The cFund, a collaboration between IOG and Wave Financial, plans to support the Cardano ecosystem by investing in high-impact projects. The fund was first announced at the Shelley Summit and focuses on companies that utilize Cardano’s blockchain and technology.
Wave Finance Principal David Roebuck spoke to IOHK, outlining the plans for the fund. Let’s take a quick summary of the conversation.
Details Of The Fund
Managed by Wave Financial in partnership with IOG, the cFund is a crypto-native hedge fund employing an early-stage venture strategy, investing in innovative companies on the Cardano blockchain that are developing businesses, applications, and products. The fund leverages the domain expertise and connections that IOG and Wave Finance offer, the cFund is creating a multiplier effect for companies in its portfolio, significantly increasing their growth.
Rationale Behind The Fund
IOG hopes to enable developers to build interoperable, scalable, and sustainable blockchain solutions. It also aims to promote financial inclusion in areas of the world where the population is significantly underserved. IOG hopes to create an entirely new financial structure that focuses on emerging markets and utilizes dApps and protocols that have been deployed on Cardano and other similar blockchains.
The Investment Approach
cFund is backed by institutional investors, family offices, and high net worth individuals. Roebuck stated,
“cFund looks to invest in, and partner with, leading early-stage projects and businesses that primarily have a focus on the Cardano ecosystem and associated technology. The fund is already actively deploying capital and creating partnerships across the Cardano ecosystem.”
cFund takes a disciplined approach when analyzing an investment opportunity, considering several factors that could play a role in the investment. The fund evaluates if there is a need in the market for the offering a company is providing, it then determines the position of its competitors and if they can out-execute the company.
The fund also checks the team involved with the company and their background, knowledge, skills, and resources to execute and scale their project. It also evaluates possible exit scenarios. The cFunds main goal is to help Cardano build partnerships across the blockchain space, which is why one of the most important factors it considers is whether or not the project can add value to the Cardano ecosystem.
Focus On DeFi
The fund is significantly focused on DeFi, with its first investment, called COTI, a scalable and decentralized payments network for e-commerce. According to Roebuck, COTI adds value to the Cardano ecosystem because it “plans to provide a bridge for DeFi applications wishing to deploy on the Cardano blockchain.”
COTI is also developing ADA Pay, a solution enabling merchants to accept payments on ADA with instant settlement. Another company in the portfolio is Blockswap, an automated protocol that allows users to re-stake assets already staked, bringing liquidity for staking activities.
cFunds latest investment in the DeFi space is Occam.Fi. Occam.Fi is a suite of DeFi solutions that have been tailored exclusively for Cardano, with the company having already launched its first product. This decentralized funding platform will allow DeFi applications to raise capital using the Cardano blockchain.
Long-Term Plan For cFund
cFund plans to invest primarily in Cardano, becoming the leading early-stage venture firm for Cardano, becoming an integral part of Cardano’s ecosystem.
“In line with IOG’s founding principle of cascading disruption, the idea that most of the structures that form global financial, governance and social systems are inherently unstable and thus minor perturbations can cause a ripple effect that fundamentally re-configures the entire system.”
cFund is identifying and backing technologies that are forcing these perturbations together while pushing a fair and transparent order for stakeholders involved.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
