Beacon, an early-stage web3 accelerator program, held its second cohort graduation on Wednesday. The demo day launched in tandem with its VC database, which opened to the public amid ongoing capital restraints in a bear market.
The teams in the second cohort, its Summer 2023 group (Cohort S23), presented their startups during the demo day, exclusively covered by TechCrunch+. We also covered its first Cohort demo day in January, which it styled as “Cohort 0.” That one featured 13 startups.
Cohort S23 consists of 10 companies, built by 25 founders across three countries and 12 cities. Unlike Y Combinator, Beacon doesn’t select only the companies that are the most nascent. “The accelerator focuses on web3 but looks at everything within the industry from pre-seed and Series A,” said Sam Lehman, core contributor at Beacon.
The three-month program runs twice a year and accepts about 15 to 20 applicants for its fall and spring cohorts.
Kenzi Wang, another core contributor for Beacon, shared that the cohort had about 40 mentors, including: Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden; Neil Cunha-Gomes, head of EMEA fintech at SoftBank Vision Fund; and Dan Kim, VP of business development at Coinbase. Venture capitalists from CoinFund, Variant, Electric Capital, Pantera, Lightspeed, Galaxy Interactive and others also served as mentors.
Prospective startups are not tied to any particular blockchain, making Beacon’s program open to anyone in the crypto market. “We definitely take a multi-chain future view at Beacon, so most of our projects are building multi-chain or chain-agnostic products,” Lehman said in an email to TechCrunch+. “That said, stuff in the EVM world is definitely still the hottest.”
The startups focused on a range of crypto subsectors like infrastructure, gaming, decentralized social media and DeFi, to name a few. The majority of the startups in the cohort are seed stage, with two at pre-seed and one company, Phaver, at Series A.
But the new startup group (notes below) was not all that Beacon had on offer this week.
Sharing fund data
Beacon VC Database is a tool initially used internally by the group to help founders in its accelerator program find funds actively deploying capital into web3 startups. As of today, the platform features over 200 funds, including generalist funds with a crypto arm like a16z and Lightspeed, along with pure crypto-focused funds invested in the space like Dragonfly and Blockchain Capital. It also includes micro funds around $10 million to mega funds with over $1 billion in assets under management, Lehman noted.
“We built it because we kept hearing the same questions: ‘Which funds are deploying into game content right now?’ or ‘Do you know any funds that would lead a round for a security focused company at a seed stage?’” Lehman said. While venture databases are not rare — PitchBook, Crunchbase, Dealroom, etc. — they are often generalized and thus less precise for subniche categories of a startup.
Beacon plans to progressively decentralize the database over time to allow investors to “claim” their records to update it in real time, the accelerator said in a statement.
Beacon’s S23 Cohort
Company name: Cube3.AI
- What it does: Real-time web3 security platform
- Founders: Einaras Gravrock, Chris Griffiths
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Cube3.AI is building a real-time web3 transaction security solution. It uses AI to inspect contracts deployed on chain for risks and exploits, Einaras Gravrock, co-founder of Cube3.AI, said during demo day. Attacks will continue to happen, Gravrock said, but Cube3.AI aims to be a “mousetrap to save DeFi and web3” from attackers. It focuses on sectors like marketplaces, bridges, gaming and NFTs and works to identify threats with smart contracts before attacks happen, so other entities can better protect themselves. It also provides applications with services to block exploits, instead of pausing the app itself, so users are not impeded during security-related issues. Its software requires no coding skills and users can get it up and running within 60 seconds, according to its website. It’s looking for $2 million in additional capital and has a “good chunk” already committed, Gravrock said.
Company name: Ryu Games
- What it does: Building “Steam” for web3
- Founders: Rick Ellis, Wyatt Mufson, Ross Krasner
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Ryu Games is building a protocol to decentralize everything that makes up a game and become the “Steam of web3.” The startup’s chief product officer, Rick Ellis, is an original inventor and founder of Steam. “The way people find and play games hasn’t changed much since digital distribution has started,” Ross Krasner, co-founder and CEO of Ryu Games, said during demo day. But now, web3 platforms like Ryu are attempting to disrupt gaming distribution. The startup is building a network of interconnected game stores and launchers with low fees and plans to decentralize user-generated content in the future. Its public beta is currently open and the protocol’s first store and launcher is live. The startup is looking for investors for a strategic round.
Company name: Wasabi
- What it does: Derivative infra for NFTs
- Founders: Eren Derman, Kemal Hasan Atay
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Wasabi is an audited NFT options protocol that wants to create more liquid NFT economies by leveraging market volatility, hedging against price declines and helping users earn premiums on NFTs (but did not disclose how). The protocol is live on Ethereum’s mainnet and currently has about $750,000 in liquidity locked into its pools and a total of 18,598 options available, according to its website. The startup is interoperable, meaning it can support decentralized applications that work with options, derivatives and metamarkets. It has over $1 million in trade volume and is currently raising $2 million for its seed round.
Company name: Phaver
- What it does: Multiprotocol app
- Founders: Tomi Fyrqvist
- Stage: Series A
- The pitch: Phaver aims to be the “gateway to web3” social media. It operates on top of the Lens Protocol, a decentralized social networking ecosystem, and is a multiwallet, multiprotocol application. It aims to help users to engage with creators, connect with NFT communities and earn rewards directly in-app, among other elements. It has over 200,000 unique application installs, about 170,000 monthly active users and 65,000 daily active users, Tomi Fyrqvist, founder of Phaver, said during the demo day. Its most active users are Japan, South Korea and Turkey, Fyrqvist noted. The company recently raised $7 million in its seed round.
Company name: Vest
- What it does: Decentralized financial products
- Founders: Max T, Rikuya T. and Justin M. (The team is semi-anonymous.)
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Vest Labs is a quantitative research firm backed by Jane Street and other investors. Its first product, Vest Exchange, is a perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) that allows traders to speculate on crypto assets. The exchange is powered by a risk-based automatic market maker, which matches buyers and sellers asynchronously to allow for a temporary imbalance (or inventory), according to its documents. The exchange’s products include perpetual futures trading and “providing liquidity.” The platform is planning for its mainnet launch in October, Justin said. It is raising a $1.5 million strategic round.
Company name: Side Protocol
- What it does: DeFi liquidity infra
- Founders: Shane Qiu, Ping Liang
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Side is a Cosmos software development kit–based, Ethereum-compatible blockchain that aims to be an open ecosystem. “We believe that the future of blockchains is multichain,” Shane Qiu said during the demo day. He noted its protocol focus is on building an infrastructure provider for “mesh liquidity,” which is a liquidity network distributed across different blockchains but connected through messaging platforms. In late July, the startup raised $1.5 million at a $30 million valuation. It closed its $1.5 million pre-seed round in May.
Company name: Formless
- What it does: Decentralized media distribution
- Founders: Brandon Tory, Justin Zubrick, Bixia Mac, Jason Martin
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Formless is building Share, a decentralized distribution protocol, that aims to provide peer-to-peer media distribution and help creators gain ownership rights. Its decentralized app (dApp) uses blockchain technology and smart contracts to help creators collect revenues directly from consumers in real time. Related royalties are automatically distributed to owners. The protocol that powers the dApp aims to provide consumer revenue sharing, peer-to-peer advertising and biometric-based media access policies, to name a few use cases, Brandon Tory, co-founder and CEO of Formless, shared during demo day. Other web3 dApps and traditional web hosting services can pull content from Share, and the company sees it as the beginning of a multiplayer internet that can help the creator ecosystem grow, Tory noted. It closed a $2 million pre-seed round with backers like a16z and is currently raising $3 million for its seed round.
Company name: Hopscotch
- What it does: Venmo for crypto
- Founders: Marco Mele, Morgan Culbertson, Luca Faust, Chiara Faust
- Stage: Pre-seed
- The pitch: Hopscotch dubs itself the “Venmo for crypto” that allows people to send money with just a message. With that said, its aspirations are greater, hoping to build an all-in-one web3 super app for “anything and everything.” The app optimized its platform for small size execution from $1 to $1,000, Morgan Culbertson, co-founder and CEO of Hopscotch, said during demo day. Its app provides users the ability to message each other and send payments through its platform and also helps convert, bridge, on-ramp and off-ramp assets through its chat function. It is currently in beta mode and is available on blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche. “Today’s competition is Venmo and tomorrow’s is Telegram and WhatsApp,” Culbertson said. It’s raising $1.5 million and already has investors like Dragonfly and 0xBeacon.
Company name: Octane
- What it does: AI security tools for blockchains
- Founders: Nathan Ostrowski, Devin Shah, Giovanni Vignone
- Stage: Pre-seed
- The pitch: Octane is a developer-focused platform that aims to battle-test smart contracts simply with AI technology. Its tool suite aims to help customers find vulnerabilities without complex setup or developer onboarding. It integrates into developer workflows like GitHub and utilizes machine learning architectures to help improve projects’ security. “We serve clear, actionable one-click fixes,” Giovanni Vignone, co-founder and CEO of Octane, said during demo day. Currently developers write code and ship it off to a bunch of auditors, but the platform tries to streamline the process by allowing developers to write code through Octane and have it sent off to audit directly from the service. It currently has over 120 developer sign-ups, Vignone noted. Investors include Druid Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Duke Capital partners and Orange DAO. It’s opening up a $700,000 round.
Company name: Native
- What it does: Invisible decentralized exchange layer
- Founder: Meina Zhou
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Native is an “invisible DEX layer” that allows applications to embed an exchange into their project’s interface within five minutes so users can buy and sell tokens directly without a third-party platform. The product aims to separate asset custody from trading and help projects earn fee revenue, drive greater liquidity and streamline users’ journeys directly on applications, as opposed to redirecting them to exchanges.