Skynet Trading Launches $40M Fund to Support Elrond Network’s DeFi Push

After a pair of splashy acquisitions, Elrond is looking to attract more projects.

By Brandy Betz

Apr 14, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. UTC

Updated Apr 14, 2022 at 2:32 p.m. UTC

Brandy Betz

Brandy covers crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk.

Follow @BrandyBetz on Twitter

Elrond, a layer 1 blockchain focused on scalability, has moved deeper into the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) in recent months through strategic acquisitions.

Now Skynet EGLD Capital, the investment arm of software and consultancy firm Skynet Trading, is committing $40 million to back projects in the Elrond ecosystem.

“The Elrond blockchain architecture has been designed from scratch to evolve beyond the current scaling limitations of, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum,” Elrond co-founder and CEO Beniamin Mincu told CoinDesk in an email, touting the network’s high transaction capacity.

“A fully licensed fund like Skynet can attract institutional capital and provide a new growth path for the Elrond Network,” he added.

The Elrond Foundation, Morningstar Ventures, Spark Digital Capital, Woodstock, Verko and others are also involved in the fund.

Elrond roadmap

Web 3 payments are an important investment area for the Elrond ecosystem following the network’s acquisitions of crypto payments firms Utrust and Twispay, said Mincu. The latter provided Elrond with regulatory approval to issue electronic money in Romania.

“Skynet has deep expertise in DeFi and algorithmic trading and will provide the knowledge and synergies to really build the backbone for Web 3 payments and the new metaverse economy,” he explained.

The Skynet fund has already started deploying funds, including an undisclosed investment in Itheum, which is launching a data brokerage platform on Elrond.

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elrond Payments Network Venture Capital

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