Los Angeles (CoinChapter): Tendermint, one of the leading firms behind Cosmos, is launching a $20 million venture fund to boost development across the network.
“We’re trying to lay the foundations for decentralized networks to flourish as part of Cosmos,” Tendermint CEO Peng Zhong said. “So, just providing another source of liquidity for people that want to build on our stack.”
The announcement coincided with the activation of Cosmos’ inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC). IBC makes it easier for distinct blockchains built on Tendermint Core to work together.
The cross-chain flow of tokens is expected to help financial products in the Cosmos network become more widely used. According to Cosmos, the Tendermint Ventures fund and IRIS tokens will be the largest in the network’s ecosystem.
“Tendermint Ventures is similar to ConsenSys Ventures,” Peng said. Referring to the investments wing of Joe Lubin’s Ethereum workshop.
“We’re going to identify promising projects, building using Cosmos tech and provide venture capital to accelerate their growth.”
The Tendermint Ventures fund comes on the heels of a $10 million Terraform Capital fund announced in February. Terraform mostly focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) on the Terra blockchain.
Meanwhile, the Tendermint Ventures fund has its sights on bigger things. “In the near term, we are focusing on creating a really robust DeFi ecosystem within Cosmos.” Said Jin Kwon, the Tendermint chief of staff leading the new venture fund.
“Our goal at the end of the day is that these projects that we bring in will be complementary to each other. So one may be doing something in one aspect of DeFi and another project will be to leverage that project.”
Tendermint Ventures among early investors in Anchor
As the Terra blockchain continues to grow, it recently launched a high-yield savings account known as Anchor. One of the early investors in the project is Tendermint Ventures. They additionally has invested in Regen, IRIS, B-Harvest and Tgrade.
