/ Insights
In some sense, every server-side security vulnerability or exploit over the last 30 years shares the same root cause: some sensitive piece of data was left unencrypted (or an attacker gained access to a decryption key). When presented in this frame, the solution is fairly obvious: don’t ever decrypt data, and ensure no decryption key is ever stored on any server.
We are excited to announce our investment in io.net, the leading distributed compute marketplace for AI workloads. We led the seed and participated in the Series A Round. In total, io.net has raised $30M from Multicoin, Hack VC, 6th Man Ventures, Modular Capital, and a syndicate of deeply connected angel investors to make on-demand, production-ready compute markets a reality.
The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) launched on March 14, 2023 (pi day). There is nothing else in crypto quite like the FVM. It allows developers to bind payments and DeFi to real world primitives on the Filecoin network, starting with storage. Over time, we expect the FVM to also allow for direct programmability of bandwidth and compute resources as well.
/What Multicoin Is Excited About For 2024
At the end of every year we come together and discuss some of the biggest changes we’re expecting in the year ahead. For the first time, we’re publishing these ideas. Please feel free to reach out to any of us to discuss these ideas further.
/Oracles and the New Frontier for Application-Owned Orderflow Auctions
Today, we are excited to announce our investment in Pyth Network, the leading first-party oracle in crypto. The implicit premise behind legacy oracles in crypto has been that all data—including financial data—is freely available and accessible to on-chain contracts. Accordingly, oracles simply need to incentivize supply-side network contributors to scrape and aggregate this data, come to consensus on it, and bring it on-chain.
Today, we are proud to announce our investment in Squads Labs, a core contributor to the Squads Protocol, the leading multisig solution on Solana. Their latest $5.7M round brings Squad’s total funding to date to $12.5M. We first invested in Squads in late 2021, and since then they have grown to become a powerhouse in the Solana ecosystem and, we believe, a best-in-class multisig solution on Solana for institutional traders, crypto-prosumers, and builders.
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On September 27-28, we held our annual summit in Austin, Texas, which brings together some of the brightest and most influential minds in crypto to explore the latest trends and issues shaping the industry. This event is primarily for our Limited Partners, so thank you, again, to all of you who came down to see us this year. We appreciate your continued support.
The two most challenging technical problems in crypto have been clear for a decade: scaling and confidentiality. Most of the discourse in the industry is around scaling; meanwhile, a handful of teams continue to quietly build a variety of advanced cryptographic techniques to enable confidentiality. Today, I’m excited to announce that Multicoin has led a $7.5M investment into Fhenix, which is pioneering a fundamentally new approach to on-chain confidentiality.
/Exploring The Design Space Of DePIN Networks
In April 2022, we published our thesis on Proof of Physical Work (PoPW) networks (now, more colloquially referred to as “Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks,” or “DePIN” for short). In that essay, we wrote: “[PoPW networks] incentivize people to do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure. Relative to traditional forms of capital formation for building physical infrastructure, these permissionless and credibly-neutral protocols:"
/Exploring Long-Term Staking in PoS Networks
Today, nearly every proof-of-stake (PoS) network offers rewards through protocol staking and inflation; however, none have yet to offer a killer feature: long-term staking. Term structures[1] allow investors to strategically lock up capital for distinct periods of time in exchange for generally greater returns on investment. In finance, term rates make up a yield curve, which is an essential ingredient into well-functioning financial markets.