We're excited to back
@eigenlayer
on its $50M Series A round.
Founded by
@sreeramkannan
- EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that enables users to re-stake (automatically) and extend cryptoeconomic security by validating applications on the network.
Happy to announce that EigenLabs, the team behind the initial development of the EigenLayer protocol, has raised $50 million in a Series A round led by
@blockchaincap
👋 Meet Harry Hurst (
@harryhurst
)
💼 Co-Founder & Managing Partner
🌟 Harry is the founder of
@Pipe
, which reached a $2 billion valuation within a year of its public launch after raising $315M in equity financing, making it the fastest fintech to achieve this at the time.
👋 Meet Huupe
@huupeofficial
📍 HQ: Irvine, California
👥 Leadership: Paul Anton (
@manyyearstime
) and Lyth Saeed (
@lythsaeed
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Huupe's smart basketball hoop is an innovative product that offers users a new level of
🌟 Protagonist, in collaboration with
@305venture
and other sponsors, was honored to host over 130+ Thiel Fellows at a fun-filled BBQ.
🚀 At Protagonist we are dedicated to backing ambitious founders who are building the next generation of industry-defining companies. This
-
@sec3dev
is a security research firm that prepares Solana projects for millions of users by building technology-based solutions for Web3 projects to ensure protocols stay safe as they scale.
👋 Meet Exowatt (
@exowatt305
)
📍HQ: Miami, FL
👥 Founders: Hannan Parvizian (
@HaPi31415
) & Jack Abraham (
@jackabraham
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Exowatt is a next generation renewable energy company offering commercial and industrial
1/ THE SMART MESSAGE SPEC IS NOW LIVE 🟣
We've teamed up with 50+ projects across
@solana
to build the first Smart Messages
AND we're launching a $100k Grant Program to kickstart the next wave of apps building the future of messaging
Read more
@CoinDesk
“Protagonist” - A leader, an advocate or champion of a particular cause, a movement or idea.
The main character of a story.
The one who makes key decisions and faces the most significant obstacles.
Aptos Labs is a safe and scalable layer 1 blockchain built in Move and designed to be modular and seamlessly upgradable. Protagonist invested in the seed round alongside
@a16z
@binance
@ftx_official
@coinbase
@jumpcapital
and others.
WOW!
@bjornwgnr
was joined on stage by
@GBousis
and teased the upcoming Polkadot App, a self custodial wallet optimized for ease of use, simple enough for the crypto uninitiated 🙌
No seed phrases - No usernames - No passwords. It will use Apple or Google Passkeys 🔐
🔹 Staking
👋 Meet George Bousis (
@GBousis
)
💼 Co-Founder & Managing Partner
🌟 George Bousis is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor at the forefront of the payments, loyalty, and blockchain industries. As the Founder, and CEO of
@RaiseMarket
, he launched the world's leading
👋 Meet Roam
@roam
📍HQ: Miami, Florida
👥 Leadership:
@howard
,
@jbrod
, Tom Dixon, Sean MacIsaac, Grace Sutherland
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: To provide an all-in-one Cloud HQ solution that brings distributed companies together in one
-
@cardinal_labs
is a protocol built on Solana that enables the conditional ownership of NFTs. The company is poised to disrupt the future utility of NFTs through rentals, subscriptions, staking, tickets, and more.
👋 Meet Levitate
@levitateai
📍HQ: Raleigh, North Carolina
👥 Leadership:
@jesselipson
, Grant Kitching, Pete Harvey
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Combining AI-powered software with dedicated content specialists to help customers build real
-
@saydialect
is the first protocol for smart messaging - dynamic, composable dapp notifications and wallet-to-wallet chat.
Dialect enables more engaging dapp experiences with targeted messages and notifications.
The Protagonist symbol is inspired by the four parallel ellipses representing different perspectives in one storyline; or parallel alternatives to reality.
We are delighted to be working with
@ProtagonistXYZ
as investors in our series A round! We appreciate the continued inputs on strategy and execution from
@GBousis
as well as on technology from
@rakeshgidwani
!
Have you heard of
@huupeofficial
?? The smart basketball hoop we just co-led an $11M seed round in where you can stream games, compete with friends, watch content, and improve your jump shot! More here -
👋 Meet GigaBrain
@the_gigabrain
📍 HQ: Irvine, California
👥 Leadership: Robert Toledo and Mark Hudson
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: GigaBrain scans billions of discussions on reddit and other online communities to find the most useful posts
We are thrilled to announce the deployment of the Stage-1 EigenLayer protocol on Ethereum Mainnet!
This marks a significant milestone in our mission to create a permissionless environment for innovation.
👋 Meet
@DiamondStandard
📍 HQ: New York, New York
👥 Leadership: Cormac Kinney (
@CormacKinney
), Doug Jordan, Chris Dessi (
@chrisdessi
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Diamond Standard has created the first and only licensed diamond commodities.
👋 Meet Bruinen
@BruinenHQ
📍 HQ: San Francisco, CA
👥 Leadership:
@strandbrown
,
@tylerjdammann
, Grant Pierce
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Bruinen solves the problem of fragmented user data sharing by building APIs that allow user accounts to
👋 Meet Camp Network
@Camp_L2
📍HQ: New York, NY
👥 Founders: Nirav Murthy (
@niravmurthy
) & James Chi (
@jameskchi
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Camp Network, an optimistic rollup, is a Layer 2 scaling solution developed on the Ethereum
👋 Meet Bird Buddy
@mybirdbuddy
📍 HQ: Ljubljana, Slovenia
👥 Leadership: Franci Zidar and Ziga Vrtacic
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Bird Buddy is an AI-powered smart bird feeder that notifies you of feathered visitors, captures their photos
👋 Meet Fhenix
@FhenixIO
📍HQ: Tel Aviv, Israel
👥 Leadership: Guy Itzhaki (
@GuyItzh
) and Guy Zyskind (
@GuyZys
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Fhenix is a confidential Layer 2 solution for Ethereum, enabling developers to build encrypted smart
👋 Meet Insomnia Labs
@insomnia_labs
📍HQ: New York, USA
👥 Founders: Billy Huang (
@bilo_eth
) and Jack Cameron (
@MyKittyPasha
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Insomnia Labs is a Web3 advertising & technology company dedicated to bringing brands
👋 Meet Jiani Chen
@chloejiani
💼 Partner and Investment Lead
🌟 Prior to joining Protagonist, Jiani was an investor at Felicis Ventures where she sourced the team's investment in Sourcegraph and helped close investments in Xilis and Opsera. She also helped manage Felicis's
👋 Meet Movement Labs
@movementlabsxyz
📍HQ: New York, USA
👥 Founders: Cooper Scanlon (
@coopsmoves
) and Rushi Manche (
@rushimanche
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Movement Labs is the first network of modular Move-based blockchains built to
Proud to be backing
@mybirdbuddy
, the AI-powered smart bird feeder transforming bird-watching!
Check out their incredible journey as they expand their product line and engage a growing community.
1/ While centralized AI is already quite mature and valuable, decentralized AI is essential for ensuring data ownership, transparency, and inclusivity.
2/
@sentient_agi
aims to create an open AGI economy where AI builders and users are stakeholders. This economy will enable
Last week, Protagonist team members George Bousis (
@GBousis
) and Michael Gargiulo visited Unicorn Auctions (
@AuctionsUnicorn
) new headquarters, alongside CEO & Co-Founder Phil Mikhaylov (
@PhillyMik
).
👋 Meet Sevan Avakian
@SevannyV
💼 Partner and General Counsel
🌟 Prior to joining Protagonist, Sevan was a partner at Gould & Ratner LLP where he counseled privately held businesses in a variety of complex transactions and corporate governance matters. He also represented
👋 Meet Rakesh Gidwani
@rakeshgidwani
💼 Partner & Chief Technology Officer
🌟 Rakesh Gidwani is an accomplished technology leader with over 20 years of experience in delivering software products at scale. He has spent a significant portion of his career building software
🌟 This summer Protagonist has been actively engaged in attending industry-leading conferences and networking events. We are creating meaningful connections with visionaries, startups, and disruptors as we continue to shape the future together.
👋 Meet SITE Technologies
📍 HQ: Chicago, IL
👥 Leadership: Dan Duffy (President & CEO) and Austin Rabine (Co-Founder)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: SITE is an innovative asset management and data analytics company whose team of experts develop
Last week, George Bousis
@GBousis
, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Protagonist, spoke at the
@roam
Chicago launch event, highlighting how Roam is building the office of tomorrow.
👋Meet Agentio
@Agentiohq
📍HQ: New York, USA
👥Founders: Arthur Leopold (
@Arthur_Leopold
) and Jonathan Meyers
🌐Website:
🚀Vision & Opportunity: Agentio is the first advertising platform dedicated to creator content. Agentio's core thesis is that
🌟Protagonist takes a “hands-on” approach working with founders to guide them each step of the way in building and scaling their businesses. We draw on our network of founders, operators, and investors as well as our experience scaling companies to our portfolio companies across
⭐Protagonist co-hosted a NYC Crypto Ecosystem Breakfast with the TwoSigma Ventures team yesterday. Thank you to everyone who stopped by. It was great to connect with founders and builders in the crypto industry!
👋 Meet Morty (
@mortyapp
)
📍 HQ: Los Angeles, CA
👥 Founders: Andy Bauch (
@AndyBauch
) and Karlis Lapsins
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Morty is building the ultimate app to discover the coolest experiences and find people to do them with. As
⭐Protagonist team members, Jiani Chen and Nick Malone, attended Stanford Blockchain Week where they spent time learning about leading trends in the blockchain industry. During the week, Protagonist co-hosted a dinner alongside General Catalyst, which included over 50 founders,
👋 Meet Era (
@makeyourera
)
📍HQ: San Francisco, CA
👥 Founders: Alex Norcliffe (
@alex_norcliffe
) and Lindsay Brady (
@LinsdorB
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Era is on a mission to simplify the complexities of the financial system by leveraging
👋 Meet Nubit
@nubit_org
📍HQ: Santa Barbara, CA
👥 Leadership: Yu Feng (
@captain8299
), Hanzhi Liu (
@trackoor
), and Hongbo Wen
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Founded by UCSB computer science professor Yu Feng, Nubit integrates a decade of
👋 Meet
@ionet_official
📍HQ: New York, NY
👥 Leadership: Ahmad Shadid (
@shadid_io
) & Tory Green (
@MTorygreen
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: is a decentralized GPU network designed to give unlimited computing power to
👋 Meet Nick Malone
💼 Associate
🌟 Nick Malone is an Associate on the investment team at Protagonist. Prior to joining Protagonist, he was an Investment Banking Analyst at J.P. Morgan in the Financial Institutions group. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of
👋 Meet Telly
@itsfreetelly
📍HQ: Los Angeles, CA
👥 Founders: Ilya Pozin (
@ilyaNeverSleeps
) and Shervin Pishevar (
@shervin
)
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Telly is building the ultimate TV experience and revolutionizing the future of television
👋 Meet Trait
📍HQ: San Francisco, California
👥 Founders: Sam England and David Shariff
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Verify the world, maximize trust. Trait enables people, businesses, and organizations to share, connect, and transact
Loyal to a cause, driven by a goal, and those brave enough to face the most significant obstacles. At Protagonist, we are more than a venture firm; we are your partners on the journey, every step of the way.
@elonmusk
Previous Twitter Blue subscribers that upgraded to new $8 p/mo tier are unable to receive verification/new status until the prior apple subscription commences. Only then will it go into effect vs replacing the old package (can also pro-rate the difference).
Happy Friday the 13th!
The Morty team is thrilled to announce our $2.2M Series Seed round, and our launch of haunted attractions! 🎃
If you know someone who loves haunted houses and Halloween, please share
@mortyapp
with them today!
More on the future of Morty:
⭐Thank you to everyone who stopped by PayPal's NYC office for our
@PayPal
x
@ProtagonistXYZ
Web3/FinTech Breakfast! We were thrilled to get a chance to connect with over 160 founders, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurial-minded leaders from the tech and crypto industries.
👋 Meet Spectral
@SpectralFi
📍 HQ: New York, USA
👥 Founders: Sishir Varghese and Kevin Choi
🌐 Website:
🚀Vision & Opportunity: Spectral's vision is to revolutionize the global financial reputation system, empowering individuals, companies, and
👋 Meet Glacis Labs
@glacislabs
📍HQ: New York, USA
👥Leadership: Jacob Blish (
@chaingenius
), Sam Patel, Gustavo J. Vazquez Amado, Jeremy Boetticher
🌐 Website:
🚀 Vision & Opportunity: Glacis is a Firewall, Router and universal adaptor for chain
👋 Meet George Ruan
💼 Co-Founder & Managing Partner
🌟George Ruan is the co-founder and former CEO of Honey, a free browser extension that aggregates and automatically applies online coupons when shopping online. Honey was acquired by PayPal (PYPL) in 2019 for $4 billion in
🎯 Traditional venture capital remains disconnected from the founder ecosystem. Protagonist was founded to be the strategic value-add capital that founders wish they had when building their businesses.
🤝 As strategic partners, Protagonist advises portfolio companies on a
👋 Meet James Norris
💼 Partner, CFO and Chief Compliance Officer
🌟 James Norris has spent 20+ years in the accounting profession. James was previously a manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK and the US auditing alternative investment vehicles. James has also served as