The ‘simposium’ storming crypto venture capital
What do you get when you cross a cat, a Pokemon, and an Iron Age warrior？ A venture capital fund, of course!To get more news about
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One of the toughest puzzles in crypto is figuring out what to take seriously.
On Friday, the DeFi Alliance — a decentralized finance startup incubator and accelerator — announced a list of 11 new members. Some were predictable, such as oracle provider Chainlink and VC stalwart Blockchain Capital, but one name stood out in particular: eGirl Capital, the social media menace and upstart venture capital outfit inspired by a horned-up Internet subculture.
eGirl members, such as Degen Spartan, are known just as much for their cogent analysis of cryptos notoriously complex markets as they are for posting nothing but animated porn for weeks at a time. One member — perhaps one of the best and brightest on cryptoTwitter — dons the social media persona of a Pokemon, Ditto, that has transformed into a couch so that people will unwittingly sit on them. The constellation of memetic touchstones animating these various comic bits is too exhausting to summarize and likely worth an anthropological study.
While it might be easy to pass the group off as a joke gone too far (by that standard the t-rex in Jurassic Park is a pet that got off-leash), eGirl has been included in some high-profile press releases of late. The group participated in a $4.9 million funding round for decentralized finance protocol Alchemix, and has also announced investments in Radicle and Unisocks. Theyll be releasing the first episode of a in-house podcast series next week.
As for their funding, in a question-and-answer document this reporter caught a glimpse of a figure prior to a committee decision to delete it and offer no comment in an effort to appear more “mysterious”; if accurate, it was staggeringly high.
Their arrival on the investment scene comes amid a period of professionalization and institutional adoption for crypto. Hedge funds that previously dismissed cryptocurrencies as a scam are now setting up trading desks. The assets are getting to be so boring that retirement funds are allocating money into digital currencies.
eGirl made it clear, however, that theyre willing (and perhaps eager) to lob a glitter bomb into the midst of the increasingly buttoned-up affair. As DAO and community growth specialist Pet3rpan put it:
“egirl/eboy aesthetic is a big fuck you to traditional ideals of culture of the last 10 years, we dont care that we aren't cool.”Traditional venture capital organizations bring varying degrees of utility to a project besides money. Delphi Digital, for instance, can actively contribute to the architecting and engineering of the tokenomics and contracts of a protocol. Many offer public relations expertise and can attract significant publicity.
So why would anyone work with an organization overwhelmingly peopled with anons？ And, likewise, what do the anons think they can bring to the table？
“Crypto was started by an anonymous founder with strong pseudonymity built into the heart of the bitcoin protocol and all those who followed it. Bitcoin is stronger for it too,” said Eva Beylin, one of eGirl's few 'doxxed' members and the director of The Graph Foundation. “Weve seen a reversal in this trend as public figures have become the face of protocols and projects, and worse yet, sophisticated tracking software has de-anonymized much of the activity going on on-chain. [...] While egirl has invested in a wide range of anon and non-anon projects, anon funds funding anon teams can reverse this trend and bring back the privacy preserving qualities we all value deep down in our heart of hearts.”
eGirl member Scoopy Trooples, who is also a core team member for eGirl portfolio protocol Alchemix, noted that eGirls involvement was key in helping to generate ideas and refine Alchemix's wider vision. In a Tweet, they also thanked eGirl for bootstrapping liquidity, fostering insider connections, and promoting the project:
