Gate Ventures and Boon Ventures Announce $20M Fund Dedicated to Web3 Startups Targeting Move-Based Protocols

The fund will invest across a range of Web3 verticals within the Move ecosystem, a spokesperson for Gate Ventures told Cointelegraph.

Venture capital firms Gate Ventures and Boon Ventures have partnered with Movement Labs to launch a new $20 million fund dedicated to Web3 startups.

The fund will focus on the development of Move-based protocols, particularly projects bridging the Move network with Ethereum-compatible (EVM) applications, according to an Oct. 13 announcement.

“The fund will invest across a range of Web3 verticals within the Move ecosystem,” a spokesperson for Gate Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange Gate.io, told Cointelegraph.

Specifically, investments will be directed toward decentralized finance (DeFi) projects working on security, GameFi with in-game asset transactions and non-fungible token (NFT) management, and interoperability solutions for data and asset transfers between Move and EVM ecosystems.

Startups backed by the initiative will also participate in a mentorship program and hackathons, and will have the opportunity to join a research grant program for blockchain interoperability, the announcement states.

Movement Labs is a protocol built on the Move programming language, which was initially developed by Facebook-parent Meta. Distinct from the Aptos Network, a layer-1 that also uses the Move programming language, Movement Labs’ upcoming mainnet will offer a layer-2 solution for integrating Move and Ethereum transactions.

The startup recently closed a Series A funding round with $38 million to advance fast-finality rollups, cross-chain atomic transactions, and customizable transaction sequencing, as reported in May.

To that end, supporting startups working on both Move and the EVM ecosystem is critical for improving liquidity and adoption among developers, according to a spokesperson for Movement Labs:

“The ultimate goal is to create an integrated blockchain environment where developers can build across platforms without sacrificing security or performance.”

As previously reported, Movement has been ramping up its efforts to support startups and foster its ecosystem. In September, the protocol announced that the first cohort of startups in its accelerator program raised $13.2 million in seed funding.

An additional $10 million was secured from the Web3Port Foundation to support investments in native DeFi protocols, and consumer and gaming applications within the Move network.