On 26 October, 2017, DraperDragon Innovation Fund and the Metaverse Foundation officially announced their partnership to establish a digital asset investment fund. According to the announcement, the investment fund will control capital totaling 5 million ETP and will be investing in blockchain projects globally. There are three notable points about the fund:

1. It will invest in blockchain projects that exhibit the spirit of innovation;

2. It will contribute to the establishment of the Metaverse ecosystem and invest in a range of blockchain-based commercial applications including those in the areas of social media, gaming, media and advertising, finance, government cooperation (regulatory assistance) and other outstanding projects. Furthermore, it will help these applications go live on Metaverse based on the Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) concept;

3. For developers in the open source community, this fund will serve to encourage application development on the Metaverse public blockchain as well as screen and provide funding for promising projects.

As the digital asset fund invests in projects, an increasing number of blockchain projects will be financed by ETP. Apart from bringing more traffic to applications built on Metaverse, this will also increase the usage frequency of Metaverse’s basic functions. Furthermore, the digital asset fund will be investing its ETP holdings over a prolonged period of time. This will help to stabilize the price of ETP in the secondary market as well as steadily increase the demand for ETP, since users must transact in ETP for certain functions on the main Metaverse blockchain. As mentioned in Metaverse’s white paper, “ETP itself can be used to measure the value of smart properties in Metaverse or as collateral in financial transactions. Additionally, fees applied on Metaverse must be paid in ETP.” The results of the digital asset fund are a crucial target — its excellent performance will help drive rapid growth in the value of ETP.

As a new sector, the blockchain industry has several unique features, including peculiar ways of financing and high entry barriers for technology research and development. Therefore, there are also high standards set for blockchain investors — in addition to a wealth of investment experience, investors in projects built on the Metaverse blockchain should also have a deep understanding of the relevant technical fields. Additionally, they should be well-versed in investing in blockchain application scenarios based on blockchain infrastructure.

The DraperDragon Innovation Fund has a reputation for its excellent historical investment performance in the field of high-tech innovation, and has long been committed to cross-border investment in Sino-US emerging industries. Early-stage venture capital has always been a high-risk and high-return proposition, but DraperDragon Innovation Fund’s investment team have a sharp eye for blockchain-related industries and programs. This will be essential for the special investment fund to invest in early-stage projects, including ICOs. As for Metaverse, its members have many years of experience in cross-border entrepreneurship ventures and a thorough understanding of the blockchain projects in various countries. This cross-disciplinary collaboration between outstanding names in the VC and blockchain industries hold exciting prospects for the future development of the Metaverse blockchain ecosystem.