BNB Chain $1B Growth Fund: 2021 End of Year Review

2021.12.31  •  5 min read
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There are an estimated 300 million crypto users worldwide. With 7.9 billion people on Earth, you and I (and other crypto users) reading this only make up 3.8% of the total global population.

We have a long way ahead of us.

Our goal at the BNB Chain $1B Growth Fund is to onboard the first one billion users to crypto.  

How will we get there? By leveraging the active BNB Chain community that is out there, supercharging all of you, and building together.

If You Haven’t Yet Read The BNB Chain 2021 Year In Review, You Should.

Despite launching just 17 months ago, BNB Chain is now one of the largest blockchains in the world. With an ATH of 2.2M daily active addresses and an ecosystem that spans almost 1,200 dApps, it is still growing rapidly. Here is an in-depth 2021 year in review of the entire BNB Chain ecosystem.

Source: https://bscscan.com/chart/active-address

This extraordinary growth has been supercharged partially by the BNB Chain $100M Accelerator Fund, which now has evolved into the $1B Growth Fund.

One Billion Crypto Users

Together we’ll get to one billion users, but how? By funding new builders and dApps that cater to and will usher in the next mass crypto use case; laying the foundation for a world where the user experience is fluid and intuitive.

By focusing on big key use cases like DeFi, NFT, GameFi and Metaverse, we also made sure we supported projects with a strong focus on infrastructure and web/dev tools for large scale web3 applications. In the NFT space, we invested and supported several projects centered around the creation, analytics, and liquidity of NFTs in the BNB Chain ecosystem.

For the future, we’re looking at fundamentals across several metaverses, SocialFi, and even more advanced DeFi as we see the financialization of society unfold before us.

How We Have Used The Funds

The $1B is split across four categories of funding support, designed to accelerate all parts of the value chain:

Here’s a brief summary of what the BNB Chain investment initiative achieved in 2021.

Working with Developer Communities

To get to one billion crypto users, we first need builders to build dApps that these one billion crypto users will use.

Developers and builders are key to the crypto ecosystem.

As such, to help educate and build the developer pool, we sponsored hackathons and dev communities such as Gitcoin and Chainlink. We sponsored bounties that targeted different parts of the BNB Chain ecosystem.

BSCproject.org is a good resource to find dApps on BNB Chain. (Source: https://bscproject.org/#/projects?cateID=0&tagID=20)

Our efforts here fit in under the Talent Development and Builder & Incubation support categories. We want to do even more with developer communities, in order to continually grow the number of dApps on BNB Chain.

Achieving Sustainable Liquidity and Growth

To get to one billion crypto users, we need solid and reliable projects with high liquidity and sustainable growth.

For builders that already have projects - regardless of whether they are fairly new or established - we launched the Liquidity Incentive Program to provide the projects with liquidity and help them achieve sustainable growth.

The first few projects that benefited from the Liquidity Incentive Program were Deri Protocol, MCDEX, WOO Network, Decentral Games, and Celer Network.

We select projects based on innovation, traction, and projects that have solid long-term plans and vision.

BNB Chain’s Flagship Accelerator & Incubation Program: Most Valuable Builder

To get to one billion crypto users, we need to double down and supercharge support for the top dApps on BNB Chain.

Again under Builder & Incubation, We have recently concluded our flagship incubation program, Most Valuable Builder Season 3 - MVB III: Beyond the Big Bang.

For the first time, we brought on community leaders, domain experts, builders and investors to mentor and share insights via invaluable fireside chats.

During Demo Day, 8 promising MVB projects presented and pitched to both web2 and web3 investors. We received very positive feedback on the event. Check the recap here.

We have seen firsthand how many web2 investors crossed over and are continuously dipping their toes into the space. Please reach out to us if you want to be involved.

Direct Investments

To get to one billion crypto users, we need to invest into strong visionary teams who execute at lightning speeds, flawlessly .

Since the genesis of the BNB Chain fund till today, we’ve made about 50 investments into many amazing teams and projects across various categories.

Here’s a highlight of some of the investments we made in 2021:

  • To grow the base needed for web3, we supported infrastructure and tooling projects like Biconomy, EPNS, Covalent, and Project Galaxy.
  • We invested in DeFi projects like AllianceBlock and OpenOcean. We intend to expand here exponentially, especially if you're building advanced DeFi legos/2.0. Please do apply here!
  • We also invested in NFT projects such as Quidd, Mask Network, NFTb, Refinable. Alethea is ushering in the next wave of intelligent NFTs (iNFTs). We've made even more investments into the wider NFT ecosystem (infra, analytics, tooling etc.), which you'll soon hear more about!
  • As gaming guilds are necessary for a healthy blockchain gaming ecosystem now, we made investments into Avocado Guild, Crypto Gaming United, and into games, game studios, and metaverses such as Gala Games and SecondLive.

When the BNB Chain fund invests, we also invest in your growth.

While it isn’t our end goal, since the BNB Chain fund’s investment, projects such as BakerySwap, AnySwap, Paid Network, Juggernaut, NFTb, and Gala Games have increased their market cap upwards of 700%, due to direct traction and impact of our ecosystem. The total portfolio’s contribution to the BNB Chain ecosystem currently sits at 19% of transaction volume and 47% of active addresses (and growing). Additionally, several projects have been listed on Binance.com.

Co-Investment Partnerships

To get to one billion crypto users, we need to partner with industry leaders from both the web2 and web3 space. We want to bring real world use cases into crypto.

We started with gaming. Gaming is one of the core use cases for mass crypto adoption. BNB Chain supports a plethora of GameFi projects.

For the BNB Chain $1B Growth Fund’s first co-investment partnership, we teamed up with blockchain gaming leader, Animoca Brands to announce a joint $200M investment program for early stage GameFi projects. It was a natural fit as the BNB Chain fund and Animoca Brands already have many investments in common.

2022 and Beyond

We have big plans and can’t wait to share them with you. Stay tuned as we will share more news and insights in January. In the meanwhile, enjoy the remainder of 2021 and have yourself a spectacular New Year’s celebration!

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