Variant

Variant is a venture capital firm based in Brooklyn, New York, founded in 2020. The firm specializes in early-stage investments within the cryptocurrency and blockchain sectors, focusing on areas such as web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi). As a Registered Investment Adviser, Variant manages the Variant Opportunity Fund, which targets promising opportunities in these innovative industries. Through its investments, Variant aims to support and advance the development of transformative technologies in the digital economy.
https://crunchbase.com/organization/***
https://linkedin.com/company/***
https://signal.nfx.com/firms/***

Tina Dai

Investment Partner

63 past transactions

Plastic Labs

Pre Seed Round in 2025
Plastic Labs is a technology company that specializes in developing artificial intelligence tools for securely managing and processing sensitive, intimate data in large language model applications. The company operates at the intersection of human and machine learning, focusing on enhancing the viability of large language models by securely handling and analyzing psychological data between users and models.

Pluralis Research

Seed Round in 2025
Pluralis Research is an AI startup that develops a decentralized AI platform. This platform enables secure and collaborative machine learning across organizations by pooling computational resources, allowing multiple participants to train models together without any single entity accessing the complete model. This approach encourages open participation without upfront costs and ensures economic sustainability for creators.

Blockaid

Series B in 2025
Blockaid is a technology company that specializes in digital security. It develops a security platform designed to safeguard users from fraud, phishing, and hacks. The company employs a range of security features, including blockchain technology, to ensure the safety and security of users' data. This enables online businesses to offer their services with confidence, knowing that their customers' data is protected.

Whetstone Research

Pre Seed Round in 2025
Whetstone Research specializes in designing and developing novel protocols to foster the growth of on-chain markets. Operating discreetly, the company focuses on token issuance services to drive innovation in this space.

Reservoir

Series A in 2025
Reservoir operates an NFT aggregator platform that streamlines access to NFT data and facilitates the creation, storage, and execution of NFT orders. By normalizing the entire NFT market into a unified platform, it enables clients to enhance liquidity and trade NFTs across multiple major marketplaces through a single API. This innovative approach positions Reservoir as a key player in the next-generation NFT solutions market, providing essential tools for developers and businesses looking to integrate NFT trading capabilities into their applications.

Phantom

Series C in 2025
Phantom is a digital wallet designed for decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens. It functions as a multichain wallet that supports multiple blockchains and applications, with a focus on Solana, enabling users to manage crypto and NFT assets across networks. The platform allows users to store, buy, send, receive, swap tokens, and collect NFTs in a single interface. It is accessible via mobile apps and browser extensions, providing cross-device usability for crypto activity. Phantom emphasizes secure access to funds and assets and aims to offer a straightforward, user-friendly experience for navigating DeFi and NFT ecosystems.

Hyperbolic

Series A in 2024
Hyperbolic is a software development company specializing in web and networking solutions. It focuses on building decentralized computing platforms.

Sapien

Seed Round in 2024
Founded in 2023, Sapien specializes in data labeling services for AI model training. Combining advanced technology and blockchain rewards, it offers scalable, high-quality data labeling across industries like healthcare, finance, and education tech. Its gamification approach ensures superior data quality and high labeler retention rates, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses developing high-performance AI models.

Delta

Seed Round in 2024
Delta is a technology company that develops a layer-1 platform for decentralized applications. Its platform separates transaction ordering and execution from data availability and settlement, providing theoretical advantages over app chains and rollups, and allowing users to maintain full control over their block space and use existing or custom virtual machines.

Satflow

Seed Round in 2024
Satflow is a technology company that specializes in developing advanced trading platforms for digital currencies. Its primary focus is to enhance the functionality and accessibility of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Satflow aims to address key challenges in the current DEX landscape, such as the lack of advanced order types, high-speed data processing, and liquidity pools. By providing robust infrastructure tailored for market makers and high-frequency traders, Satflow seeks to elevate the cryptocurrency trading layer to institutional quality, thereby fostering stability and decentralization within the crypto network.

Morpho Labs

Venture Round in 2024
Morpho is an on-chain peer-to-peer layer on top of lending pools. Rates are seamlessly improved for borrowers and lenders while preserving the same guarantees. Morpho combines the efficiency of P2P with the liquidity of lending pools. Users enjoy an improved APY while maintaining the pool’s flexibility

Farcaster

Series A in 2024
Farcaster is a decentralized social network designed to facilitate connections among users with shared interests, such as coders, fitness enthusiasts, and meme creators. The company is focused on enhancing user engagement by increasing daily active users and implementing developer-friendly features, including channels and direct messaging capabilities. By establishing an open protocol, Farcaster enables users to move their identities across various applications, akin to how email operates. Users can claim unique usernames and store their social data off-chain, ensuring ownership and control over their social graphs. This framework empowers developers to create innovative applications that leverage the network's capabilities.

Kiosk

Seed Round in 2024
Kiosk offers on-chain assets that are essential for social media clients that build feedback loops between assets and communities.

Turnkey

Series A in 2024
Turnkey specializes in providing secure wallet infrastructure for crypto developers. Its platform enables the management of private keys across various blockchains, facilitating transactions while maintaining robust security.

Botto

Seed Round in 2024
Botto is a decentralized autonomous artist platform that integrates artificial intelligence for art creation. It fosters innovative collaborations and community-driven voting processes, enabling creators and enthusiasts to shape creative narratives.

Delegate

Seed Round in 2024
Delegate specializes in enhancing the security of on-chain identities and digital asset management, particularly focusing on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and ERC20 tokens.

Gevulot

Seed Round in 2024
Gevulot specializes in blockchain technology solutions, focusing on zero-knowledge proofs. It enables developers to integrate ZK proofs into their applications and offload heavy computations to a network of advanced hardware operators.

Modulus

Seed Round in 2023
Modulus uses cryptography to verify that AI results weren't doctored. It was founded in 2021 and is located in San Francisco, California.

Blockaid

Series A in 2023
Blockaid is a technology company that specializes in digital security. It develops a security platform designed to safeguard users from fraud, phishing, and hacks. The company employs a range of security features, including blockchain technology, to ensure the safety and security of users' data. This enables online businesses to offer their services with confidence, knowing that their customers' data is protected.

Blackbird

Series A in 2023
Blackbird Labs is a web3 hospitality technology platform founded in 2022 by Ben Leventhal and based in New York, United States. The company focuses on directly connecting restaurants with their customers through loyalty and membership services. By leveraging innovative software solutions, Blackbird Labs aims to enhance the dining experience, facilitating meaningful and ongoing interactions between restaurants and their guests. The platform is designed to transform how hospitality businesses engage with their clientele, ultimately elevating customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Lens Protocol

Seed Round in 2023
Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social network serving the Web3 community. It enables creators to build their own web3 social media platforms and accounts, giving them control over their connections with their communities and also ownership over their content.

Turnkey

Seed Round in 2023
Turnkey specializes in providing secure wallet infrastructure for crypto developers. Its platform enables the management of private keys across various blockchains, facilitating transactions while maintaining robust security.

Scroll.io

Venture Round in 2023
Scroll, founded in 2021 and based in Victoria, Seychelles, is focused on developing an EVM-equivalent zk-rollup, which utilizes a robust proving network. The company operates within the technology sector, with an emphasis on enhancing blockchain scalability and efficiency. By leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology, Scroll aims to facilitate faster and more secure transactions on decentralized applications. The firm's innovative approach positions it as a key player in the evolving landscape of blockchain infrastructure.

Aztec

Series B in 2022
Aztec specializes in developing privacy-focused technologies for Ethereum-based transactions. It is renowned for creating PLONK, a leading standard in zero-knowledge proofs, enabling fast, private interactions on the public blockchain. The company's research team has made significant contributions to Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum and possesses extensive expertise in deploying intricate cryptosystems within Web3 environments. Aztec Network recently unveiled an advanced version of zk.money, showcasing its Aztec Connect SDK's ability to facilitate seamless integrations with prominent DeFi protocols like Lido and Element Finance. The company is currently working on building a secure, encrypted blockchain secured by Ethereum.

Shibuya

Seed Round in 2022
Shibuya is a web3 content studio and creator platform that uses blockchain technology to securely distribute and monetize video content in a decentralized manner. The company provides tools and resources for producers to create high-quality videos and to reach audiences directly, enabling creators to build relationships with fans and monetize through non-fungible tokens. The platform focuses on long-form content and positions NFTs as a new model for content monetization, aiming to address gaps in the market for ownership, distribution, and audience engagement. Shibuya seeks to reshape how content is created, owned, and consumed by empowering creators with secure distribution, transparent monetization, and direct access to viewers.

Perennial Labs

Seed Round in 2022
Perennial Labs develops decentralized finance technology, offering a derivatives protocol and related primitives for developers. The permission-free platform is designed to simplify trading of DeFi derivatives and enable the creation of new DeFi tools, using a capital-efficient model for liquidity provisioning. Established in 2022 in New Castle, Delaware, the company focuses on providing a standardized framework that supports a wide range of DeFi use cases while making derivative workflows easier to build and deploy.

Matter Labs

Series C in 2022
Matter Labs designs and develops blockchain technology that uses zero-knowledge proofs to scale Ethereum and improve privacy, removing interaction obstacles between untrusted parties. The company builds a scaling decentralized application that provides succinctly verifiable computation, enabling businesses and others to prove integrity without disclosing sensitive data. It aims to accelerate public blockchain adoption by offering an open, scalable alternative to existing financial systems. Founded in 2018, it has been associated with Berlin, Germany, and is based in the Cayman Islands.

Uniswap Labs

Series B in 2022
Founded in 2018 by Hayden Adams, Uniswap Labs develops decentralized finance (DeFi) products. It specializes in creating user-friendly platforms for secure, peer-to-peer digital asset swapping, with a focus on accessibility and empowerment of liquidity providers and traders.

Blackbird

Seed Round in 2022
Blackbird Labs is a web3 hospitality technology platform founded in 2022 by Ben Leventhal and based in New York, United States. The company focuses on directly connecting restaurants with their customers through loyalty and membership services. By leveraging innovative software solutions, Blackbird Labs aims to enhance the dining experience, facilitating meaningful and ongoing interactions between restaurants and their guests. The platform is designed to transform how hospitality businesses engage with their clientele, ultimately elevating customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Koop

Seed Round in 2022
Koop is a developer of a digital wallet application that facilitates the collection of coins and NFTs within a shared treasury. This application enables users to invest in their communities and collaborate with friends, fostering a sense of communal growth. By leveraging a treasury formed from an NFT collection or membership pass, Koop allows its members to engage as viewers, users, and builders within their group. The platform aims to enhance community interaction and investment, allowing participants to explore and contribute to their collective interests.

Tephra Labs

Seed Round in 2022
Tephra Labs develops infrastructure for modern global collaboration, focusing on connecting independent professionals and teams to projects in the web3 space. Its platform specializes in decentralized reputation systems, skills verification protocols, and educational programs to facilitate successful transitions into web3 work opportunities.

Empiric Network

Seed Round in 2022
Empiric is the oracle on Starknet, built to empower native protocols to realize their ambitious potential.

Morpho Labs

Seed Round in 2022
Morpho is an on-chain peer-to-peer layer on top of lending pools. Rates are seamlessly improved for borrowers and lenders while preserving the same guarantees. Morpho combines the efficiency of P2P with the liquidity of lending pools. Users enjoy an improved APY while maintaining the pool’s flexibility

Entropy

Seed Round in 2022
Entropy provides crypto custody services to keep private keys secure and make assets available on demand. Its services specialize in creating a decentralized network leveraging advanced threshold cryptography and multi-party computation. The company was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in New York.

Euler Labs

Venture Round in 2022
Euler Labs is a developer of a non-custodial lending protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain, designed to facilitate lending and borrowing of a wide range of crypto assets. The platform operates without the need for trusted third parties, allowing users to earn interest on their crypto holdings or hedge against market volatility in a capital-efficient manner. Euler's innovative approach incorporates reactive interest rates that adjust in real-time based on market conditions, alongside asset-specific collaterals, which provides clients with a risk-minimized opportunity to engage in crypto finance. The company's technology aims to enhance financial accessibility and efficiency for users in the decentralized finance space.

Context

Seed Round in 2022
Context is a Web3 business that allows users to “track” the transactions of any crypto wallet. It offers an app that enables users to track the wallets and transactions of individuals they follow on Twitter. Aside from that, users may track the activities of friends, influencers, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), and celebrities using Context. Context was co-founded in 2021 by Luke Miles and Adam Ludwin.

Context

Seed Round in 2022
Context is a Web3 wallet watcher app that allows users to observe people's wallets and transactions through an Instagram-like feed. It also has a new feature that allows users to find wallets linked to the people they follow on Twitter automatically.

Aptos

Seed Round in 2022
Aptos is a web3 startup founded in 2021 and based in Palo Alto, California. The company develops a scalable Layer 1 blockchain that allows developers to create future-proof applications. Aptos aims to provide universal access to decentralized assets through its network, utilizing a safe and reliable programming language that facilitates application development. The team at Aptos is composed of skilled engineers, researchers, strategists, designers, and builders, all working towards enhancing the accessibility and scalability of blockchain infrastructure for developers.

3Box Labs

Series A in 2022
3Box Labs is a technology company based in New York that specializes in decentralized identity and data management solutions for web3 applications. Founded in 2018, it offers a suite of products including 3box.io, a social profiles application tailored for Ethereum users, and 3box.js, an API that facilitates user onboarding and data management for developers. Additionally, 3Box provides the 3box-dapp, which enables users to create and manage their social profiles, interact with decentralized applications, build reputations, and securely store data. The company's platform is designed to enhance user experience by ensuring that applications are lighter, more trustworthy, and carry reduced data management liabilities, thereby fostering a sustainable ecosystem where users have greater control over their data.

DIMO

Seed Round in 2022
DIMO is a user-owned connected vehicle platform. It allows drivers to access next-generation mobility apps and earn $DIMO for sharing data from their cars.

onCyber

Seed Round in 2022
onCyber is a New York-based metaverse company established in 2021 that enables artists and collectors to create and sell 3D virtual showrooms for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company operates an online platform that allows users to showcase their NFTs in high-quality virtual spaces, providing a fully immersive experience. Users can display their digital assets on the walls of these showrooms and share them through custom links, facilitating an engaging environment for presenting decentralized content without incurring any charges.

IndiGG

Seed Round in 2022
IndiGG is an NFT based play-to-earn game in the web3 frontier. IndiGG is the India sub-decentralized autonomous organization(subDAO) of YGG.

Aztec

Series A in 2021
Aztec specializes in developing privacy-focused technologies for Ethereum-based transactions. It is renowned for creating PLONK, a leading standard in zero-knowledge proofs, enabling fast, private interactions on the public blockchain. The company's research team has made significant contributions to Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum and possesses extensive expertise in deploying intricate cryptosystems within Web3 environments. Aztec Network recently unveiled an advanced version of zk.money, showcasing its Aztec Connect SDK's ability to facilitate seamless integrations with prominent DeFi protocols like Lido and Element Finance. The company is currently working on building a secure, encrypted blockchain secured by Ethereum.

Sound

Seed Round in 2021
Sound connects artists and listeners to take ownership over the culture they create together.

Burrata

Seed Round in 2021
Burrata is a computer software provider focused on facilitating the transition from Web2 to Web3. The company specializes in developing decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that aid in constructing and identifying information bridges. Burrata's protocols create an extensible integration layer designed to standardize, process, and prioritize the influx of Web2 data on-chain. This innovative approach allows users to navigate Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements without needing to re-verify or disclose their information, thereby enhancing user experience and data security in the evolving digital landscape.

World

Venture Round in 2021
World is a technology company specializing in secure digital asset management. It operates the World App, which enables users to securely store their World ID, manage digital assets, and access various Mini Apps within a privacy-focused network.

Syndicate

Series A in 2021
Syndicate is a decentralized asset management platform and social network that aims to democratize the investment process. By facilitating the creation of investing syndicates, it enables users to raise and invest capital with significantly reduced time and cost. The platform supports the establishment of decentralized autonomous organizations, empowering communities to collaborate effectively in value creation. Through its innovative approach, Syndicate transforms traditional investing practices, making it more accessible to a broader audience.

Tessera

Seed Round in 2021
Tessera's mission is to curate the most extraordinary collective ownership experiences produced by the greatest creators, builders, and leaders. Tessera's vision is a world where anyone can have the opportunity to collectively own and govern things they value, without reliance on central gatekeepers to execute decisions and actions on their behalf.

Phantom

Series A in 2021
Phantom is a digital wallet designed for decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens. It functions as a multichain wallet that supports multiple blockchains and applications, with a focus on Solana, enabling users to manage crypto and NFT assets across networks. The platform allows users to store, buy, send, receive, swap tokens, and collect NFTs in a single interface. It is accessible via mobile apps and browser extensions, providing cross-device usability for crypto activity. Phantom emphasizes secure access to funds and assets and aims to offer a straightforward, user-friendly experience for navigating DeFi and NFT ecosystems.

Gearbox Protocol

Pre Seed Round in 2021
Gearbox Protocol is a decentralized leveraged protocol provider that enables users to obtain leverage in a straightforward manner. The protocol operates as a two-sided lending marketplace, facilitating leverage that can be utilized across various decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms in a composable way. Gearbox Protocol offers a software platform that delivers leverage-as-a-service, allowing clients to automate and program their DeFi positions. This approach enhances capital efficiency and improves the overall composability of users' financial activities within the decentralized ecosystem.

Aleo

Venture Round in 2021
Aleo provides a platform for building fully private applications using zero-knowledge technology. It offers a comprehensive toolkit that includes an application runtime environment, allowing software to compile, execute, and finalize its state autonomously. Aleo also supports a statically-typed programming language called Leo, designed specifically for private application development on the Aleo blockchain. The company engages its community through blogs and incentive programs to test the bounds of its decentralized technology.

Gro

Seed Round in 2021
Gro builds products, called protocols or autonomous programs, for a more simple and friendly DeFi experience. Gro empowers people to easily create and share wealth, by combining the best of decentralized and legacy finance.

Fei Protocol

Series A in 2021
Fei Protocol is a developer of a decentralized and scalable stablecoin aimed at addressing issues related to whale activity that affect existing dollar-pegged products. The platform employs an innovative stablecoin mechanism that promotes capital efficiency and ensures fair distribution, all while being fully decentralized. This design allows users to utilize the stablecoin to support liquid secondary markets. By contributing to open source decentralized applications, Fei Protocol seeks to enhance the functionality and accessibility of stablecoins within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Verto

Pre Seed Round in 2021
Verto is a decentralized network that allows individuals to create and host their own trading posts for exchanging tokenized assets. Built on a blockweave infrastructure, Verto provides an open platform where developers can earn incentives through a unique mechanism that generates micro-dividends as long as their applications are active. This structure empowers users to select their preferred trading posts and facilitates the efficient trading of tokenized securities, promoting a more accessible and flexible exchange environment.

Goldfinch

Venture Round in 2021
Goldfinch is a credit platform that offers crypto loans without collateral. It also offers capital in a digital currency by expanding access to capital in emerging markets and offers a stable yield to the lenders, enabling the empowerment of financial inclusion in emerging markets. The company was founded in 2020 by Mike Sall and Blake West.

Cozy Finance

Seed Round in 2020
Cozy Finance, Inc. is a Seattle-based company that specializes in developing risk management software tailored for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Founded in 2020, the company offers a permissionless, peer-to-peer protection solution that enables users to invest in DeFi while safeguarding their assets against potential hacks and exploits. Additionally, Cozy Finance allows users to deposit funds, which can then be utilized by others for protected investing. By providing innovative tools and solutions, Cozy Finance aims to enhance the security and value management of cryptocurrency investments for developers and investors alike.

Uniswap Labs

Series A in 2020
Founded in 2018 by Hayden Adams, Uniswap Labs develops decentralized finance (DeFi) products. It specializes in creating user-friendly platforms for secure, peer-to-peer digital asset swapping, with a focus on accessibility and empowerment of liquidity providers and traders.

DeSo Foundation

Seed Round in 2020
DeSo is a layer-1 blockchain, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, that recently listed on Coinbase, has accumulated over 1.5 million accounts, and just crossed over $1B in volume transacted on-chain. DeSo is backed by Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and many others. Our mission is to decentralize social media the same way Bitcoin and Ethereum are decentralizing the financial system. As a layer-1 blockchain, DeSo can be compared to other blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, etc... However, DeSo has several major advantages over these platforms, the largest being that it is designed to power storage-heavy applications (like social applications and marketplaces). To put it in perspective, storing just a 200-character "Tweet" on Ethereum costs ~$80, and costs ~$0.25-$1.00+ on Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, and virtually all other smart contract chains. In contrast, it costs 1/1,000th of a penny on DeSo, which is why breakthrough apps like Diamond, DAODAO, Pearl, OpenProsper, NFTz, and Entre, now possible exclusively on DeSo. Today, social media is even more centralized than the financial industry was prior to the creation of Bitcoin. A handful of private entities effectively control public discourse, and earn monopoly profits off of content that they don't even create. Society’s answer to financial centralization was not to put Warren Buffett in charge of money, it was to use technology, namely Bitcoin, so we could have nobody in charge. We believe the same type of technology will cause this conclusion to ultimately play out in social. DeSo’s advantages make it capable of breaking this status quo for the first time, and bringing competition and innovation back to social in much the same way Bitcoin and Ethereum have done for our financial system. Moreover, if DeSo succeeds, we will no longer need individual "dictators" to set a homogenous moderation policy for hundreds of millions of people.

Polygon

Polygon is a blockchain scalability platform designed to enhance the usability and convenience of decentralized transactions. By offering a structured and user-friendly environment for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development, Polygon aims to address the slow, expensive, and complex nature of current decentralized systems. The platform combines various scaling solutions and development tools, prioritizing user experience to facilitate quicker and more secure transactions. Polygon's mission is to drive mainstream adoption of blockchain technology, enabling a more accessible and efficient decentralized ecosystem.

TrueX

TrueX is a non-custodial, stablecoin-native exchange that represents the next stage in crypto markets.
Spot something off? Help us improve by flagging any incorrect or outdated information. Just email us at support@teaserclub.com. Your feedback is most welcome.