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Binance Labs Fund Overview & Investment Trends 2022
What is Binance Labs? The article will provide an overview and complete for you about the portfolio of Binance Labs.
Binance Labs is one of the most famous names in Crypto, partly because it is a division of the most famous Crypto exchange in the world.
Will Binance Labs succeed in their deals like they did on Binance? Or how is the investment taste of Binance Labs? The following article will partly answer the above questions.
Overview of Binance Labs
Binance Labs is an investment fund of Binance – today’s leading exchange, to support and develop blockchain, along with the crypto ecosystem. The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Hong Kong.
Binance Labs identifies, invests in, and empowers potential blockchain entrepreneurs, startups, and communities, financing industry projects that help grow the blockchain ecosystem. In addition to money, Binance Labs also provides technical support if the project needs it.
The main activity of Binance Labs is to continuously search, evaluate and invest in potential and valuable projects and ideas over the long term.
Featured Members of Binance Labs
Changpeng Zhao – CEO of Binance Labs
- Head of Development of Blockchan.com.
- Ranked third on Forbes’ list of “World’s Richest People in Cryptocurrencies” in February 2018.
- The one who brought the ICO movement to the top in 2017.
Ella Zhang – Head of Binance Labs
- Major in MBA and M.S.E.E (Electrical and Electronics Engineering).
- Used to be Key Account Manager of Google.
Gin Chao – Strategy Officer of Binance Labs.
- Formerly Vice President of Strategy and Business Development of the NBA – the top basketball league in the US.
- Former Chief Strategy Officer of Dell.
- Ross Barbash JD: Mentor of Binance Labs.
- Founder of Blockchain Lawyers Forum.
Binance Labs Portfolio Overview
Below is an overview of the Binance Labs Portfolio.
Binance Labs Investment Fund Portfolio
Next, we will take a look at a few outstanding projects of some Sectors.
All the projects mentioned below have informational articles on idolmeta.net, if you are interested in any project, you can search the project name to learn more!!!
Oracle
- Band Protocol: Band is one of the early Oracles, once increasing by more than 1,500% within a few months when the Oracle trend was still in vogue. Binance Labs Invested in Seed Round in September 2019
- Tellor: Tellor was also an Oracle of the same era as Band. But up to now, Tellor has not developed in terms of partners. The time Binance Labs invested in Tellor could not be found.
Comments: Band and Tellor have both experienced a huge bull run in 2020. If we compare the ATH and ATL of both projects, we have an ROI of 11,400% and… 1,610,000% respectively. It is not clear if there is an error in CoinGecko’s metrics, but TRB is probably one of the projects with an almost invisible ROI at the moment.
In terms of development, both Band and TRB are still performing well, but only Band is in the top of the Oracle with the most partners. As for TRB, it’s been two years but still not many people use it.
Derivatives
- Injective Protocol: Initially, Injective was just a derivatives exchange. But now, Injective has developed into a Blockchain with its own ecosystem in the Cosmos universe. Injective had three rounds of funding, but couldn’t find the time Binance Labs invested in Injective.
- Perpetual Protocol: One of the largest revenue-generating derivatives trading platforms today, just behind dYdX. Binance Labs invested in the Seed round in August 2020, as well as in the Incubator Season 3 projects of Binanace Labs.
Comment: Both projects have a certain success after a period of not less than a year of development. If Injective Protocol is currently starting to build its own ecosystem, then Perpetual Protocol once had the top revenue in derivatives exchanges.
In September 2021, DEX exchanges had a boom coming from FUD of CEX exchanges in China. This shows that Binance’s early decision to invest in Derivatives segment is quite right.
Analytics
- Dune Analytics: A decentralized analytics platform where you can contribute your own data for others to look up. Dune Analytics has two rounds of fundraising, in which there are many large funds such as Hashed, Coinbase, Multicoin, Dragonfly,… Dune Analytics is part of the Incubator Season 3 projects of Binanace Labs
- DappReview: A platform that analyzes more than 5,000 projects on 15 Blockchains, helping you find project popularity metrics in the fastest way. Binance Labs acquired DappReview in December 2019.
Comment: Analytics projects in the second half of 2021 seem to be of interest to many parties. In addition to Dune Analytics, another party, Messari, also raised $ 21M Series A with the participation of Coinbase, Alameda Reserch.
This is a fairly new investment segment, because currently there are not too many projects in this field that have tokens. Therefore, it takes time to consider further. For now, we are only looking at the investment taste of Binance Labs.
Aggregator
- 1inch: One of the first projects about Aggregator, making it possible for users to trade with low slippage, thanks to finding a source of high liquidity. 1inch has 3 rounds of funding:
- Seed (August 2020): Binance Labs, Alameda Research, Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly Capital
- Series A (December 2020): Pantera Capital, ParaFi Capital, Spartan Group,…
- Series B (December 2021): Amber Group, Alameda, Jane Street, VanEck,..
- Bella: A platform that aggregates Farming, Lending, and Saving services in one place, helping you make profits in many different ways. No time found Binance Labs invested in Bella.
- Flamingo: Full-Stack DeFi protocol, built on Blockchain Neo. Flamingo includes Swap, Perpetual, Wrapped,… No time found Binance Labs invested in Flamingo.
Comment: Only 1inch so far is the “best” of the three, with funding in the following rounds always higher than in the previous round, and large funds all involved.
In the latest round of funding on December 1, 2021, 1inch was initially only planning to raise $70M, but later this amount increased to $175M, thereby being valued at $2.25B.
The other two projects only have FDV $207M (Bella) and $76M (Flamingo), and TVL $36M (Bella) and $144M (Flamingo) over a year of work. From there, the distance between 1 inch, Bella and Flamingo is clearly revealed.
Wallet/Payment
- Torus: The product suite includes infrastructure, wallet, … to provide users with an easy, password-free login storage utility. Binance Labs invested in Seed round in July 2019, along with Coinbase, Multicoin,…
- SafePal: Cryptocurrency wallet, supports 20 Blockchain, has a cold wallet product besides the phone application. SafePal is part of Incubator Season 3 projects of Binanace Labs
- Swipe: Cryptocurrency trading portal built on Ethereum, allowing cryptocurrency to be used as a fiat currency in everyday life. Based on Swipe’s homepage, Binance and FTX are their major customers. No time found Binance Labs invest Swipe.
- Math Wallet: One of the Multi-chain wallets, integrating DeFi features in Crypto. In addition to the wallet, the project also has a Layer-2 made up of Substrate, named MathChain.
- Mobilecoin: The project to develop a payment platform with electronic money on the phone. Mobilecoin has 3 rounds of fundraising:
- Unknown (April 2018): Binance Labs leads.
- Series A (March 2021): No special fund.
- Series B (August 2021): Alameda, Coinbase,…
Comment: If considered separately, it is no different from the above arrays, Binance only invests from 2-3 projects in each array (Payment: 2, Wallet: 3). And the projects also have certain achievements.
For example, Math Wallet is currently one of the leading wallets, integrating up to 60+ chains; or Mobilecoin ROI from ATL to ATH up to 4.583% within the first 4 months of 2021;…
Betting
- WinK: Famous gambling platform on Blockchain Tron. No time found Binance Labs invested in WinK.
- PlayBread: A gambling platform that accepts many payment assets such as BTC. ETH,… No time found Binance Labs invested in PlayBread
Comment: This is not a new segment, but very picky about investment funds. Up to now, Betting only appears in Terra, Tron is the main, even in Terra is not too prominent. In terms of ROI, WinK has x70 from ATL to ATH, so it is also considered a quite successful deal.
Farming
- Alpha Finance: One of the first Yield Farming projects incorporating leverage on the market. The time Binance Labs invested in Alpha Finance could not be found.
- Pancake Bunny: Yield Farming project on Binance Smart Chain, synthesizing many other features such as Swap, Game play, … Binance Labs invested in Seed round in April 2021.
Comment: Both have pretty impressive ROI with x100 in short time. But now, while Alpha Finance has grown into an impressive ecosystem, Pancake Bunny’s token has been split… 100 times, returning to the starting point.
Asset Management
- Tranchess: Property investment management project, divided by investment taste. Binance Labs invests in seed round in July 2021.
- Troy: Trading management platform, providing analytical data, tactics,… for you.
Comment: In my opinion, this is an important segment, because it helps those who are not familiar with investment to participate in putting assets into branches depending on their preferences. But in reality, there are not too many outstanding projects in this field.
Tranchess is an exception, with less than a year of launch, TVL has reached about $1.5B, growing x20x in three months.
Lending
- Xend Finance: A lending and savings platform with interest rates up to 15% APY. Binance Labs Invested in Seed Round February 2021.
- Kava Lend: The original name was Hard Protocol, then changed to Kava Lend for easy identification with products from Kava such as Kave Swap, Kava Mint. The time Binance Labs invested in Kava Lend could not be found.
- Wing: Unsecured Lending platform, Cross-chain support. The time Binance Labs invested in Wing could not be found.
Comments: Leding is one of the key pieces of DeFi, but in the Binance Labs portfolio, the Lending section doesn’t have much to say about reputation.
But in terms of investment style, Binance Labs’ Lending is quite special because it focuses on unsecured, saving is the main thing. Particularly, Kava Lend is located in a currently not very prominent Blockchain.
Trading
- FTX: The second largest CEX exchange currently, famous for its derivatives array. Founded in 2019, FTX has an outstanding growth rate, even comparable to Binance. FTX has 4 rounds of funding:
- Seed (August 2019): No special investors.
- Strategic (December 2019): Binance Labs.
- Series A (7/2021): Coinbase, Sequoia, Paradigm,…
- Series B (October 2021): Sequoia, Tiger Global Management,…
- WazirX: CEX exchange from India, with WRX coin having grown quite well: 14,700% from ATL to ATH. On November 25, 2019, Binance officially acquired WazirX exchange.
- Tokocrypto: Indonesia’s CEX exchange. The time Binance Labs invested in Tokocrypto could not be found.
- DODO: DEX was born for a long time, then integrated many features such as Launchpad, token creation,… DODO has 2 rounds of fundraising:
- Seed (August 2020): Framwork, DeFiance,…
- Private Sale (October 2020): Binance Labs, Pantera, Three Arrow Capital,…
Comments:
Binance Labs is one of the few funds with the most CEX exchanges in the Portfolio. In terms of the market, Binance has indirectly created one of their biggest competitors right now – FTX. But if you look at the profit side, then FTX is also one of the quite successful deals with ROI from ATL to ATH about 70,000%.
Binance’s stake in FTX was acquired by FTX in July 2021. I don’t know if the “stake” is an FTT token, but if it’s FTT, from ATL to a price of around $25 in July 2021, Binance’s ROI is over 20,000% (purchase price below ATL).
Talking about the DEX array, neither Biswap nor DODO have impressed the community. Although DODO has many “big hands” behind, DODO still has not kept the price calculated since its peak in February 2021 (when Bullrun the whole market). Until now there is still not much development.
Infrastructure
- Cartesi: Layer 2 of Ethereum, allowing users to build projects on Linux operating system. No time found for Binance Labs to invest in Cartesi.
- Celer Network: Layer 2 combines State Channel and Rollups technology. The time Binance Labs invested in Celer Network could not be found.
- Terra: Blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem, revolving around Stablecoin UST. Terra has 3 rounds of funding:
- Harmony: Blockchain works according to Proof of Stake mechanism. Harmony has 2 rounds of funding. The time Binance Labs invested in Harmony could not be found.
- Polygon: Formerly Matic, Sidechain is similar to Binance Smart Chain, solving Ethereum’s congestion problem. The time Binance Labs invested in Polygon could not be found.
Comment:
In the infrastructure array of Binance Labs, there are quite a few Layer-1, Layer-2, Smart Contract Platform on Polkadot,…
Specifically:
- Layer 1: Terra, Harmony, Asta (formerly Plasm Network), Moonbeam, Elrond, Kava.
- Layer 2: Polygon, Cartesi, Celer Network.
This shows that they are aiming for solutions for Layer 2 congestion. Unlike other funds when they chose the Internet of Blockchain (Cosmos, Polkadot), Binance Labs chose Layer 2 as the majority, as well as single chains. odd is key.
NFT/Gaming
- My Neigbor Alice: Farm-style game. Although the game has not been released yet, it has received a lot of attention from the community thanks to the fact that x400 is calculated from Private to ATH prices. The time Binance Labs invested in My Neighbor Alice could not be found.
- Axie Infinity: The game that started the Play to Earn movement, and is also the project with the highest capitalization in the Gaming segment. No time found Binance Labs invested in Axie Infinity.
- Sandbox: a decentralized virtual reality platform (Metaverse) developed on the Ethereum platform. Binance Labs invests in Private round in August 2020.
- High Street: Highstreet is a platform for gaming, NFTs marketplace and Metaverse developed using blockchain technology. Highstreet has 2 rounds of funding:
- Seed (August 2021): Mechanism and other funds.
- Strategic (October 2021): Binance Labs, Animoca Brand,…
- Seed (August 2021): Mechanism and other funds.
Comment: Like most funds currently, Binance Labs invests mainly in the Gaming segment, but there is no Gaming Guild in the Portfolio. Binance Labs does not focus on pure NFTs like NFT paintings, or NFT liquidity solutions, etc.
Other
- Chilliz: Blockchain Platform Focused on Fan Tokens. Chiliz’s exchange is used to trade tokens of teams, E-Sports,… Binance invested in Chiliz in June 2018.
- Audius: A blockchain-powered Streaming service that connects music fans with artists. Audius has 2 rounds of funding:
- Strategic (July 2020): Multicoin, Coinbase, Pantera,…
- Unknown (October 2020): Binance Labs and other funds.
- Unknown (9/2021): Big artists like Katy Perry, Nas, The Chainsmokers,…
- CertiK: Famous Audit Company in Crypto. No time found for Binance Labs to invest in CertiK.
Comments: In addition to DeFi segments, Binance Labs also invests a lot in quite strange fields such as music (Audius), Fan Token (Chiliz), security (CertiK), Travel (Travala),… or even app notifications (EPNS).
Clarifying Binance Labs Relationships
Relationship between Binance Labs and Binance Launchpad, Launchpool
There are many projects above that can’t find the time Binance Labs invests in, and they all have in common that they are all available at Binance Launchpad or Launchpool.
Therefore, although the project has not officially announced the investment, when the project is available on two of Binance’s fundraising platforms, it can be considered as invested by Binance Labs.
Projects at Binance Launchpad
In addition, many of you wonder if your name in Binance Launchpad and Launchpool will be listed on Binance or not? Up to now, Binance Launchpad has 21 projects, Binance Launchpool has 27 projects, and all are listed on Binance.
From that, it can be drawn that: although there is no official announcement, the projects on these two platforms will be listed on Binance after the end of the fundraising.
Relationship between Binance Labs and Impossible Finance
If you do not know, Impossible Finance is an Incubator platform whose Founder is Calvin Chu, who used to work at Binance in the Binance Launchpad segment. Since Binance Launchpad is a potential project pick to help them raise capital, many people will think Calvin is related to Binance Labs.
But in fact, the two arrays, although they have something in common in terms of project selection, are not related to each other. Calvin himself has also confirmed that he is not much involved in Binance Labs. Therefore, projects that are IDO on Impossible Finance cannot be compared with projects in the Binance Labs Portfolio.
This unrelatedness is also confirmed in IDO projects on Impossible Finance. Up to now, Impossible Finance has had 8 projects, but only Highstreet has Binance Labs present.
Ecosystems in the Binance Labs Portfolio
Binance Labs is not focused on any ecosystem. The projects are scattered in Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Tron, or even they do not invest much in Solana – the most vibrant ecosystem in the market today.
This is a rather rare view, because funds currently have two trends:
- Following the ecosystem trend: they will have more or less some projects in Solana.
- Internet of Blockchain Vision: They will have a fair amount of projects in Cosmos, Polkadot, or both.
There is an interesting point when it comes to the ecosystem, which is Kava. Kava currently has only three key projects made by the Kava team themselves, which are Kava Lend, Kava Swap, Kava Mint (Kava Protocol). And Binance Labs has invested in 2/3 of the Kava ecosystem.
Binance Labs Portfolio Review
Perfomance
The top 5 projects with the best performing Tokens (price of ATH compared to ATL) are:
- AXS: 134.065%
- LUNA: 58.258%
- SAND: 30,000%
- CHZ: 21.750%
- ALPHA: 11.269%
Investment Trends of Binance Labs in 2022
In 2021, Binance Labs has invested in about 13 projects, this is quite a modest number compared to other funds such as a16z (50), Hashed (31), Delphi Ventures (20),…
Binance Labs Portfolio in 2021
Conspicuously, they invest a lot in NFT/Gaming based on the fact that this trend is quite developing in 2021. In addition, they also invest a part in Polkadot with Moonbeam and Astar. And both won Parachain slots on Polkadot (Moonbeam, Astar) and Kusama (MoonRiver, Shiden).
If you notice, projects with high ROI are not among the new investments in 2021. These projects have all been invested for quite a long time before strong growth, such as Band, Axie Infinity, Sandbox, Chiliz , Terra,…
If at the time they invested, maybe these trends were quite strange, like how do we believe that one day Fan Tokens could be so popular, or the Metaverse world starts to become a trend in 2021. All have been welcomed by Binance Labs.
But not every field they “bet” to succeed all projects. There are also some arrays that have yet to see the highlights: Lending, Betting are two examples.
Summary
From the above analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:
- Binance Labs invests horizontally with a lot of ecosystems, not focusing on popular sectors like DEX, Lending.
- Binance Labs tends to stay ahead of the trend very well. When a trend is blooming, they usually already have an existing position, so they will not invest more, or very little. But that’s not always true.
- The Binance Labs portfolio comes largely from Binance Launchpad and Binance Launchpool. They rarely announce investments like other funds.
Above is an overview of the Portfolio and some comments on investment trends of Binance Labs, if you have any other questions or comments, please comment below to discuss with idolmeta.net!
