Berlin-based crypto VC firm Greenfield One raises “Europe’s largest crypto fund” with €142.4M

Berlin-based Greenfield One, an early-stage crypto and blockchain venture capital firm, has announced the closing of $160M (approx €142.4M) in its third fund, becoming Europe’s largest crypto fund.

Last year, the firm had announced the first closing of the second fund with a target of €50M. However, it had to be closed early due to significant increase in portfolio value after the first investments. The first Greenfield One fund was launched in early 2019.

Investors in this round

Greenfield One’s current fund saw participation from existing investor Bertelsmann Investments, a German media giant that had also invested in the firm’s second fund. 

Family offices such as Lennertz & Co. from Hamburg, the telecommunications group Swisscom, CommerzVentures, Galaxy Vision Hill, the fund of funds business unit of Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, and the fund of funds Aldea Ventures have also invested in this round.

Greenfield says it does not use public funds and all investors come from the private sector.

What to expect from the third fund?

Greenfield One will continue to invest in crypto networks and developer teams that create an open, decentralised, and more robust architecture of tomorrow’s web – in short on Web 3.0.

Web3, short for web 3.0, is a vision of the future of the Internet in which people operate on decentralised, quasi-anonymous platforms, rather than depend on tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Sebastian Blum, Founder and Partner at Greenfield One, says, “Web 3.0 has now evolved out of its niche. The pace of innovation is still extremely high. We are very happy about the strong growth of the investment volume in our new fund, in which previous backers but also more and more institutional investors are getting involved in order to profit from the innovations in the crypto market.”

The new fund will be used in backing around 35 projects. It has already made initial investments in Paladin, a governance lending protocol, Brink, a decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol for conditional bids, and Darkblock, a protocol for rights management of NFTs, among others.

Betting on tomorrow’s web

Founded in 2018 by VC veteran Jascha Samadi and Sebastian Blum, Greenfield One invests early in crypto networks and developer teams that are creating the infrastructure for Web 3.0 as a fundamental asset layer on the internet through blockchain-based technology.

The firm pursues a research-driven investment approach and actively participates in the portfolio’s crypto networks through its own technical infrastructure in order to maximise potential returns in as diversified ways as possible. 

Since launching its first fund in 2019, the team, which consists of experienced founders, developers, and crypto investors, have already invested in various European-based projects at the Seed-stage. Some of these include NEAR, Celo, Spacemesh, Vega, Multis, Arweave, Dapper Labs, and 1inch. 

In addition to the European projects, Greenfield One has also long been invested in Flow, the blockchain developed by Dapper Labs, which became known to a broader audience with NFT-based basketball trading cards, among other things.