Research Archive - Outlier Ventures

The Open Metaverse OS Paper

Blockchain Development Trends Q2 2020/21

In the blockchain development trends report, we analyze critical projects and protocols of the Web3 ecosystem. We identify trends such as rising commit levels, consistent commit levels, a rising number of core developers, and other related areas of development activity. In the process of conducting our research, we analyzed 4,831 individual repositories, 1,246,318 code commits, […]

Understanding Social Tokens

Social tokens are one of the many innovations the crypto space has brought forth in recent years. With celebrities from Akon to Ja Rule launching their own social tokens, mainstream media is catching up with this new way of leveraging permissionless blockchains. This article is looking to summarise social tokens, create some conceptual clarity, and […]

What is the Secret to Building Valuable Tokens?

Jack Laing of Pocket Network defines governance in the context of Web3 simply as “rewriting contracts.” According to Mario Laul of Placeholder VC, decentralised network governance consists of 4 core components: Leadership, vision, and values that attract and guide network participants, i.e. deliberately putting emphasis on one or more of the following: decentralization, democracy, efficiency, […]

Understanding P2E 2.0: Axie Infinity Deep Dive

>> Base Camp 6 accelerator applications are now open. $50k immediate cash, up to $250k total investment and access to market leading mentors and investor network. Apply now. << Gameplay Axie Infinity is a complex gaming ecosystem based on NFTs with different levels of rarity and utility, generated by genetic algorithms. Each Axie is an […]

P2E 2.0 – A new economic model for gaming based on crypto tokens

Leading P2E 2.0 games and their economics The five games we present are meant to give an overview of current P2E 2.0 mechanics and the selection in no way constitutes a ranked list or attempts to be comprehensive (there are hundreds of blockchain-based P2E games by now). We purposefully included NFT classics like CryptoKitties […]

Why we invested in CoinBurp

Let them have their cake and eat it: DeFi & NFTs Since last March, the latest CoinBurp Wallet now includes both DeFi and NFT support. Additionally, CoinBurp has plans to enable the CeFi functionality, which will make it the first mobile-native wallet to truly bridge CeFi and DeFi. This enables users to best utilize DeFi […]

Protocol Whitepaper Master Guide 2021

No aspect of a protocol/crypto project is more representative of its worth than its whitepaper. It acts both as a symbolic milestone and a carefully designed story of the company’s current and future objectives. Those familiar with the market and blockchain projects should have an educating experience when reading whitepapers. However, whitepapers remain largely unapproachable, […]

Why We Invested In Unique Network

Unique Network is Outlier Venture’s latest investment and participant in our token launch program, Ascent. Polkadot’s first custom parachain was explicitly designed for NFTs with a powerful ‘NFT Pallet’, which allows for greater flexibility to create collections and manage ownership. Including improved levels of governance, permissions, and royalties. For the first time, they’re offering a […]

Can blockchain technology prevent the imminent financial conflict between the United States and China?

What are the benefits of the reserve currency status? The global reserve currency is a currency that the world’s central banks use as their foreign exchange reserves. Foreign exchange reserves are typically used by countries to: Balance international payments Manage the exchange rate of their domestic currencies Balance of international payments is the difference between all […]

So why build in the Open Metaverse?

Well firstly there is a general direction of travel towards open standards in the Metaverse even by what you might at first glance regard as it’s closed participants including: Open 3D object media standards: There are a number of now well established standards around 3D object media including Pixar’s USD (Universal Screen Description) and NVIDIA’s […]

Why We Invested In Polkadex

Leveling the playing field in DeFi Polkadex not only increases the efficiency behind transaction settling, allowing for higher throughput, scale, and faster transactions by removing fees and in doing so solves more complex issues such as increasing liquidity and front running. One of the key design flaws in today’s DEX are users know which transactions […]

Closer look at the Open Metaverse OS

Equally, Web 3 technology has instead optimised primarily for high degrees of decentralisation and transaction security rather than and sometimes at the expense of enabling smooth, real-time interactions, and its applications for more 2D web based experiences on desktops and mobiles. As a consequence user experience in Web 3 has to date been poor and […]

Building in the Metaverse

A way to approach this is to look at the anatomy of any given instance of the Metaverse as a platform at its various levels of the stack as we have outlined below. User persona: the identity and properties of end-users, including their name, avatar, ownership of assets, reputation. End-user hardware and software: the hardware […]

Predicting the Long Term Value of NFTs; Cloud Streaming & the Metaverse

In case you haven’t come across non-fungible tokens already, here’s a short explainer: non-fungible tokens act as unique identifiers for digital items, allowing a creator to assign an unhackable string of data to a product, which is tradable via blockchain. This has multiple use-cases, but most importantly, we can now uniquely identify the owner of […]

The Web 3 Toolbox

The Web 3 Toolbox Web 3 consists of several principles, protocols and standards which could be said to form a stack that will inform and can and is being leveraged by the entrepreneurs and architects in The Metaverse. In combination these technologies can be seen as a highly composable Web3 Toolbox for The Open Metaverse, […]

Why we invested in Boson? The trillion dollar dCommerce opportunity

Boson Protocol is to dCommerce what stablecoins were to the DeFi stack – the catalyst for an ecosystem of highly specialised, yet complimentary and composable protocols. On the question of what to do with Big Tech The Web’s ecommerce platform monopolies, like Amazon in The West and Alibaba in Asia, are often referred to […]

Are there competing visions for the Metaverse?

It is true there are competing visions for the Metaverse and it is not yet clear if they can and will co-exist or must be in competition. To put it simply there are at least two versions of the Metaverse we observe emerging: one dominated by closed platforms and Big Tech like Facebook / Oculus […]

What is the Secret to Building Valuable Tokens?

What is the Secret to Building Valuable Tokens? What are Token Architectures? Architecture is both the process and the product of planning and designing structures, while tokens represent assets or utility on a blockchain, which is a decentralised ledger or database. Token architecture is thus both the process and product of planning and designing […]

The Open Metaverse OS

Defining the Metaverse Technically the original vision and definition of The Metaverse was a point in time when the blurring of a distinction between physical and digital happens. This has typically been thought of in the context of AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) otherwise known as Mixed Reality becoming ubiquitous. However, we […]

Blockchain Development Trends 2021

An open-source report Outlier Ventures’ development trends report was motivated by the need to provide insights for the teams in our Base Camp accelerator, so that they can choose their blockchain platform with confidence and identify major trends beforehand. No one wants to build their business on a platform that will die out, and how […]

Trends for 2021 in Web 3 funding

2020 was a very good year for crypto despite the world events. Markets are booming again, fundraising is following with a lag. Continuing the tradition…

Why we invested in CUDOS

Introducing CUDOS, the billion dollar distributed compute network We began working with Cudo back in 2019 impressed by their team, traction and fit with our belief in a new distributed internet stack of critical infrastructure. Over that time we help them design, develop and now successfully launch a token optimised instance of their network through […]

Why We Invested In Biconomy

Biconomy joined our Spring 2020 Web 3 Accelerator (Base Camp) to solve the industry-wide problem of gas-fees on Ethereum, which has limited the ability of DApps to mainstream and also represented our first investment into the Indian ecosystem.

Web 3 funding: November 2020 in numbers

November continues a very strong trend for 2020. Markets are booming, fundraising is following…

Web 3 funding: October 2020 in numbers

October is proving once again the industry is here to stay. Despite slight slowdown in the markets, fundraising is booming…

Why We Invested In TapMyData

When we invited TapMyData into our accelerator because we believed by their leveraging of SAR (Subject Access Request) to empower users to exercise their digital rights they were the thin end of the wedge to open up for data emancipation and this paradigm shift and were encouraged by the impressive user growth. 6 months on […]

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Crypto regulation globally is at a critical inflexion point. Regulators must choose to either embrace these new technologies and adopt proportionate, clear regulation or continue to rely on outdated, inconsistent enforcement regimes that stifle innovation.

Crypto Regulation: A crossroads?

Earlier in October, here in the UK the FCA published final rules banning the sale of derivatives and ETNs that reference certain types of cryptoassets to retail investors (coming into effect on 6 January 2021); despite the fact that 97% of respondents to the original consultation opposed the ban.

Crypto Spring: The Awakening

2020 has been a turbulent year with no middle ground in business. Tech has generally done alright as an industry with the exception of a couple of tech enabled industries. Web 3 has its root in decentralised cooperation which made it quite resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, we are seeing more companies enter the space and more product building than ever.

DeFi 2.0 Innovations for Institutional Adoption

Institutions / businesses already in crypto whose organisations are heavily exposed to the asset and its markets and therefore likely ‘underbanked’ in a conventional sense.

Web 3 funding: September 2020 in numbers

September is proving once again the industry is here to stay. Despite slight slowdown in the markets, fundraising is booming.

DeFi + NFTs

Post (2/3) — In this series I propose we are a year into a 5 year long ‘DeFi Hype Cycle’, likely made up of several mini-cycles, where the aggregate effect is a quadrupling of today’s combined market cap and a doubling of the 2017 $600bn highs based on a sustained ‘mainstreaming’ of the industry.

The Broken DeFi Hypecycle

Post (1/3) — In this series I propose we are a year into a 5 year long ‘DeFi Hype Cycle’, likely made up of several mini-cycles, where the aggregate effect is a quadrupling of today’s combined market cap and a doubling of the 2017 $600bn highs based on a sustained ‘mainstreaming’ of the industry.

DIA: From stealth to a $15m raise in 7 months

DIA joined our Base Camp accelerator program (open now) in September 2019. By the end of the program in December he had already secured a solid SaaS revenue stream pipeline, multiple advisors, public funding and already started thinking about taking the product to the next level in the way we see it today 9 months […]

Web 3 funding: August 2020 in numbers

August keeps on setting records with 24 deals and $278 million raised. This is more than what we did for the entire Q2 2020. Source: Crunchbase and The Block The median raise this month was $2.9 million across 5 different verticals. The massive difference this month again comes from token sales. For the first time […]

‘P-DIDI’ (Project DID Initiative): An RFP for a tokenised SSI network based on the Sovrin architecture

As such we propose a fork of the Sovrin Mainnet and that a new (non US) entity be constituted by a new founder team, which is to be recruited from the community. This team will be run through the Outlier Ventures Web 3 ‘Basecamp’ accelerator program to help them rapidly get to market, issue a […]

Request For Proposal: ZIP Takeover

After several months of development Outlier Ventures internal technical team has developed a cross-blockchain cloud credit based on the increasing needs of their growing portfolio and partner ecosystem.

Crypto Art will be the Lambo for the 2020 Bull Run

The term ‘crypto art’ is still somewhat nebulous, but increasingly the moniker of a rapidly growing creative community. On the one hand, it is art about crypto and its various memes – which can be digital or otherwise. Yet, on the other hand, it is increasingly about purely digital art made by a community of […]

Web 3 funding: July 2020 in numbers

It’s August and everyone in Europe seems to be on holiday. The summer tends to be a dead season, but this year’s July fundraising numbers proved us wrong. Founders and investors were busier than ever in the UK, Europe and the US. Continuing the tradition I am looking into the fundraising data for the second quarter of the year to get a comprehensive view of the state of web3. I am doing this every month to see how the true effect of COVID-19 unravels in the Web 3 world in near real time across 5 charts. See Q2 2020 numbers here.

Our partnership with Dia Data

Dia Data was one of the star performers to come out of our Base Camp Accelerator (2019, Fall Cohort), an accelerator format we launched in the same year dedicated to transformational Web 3.0 businesses from around the world.

Web 3 funding: Q2 2020 in numbers

Over 100 days into lockdown and we are starting to open up. Time to draw the line for the short term implications of the pandemic on the Web 3 world.

Introducing the teams in the latest virtual cohort from our Web 3 accelerator programme Base Camp

After successfully transitioning Base Camp 2 to a fully virtual programme, triggered by COVID-19, we were inspired to launch this Summer’s cohort as fully virtual and were amazed by the response: receiving a record 250 applications from all over the world with increasing quality.

Blockchain Developer Report Q2 2020

In 2020, a new entrant secured a top 5 spot in share of smart contracts, dapps and daily active users. 3 top-20 protocols suffered greater than 50% declines in developer activity, and one protocol saw a meteoric 931% rise in core protocol development. At Outlier Ventures, we’ve indexed millions of commits across thousands of repositories to compile a report on blockchain developer activity over the past year.

Why you should apply to be a mentor for our Base Camp accelerator

Today we’re starting an open call for startup advisors, experienced professionals and investors to register interest in supporting our accelerator Base Camp.

Enigma: data sharing without liability

Blitzscaling ZIP: Introducing ZIPdao

As a community, ZIP is open and inclusive by default. It does not discriminate. In order to effectively align and coordinate a rapidly growing community around our shared goal, we believe a DAO with simple, but well designed, governance is critical. Therefore we are excited to announce the soft launch of ZIPdao.

Z!P: A stable crypto commodity

We believe one of the most important barriers to meaningful adoption of the emergent Web 3 Stack is the volatility of tokens: both gas and token price as a commodity. The solution is something we call FUEL.

Market outlook: insights for seed stage founders

This short briefing note is prepared for founders who are considering, or are in the process of raising seed capital. The last few weeks have seen a significant shift in terms of the fundraising atmosphere, and investors’ appetite for risk.

The Role of DAOs in Web3

As Web3 emerges, DAOs will become the de facto organisational structure; digital and global with broad-based governance. An organisational structure fit to support trusted peer-to-peer interactions.

Technology as a political act aka Web3

Web3 is a social movement. As computing and software become cheaper, faster and easier, activism and political statements can be expressed in code. A lot of people don’t trust authorities, so instead of demonstrating they are creating technology. Technology, in this case, is a political act.

Trust people, not companies

So, as people come to trust institutions less and peers more; the pitch could be: trust people, not Big Tech. Or trust people, not companies. Blockchains are a part of a much bigger social movement, the changing nature of trust.

London Blockchain Firms Raise over $500 Million in Equity Funding since 2013

Analysis of global startup hubs has revealed that London may be one of the most preferred hubs for blockchain start-ups to headquarter themselves.

Thick Clients, No Servers aka Web3

The logical extension of “Thick Clients, Thin Servers” is non-existent servers. Go full peer-to-peer.

Base Camp Application Guide

Outlier Ventures opens applications for the Base Camp accelerator programs twice a year per city in various locations. After the success in London, we are expanding to Berlin!

Cross-Enterprise Collaborative Analytics with Enigma

Homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation have long been heralded as the advent of privacy-preserving outsourced compute, however, for practical applications, these technologies have been in research limbo since the 1970s. Leveraging a new technology from Intel chipsets known as SGX, Enigma has created a practical implementation of private compute in the Rust programming language. Rust, […]

18 Predictions for 2020

Over 11 years since the creation of Bitcoin, 2020 will be the year we follow the S-Curve of technology diffusion out of the period of Installation and into Deployment, where we see ‘synergy’ and ‘consolidation’ of the technology begin to take effect. Blockchain will finally grow up, with institutional money trickling into the market based on fundamentals – real traction and usage.

7 Steps for a Successful Equity Fundraising Campaign: Part I

As VCs we have been in the industry for a long time. Sometimes we forget how difficult it can be to navigate. So as we graduate another cohort, we present you with the Fundraising Playbook. We like to keep the process simple. By sticking to 7 fundamental steps, you can take away the anxiety from the unknown. Let’s dive in.

Diffusion 2019: overview of presentations, talks and workshops

The tone and format of the event was not about crypto theatre, ego and noise, it was strictly focused on collaboration and building. What made the event unique was the resolute focus on growing the space together, in an open exchange of ideas between protocols and teams across the technology stack from around the globe. The technical, […]

The Invisible Protocol Thesis: Tomorrow’s Crypto Unicorns

Following the introduction of any new disruptive innovation, there is always a speculative phase to a technology cycle as the market tries to size and time the market opportunity.

ArBot, a Fetch.AI-Ocean integration

In the lead-up to the Diffusion DevCon, we at Outlier Ventures continue expanding and developing The Convergence Stack to make it as easy as possible for developers to use. Today, we’re releasing ArBot, a data arbitrage bot and tool for moving datasets between the Fetch.AI and Ocean Protocol marketplaces. Read on to learn how you can perform arbitrage with data as an asset.

Investments in Blockchain 2019: $23.7 Billion raised by 3738 blockchain companies since 2013

A new study of blockchain investments by Outlier Ventures in early-stage rounds reveals that $23.7 billion has been raised since 2013 with focus moving from purely cryptocurrency to new applications.

Diffusion 2019: 15 Protocols, 25m+ lines of open source code, 2 days of hacking

For the first time since 2013, Outlier Ventures and 15 protocols including Fetch.AI, Cosmos, IOTA, Chainlink, Enigma, Sovrin, Evernym, Haja Networks, Agoric Systems, Ocean Protocol, FOAM, Alkemi, RightMesh and SEED have come together for a combined dev con, “Diffusion” to build an alternative web.

HealthClaim: Scalable digital healthcare agent

The Sovrin Network is creating a global metasystem for identity. Decentralised identity is an integral part of the Convergence Stack, with Sovrin as the premier solution to enable it.

Let Us Face The Future Together: Help Us Build an Open Data Economy

We have launched a new accelerator program called Base Camp. Why are we doing this and why should you apply?

Launching the Base Camp decentralised tech accelerator

Starting September 2019, Outlier Ventures are recruiting, financing, and providing a launchpad for pre-seed projects, recruitment is open for teams wishing to apply until August 15th.

State of Blockchains Q2 2019: Blockchain Founders Raise over $822 million by Q2

State of Blockchains Q2 report provided an overview into blockchain investment and market trends in 2019. According to the report, blockchain start-ups raised $822 Million from 279 separate VC deals during the first half of this year.

Token Curated Registry Part 4

In this project, as part of Outlier Ventures’ Research Programme with the Imperial Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering and in collaboration with Ocean Protocol and MusicMap, a group of six students from Imperial College share their fourth blog post where they explain their goal of building a TCR Simulator.

The Convergence Alliance Launch

The launch of The Convergence Alliance brought together the leaders building the next phase of the Web from open source protocols, enterprise, start-ups, government bodies, and academia.

Token Curated Registry Part 3

Token Curated Registry Part 2

In this project, as part of Outlier Ventures’ Research Programme with the Imperial Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering and in collaboration with Ocean Protocol and MusicMap, a group of six students from Imperial College took on the task of building a TCR Simulator that allows for experimentation in an isolated framework to learn what works and what doesn’t.

The Convergence Tracker 1.0

Introducing The Convergence Tracker 1.0: The Tracker is designed to be selective and curated rather than comprehensive. At its core, it is about tracking the best in class technologies and respective token economies.

Energy as Data: Decarbonization, Digitization, and Decentralization

We are transitioning from a centralized energy system reliant on burning fossil fuels, to a distributed and peer-to-peer system in which renewables are increasingly used. This transition brings with it a whole host of technological challenges that the energy sector has never needed to deal with.To integrate these advanced data technologies holistically, the energy sector should look to the Convergence Stack as a framework

Deployment Phase Part 3: Measuring, Monitoring and Maintenance

Wrapping up our series on the Deployment Phase we’ll discuss the importance of network measurement, monitoring, and maintenance.

Mapping Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. DeFi is a peer-to-peer electronic financial instrument system and refers to projects that are using cryptographic tokens and blockchains enabling anyone to issue, transfer and own financial instruments.

Token Curated Registry Part 1

Deployment Phase of Token Ecosystem Creation Part 1 & 2: Testing & Iteration + System Safety

Kicking off our series on the Deployment Phase we will discuss the importance of testing and network safety. Deployment is focused on system integration and continued model optimisation through testing and iteration.

Decentralized Data Exchanges Give Value To Data In Smart Cities

These marketplaces are made possible because of the technologies lower in stack from hardware, distribution, routing, verification, and interfacing. To learn more about the Convergence Stack, a valuable framework for understanding and building the next phase of digital infrastructure in cities, download the paper here. Decentralised Data Marketplaces Without a free flow of data, there […]

Designing a Smart City Through The Convergence

The Convergence Stack recognises how data is collected, transported and exchanges in marketplaces that function both economically and for technology innovation that consists of many moving parts. By bringing these elements together we will create value and investable urban business models. Download the paper here to understand more. Building the digital infrastructure for the Fourth […]

Decentralised And Open Data Is The Foundation Of A Smart City

This new infrastructure requires a host of technologies from the hardware to secure the data to the tools to distribute the data like distributed ledgers. It will also need new routing and authentication technologies, interfacing technologies to make it easier to build applications, and new services, marketplaces and applications for users to benefit from what […]

Designing Simple Incentives for Complex Networks Part 2

In previous posts, we discussed the importance of stakeholder mapping and creating a taxonomy of actors, and setting your network’s objective function. These steps set a strong macro foundation for starting to build out specific incentives across your network, but now the focus turns to the microeconomics of specific roles within your network. More and […]

The Convergence Stack webinar featuring ANVIL

Outlier Ventures supports the development of the next era of digital infrastructure: The Convergence Stack. They anticipate the convergence of blockchains with IoT, AI and robotics and the stack is the set of decentralized technologies that are needed to replace the broken Web. Outlier Ventures Labs invite you to a virtual conversation with two technical […]

Outlier Ventures Labs

This means they must be active developers, administrators and participants of networks. We call this Outlier Labs, and it has been our commitment to the space since 2014 and includes a multitude of activities such as: building apps, hackathons, dev cons, running network nodes and applied academic research. Recent work: Decentralised data to decentralised data […]

Data Science in Blockchain

Blockchain is the ultimate database for data science. After all, blockchains are open, high-availability ledgers whose maintainers have an economic incentive to keep them perfectly up-to-date. They’re highly reliable and architected to be as small as possible. They make sourcing data easy.

Design Phase of Token Ecosystem Creation Part 1

Kicking off our series on the Design Phase of Token Ecosystem Creation, we discuss setting a network’s objective function and how to best approach setting the foundations for a token design that can effectively create and capture network effects.

Why we invested in Agoric

We are excited to announce our investment into Agoric to support the team to bring security, usability, and interoperability to smart contracts. In the global economy, establishing trust costs up to 35 percent of GDP. Smart contracts are key to changing the way trust is established in the economy.

Glossary of Terms

51% attack An attack where a single entity controls more than half of the network hash rate, allowing them to stop/change transactions, double spend and take over other mining operations. Airdrop A token distribution mechanism in which tokens as given away for free. Altcoin Umbrella term for any cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin popular from […]

Dubai is piloting a decentralised data programme with Outlier Ventures

An open data ‘Sandbox’ built using a range of decentralised technologies from the Outlier Ventures ‘Convergence Stack’, potentially including Sovrin, Ocean Protocol and Fetch.AI.

Designing for user focused incentives using a Token utility canvas

As we wrap our series on the Discovery Phase, it needs to be stressed that token design is not only about systems design thinking. Incentives and mechanism design are only part of the equation.

Crossing the Crypto Chasm & Diffusion of Innovation

One of the big downsides of the Crypto Winter is that ‘falling tides lower all ships’. Many promising projects are experiencing difficulties, while at the same time, the advisors and support networks they rely on are rapidly disappearing, and at a moment when they and the industry as a whole need them the most to ‘cross the chasm’.

Top 100 Leaders of Convergence

This year we released a refinement of the thesis: The Convergence Stack viewing our portfolio as a set of interlinked and open-source technologies spanning hardware, software, networking and applications.

A Guide to Surviving Web 3: Crossing the Crypto Chasm

[image id=’2794′ alignment=’none’] Crossing the Crypto Chasm By Ana-Maria Yanakieva & Lawrence Lundy-Bryan, April 2019 Spread The Word Knowledge is the foundation of all invention and with the Internet, knowledge exchange is easier than ever. The Internet, smartphones and social media make it seamless to share information in seconds with anyone around the world. […]

State of Blockchains 2019: Green shoots of adoption emerge from 2018 crypto crash

Outlier Ventures’ State Of Blockchains 2019 report highlights increasing user adoption whilst data shows decline in ETH price isn’t due to ICO sellers

ANVIL: A Fetch.AI and Sovrin bridge

ANVIL, is Outlier Ventures’ latest app in the convergence stack. ANVIL brings trusted agents to Fetch.AI using Sovrin’s verifiable credentials.

Introducing The Convergence Alliance

Last week (13 March) we announced our evolved investment thesis: The Convergence Stack. This frames both our investments and their relationship with one another as well as the wider ‘crypto’ industry in an OSI-inspired model from hardware at the bottom to the application layer at the top that combines DLT with IoT, Big Data & AI.