Ripple Xpring, Bain Capital Invest in Early-Stage Blockchain VC Firm Robot Ventures

Published at: April 10, 2019

Ripple’s developer ecosystem project Xpring and Bain Capital Ventures have invested in early-stage blockchain venture capital (VC) firm Robot Ventures, head of the fund Robert Leshner wrote in a blog post on April 10.

Leshner, who also founded Ethereum-based financial open-source protocol Compound, has already completed two investments within its new venture capital initiative.

Targeting fintech and product strategy disruptors, Robot Ventures invested in crypto mining firm Coinmine and Point, a startup developing new debit card solutions. As Leshner told Cointelegraph, both investments were completed in Q1 2019.

Leshner declined to reveal any additional information regarding the financial details of the investment by Ripple Xpring and Bain Capital.

Leshner introduced the Compound protocol in January 2018, which is an algorithmic tool for setting interest rates in money markets. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures, Compound aims to allow users and decentralized applications (DApps) to earn interest on Ethereum (ETH) and tokens, as well as borrow ETH and tokens to invest, use or short-sell.

Xpring is Ripple’s initiative to create a community of developers, entrepreneurs and companies engaged in blockchain technology. Recently, Ripple Xpring established a $100 million game developer fund along with blockchain platform Forte.

Bain Capital Ventures is a major American VC firm with around $3.6 billion of assets under management. Having supported companies such as LinkedIn and Jet.com, Bain Capital participated in a $133 million funding round of stablecoin project Basis previously in 2019.

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