Uniswap Labs, a decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol provider, has launched a corporate venture capital unit despite a lawsuit for alleged fraud.
Matteo Leibowitz will head the CVC unit alongside Uniswap’s chief operating officer, Mary-Catherine Lader.
Uniswap Labs Ventures will invest in companies across infrastructure to developer tools and consumer-facing applications around the Ethereum protocol, according to the company reported by TechCrunch. Previously, Uniswap invested in 11 companies and protocols, including Tenderly, LayerZero, MakerDAO, Aave, Compound Protocol and PartyDAO, the company told TechCrunch.
The news came after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Uniswap Labs, as well as its founder and its own backers — Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Union Square Ventures — for allegedly engaging in “rampant fraud” on the exchange. A spokesperson for the company said in a statement to TechCrunch that the lawsuit was riddled with factual inaccuracies.
Separately, crypto venture capital firm Gumi Cryptos Capital (GCC) has set up a $110m second fund.
The capital came from about 60 limited partners with about half of the money coming from Japan, largely from publicly-traded companies, according to CoinDesk.
