The Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (LEIA) – an investment syndicate with over 50 leading venture capital firms committed to empowering startups on Linea – is proud to announce its first seven investments.

LEIA, launched in July last year, is designed to ease the fundraising process for startups building on Linea, the largest and fastest-growing zkEVM on Ethereum. The syndicate invests across stages and sectors, with an emphasis on (i) DeFi, (ii) Social, and (iii) Gaming.

“LEIA has been a phenomenal source of deal flow and education. The team does a great job curating investments and helping us vet the underlying technology,” shares Kavan Canekeratne, Partner at Draper Dragon, one of LEIA’s venture partners.

“Working with both the LEIA and Linea team has been an excellent experience. We look forward to our continued collaboration and partnership with the objective of pushing web3 adoption forward through the support of innovative founders.” says Sumeet Surana, Investment Director at Cypher Capital.

LEIA aims to expedite the funding process by connecting venture capital firms like Cypher and Draper Dragon to a curated selection of startups, while also providing selected projects with technical support and mentorship.

"Working alongside LEIA has been a pleasure, providing us access to quality industry updates and curated investment opportunities. Their commitment to fostering information exchange and collaboration has greatly benefited us," adds Francis Zhan, Investor at Tribe Capital, another LEIA partner.

With well over 600 applications submitted, LEIA would like to thank all the builders for their submissions. We are excited to present our first seven teams that share Linea’s vision of empowering people and communities with economic and political agency through decentralized technologies.

Agora is building the next-generation of payments and asset infrastructure for the transmission of value on blockchain-based rails, starting with their first product, the stablecoin AUSD, which will differ materially from existing fully collateralized stablecoin offerings in the market. We are excited by their unique incentives-aligned approach as well as their best-in-class team and partners.

CARV is the modular data layer platform for gaming and AI, empowering users with data self-sovereignty. CARV users can discover new games, earn rewards, and build their identity, all while aggregating, owning, controlling, and monetizing their identity and data. They’ve created a unified user ID standard (ERC-7231) that bridges web2 and web3, enabling seamless data portability versus today’s siloed solutions, and the company now has over 2.5 million registered users and over 350 integrated gaming and AI company partners. CARV has been a key partner for Linea since day one and we are excited to continue supporting them.

Entangle offers a customizable platform enabling secure and interoperable data handling for cross-chain operations. It allows for the creation of bespoke oracles that facilitate real-time, responsive data flow to and from contracts, enhancing the interoperability of decentralized applications across various blockchains. By integrating Entangle's solutions, Linea is positioned at the forefront in LP lending that ensures isolated risk and amplifies incentives, yields, and the depth of liquidity trading on DEXs.

MYX is revolutionizing DeFi by pioneering a scalable, cost-efficient derivatives protocol with its Matching Pool Mechanism (MPM), a decentralized 'Peer-to-Pool-to-Peer' engine that ensures capital efficiency and low trading costs comparable to CEXs. By enabling cross-chain portfolio margin capabilities with its novel MYX settlement layer, MYX aims to become the liquidity hub of decentralized trading. We are excited by MYX’s innovative approach that has attracted significant liquidity to Linea resulting in more market participants and user activity.

Tomo is an innovative web3 SocialFi wallet that revolutionizes how users interact with and support their favorite creators. By purchasing creators' Keys on Linea, users can directly invest in and engage with content. Tomo enriches this social experience by offering features such as direct messaging, private rooms, and personalized feeds. Additionally, to add more value to the Linea ecosystem, Tomo is working on integrating more assets, including BTC, and creating token-gated chat rooms on Linea. Tomo is one of the marquee social apps on Linea and has contributed to over 1000 ETH bridged to Linea and over 170,000 transactions.

ZeroLend is the largest lending market on L2s (including Linea) with a focus on liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) lending, governance, real-world assets (RWAs) lending, and account abstraction. We are excited by their unique approach to user acquisition and their ability to execute fast and provide unique incentive structures that capitalize on narratives in the ecosystem.

Inverter is a modular protocol stack that enables no-code smart contract infrastructure setup and operation with integrated solutions for applications and enterprises tackling real-world tokenization use cases. Inverter’s core technology for tokenization, Primary Issuance Markets, employs dynamic algorithms to optimize token issuance with programmable distribution for sustained treasury growth, market creation for niche assets, and native yield generation. Inverter’s technology will help Linea in its goal to incubate an ecosystem of real-world-focused applications, including credit netting, tokenizing obligations, supply chain management of raw materials, undercollateralized microcredits in developing regions, and many more.

The Linea ecosystem keeps growing and we actively seek to engage with great builders deploying on Linea. Apply here to become part of the Linea community!