• Uniswap Labs recently announced Uniswap Labs Ventures, a new venture wing focused on Web3 companies.
• The new division will not only invest in web3 companies, but it will also actively participate in their governance systems.

Uniswap Labs, the company behind Ethereum-native decentralized exchange Uniswap, is venturing into web3 projects with a new venture capital wing. 

Known as Uniswap Labs Ventures, the new arm will invest in companies at different stages or areas of web3. These include infrastructure, developer tools, and consumer-facing applications. Investment funds will be deducted from the company’s balance sheet, though the actual amount is yet to be revealed.

According to the official announcement, Uniswap Labs Ventures will be under the leadership of Matteo Leibowitz. He will serve alongside Marty-Catherine Lader,  the exchange’s chief operating officer. Per his Linkedin profile, Leibowitz previously worked at Uniswap as a strategy lead starting August 2020. Before that, he was a research analyst at The Block for about two years.

Uniswap Labs boasts of the measures it took towards conquering web3 before it launched the venture wing. The company made investments in a total of 11 companies and protocols focusing on the decentralized version of the internet. The list includes Tenderly, LayerZero, MakerDAO, Aave, Compound Protocol, and PartyDAO.

Uniswap Labs pursues Web3 with a new venture arm

The incoming team will not only offer investments in web3, but it will also actively participate in on and off-chain governance “when relevant.” Specifically, Uniswap Labs Ventures will take part in the governance systems of Aave, MakerDAO, Compound, and Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

It is now about a week since Uniswap was slapped with a class-action lawsuit. The allegations were “rampant fraud” specifically the sale of “scam tokens.” The exchange’s founder and backers are among the accused, that is, Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Union Square Ventures. 

Additionally, the exchange entered the radar of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last year. The regulator launched an inquest to discover the manner in which “investors use Uniswap” and its marketing strategies.

Still, Uniswap continues to lead the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. DeFi Pulse ranks fifth-largest by total value locked (TVL) of $7.04 billion as of April 11. This value is about half that of the topmost DeFi platform Maker.

Collaboration rather than competition

The exchange is also boldly taking steps towards investing in other companies. According to a spokesperson, this depicts a collaborative rather than competitive approach on the side of Uniswap. It also shows a desire in crypto companies to invest in other firms despite some differences in their core businesses. Crypto exchange FTX and DeFi protocol Cake are some of the firms that recently launched venture funds. 

Ryan Rasmussen, a DeFi researcher at Bitwise Asset Management commended Uniswap Labs for its latest move, adding:

 Many will follow suit, expanding web3 ecosystem.