Paradigm

Basics

• A fund focused on digital assets.
• Launched in 2018.

Projects

• Citadel was created by Paradigm (3-9-2020). However that working relation stopped (18-9-2020).
• Ithaca; a spinoff building Odyssey
• Paradigm launched an AMM division that will provide community engaging services to Orbs (14-10-2020).
• Humanode was announced (4-12-2020):

"Humanode is a decentralized network based on private biometrically encrypted nodes (or replicas). Using solutions that provide fully homomorphically encrypted feature vectors for biometric processing and a Merkle-CRDT mechanism, people will be able to deploy replicas to create a public permissionless financial network based on consensus between equal human nodes with a rule-based monetary policy targeting real value growth and proportional emission."

• Tagomi' a crypto-focused trading desk. Is mentioned as 'one of their own startups' which they also used when they bought BTC and ETH with their first $400M (18-10-2020). Is part of the Diem Association. Got acquired (27-5-2020) by Coinbase for more than $75 million.

Controversy

• Ric Burton came out with allegations of Hayden ghosting him after years of work and investment in Hayden and introducing him to Paradigm (2-2023). Insinuating that Paradigm took all the spoils. Hayden countered, saying Ric is lying "That claim has already been dismissed by a judge - and is a matter of public record. Ric’s claim that it was his idea for me to raise from Paradigm is also false. I met @danrobinson at @phildaian’s apartment before I ever crossed paths with Ric. We became friends and Dan intro’d me to Paradigm when he joined."

Investments

• According to this thread (16-2-2023):

"Total Balance $382m • $195m $LDO • $166.5m $ETH • $20.47m $MKR This is likely just a few of their larger holdings. Some of their investments include Optimism, Synthetix, DYDX, Osmosis, Uniswap, Starkware and more. Interestingly, Paradigm is one of the largest investors in Lido Finance. As of now, 79m of their 100m LDO tokens have been unlocked (fully unlocked May 1st 2023). Paradigm further has > $2m $MKR staked for governance on MakerDAO."

• From Forbes (18-10-2020):

"All told, 13 of Paradigm’s 28 investments so far have already raised or circulated tokens at higher valuations. That’s helped the firm establish itself as an elite player."

• Argent. Led (9-3-2020) a $12M Series A round for Argent.
• Axie Infinity; was part of their $152m Series B round (5-10-2021).
• Aztec; led its $17m raise (16-12-2021).
• Babylon; led their $70M pre-launch round (30-5-2024).
• Blast; part of the $20M funding round (22-11-2023).
• Blur; led the $11M seed round (26-3-2022). Also in Blast.
• Chainalysis; part of their Series D $100M raise (27-6-2021).
• Compound, before it had a token (18-10-2020).
• dYdX; was part of the dYdX Series C raise of $64M (15-6-2021).
• Euler; part of the $8m raise (25-8-2021).
• Farcaster; led the $150M Series A (22-5-2024).
• Fireblocks, Was part of a Series C funding raise of $133M (18-3-2021).
• FTX; after the crash of FTX co-founder Matt announced (16-11-2022): "Paradigm’s equity investment in FTX constituted a small part of our total assets and has now been written down to $0. We never traded on FTX and did not have any assets on the exchange. We have never been investors in related tokens such as FTT, SRM, MAPS, or OXY." But later it was revealed that it had invested $290m into FTX (10-12-2022).
• Gauntlet. Is an investor in Gauntlet, according to their website (19-10-2020).
• Gitcoin; was part of a $11.4M raise for them (14-4-2021).
• Keep Network. Is mentioned as a staker on the network (12-11-2020).
• Lido; led a $75M raise (5-5-2021). Paradigm has exactly 7% of the token supply.
• Maker, from this CoinDesk article (19-12-2019):

"Venture funds Dragonfly Capital and Paradigm have acquired $27.5 million worth of MKR tokens and plan to take part in the Maker Protocol's governance system. Announced Thursday by the Maker Foundation, the $27.5 million raised will fund the foundation's efforts to promote dai adoption in China and the broader Asia region. It's expected Dragonfly and Paradigm, who already have a strong presence in the region, will advise on the expansion.The joint purchase means Dragonfly and Paradigm now control approximately 5.5 percent of the total MKR token supply. Combined, the acquisition makes Dragonfly and Paradigm the second-largest private holder of MKR tokens. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz remains the single largest private holder with the 6 percent stake it acquired in September 2018."

• After Black Thursday (13-3-2020) they; "plan on participating in the upcoming @MakerDAO backstop auction up to the total current shortfall (~5M DAI), which would add to our existing MKR position." Update: Paradigm said (31-3-2020) that it won 72 of the 106 auctions and paid a total of 3.6 million DAI for these governance tokens. 
• Mina. Helped raise $15M for Mina (21-10-2020). 
• Monad: part of the $225M raise (9-4-2024).
• Optimism; which raised 3.5 million dollars from Paradigm and IDEO CoLab Ventures. Led the $150M raise on 17-3-2022.
• Odyssey; gave this spinoff $20M.
• Opyn; led a $6.5M raise (4-2-2021).
• Osmosis; led a $21m raise (10-2021).
• Phantom; led their $550M funding round (1-2022).
• Reflexer; investor. Participated in a $1.68 million seed round (5-8-2020). 
• Sia. Lead a $3M raise for Sia (23-9-2020). 
• Showtime; part of a $7.6M funding round (6-5-2021).
• StarkWare; part of a $75M raise (24-3-2021). Took part in the Series C raise of $50m (17-11-2021).
• Synthetix; was one of the three VCs which bought SNX from the DAO ($12M in total) and has also joined their Spartan Board (12-2-2021).
• Tessera; led their $20m raise (18-8-2022).
• Uniswap. Led a seed round in April 2020 for Uniswap. And another one, when it was part of a $11M fund raise (7-8-2020). 

Team, Funding, partnerships

Team

• The fund was started by Coinbase Inc. co-founder Fred Ehrsam, former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang, and Charles Noyes, an ex-employee of crypto fund Pantera Capital.
• From DeFi Llama news (15-6-2024):

"In 2021, Paradigm said it had $13.2 billion in assets under management, and in 2022 it said it employed 73 staff members. Now, it has only 59 employees."

• From Forbes (18-10-2020):

"Paradigm’s been busy, too, hiring a second researcher, a general counsel and, in October, a crypto security expert, bringing its team to 15."

• Georgios Konstantopoulos; CTO, and also became CEO of Paradigm's spinoff Ithaca to build the Odyssey L2.
• Dan Robinson
• Arjun Balaji; investor at Paradigm
• In an article Dan disclosed that he and Georgios did not personally knew any miners (28-8-2020).
• Charlie Noyes
• Samczsun; works for Paradigm's A+ team according to Messari (12-2020).
• Hasu; researcher and writer (26-4-2021)

Funding

• Raised another $850M (14-6-2024)
• Had investment from bankrupt Alameda Research/FTX, which came out (11-11-2022) during the FTX crash. This could mean fall-out risk. Sequoia for instance took a big hit. The investment turned out to be $20M within their Feeder LP, another ~$5M in their Feeder LP (8-12-2022) and another $9.25M worth of equity.
• Sequoia invested in the firm (18-10-2020).
• Yale University helped raise $400 million.
• From Forbes (18-10-2020):

"Paradigm moved its $400 million of initial capital into Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2018 at burst-bubble discount prices, converting it back into greenbacks when needed for individual investments.

Combining mainstream pedigrees and pioneering crypto cred, Ehrsam, 32 and Huang, 31, convinced top institutional investors like Harvard and Stanford to give them $750 million to invest in a market they were too blue-blooded to touch directly. The vehicle was odd, an open-ended fund with no deadline to return it back. (All three [including Yale] declined to comment for this story.)"