Defiance Capital

Basics

• Launched in 2020
• Venture fund startup which was incubated by Three Arrows (8-7-2022). DeFiance is now considering legal action against Three Arrows, the sources said. This happened after 3AC filed for bankruptcy. DeFiance Capital said it has been “materially affected” by the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital.

• In a short thread about VCs and dumping, this fund was the fastest dumper (4-6-2022):

"They transferred to Binance within 15 minutes of this latest vest, and in March in took them under an hour."

• Tipped the vote towards licencing the Aave V3 codebase (13-12-2021):

"What was interesting about this vote was the fact that defimaximalist.eth (Defiance Capital) tipped the vote over to yes. Kind of ironic for the name huh."

Investments

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

"Total Balance $85m • $57m $USDC/DAI/USDT • $17m $LDO • $3.1m $AAVE • $3m $DODO • $1.7m $AXS • $1.6m $ETH • $1m $MC. Merit Circle ($MC) is a gaming DAO building Web3 games. Defiance is also farming a large amount of USDC on Stargate."

• The firm still manages somewhere north of $100 million, according to a source (8-7-2022).
• Armor.Fi. Joined Armor as one of its 'strategic investors' (31-1-2021).
• Balancer; part of a $12M funding round (2-2021).
• Bancor; from the Bancor blog (18-3-2021): "Has a position in the BNT token and will serve as strategic advisors to the Bancor protocol, advising on tokenomics, strategy and institutional liquidity provision."
• BoringDAO; mentioned as one of the investor partners on Boring's website (3-5-2021).
• The Defiant; one of many investors who took part in the $1.4M raise for Defiant Media (12-4-2021).
• DeversiFi; one of the participants of a $5M private token sale for 12% of the supply (18-5-2021).
• dYdX; participated in the Series B round of $10M (26-1-2021).
• InsurAce; participated in a $3M raise (4-3-2021).
• Furucombo; one of the participants in a $1.85$ raise (7-1-2021).
• Gitcoin. Is one of the funders (18-10-2020) of Gitcoin Grant round 7 (and possibly continues to do so).
• Manta; part of the $50M raise
• mStable; turned out to have a backdoor deal on tokens. From a Prime Rating report (7-2022): "In July 2020 community observed that some MTA tokens were unlocked unexpectedly and without announcement. Co-founder James Simpson admitted that the protocol team wasn't communicating clearly to the community about the deal and vesting schedule with a group of investors (DeFiance Capital, DACM, and Three Arrows Capital). Simpson explained the situation in this article."
• Nexus Protocol; mentioned on their website as an investor (4-11-2021).
• Orca; co-invested with 3AC.
• Rift Protocol; mentioned as a backer on the Rift website (21-3-2022).
• Set; part of their $14M raise (29-5-2021).
• Secret Network; bought SCRT in an OTC deal (16-1-2022).
• Swivel; participated in the S1.15M seed round, along many other participants (10-12-2020).
• Timeswap; mentions them among their backers (15-5-2023).
• Zircuit; mentioned a founder was part of their Mainnet Round (22-7-2024).

Team

• Is a founding member of Asia DeFi Network (ADN) according to the website (13-7-2021).