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).
• 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.

Investments

• 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).
• 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).
• Fireblocks, Was part of a Series C funding raise of $133M (18-3-2021).
• 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).
• 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). 

• Optimism; which raised 3.5 million dollars from Paradigm and IDEO CoLab Ventures. Led the $150M raise on 17-3-2022.
• 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 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
• 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

• 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.
• 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.)"