Author: Zuoyewaiboshan

It seems that VC is indeed dead, Web2 venture capital is unwilling to take risks, only following up and co-investing after government industry guidance funds, Web3 Seed rounds are not well-received, VC and FA are further reversely integrated, facing Binance startups has become an industry consensus, and all Insights and Memos have become Info exchanged for Yap.

From an overall perspective, more and more large VCs are starting to enter projects by issuing tokens, building the dreams of the primary market with the secondary market, which is different from the early equity investment, initial token offering (IXO), and equity/token dual-mode. The market is rapidly entering a mature stage, but it still needs to further sacrifice small VCs.

After CZ's comeback, with investment-oriented, education-as-slogan, and tweeting as the core, the main business is to "All In" BNB Chain memes, and Binance Labs was renamed YZi Labs on January 23, becoming more like a Family Office.

The aversion to risk and the preference for investment stability are not only in the post-investment period and in mature projects, but also in the increasingly faded exploration color of the projects. Taking YZi Labs as an example, we can see the investment style of new money turning into old money, and learn in advance how the style changes after getting rich.

Data source: Decentralised Co., chart: @zuoyeweb3

In a normal state, the seed round should have an extremely large number, and the subsequent rounds should have larger amounts.

But from the data of the past half year, the number of seed rounds is not overwhelming compared to A/B/C rounds, and the amounts of the two are also highly similar. The disappearance of crypto rounds has become a reality, those who can get small money will continue to get small money, and those who cannot get money will never get it.

Investing in the AI cold season, speculating on the Meme on-chain season

Whether in Web2 or Web3, AI is currently a bit cold, but CZ feels it's not enough, hoping it can continue to cool down before taking action, leaving only the most devout builders.

Caption: YZi's investment targets, image source: CryptoRank

However, YZi's direction does have AI. In fact, most projects can be associated with AI, so they can be divided into "using Crypto to do AI" like Vana and Tensorplex Labs, and "using AI to do Crypto" like Plume Network, Blum and Opinion Labs.

Of course, this is a forced classification and has no guiding significance. In the era of AI-assisted postpartum care for mother pigs, there is no need to be too concerned about the necessity of AI.

In chronological order, let's review the characteristics of each project one by one.

1. Opinion Labs = Kaito + Polymarket

Opinion Labs is a so-called human opinion-driven prediction market. I boldly guess that the future development direction is based on the prediction and trading of Twitter KOLs, which can ride the InfoFi concept upwards and the enduring trading attributes downwards.

2. Plume Network = Everything is RWA

RWA is not a new concept, but Plume Network's experience is very legendary. It has received $30 million in financing from top institutions like Galaxy, and surprisingly chose to conduct an IEO on Gate in January this year before receiving YZi's investment, causing a wave in the coin price.

Calm and flexible is the style of the crypto circle after polishing. Rushing to issue coins and then raising funds is the opportunity given by the times in the crypto world.

3. Tensorplex Labs = LSD + AI

First of all, I think decentralized AI is a false concept. Tensorplex Labs wants to use LSDfi to ensure the decentralization of LLM training and data sets, which has little productivity significance, but in the crypto world's eagerness to do something for AI, getting investment from institutions in the circle is not uncommon.

This has meaning for the future coin price, after all, the product is the product, and the coin price is the coin price. Otherwise, ADA and XRP would be ashamed.

4. Vana = AI concept coin that transcends the cycle

It has successfully landed on Binance Launchpool, having received investments from Polychain in 2021, Paradigm in 2022, Coinbase in 2024, and YZi Labs in 2025.

This is a very typical VC coin of the previous cycle, and it has no reference significance for the current and future projects. All I can say is that I'm very envious.

5. Blum = The only seed player + trading

This is the most typical Binance Labs investment style, a trading-oriented DeFi product, and it is also a rare seed round player. The most surprising thing is that OKX and YZi have jointly invested, which can be said to be brothers who have gone through all the hardships, and they are going overseas together.

Please forgive me for not going into too much detail about the project mechanism and token economics, because it doesn't mean much. What is the basic situation of Meme, the difference between community and speculation group, and the role of token economics, I call them the three great unsolved mysteries of the crypto circle.

Welcoming the aesthetics of family offices, stability above all

YZi is quite typical, and the domestic group is also relatively familiar with it. But after the wealth creation wave of 17-21, Crypto New Money has gradually transformed into a family office-like old-fashioned co-investment institution, not pursuing super-high returns, but more concerned about the stability of the project.

Two years earlier than CZ, the founding father of the contract king BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, established his own family office Maelstrom, with funds from Arthur's personal assets. Similar to CZ's recall of Ella Zhang, Maelstrom's daily operations are handled by Akshat Vaidya, a former senior executive of BitMEX.

It turns out that Arthur Hayes can develop perpetual contract products more suitable for the physique of crypto babies, and his investment aesthetics are also unique, such as the post-UST era's stable currency Ethena, which officially opened the first step of reversing the trading platform fee rate on-chain, and the DeFi cross-era product Pendle.

The complete story of Arthur Hayes will be presented in a later article. He is worth learning more than Sun Yuchen and CZ.

Similar to YZi, Maelstrom also pursues stability, such as not investing in Meme, but more in Meme-related tools and infrastructure, like Time.Fun, highlighting that success is not judged by ROI, but by adhering to the stable style.

However, YZi's style is not yet fixed. In Binance Labs' past track record, getting a ticket to the Binance main site is an extremely attractive barrier, but now the landlord's pantry is also empty. By the end of 2024, it has started to transfer the tokens of invested projects to Gate, and ultimately Gate has to bear it all.

Unlike Arthur Hayes, who can serve as the spokesperson for Ethena, CZ has not yet formed a deep binding with any project, and YZi has not formed its own investment aesthetics either. As mentioned earlier, Binance Labs is very fond of investing in trading-related products, but in the post-DeFi profiteering era, Ethena and Pendle will only be a minority, and most of them will be Crypto+AI sell-coin projects, the leftovers of Web2 AI and the small pride of Web3 AI.

As it moves further away from the Binance ecosystem, YZi's true strength still needs to be tested by the market, and this particularly tests CZ's personal investment level. From his AI not yet cooled down, to the development of the BNB Chain Meme ecosystem after $TRUMP, I feel that it is not as ingenious as his guidance to Ben Zhou to reject user withdrawals and precisely occupy the OKX DEX market share.

But this may also be because CZ really doesn't do trading, only trading platforms.

Conclusion

The world of yesterday is gone forever.

Crypto venture capital truly set sail in the IXO era, and reached its peak before the FTX collapse (I have to mention SBF every time, he really changed the industry trend with his own strength), and now it is just completing the cleanup process of the established investment projects, enduring the cursing of the retail investors, and trying to finish issuing the coins.

There was no crypto VC in the first place, but after investing a lot of money, there are also risks.