Saber Lab’s Macalinao Brothers Fire up $100M Fund to Support Crypto-Driven Firms

Protagonist, a brand new crypto fund founded by two brothers Dylan and Ian Macalinaos, has recently rolled out its debut $100M fund to support early-stage crypto-driven firms, specializing in gaming, infrastructure, security, privacy, and blockchain technology fields.

According to the official announcement issued on July 12th, Protagonist, formerly known as Ship Capital, has already joined forces with a significant number of firms to produce its products. On top of that, the incubator fund has also allocated some portion of money to protocols under its wing, including Solana-based protocol Cardinal, Layer-1 blockchain Aptos, and Cogni, a digital banking platform.

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As stated in the official report, Protagonist is mostly seeking to invest in venture capital firms that have the potential to build "amazing things." Other founders of the fund include two angel investors George Bousis, the founder of Raise, and Harry Hurst, co-founder of Pipe.

George Bousis noted that the company is leveraging the current crypto bear market as an opportunity to invest, adding that the recent slump is the perfect time to draw attention and climb to the top of the market:

“In bear markets and out of financial crises and whatnot, you see some of the best businesses and returns come from these markets.”

Dylan Macalinao mentioned that Protagonist is currently investing in up-and-coming core protocols that have the potential to boost the Web3 ecosystem and grow in the upcoming 20 years. “We are excited to play a big part in supporting” such blockchain networks, he added.

Protagonist hasn’t yet disclosed who led the fund and backed the startup.

The firm joins the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, which rolled out a $500M fund earlier in June. The platform will reportedly use the fresh capital to “support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse, social,” CEO Changpeng Zhao implied.

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