V3V Ventures lounge

We have a few exciting updates to share!

• Deal with U2U Network - Done.
• Bracket - in the final stage.
• Ghostdrive - currently working on an investment.

Recently, various games have been booming on Telegram, and one of the biggest hits is Hamster Combat, which has gained over 250 million users in just a few months. Naturally, we were curious—how did they grow so fast? And, as always, the answer is right on the surface: Freebies, Sir.

Users click, tap, play, and collect in-game currency, hoping that one day it will become the next Ethereum. Just a few days ago, a taxi driver in Singapore was playing Hamster while driving—seriously explaining how he plans to buy a country house with the tokens he has earned. And he’s not alone. Millions of people want to believe in miracles, that somewhere out there is a magic money button that will make them rich overnight.

But let’s do some elementary school math:
If they were to give away an average of $50 per user, that would total $12.5 billion. But $50 is barely enough to motivate anyone.
If we increase the average to $500 per user, the total giveaway skyrockets to $125 billion, which exceeds the GDP of many countries.

Another key issue is that unlike other cryptocurrencies, where users contribute value to the network, Hamster’s users are purely profit-driven. The token giveaway will inevitably lead to massive sell-offs, resulting in a deep price drop.

There are also rumors that Hamster’s owners plan to sell users by listing the token on some low-tier exchange, where people will have to trade or complete tasks to claim their tokens. Sounds familiar? Yep, it’s just a classic online casino model—nothing new under the sun 🙂.

Just a few days ago, we successfully invested in crosscurve.fi, and now we are working on deals with U2U Network and Bracket, which is building a platform for Staked Liquid DeFi.

Now, let’s try to do something similar—but with older crypto projects!

By considering the market as a system of interconnected forces, we can identify patterns and make data-driven assumptions about the future—even without insider information.

Over the past two years, many promising projects have emerged in crypto. Most have already raised VC funding and launched their own tokens, which are now actively trading on exchanges. Since many founders tend to overestimate their new projects, and given that many older, fundamentally strong projects have tokens trading at all-time lows, we started wondering:

🧐 Can we identify promising “old” projects, buy their tokens on exchanges, and generate 5-10x returns within a few months?

To test this, we compiled a Google Sheet, filtering for projects launched in the past 2-3 years and tracking the following:

✅ VC price (the price at which VCs invested)
✅ Start price (the token’s price at launch)
✅ Current price (the token’s price now)
✅ Retail vs. VC ROI
✅ Project industry/category
✅ Venture funds involved (and their tier ranking)
✅ Exchanges where the token is listed
✅ Social media engagement & project development activity (e.g., GitHub updates)
✅ VC fund holdings (via Arkham, Messari, or manual research)

This isn’t a ready-made investment list—it’s a data-driven research tool to help make informed investment decisions based on personal strategies.

Finding Hidden Market Logic

Beyond just numbers, this method allows us to uncover the logic behind market movements.

For example:

🔍 Which VC funds have historically worked with “money makers” to pump tokens?
-If their vesting period is ending, they might attempt a final pump before exiting.

📈 Which projects are approaching a major exchange listing (e.g., Binance)?
-Some funds specialize in securing high-value exchange listings for their projects.
-If a fund has helped several projects get listed, we can analyze other projects they backed that haven’t been listed yet but could be next.

📊 What’s happening on social media & GitHub?
-If a project suddenly shows renewed activity, it might indicate an upcoming catalyst.

💡 The Key Idea:
To make this table valuable, we need to identify data points that the market hasn’t yet priced in.
By modeling future catalysts, we can buy strong tokens at rock-bottom prices before they pump.

Why Now?

With the entire market cooling down, many tokens are at their lowest valuations. Historically, these are the best entry points for high-upside plays.

By systematically analyzing older projects alongside new investments, we can maximize returns while minimizing speculative risks.

Here is the table https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14k-H6lK8y2XhXfURI640kCB0SzSjRZ39JYiISPwH5Rs/

Despite being summer, it’s still a pretty busy time for venture deals!

Recent Investments

💰 BitLayer - A Layer 2 blockchain built on Bitcoin, integrating BitVM to support smart contracts.
🔹 Building an L2 staking solution for Bitcoin—let’s see how it plays out!
🔹 Founders: Former technical lead at Huobi, and former head of business development at Tezos & Polygon.
🔹 Public round valuation goal (July): $1B 🤷‍♀️

🎮 OneWayBlock & Class of Coins - Two NFT farming games.
🔹 Backed by strong, experienced founders.
🔹 Higher risk than BitLayer, but also higher potential upside!

Final Stage Deals

🃏 U2U Network - Building an L1 blockchain featuring its own blackjack & crypto farming ecosystem.

🔄 CrossCurve - A Curve Finance aggregator integrating multiple blockchains into a single, global market.
🔹 Co-founded by Michael Egorov (Curve Finance) in partnership with Eywa.fi.
🔹 Leveraging Curve infrastructure & liquidity.
🔹 Cross-chain listings + increased yield generation + low slippage trades.

Market Insights

🚀 Many founders overvalue their projects in this market, but we believe the bear cycle will correct expectations.

📉 Over the past two years, many strong projects have launched—yet their tokens are at rock-bottom prices. We see this as an excellent buying opportunity (but, of course, not financial advice 😏).

📊 We’ve conducted a detailed analysis of various undervalued projects based on multiple criteria and are gonna post the full table exclusively here soon!

How Did We Get Into Venture?

Back in 2021, two of V3V Ventures’ current partners launched a web portal called Metaverse.SG with the goal of bringing Web3 and NFT market news to the world while providing convenient access to real-time data and analytics on all existing NFT projects.

The site quickly gained organic traction, with the majority of its visitors coming from Asia, particularly Singapore.

Later, we created a https://x.com/MetaverseSG channel on DeBank and Twitter to share news and insights, which, in hindsight, turned out to be a brilliant decision. The channel (https://debank.com/official-account/112095/stream) eventually amassed a follower base with combined wallet balances exceeding $600 million. This wealthy and engaged community of followers likely played a key role in the company’s valuation.

Earlier this year, V3V Ventures reached out with an offer to acquire the Metaverse website and its social network. We were pleased to see them place such a high value on our work. You can read more about the acquisition here: Hackernoon article.

Throughout the acquisition process, we realized just how aligned we were with the V3V team in terms of thought process and vision. Ultimately, they invited us to join V3V, where we now help scout and research promising startup projects, as well as negotiate investments with project founders.

It’s been an exciting journey and a fantastic opportunity to explore a new side of the industry!