Lightspeed Faction, a blockchain-focused venture capital (VC) firm, is starting a new $285 million fund that will primarily invest in early-stage projects.

The VC, whose team members previously worked at Amber Group, Blockchain.com and Coinbase, will also provide "crypto-native" advice to the projects it will invest in.

"Faction offers founders access to a team of experienced blockchain investors and operators, servicing the industry at a time when many have fled," the firm said in a statement Thursday. "The team is primed to provide crypto-native advice, with team members hailing from."

The new fund comes as optimism is trickling into the crypto sector after a prolonged bear market, buoyed by the expectation of bitcoin spot ETF approval by the SEC. Recently, Blockchain Capital, a crypto-focused investment firm, raised $580 million for two new funds. Meanwhile, Nym Technologies attracted $300 million from VCs in a crypto fund that will provide capital to crypto builders, developers and communities with a focus on privacy,

Faction, a joint venture with a $25 billion asset-under-management VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, typically invests in seed-stage and Series A funding rounds. The firm has investments in Crossmint, Lens, Narya.ai, Skip.money and Matter Labs, the development team behind the zkSync layer-2 network atop Ethereum.

"The blockchain ecosystem is full of promising projects looking to disrupt everything from financial systems to telecommunication and we look forward to collaborating with them to nurture the next phase of blockchain innovation,” said Banafsheh Fathieh, co-founder and general partner of Lightspeed Faction.

VC Venture Capital Funding fund Zksync era

Aoyon Ashraf

Aoyon Ashraf is CoinDesk's managing editor for Breaking News. He spent almost a decade at Bloomberg covering equities, commodities and tech. Prior to that, he spent several years on the sellside, financing small-cap companies. Aoyon graduated from University of Toronto with a degree in mining engineering. He holds ETH and BTC, as well as ALGO, ADA, SOL, OP and some other altcoins which are below CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.