Gmoon!

TL;DR: StationX is an onchain capital coordination protocol that makes investing in web2 or web3 opportunities seamless for investors through onchain SPVs. One syndicate invested in OpenAI using StationX.

Pro tip #1: Don’t forget to mint your Super-Angel badge after setting up your StationX profile here.

Pro tip #2: Mint Gmoon Zorbs on Zora to celebrate the launch!

The state of crypto venture

Since Ethereum's ICO in 2015, crypto has experienced multiple capital inflow and outflow cycles. Institutional smart money chose funds for private early-stage investing, HNIs and UHNIs chose micro-funds and syndicates, and retail smart money chose ICOs/IDOs and other public offerings like node sales. As a result, over $105B was invested in Web3 companies in the last 9 years.

Interest peaked after DeFi summer, and a strong foundation was built with stablecoins and lending. After bottoming in late 2023, it’s on the rise again with traditional funds, family offices, and "web2" capital entering web3 - driven by AI, RWAs, consumer apps, BTC/ETH ETFs, and overall favorable market conditions due to the Trump bubble.

Most of this is fuelled by high-risk capital allocators like operators, founders, catalysts, fund managers, and sophisticated investors at the forefront of hunting for winning narratives and products. They are first believers in a hypothesis waiting to be proven right and adopted by the market; other believers, backers, and capital formation are a virtue of signal.

Every successful startup, venture-backed or organically grown, has early supporters and backers that bring value in the form of a signal to their company through evangelism, apart from investing capital. Such angels go on to generate wealth even for close friends and people in their social circles.

Between 2016–2024, global venture investments totaled $2.28T, with U.S. angel investments alone contributing $252B (11%). As per data, ~17% of $105B was raised via ICOs and angel investments, highlighting an inclination towards early-stage funding. This trend is driven by global opportunities, onchain liquidity, instant stablecoin deployment, faster exits, and startups favoring strategic angels and communities on their cap-tables.

But despite social media driving everything we do today, angel investing is still largely inaccessible and complex for everyone. With a firm belief that first believers and backers will onboard net new angel investors from their social circles—we’re excited to introduce Spaces.

Introducing Spaces

Spaces will make it more social for investors to find syndicates operated by verified leads on StationX. This will increase collaboration, exploration of new opportunities, and deal-making among investors.

Explore spaces here.

Invest in onchain/offchain deals

• Customizable deal pages: Spin up a deal in under 60 seconds with dedicated contribution links that cover deal information (memos, decks, links, etc.) and accept funds from members in stablecoins across 6+ EVM networks.

• E-mail alerts for deals: Members are informed in real time about incoming deals, ongoing raises, and other investor updates.

• Create or plug-in SPVs: Spin up low-cost SPVs on the fly for each deal (even deals as low as $25K), or plug your existing legal structure.

• Fully non-custodial: SPVs are paired with non-custodial treasuries powered by Safe multisigs, allowing investors to co-own the deals they fund.

• SAFEs, SAFTs, or RWAs with full compliance: zkMe powers privacy preserving KYC via zk proofs for investors; investors sign subscription agreements with deal SPVs to invest in onchain/offchain opportunities alike.

2024 Year in review and what’s next

Since Jan’24, around $6M has been deployed into 40+ deals through StationX SPVs. AI, Infrastructure, Bitcoin, DePIN, and apps were dominant categories whose startups attracted syndicates on the platform. While infrastructure deals like Lava Network, Peaq, and Safe attracted investors and capital in the first half of the year, the latter half was dominated by AI deals like Sentient, xAI, and OpenAI.

We are embarking on a journey to make early-stage investing more democratic, accessible, and signal-driven through a social fly-wheel enabled by Spaces. Our mission is to empower thousands of fund managers and syndicate leads to execute deals fast and grow their investor/LP base onchain.

“It makes sense that network effects would dominate the internet, the ultimate network of networks.” - quoted from “Read. Write. Own” by Chris Dixon

In a new era of the internet where ownership is the only truth, StationX enables investors to own their investments without depending on centralized entities.