Hi Merit Circle Community!
I’m Gabriel, an analyst at Spartan Capital, writing on behalf of the team.
Intro to Spartan
We are one of Asia’s first institutional investors in crypto and were an early investor in marquee projects such as Maker, Aave, Axie Infinity, Solana, Polkadot and many more since 2018. We raised a dedicated fund to focus on DeFi in 2020 and have supported over 90 projects, and have raised a second venture fund to focus on gaming, metaverse and NFT projects.
Our advisory business has an extensive network in crypto, having advised on the Solana, Dapper Labs fundraises, the sale of Blockfolio to FTX and other notable M&A transactions.
Kelvin Koh, our CIO, comes from 2 decades in traditional finance leading Goldman Sach’s research practice, and our investment team is deeply crypto-native and hails from multiple disciplines from tech investing, to legal, to data science.
1. Transparency / Staking
We are strong believers in being transparent and accountable to the DAO. Our $MC receiving address is 0x52760Ab3f1e81Ff4b49d0C25D5F365f17B64698c and we intend to stake our tokens to align our interests with that of the DAO.
2. Accountability
(A) Value added to the Merit Circle DAO so far:
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Dealflow: We have shared over a dozen deals (within the Web3 gaming and NFT verticals) with the Merit Circle team for potential co-investment opportunities. Examples include Tatsumeeko, Sirocco, Digital Entertainment Assets and Decimated. We value Merit Circle as an important partner and have shared deal flow which would synergise with or are of strategic value to the DAO.
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Assisting the DAO with deal evaluation: When the Hotwire Studios team made a governance proposal for Merit Circle to make an equity investment into Hotwire Studios and a token investment into Nitro League (MIP-8), we arranged a call with the Hotwire Studios team, reviewed the deal materials and ran our due diligence process to evaluate the merits of the deal from the perspective of the DAO. A summary of our thoughts and findings can be found here.
(B) Plans to work on individually for the Merit Circle DAO in future:
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Continuing to share strategic dealflow with the DAO and assisting it with deal evaluation.
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We have a growing portfolio of Web3 games (over 20) and NFT game assets (e.g. MetalCore, Gunzilla and Phantom Galaxies NFTs) in our metaverse fund and as these Web3 games launch and come to market, we see opportunities for connecting these games to the DAO, deploying our NFTs with the DAO and being an early user of Merit Circle’s marketplace for our NFT transactions.
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Sharing ideas on DeFi yield opportunities for the DAO to consider deploying treasury funds into.
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We recently launched Spartan Labs, which is a Web3 startup incubation and venture studio where we partner with our portfolio companies and advisory clients to co-build Web3 products. Spartan Labs will also provide functional support to Spartan’s portfolio companies in areas including technology, legal, design, recruitment, marketing, community building, and tokenomics. As we continue to expand the Spartan Labs team, we see opportunities for collaboration between the DAO (in particular the Studios vertical) and Spartan Labs for co-building in the NFT and Web3 gaming space.
(C) What ideas do you have for the Merit Circle DAO:
Mechanism, Maven11 and DeFiance have proposed great suggestions on possible future areas of focus for the DAO.
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In particular, we agree with Mechanism that given the DAO’s extensive experience in evaluating Web3 games and its deep connections within the space, the DAO should consider setting up a research arm to (1) establish Merit Circle as a thought leader in the Web3 gaming space, and (2) develop a strong base of institutional knowledge which will benefit the other verticals of the DAO e.g. Investments and Studios. Spartan would also be happy to collaborate on research initiatives / author guest posts.
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The DAO could consider setting up a function that specialises in NFT game asset production (similar to what BreederDAO is doing). Given that the DAO has (1) a rich dataset of players’ behaviour and gameplay styles, (2) early access to Web3 games, (3) substantial balance sheet capital, and (4) a large existing player base that could drive initial demand for newly produced NFTs, this function could serve as a new revenue stream that synergises well with the other aspects of the DAO.