Colosseum, a Solana SOL -3.78% -focused crypto accelerator, has raised $60 million for its first fund to back early-stage startups in the Solana ecosystem.

The fund will only invest in select projects chosen from winners of Solana hackathons, Colosseum said Tuesday. Colosseum is currently the exclusive platform partner for running Solana Foundation hackathons, Clay Robbins, co-founder of Colosseum, told The Block.

Colosseum was founded earlier this year by Robbins, Nate Levine and Matty Taylor. Taylor, a former head of growth at Solana Foundation, started the Solana hackathon program in 2020. In January of this year, Solana Foundation handed over the management of its hackathons and accelerator programs to Colosseum.

Colosseum completed its first Solana hackathon on its online platform, Renaissance, from March 4 to April 8, Robbins said. He added that it was the biggest turnout for a Solana hackathon to date, with more than 8,300 participants from 95 countries.

Colosseum Fund I

Colosseum began raising money for its Fund I toward the end of last year and closed it this month, Robbins said. The fund was "oversubscribed," as Colosseum initially aimed to raise $50 million, Robbins added. He declined to name the fund's backers but said they include ecosystem founders and hackathon alumni.

The initial deal size of the fund per startup is a standard $250,000 investment, though Robbins noted that follow-on rounds could vary in check sizes.

As for its first investments, the fund has backed 10 projects, all of which will be presented at its first demo day on June 27. These include Ore, a mineable token project on Solana blockchain, Urani, a Solana intent-based swap aggregator and BlockMesh, a Solana-based DePIN project.

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The fund's full deployment will likely take place over three to four years, Robbins said, adding that it would depend on a batch size of future cohorts and follow-on investments.

"Crypto is still early in its adoption cycle, and Colosseum's model of integrating online hackathons with an accelerator and fund can shepherd the development, application and growth of any early-stage technology," Robbins said. "However, Solana is the ecosystem we are most excited about as it provides builders the infrastructure needed to scale their crypto products today."

As for the impact Colosseum anticipates the fund to have on the Solana ecosystem, Robbins said Colosseum will hasten the time it takes teams to find product-market fit.

"More broadly, we believe the Colosseum platform will massively increase the pace of on-chain experimentation from all corners of the globe," he added.

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