Hack VC is a thesis-driven VC firm. We partner at the earliest stages with founders building the future of the Internet across crypto, AI, and frontier tech.
The Hack VC Founders Hotline has been live for over 3 weeks now. Some stats to share:
- We’ve received 243 submissions
- We’ve responded to every single one of them (if you submitted before 4/27)
- We are diligencing 18%
- We asked to schedule calls with 10%
Thanks everyone for all the awesome submissions!
If you are building something cool, hit us up on our hotline (link below). We are actively monitoring and will get back to you within 1 week.
Upshift is launching vault infrastructure on @StellarOrg.
We're integrating with Stellar to grow DeFi TVL across the network, with a vault roadmap that spans RWAs, DeFi, and asset management infrastructure for Stellar ecosystem apps.
1/ Your IPO deep dive starts now.
The debut episode of The Pop goes backstage on a process most people only see at the finish: how a company goes public.
@JoeRBLT, CEO of @RBLTSecurities, walks through the journey from decision to day one of trading.
https://t.co/uYQJRh0lAT
We're hosting another "Quantum Qafe" coffee meetup at our NY office on Tuesday, June 9th with the quantum experts @tectonicxyz!
Join us -- Luma registration link below👇
Everyone talks about IPO day. We’re going deeper.
Who gets in early? Who pulls the levers? Who wins before trading even begins? What really happens before and after the bell?
Presenting The Pop: a Superstate podcast exploring America’s IPO machine.
https://t.co/0pRqWoNpC9
Pharos has entered a strategic partnership with @KUN_Sight to advance RealFi, RWA, and cross-border payment infrastructure
The collaboration will tokenize supply chain credit assets, enable native onchain settlement, and bridge licensed payment rails across Asia, Africa, LATAM, and the Middle East with compliant layer-1 infrastructure
Bringing real-world finance onchain!
Tokenized asset management is coming to @solana.
Businesses can now use Upshift to build non-custodial vaults, generating yield across any strategy:
- Onchain lending
- Levered RWAs
- Tokenized private credit
- Market-making
- Basis trades and more
A new, multi-strategy vault standard on Solana, powered by Upshift.
Huge congrats to the @variational_io team on their latest raise! We were proud to back them at the seed stage 5 years ago, and we're even prouder to see them leading the charge in bringing TradFi liquidity on-chain.
We’ve raised $50M led by @dragonfly_xyz to go all in on RWAs and bring TradFi liquidity on-chain.
Today, we're launching Phase 1 of our RWA rollout to stress-test our infrastructure before bringing 100+ TradFi markets on-chain this summer.
I am very excited to announce that @zama has acquired @TokenOps_xyz, a full-stack solution for token distribution and vesting that has been used to distribute over $2b so far. Here is why we made the deal and what it means for the Zama Protocol.
# The problem TokenOps is solving
When a company or foundation launches a token, they typically distribute a large portion to their team, early investors and treasury. The issue with doing this on public chains is that every allocation and wallet is visible to everyone. This is a lose-lose situation for everyone involved:
- long-term holders who believe in the project get penalized by bots who front-run token unlocks and push the price down
- team members become targets for hackers and criminals who use tools like Arkham to check how much they hold in their wallets. France alone had 60 kidnappings of crypto founders, employees and family members since the start of the year!
- early investors get flagged on social media and front-run by bots the instant they move tokens to exchanges, leading them to lose a lot of upside. And if investors don't make good returns, they'll imply stop investing and you won't anyone funding new projects in the future.
- treasuries and foundations cannot effectively manage their assets, and often have to split holdings across hundreds of wallets, creating massive operational overhead
TokenOps solves exactly this. By using the Zama Protocol, they enable token issuers to distribute, vest and manage allocations privately, while remaining fully onchain and self-custodial. Each team member and investor can have a single wallet receiving an encrypted amount of tokens. From the outside, you only see that the wallet received tokens and what the vesting terms are, but you no longer know the amount itself.
Beyond confidential distribution and vesting, we are also working on enabling confidential swaps directly within TokenOps, so that anyone receiving an allocation can buy and sell tokens seamlessly without anyone knowing the size or direction. This turns vesting from a static product into an active venue for OTC, treasury management and hedging on compliant rails.
And just like we used our own technology to run our token sale, we will of course use it to distribute allocations to our team and investors. In the coming months, we will shield the entire supply earmarked for team and investors, and distribute it through TokenOps' confidential onchain vesting contracts.
# How this benefits the Zama Protocol
1. it's a great use case of the technology, and it solves a real problem in the market that no transparent solution can address.
2. it creates extremely sticky TVS (Total Value Shielded) for the protocol. Whenever someone gets a vested allocation, they become a user of the Zama Protocol for the duration of their lockup, which is typically 2-4 years. That gives us 2-4 years to build utility for them so they never have to unshield their tokens and leave Zama.
3. it generates real revenue for the Zama Protocol. Every distribution, every claim, every confidential swap generates onchain fees, and all of these fees accrue directly to the protocol and are used to buy back and burn $ZAMA.
Over the next few months, we will turn TokenOps from a SaaS product into a fully onchain platform, owned entirely by the Zama Protocol. Anyone will be able to permissionlessly build on top of it and add confidential distribution and vesting features to their own apps.
If you plan to issue a token, take it for a spin at https://t.co/7MoSFYkRFS!
Excited to announce @Morpho as a launch partner for Upshift Clear, alongside @SuperstateInc.
Upshift Clear is an instant redemption facility for RWAs, starting with USCC.
Idle USDC in Clear vaults is routed into Morpho markets between redemption events. Clear LPs earn two yield sources: redemption fees from instant RWA exits, plus onchain lending yield from Morpho.
1/ The MXRPY vault is now open for deposits, curated by @Monarq_mgmt & @FalconXglobal.
Bringing you more ways to earn XRP yield on @FlareNetworks.
Vaults are how we bridge the gap between tokenized assets and DeFi.
1/
Introducing Upshift Clear, instant redemption infrastructure for tokenized RWAs.
Starting with @SuperstateInc's Crypto Carry Fund (USCC), with $250M+ AUM and soon to be managed by @Bitwise.
Enterprise blockchains are back with a twist: cutting-edge enterprises are building their own open, permissionless chains
@alpackaP and @peterhansVC break down one of our core investment theses this cycle at @consensus2026
There's ~$300B of stablecoins out there doing ~$30T of activity. That's 100x velocity, higher than almost anything in TradFi.
@IggyIoppe on @HouseofChimera's RWA megaspace: stablecoins are settlement infrastructure, and yield-bearing stables will capture more of the market over time.
Coinmerce Capital is bringing their institutional strategies onchain as an Upshift vault curator.
They are the longest-running AFM-registered crypto asset manager in the Netherlands, managing over $60M.
DeFi is converging with traditional finance.
Pleased to unveil the expansion of the RealFi Alliance with the 3rd strategic cohort, a group dedicated to bringing seamless settlement, deep liquidity, and institutional execution to the ecosystem
New Alliance Partners:
Liquidity & Connectivity: @ambergroup_io | @lifiprotocol | @agra_gg
Settlement & Payments: @Kun_sight
Credit, Assets & Apps: @PleasingMarket | @YuzuMoneyX
Agent Banking Infrastructure: @Vishwa_xyz
By integrating institutional market-making, cross-chain liquidity, and RWA-backed credit, Pharos has transitioned into a fully operational, capital-efficient environment for global finance ⚓️
Superstate USCC is about to become Bitwise $USCC, bringing another world-class asset manager onto our FundOS platform.
We're incredibly excited to work with the brilliant Bitwise team. More tokenization soon!
1/ @CoinbaseAM has selected Superstate FundOS to launch an onchain share class of the Coinbase Stablecoin Yield Fund (CUSHY) in Q2 2026.
For the first time, FundOS is powering a third-party fund launch from inception.
https://t.co/xPXOayoQgM