RBV + Denarii Labs Weekly Newsletter 🧔📖 Week of 05/1/25

Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, & More

Author

Austin Ritter
May 01, 2025

Welcome to the latest edition of the Red Beard Ventures newsletter, where we dive into exciting updates and insights from all over blockchain, frontier tech, and the angel investing landscape.

As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has a syndicate, fund, tokenomics accelerator, and Web3 consultancy:

  • The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Sports, Robotics, Biotech, and Climate. We invest anywhere between $100k - $1.5M.

  • Red Beard Ventures Fund I invests $100k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain based companies.

  • Denarii Labs is a tokenomics accelerator which invests $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token over a twelve week hands-on program. Denarii also features a consulting business for later stage clients with higher touchpoint needs in tokenomics, communications, growth, and marketing.

🎤 RBV / Denarii Labs Announcements:

Denarii Labs Accelerator Cohort 003 - Applications Now Open

Denarii Labs is accepting applications for its third accelerator cohort - designed to help Web3 founders refine their token models, prepare for investors, and execute a best in class GTM strategy. Participating teams will receive $100,000 in funding and gain access to a robust network of 200+ Web3 portfolio companies—including Animoca, Dapper Labs, and SuperRare—for business development. Additionally, founders will connect with a community of over 4,000 investors ready to support their growth.

Red Beard Ventures Fund II - Now Raising

Red Beard Ventures is launching Fund II, building on the success of our first fund and extensive network in Web3, blockchain, and DePIN. With a track record of early investments in high growth companies and a strong investor base, Fund II is positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities in the space.

Reach out to [email protected] for more information.

🚀 RBV Spotlight:

Wilder World has unveiled Chapter 1 of its Vision Paper, outlining a bold blueprint for the Metaverse as the convergence point of AGI, crypto, and virtual reality. Positioned as a new digital frontier, the Metaverse will dissolve the boundaries between physical and digital realms - transforming gaming into real-world building, economies into tokenized ecosystems, and creativity into a universally accessible force powered by autonomous agents. Wilder World’s ecosystem integrates blockchain, decentralized governance, AI-driven agents, and XR infrastructure to support immersive, interoperable, user-generated worlds. With nearly a decade of R&D behind it, the team has built the core layers needed to enable scalable, secure, and community-owned digital societies. This living document is more than a vision—it’s an open invitation to shape the Metaverse as a shared creative and economic playground.

đź’Ľ Portfolio News:

  • Zed Champions officially launches Monday at 8pm ET on Coinbase’s Base network.

  • New features include automatic skill based matchmaking and strategic retirement mechanics.

  • Relaunch modernizes original Zed Run experience with better UX and new tokenized incentives.

  • Minima was awarded “Best DePIN Company” at the 2025 DCW_X Awards in London.

  • The company cited enterprise collaborations with Siemens, Volvo, and Arm in its acceptance.

  • Reinforces its leadership in decentralized infrastructure and embedded mobility solutions.

  • SuperWorld partnered with Ellipal to spotlight the launch of the air-gapped Ellipal X Card wallet.

  • The collaboration includes co-branded campaigns and a promotional giveaway.

  • Highlights convergence of metaverse, security, and hardware in consumer-facing crypto.

  • SoundMoney, a new social layer of Web3 with $20M in funding will launch on a Saga chainlet.

  • The project features artists like T-Pain and Snoop Dogg and blends culture with crypto-native tools.

  • Marks a major ecosystem win for Saga and real-world creator adoption of chainlet infrastructure.

  • LimeWire reported a 3Ă— increase in web traffic across its content sharing and AI editing platform.

  • Millions of users are engaging with its $LMWR ecosystem, signaling renewed brand momentum.

  • Growth coincides with feature rollouts and deeper creator monetization options.

  • Shardeum begins its final countdown to mainnet with the network name open for community vote.

  • This marks the transition from testnet to a fully sharded Layer-1 blockchain in early May.

  • Signals technical readiness and community alignment ahead of mainnet deployment.

  • Bitwage introduced a referral program offering up to $1,000 for qualified leads.

  • Affiliates can also earn 10–25% recurring commissions from onboarded clients.

  • Effort aims to accelerate global adoption of crypto payroll and invoicing solutions.

  • Azuro introduced a no-code deployment stack for decentralized betting applications.

  • The system lets teams launch polished front-ends in days without building smart contracts.

  • Reinforces Azuro’s positioning as infrastructure for composable on-chain prediction markets.

  • Genies unveiled its new open-source avatar framework powered by leading LLMs.

  • Aims to decentralize digital identity and allow users to train and own AI-native personas.

  • Supports Genies’ long-term strategy of modular, composable avatar ecosystems.

  • The Sandbox launched a retro voxel experience in collaboration with gaming giant Atari.

  • The world includes nostalgic arcade gameplay and quests built into the metaverse platform.

  • Continues the push toward branded, playable environments tied to real-world IP.

🥳 Upcoming Events:

Some of the events you’ll find our team at include:

🚀 Onwards!

Drew, Elana, Joshua, Lauren, and Austin