Recently, Binance Labs let her audience know that the venture capitalist wing of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance might be renamed, announcing the effective date as 2025.
As one would expect, the named transformation will underline updated optics and an intentional attempt to segregate their identity from that of the mother company. Ironically, it might be in this landscape that ex-founder Changpeng Zhao will have a lot more vigorous aliases, CZ.
Binance Labs stated that he “will spend more time directly on investments and project interactions.” Considering the regulatory sanctions, CZ could not be part of Binance’s leadership, but he could focus more on investments.
At Binance Labs (soon to be rebranded), we’re laser-focused on fundamentals, aiming for long-term impact. Going into 2025 and beyond, we’ll continue to provide evergreen support to founders who share our vision of building for the long term.
As we conclude 2024, let’s review the…
— Binance Labs Fund (@BinanceLabs) December 31, 2024
CZ Overcomes Legal Challenges To Lead Investment Expansion
This is after some recent legal challenges that saw him face a four-month prison sentence for violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, among other regulatory issues. These have not deterred CZ’s return to investment leadership, with Binance Labs considering expanding its portfolio and strategy.
With @CZ_Binance back in action, and spending a large portion of his time on investing in the industry, he is eager to connect with both existing and new founders, and engage with projects on a personal level.
— Binance Labs Fund (@BinanceLabs) December 31, 2024
It also announced the further extension of investment scope to secondary markets, OTC, and other emerging opportunities that could effectively respond to the blockchain industry’s varied market requirements.
Binance Labs used the opportunity to review 2024 and termed it a banner year. It said that it reportedly invested in 46 different projects across all sectors, 14 of which were under the BNB Chain-focused Most Valuable Builder and Labs Incubation programs.
About 32 direct investments across industries ranging from blockchain and DeFi to Artificial Intelligence, gaming, and zero-knowledge technologies.
Salient features of its portfolio for 2024 include the following:
- DeFi: 10 projects
- AI: 7 projects
- Bitcoin ecosystem: 7 projects
- Re-staking technology: 4 projects
- Gaming: 3 projects
As mentioned above, around 40% of the fund flowed to the ZK technologies, RWAs, and consumer apps, targeting a few field projects in each field. The other striking fields that took part in these investments with Binance Labs are decentralized science and the “Move” system. It also ventured into large established platforms like Solana, Ethereum, and Berachain.
Altogether, 20% of the investment has gone to the BNB ecosystem. In particular, considering what has looked like a more enabling regulatory environment ahead for the industry, Binance Labs still stays especially buoyant with respect to Industry prospects.
Be it a friendlier incoming administration, it should equate to better participation from institutional members, all helping accelerate Industry development.
By 2025, driven by more innovative ventures taken on so far and encouraged, he wants to lead or at least set trends in core innovation chain activities involving blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and Biotechnology, among several other modern core innovations in the emerging trends of the Blockchain mainstream.
Industries that aren’t doing well currently, such as gaming and privacy solutions, may emerge with new strength to push the transition from development to production.
This rebranding in-store is consistent with how Binance Labs envisions it: operating independently and not representing Binance. This reaffirms the commitment to foster innovation support projects across blockchain ecosystems and points towards strong support from leadership.
While Binance Labs is pivoting at this, including the active involvement of CZ and extending the investment strategy is a very important juncture in its evolution to lead innovation in the future blockchain.
