Binance Labs, the venture capital arm and innovation incubator of Binance, announced Season 3 of the Incubation Program to support promising projects in the blockchain space. The Incubation Program is starting on November 15.

For the past 2 seasons of the Incubation Program, Binance Labs incubated market-leading and successful crypto businesses such as Polygon, Perpetual Protocol, Injective Protocol, SafePal, Cere Network, and Dune Analytics. Through the experience of incubating a wide range of projects at a very early stage, Binance Labs has acquired its own knowhow for developing and elevating projects.

The Incubation Program has some key elements:

·         8-week timeline for incubation projects to take advantage of the Binance Labs ecosystem, with a focus on mentorship from successful portfolio companies of Binance Labs, industry influencers, and potential investors.

·         Binance Labs will support value-add services like PR & marketing and fundraising advice

·         Incubation teams will join weekly fireside chat sessions with founders of Binance and other top crypto mentors for in-depth discussions

·         Incubated projects will exhibit at Binance Labs Demo Day and formally pitch their progress and traction to a wide audience of investors and mentors.

Bill Chin, the Head of Binance Labs Fund, said: “Binance Labs Incubation Program was first created to nurture potential and promising entrepreneurs and projects that can accelerate the adoption and innovation in the industry. Through the Incubation Program, we hope to help the future industry key players go through easier ways of development and I am sure our team and the mentors can also be inspired by the fresh and new insights of the talented founders and teams all around the world.”

There are 9 incubation projects that have been selected from the Fall 2021 Edition of the Binance Incubation Program submissions. They are all based in different parts of the world, and they are building products across a wide range of sectors.

·         (Game) Block Ape Scissors, a play-to-earn ecosystem built on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), incorporating gaming, NFTs and DeFi together into exciting, diverse and rewarding opportunities.

·         (DeFi) Tranching Protocol, a yield optimization and hedging protocol implementing tranching for yield farming.

·         (Game) GAT Network, a web of connected NFT trading and gaming projects that already has launched several projects on BSC.

·         (DeFi/Stablecoin) Wombat, a trusted wallet for gamers and beyond to manage and trade their NFTs and token on different blockchains.

·         (DeFi/Credit) Bird.Money, a new type of decentralized oracle that empowers blockchain developers with access to plug and play analytics products for next generation web platforms.

·         (Social) Mint Club, a smart token building platform without the need for coding or providing liquidity on the BSC.

·         (Bridge) Raydius, a middleware solution designed to create a more connected blockchain ecosystem.

·         (Trading) Copycat Finance, decentralized copy trading and copy farming platform on BSC where the innovative social trading meets the high yield social farming revolution.

·         (Game) XII Braves (SkyArk Studio), a Singapore-based blockchain gaming studio.

Binance Labs invited mentors from the Binance team, potential investors from different venture capitals, and the leaders of previous incubation projects that went through similar processes as the 9 incubation projects will go through.

Ken Li, Investment Director at Binance Labs said “All of these incubation projects have strengths in what Labs has been looking into. We are excited to support them at an early stage and contribute to the future of the industry through mentorship.”

Chase Guo, Investment Director at Binance Labs added, “Our program has successfully incubated major projects for the industry in the past through other seasons of Incubation Program, and we hope to see the same track records from this season’s projects.”

After the 8 weeks of the Incubation Program, Binance Labs will host an official demo day for the 9 projects, open to a broad audience of industry experts, mentors and investors. Through the pitches, projects can appeal to potential investors and find partners who will collaborate with them.

Binance Labs has incubated projects that eventually secured funds from other market players and these projects are well-positioned in the industry.

Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, is one of such projects leading the industry. As an Ethereum scaling aggregator to scale up Ethereum through various scaling approaches, the project has gone through a steady development. Last year, Polygon became the most adoption solution in the industry with 3000+ Dapps and achieving DAUs higher than that of Ethereum mainchain itself. Next year, Polygon is working hard to become the biggest player in the ZK technology scaling. Polygon has already acquired and initiated various ZK initiatives

Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, attending as one of the mentors for the Season 3 Incubation Program, said “Binance Labs Incubation Program was an important momentum if we see the history of this project. Through the programs Binance Labs has prepared, we could develop our business more, and eventually, we were able to launch our tokens through the Launchpad. On top of the financial investment Binance Labs made, the project was able to secure additional funding through the Launchpad and the attention of crypto users. We hope that through the Season 3 of Incubation Program, future market leaders can be discovered and incubated.”

Dorahacks, a global hackathon organizer and one of the world's most active developer communities, is co-organizing the Season 3 of Incubation Program with Binance Labs. DoraHacks' open source developer platform and curation market, HackerLink, provides unique on-chain tools to incentivize open source developments around the world.

Binance Labs will also launch applications for its Season 4 Incubation Program, which will kick off in March of 2022. As one of the benefits of being part of the Binance Labs ecosystem, all portfolio company founder, mentor or Binance alumni can directly recommend projects to fast-track into the final interview for incubation selection. Interested applicants can apply for the program here.