The Why
Short backstory:
I came into Chorus One as a research analyst in 2021 with the job to pick the best proof-of-stake blockchains in an era of infrastructure innovation. I started investing off-balance sheet to prioritise engineering resources under the guidance of Brian Crain (CEO of Chorus One). My passion for investing grew at the company and I ended up as Chief Investment Officer within 1.5 years. I analysed and spoke with hundreds of blockchains, developed a deep understanding of the trade-offs and what validators need to onboard blockchains. With this experience, I discovered many of the problems that exist in the blockchain infrastructure space, such as: distribution, user experience, developer experience, disloyal users and liquidity. At the same time, I watched the technology advance and scale to the point where it is now, ready to host breakout applications.
I worked with several of the world’s leading VCs as a major customer of Chorus One, one of the largest staking providers in the industry. I got to understand how many VCs think and operate whilst working on the investments and growth side of Chorus One. In 2024, I realised that we had the intelligence, access, allocation and resources to launch a fund. I worked with Brian through seeding Frachtis, a new fund dedicated to my passion, crafting investments in transformative decentralised technology.
The opportunity is clear. We are entering a new period of crypto adoption in the coming years. We have built an incredible amount of infrastructure that is ready for application development. AI continues to improve at an advanced rate. Regulations are coming to enable better business models and more stable liquidity in the space. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is increasing as institutional investors start to enter the blockchain space. Business models are changing from tokens without utility to thoughtfulness around how tokens (or equity) capture value. Gen Z interest in experimenting with the technology continues to grow. It has never been easier to launch prototype experiments of applications thanks to AI. The Apple App Store has removed their 30% tax on crypto transactions within iOS apps encouraging developers to deploy mobile crypto apps. The asset class has never been more credible and exciting. The whole world is about to be influenced by the growth of crypto.
What We Believe – Our Vision
Crypto is already becoming the backbone of modern financial technology. Infrastructure and applications are commoditising and it is harder than ever to attract users and liquidity. The next frontier is to move away from building generic blockchains and/or copied applications, towards solving new problems with new technology. Distribution is everything in this new era of abundant crypto. With so much noise, we are looking for dynamic, impactful and useful decentralised technology that separates itself from undifferentiated solutions. Our thesis is that the best teams will be the ones that create unique defensible businesses, especially when it comes to owning the end-user relationship, liquidity and AI model feedback loops (from user data).
- The next wave will be shaped by four overlapping forces:
- Decentralised AI infrastructure enabling multi-agent coordination, fast execution, verifiability, key management, persistent memory, discoverability, and cost-efficiency for AI agents
- Crypto x AI applications offering personalised onchain experiences powered by verifiable AI inference
- Consumer apps that solve usability and make crypto fun, social, or invisible
- Middleware (via API / SDKs) that solves painful and universal problems for consumer developers building decentralised applications on any blockchain
How We Invest
- Stage: Pre-seed & seed
- What we look for: technical excellence, crypto-native focus, domain expertise, an ability to attract talent, aligned stakeholders, novel utility, marketing prowess, daring and ambitious vision, early validated demand and a risk management / security mindset
- What we offer: early belief, zero-to-one customer acquisition, deep infra expertise, actionable market insights, access to upstream investors, connections across all major blockchain ecosystems, pitch refinement, go-to-market feedback and real founder empathy
Who Frachtis is Targeting
- Technical founders with a unique insight into an underaddressed or unsolved problem
- Teams building transformative decentralised technology others haven’t investigated yet
- Teams looking for a hands-on investor who commits early and brings long-term conviction
Let’s Build Together
- DM on X, intro via a founder, or drop us a note: xavier@frachtis.com
