Informal Systems

The firm's sourcing is tightly coupled to its engineering footprint. Because Informal Systems acts as a core contributor to the Cosmos Hub and the IBC protocol, its team directly shapes the technical direction of the interchain ecosystem. This embedded position generates proprietary insight into which early-stage infrastructure projects require capital and which teams have the technical depth to execute.

It operates as both. The entity structure separates a protocol-services business — which stewards Cosmos Hub development and IBC upgrades — from Informal Ventures, the venture arm. This hybrid model is unusual: the same leadership team sets technical roadmaps for public infrastructure while deploying capital into startups built atop that infrastructure.

Informal Systems originated as a core development team within the Interchain Foundation ecosystem and remains one of the primary maintainers of the Cosmos Hub. The firm's engineers contribute to consensus-layer upgrades, formal verification of protocol logic, and the evolution of IBC, the inter-blockchain communication standard that connects over 100 sovereign chains.

Public disclosures point to an early-stage focus. Informal Ventures backs pre-seed and seed-stage projects where formal verification, protocol security, or distributed-systems engineering are core differentiators. The firm has not publicly disclosed a growth-stage or liquid-token strategy.

Publicly available information only confirms direct venture investments. There is no public record of the firm acting as a limited partner in external funds, though its embedded position in the interchain ecosystem gives it visibility into funds that co-invest alongside its direct deals.

The firm has not published a formal co-investment policy. Given its dual role as a protocol maintainer, co-investment dynamics are likely shaped by ecosystem alignment: external GPs that share the verifiable-software thesis and contribute to the same open-source infrastructure may have informal access to deal flow.

No explicit exclusion list is published. The firm's technical output strongly signals a focus on verifiable computation, distributed consensus, and cryptographic infrastructure. Consumer-facing applications, traditional SaaS without a verifiability angle, and asset classes outside software appear absent from the observable portfolio.