Lemniscap Global

Lemniscap invests in protocols and early-stage ventures that build the infrastructure for a decentralized internet — specifically, computation, data sovereignty, and energy coordination layers. The firm argues that the largest value-creation opportunities over the next decade will come from unbundling centralized platform economics and redistributing ownership to network participants through token-based coordination mechanisms. Its portfolio tilts heavily toward modular blockchain architectures, zero-knowledge proof systems, and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).

Roderik van der Graaf, the firm's founder and managing partner, leads the investment committee and originates most of the firm's earliest-stage commitments. He is supported by partner Shaun Kiatvongcharoen and a lean research team distributed across London and the Cayman Islands. The partnership structure is deliberately flat, with no junior investment professionals writing solo checks — every term sheet reflects consensus between both partners.

Lemniscap is primarily a direct investor, leading and co-leading seed and Series A rounds in protocol teams and early-stage ventures. It does not market a fund-of-funds product and has no publicly disclosed history of writing checks into other venture capital funds as a limited partner. The firm's LPs gain exposure to a concentrated portfolio of 20–30 direct investments per fund vintage, supplemented by selective co-investment deals alongside the general partner.

The firm sources opportunities through van der Graaf's decade-plus network in European venture and his early presence in the builder communities that formed around Ethereum after 2015. Lemniscap is known among technical founders for taking governance positions in early testnets and contributing research to protocol design discussions before a token generation event — behavior that gives the firm early access to pre-announcement allocations. It also maintains close relationships with several university computer science departments in continental Europe.

Lemniscap is structured as a venture capital firm, not a hedge fund. It raises closed-end vehicles with standard venture fund economics — committed capital, a 10-year life with extensions, and a management fee plus carried interest structure — rather than an open-ended liquid-token fund. The firm does not run a liquid trading desk or market-making operation, and its portfolio holds assets predominantly in pre-token or early-token form with multi-year lockup expectations.

Lemniscap has publicly stated that it does not invest in pure consumer token projects, memecoins, NFT collections, or yield-farming protocols that lack a differentiated technical moat. The firm's internal allocation framework filters out projects where value accrual depends primarily on virality or marketing rather than on novel cryptographic or distributed-systems innovation. It also avoids exposure to centralized exchange tokens and most lending-protocol governance tokens.

Lemniscap maintains a Cayman Islands-domiciled fund structure with a board of directors, an independent fund administrator, and annual audits by a recognized accounting firm. The general partner entity is subject to Cayman Islands Monetary Authority registration as a mutual fund. This structure was deliberately chosen to replicate the governance standards of institutional venture capital — quarterly net asset value reporting, LP advisory committee engagement, and audited financial statements — rather than the lighter-touch structures common among crypto-native investment vehicles.