International cryptocurrency exchange Binance Ltd. Thursday announced the formation of a $1 billion fund of funds for investments in blockchain startups through its incubator Binance Labs, and it’s looking for 20 future partners to invest in an ecosystem fund.

The $1 billion fund will be used in what Binance called a “Community Influence Fund,” and it will be used to fund blockchain and cryptocurrency startups to influence the industry.

Ella Zang, head of Binance, said that the entire amount will be contributed by Binance alone and all investments would be made using the exchange’s own cryptocurrency, the Binance Token or BNB. She explained that the company intends to invest the total $1 billion in $100 million increments across 10 phases.

Zhang also said during a web conference on Thursday that the incubator has now invested in four projects. These projects include MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency dedicated to developing a fast, private and easy to use currency; Oasis Labs, a smart contract platform integrating security, high scalability and privacy protection; Certik, a developer of blockchain-based verification technology; and the crowdfunding platform Republic, a service for nonretail investors to provide token and equity sales.

The first project to be incubated by Binance Labs has been identified as Dache Chain, a blockchain-based ride-hailing service in China. Dache Chain’s co-founder Chen Weixing is the chief executive of an app development startup named Funcity, which is credited with founding Kuaidi Dache, a ride-hailing startup that became China’s dominant service.

“This project will utilize blockchain technology to redesign the relationship between the interests and power of entrepreneur, labors, consumers, investors and organizers,” Binance wrote in a statement detailing the project. “Dache Chain will establish a community ecosystem with value anchoring, and it is expected to achieve a pure shared ecosystem and solve the problem of unfair distribution of productivity and wealth.”

The formation of this fund follows an initiative backed by the Chinese government in April for a similar fund called the Xiong’An Global Blockchain Innovation Fund. This fund will raise $1.6 billion, with 30 percent backed by the Hangzhou city government, and would also be invested in innovative blockchain startups. Chinese exchange Houbi also announced today the formation of a $93 million (100 billion Korean won) fund jointly with Chinese investment firm NewMargin Capital and South Korean securities firm Kiwoom Securities Co. Ltd. for blockchain startup investments.

Binance became the apparent target of hackers in February when the exchange ceased trading for 24 hours. The next month, the company announced a bounty equivalent to $250,000 to anyone who could supply information on what it called an attempted hack.

Binance is the top global exchange by volume, according to CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency exchange tracking website. In the past 24 hours, Binance has traded a volume of more than $228 million in bitcoin and $1.5 billion in all cryptocurrencies.

Although this makes Binance the world’s top exchange, the company was also called out in a report written by Sylvain Ribes about the persistence of what he called “fake volume” on cryptocurrency exchanges. Ribes focused primarily on strange behavior from exchanges such as OKex and Huobi, two major exchanges in China, showing that much of the exchange’s claimed volume could not be accounted for – and he ended by concluding that though he found Binance questionable, he found no obvious suspicious activity in the exchange’s volume history.

In March, the exchange also launched its own blockchain, the Binance Chain, that would run on its own cryptocurrency. The Binance blockchain is a public blockchain that focuses on the exchange of blockchain assets and will focus on performance, ease of use and liquidity.

Image: Binance