Some of the largest Asian venture capital firms and crypto hedge funds will invest $100 million to further develop applications on a new blockchain called Assembly under the IOTA network, co-founder Dominik Schiener told Reuters in an interview. IOTA is a distributed ledger network similar to blockchain. Assembly will focus on decentralized finance (DeFI), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and cryptocurrency games, Schiener said. DeFi projects, facilitating crypto-denominated lending outside traditional banking, and NFTs, which are digital assets certified to be unique and not interchangeable are two of the fastest-growing crypto sectors. Many blockchain companies around the world have pivoted to cater to this space to meet increasing demand. Assembly, a smart contract network similar to the Ethereum blockchain launched by Berlin-based research and engineering group IOTA Foundation last month, will serve as the anchor for DeFi, NFT, and gaming applications. Smart contracts are self-executing transactions whose results depend on pre-programmed inputs. Asian investment firms led by LD Capital, Signum Capital, Huobi Ventures, UOB Venture Management, HyperChain Capital, and Du Capital have committed $100 million to funding developments in the Assembly network, Schiener said. Crypto market-maker GSR will also contribute to the $100-million investment, he added. All the investors confirmed their investment in emails and statements to Reuters. These firms also took part in a seed funding around earlier this year that raised $18 million for Assembly. "Assembly is now its own network that"s built on top of IOTA and enables anybody to create their own blockchain network. And this blockchain network is deemed secure and connected through IOTA," said Schiener. "You can think of Assembly as being a network of networks, where there are many blockchains that are now being secured and connected through the same architecture," he added. Assembly"s beta or test version is already live, Schiener said, to be officially launched next year with its own token. Developers, creators and early contributors of Assembly will be rewarded with close to 70% of the entire token supply. Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Alden Bentley and Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.