On January 19, 2026, the entrepreneurial laboratory YZi Labs announced the launch of EASY Residency Season 3. This time, recruitment will no longer be conducted quarterly or biannually, but will instead upgrade to a year-round rolling application mechanism, sending a signal of “year-round availability” to the outside world. Official information indicates that selected teams can receive up to $500,000 in investment, composed of $150,000 SAFE and a maximum of $350,000 unlimited SAFE. Additionally, long-term bases will be established in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, providing office space, housing subsidies, and cloud service resources. While this appears to be a more friendly entrepreneurial support scheme, the rolling mechanism of EASY Residency actively challenges the traditional model's time structure and selection logic, which still adheres to the standard process of “fixed batches, unified start, and concentrated Demo Day.”
From One Batch Per Season to Year-Round Rolling: The Incubation Timeline is Rewritten
Over the past decade, whether in internet entrepreneurship or incubation projects in the crypto industry, mainstream accelerators have generally followed a similar “semester system” operational paradigm. Projects are concentrated and admitted in the form of one batch per season or two batches per year, entering at the same time, undergoing several weeks to months of collective mentoring, and ultimately showcasing at a high-density Demo Day to investors and media. This linear structure of “opening—intensive training—graduation roadshow” facilitates the unified arrangement of resources by capital, mentors, and service teams, while also creating a clear generational sense and alumni network between batches. However, it also means that projects missing a particular batch often have to wait several months to enter the next cycle.
In EASY Residency Season 3, YZi Labs completely disrupts this rhythm, shifting to year-round rolling applications and residency. This mechanism no longer forces all projects to “queue up” at the same time but allows teams to choose more suitable application timings based on their own R&D progress, financing pressure, and market windows. Once a project passes the screening, it can join the long-term base, access investment and mentoring, rather than passively waiting for a pre-set “next opening.” For entrepreneurs, this directly rewrites the admission rhythm, bringing the timelines of financing and incubation closer to the real rhythm of product iteration.
The impact of the rolling system is first reflected in time windows and trial-and-error costs. Early-stage teams often explore back and forth between refining direction and product formation. Under the fixed batch model, if the product is not yet formed or the market environment changes during the roadshow, they often miss an entire cycle; whereas rolling applications mean projects can knock on the door at a point closer to their “optimal state,” reducing discounts caused by time mismatches. At the same time, the competitive rhythm is also changing: in the past, projects in the same batch competed on Demo Day, forming clear horizontal comparisons, while the rolling mechanism resembles a year-long continuous runway, where projects must complete their products before suitable market windows and prepare narratives before multiple industry exposure points throughout the year.
From a more macro perspective, this reconstruction of time structure is a direct response to the increasingly rapid and fragmented early cycles of Web3. The intertwining of token economics, protocol iterations, and regulatory trends means that the frequency of updates to a project's technical route and business assumptions is far higher than in the traditional internet era, with market sentiment fluctuating dramatically on a weekly basis. In such an environment, adhering to a rhythm of “two openings per year” can easily misalign with real opportunities. By choosing a year-round rolling mechanism to connect with these irregular fluctuations, EASY Residency is essentially betting on a higher frequency, more flexible incubation infrastructure to absorb the uncertainties of early Web3.
$500,000 Ammunition and SAFE: Valuation Games are Preceded
In terms of investment structure, EASY Residency Season 3 has designed a layered ammunition system around the maximum of $500,000: the base part is $150,000 SAFE, supplemented by a maximum of $350,000 unlimited SAFE, together constituting the capital support cap for a single team. The former is closer to the “standard ticket” of traditional early-stage accelerator projects, helping teams address basic funding needs during the startup and experimentation phases; the latter exists in the form of “unlimited SAFE,” reserving additional space for teams that demonstrate stronger growth potential in the short term, allowing for increased stakes at an earlier stage.
The introduction of the unlimited SAFE brings forward some of the valuation and dilution games that would typically play out in the next round of financing to the incubation period. For investors, increasing investment when the valuation has not yet been fully anchored by the market can yield more favorable shareholding costs and higher future upside potential; for founders, this structure means the opportunity to secure funding that exceeds the average ticket size of traditional accelerators early on, but it also means that the valuation anchor points they can negotiate in subsequent rounds will be influenced by the early SAFE terms. If the market cools in the future or financing progress falls short of expectations, the valuation range when early unlimited SAFE converts can amplify the dilution pressure on founders' equity.
In the narrative context of Web3, AI, and biotechnology advancing simultaneously, this investment portfolio also reflects YZi Labs' risk appetite. The three fields share common characteristics: high technical barriers, strong uncertainty, and long validation cycles, while often producing extreme return projects during bull markets and periods of technological breakthroughs. Covering a broader range of early explorations with the $150,000 base SAFE and then focusing on top candidates with the maximum $350,000 unlimited SAFE essentially employs a two-part structure to balance “spreading the net” and “concentrated investment” in high-risk tracks. This represents a lengthening of rhythm for pure crypto funds accustomed to making quick moves within short cycles, while potentially being more attractive to deeply technical-oriented teams.
From the founders' perspective, this combination has both highlights and boundaries compared to similar accelerator programs. The highlight is that the maximum single ticket of $500,000 is uncommon in early incubation projects, and combined with resources and offline support from New York and the Bay Area, it is sufficient to cover a significant product refinement period; the SAFE structure is relatively mature in legal and market terms, lowering the technical barriers for early financing negotiations. The boundary lies in the scale and conditions of the unlimited SAFE, meaning teams need to carefully balance short-term funding security with long-term equity dilution, making significant concessions in the absence of complete market pricing. For teams still clarifying their business models or technical paths, this presents both an opportunity and a constraint.
Dual Bases in New York and the Bay Area: Bringing Web3 Incubation Back Offline
EASY Residency Season 3 has chosen to establish long-term bases in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, creating a traditional “entrepreneurial gravity field” in terms of geography, talent, and capital. New York, as one of the global financial centers, gathers a large number of institutions and practitioners with a deep understanding of asset class innovation, compliance structures, and traditional capital markets, providing a natural soil for the interface between Web3 and real finance; the San Francisco Bay Area remains a high-density cluster for global engineers, AI research, and deep tech entrepreneurship, with top universities, major companies, and serial entrepreneurs forming a complete talent pipeline. Connecting these two locations effectively links the core nodes of the three technological tracks of Web3, AI, and biotechnology within the same incubation network.
Surrounding these two long-term bases, YZi Labs offers not just desk space, but a complete offline support system, including office space, housing subsidies, and cloud resource packages like AWS. For early-stage teams, especially those with multinational or remote collaboration projects, tangible living and infrastructure support can significantly reduce initial relocation and settling costs, allowing founders to focus more on the product and technology itself rather than constantly weighing rent against server bills. Additionally, a unified physical space creates natural scenarios for knowledge exchange, temporary collaboration, and informal feedback among teams, with some signals that are often difficult to capture online quickly emerging during hallway chats or brainstorming sessions.
More importantly, the year-round presence of the investment team changes the rhythm of decision-making and the depth of companionship. If traditional accelerator investors and mentors resemble a “visiting jury,” then in the EASY Residency model, the resident team is closer to “long-term partners fighting side by side.” Regular close contact shifts investment decisions from one-time roadshow judgments to dynamic assessments based on continuous observation, which not only improves the accuracy of evaluating founders' execution capabilities and team collaboration quality but also facilitates timely adjustments to support strategies when projects encounter short-term setbacks, rather than simply “cutting losses and exiting.” Trust is gradually built in this high-frequency interaction, laying the groundwork for larger-scale financing and strategic choices in the future.
For cross-disciplinary teams, the value of deep offline companionship is particularly pronounced. The combination of Web3 with AI and biotechnology is not merely an overlay of tracks but involves multiple complex issues such as compliance structure design, data governance, privacy protection, and scheduling of computing and experimental resources. Experience in a single field is often insufficient to support complete decision-making. At physical nodes like New York and the Bay Area, projects can receive feedback and connection opportunities from different disciplines and industry backgrounds more frequently, allowing “cross-disciplinary” collaboration to move beyond mere narratives in white papers to finding truly actionable points of integration in daily interactions.
Three Demo Days Connected: The Rhythm Anchor of Rolling Residency
In terms of time planning, YZi Labs has scheduled three Demo Days for 2026, with the earliest taking place during April TOKEN2049 in Dubai, and the other two planned for August and December. From the timeline perspective, the April event is tied to the globally renowned industry conference TOKEN2049, meaning participating projects will not only face investors and partners from within the incubation network but will also be directly exposed to a broader industry audience and international capital. Leveraging the global gathering effect created during large conferences, the exposure, financing, and business cooperation opportunities of the Demo Day are expected to be significantly amplified.
Holding the Demo Day in a high-density conference setting essentially adds a layer of “conference overflow traffic” for projects: media coverage becomes more concentrated, potential partners can more easily complete multiple rounds of face-to-face communication in a short time, and investment institutions often concentrate on evaluating new projects during this phase, making quick predictions. For teams that have entered incubation early under the rolling residency mechanism, delivering a mature product and data report during TOKEN2049 in Dubai will undoubtedly significantly increase their chances of being recognized and valued by the market in the first half of 2026.
It is noteworthy that the combination of rolling residency and fixed rhythm Demo Days effectively reconstructs the milestones and narrative rhythm of projects. Projects are no longer forced to rush at a unified time point but can view Demo Days as several key “external narrative nodes” throughout the year based on their residency timing and product progress. For teams that entered earlier, the April or August events may serve as the main battleground for a first round of large-scale market exposure and institutional financing; for projects that join mid-year, the December Demo Day is more suitable as a concentrated showcase of phase results and a prelude to next year's financing story. The three roadshows act as three time anchors, pulling the entire distribution of projects operating on a rolling basis throughout the year into a rhythmic line of capital and product disclosure.
Although the specific locations for the Demo Days in August and December have not yet been disclosed, their timing suggests potential roles in the annual financing and product release rhythm. The August event is close to the end of the traditional “summer window” in Europe and the U.S., providing a mid-term opportunity for teams that completed product refinement in the first half of the year, as well as allowing projects planning to complete financing rounds by year-end to test investor feedback in advance. December, on the other hand, serves more as an annual summary point, offering a concentrated review and external showcase for projects that have been rolling in throughout the year, while also laying a clear narrative starting line for collaborations, financing, and technology releases in the following year.
Web3 Media's Unified Presence: The Narrative Battle of Incubation Models
At the same time the upgrade was officially announced, several Chinese crypto media outlets, including Golden Finance, panews, Rhythm, and Foresight, almost simultaneously reported on EASY Residency Season 3. This phenomenon of “unified presence” is itself part of the competition among incubation models. For YZi Labs, the direct effect of intensive media exposure is to enhance brand recognition among entrepreneurs and investors, expand the funnel for project recruitment, and occupy the mental label of “year-round rolling incubation” in the public discourse; for potential applicant teams, such reporting frequency can invisibly amplify their visibility, prompting more early-stage founders to actively evaluate this option.
Media is not just disseminating information; it is also participating in shaping the discourse power structure of the industry. In the competition between Web3 incubators and accelerators over “who understands on-chain economics better,” “who has higher quality projects,” and “who can produce more leading companies in the next cycle,” the narrative battle is increasingly transforming into a contest among different institutions in media and community channels. By upgrading its model and receiving concentrated coverage, EASY Residency positions itself as an innovative sample of “year-round support and cross-border layout,” essentially seizing the narrative high ground in an arms race among incubators: attracting projects with a more flexible mechanism while consolidating credibility and a sense of being at the forefront in the minds of founders through continuous exposure.
In an environment where capital is becoming more cautious, the importance of this ongoing narrative is further amplified. Funding no longer flows indiscriminately as it did in previous cycles; instead, project teams must choose between limited high-quality capital and incubation spots. For incubation brands, a single, one-time big news is far from sufficient; how to maintain a clear rhythm of product iterations, investment actions, and graduation project trends throughout the year becomes a key variable influencing the flow of quality projects. By upgrading to a year-round rolling mechanism, announcing a $500,000 investment structure, establishing dual bases in New York and the Bay Area, and adding the timing design of three Demo Days, along with the collective amplification of a media matrix, EASY Residency is attempting to lock in the mindset of early projects for the next one to two years with a comprehensive narrative.
The Year-Round Bet: Who Can Reap the Benefits of Rolling Incubation
Overall, the upgrade of EASY Residency Season 3 focuses on three core dimensions: first, the rhythm structure, shifting from a closed cycle of one batch per season to year-round rolling applications and residency, using the three Demo Days in April, August, and December as time anchors to provide external exposure and financing nodes; second, the funding structure, combining a $150,000 SAFE with a maximum of $350,000 unlimited SAFE, ensuring basic support while reserving additional space for high-potential teams, thus bringing forward the valuation and dilution games to an earlier stage; finally, the offline companionship, providing office space, housing subsidies, and cloud resources at dual bases in New York and the Bay Area, combined with the year-round presence of the investment team, bringing incubation back from online co-learning to long-term offline co-creation.
In terms of long-term impact, the rolling mechanism presents different requirements for different participants. For early-stage teams, it offers a more flexible entry window, more continuous mentoring, and external exposure nodes that align better with their own progress, but it also requires founders to proactively plan product and financing rhythms, choosing the most suitable “debut moment” among multiple opportunities throughout the year. For investors, year-round rolling means that selection and tracking work shifts from “concentrated batch processing” to “continuous operation,” necessitating adjustments in resource allocation and team focus to ensure the quality of judgments and depth of support for incoming projects. For the incubator itself, this is a challenge regarding organizational capability: the ability to maintain high standards of project selection, mentoring, and capital connection throughout the year will directly determine whether this model can succeed.
In the cutting-edge intersection of Web3, AI, and biotechnology, incubation models like EASY Residency's year-round rolling approach may gradually evolve into a new industry standard—especially for those cross-disciplinary fields that have long technical cycles, high compliance requirements, and are sensitive to talent density. Meanwhile, differences among institutions in rhythm control, ticket sizes, offline base layouts, and brand narratives will likely widen their respective project quality and long-term return curves in the coming years, leading to a new round of differentiation. Some institutions may further increase investments in offline presence and resource integration, while others may choose to streamline and focus on deep incubation in a single track or specific region.
The real key uncertainty lies in the project quality selection and long-term outcome data, which still require time for validation. Currently, there is no complete public data on the success rates, exit situations, and long-term performance of projects from previous seasons of EASY Residency, and market judgments on its model upgrade are largely based on logical deductions and subjective expectations of team capabilities. Whether rolling incubation can actually improve the proportion of quality projects, shorten the matching time between products and markets, and enhance capital efficiency will need to be answered through the growth trajectories of real projects in the coming years. Until then, EASY Residency Season 3 resembles a comprehensive bet on time structure, capital structure, and spatial structure, and who will ultimately reap the benefits of rolling incubation remains an open question.
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