A new decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO) known as BitDAO is launching after completing a private sale that managed to raise $230M. The funding round was led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. BitDAO made the announcement pertaining its DAO launch on Tuesday while completing the private sale which was led by initial partners such as Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund.
Other investors in the DAO included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, and more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry.
One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges based in Singapore, Bybit, is an important initial supporter of BitDAO and pledged its continued support and contributions to the new DAO during the launch. Bybit specifically pledged a contribution of 2.5 basis points of its futures contracts’ trading volume to the BitDAO treasury. The contribution is expected to generate more than $1 billion per year based on 2021’s run rates.
BitDAO’s continuing treasury powered by contributions will be used to offer liquidity and to drive new protocols like decentralized exchanges, lending and synthetics protocol. BitDAO also plans to support blockchain projects by offering grants and aiding existing and emerging projects through token swaps.
According to a spokesperson from BitDAO, the project will hire both permanent and project-based teams. These includes advisers from Spartan and Dragonfly as well as developers from Sushiswap.
The major sell-off on the cryptocurrency markets has affected all players, and the DeFi industry has not been spared. According to DefiLlama, a DeFi data provider, the market that had topped in mid-May at a total value locked (TVL) of around $158 billion is currently recording TVL in the amount of $125 billion. The amount is however an improvement from one of the lowest in two months, from $88.91 billion on May, 23. The market had been on a steady growth since 2020 before the market took a dive in mid-May.
BitDAO has managed a feat many others have struggled with especially in the current market climate. With the notable decline in DeFi and other industries, many investors have been shying away from risking their investments in new projects. As such, projects are raising fewer amounts in private and public sales compared to the amounts witnessed before the market decline.
Image courtesy of pixabay
Don’t worry, we hate spam too
one weekly digest, just the important stuff.
