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Mural, a crypto firm focused on infrastructure for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), has raised $5.6 million in seed funding, company co-founders Sinclair Tofa and Kevin Alvarez Fung exclusively told TechCrunch.
This is the company’s first outside capital raise with investors such as Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Ventures, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Firstminute Capital, 186 Ventures and a handful of founders. The funding will be used to bring in new talent and work with brands that want to create and use DAOs globally, Alvarez-Fung said.
Mural is directed by Kevin Alvarez-Fung, Arthur Kamm and Sinclair Tofa. Image Credits: Wall painting
As daos grew in popularity, their instrumental use did not increase in proportion. Mural wants to confront the financial aspects of DAO management as a banking stack for brands and startups with active communities.
For reference, DAOs are community-driven groups with no central leadership. Decisions are made by group members on management proposals. A DAO can be as big as a decentralized exchange like Uniswap or as big as a major brand like a small group of friends pooling money for a book club.
“What we’re seeing right now is a proliferation of brands that have bought and created NFTs, and the next step they want to take is how to engage their community, the NFT holders, and they turn to us to use the capital they have. From the sales of the NFTs, they put it to work immediately,” Tofa said.
Alvarez-Fung shared that the company has developed a fintech-focused platform to help brands deploy DAO treasury funds in the $50 to $100 million range. The DAO treasury is being piloted by a group of brands such as SUPERF3ST, Outlanders and Bonnaroo, a community-supported music festival.
“We really want to bring communities from around the world together and provide access,” Alvarez-Fung said.
One of the biggest interactions that Tofa and Alvarez-Fung see in the DAO space is between treasuries and communities.
“We want to allow them to engage their communities, their customers, and ultimately — whether it’s a software engineer in Ghana or an artist in France — be able to tap into this global network,” Tofa said.
In the past, there were mainly DAOs created between crypto-native groups, Alvarez-Fung said. But now we’re seeing big brands embracing the fundamental value of DAOs and their creativity.
Going forward, Alvarez-Fung said he expects every progressive brand to have their own DAO.
“It’s going to be an integral part of how companies innovate.”
TechCrunch updated the photo description, which previously said Alvarez-Fung, Tofa and Arthur Kamm were all co-founders, all three “led” the company as a result of the press release, but shared that it was Kamm after the mural was published. Not CTO and co-founder.
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