Blockchain specialist Metis, has raised USD1 million in seed and angel funding, which will enable it to release its new Layer2 DAO framework at the end of March.
The investors are Ralf P Gerteis, P1X Capital, Waterdrip Capital, DFG, Chain Capital, AC Capital, Block.power Combinator, Hotbit, SSSnodes, Crasolum, Kernel Ventures, Catcher VC, Jubi Labs and Ming Liu, former co-founder of Tron.
Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) create value in a decentralised and autonomous managed way, with members participating in a DAO and benefitting from it, based on their contribution. However, they have a number of inherent organisational and technological drawbacks. The structure of a DAO, involving governance by community voting, is impractical and not suitable for project operations at scale. Technologically, current Layer 1 solutions are marred by high gas costs, reduced efficiency levels, and a lack of on-chain management tools and usability of available platforms.
Established in 2018 by co-founders Elena Sinelnikova, Kevin Liu and Yuan Su, Metis is building an easy-to-use, highly scalable, low cost, governance and management mechanism-embedded Layer2 protocol to fully support the application migration from Web2 to Web3. Elena is also CEO at CryptoChicks, a non-profit blockchain educational hub which aims to grow the potential of women in the blockchain industry. She brings that expertise to the Metis, which will empower Web2 builders and communities to create decentralised companies, launch blockchain DApps and leverage blockchain-based tools to manage the decentralised collaborations happening among the DApps.
Metis has built its tech stack by hard-forking the Optimistic Rollup(OR), a mainstream Layer2 scaling solution of Ethereum. Tailoring the OR for managing collaborations, Metis is endeavouring to develop an easy-to-use and full functions framework for Web2 communities, allowing anyone to create their decentralized company on the blockchain, whatever their prior experience of blockchain technology. The Optimistic Governance mechanism will provide a simple way to build trust among collaborating community members and other tools will enable the management of business activities.
Jademont Zheng, Founding Partner of Waterdrip Capital, says: “Metis is a layer2 solution for Ethereum based DAO. This new paradigm pushes the limit of previous DAOs, so that a DAO can not only be used as a governance tool, but also a platform to carry massive business; that’s why we invest in it.”
Elena Sinelnikova, Co-Founder of Metis, says: “We’re delighted with the success of this seed funding round and the work which has taken us to the MVP stage. We’re now looking forward to the TestNet launch, community NFT airdrop and public sale, the next steps on our journey to unlock the full potential of decentralized collaboration of autonomous organizations and companies in the Web3 world.”
