On-Chain Governance Provider Tally Raises $8M Series A
Summary
"Weve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations," Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. "The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release. "On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally," Bertram said.One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto. "Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future," he said.One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent. Now that weve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, its time to really scale it up.Institutions are getting involved in DAOsBertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.With this clarity, were going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure theyre building on, he said.