Tekin Salimi, a former general partner at Polychain Capital, has launched DAO-5, a $125 million crypto investment fund that will seek to offer early-stage funding for startups in a number of cryptocurrency sectors.
According to a statement issued on Wednesday, DAO-5 will commit to pre-seed and seed-stage investments in verticals like privacy technology, decentralised finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure.
Emin Gün Sirer, founder of Avalanche, and Do Kwon, CEO of Terraform Labs, will serve on the advisory board. Moonpay creator Ivan Soto-Wright is on the board, as is Ben Fisch, a computer science professor and the founder of Espresso Systems. CoinShares chief strategy officer, Meltem Demirors, is also on the board.
While DAO-5 began as a crypto fund, Salimi believes it will ultimately evolve into a full-fledged DAO. As a result, anytime DAO-5 invests in a project, the project’s founders will receive governance tokens for the future of DAO-5.
According to the statement, the token grant is an important aspect of the DAO’s long-term objectives. The token grant ensures that projects receiving DAO-5 investments have economic exposure to other businesses in the fund’s portfolio, implying that DAO-5 project founders will be encouraged to work for the benefit of the DAO collective. This alliance intends to act as a type of risk diversification while also adding value to the DAO-5 initiatives.
The DAO-5 crypto fund will ultimately become a complete DAO around 2025. According to the statement, the three-year transition period would provide the DAO enough time to develop a strong token and governance architecture.
According to the statement, this tokenomics and governance approach will concentrate on aspects aimed at encouraging participation and providing simplified incentives.
