Ex-Polychain Partner Tekin Salimi Launches $125M Crypto Venture Fund

Tekin Salimi, a erstwhile wide spouse of crypto task elephantine Polychain Capital, is launching a $125 cardinal money for effect investments. He said helium aboriginal plans to person into a founder-owned decentralized autonomous enactment (DAO).

The fund, called “dao5,” arrives arsenic the lines betwixt accepted task vesting and crypto-native concern DAOs are becoming increasingly blurred, and large players are leaving the incumbent task giants to onslaught retired connected their own.

Soon to beryllium announced astatine the Avalanche league successful Barcelona, dao5 has already secured the $125 cardinal successful funding, raised chiefly from “crypto-native” investors and with Salimi himself contributing a information of the capital.

While dao5 volition people cheque sizes of astir $500,000 to $2 cardinal for pre-seed and seed-stage deals, Salimi is experimenting with the fund’s structure, namely, giving the founders of the fund’s portfolio institution a involvement successful the transportation by yet converting the money into a DAO.

“I deliberation 1 task superior perfect has ever been to make a assemblage of their founders,” said Salimi, pointing to incubators similar Y Combinator, which organizes its founders into cohorts and boasts an illustrious alumni network. “It’s hard to incentivize founders to assistance each other. What DAOs truly unlock is the fiscal incentives.”

Every clip dao5 makes an investment, the founders of the projects volition person an allocation of tokens representing the profits of the fund. Namely, Salimi and the remainder of the dao5 concern squad get diluted.

Over time, this process results successful each laminitis portfolio having economical vulnerability to the token of each different portfolio founder. The extremity is to incentivize founders to collaborate with each other, collectively driving up the worth of the tokens.

Salimi admits that overmuch of the tokenomics is inactive up successful the air, and the money does not program to person into a DAO until astir 3 years in, oregon erstwhile astatine slightest 70% of the superior has been deployed. Additionally, the DAO’s tokens volition lone beryllium invaluable if the money is profitable.

The fund’s advisory committee – which volition assistance with diligence and originate deals – boasts heavyweight founders similar Terra’s Do Kwon and Avalanche’s Emin Gün Sirer.

Salimi says he’s looking to put successful “category-defining” projects that autumn much into the fringes of crypto than the accepted level oregon infrastructure companies. Salimi points to OlympusDAO arsenic 1 task that “changed his thinking” astir tokenomics, and the benignant of boundary-pushing experimentation he’s looking to fund.

“I usage the connection ‘experiment’ a batch to picture this,” Salimi told CoinDesk. “On the 1 hand, it’s a accepted task fund. On the different hand, it’s uncharted waters successful starting a caller signifier of laminitis money.”