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The firm invested $5M in Agora, a front-end solution for DAO governance, this week
Blockchain startups were red - hot when Katie Haun will Andreessen Horowitz in 2021 to launch her own crypto - focussed speculation house . But shortly after Haun announced that Haun Ventures ’ two funds amount $ 1.5 billion , cryptocurrency Price cratered and FTX collapsed .
Despite having a monolithic arsenal of dry powder , Haun Ventures did n’t hurry to outdo up stakes in crypto and web3 on the cheap , andmany observers wonderedwhen the firm would pick up its deployment tempo .
While Haun Ventures sound out it was n’t exactly sitting on its hands ( and chapiter ) through crypto ’s downturn , the firm was perhaps more cautious than it ab initio mean .
But now that bitcoin prices have rebounded to their previous highs , Haun Ventures ’ investment activity is increasing dramatically . include some of its token positions , the business firm has made 48 investment across its early - stage $ 500 million and $ 1 billion later - stage acceleration funds , Haun Ventures told TechCrunch .
The firm ’s latest investiture is Agora , an app that streamline voting and other decision - making for decentralized autonomous organizations . The house lead a $ 5 million come round into Agora on Tuesday , with participation from Seed Club , Coinbase Ventures , Balaji Srinivasan and others .
Sam Rosenblum , a pardner at Haun Ventures , say that a substantial impediment to DAO participation had been the lack of a round-eyed user interface that allow for member to O.K. ( or vote on ) the implementation of software upgrade to the protocols they are regulate .
The process was extremely fragmented . Certain decisions were made in a separate Discord channel ; “ you then [ the community would ] go somewhere else to take a balloting on apportion one dollar bill in the First Lord of the Treasury towards a certain project , ” Rosenblum said .
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Agora solves this issue for DAO members by providing an easy - to - use biotic community and protocol organization solution . “ Historically , if you wanted to participate in resource allocation of a communications protocol exchequer , you had to do a crowd of on - Ernst Boris Chain activity yourself , which probably mean you have hardware and software setup that most the great unwashed do n’t have , ” Rosenblum said .
Agora is supposed to make DAO participation aboveboard for non - technical substance abuser . Rosenblum compared it to Coinbase , which simplified coin trading for most multitude .
The company was launch in 2022 by Charlie Feng , who co - establish fintech Clearco ; Coinbase product designer Yitong Zhang ; and software engineer Kent Fenwick .
Agora , which is essentially a SaaS offering , is already used by communications protocol such asOptimism , ENS andUniswap .
Rosenblum excuse that these protocols are felicitous to pay for Agora because it helps lower the roadblock to involvement in their community .
While activity is for sure accelerating in the crypto world , Rosenblum did n’t say precisely when Haun Ventures will be done deploying its current investment company . But he did say that investing will proceed into next twelvemonth .
