Llama raises $6M for role-based governance platform

A governance and smart contract management solution called Llama has successfully secured a $6 million investment. The funding round was spearheaded by investment firms Founders Fund and Electric Capital.

Llama is a governance application that manages smart contracts and permissions on behalf of protocols. The fundraise comes amid what some perceive as stagnation on the part of DAOs when it comes to innovative approaches to governance. 

Llama told Blockworks that its full stack platform would streamline governance.

“Currently, the space is very fragmented,” Llama co-founder Austin Green said. “There really isn’t one unified place that has the full stack for you to manage roles and permissions.”

DAO governance has been generally rocky of late. A Solana DAO recently lost $230,000 after failing to notice a proposal that drained the treasury. The Nouns DAO saw half of its own treasury exit via a “fork,” and Lido critics have focused on the platform’s DAO as a point of concern for Ethereum’s credible neutrality.

When asked about the frayed reputation of DAOs, Green said that crypto governance hasn’t innovated enough past the “one token, one vote” approach popularized during DeFi’s breakout in 2020. 

To make voting less one size fits all, Llama is working on “decentralization through access control,” Green said, where roles are split between different service providers based on their area of expertise. A grants team, for instance, could vote on decisions relevant to grant allocation, but not on changing lending risk parameters. 

Notably, in a press release announcing its fundraise, Llama didn’t use the term “DAO” at all, opting to focus on “governance” instead.

Llama’s fundraise isn’t the first example of venture capital showing interest in governance.

VCs poured money into DAOs in 2022. Tally, another governance platform, raised $6 million of its own in 2021 in a round led by Blockchain Capital and Placeholder. And last week, Variant Fund’s general partner was the largest voter on a temp check for a Uniswap DAO investment decision.

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