Common Protocol Raises $3.2M to Streamline DeFi Governance

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18 May 2021

Governance startup Common Protocol has closed a $3.2 million funding round led by Dragonfly Capital and ParaFi Capital.

Other participating investors included Framework, Hashed, IDEO, Nascent and angel investor Balaji Srinivasan. 

Common develops interfaces and voting mechanisms for projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. The San Francisco-based firm said Tuesday it will use the funding to build a community for token holders and new hires.

“As active governance participants across DeFi, we’ve found it hard at times to keep tabs on the ever-expanding number of discussions and proposals across our portfolio,” said ParaFi partner Santiago Santos.

Santos described Common as a governance aggregator that monitors and manages proposals from one simple interface. It joins a crop of DeFi governance startups, including Snapshot, Tally and Boardroom, that are looking to bring transparency to distributed decision-making.

“Our goal is to become the place for token communities to launch, discuss and grow in common,” Common Protocol co-founder Dillon Chen said. “To accomplish this, we’re building a multi-chain community platform that any EVM-, Substrate- and Cosmos-compatible protocol or token can use.”

As crypto becomes increasingly multi-chain, Chen says a cross-network governance dashboard will be key for token holders.

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