Koinify has raised $1 million to further develop its decentralized application crowdfunding platform.
The platform will enable the creation of smart corporations – also known as decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs) – and decentralized applications (DApps). Upon launch, investors will be able to use Koinify to buy tokens associated with various projects using bitcoin.
The round included participants such as IDG Capital Partners, Brock Pierce‘s AngelList syndicate and zPark Ventures. With the new round completed, the company has raised roughly $1.4m to date, including seed funding from Sequoia China.
Tom Ding, CEO and founder of Koinify, said that the money will be used to both develop the platform and promote the broader concept of decentralized companies and applications.
Ding commented:
“The extra funding will primarily be used to continue development of a secure and extremely user friendly funding platform, as well as to evangelize decentralized application development.”
Pierce, whose AngelList syndicate recently topped $1m in investor funding, lauded both the company’s leader and its concept. Ding has notably worked as a product manager for eBay and as an online marketing specialist for Alibaba.
“Right model. Right time,” Pierce added.
Funding channels decentralized
Koinify seeks to provide the financial backbone for one of the more nascent areas of the bitcoin economy, namely decentralized platforms and entities that, according to some, constitute crypto 2.0.
Decentralized projects can use the platform to raise funds, allowing developers to circumvent an environment ill-suited for startups that lack wealthy backers or industry connections.
Yet, beyond financial considerations, Koinify wants to provide an ecosystem for decentralized entities to access funding and build a whole new economic infrastructure from the ground up.
As Ding noted:
“We have always been looking for really ambitious and radical ideas to disrupt the inefficient legacy system. The block chain and smart contract technology allows developers to essentially replace the classic hundred year old corporate monopoly with lines of code.”
Koinify’s upcoming platform is one side of the broader decentralized crowdfunding movement. Other platforms, including Bitcoin Core developer Mike Hearn’s Lighthouse, focus on bitcoin-centric projects that are short on funding.
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