According to Blockworks, Llama, a governance and smart contract management solution, has successfully secured a $6 million investment. The funding round was led by investment firms Founders Fund and Electric Capital. Llama is a governance application that manages smart contracts and permissions on behalf of protocols. This fundraise comes amid perceived stagnation in DAOs regarding innovative approaches to governance. Llama's full stack platform aims to streamline governance by providing a unified place to manage roles and permissions.
DAO governance has faced challenges recently, with a Solana DAO losing $230,000 after failing to notice a proposal that drained the treasury, and the Nouns DAO experiencing half of its treasury exit via a fork. Lido critics have also focused on the platform's DAO as a point of concern for Ethereum's credible neutrality. Llama co-founder Austin Green believes that crypto governance has not innovated enough beyond the 'one token, one vote' approach popularized during DeFi's breakout in 2020.
To make voting more flexible, Llama is working on 'decentralization through access control,' where roles are split between different service providers based on their area of expertise. For example, a grants team could vote on decisions relevant to grant allocation, but not on changing lending risk parameters. Interestingly, Llama did not use the term 'DAO' in its press release announcing the fundraise, choosing to focus on 'governance' instead.
Llama's fundraise is not the first instance of venture capital showing interest in governance. In 2022, VCs invested heavily in DAOs, and Tally, another governance platform, raised $6 million in 2021 in a round led by Blockchain Capital and Placeholder. Last week, Variant Fund's general partner was the largest voter on a temp check for a Uniswap DAO investment decision.
