Exploring the SeekTiger ecosystem, what new expectations does Tiger DAO VC have?

Venture capital is becoming one of the important ways for early-stage and small to medium-sized startups to obtain funding. In modern terms, venture capital is commonly abbreviated as VC (Venture Capital), which refers to a type of investment that provides financial support to early-stage startups in exchange for equity in the company. VC is a form of private equity investment.

Generally, venture capital is more flexible compared to other investment methods, especially suitable for companies or industries that are highly imaginative, develop rapidly, and have simple shareholder structures.

Historically, the model of venture capital has been around for a long time. For example, as early as 1492, Queen Isabella I of Spain sponsored Columbus's voyage, which is considered one of the earliest instances of venture capital in human history. In the mid-19th century in the United States, investments in the whaling industry were seen as one of the earliest practices of modern venture capital. However, it wasn't until the late 1990s, when the internet began to emerge, that the venture capital field gradually came into its own.

In the mid-1990s, venture capital was a small and relatively new form of investment, with a total capital deployment of only $7.6 billion (less than 5% of the market size in 2021). About 70% of this venture capital was invested in technology or internet companies, especially after 1995 when the internet became a trend, leading to an explosive growth in the market size of venture capital funds year by year.

According to statistics, in the five years starting from 1995, the stock prices of publicly listed technology companies saw significant increases, with the returns of the four largest companies exceeding ten times. Most of these occurrences coincided with fundraising from the largest venture capital firms, and to this day, hot money continues to flow into the VC field. The technological development and prosperity of the internet industry cannot be separated from the deep push of early venture capital in this field.

Blockchain Industry: A New Beacon for Venture Capital

Twenty years ago, VC drove the rapid development of the traditional internet sector, and now VC is pushing for further innovation in technology and markets within the blockchain field. Compared to the traditional internet sector, the overall imaginative space of the crypto industry is larger, the pace of development is faster, and the profit cycle is shorter. For instance, the Web3 sector not only possesses considerable imaginative potential, but public chain projects represented by Polkadot, Solana, and Terra have also allowed early investors to achieve extremely high returns in a short period, making the crypto industry a new beacon for various VC investments.

According to statistics from 2021, cryptocurrency attracted $30 billion in venture capital, surpassing the total of previous years (approximately $8 billion in 2018). Among them, large financing deals exceeding $1 billion in the cryptocurrency sector also set new records, totaling about $7.2 billion, four times the previous record before 2018.

Some well-known VC investment cases from last year include FTX completing a $1 billion Series B financing in July, New York Digital Investment Group raising $1 billion in mid-December, and Dapper Labs raising $350 million from investors including basketball superstar Michael Jordan.

Currently, in addition to some venture capital institutions focused on the blockchain field, such as A16Z, Multicoin, Paradigm, Three Arrows Capital, and Social Capital, traditional VC firms represented by SoftBank and IDG Capital are also striving to lay out in the crypto field. For example, SoftBank was reported last year to be deeply investing in the crypto industry, having invested in a Brazilian cryptocurrency fund company, while IDG Capital had already tested the waters by investing in Coinbase, imToken, and Ripple early on.

Although many traditional VC firms are observing and believe there is too much speculation involved, a considerable number of VC firms are focused on the innovative technology of the industry. For instance, A16Z co-founder Marc Andreessen stated, "The purpose of establishing a fund is not just to invest in cryptocurrencies, but to view the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies as a revolutionary change in computing models."

With the further rise of Web3 concepts such as NFTs, GameFi, and SocialFi, as well as the further compliance of the crypto industry, such as Coinbase's listing, which injects confidence into investors, it is foreseeable that existing industry VCs will continue to increase their investment volume, and more external capital will continue to flow in to capture the "dividends" in this field.

Will the VC Field Further Shift to Venture DAO?

Although more and more VCs are entering Web3, they do not fundamentally align with the ideology of Web3; they are more like representatives extending from the traditional internet world into Web3, continuing the ideology of the Web2 world. While they play a crucial role in the development of the industry, they cannot change the aforementioned fact.

Moreover, the intensifying competition among VCs has raised valuations and somewhat overdrawn expectations. Traditional venture capital firms are innovating themselves by seeking differentiation and expanding scale. On the other hand, venture capital is no longer the "power" of a few; it is no longer a game exclusive to well-connected venture capitalists.

In fact, the crypto industry is continuously disrupting traditional company forms in the form of DAOs. DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a term rich in crypto connotations, usually implying blockchain governance, and represents a new type of production relationship organization that runs parallel to existing economic organizations like corporations.

Its characteristic is that there are no bosses or leaders in a DAO; participants work in a self-driven manner based on software and code governance.

This distributed collaborative system has a high overall fault tolerance and collaborative efficiency. It typically opens up to any autonomous community user, and the overall benefits are shared among community members. Any resolutions within the community will also be decided by community members through public voting (governance tokens), without any unilateral decisions.

Currently, a considerable portion of the blockchain ecosystem is governed and driven by DAO-like structures, such as the Ethereum network and the Bitcoin network. Of course, DAOs are also continuously disrupting traditional entities, such as ConstitutionDAO attempting to auction a copy of the U.S. Constitution, OpenDAO "seizing power" from Opensea, and AssangeDAO striving to restore Julian Assange's freedom.

Crypto VCs may also be an area being disrupted by DAOs. Currently, the industry refers to DAO-driven VCs as Venture DAOs. Its characteristic is that every member of the DAO can act as a primary investor and propose investment suggestions to the DAO. Investment decisions are also based on the results of DAO voting rather than through an investment committee.

According to specific DAO smart contracts, DAO members may have the right to "exit" or terminate their participation in the DAO at any time. Traditional venture capital requires investors to stay in the fund for a period, and it generally does not cater to small investors.

Venture DAO is not a new concept; as early as 2016, the DAO organization The DAO on Ethereum can be seen as one of the earliest forms of Venture DAO. After 2018, various organizations such as MetaCartel, LAO, Flamingo DAO, Stacker Ventures, Angel DAO, Honey DAO, Komorebi Collective, and the recently popular Tiger DAO VC emerged.

Venture DAOs should be decentralized and highly open, but existing DAO projects more or less have some issues. For example, MetaCartel Ventures is currently not open to new members, Flamingo DAO members must be accredited investors as defined by U.S. law, and new members of LAO must contribute at least 310 ETH to obtain a 1% share of LAO, meaning a considerable number of users cannot participate.

Honey DAO and Komorebi Collective lack a degree of decentralization, while Stacker Ventures has a relatively low overall threshold but still has some functional shortcomings. Tiger DAO VC, launched this year by Tiger DAO and Tiger Capital, has a product form that aligns more closely with the concept of Venture DAO and offers richer functionalities.

This is one of the reasons it has attracted significant attention since its launch, and perhaps on Tiger DAO VC, we can further perceive the future development trends and directions of Venture DAOs, so let us explore it together.

The New Paradigm of Venture DAO Constructed by Tiger DAO VC

⦁ The Mother Ecosystem of Tiger DAO VC: Seek Tiger

Seek Tiger is the mother ecosystem behind Tiger DAO VC. It is a GameFi chain game aggregation platform based on the Web 3.0 concept, focusing on NFT + DAO + GameFi, and is committed to providing complete blockchain solutions for game developers.

Seek Tiger itself is a resource-based ecosystem that not only provides APIs, technical support, and wallet support for GameFi developers but also helps more game development studios launch games on the platform. It also offers liquidity tools such as IGO, DeFi, game display and download entrances, game guilds, communities, and one-stop solutions, all governed by DAO.

Currently, the ecosystem mainly includes two major platforms: a chain game aggregation platform and an NFT trading platform, two organizations: TIGER Capital and SeekTiger DAO, and four matrices: capital matrix, guild matrix, NFT matrix, and game matrix.

Tiger DAO VC is the Venture DAO platform within the Seek Tiger ecosystem, jointly launched by Tiger DAO and Tiger Capital. Tiger DAO VC itself has a resource foundation and is also one of the major innovations of the Seek Tiger ecosystem.

⦁ Functions and Mechanisms of Tiger DAO VC

Although Seek Tiger is a chain game aggregation ecosystem, Tiger DAO VC focuses on a broader scope, concentrating on discovering high-quality blockchain projects. The Tiger DAO VC investment fund primarily uses the ecological token STI for investment settlement. In addition to financial support, it will also provide a super post-investment support program for Tiger DAO, including strategic consulting, resource collaboration, market growth, and capital relations, offering panoramic support for more blockchain projects.

Pre-Investment

Traditional VCs typically discover investment projects through their own market exploration, resulting in relatively limited project sourcing channels and a single investment mechanism.

Tiger DAO VC itself is a project display platform that allows blockchain entrepreneurs to showcase their projects to all users on the platform with zero barriers, and vote to decide whether to invest in them. Members of Tiger DAO will also have the right to prioritize recommendations, giving projects more opportunities for exposure.

The Seek Tiger community has a considerable traffic base, and projects selected by Tiger DAO VC will have the opportunity to present their projects in more detail here to gain early support from more DAO members and other users. All users can review certain issues and risks associated with the project, and verified risk assessment suggestions will be presented to users to remind them to make cautious decisions, while also conducting due diligence on the project.

Using the different professional fields of DAO members, they can conduct product and technical due diligence on the projects they are preparing to invest in. For example, a DAO member who is a software engineer may contribute in technical aspects. DAO members with graphic design skills can create artwork and materials, providing more professional and independent advice for investment decisions.

DAO Members are the Community

During Investment

At the stage when the project begins fundraising, the 10,000 DAO members of Tiger DAO VC participate in project review voting. A project is selected if it receives over 60% of the votes, achieving strategic investment cooperation. At the same time, a special investment fund is initiated for the project, and DAO members voluntarily invest STI to participate in the investment. The platform automatically locks the contract, and tokens will be released in batches according to the project release mechanism to further increase the cost of misconduct for the project team.

If the project's overall performance is poor or extreme situations arise later, participating DAO members can apply on the platform to redeem their remaining investment principal, and the platform will also suspend the disbursement of remaining investment funds to the project party to prevent damage to community users' rights. The membership, investment decisions, and assets of Tiger DAO VC are managed by its DAO members.

This stands in stark contrast to traditional venture capital funds, where investment decisions and internal management are made by company partners, and there are no relevant circuit breaker mechanisms. When investment issues arise, VCs typically bear the losses themselves.

From a financial perspective, the funds for Tiger DAO VC usually come from DAO community users, resulting in a large overall capital flow, sufficient investment funds, and the ability to support more high-quality projects. Traditional VCs, on the other hand, rely solely on free LP fundraising, resulting in limited investment funds and a narrow investment scope.

Post-Investment

After investment, Tiger DAO VC can also provide multi-faceted support for projects. Tiger VC brings high-quality traffic, offers strategic development advice to project parties, and helps connect ecological resources, promoting FA capital relations, community market growth, brand influence, and listing cooperation.

In addition to the financial support provided by the platform itself, Tiger DAO VC will also offer opportunities to connect with capital from the same industry, helping projects obtain capital support through multiple channels, and can provide market-recognized brand endorsements for projects.

Furthermore, Tiger DAO VC can provide support for NFT trading, IDOs, platform hot project rankings, AMAs, LP liquidity mining, and other functional support. With the support of 10,000 DAO members, Tiger DAO VC continuously creates ecological value for projects in terms of market growth.

Traditional VCs typically make one-time investments and have limited ecological resources, providing little support for projects afterward, with many services requiring payment. The services that Tiger DAO VC can provide are difficult for traditional VCs and existing Venture DAOs to match.

Tiger DAO VC is a Web3 VC with a high degree of autonomy and more comprehensive functions in the Venture DAO track. It not only addresses various shortcomings presented by traditional VCs but also fills in some gaps in the Venture DAO track comprehensively, while further ensuring the rights of all investors and providing them with early market investment opportunities.

Tiger DAO VC is expected to gradually establish strategic investment partnerships with more excellent projects, empowering each other, promoting the healthy development of the industry ecosystem, and further setting a template for the Venture DAO track to lead the trend.

The Threshold for Becoming a Community Member of Tiger DAO VC: DAO Medals

Currently, many Venture DAO projects set high thresholds for users, requiring not only specific KYC but also certain financial thresholds, such as LAO and Flamingo DAO. To enter the DAO community of Tiger DAO VC, one only needs to obtain a DAO medal to enjoy functions or rights such as proposals, voting, governance, staking, and dividends on the platform.

Seek Tiger is currently selling NFT digital tiger blind boxes. Users who purchase and open a blind box (with a total of 1 million) will receive a different "NFT digital tiger" of varying rarity. Users can exchange NFT digital tigers for DAO honor medals according to the rules. When the types of non-N class digital tigers reach three or more, they can participate in synthesizing DAO digital medals, and the digital tigers will be destroyed after synthesis.

According to rarity, DAO honor medals are currently divided into three types: "SN," "VB," and "CZ," with different rights associated with holding different DAO medals.

Each time a user opens a blind box, they need to consume 10 STI tokens, and the STI tokens will be destroyed after opening the blind box. This means that synthesizing DAO medals will consume a large number of STI tokens, with 10 million being destroyed only after all blind boxes are sold. According to the official plan, after the blind boxes are sold out, the breeding of digital tigers will be further initiated, creating additional consumption scenarios for STI.

In addition to the aforementioned consumption scenarios, as well as IDOs, in-game purchases, and many other scenarios, STI will also be the main fundraising asset in Tiger DAO VC. This means that whenever a high-quality project within the ecosystem successfully raises funds, a large amount of STI will be locked, significantly reducing the circulating supply of STI and potentially forming strong demand.

It is reported that STI will launch its IDO at 8 PM on March 21 and will open for secondary market trading after the IDO, so stay tuned.