BitDAO participants to vote on creating a $200 million ecosystem investment fund

Mantle Core and Mirana Ventures have proposed that the BitDAO community vote on establishing an ecosystem investment fund worth $200 million.

[DISCUSSION] Mantle EcoFund@0xMantle has posted a discussion proposing:

✅ Authorization to establish Mantle EcoFund 1 of a capital pool of $200M (catalyzed with a target size of $100M from BitDAO).

✅ Authorization of first capital call: $10M USDC from the #BitDAO Treasury.

— BitDAO (@BitDAO_Official) February 26, 2023

The goal of the structure is to expand use by developers of layer-2 solutions in the Mantle ecosystem of BitDAO. The test version of the protocol was dapps launched in January 2023.

Under the proposal, BitDAO’s treasury would allocate $100 million to the fund over three years in the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). An equivalent amount would be contributed pro rata to Mantle EcoFund by strategic venture partners, including Mirana Ventures.

Interest in such a status has been expressed by Dragonfly Capital, Pantera, Folius Ventures, Play Ventures, Spartan, Lemniscap, Selini Capital, Cadenza Ventures and QCP Capital.

The fund will back early-stage projects, up to Series A rounds. The investment size will be $500,000 per project, with the possibility of doubling for “promising startups with stronger use cases for the BIT token.”

Mirana Ventures will operate Mantle EcoFund. The firm will have one seat on the investment committee. It will also include two representatives from the Mantle team and one each from BitDAO and Bybit. The community will have the ability to propose changes to membership.

The management fee is expected to be at the industry standard level of 2% per year of the fund’s AUM.

To incentivize strategic partners, Mantle EcoFund proposes to allocate 20% of the revenue due to BitDAO’s treasury to them. However, this provision would take effect only after the initial investments are fully repaid.

Targets for Mantle EcoFund include:

• more than 100 projects deployed within the protocol’s ecosystem over three years;
• increase in invested capital by 1.5x.

If the community approves the creation of the fund, the treasury would automatically allocate the first tranche of 10 million USDC.

In January, the Venom Foundation, a blockchain platform developer, in partnership with Iceberg Capital, launched a $1 billion venture fund.