Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), a software developer, raised $9m in a seed round, reports The Block.
Venture firms Foundation Capital and Road Capital co-led the round. Other investors included 6th Man Ventures, Common Metal, and a number of angel investors, including former Uber executives Josh Morera and Ryan McKillen.
The startup built the TRIP protocol on the blockchain Solana. Its first app on it is Teleport for decentralising ride-sharing.
TRIP is open source. Key components of the service such as dispatch, payments, data verification and dispute resolution will be available to all participants in the network.
“There could be several operator companies and customers working to build this market. […] This is the difference from Uber — a monopoly that no one can develop, change and deploy innovations,” said Paul Bom, founder and CEO of DEC.
According to him, the startup intends to attract many small players who want to challenge the monopoly.
“Why should drivers continue investing in the Uber ecosystem? When they could really collaborate and create their own space, where they own what they do,” said Bom.
By the end of the year the startup will pilot Teleport at the Solana Breakpoint conferences in Lisbon and Art Basel in Miami.
The funds raised will allow DEC to expand testing, establish new partnerships and foster the project’s development by holding hackathons.
In 2023 the startup set a goal to launch Teleport in one of the cities. The project also wants to achieve real decentralisation, with protocol governance moving from the team to several distributed entities.
“Including ride-sharing in the protocol, Teleport does what we couldn’t build at Uber in 2010, and what the company should be building today. Passengers and drivers will move from centralized intermediaries to an open economy with aligned economic incentives,” commented Ryan McKillen, former Uber product manager.
Bom noted to the publication that half of the round’s funds were raised before the May crypto-market downturn. The financing was fully equity.
As Morgan Stanley analysts noted that after the market correction the number of venture deals in the industry remained high.
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