Why wait for one of your investments to release a new feature when you can just build it yourself?
Delphi Digital’s newly-announced expansion aims
to do just that. The cryptocurrency investment, media, and research
company is now adding a Labs department which will be focused on
contributing to Venture portfolio company development.
The move will help expand Delphi’s current developmental wing, which
presently houses 9 employees, according to Delphi Digital analyst José
Macedo. Before they branched off from Research, the Labs team assisted
with tokeneconomic design for multiple projects, and is currently spearheading an overhaul of Aave’s $1.4 billion Safety Module.
According
to Macedo, the impetus for the new company wing is a lack of
developmental and smart contract engineering resources endemic to the
space.
“I think what led to this model was working with
top projects and witnessing first hand how much work needs to be done
and how there just isn't the talent to do it. We realised the IP we've
gained compounds and can be leveraged across the entire space.”
While
Labs' current focus will continue to be on tokeneconomics and
governance proposals, as it expands it will eventually help to incubate
younger projects, as well as potentially launch entirely new protocols
under the Delphi brand, per a two-year timeline in the announcement.
Big money governance
Delphi
isn’t alone in taking a more active role in the protocols they invest
in. How venture capital funds interact with DAOs has been a hotly
debated topic as of late, with some crypto community members arguing
against preferential treatment (and/or governance token investment
terms) for deep-pocketed investors, while others saying that fund are
welcome like any other participant to become a part of public good governance.
So
far protocol founders remain resolutely in favor of VC involvement,
particularly when the VCs make material contributions. Uniswap founder
Hayden Adams argued as much in a long Twitter thread two weeks ago:
Likewise, earlier in the month Synthetix announced a $12 million dollar raise from three venture capital funds, noting that the institutions would help with protocol development and participate in governance where able.
It’s
a model Macedo says makes sense: projects can leverage Delphi’s
research and developmental heft, and Delphi will in turn see their
investments flourish:
“We only want to work with projectssource link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/delphi-digital-launches-labs-wing-to-bolster-portfolio-company-development
whose tokens we intend to hold for several years and our goal is to be
long-term participants with aligned incentives.”
