Heat Unabated: Exploring 16 Promising New Projects at Alliance DAO Demo Day
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Heat Unabated: Exploring 16 Promising New Projects at Alliance DAO Demo Day
Market-driven DeFi, customer-driven social protocols, tokens as coordination mechanisms, consumer-grade tiered pricing, and how DAOs function as risk-sharing mechanisms.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOriginal author: Jacquelyn Melinek, TechCrunch
Translation: 0x711 & Noc, BlockBeats
Demo days are common among traditional tech startups in Silicon Valley. But today we're spotlighting a group of crypto projects and teams participating in the demo day hosted by Web3 accelerator and builder community Alliance DAO.
During the event, Alliance DAO’s core contributor Qiao Wang said the program runs three times per year. "Startups at all stages join us—from those just starting with an idea to companies valued at over a billion dollars."
The accelerator brought in mentors and speakers such as Ryan Wyatt, CEO of Polygon Studios, and Jeff 'Jiho' Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, to guide the participating teams.
Twenty-four teams joined the cohort, but only 16 made it through to the final showcase. Three-quarters of these teams focus on NFT and DeFi infrastructure, with most building on L1 networks like Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana.
Key themes covered during the program include: market-driven DeFi, user-centric social protocols, tokens as coordination mechanisms, price segmentation for consumer products, and how DAOs can function as risk-sharing vehicles.
Below is a brief introduction to the 16 startups.
Lulo: Decentralized Order Book-Based Lending Protocol
Founders: Daniel Garay, Jesse Brauner
Funding Stage: Seed
Lulo is a DeFi lending infrastructure aiming to create a global liquidity layer using order book technology in a permissionless way. It offers “liquidity-as-a-service,” enabling users to integrate DeFi protocols with a global lending platform. By eliminating centralization risks, lenders and borrowers gain access to competitive interest rates without borrowing spreads.
LiquiFi: Carta for Web3
Founders: Oliver Tang, Robin Ji
Funding Stage: Seed
LiquiFi aims to automate token distribution and operations for Web3 products and entities across major blockchains including Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Solana. Co-founder Robin Ji noted that while nearly every Web3 product issues tokens, tracking and transferring them poses challenges, risks, and scalability issues for both consumers and companies.
LiquiFi uses its audited smart contracts to manage all tokens and provides an interface to help users track their investments. "Our strategy is to stay ahead of every trend so other companies don’t have to," Ji said. "The bigger the challenge, the more you need specialized solutions focused on it." The company has raised $5 million in seed funding.
Note: Carta is a pioneer SaaS platform in asset management, valued at $7.4 billion as of 2021.
fam.: NFT-Based Exclusive Social Club
Founders: Chris Tam, Shuguo Yang, Wallace Wong
Funding Stage: Seed
Co-founder Chris Tam said NFT markets are booming and communities around them are thriving. However, current Web2 platforms like Twitter and Discord—used as communication tools—are often criticized for noise and spam. fam. aims to build a social club application based directly on NFTs, allowing users to connect via their crypto wallets. Individuals can chat, vote, attend events, and share their lifestyle with others holding the same NFT collections. The project has secured seed funding from Sequoia Capital, Alliance DAO, Xoogler, and others.
PwnedNoMore: White-Hat Automated Code Review Organization
Founders: Wen Xu, Conan Zhou, Mike Yan, Oriol Plazas
Funding Stage: Seed
PwnedNoMore is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) founded by white-hat hackers to help build tools and safeguards for the Web3 ecosystem. It is developing a fully automated bug detection engine currently supporting Solana-based projects, with an Ethereum-compatible version launching in August. The group includes six DEF CON CTF winners. Co-founder Mike Yan said its community has reported over 1,100 vulnerabilities and protected more than $650 million in at-risk crypto funds. The organization has received backing from angel investors including Alliance DAO, dao5, and IDEO CoLab.
Leather: Watch-to-Earn Project
Founders: Niko Cunningham, Shaminda Subasingha, Jason Kilic
Funding Stage: Seed
Leather is a mobile "Watch-to-Earn" service that analyzes and rewards users in real time for everything they watch on TV. Co-founder Niko Cunningham said major streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV spend billions annually on content to make it more targeted and personalized. "We don't really know who's in that room, or who actually listened to [the show], or who truly cared." Leather users earn tokens and Leather-branded products by sharing their consumption and engagement data with third parties.
Filmine: AWS for Decentralized Computing
Founders: Vukasin Vukoje
Funding Stage: Seed
Backed by Alt Labs, Filmine aims to become the AWS of decentralized computing. Centered around the decentralized storage network Filecoin (FIL), it helps users mine FIL more efficiently. Through its network called Filgram—a FIL storage provider discovery tool—it aims to help miners achieve over 10x higher mining rewards.
Legion DAO: Tokenized Union for Professional Gamers
Founders: Alex Beliankin, Alex Anikin
Funding Stage: Seed
Legion DAO helps full-time gamers monetize their passion through a tokenized union. It plans to improve gaming communities by training players to become coaches and standardizing employment contracts. Legion DAO CEO Alex Beliankin said it currently has 100 professional contributors and 3,000 NFT members, with projected revenue of about $2.5 million over the next two years.
Clique: Web2 Data Oracle
Founders: Kevin Yu, Jaden Yan
Funding Stage: Seed
Clique is a privacy-preserving identity oracle for Web2 user data. Co-founder and CMO Jaden Yan said DeFi, GameFi, and DAOs are limited by scarce on-chain data availability, but Clique addresses this by bringing users’ online identities from Web2 channels like Twitter or Discord onto the blockchain. It completed a seed round in April backed by GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Infinity Ventures Crypto, SKy9 Capital, and others.
Ajna: Decentralized Lending Platform
Founders: Greg DiPrisco, Ed Noepel, Akash Patel, George Niculae, Joseph Quintilian, Ian Harvey, Mike Hathaway, Matt Cushman, Howard Malzberg
Funding Stage: Pre-seed
Ajna is a decentralized, permissionless lending platform. Co-founder Greg DiPrisco said creating loan markets today requires substantial existing liquidity and complex governance to manage risk, leaving most assets unable to be freely borrowed or lent. Ajna enables anyone to instantly lend digital assets in a permissionless market without oracles, governors, or administrators. Lenders simply set a price they’re willing to lend at, and the protocol handles the rest. Funded entirely by its nine co-founders, the platform currently has no plans to raise additional capital.
Tilting Point: Bringing Web2 Games into Web3
Founders: Kevin Segalla
Funding Stage: Late-stage
Tilting Point is a publisher dedicated to bringing Web2 games into Web3. It simplifies developers’ transition into the Web3 space by handling their entire crypto strategy in exchange for future crypto revenue. The company has already released 41 games and partnered with Polygon, planning to launch 10 Web3 games within the next 24 months. Founder and chairman Kevin Segalla said the company generated $200 million in revenue in 2021, growing fivefold over the past four years. In July 2021, it raised $235 million from General Atlantic to hire developers. It is now raising $20 million to expand further into Web3.
Krypton: MEV-Resistant Decentralized Exchange Protocol
Founders: Michael Nowotny, Nathan Moore
Funding Stage: Seed
Krypton is an MEV-resistant (miner extractable value) decentralized exchange protocol. It aims to be the next-generation trading protocol for DeFi, protecting traders from front-running, sandwich attacks, and other exploits. Leveraging Chainlink’s off-chain computation and transaction flow routing, it eliminates MEV, protects traders, reduces costs, and enhances cross-chain liquidity. Krypton won the Chainlink DeFi Hackathon in Fall 2021 and is currently raising a seed round led by Framework Ventures.
Parasol: NFT Wallet
Founders: Kevin Phung, Tony Chen, Allen Guan, Louis Kang, Joi Ito
Funding Stage: Seed
Parasol is an NFT wallet focused on the Japanese market. Co-founder Kevin Phung said Japan’s strong fan loyalty, driven by "otaku" culture, has brands seeking new monetization avenues through NFTs. Parasol offers a semi-custodial wallet with “crypto-invisible” features, giving users ownership while maintaining user-friendly protections. Within one month of launch, over 35,000 Parasol wallets were created, purchasing approximately 40,000 NFTs.
Dapi: Decentralized Banking API Gateway
Founders: Ahmed Agour, Hesham Ghandour
Funding Stage: Seed
Dapi is a decentralized banking API gateway that bridges fintech apps and consumer bank accounts using private banking APIs similar to Plaid. Dapi is building a decentralized peer-to-peer open network bridge. It also employs decentralized incentives, allowing anyone to build APIs and earn profit shares without permission. The platform claims that having many contributors makes the network censorship-resistant. Investors include Y Combinator, Alliance DAO, Alloy Labs Alliance, Reserve, and Cadenza.
Metavoice: Voice-Creation PFP NFTs
Founders: Vatsal Aggarwal, Siddharth Sharma, Tom Etminan
Funding Stage: Seed
Metavoice provides anthropomorphic, customizable virtual voices for users. Co-founder Tom Etminan said the product allows users to customize their voice online, which is especially important for anonymous users. Users connect their crypto wallet, select their voice, and it can be converted and output to over 800 different platforms. The beta app will launch on iOS and Windows in August 2022.
Lava: Decentralized Infura and Blockchain Data Marketplace
Founders: Yair Cleper, Gil Binder
Funding Stage: Seed
Lava Network aims to become a marketplace for blockchain data. Lava incentivizes node providers and dApp users to contribute blockchain data to its network. Just as Airbnb allows homeowners to monetize unused space, Lava plans to let any node operator use their bandwidth, while the protocol ensures data quality. Major crypto entities including Algorand, Fireblocks, Messari, Avalanche, Polygon, and Cosmos are on its waitlist. Lava has raised funds from investors including Jump Crypto, PayPal, Tribe Capital, and North Island Ventures.
Yakoa: NFT Fraud Detection Network
Founders: Andrew Dworschak, Graham Robinson
Funding Stage: Seed
Yakoa aims to detect fraudulent NFT transactions. Co-founder Andrew Dworschak said that on today’s blockchains, one-third of NFTs are original, one-third are direct forgeries, and one-third are highly similar to existing ones—resulting in millions lost daily. The platform aims to solve this by tracking infringing assets across all blockchains and flagging authentic works. Its API is live and already indexing over 40 million assets.
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