Umia raises $6.1 million at $18 million FDV to help crypto projects launch tokens

Umia, a platform that helps crypto projects launch and govern tokens, has raised $6.11 million through the sale of its own UMIA token.

The seven-day auction valued Umia at a fully diluted valuation of $18 million and sold 17.3 million tokens, or 34.6% of the total supply, Umia co-founder and CEO Francesco Mosterts told The Block. All tokens sold in the auction were liquid at launch, with no lockup.

UMIA is currently trading at around $0.68, giving the token a fully diluted valuation of about $34 million, according to CoinGecko.

Mosterts said Umia intentionally sold a large share of the supply to give early backers a meaningful stake and avoid a small circulating supply followed by large future unlocks.

Around 45% of the money came from institutional investors, Mosterts said. Ten funds participated, including Galaxy Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Draper Associates, RenGen, Alpha EV, Maven 11 and Eon Capital. Nearly 700 individual bidders also took part.

The funds participated on the same terms as other bidders and received no discounts, Umia said. None of the investors received a board seat, observer role or advisory position, Mosterts noted.

The raise comes during a difficult period for new token projects. Investors have shown a preference for equity deals and tokens linked to revenue, as The Block has previously reported.

Last month, GSR, Ink Foundation and several legal and audit firms also launched Charter Foundation to help reduce token launch costs.

Asked how Umia differs, Mosterts pointed to its combination of a legal wrapper, decision markets, onchain auctions and a supported onboarding process. He said its auction also uses eligibility checks and technical measures intended to reduce activity from bots and traders trying to exploit transaction ordering.

Umia said it structures each project so its intellectual property, operating team and treasury sit under one legal wrapper linked to the token, rather than being divided among a company, foundation and decentralized autonomous organization.

This structure is meant to ensure value generated by a project goes to the token rather than remaining with founders, equity holders or a separate foundation, Mosterts said.

Umia earns a 0.5% fee on spot trades across the decentralized exchange pools it manages and a 1% fee on decision-market trades.

For the UMIA token sale, 20% of the proceeds were used to create a protocol-owned UMIA-USDC liquidity pool on Uniswap v4 at the auction's closing price. The rest went into the treasury.

Smart contracts release $120,000 each month for development costs. Spending above that amount, or any change to the monthly allowance, must pass through a UMIA decision market.

Decision markets replace a standard token vote. Traders take positions based on how they expect the token price to perform under different proposals. The option with the highest time-weighted average price can then execute onchain.

Mosterts acknowledged that giving token holders control over board-level decisions could leave founders with less control. He also said a liquid token can push teams toward short-term decisions aimed at increasing its price.

However, he said these risks are preferable to standard token voting, which he believes does not work, or equity financing that gives board seats to venture firms with their own conflicts.

The UMIA sale ran on Base from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2 using Umia's version of Uniswap's Continuous Clearing Auction. It had a minimum target of $2 million and a maximum token price of $0.36, equal to an $18 million FDV.

First external launches

Umia's curation committee has selected three external projects to launch through the platform. The first is Slop.cash, a project from Shaw, who started ai16z, now known as ElizaOS. It is expected to launch later in the fourth quarter, Mosterts said. The other two projects are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Umia has received more than 200 applications across AI infrastructure, AI apps, decentralized finance, tokenized funds, real-world assets and fintech, Mosterts said. Projects can build on any Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain.

Applicants first go through internal due diligence before presenting to a curation committee that includes investors from Maven 11 and RenGen and representatives from analytics platform 01resolved.

Selected projects receive help with technology, finance, design, tax, legal work, and public relations, according to Mosterts.

Umia was incubated by Ethereum research and development firm Chainbound, which has worked with Flashbots and Ethereum Foundation. Mosterts previously worked at Point72, while co-founder and CTO Nicolas Racchi previously developed DeFi protocols and Ethereum infrastructure.

Umia currently has seven employees and is hiring business development staff to support the due diligence process, though Mosterts did not specify how many people it plans to add.

The Funding newsletter:  Stay on top of the latest crypto VC funding and M&A deals, news, and trends with my free bi-monthly newsletter, The Funding. Sign up here!