DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Raises $8M in Series A Funding
Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding. The investment will help scale its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
The funding round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo and others. This follows Tally's previous fundraising of $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.
Tally Protocol powers infrastructure that helps leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs. Its client list includes Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.
"We've built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations," said Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol. The platform can assist from idea conception to token launch, membership distribution, and value accrual.
Tally aims to address low voter participation in DAO governance, which has led to controversial outcomes. Last year, a group called Golden Boys passed a disputed proposal in CompoundDAO to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP, which was later canceled after controversy.
To improve participation, Tally has developed staking mechanisms to reward active governance participants. Users can stake their tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning yields while keeping voting rights within DAOs.
Bertram noted that recent regulatory clarity in the U.S. has opened doors for institutional participation in DAOs. "These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on," he said.
The DAO governance model has also found application beyond financial protocols. Projects like Pump.science and VitaDAO now direct crypto trading fees toward longevity research, with one platform reporting 45,000 token holders generating $2.37 billion in volume to fund anti-aging experiments.
