Otterspace, an NFT startup firm, has secured $3.7 million to develop a protocol and application with the goal of reducing financialization in the web3. Cherry Crypto and Inflection, two venture capital companies, led the seed round, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Coinbase Ventures. The fledgling company has enough funds to sustain it for at least 29 months after this latest round of funding.
What’s Otterspace’s mission?
Through the use of earned NFTs, rather than purchased ones, Otterspace hopes to incentivize positive conduct and reward members of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs). Non-transferable (NFT) badges are awarded to contributors for achieving specific DAO-mandated goals or exhibiting desirable behaviours. A contributor will have access to various privileges once they have earned their NFT badges.
NFT badges make it easy for DAOs to set up teams, determine who among its members is a key player, and then grant them access to a private channel on Discord or Telegram automatically. The token’s holders can cast votes in governance elections or utilize the token as a reputational token to get a steady income stream, similar to a monthly wage. Otterspace, which was developed on the Layer 2 solution Optimism, is also getting ready to deploy on the Ethereum mainnet in the near future.
Otterspace was created in an effort to shake up the status quo of DAOs, where a few large members have undue power over the organization’s direction. Problems arise when investors with lesser shareholding are less likely to be heard. The NFT badges offered by Otterspace not only empower users who might not otherwise be able to afford such privileges, but they also attract new DAO members who might only have a tiny quantity of tokens. Moreover, the EIP-4973 interface on which these coins are built prevents them from being traded or sold.