Mantra DAO, a community-governed Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform with a focus on staking, lending, and governance, has announced it has finished its initial membership offering on August 16. In total, the project has raised $5.9 million.
To make the crowdfunding more decentralized and prevent large investors from having too much control of the secondary market, Mantra DAO said it signed a digital Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, or SAFT, after completing know-your-customer activities with every single retail investor. SAFT is an investment contract offered by cryptocurrency developers, normally only to accredited investors. However, the project tells Cointelegraph that it is trying to “raise the bar” for crypto investment and set an example for future blockchain projects to be more accountable with investors' funds.
These investors have legal claims and protection with their investments for the first time in crypto or blockchain space. It explained that:
“Electronic signatures are valid under most jurisdictions and provide a very convenient, very transparent solution to retail investors protection. [...] we issue a digital agreement via Docusign where the user inputs his wallet address and the amount contributed.”
The raised funds, according to the project, is in a licensed custodian company. The custodian company will be in charge of the fund accounting and keep track of “every single penny raised”. This will solve the dilemma of who controls the funds with the previous blockchain project, says Mantra DAO.
They concluded that these various measures are meant to put more pressure on the project itself to deliver what the project has promised on paper.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, the new Russian “crypto” law showed a regulatory regime for tokenized securities, yet had no regulation for cryptocurrencies. The SEC eased crowdfunding regulations amid the coronavirus pandemic.