How Raisebase is Raising the Bar for Investment DAOs Everywhere

Raisebase, a platform and dashboard designed for investment syndicate Vanta DAO, is on the verge of pushing an update that aims to drastically improve the experience and efficiency of participating in any investment DAO or syndicate.

The Raisebase platform was created for Vanta DAO, but its founders plan to white-label it for others after the release of its next update.

Investors holding an NFT that provides gated access to a DAO using Raisebase gain access to an all-in-one dashboard that provides “all of the information that you might need to make investment decisions,” Raisebase and Vanta DAO Co-Founder Josh Field told Decrypt. “You join that dashboard, you connect your Web3 wallet, and deals populate there in your dashboard,” he said.

The dashboard displays all the information that investors need to “do their own due diligence and make an investment decision,” he said, including links to the company, its social media presence, research reports and decks, and a visualization of its vesting schedule.

Investing is then as simple as hitting a “contribute” button, which brings up a separate page allowing them to connect their wallet. “It scans your wallet for stablecoins, and you can invest specifically in that deal just by connecting a self-custodial wallet like Metamask,” Field said.

Once the transaction is completed, it populates a “portfolio” section on the dashboard, that allows the investor to “track all of the deals that you've invested in,” check on the status of their vested and unvested allocations, and create SPVs for new deals in just one click. The platform also includes a KYC integration so DAOs can rest assured they’re compliant.

A CoinGecko API tracks token prices and profits based on the seed round price versus their current price, enabling the dashboard to provide a “total portfolio return on investment,” said Field.

The DIY approach

At inception, Vanta DAO used a third-party provider for the dashboard of its investment syndicate. The platform they were using didn’t have the flexibility or features that Vanta needed, its founders told Decrypt—so they decided to create their own. “We just thought, hey, let's build it ourselves,” said Field.

Raisebase was designed to bring more organization, transparency, and functionality to investment DAOs, Field told Decrypt, explaining that they historically don’t have a reputation for being well-organized or professional. "A lot of syndicates and DAOs use Excel sheets to manage investors and their allocations,” he told Decrypt.

He explained that Vanta DAO “decided to build something internally that acts as a dashboard for not only our investors, but also for the admin and the analysts that work for the DAO behind the scenes to set up these deals and raise capital in a secure, compliant manner."

He added that investing syndicates also suffer from a stigma when trying to get allocations for upcoming investment opportunities—with some syndicate investors having been known to sell as soon as they get tokens—as such, many founders don’t want to allow investment DAOs into their rounds.

One aspect of Raisebase’s approaching update is a HODL score—which will allow Vanta, and other DAOs that white label Raisebase, to assign a score to investors designed to create a reputation system where investors can prove their worth and engagement on chain. DAOs that are able to show a high HODL score for their investors, should be able to get access to more investment opportunities.

Another issue faced by investment syndicates centers around liquidity. With limited members and capital, sometimes there isn’t enough liquidity to go around for new deals. With the introduction of an OTC market in the next Raisebase update, DAO members will be able to buy and sell vested and unvested token allocations.

This, Field said, will give investors the ability to get liquidity on their investments before fully vested and also lets new members of Vanta get access to older deal flow they might have missed out on. Fees generated by the OTC market will go directly to the DAO treasury, creating more runway for continued operations.

The update also includes a new performance tracking dashboard that allows DAO members to track their performance more easily. DAO members can track their on-chain performance, realized gains based on tokens they’ve already sold, and unrealized gains based on where that token price is currently trading.

While no firm date is set for the update, Raisebase’s founders told Decrypt to expect it in a couple of weeks, and that it’d be available as a white-labeled dashboard for other DAOs and syndicates shortly after.