Colony Raises $18.5 Million To Fuel Next-Generation Applications in the Avalanche Ecosystem

November 30, 2021 – Paris, France

Colony, a community-driven accelerator evolving into a decentralized autonomous organization that’s aiming to generate rapid growth in the Avalanche ecosystem, announced it has raised $18.5 million in seed funding.

The round was led by the Avalanche Foundation and saw participation from Shima Capital, Hashkey, GBV Capital and Bixin Ventures. Members of the Avalanche community also participated in the round.

Colony’s mission is to deploy capital within the Avalanche ecosystem to fund the most promising early-stage projects, provide liquidity for DeFi protocols, maintain an index on top of Avalanche projects and validate networks through stacking capabilities.

Through its concept of ecosystem farming, Colony will enable the community to invest in the most promising projects at the ground level development stage, creating opportunities that were previously only available to VCs and angel investors.

Colony’s open governance mechanism ensures capital is allocated across the Avalanche ecosystem for the sole benefit of ecosystem projects and its community. Value generated by Colony’s investments will be routed back into the community via airdrops, a buyback mechanism and staking rewards.

Under its validator program, 10% of Colony’s capital will be deployed in AVAX to be staked – with Colony also contributing to subnets validation if allowed. Another 10% will be deployed into the top 10 projects built on Avalanche ranked by market cap, with distribution rebalanced quarterly.

Projects ranked within the index will be determined by community vote. 50% of Colony’s capital will be deployed to support the best teams and projects building on Avalanche, to finance their efficient development and growth. The final 30% of Colony’s capital will be deployed via liquidity protocols built on Avalanche.

Elie Le Rest, CEO of Colony, said,

“We are delighted to announce that we’ve established close ties with the Avalanche Foundation itself. We’ll be sharing deal flow to create a more fertile ground for projects building on Avalanche – the fastest, highly customizable smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry.”

Colony’s native token CLY is a unique hybrid token that’s used for both DAO governance and liquid exposure to Colony’s value flow. CLY is a new kind of asset that features an airdrop mechanism to incentivize token holders as they build a diversified portfolio on Avalanche by staking their tokens.

Another unique feature is its buyback mechanism to create recurring pressure on CLY and redistribute bought CLY to active community members. CLY both empowers and controls, enabling the community to align incentives across pillars and create a codified harmony between stakeholders, the protocol and its assets.

Nicolas Lemaitre, general manager of Ava Labs, said,

“It’s great to see Colony seeking to create a decentralized democratic financial ecosystem by giving the community access to early-stage projects in seed and private rounds. This is very much aligned with Avalanche’s core value – community first.”

Colony will launch in Q4 2021 with public token sales and shall continue empowering selected projects building on Avalanche with its first capital deployments. In the second half of 2022, Colony will move to implement a DAO structure with its own subnet on Avalanche to decentralize itself and build new incentive models for CLY token holders.

About Colony

Colony is a community-driven accelerator that aims to generate Avalanche ecosystem growth by empowering its community to invest in early-stage projects. Powered by a first-of-its-kind funding mechanism, Colony permeates traditional venture capital with a spirit of community through open governance, support and inclusion. Over time, Colony will implement an inclusive DAO structure to become truly decentralized.