Poolz, a blockchain platform designed to help promising new crypto projects bootstrap liquidity for their decentralized exchange (DEX) listing, has just concluded its $300,000 seed round and now moves one step closer to revamping the way investors gain access to early-stage investments.
The funding round was led by prominent Tel-Aviv based venture capital firm Aggressor Capital and OMS Capital — an investment firm that specializes in early-stage blockchain startups, including those in the DeFi niche.
The announcement comes less than a month after Poolz revealed it had raised an initial $180,000 in a private equity and tokens sale round.
Making Early Stage Investment Accessible
As a decentralized swap launchpad, Poolz enables crypto projects to launch simple decentralized funding pools, allowing investors to quickly and easily purchase project tokens at a specified rate or based on an auction process.
These pools will give nascent DeFi projects granular control over the early distribution of their tokens, allowing these projects to set whether tokens will be released instantly to contributors, or after customized lock-in and vesting period. This allows projects to control their token supply to better manage supply with demand.
Poolz is designed to be open and accessible to investors of all experience levels, making it simple for users to discover and participate in early-stage liquidity auctions by projects they believe in. These investors will be able to see the full specifications of the pool before participating, including the current swap ratio, accepted assets, and distribution schedule — providing a transparent interface that contains all the essential information liquidity providers need.
The protocol is powered by the POZ token, an ERC-20 based governance token that provides several benefits to holders, including early access to liquidity pools, as well as access to exclusive pools with better swap ratios. Poolz also plans to support the staking of POZ tokens by Q1 2020, enabling holders to earn rewards by holding their tokens in supported wallets.
Poolz looks set to launch by year end. (Image: Poolz)
As per the press release, Poolz plans to use the proceeds if its funding round to accelerate work on its cross-chain support, allowing projects on a variety of blockchains to conduct liquidity actions for their tokens through Poolz.
“The funds we raised through this seed round will help us build a better product and serve crypto projects not only on the Ethereum blockchain but also on other blockchains. We will build a cohesive ecosystem that supports both investors and project owners equally,” said the Founder and CEO of Poolz, Guy Oren.
The End of the Rug Pull Era
With the recent explosion in interest in DeFi, a huge number of investors have now been exposed to the potential benefits of an ever-growing range of protocols, platforms, and projects that help them manage their own finances.
But this growth has also drawn unwanted attention from scammers, who have taken the opportunity to capitalize on the hype by setting up fake token sales and puffed out projects to separate unsuspending investors from their money with no realistic prospects of success. This has led to the unfortunate development of a huge number of “rug pulls” — which see projects raise funds and simply vanish, or later crash the market by dumping their tokens on investors.
https://twitter.com/Poolz__/status/1320330644229160963
With Poolz, projects will be required to deposit their assets to an address controlled by a Poolz smart contract. This smart contract will automatically handle the execution logic of the pool, ensuring all contributors are guaranteed to receive the tokens they purchase.
Beyond this, liquidity providers will be given ample information to assess the quality and prospects of the projects they invest in beforehand, providing the information they need to separate the truly promising options from the duds.
