Raising money is one of the biggest challenges involved with launching a project in web3. Simply put, it’s not easy to securely pool together funds in an efficient manner. While other projects do exist on the Ethereum blockchain, such as Aragon, there hasn’t been a clear winner in the Solana ecosystem.
Today we are looking at a project that aims to solve this issue on Solana. Unique Venture Clubs is a platform that focuses on harnessing the power of decentralized autonomous organizations (popularly called DAOs) to create a robust investment system for anyone.
With Unique Venture Clubs, anyone, anywhere can have access to investment opportunities without being hindered by the common limitations found in hedge funds. An example of the issues faced by people in traditional investment settings is that they are not usually profitable for investors with lesser capital – and many people willing to make investments don’t have so much to invest independently.
DAOs
One of the popular names associated with the word “DAO” is the “Constitution DAO”. The constitution DAO was created to make a bid on the original copy of the United States Constitution. In seven days, they raised $42m for the bid.
Even though the investors involved in this fundraising couldn’t eventually buy the Constitution as intended because someone else outbid the Constitution DAO, it shows how decentralized systems like this can be efficient and fast for investors when they come together. You also could have participated in the fundraising if you were interested and had the information at your disposal when it was happening.
By pooling resources together in this manner, independent investors now have an advantage over the hedge fund system’s limitations.
Venture Clubbing
As defined by Unique VC,
A Venture Club is an on-chain entity with its own set of rules, known as governance and financial configuration.
Unique VC
These clubs consist of Roles, Governance, Financial, and Voting Configurations. With the proper configurations in place, the users (individual investors) are guaranteed a just distribution in the reward systems since it is based on the protocol’s smart contract. (Please note that one Venture Club can have a maximum of 99 investors).
With the help of decentralized systems, Unique Venture Club enables you to join Venture Clubs created by people. By joining a club, you can participate in any funding and investments going on in the Club.
An interesting advantage with this type of venture club is that you are able to access a combination of talented individuals from different walks of life. Each club member has a diverse set of skills and expertise. This makes the club possess knowledge and the ability to make decisions strategically.
With Unique VC, apart from Joining Clubs, you can also create your own club. After creating your own Venture Clubs with a purpose in mind, other people interested in investing can also join your cause and start their own investment journey with you.
Creating a Venture Club – Steps and Processes Involved
First, create your profile
After connecting your wallet to the web app, a prompt will appear asking you to input some details of yourself such as profile name, email and a profile picture. The profile picture does not require your real image.
This helps the application in mapping your profile with your wallet address. After inputting the ones you can, click on the “Save Changes” button.
Creating a club
To start your own personal club, where you begin your own investment journey, click on the “+ Create Club” option. After doing that, you will get a new page on the app with a form to fill in order to begin your club creation settings.
Input your Club’s name and the official club’s email address. For the club application status, if you make it open, it means that any new investor can hop in the club and start participating. If you make it closed, it means new members can only join if you grant them access through special invite link.
Your Club must also have a description that gives a concise summary or purpose for why it was created.
By including a tag for your Club, it helps people find it easily when searching for it. The keywords used in the tags should be what your club does or represents. Soladex is known to be a content creation project with the sole purpose of documenting Solana, so I added “writers” and “content” in the field. After adding your discord and twitter handle, click on “Next Step”.
Your Governance Configuration gives some rights to the members of your Club. These rights are with respect to the Configuration system you have implemented. The three forms available are based on Deposit, Role and NFT.
Deposit-based: The total the higher the number of tokens a member deposits into the pool, the higher their number of votes).
Role-based: The members of the Club are assigned some specific roles with a predefined amount of vote. This can happen as a result of different reasons. For example, if I create a Club and there are 6 of us including @SolBigBrain, it would be reasonable for me to assign him a role that gives him a higher voting power than most of the members in the Club since he is a more experienced investor than I am).
NFT-based: This is just like the Deposit-based membership governance configuration but the tokens here are the Non-Fungible types e.g., Solana Monkey Business (SMB). If a Club Member has 25 and another has 2, because their configuration in governance is based on it, the member holding 25 will have a higher voting power than the other!
Role-based
Let’s select the Role-based configuration this time around.
We have the Founder, Member and Manager roles. You as a club creator can assign the vote weight of these roles.
After giving these roles their various votes, you can proceed to add members to the club and also assign them their roles.
After you have made all selections and inputted all the parameters rightly, you can now put in the maximum amount you want in the pool. (please note that the current maximum amount in a fundraising pool is 200 SOL.)
If you select an NFT-based configuration system, you need to supply the mint address of the NFT so that the Unique VC platform can create an on-chain program for your club with the original collection of that NFT of your club’s choice.
Final Steps
Approve all the transactions that comes up after creating the club. Wait for the processes to finish all approvals and your Club will be deployed successfully.
Club Dashboard
Once you click on the club, you can do a lot of things in the dashboard. You can make your deposit in the treasury, share the club to other prospective members and also view stats like the summary of the Club.
Making your Club Deposit
If you select the Deposit, you can easily make your donations into the treasury by inputting the amount of SOL intended.
Conclusion
By creating or joining a club, you can enjoy the benefit of Unique Venture Club. Bringing together a team of like-minded investors at your disposal can lead you to flourishing in your investment journey and this is what Unique VC has brought to us in a simple and easy-to-use manner.
