On August 23, Digital Currency Group, owner of crypto news company CoinDesk, Genesis Global Trading, and Grayscale Investments announced that it has backed a decentralized autonomous organization treasury (DAO) tooling startup, Mural in an initial $5.6 million deal. 

The seed round was also led by Galaxy Ventures, Firstminute Capital, AlleyCorp, and 186 Ventures. Mural neither reveals the lead investor in the round nor clarifies its valuation. 

The deal closed in the second quarter of this financial year during a period of turmoil for crypto startups hoping to raise venture funding.  

With the help of Mural’s tools, brands can take advantage of DAO, offering tools to ease the launch of DAOs and the management of treasuries. For example, it permits brands to deploy funds effortlessly to those invested in the community, along with financial reporting tools.  

“Mural is laying the foundational technology needed for all enterprises to be able to efficiently and securely manage critical financial infrastructure in an entirely new web3 global economy,” said Giuseppe Stuto of 186 Ventures. “DAOs are leading the way in showing the world how to build decentralized innovation of tomorrow, and the Mural team has all of the necessary ingredients to make this vision a reality.” 

The organization says that its services are already used by a festival founded by the creator of Outside Lands and Bonaroo, Superf3st. Superf3st also allows NFT holders to vote and submit governance proposals for its event and will utilize Mural to manage, store, and deploy its DAO treasury funds. The organization has already launched its platform in beta to bring in more clients.