CoWDAO is the steward organization for CoW Protocol, a batch-auction-based trading infrastructure that enables trustless, peer-to-peer settlement and MEV protection on EVM chains. The protocol was incubated inside GnosisDAO for four years and was autonomously spun out via a governance proposal and community deployment that created CoWDAO and a vCOW token airdrop. CoW Protocol powers a network of traders and solvers and aims to become a core settlement layer for decentralized trading across Web3 by delivering better prices through P2P execution and co-shared costs. The recent $23M raise will fund ecosystem development, hires, expansion into new chains where MEV protection is needed, and marketing. Token distribution and the fundraising process emphasized decentralization: no single holder has >1% of vCOW supply except GnosisDAO, and more than 5,000 CoWmunity participants took part alongside 57 private investors. The community investment mechanism allowed protocol users to exercise options to receive vCOW tokens at a set price, vested linearly over four years. High take-up rates were reported: 90.9% of Ethereum-allocated options and 50.2% of Gnosis Chain-allocated options were exercised.

Total raised

$23M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Mar 2022