Swarm Offers Up to $50,000 to Second Startup Class

Swarm has partnered with Focus Investments to fund its second class of startups.

The fund will provide between $5,000 and $50,000 in funding to startups accepted into the round, which follows its first announced in October. Participants in its inaugural round included Coinspace, Manna and a decentralised dance party.

Focus invests primarily in bitcoin ventures and projects such as Counterparty, Factom, GetGems and NXT. A decentralized crowdfunding platform, Swarm helps startups establish themselves as distributed collaborative organisations (DCOs), allowing them to sell cryptographic tokens to raise funds.

CEO Joel Dietz indicated that Swarm is putting a greater emphasis on "the governance aspect" or DCO model for its startups following a recent legal seminar it sponsored that sought to address legal challenges in the crypto 2.0 space.

At the event, legal experts in the cryptocurrency space put forth a working paper that suggested DCOs, where tokens are used to denote membership in an organisation, were among the safer legal models for projects looking to raise money.

Tokens remain tradable and can increase in value, giving backers the option to sell their stake in the project to an interested third party.

Applicants can register online until 3rd March.

Pete Rizzo contributed reporting.

Money image via Shutterstock