Paladin
Aims to create a market for idle governance tokens by providing voters the incentives and tools to do so.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor investor investor | €0.0 | round |
$2.6m | Seed | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
| USD | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenues | 0000 | 0000 |
| EBITDA | 0000 | 0000 |
| Profit | 0000 | 0000 |
| EV | 0000 | 0000 |
| EV / revenue | 00.0x | 00.0x |
| EV / EBITDA | 00.0x | 00.0x |
| R&D budget | 0000 | 0000 |
Source: Dealroom estimates
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Paladin operates within the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, providing a suite of products designed to enhance governance participation and efficiency. The company was founded in 2021 by French entrepreneur Romain Figuereo, whose background includes project management, economic research, and a Master's degree in Banking, Corporate, Finance, and Securities Law. Paladin addresses the issue of voter apathy in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) by creating markets for governance power.
The business model centers on creating a decentralized, non-custodial governance lending protocol. This allows users who hold governance tokens but are passive in voting to lend the voting power of their tokens to earn a yield. Simultaneously, it allows more active participants, or 'activists', to borrow this voting power to influence protocol decisions, support proposals, or reach minimum quorum requirements. Paladin generates revenue through fees on its various products, which is then managed by the Paladin DAO.
Paladin's ecosystem includes several key products. **Paladin Lending** was the initial offering, creating a market for idle governance tokens from protocols like AAVE and Uniswap. **Quest** is a flagship product that creates a marketplace for vote incentives, allowing protocols to boost liquidity by offering fixed-rate rewards for gauge votes on decentralized exchanges such as Curve and Balancer. **Warlord** is a governance index token (WAR) that automates yield generation from vote incentives within the Convex and Aura ecosystems. **Dullahan** is a specialized vault for stkAAVE holders that generates passive income while offering lower interest rates for those borrowing the GHO stablecoin. The protocol also features an **Autovoter** which optimizes voting for holders of vlCVX, vlAURA, and vlLIQ to maximize rewards.
The company's governance token is PAL, with a staked version called Holy PAL (hPAL) that grants rights to govern the protocol itself. Paladin successfully raised $2.55 million in a seed round in September 2021, with participation from firms like Greenfield One, Galaxy Digital, and NFX, to accelerate protocol development.
Keywords: DeFi governance, vote lending, governance tokens, yield generation, liquidity incentives, decentralized autonomous organizations, protocol governance, vote markets, blockchain, crypto finance