Tally Raises $1.5M to Boost On-Chain Governance in Compound’s DeFi Ecosystem

A startup focused on good governance in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space has raised $1.5 million.

The investment in Tally was joined by Notation Capital, Castle Island Ventures, 1kx, Lemniscap and others.

The firm looks to improve an underdeveloped component of the $44 billion DeFi sector by building an easy-to-use governance dashboard. Protocol elections have yet to lend credence to the “governance token” moniker. Participation has generally remained low on decisions that dictate the fate of platforms with billions in locked value.

“If you look at Uniswap, if you look at Compound, it's difficult to understand what's happening,” Tally founder Dennison Bertram said in an interview. “Part of our mission around transparency is we think that governance works better when people can feel comfortable making a decision.”

The project will initially be focused on the Compound ecosystem but works with a number of other platforms. The project already received $50,000 from the Uniswap grants program.

“When we scale these protocols up, we have to help scale decision-making,” Bertram said. “The governance layer is just the first step to this.”