Funding of $10 Million Obtained by Merit Systems in Seed Round, Valuing the Company at $55.5 Million
Merit Systems Raises $10 Million to Revolutionize Open-Source Projects
Merit Systems, a blockchain-based attribution protocol startup, has recently secured a $10 million seed round. Co-led by venture capital firms A16z Crypto and Blockchain Capital, the funding will be used to develop a system that rewards developers proportionately to their actual contributions in software projects or other collaborative work.
The core idea behind Merit Systems is to address the issue of traditional contribution systems, such as those in open-source projects or collaborative platforms, which often fail to fully recognize each participant’s input. Merit Systems utilizes decentralized ledgers and tokenization to record and verify contributions immutably, ensuring precise attribution.
Contributors receive rewards directly tied to the measured value and impact of their work. This approach promotes fairness and incentivizes quality participation by aligning rewards strictly with contributions. By leveraging blockchain's transparency, security, and automation (via smart contracts), Merit Systems ensures that every developer or contributor’s effort is logged, verified, and rewarded without reliance on centralized intermediaries.
Merit Systems' goal is to create a sustainable economic model for open-source projects, focusing on ensuring builders own what they build and attribution and ownership are enshrined by default. The company also aims to refine the factory for innovation, creating a system to focus the world's best minds towards humanity's biggest challenges.
The company's founders, Sam Ragsdale, Mason Hall, and Ryan Sproule, previously worked with A16z's investment teams. Sproule, another Merit founder, was also at Blockchain Capital.
While the exact details of Merit Systems' attribution protocol are not yet disclosed, the company's website states that it is developing an attribution protocol for open-source projects. The protocol aims to reward developers based on their contributions and enables capital sources to directly incentivize builders by routing funds to codebases.
The fundraising was completed at a post-money valuation of $55.5 million, but the company's website does not provide any updates on this valuation. The statement on Merit's website also does not mention any new fundraising or partnerships.
Merit Systems views human ingenuity, properly aligned and incentivized, as civilization's most precious resource in the context of AI advancements. The company's mission is to build a system where builders truly own what they build, fostering a more equitable and efficient digital economy.
[1] Intellectual Property Tokenization Frameworks: An Overview (2021), Blockchain Council [3] Blockchain Token Standards: A Comprehensive Guide (2021), Blockchain Council
Note: This article provides an overview of Merit Systems based on available information. For more detailed technical descriptions or official statements, please refer to the resources listed above or visit Merit Systems' official website.
1) This funding secured by Merit Systems could revolutionize not only open-source projects but also other collaborative work, as it promises to establish a fair and efficient system that best recognizes and rewards contributors' work.
2) By fostering a more equitable and efficient digital economy, Merit Systems aims to create the factory for innovation, focusing the world's best minds on addressing humanity's biggest challenges and utilizing the best news in technology, such as blockchain, to ensure builders truly own what they build.
