May 19, 2022
Introducing Umami DAO Foundation & Umami Labs LLC
Umami is excited to announce that its team is creating two new legal entities that will greatly enhance its ability to source talent, scale product output and attract institutional capital.
Umami Labs LLC is a U.S.-based C-corp that the team formally incorporated earlier this week in Delaware. The team has also applied to create Umami DAO Foundation in the Cayman Islands.
Umami DAO Foundation will serve as the legal representation of Umami and formalize its standing as an ownerless, leaderless DAO (Decentralized, Autonomous Organization). Umami’s governance, and custody of its treasury assets, will remain in the hands of its multisig & DAO community.
Umami Labs LLC is a technology company that will be headquartered in New York City. It will provide Umami with an enormous competitive advantage in sourcing talent & also give it expanded access to institutional capital.
The LLC is entirely independent of Umami DAO but will provide it with product development, marketing & strategic services at no added cost to its treasury.
Umami DAO Foundation
Using an innovative legal framework developed in the Cayman Islands, Umami DAO Foundation provides Umami with the benefits of having a formal legal entity without compromising its status as a fully on-chain, decentralized DAO.
Umami’s team submitted an application to regulators in the Caymans earlier this week to the Foundation. The process is expected to be completed in approximately two weeks.
The DAO Foundation does not create any significant compliance overhead but opens up new opportunities for Umami, such as enabling it to open a fiat bank account and enter into contracts with off-chain services providers.
The Foundation has no governance over Umami DAO or custody of Umami’s treasury assets, both of which will remain under the control of the multisig & the DAO community.
Umami Labs LLC
Umami Labs LLC is an independent, U.S-based technology company organized in Delaware & headquartered in New York City. It has no formal relationship with Umami DAO.
Umami Labs will greatly enhance Umami’s ability to source, hire & manage talent at a time when its team is working round-the-clock to ship an ambitious array of DeFi products.
It will also open up the possibility of creating new product offerings on behalf of Umami that are tailored to institutional capital.
New York City Headquarters
From its base in New York City, Umami Labs will have access to a rich pipeline of experienced Solidity & React developers. It will be able to progress them through a comprehensive assessment process, much like any other technology startup.
In the near future, new and existing Umami team members will have the option of working at an in-person collaborative workspace in Manhattan. Umami Labs will offer highly competitive fiat compensation and benefits with the goal of matching or exceeding its Web 2 peers.
Umami’s team believes that having access to off-chain talent and an in-person HQ will give it an enormous advantage over wholly on-chain entities in product development and shipping time.
Meanwhile, Umami DAO will continue to source talent on Web 3 and provide on-chain payments in USDC and ETH.
Relationship With Umami DAO
Umami Labs’ services will come at no added cost to the Umami treasury. Instead, Umami Labs will invoice Umami’s treasury at the same USDC compensation rates that its existing team members have already been receiving.
The invoiced USDC will be converted to fiat and issued to team members as biweekly paychecks from Umami Labs.
Umami DAO will make all of Umami Labs’ invoices available for the community to review. It will also continue to publish monthly treasury updates detailing its Operational Expenses for the community.
An Ambitious Product Roadmap
Umami is preparing to ship its highly anticipated USDC Vault by early June, along with several other unique vaults that will enhance yield for some of Arbitrum’s top native farms & vaults.
Soon, Umami will publish an ambitious roadmap for the remainder of 2022. It will include over a dozen planned products that will enrich the DeFi ecosystem on Arbitrum and dramatically increase Umami’s TVL.
Get ready, Umamies. 2022 is going to be an incredible year for Umami and Arbitrum!
