Singapore-based tomi, a DAO aiming to build an “alternative internet” to promote free speech and access to uncensored information, raised $40M from DWF Labs
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
tomi's $40M from DWF Labs slots into an established pattern of Singapore-domiciled crypto raises — Cobo's $40M custody round co-led by DST Global in 2021 was almost exactly the same size — but the investor profile differs sharply: this is a market maker writing a solo check into a pre-adoption alternative-internet network, not a VC syndicate backing financial infrastructure.
The choice of domicile is the analytically interesting part. Singapore is actively cultivating a posture as neutral ground for companies that want to operate outside US and Chinese regulatory gravity, and it is courting that image on two fronts at once — regulated finance, where Endowus drew money from Citi Ventures and MUFG, and frontier tech. A free-speech-first DAO incorporated there stress-tests how wide that neutrality actually runs.
First-order effects
- DWF Labs takes a concentrated, unshared position in tomi's network, meaning its return depends entirely on adoption of an uncensored-access product rather than on any revenue-generating service already described.
- tomi gets runway to build out its alternative internet from Singapore, gaining the credibility of a major market-maker backer without ceding equity or board control in the way a VC round would require.
Second-order effects
- Other decentralization and anti-censorship projects now have a funded, market-maker-backed competitor setting the pace for token distribution and network launch, pressuring slower-moving rivals to accelerate their own go-to-market.
- Singapore's regulators face a live test case: the same jurisdiction hosting MUFG-backed wealth platforms is now home to a DAO whose explicit mission is routing users around information controls, forcing a public answer on where the neutrality line sits.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, project founders will keep decoupling legal domicile from mission content — incorporating in permissive neutral hubs while building products aimed squarely at jurisdictions with heavy information regimes — which erodes the assumption that a company's home regulator constrains what its protocol does.
- Market makers replacing venture syndicates as the default first check for early web3 networks concentrates both capital and exit liquidity in a small set of firms, shifting power in the sector from institutional investors toward trading desks.
The trend: Web3 infrastructure continues to consolidate around Singapore as a neutral domicile, with market makers rather than VC syndicates increasingly writing the foundational checks.