Umia raises $6.1 million selling its own token to help crypto projects launch theirs

Umia, a platform that helps crypto projects launch and run their own tokens, has raised $6.11 million by selling its UMIA token in a seven-day auction. The auction valued the company at $18 million when all its tokens are counted, a measure known as a fully diluted valuation, or FDV.

The sale sold 17.3 million UMIA tokens, which is 34.6% of the total supply. Umia co-founder and CEO Francesco Mosterts told The Block that every token sold in the auction could be traded from the first day, with no lockup period that would stop early buyers from selling.

The key numbers from the auction

• Raised: $6.11 million
• Valuation at the auction: $18 million FDV
• Tokens sold: 17.3 million, or 34.6% of total supply
• Length of the sale: seven days, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2 on the Base blockchain
• Smallest target the auction had to reach: $2 million
• Highest allowed token price: $0.36, which matched the $18 million FDV
• Buyers: ten investment funds and nearly 700 individuals
• Share of the money from funds: about 45%, according to Mosterts

On Base, an Ethereum-compatible network where transactions are cheap and fast, the auction used Umia's version of Uniswap's Continuous Clearing Auction, which sets a maximum price and sells downward to accepted bids.

Which funds bought in

Ten funds took part, including Galaxy Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Draper Associates, RenGen, Alpha EV, Maven 11 and Eon Capital.

Umia said the funds joined on the same terms as everyone else and received no discounts. Mosterts added that none of the investors got a board seat, an observer role or an advisory position.

What Umia does for projects

Umia's main pitch is legal and organizational. It says it places a project's intellectual property, operating team and treasury inside one legal wrapper that is linked to the token. In many crypto projects, those pieces are split between a company, a foundation and a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, which is a group that runs rules through onchain votes rather than through a normal company board.

The company says this is meant to direct the value a project creates to the token instead of to founders, equity holders or a separate foundation.

Umia also runs the auction itself. According to the company, its sales include eligibility checks and technical steps intended to reduce activity from bots and traders who try to profit from the order of transactions.

Asked how Umia differs from other token-launch efforts, Mosterts pointed to a mix of the legal wrapper, decision markets, onchain auctions and a hands-on onboarding process.

Decision markets replace the usual token vote

Instead of a standard token vote, Umia uses decision markets. Traders take positions based on how they expect the token price to react to different proposals, and the option with the highest time-weighted average price can then be carried out onchain.

The company earns a 0.5% fee on spot trades across the decentralized exchange pools it manages. A decentralized exchange, or DEX, lets people trade tokens directly with each other without a traditional brokerage. Umia also charges1% on decision-market trades.

Where the money is going

Twenty percent of the auction money was used to create a liquidity pool owned by the protocol, holding UMIA and USDC, a US dollar stablecoin, on Uniswap v4. A liquidity pool holds funds so that traders can buy and sell. The pool was created at the auction's closing price. The rest of the money went into the treasury.

Smart contracts, which are programs that run automatically on a blockchain, release $120,000 each month for development. Anything above that amount, or any change to the monthly amount, has to pass through a UMIA decision market.

The company behind Umia

Umia was incubated by Chainbound, an Ethereum research and development firm that has worked with Flashbots and the Ethereum Foundation. Mosterts previously worked at Point72, and co-founder and CTO Nicolas Racchi previously developed decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols and Ethereum infrastructure.

Umia has seven employees and is hiring business development staff to support its due diligence work. Mosterts did not say how many people the company plans to add.

Three outside projects are lined up

Umia's curation committee has selected three outside projects to launch through the platform. The first is Slop.cash, a project from Shaw, who started ai16z, now known as ElizaOS. Mosterts said it is expected to launch later in the fourth quarter of 2026. The other two projects are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Umia said it has received more than 200 applications, spanning AI infrastructure, AI apps, decentralized finance, tokenized funds, real-world assets and fintech. Projects can be built on any blockchain that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the software standard that lets applications run on Ethereum and similar networks.

Applicants first go through internal due diligence, a standard review of a company's finances and operations, before presenting to a curation committee. That committee includes investors from Maven 11 and RenGen and representatives from the analytics platform 01resolved. Selected projects receive help with technology, finance, design, tax, legal work and public relations.

Why Mosterts sold so much at once

Mosterts said Umia deliberately sold a large share of the supply at the start. His reasoning was that early backers should hold a meaningful stake, and that it avoids the pattern where very few tokens circulate at first and much larger amounts are released later.

Token price now sits above the auction cap

UMIA was trading at around $0.68 at the time The Block published its report, according to CoinGecko, which put the token's fully diluted valuation at about $34 million. That is well above the $0.36 ceiling set during the auction and the $18 million valuation attached to it at the time.

Where token launches are standing

The sale came during a weak stretch for new token projects. The Block has previously reported that investors have been favoring equity deals and tokens tied to actual revenue rather than plain token sales.

Last month, GSR, Ink Foundation and several legal and audit firms launched Charter Foundation, a group aimed at lowering the cost of launching a token.

Risks the CEO raised himself

Mosterts acknowledged downsides to Umia's model. He said that letting token holders control decisions at board level could leave founders with less control. He also said a token that can be traded easily may push teams toward short-term decisions aimed at lifting its price.

He argued these risks are preferable to standard token voting, which he believes does not work, or to equity financing that gives board seats to venture firms with their own conflicts of interest.

What is confirmed and what comes from the company

The Block's figures on the auction, its terms and the buyer list come from Mosterts, who is the company's CEO and an interested party. No independent review of those numbers is described in the report. The only outside data point is CoinGecko's market price and valuation for UMIA.

The claims that Umia's structure sends value to the token, that its auction reduces bot activity, and that its decision markets work better than ordinary token votes are the company's own statements and have not been independently confirmed in the supplied material. The fourth-quarter launch date for Slop.cash and the two unnamed projects are also company expectations, not confirmed events.

What to watch next

Two things are on the schedule the company described: the announcement of two more selected projects in the coming weeks, and the first outside launch through the platform, Slop.cash, which Mosterts said is expected later in the fourth quarter. Both are statements of intent, and neither had happened at the time of the report.

Sources

• The Block