Why We Built DTF - A Return to Crypto Ideals One of the core tenets of decentralization and cryptocurrency is to enable the free flow of capital. In the early days of the industry, this also meant the ability for anybody to contribute capital to projects and founders that they believed in, and participate in their growth journey from an early stage. In return, conviction was rewarded both financially and socially if the projects took off. The ICO meta of 2016-2017 in many ways contributed to the Golden Age of DeFi that came in 2020. It was a lot less about who you knew and more about whether you were good at picking the right horses to back. Reading the white papers, participating in the community, talking directly to the core developers and others in the project. Learning more about what the project believed in, and what made it unique. And then participating financially, and socially, if you believed. Participants weren't just investors, they were evangelists. Even though some projects failed, connections with other like-minded people were created in these shared journeys, many of whom would work to build other projects together. This was lost as the era of private placements and VC deals took over. It became less about giving everyone a fair and level playing field. Instead of competing in the free market of ideas, project founders started competing for the attention of GPs at mega-funds. Instead of building something to change the world, it became more about building something to sell to someone else to return a profit to investors who believed in nothing but the dollar. It became functionally impossible for an average person to invest in projects. Retail participants were always late (you never had access). The white papers were released only at the token launch. And by then, it wouldn’t matter. VCs had bought up everything at 20m FDV and were realizing their 10-100x returns in the market. It used to pay to believe. Today, your belief pays the VCs.