ukiyo Labs wound down in 2024. Its product, sites, and documents are preserved live below.
ukiyo
2021–2024 · Founder · Built, angel-funded, exited
A web3 bridge to global venture capital and real-world assets.
The first on-chain VC structure built to open private-company investing to global participants — end to end.
The story
Problem
Global investors locked out of private-company value creation.
Venture capital is the most exclusive asset class in the world. To invest in a private company before it becomes big tech or big pharma, you generally need to be an accredited investor, in the right country, with the right network, writing cheques most people will never have. Meanwhile, billions in crypto assets sat idle on-chain — capital looking for real-world exposure, and real-world assets locked away from it.
Three barriers held the two apart: a financing gap for early-stage companies outside traditional VC pipelines, high barriers to entry for ordinary investors, and an ownership-and-trust problem — no credible way to prove and transfer fractional ownership of an off-chain asset.
What we built
A crypto-native venture platform — anyone with a wallet could invest from $1.
ukiyo — named for the Japanese “floating world” — was anchored by Ventures, the investment and crowdfunding product for real-world assets, alongside Versse, an AI storytelling and licensing platform. Holding it together was $KXO, a single utility token for governance and revenue sharing across the ecosystem.
Legal structure
First-of-its-kind Cayman Islands Segregated Portfolio Company for on-chain VC
Smart contracts
ERC-20 token issuance, treasury management, on-chain governance
Tokenomics
Custom treasury design, vesting schedules, 521M fixed supply, 40% ecosystem allocation
Stack
Solidity · React · Ethereum · Sanity · Vercel
Outcome
$100K pre-seed raised. Strategic relationships. Exited.
Raised a $100K pre-seed from angel investors and shipped a working product. Along the way, built relationships with tier-one crypto funds — conversations, not cheques. Wound down in 2024 as market conditions shifted — the on-chain legal and technical precedents remain novel.
Relationships built with
What I owned
Product & design
- Brand & visual identity
- App + website UX/UI end to end
- Art direction to launch
Technology
- Product architecture
- Ethereum smart-contract coordination
- DappCon Berlin · ETHDenver fieldwork
Capital & community
- $100K pre-seed raise
- Telegram community
- Hashed · Placeholder · Volt · Dapper Labs
Legal & treasury
- Cayman SPC structuring
- Tokenomics & treasury design
- 521M $KXO supply model
Writing
- 55-page technical whitepaper
- GitBook documentation
- Full pitch narrative
The product — Ventures
Investment and crowdfunding for real-world assets.
Ventures was ukiyo’s flagship product: a global pool of small investors acting collectively as venture capital. Users connected a wallet, passed KYC, and deployed capital into curated real-world companies — from Series A through D — with staking, governance, and treasury mechanics running on Ethereum.
- Non-custodial investing from $1
- DAO governance via $KXO
- Staking + community treasury
- KYC/AML-whitelisted onboarding
Documents
Timeline
Q3 2021
Company incorporated; early product concept and legal scoping
Q1 2022
Smart contracts v1 deployed to testnet; tokenomics model finalised
Q2 2022
Token launch film produced; community building begins
Q3 2022
Cayman SPC legal structure completed — first of its kind for on-chain VC
Q4 2022
$100K pre-seed raised from angel investors
2023
Fieldwork at DappCon Berlin and ETHDenver — introductions to Hashed, Placeholder, Volt Capital, Dapper Labs, and the Story Protocol team
Q1 2024
Wind-down decision. Product, docs, and sites archived and preserved.