TL/DR: Backdrop goes live today, along with an early supporters NFT airdrop and $1.7M in initial funding.

DAOs and tokenized communities exploded in the past year, simultaneously paving trails at the frontiers of human connection, collaboration, coordination, and creative work. They are the explosion of creativity and possibility that happens when new crypto-enabled ownership and participation collides with the speed and scale of digitally enabled communities.

Web3 makes it possible for diverse, decentralized communities to not only build incredible value — as they already have in web2 — but to capture, govern, and own that value via tokens. With so much talent, projects, and investment flooding in, we have an urgent demand to go beyond Github, Discord, and other web2 tools to make participation, contribution, and ownership in these communities a rewarding and powerful experience.

Backdrop is web3-native, built to connect people within and across tokenized communities, helping them discover, get notified about their activity, and participate more easily. We’re just getting started, but the product today already allows you to:

• Fight Discord fatigue: get simple in-app or email notifications about governance proposals, announcements, crowdfunds, and other key information from your communities.
• Stop trying to understand community activity via Etherscan: Backdrop contextualizes on and off-chain data on profiles and project pages to help you discover, understand, and connect you with what’s happening in web3.
• Unlock better community participation: participate in threaded discussions, natively integrated with tokenized memberships with zero setup ― make announcements, give feedback and ideas, and leverage the true potential of decentralized communities.

Jump right in (and NFTs)

If you’re already an early alpha user or one of our founding communities, a heartfelt thank you for supporting us. If you're not on Backdrop yet, you can jump in right now at Backdrop.so. If you have a wallet, your profile and projects you participate on are already waiting for you.

With today's launch we're also kicking off our own Backdrop Community, issuing community membership NFTs for those who've joined us in our alpha as well as those joining from today. This membership NFT unlocks immediate access to participating in discussions and governance on the Backdrop Community project, and is a first step towards making Backdrop community-owned in the future.

We’re excited to announce $1.7 Million in funding from amazing firms, communities, and angels who are building and leading the way for tokenized communities. They are builders and users of Backdrop themselves, deeply connected to our mission and to our plans for progressively transitioning Backdrop towards wider community ownership.

Over the coming years, tokenized communities will emerge center stage across every topic and industry. Join us to weave a backdrop worthy of that transformative show.

Build with us!

We are a small but mighty team helping to shape how people participate and work in web3 communities and DAOs. We stand together with our communities, we're passionate about the craft of building products, and we're not afraid of exploring and doing things differently.

Interested? We’re looking for founding engineers, designers, community builders, and more. Check our openings at https://backdrop.so/careers.