NYC-Based TBD Launches Sentiment Market with $3M
TBD, a New York-based prediction market protocol, announced its public launch and a $3 million seed round. The platform is designed to measure verified human sentiment on various topics. The company reports it has already processed 19 million votes from over 225,000 verified participants during its private beta.
- The company was co-founded by CEO Corey Miller, previously a product and growth lead at dYdX, and Taehoon Lee, a former senior engineering team member at dYdX and Google. - The three-person team is based in New York and plans to roughly double its headcount, with a focus on hiring for engineering and growth roles. - The $3 million seed round was co-led by CMT Digital and ParaFi, with participation from Jump Crypto. An earlier $800,000 angel round included notable investors like Solana co-founder Raj Gokal and dYdX founder Antonio Juliano. - TBD is built on the Solana blockchain and differentiates itself from event-based prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi by directly tying its markets to the outcomes of its own large-scale, bot-resistant polls. - To combat bots and ensure genuine human sentiment, the platform's polling mechanism is gated by World ID, meaning only uniquely verified individuals can vote. - The company's name, TBD (To Be Decided), reflects its mission to discover and reveal authentic human perspectives on various topics, rather than those shaped by algorithms. - Lead investor CMT Digital has a history of backing foundational crypto infrastructure, including early investments in Coinbase, Circle, and dYdX, aligning with their focus on the "re-architecture of global finance."
