The Zug-based, Golem Factory, which maintains the eponymously named blockchain platform, has split into for-profit Golem Factory, and the nonprofit Golem Foundation. In so doing, Golem hopes its new, unbridled non-profit arm will be able to move faster and take bigger risks that could speed up the network’s development.
Splitting companies up into for-profit and not-for profit entities has happened before in crypto. The Electric Coin Company, which builds Zcash, created a non-profit foundation in March, 2017, to cater to the community and show that it isn’t solely managed by a centralized company. However, in that case, tensions between the two—which were pursuing different aims—actually led to stagnation of the blockchain’s growth.
But, in this case, Julian Zawistowski, who’ll be leading the foundation after being the CEO of Golem Factory since 2016, believes the bifurcation it will actually play to Golem’s advantage.
The Golem Foundation, he said in a statement, aims to pursue “new—perhaps innovative and experimental, and at the same time riskier—approaches to the value proposition for Golem and for GNT. This includes testing new hypotheses and looking for attractive solutions that potentially increase the value of the entire project in the future.”
Zawistowski argues that the Foundation, which will operate without commercial limitations, could be more experimental with its use of funds. He emphasized that doing so should bring greater value to the Golem ecosystem, with a particular focus on the value of the native token GNT.
Golem aims to link up spare computing power on thousands of desktop and laptop computers—or millions, if the network gets that big—to create a “decentralized supercomputer.” It’s based on Ethereum and is similar to the up-and-coming project, Dfinity.
The price of GMT has flatlined since the start of this year, sitting at just one percent of its all-time-high. Considering the project was largely funded by an ICO in 2016 that raised $8 million, and that the company may still be holding its remaining chunk of tokens—this may just be a last ditch effort to budge the price. But history says otherwise.