The challenge
soonami is building a decentralized venture-building ecosystem - funding and launching Web3 startups. The hard question for any such model is funding: how do you finance ventures without asking supporters to sell the crypto they believe in?
Their answer is venture staking: route the yield on deposited assets into venture funding, while depositors keep their principal. But that only works if the vehicle holding everyone's WETH is genuinely non-custodial, auditable, and safe to withdraw from at any time.
Why Rethink
soonami built the vehicle on Rethink rather than rolling its own custody and accounting. Deposits flow into an on-chain investment vehicle where ownership, yield and rewards are tracked transparently - and the contracts are independently audited.
- Depositors keep ownership. WETH isn't locked and there's no impermanent loss - you withdraw the same amount you deposited, whenever you choose.
- Rewards held in a Rethink fund. Token rewards accrue to each depositor in a Rethink fund and are released when they unstake.
- Audited infrastructure. The contracts depositors stake into are covered by Rethink's published security audits - no bespoke code soonami had to write or review.
"Venture staking only works if people trust the vehicle with their ETH. Building on Rethink gave us audited, non-custodial infrastructure on day one - so we could focus on funding ventures, not writing contracts."
- soonamiWhat they built
On top of Rethink, soonami shipped Venture Staking inside its own product: a depositor wraps ETH to WETH, stakes it, and within a week begins receiving soonami token rewards tied to the yield they've contributed. The flow, branding and ecosystem all belong to soonami; Rethink handles custody, accounting and settlement underneath.
The outcome
A novel funding primitive - live, non-custodial and audited - that lets crypto holders fund Web3's future without selling a single token, with their principal always theirs to reclaim.