Binance Labs recently announced it is leading an $8 million seed funding round for Tea, an emerging open-source software platform on the blockchain. The innovation incubator and venture capital arm of Binance aim to promote open-source development with this investment.

Max Howell, the CEO and Co-Founder of Tea, is well-versed in the open-source domain, having previously created Homebrew (Brew), which has garnered tens of millions of global developers and underpins numerous prominent tech organizations and projects. Brew has been crucial in managing a fair value transfer within the open-source ecosystem.

Tea aims to revolutionize traditional open-source software by introducing a model where volunteer developers are compensated and involved in open governance. The platform plans to release packages on-chain as NFTs, including their dependency metadata, with governance tokens allocated based on real-world use cases to guide the ecosystem.

Max Howell emphasized that while Web 2.0 has thrived on the unpaid labor of open-source developers, the field remains ripe with untapped opportunities. Tea is designed as an intuitive suite of tools compatible with both Web 2.0 and Web3.

The funds from this round will be used to enhance resources, support community development, and further develop the software and protocol. Participants in the funding round include Lattice Capital, XBTO Humla Ventures, Coral DeFi, DARMA Capital, Rocktree, Woodstock, MAKE Group, and SVK Crypto.