Topics web3

Common Wealth (WLTH): Invest like a VC — without being one

Intermediate
web3
Explainers
Altcoins
May 16, 2025

The traditional venture capitalist (VC) investing model is often elitist and out of reach for many retail investors. While this is particularly the case in the world of traditional finance (TradFi), access to promising early-stage crypto assets is also frequently reserved for larger entities, namely institutional investors and whales. When we hear about a wildly successful crypto project and its token, we often find that its early backers are well-known investment funds or cashed-up VCs. These early investors are the ones who benefit the most from the token’s meteoric rise on the market.

Common Wealth (WLTH) is a decentralized app (DApp) operating on Base’s Layer 2 chain that aims to democratize the way VC investment works in the crypto industry. By using a community-driven approach to sourcing and investing in promising projects, the Common Wealth platform reduces barriers to entry to VC activities. Smaller-scale retail investors, both casual and experienced, are the primary beneficiaries of Common Wealth's unique approach to crypto investment.

Common Wealth has partnered with a network of notable crypto investors who refer high-potential projects to the platform, where these projects are carefully evaluated and qualified to be included in the investment products available to the user community. The entire evaluation process is also driven by community governance procedures, making it transparent and secure. Thanks to Common Wealth, investing in high-potential early-stage crypto opportunities is now open to anyone — even investors who want to start with as little as $20.

Key Takeaways:

  • Common Wealth (WLTH) is a web3 platform that allows anyone to invest in promising pre-vetted, early-stage crypto projects with minimal capital, thus reducing barriers to entry to crypto venture capitalism.

  • The platform also features investment products based on a mixture of assets from specific blockchain niches.

  • Common Wealth's native token, WLTH, is used for governance, staking, payment of transaction and product fees, dividend payouts and rewards for the user community.

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What is Common Wealth?

Common Wealth (WLTH) is a decentralized platform that allows anyone to become a crypto VC by using a vetting-based, democratized, community-driven approach to selecting promising cryptocurrency investment opportunities.

The core idea behind the project is to tear down barriers to entry for crypto investment, particularly concerning early-stage promising ventures. Common Wealth has partnered with a group of prominent, savvy crypto investors (referred to as “Oracles”) who refer high-potential crypto investment opportunities to the platform. All the referrals are based on projects or assets that at least one so-called Oracle has personally invested in. As of May 2025, the platform works with ten Oracles, all of whom are notable investors with solid track records and standing in the crypto investment world.

The platform's governance community scrutinizes each referred project via “Oracle Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions, proposal workshops and analytics. Community investors then vote to decide on the projects' final eligibility. Any Common Wealth user can invest in qualified projects for as little as $20.

Common Wealth investors

There are two main types of investors on the platform: casual and community members. The former typically invest smaller amounts, and pay with fiat currency using credit or debit cards, greatly simplifying access to the selected projects for users without an affinity for cryptocurrency transactions. Casual investors are normally those who adopt a hands-off approach to crypto investing and tend to start with smaller investment amounts.

Members of the second group, community members, invest larger amounts, or actively participate in the decision-making process for project selection. They’re the core of the governance community on Common Wealth. These investors use cryptocurrency to invest, paying with the USDC stablecoin.

The Common Wealth project was launched in February 2024 on the Base Layer 2 chain. In May 2025, it debuted its native token, WLTH.

Common Wealth Oracles and the projects they’ve invested in.

Source: docs.joincommonwealth.xyz

How does Common Wealth Work?

Funds

All investment opportunities offered on Common Wealth are in the form of funds that provide exposure to promising projects and assets. For instance, the platform’s Priceless Fund invests in 14 high-potential web3 startup projects, while the Alpha Fund is based on early-stage projects in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem, real-world assets (RWAs), decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) and gaming.

Unlike traditional investment funds, Common Wealth funds are completely permissionless and noncustodial, operating through blockchain smart contracts. As such, no central entity can influence fund management, thus ensuring transparency and discouraging vested interests.

Some funds are based on contributions from the wider user community, and are typically capped funds. There are also perpetual funds, which are funded by the investor community that participates in on-platform governance.

Bundles

Bundles are Common Wealth funds based on a dynamic mix of assets satisfying certain criteria, e.g., a specific crypto niche. The platform has launched three such bundled products: 

  • Top 5 Crypto Assets offers exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), XRP (XRP), BNB Coin (BNB) and Solana (SOL), the market’s top five non-stablecoin assets by market cap.

  • Top 5 Meme Assets is based on Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE), Trump (TRUMP) and Bonk (BONK), the five highest-capped meme coin cryptocurrencies.

  • Top 5 AI is currently made up of Bittensor (TAO), Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET), Worldcoin (WLD), Injective (INJ) and Theta Network (THETA).

Since the bundles are dynamic, the top five assets may switch according to market sentiment. All allocations within the bundles are equally split between their five assets. For instance, if you invest $100 in a bundle, each of the five assets in it will be allocated $20 of your investment.

Fees

The Common Wealth platform charges three types of fees:

  • Protocol fee: Charged at 2% of your investment per year, this fee is capped at five years, and is repaid once you break even.

  • Performance fee (what Common Wealth calls “profit-based royalties”): The standard royalty is 40% of your profit, although this can be reduced to 10% by staking WLTH. To take advantage of the reduced fee, you need to stake at least 50% of your investment amount.

  • Transaction fees: These apply to bundles —1% for buy-in and 1% for cashing out.

Slices

When you invest in a Common Wealth fund, you’re issued a fractional NFT (Slice NFT) that denotes your share of capital in the fund. Slice NFTs are freely tradable on the market, investors can quickly access liquidity by selling their Slices. Since these NFTs are fractionalized, you can sell a part of your Slice or the whole of it, per your preference.

Distributed Autonomous Operating System (DAOS)

The Common Wealth Distributed Autonomous Operating System (DAOS) is based on a set of smart contracts that automate the entire workflow of the platform’s governance processes. Project considerations, analytics related to candidate projects, vote management and other functions related to decentralized governance are handled by the DAOS.

While the standard blockchain decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) consists of a set of rules and an on-chain community, the Common Wealth DAOS is an entire permissionless system of interoperable autonomous nodes that automates and powers all the platform’s governance elements and procedures.

What is the Common Wealth crypto token (WLTH)?

The WLTH token is an ERC-20 asset issued on the Base Layer 2 chain. The token has a wide range of functions on the platform. While investments in Common Wealth are based on the USDC stablecoin, all other key functionalities are enabled via WLTH. These include:

  • Payment of transaction and product fees, such as protocol royalties

  • Governance

  • Staking

  • Payments to contributors

  • Protocol and fund dividend payouts

  • Rewards and airdrops

WLTH is a capped asset with a maximum supply of 1 billion. As of mid-May 2025, its total supply stands at around 984 million. The chart below shows the token's supply allocation shares and vesting periods upon its launch in May 2024.

WLTH tokenomics.

Source: docs.joincommonwealth.xyz

Common Wealth price prediction

As of May 16, 2025, the WLTH token is trading at $0.003877, which is 98.2% lower than its ATH of $0.2148 on Jul 22, 2024 and 82.8% higher than its ATL of $0.002121 on Apr 18, 2025.

Long-term price forecasts for WLTH are mostly bullish.DigitalCoinPrice predicts average rates of $0.0129 in 2027 and $0.0192 in 2030, whileCoinCodex expects the token to trade at around $0.0042 in 2027 but rise to $0.014 in 2030.

Closing thoughts

VC investment in financial markets remains an exclusive club that isn’t easily accessible to everyday retail investors. In most cases, this applies to the crypto market as well. Common Wealth's value to the broader crypto community lies in designing a system that makes investment in promising web3 initiatives accessible to everyone. The platform's novel model creates an opportunity to involve millions of individuals in the VC game. This could lead to significant growth in overall web3-based VC funding, and positively affect the entire crypto investment landscape over the coming years. Finding a future star in the crypto market with as little as $20 has never been easier — thanks to Common Wealth and the VC tools it provides!

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