Randamu was a decentralized infrastructure company spun out from Protocol Labs, commercializing cryptographic coordination primitives including verifiable randomness, threshold encryption, and off-chain compute orchestration based on the drand project.

What role did SproutVest play at Randamu?

SproutVest's Erick Watson served as Interim CEO of Randamu for 24 months, overseeing fundraising, team formation, product development, and ecosystem partnerships. The engagement culminated in the launch of dcipher.network, Randamu's flagship platform.

What was dcipher.network?

dcipher.network was Randamu's flagship platform for decentralized programmatic settlement, providing cryptographic coordination primitives for Web3 ecosystems, gaming platforms, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

What happened to Randamu?

After launching dcipher.network and operating as an independent, venture-backed company, Randamu was ultimately wound down. The 24-month SproutVest engagement covered the company's formation, $3.3M pre-seed raise, product development, and platform launch.

Case Study

Randamu Distributed Computing Case Study | SproutVest

At a glance

Client: Randamu
Industry: Decentralized Infrastructure / Cryptography / Web3
Engagement: 24 months
Services: Interim CEO, Venture Operations, Product Strategy, Web3 Ecosystem Development
Headline result: $3.3M pre-seed raised and dcipher.network launched; the venture was later wound down

Context

Randamu was a decentralized infrastructure company spun out from Protocol Labs, built on the drand project’s publicly verifiable randomness beacon. Its mission was to commercialize a new generation of cryptographic coordination primitives: verifiable randomness, threshold encryption, off-chain compute orchestration, and programmatic settlement. As part of the spin-out, Randamu engaged SproutVest for executive leadership during its first two years, with Erick Watson serving as Interim CEO.

The challenge

A cryptography company emerging from a research environment starts with everything to build. After separating from Protocol Labs, Randamu had no executive leadership, no independent governance, and no operating structure. Its core technology, drand, was offered free as a public good, so the commercial products had to be built for Web3 ecosystems, gaming platforms, and DeFi without undermining that open-source foundation. The company needed capital, which meant crafting an investor story that balanced open-source ethos with commercial goals, and it needed to operate as a globally distributed team while building the ecosystem partnerships its adoption depended on.

What we did

As Interim CEO, SproutVest defined Randamu’s mission around secure, unbiased, and verifiable cryptographic infrastructure and built a two-year roadmap tying technical milestones to funding and market goals. We led the early fundraising, securing $3.3M in pre-seed funding from Protocol Labs Venture Studio as strategic investors, which gave the company runway for R&D and ecosystem development.

Operationally, we assembled a distributed team of engineers, cryptographers, and product leaders, and established governance through the Swiss Threshold Association. The product work centered on dcipher.network, a programmable platform for randomness, conditional encryption, and off-chain compute that let developers build verifiable, trustless systems. Alongside development, we built partnerships across the ecosystem, including the Filecoin Foundation, SSV Network, DIA Data, Scroll, and other Layer 2 networks.

Results

Over 24 months, the engagement took Randamu from a paper spin-out to a fully operational, venture-backed Web3 company:

$3.3M in pre-seed funding secured, sustaining more than two years of product development
dcipher.network launched, delivering verifiable randomness, threshold encryption, and programmable settlement in production
A distributed team and Swiss governance structure built from zero
Ecosystem partnerships established with the Filecoin Foundation, SSV Network, DIA Data, Scroll, and other Layer 2 networks

Randamu was ultimately wound down. The engagement stands as a complete venture-building arc: formation, funding, team, product launch, and ecosystem, delivered inside 24 months.

The work above starts with an honest read of the leadership behind it

The Trellis Leadership Diagnostic applies that discipline to how you run your company: 24 scored items across six dimensions, a written report with one 90-day priority, and a 90-minute debrief with Erick Watson. $2,500, fully creditable against coaching.

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