Kula announced today that its native governance token, $KULA, is now tradable on Kraken, one of the world’s longest-standing digital asset exchanges. The move is a clear step toward giving more people access to Kula’s experiment in community-led, real-world investing.
$KULA sits at the heart of the Kula DAO: token holders vote on how the treasury is run, where capital is allocated and the platform’s wider strategic choices. Built on Avalanche, the token is intended to put governance power into the hands of communities and investors who want more transparency and accountability in how projects are funded.
A Boost for Decentralized Stewardship
Since launching in 2022, Kula says it has raised $25 million from partners and deployed capital into seven projects with more than $50 million in underlying asset value. Those investments are far from the usual VC checklist; they include a limestone concession in Zambia, a large-scale hydropower project in Nepal, and backing for Enzi’s electric mobility rollout across East Africa. Kula pairs blockchain-based governance with legally compliant local entities so it can scale projects in emerging markets while staying within regulatory frameworks.
“Kula was designed to make previously inaccessible assets investible while empowering communities to participate in the governance of the resources that shape their futures,” said Paul Jackson, CEO of Kula. “From agriculture and water at the community level to hydropower in Nepal and electric mobility infrastructure in East Africa, these are sectors traditional finance often overlooks. Kraken’s listing extends our model to a global audience and highlights the potential of decentralized stewardship in real-world applications.”
Kula pitches itself as a bridge between on-chain decision-making and on-the-ground operations. For communities, the model aims to restore some control over local assets and ensure economic value benefits the people who create it. For investors, it promises a more transparent route into high-impact opportunities that have often been labeled too risky or opaque for mainstream capital, backed by structured, on-chain governance and legal structures meant to reduce ambiguity.
Listing on Kraken gives $KULA a wider reach and a chance to bring more capital into Kula’s portfolio of real-world projects. Whether tokenized governance plus legally grounded operations can become a scalable alternative to traditional finance remains to be seen, but Kula’s listing will certainly be watched by investors and community leaders alike as a test of whether decentralized capital can help build long-term, locally rooted economic resilience.
