Tea
Tea is a blockchain protocol company building economic infrastructure for open-source software, using an OP Stack Layer 2 on Ethereum with a Proof of Contribution algorithm and GPG-based identity to reward OSS developers and maintainers.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersZug, Switzerland
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B and B2C
- OfferingSoftware
What Tea does
Tea is a blockchain infrastructure company building economic infrastructure for the open-source software ecosystem. Founded by Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) and headquartered in Puerto Rico under the tea Association legal entity, the company operates the tea Protocol — a decentralized network deployed as a purpose-built OP Stack Layer 2 on Ethereum. The protocol uses a proprietary Proof of Contribution consensus mechanism and a teaRank scoring algorithm to quantify the impact of open-source projects and route rewards to their maintainers. A custom GPG precompile at address 0x696 bridges developer identity (via existing PGP/GPG signing keys) to on-chain wallets, allowing maintainers to receive rewards without creating new accounts.
The platform's technology stack comprises seven layers: a purpose-built tea L2 on Ethereum, pkgx (a Web3-native package manager), chai Oracle (a cross-ecosystem dependency ranking system), a DePin layer (DeepEnd) for decentralized storage via IPFS, tea Rewards (the contribution payout system), a Universal App Store marketplace, and an Ethereum anchoring layer. Supporting products include Bountea (a GitHub add-on for bounty payouts on merged PRs with an 85/15 contributor/maintainer split) and Brew.fun (a permissionless token launchpad tied to teaRank-gated open-source projects). The protocol integrates with major package managers (npm, RubyGems, PyPI, Homebrew, pkgx, APT, Crates). Tea launched its mainnet and $TEA token on June 4, 2026, with token trading on Aerodrome, MEXC, Gate.io, and KuCoin.
Tea operates a token-based revenue model rather than traditional service fees. TEA serves as the native gas token, a staking asset for project support and governance (stTEA), a bond for vulnerability reports, and a project registration fee instrument; a portion of activity flows to a DAO-controlled treasury. The primary customer segment is individual open-source developers and project maintainers, with secondary segments of OSS supporters who stake on projects and enterprise software companies using the network for supply-chain security and provenance. The company has raised $8.9 million in seed funding (December 2022) led by Acuitas Group Holdings, operates with a 1–10 person team, and is governed via the tea Association.
Tea firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Tea
- Legal name
- tea Association
- Website
- https://tea.xyz
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Tea is a blockchain protocol company building economic infrastructure for open-source software, using an OP Stack Layer 2 on Ethereum with a Proof of Contribution algorithm and GPG-based identity to reward OSS developers and maintainers.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Tea industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Blockchain Infrastructure
- akta.pro primary industry
- Deployment, Automation & DevOps (build pipelines, contract deployment tools) (FSAPABAH)
Keywords
Where Tea is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Zug
- HQ country
- Switzerland
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Tea business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B and B2C
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- TEA Token Utility: TEA serves as the native L2 token used for gas fees on all Tea Network transactions. Every transfer, contract execution, or stake operation requires TEA for gas, creating direct demand tied to network usage.
- Staking and Support: Users stake TEA tokens to endorse open-source projects and receive a share of rewards. Project maintainers stake TEA when registering projects. All staking involves TEA lockups that support network security and alignment.
- Vulnerability Bounty Staking: Security researchers must stake TEA as bond when submitting vulnerability reports. Valid reports earn TEA rewards plus stake return; invalid reports face slashing.
- Project Registration Fees: When new projects onboard, they may pay a listing fee in TEA to prevent spam. These fees are redistributed as rewards to active participants.
- Protocol Treasury: A portion of transaction fees and rewards are funneled into a DAO-controlled treasury used for grants, ecosystem development, and protocol improvements. Governance decides allocation.
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels6 records
Marketing channels8 records
Tea product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Tea operates a permissionless blockchain protocol (tea Protocol) built as an OP Stack Layer 2 on Ethereum, designed to quantify and reward open-source software contributions through a Proof of Contribution algorithm and teaRank scoring. It provides developers with a Web3-native package manager (pkgx), a GitHub-integrated bounty system (Bountea), a token launchpad for OSS projects (Brew.Fun), and the $TEA token for gas, staking, and governance.
Product overview
Tea is a decentralized blockchain protocol (tea Protocol) deployed as an OP Stack-based Layer 2 on Ethereum, designed to create economic infrastructure for open-source software. The platform comprises a layered technology stack anchored to Ethereum for security: tea L2 handles transaction execution with custom GPG precompile support, pkgx serves as the Web3-native package manager, tea Rewards distributes value via the Proof of Contribution algorithm using teaRank scores, chai Oracle provides ecosystem rankings, and the DePin layer enables decentralized storage. Key products include the TEA token (gas, staking, and governance), teaBASE (web interface), Brew.Fun (token launchpad), and Bountea (GitHub bounty integration). The system integrates with major package managers (npm, RubyGems, PyPI, Homebrew, pkgx, APT, Crates) and GitHub for contributor verification. The platform launched mainnet on June 4, 2026, with tokens trading on Aerodrome, MEXC, Gate.io, and KuCoin.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- tea Stack: The infrastructure foundation of tea consisting of seven layers designed to secure, govern, and reward open source software.
- teaBASE
- Brew.fun
- Bountea
- Chai Oracle
- PKGX
Products and services
- tea Protocol The core decentralized protocol secured by reputation and incentives that enhances the sustainability and integrity of the open-source software supply chain by allowing OSS developers to capture the value they create through a trustless, permissionless system.
- tea L2 Purpose-built Layer-2 scaling solution on Ethereum using the Optimism OP Stack; enables GPG/PGP precompile embedding rewards directly into the network, EVM equivalence, and planned Superchain interoperability.
- $TEA Token ERC-20 token serving as the economic layer for the tea Network; functions as gas token for Layer 2 transactions, access key for protocol features, staking mechanism for OSS project support, and governance token for DAO participation.
- teaBASE Web application interface for interacting with the tea Protocol, enabling developers to register OSS projects, stake TEA tokens, claim rewards, and participate in governance.
- tea Stack Seven layers of infrastructure comprising Universal App Store, pkgx package manager, tea Rewards, chai Oracle, DePin layer (DeepEnd), tea L2, and Ethereum anchoring; designed to secure, govern, and reward open source.
- teaRank
- pkgx Web3-native package manager enabling discover, install, and verify software seamlessly; serves as the decentralized package manager and runner with provenance, governance, and rewards built in.
- tea Rewards Permissionless rewards system distributing value to contributors via cryptographic signatures; maintainers and communities can claim, stake, and govern repositories directly on-chain with rewards cascading through dependencies.
- chai Oracle Open-source oracle ranking open-source projects with teaRank to measure true software impact; expanding into commit activity, maintainer contributions, reproducibility metrics, and security disclosures.
- Brew.Fun Permissionless OSS token launchpad built on Velocitea (Velodrome-based AMM); enables projects with high teaRank to deploy tokens tied to open-source projects with bonding curve price discovery and automatic liquidity provisioning.
- Bountea GitHub add-on integrating Tea wallets for frictionless bounty payouts on code contributions; links GPG-signed commits to tea wallets and automatically distributes rewards upon PR merge.
Quantifiable outcome
- Rewards distributed proportionally based on project usage and impact measured by teaRank
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Tea
Customer profileNamed customers1 record
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Tea technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration17 records
AI capability6 records
Feature10 records
Tea partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Five partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- Optimism (OP Stack)coreTea Network is built on the Optimism OP Stack, leveraging Ethereum's security and inheriting the Superchain ecosystem. This provides L2 scalability, EVM equivalence, and interoperability with other OP Stack chains.
- EthereumcoreTea anchors its L2 state to Ethereum L1 for security. All transactions are eventually settled on Ethereum, inheriting its battle-tested consensus and economic security.
- Velodrome Finance (Velocitea)coreTea Network's on-chain exchange powered by Velodrome's technology (nicknamed Velocitea). Brew.fun launchpad integrates with Velocitea for automatic liquidity provisioning when project tokens launch.
- CoinlistcoreToken sale platform hosting Tea's community sale and token generation event, providing compliant access to TEA tokens for retail participants.
- AerodromecoreBase's deepest liquidity venue for TEA token trading. Voting on TEA pool opening May 28, 2026, following mainnet launch.
Scale indicators5 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Tea competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Gitcoin: Gitcoin runs quadratic-grant funding rounds for OSS public goods using a work token (GTC) and quadratic voting on Ethereum. Tea competes for the same OSS-funding mindshare, but uses a continuous Proof-of-Contribution mechanism rather than periodic rounds.
- Open Collective: Open Collective is the dominant fiat-transparent funding platform for OSS collectives and projects. It represents the incumbent rail Tea's reward mechanism is attempting to upgrade with on-chain, token-incentivized economics.
- Radicle: Radicle is a peer-to-peer code collaboration and reputation network built on Ethereum. Like Tea, it targets developer identity, code review, and on-chain OSS reputation, making it a closely overlapping protocol in the same niche.
- Octant: Octant is a Golem Foundation project that allocates staking yield from a major treasury (GLM) to OSS public goods via quadratic voting. It is a direct analogue of Tea's staking-based OSS reward mechanism with a different distribution model.
- Snapshot: Snapshot is the dominant off-chain DAO voting and governance platform. Tea's stTEA-based governance and protocol treasury decision flow are functionally comparable, with Tea aiming for an integrated on-chain alternative.
Broad incumbents
- Optimism: Optimism is the OP Stack L2 platform on which Tea's chain is built. As Tea's infrastructure provider and a member of the Superchain, Optimism is the upstream incumbent whose roadmap, tooling, and ecosystem distribution directly shape Tea's surface area.
- Protocol Labs (Filecoin/IPFS): Protocol Labs builds decentralized storage (Filecoin) and developer infrastructure, and Tea's DeepEnd DePin layer explicitly uses IPFS for storage. They are adjacent infrastructure peers in the Web3 developer-stack category.
- Sourcegraph: Sourcegraph provides code intelligence, search, and dependency analysis across OSS repositories. Its data layer overlaps with Chai Oracle's ranking of critical OSS dependencies, making it a comparable analytics incumbent.
Emerging players
- DoraHacks: DoraHacks runs hackathons, quadratic grants, and a developer-reputation platform (HackerLink). It is an emerging peer competing for the same OSS developer mindshare that Brew.fun and Bountea target.
Others
- Aerodrome Finance: Aerodrome is Base's largest DEX and the primary launch venue for the TEA token. As Tea's on-chain liquidity and governance venue (Velocitea), it is a tightly coupled infrastructure peer for TEA price discovery and ecosystem growth.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Tea social profiles
Digital presenceTea financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Tea leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Tea funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors14 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Tea M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Tea
What does Tea do?
Tea operates a permissionless blockchain protocol (tea Protocol) built as an OP Stack Layer 2 on Ethereum, designed to quantify and reward open-source software contributions through a Proof of Contribution algorithm and teaRank scoring. It provides developers with a Web3-native package manager (pkgx), a GitHub-integrated bounty system (Bountea), a token launchpad for OSS projects (Brew.Fun), and the $TEA token for gas, staking, and governance.
Is Tea a public or private company?
Tea is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Tea founded?
Tea was founded in 2021. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Tea based?
Tea is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, in the Europe region.
How does Tea make money?
Five revenue lines are on record. TEA Token Utility is the primary driver. The others are staking and Support, vulnerability Bounty Staking, project Registration Fees and protocol Treasury.
Who are Tea's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Gitcoin, Open Collective, Radicle, Octant and Snapshot. Broad incumbents are Optimism, Protocol Labs (Filecoin/IPFS) and Sourcegraph. DoraHacks is listed as an emerging player. Aerodrome Finance is listed as an others.
Does Tea have an API?
No public API is recorded for Tea.
What industry is Tea in?
Tea's product category is Blockchain Infrastructure. Its primary akta.pro industry code is FSAPABAH, Deployment, Automation & DevOps (build pipelines, contract deployment tools).