Quantum Leap Labs is about to unleash its first cohort of Web3 startups, and the spotlight turns to British Columbia as these early-stage builders present their work on April 24. Each startup is built on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), and the focus isn’t just on launching apps—it’s on launching whole ecosystems.
The lab, led by former banker turned blockchain advocate Javier Arroyo Ferrer, has taken on the task of guiding founders through the often messy middle of building full-stack decentralised apps—ones that skip the usual cloud giants and rely entirely on ICP’s decentralised infrastructure. The goal? Real SNS DAOs that can stand on their own, run by the community, and live entirely on-chain.
The five startups being showcased represent a wide slice of the Web3 world. Abell Finance is tackling DeFi with a local-first approach, focusing on safe asset issuance and lending infrastructure directly on the Internet Computer. Then there’s OM Rulancer, which imagines a different kind of freelance economy—one where users manage contracts, reviews and payments without relying on centralised intermediaries. FExtreme Sports has gamified fan engagement, taking a swing at the sports experience with NFTs and interactive content. RhinoSpider wants to build a better decentralised internet for small businesses, and BipQuantum is out to push the limits of AI and decentralised intelligence.
It’s a curious mix—finance, work, sport, commerce, intelligence—and it reflects what the Internet Computer ecosystem has quietly been encouraging for years: whole services, not fragments. This is about entire platforms that exist without fallback to Amazon or Google servers, that don’t need middlemen to function, and that are designed to hand over control to their user base through SNS DAO structures.
All of this is getting a big push on Demo Day, where each team will pitch their progress to a trio of experienced investors. Alexa Goldhar from Antler Global brings deep experience in early-stage scouting; Matt Law of OVio HQ brings a builder’s lens to protocol-first companies; and Arzu Tekir from Treeo VC brings the kind of sharp evaluation that comes from funding deep-tech ideas. The feedback won’t just be polite claps and compliments—these founders are here to be tested, challenged, and hopefully backed.
Quantum Leap Labs is one of the first incubators of its kind in North America, and certainly the first to focus specifically on startups building SNS DAOs on ICP. While decentralised autonomous organisations aren’t a new concept, the SNS model—proposed and developed by the DFINITY Foundation—brings something different to the table. It automates governance, treasury, and roadmap control via smart contracts, all hosted directly on-chain with no reliance on third-party cloud providers. This makes for incredibly resilient apps—but it also means the learning curve is steep. That’s where Quantum Leap Labs comes in.
Javier Arroyo Ferrer knows the road well. With over a decade in traditional banking, including roles at Santander and BBVA, he switched gears in 2021 to join DFINITY’s Special Projects team. Since then, he’s been one of the louder voices for the Internet Computer, hosting the podcast Let’s Talk ICP and helping drive education through ICP HUB Canada & US. His vision for Quantum Leap Labs is straightforward: find technical founders with real-world ideas and help them get to DAO-ready, fast.
And he’s brought in a team that complements his focus. Demali Gregg, a blockchain developer with a strong command of Motoko (the native language of the Internet Computer), plays a key role in shaping the architecture of cohort projects. Darren Moore, known in the Web3 world for making complex ideas digestible through content, helps translate dense technical plans into pitches that land with investors and users alike.
This support structure makes a difference, particularly for founders trying to balance code with governance. Launching a project on ICP isn’t just about writing a smart contract—it’s about crafting something that can handle community governance, financial autonomy, and secure interaction with users. SNS DAOs don’t require a middle layer of infrastructure—they are the infrastructure.
That means you need a working product before you start selling tokens. You need clarity on how your protocol works and what happens when someone disagrees with the group. And you need a structure that doesn’t fall apart when a team member leaves or a node drops off the network. Quantum Leap Labs’ founders are expected to handle all of this, and Demo Day is the first chance to show they can.
The startups presenting have each taken a slightly different path. Some arrived with working code and refined it to fit the SNS model. Others came with only an idea and spent months learning how ICP works from the ground up. Regardless, each team now stands behind a working prototype, a DAO framework, and a pitch for the next stage of growth.
There’s more to this moment than just technical achievement. This Demo Day is also a public marker for what’s happening in the wider ICP ecosystem. The protocol, often overshadowed by louder L2s and faster blockchains, has steadily grown its stack and community. Projects are increasingly launching without fallback infrastructure—no AWS, no external databases, no API gateways. And with the SNS model, they’re not launching to be managed by a board of directors, but by token-holding users.
It’s not a simple model. But it is a powerful one. And Quantum Leap Labs has taken the complexity of building on ICP and turned it into a repeatable programme—one that can help launch more of these projects at scale.
The cohort members now step into the open, ready for questions, feedback, and hopefully funding. Demo Day is a celebration, sure, but it’s also a checkpoint. From here, each founder will need to transition from cohort life into the broader community—managing upgrades, dealing with governance proposals, and facing the cold start problem of user adoption. There’s no safety net in a decentralised system.
But if there’s one thing this cohort shares, it’s a clear belief that the Internet Computer isn’t just another chain to build on. It’s a full stack for shipping Web3-native products, and that belief runs through each team’s pitch. Whether they’re trying to reinvent finance or fix the mess of freelance platforms, they’re doing it with tools built for autonomy, not dependency.
Quantum Leap Labs has done its bit. The infrastructure is in place, the guidance has been delivered, and the spotlight is on. Now it’s up to the founders to prove that full-stack, decentralised apps can do more than talk—they can actually work.
