Announced Thursday, Braintrust, a tech talent marketplace that will essentially be owned by the IT freelancers and companies using it, has raised an $18 million strategic growth round, bringing its total funding to date to $24 million. Employing a system of blockchain-based tokens to align the incentives of users and keep fees low, Braintrust boasts a nice mix of seasoned Silicon Valley VCs and crypto heavyweights like Pantera, Multicoin and Galaxy Digital. Notable joiners on today’s round are Omidyar Technology Ventures, the original online marketplace builders. San Francisco-based Braintrust is another example of how the core tenets of DeFi’s multi-billion dollar science experiment can be applied to real-world use cases. Unlike the often vague “utility” of ICO tokens that were sold in the billions back in 2017, Braintrust is focused on solving the liquidity problem encountered when establishing two-sided marketplaces.