Swarm, a cooperative ownership fund for investment assets, has raised $5.5 million in an initial coin offering (ICO).

Philipp Pieper, a partner at the company, told CoinDesk that 637 contributors took part in the token sale, which was split into two phases. All told, those backing the project gave 18,048 ethers in exchange for 8,171,014 SWM tokens, with almost all of the funding being raised during the pre-sale.

Owners of Swarm Fund tokens can vote now on the way in which their tokens will become liquid on the open market, reflecting a pivot the company made two years ago, to focus on decentralized governance.

Swarm Fund seeks to enable people to buy into investments that they might not be able to otherwise access. In order to make decisions about investments, Swarm designed a voting system that uses the SWM tokens to determine the outcome.

The first test of its voting system is underway now, according to the firm. Token holders have four options to choose from, ranging from large, infrequent distributions to smaller, more frequent ones, according to a blog post describing the vote.

"This is kind of a big deal," Pieper wrote CoinDesk, "as this directly influences the behavior of the token and it draws in buyers to become 'active investors' right away."

Voting will run through Nov. 6, with token holders ballots being proportional to their overall holdings.

Of the funds gathered, 25 percent of funds raised will be used to support the foundation that will manage the token, with the remainder going toward software development. According to its whitepaper, Swarm's goal had been to raise $55 million.

The completed sale represents the latest utilization of the blockchain use case this year. CoinDesk's ICO Tracker shows that more than $2.6 billion has been raised through token offerings to date.

Bee hive image via Shutterstock