A Broader, More Nuanced Treasury Coverage: New Types Added to DeepDAO

DeepDAO adds 3 new treasury types, starting with the top 20 orgs, and 87 new contracts totaling $4 billion * The largest collection of DAO treasuries is now even larger

DeepDAO has been tracking DAO treasuries for over three years, and has the largest collection of DAOs and their fungible assets, both liquid and vesting. Our guiding principle has been to limit our tracking to treasuries that are directly under DAO management, both liquid and vesting. We regularly track the treasury addresses of over 1,800 liquid and vesting accounts, in more than 550 DAOs. 

We now feel that, given the progress made in the ecosystem, and the large, established, mega-rich DAOs out there, there is a need to expand our reach to funds that belong to the DAO projects, even when they are not directly available for the DAO governance to work with, and manage. 

These are the three new treasury types: 

• Protocol Funds: Locked in a contract of specific protocol actions such as DAO tokenomics (examples: automated rewards, airdrop funding).

• Private Funds Under DAO Management: Locked in a DAO smart contract while owned by private users (example: staking). Private allocations such as for investors are not counted. 

• Project Funds: Officially related to the DAO project but not under Protocol or DAO management (examples: legal Foundation, pre-DAO deployer).

As a first step, we have added new treasury data for the top 20 richest DAOs on our lists, and for some others, recently listed DAOs. Those include 87 accounts that close to $4 billion, divided as follows:

Richer DAO view, not richer DAOs

The new treasury types are by definition not added to the calculation of DAO treasuries market value, since they are either not owned by the DAO (while being owned by other project entities, or by the DAO customers and users), or not directly managed by the DAO (but rather designated by code), or both. They are marked on our site with a different font color. 

That said, the extended framework offers a concrete, hard-data context to the tokenomics and governance of DAOs beyond their immediate funds. The new treasury types were developed to answer a need shared by DAOs, DAOists and researchers alike, for data of daily DAO realities that transcend their immediate borders. Thus Protocol funds show, e.g., DAO investments in users and the wider community. Private funds under DAO management indicate, among other things, participant commitments to the DAO project. And Project funds explore the involvement of closely related and pre-DAO entities in immediate DAO affairs.

Put together, the five treasury types nuance our understanding of the formal DAO surroundings, and offer fertile data grounds for the analysis of DAO funds, power relations, governance, accountability and much more

Examples

Consider Polygon’s PoS Staking contract on Ethereum: The $2.8 billion of $MATIC there belong to the accounts that staked them, while locked in a DAO-managed contract which allows network validation. They are therefore listed as Private funds under the DAO’s management.

Alternatively, see this Rewards Treasury proxy by dYdX: officially owned by one of the DAO multisigs and allocated $DYDX by a specific vesting account, it is specifically designated to spread rewards to users as by DAO tokenomics. Hence it is listed as Protocol funds. 

Finally, have a look at this Sperax Foundation multisig at the Sperax DAO: it is officially separated from the DAO treasuries, hence listed as Project funds. 

As always, please Do Your Own Research, and do not consider this article or the data as financial advice or any other form of recommendation.

Help us get you better data

The process of listing, and aggregating new DAOs and treasuries is ongoing. New accounts are being added every week, and that includes treasuries in the new types, outlined above. 

This work is open to DAOs and DAOist feedback on any aspect, from ideation to definitions to specific addresses. Let’s make the DAO ecosystem even more transparent -- together!

About DeepDAO

DeepDAO is the #1 source of truth for data about DAOs, serving the DAO ecosystem, crypto and mainstream media, investors, researchers, and academics. DeepDAO has been tracking the DAO ecosystem since early 2020, and is providing targeted insights, recommendations, and reports on voter participation and DAO power structure. 

Get time-series data for 50K+ governance platforms, 1.8K + treasuries, 3M+ People data and much more on our API.

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