DAOpulse Issue #6: $500m DAOs Marketcap 🤓📈
By hitting the milestone AUM value of over USD $500M, the DAO ecosystem shows it’s not just part of a hypothetical crypto-future but instead is a piece of the real deal happening right now.💰
Browsing DeepDAO.io we quickly see a variety of DAOs that span across different core purposes. The futureof decentralized governance has arrived!
VC DAOs:
VC DAOs are a great example of merging the financially democratizing force of crypto with decentralized governance. They are becoming increasingly popular because they allow access to lucrative tech investment for the average person. In the world before DAOs this privilege was reserved wholly to investment firms. While some VC DAOs like The LAO (#9 on DeepDAO by AUM) do require accreditation, others such as MetaCartel’s Venture DAO do not. The rules have changed in favor of the people.
DeFi DAOs:
Projects like mStable (#1 on DeepDAO by AUM) are managing governance of their token through a DAO.
Tornado.cash is establishing a development fund that will be managed by a DAO.
DXdao is a pioneering DAO that creates and manages a growing portfolio of DeFi products.
NecDAO owns and manages exchange oriented products through its DAO.
Developer collectives:
Software developer DAOs like dOrg and RaidGuild are both crypto native tech development consultancies and are practically living in the so-called “Future of Work” by sharing resources, branding and tools (all done 100% remote). They don’t bother using the tired buzzword, because for them it’s just Present of Work LOL.
The Great DAOification:
Recently several crypto projects potentially set to be unicorns have decided to dissolve their companies’ traditional internal governance structures and instead distribute the control over project ecosystems to the community. These orgs include Synthetix, Curve, and YFI, with more on the way. Alternately, quite a few projects are launching as a DAO from the get go. While decentralized governance can serve to minimize exposure to regulatory risks, if done right it also provides a much fairer reward dynamic where project contributors are fairly compensated for the success of the collective organizations and the subsequent value they help to create.Conclusion
Governance: The HOW to an organization’s WHAT and WHY
While the products and the money involved get a lot of attention, the less understood and perhaps most important principle in driving blockchain innovation is governance. Achieving healthy decentralized decision and prioritization management is what sets apart projects that grow long term from those that stagnate. We are seeing this in action now with the recent DeFi-mania which is largely powered by experimentation with governance tokens - people are recognizing the value in gaining a share of the decisioning influence over financial protocols’ configuration and properties. In order to understand that better, we are analyzing the governance dynamics for all DAOs listed on DeepDAO and are developing indexes that provide deep insights that shed light on the complexity of governance and its nuances.
Conclusion
In closing, DAOs have shown themselves to be viable organizational structures, both in terms of money, and as an attractive alternative decision making body when compared to legacy corporations. With a proper DAO structure, tech startups can develop new products and be financially managed without the need for standard top-down executive leadership because they have the social and technological frameworks to collaboratively make decisions about resource allocation and organizational priorities.
The future is DAO.
(DAOpulse #6 was written by Daniel Bar, Eyal Eithcowich and edited by Ivan Sucharski)