DAO
Less than 1% of all holders have 90% of the voting power in DAOs: report
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have become a rage in the ever-expanding crypto ecosystem and are often seen as the future of decentralized corporate governance. DAOs are organizations without a centralized hierarchy, intended to work in a bottom-up manner, where the community collectively owns and contributes to an organization’s decision-making process. However, recent research data suggests that these DAOs are not as decentralized as it was intended to be. A recent report from Chainalysis analyzed the workings of ten major DAO projects and found that on average, less than 1% of all holders have 90% of the voting power. The finding highlights a high concentration of decision-making power in the hands of a selected few, an issue DAOs were created to resolve. This...
What decentralization? Solend approves whale wallet takeover to avoid DeFi implosion
On Sunday, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector came under scrutiny again after DeFi protocol Solend put together a spur-of-the-moment governance proposal related to one of the whale wallets at risk of liquidation. The proposal, dubbed “SLND1 : Mitigate Risk From Whale,” was abruptly launched on Sunday without announcement and the vote closed with a 97% approval rating. The scandal comes on the heels of last week’s sudden layoffs from Coinbase and BlockFi, and the liquidation debacle of Three Arrows Capital. Adding to the melee of unexpected volatility and market sell-offs, the spur-of-the-moment alterations of a supposed decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, show that crypto is not as “decentralized” as its users may have thought. Details of the proposal include the...
How a DAO for a bank or financial institution will look like
DAOs can provide several services for banks, including asset management, compliance and lending. Banks today are already using blockchain technology for things like payment, clearing and settlement, trade finance, identity and syndicated loans, according to The Financial Times. However, there are still many unexplored areas in banking where a DAO-based model might be useful: Fundraising In the crypto world, initial coin offerings (ICOs) are breaking down the barrier between access to capital and traditional services like capital-raising firms. Likewise, banks can use DAOs to raise capital from a wider pool of investors via ICOs. Loans and Credit Using decentralized technology in banking can eliminate the need for gatekeepers in the lending industry. DAOs provide more secure ways for people...
MetaBrewSociety to offer voting rights over a brewery via NFTs and DAO
Munich-based MetaBrewSociety (MBS) will soon offer voting rights on the business decisions of a physical brewery via nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The MBS was formed in February this year by a group of beer-loving NFT investors and entrepreneurs that came up with the idea to combine a brewery with the Metaverse, a DAO and NFTs to create a “tangible IRL utility that carries a concrete value” for participants. As part of the project, MBS will offer a range of tokenized “beer share” certificates that offer varying levels of governance rights over a physical brewery in Munich that will also have a presence in the Metaverse. The Sandbox platform is being considered as a potential location. All of the NFTs will entitle the holder to at least 100 can...
Finance Redefined: Maker founder proposes endgame, Singapore explores DeFi and more
The past week in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem saw many new developments, including the rebirth of the Terra 2.0 blockchain. Meanwhile, Binance’s incubation platform Binance Labs launched a $500 million fund to support and promote Web3 adoption. Singapore’s central bank partnered with JP Morgan to explore DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets by establishing tokenized bonds. KuCoin launched its very decentralized wallet with DeFi and nonfungible token support. The top-100 DeFi tokens showed signs of a breakout from a month-long bearish trend, with most of the tokens showing overall gains in the past seven days. Maker founder proposes MetaDAOs and synthetic ETH in ‘Endgame Plan’ MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen has issued a new monumental proposal to push the proje...
How to incorporate a DAO and issue tokens to be ready to raise money from VCs
What is a DAO? A DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is an online-based organization that exists and operates with no single leader or governing body. DAOs are run by code written on a blockchain like Ethereum (ETH) and are owned and operated by the people who use them. There are many different types of DAOs, but they all have one thing in common: they are decentralized, meaning that decisions about the organization’s future are decided by the collective group and not a single individual. This decentralization is what makes DAOs promising, as it theoretically removes the possibility of corruption or manipulation by a single entity. Smart contracts (and not people) execute the terms and conditions of the organization, making them incredibly efficient and resilient to change...
Little by little, blockchain technology is beginning to appear around the house
Blockchain technology is familiar to cryptocurrency users and national banks, and awareness of it is spreading fast to gamers. Applications in industry, particularly supply chain management, have been appearing as well. Through them, blockchain technology may improve domestic life in unseen ways, such as ensuring high-quality food, responsibly sourced seafood, or preventing the counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals. Nonetheless, the home may be blockchain’s final frontier. Blockchain penetration at the household level is so far quite low, but day-to-day utility was no afterthought for blockchain developers. Christoph Jentzsch, Simon Jentzsch and Stephan Tual, who in 2016 created The DAO — the short-lived first decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — introduced Slock.it, “the first ...
Finance Redefined: Samson Mow’s DeFi question, Fireblocks expands to institutional and more
The week was filled with several new project developments and key updates from leading decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Fireblocks has expanded its institutional access to Terra’s DeFi ecosystem and Solana partnered with the Notifi network to improve the abysmal participation rates in governance votes. We will also look into the Cointelegraph research into the Terra ecosystem’s future and see if it can sustain the current growth. Samson Mow, the former executive at Blockstream, questions the decentralized aspect of the DeFi ecosystem. Top DeFi tokens saw another week of bearish price action despite several new developments and barring a few, the majority of the tokens in the top-100 registered double-digit losses over the past week. Fireblocks ...
As labor struggle takes center stage, can DAOs democratize work?
Web3 has given rise to a number of innovative business models. In particular, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have started gaining traction as Web3 as the creator economy comes to fruition. Natalie Salemink, CEO and founder of Prismatic — a tooling and treasury management platform for DAOs — told Cointelegraph that DAOs are internet-native organizations that utilize smart contracts to facilitate coordination and governance in pursuit of a common goal. When it comes to traditional businesses, though, one of the most interesting aspects a DAO structure can provide is leadership based on computer-generated code rather than individual authority. The idea of operating a business without any central governance has become especially intriguing to brick and mortar compani...
DAO regulation in Australia: Issues and solutions, Part 3
Lawmakers in Australia want to regulate decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In this three-part series, Oleksii Konashevych discusses the risks of stifling the emerging phenomenon of DAOs and possible solutions. Crypto anarchy is unlikely to be the future that the majority of people support. Company regulation, in its essence, has a lot of positive aspects or at least, a good intention, albeit one often embodied in a red tape that stifles business. Nevertheless, nowadays, corporation rules and regulations are formalized to the extent that they could be put in the machine code. So, the role of the government is to establish mandatory standards for those DAOs that would like to operate in the Australian market. [embedded content] Non-digital There are cases when a written legal tex...
Crypto is going mainstream: Here’s how the future founders will build on it
Crypto has long been criticized for its lack of inherent value. However, the shift toward contactless transactions amid the pandemic has emphasized the value of digital currencies and blockchain technology in the modern world. For this reason, merchants have been slow to adopt cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. As it gains widespread usage, however, we can expect to see more businesses accepting crypto in the future. The global pandemic has changed the way a lot of us do business. The shift away from cash and face-to-face transactions toward digital cashless ones has introduced many people to the convenience of paying digitally. So, it’s no surprise that crypto is starting to gain traction as a viable payment option — one that will only continue to evolve. While sti...
‘Our democracy will better evolve because of DAOs,’ says Animoca’s Yat Siu
The rise of Web3 has paved the way for new business models that could shape the next phase of the internet. For instance, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will play a large part in the open metaverse as the underlying assets people interact with. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are also coming to fruition to allow for community governance within virtual environments. The growth of Web3 has essentially allowed NFTs and DAOs to flourish. For example, recent data from DeepDAO — a DAO stats platform — shows that DAOs have experienced 130-times growth over the last year, reaching a market capitalization of $24.8 billion. In December 2021, DeepDAO found that the total assets under management (AUM) for DAO treasuries listed on the platform increased from around $380 million in Januar...
