9 DAO’s To Pay Attention To Right Now

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Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, are a fascinating governance structure involving blockchain technology. There are no specific boundaries within which DAOs operate, allowing for innovative concepts and ideas. The following eight DAOs all try something unique, making them of great interest to onlookers and enthusiasts. 

FriesDAO 

The concept behind the FriesDAO is unusual, as the group of community members aims to buy fast food places. That is an intriguing take on building a decentralized social experiment where cryptocurrency community members can influence the real world. Acquiring these fast food places will require tremendous funding, and the FriesDAO currently sits at over USD 5.4 million. Most of those funds – USD 3.5 million – came from a weeklong whitelist sale, confirming strong interest in this DAO-based approach.

As the public sale is currently ongoing, money continues to pour in. The Treasury will be used to purchase franchises and expand the empire. More importantly, this approach creates utility, as the FriesDAO will explore issuing NFT coupons for free food, among other things. Contributors to the DAO receive $FRIES governance tokens, yet they do not provide ownership stake in stores or its profits. 

Building a fast-food empire requires people with expertise in the field. The FriesDAO recently added Kory Spiroff, President of Domino’s for the Middle East and Northern Africa to its team. Olivier and Jean-Claude Meyer – the largest holders of Domino’s Pizza Franchises in Northern Africa are also on board. Other members include Drizly founder Brett Beller, Bill ‘Swo’ Lee, Rowan Stone, various crypto Twitter personalities, and more to be announced. 

EOS DAO

The concept of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization allows for voting on interesting ideas. For the EOS DAO, the current objective is deciding whether they should sue Block.one to the tune of USD 4.1 billion. More specifically, the EOS project has been subject to a tug-of-war between the community and the project creators for some time now. A Canadian law firm is working with the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) to investigate the matter.

A growing dissatisfaction between the community and Block.one has created much friction. Community members claim the company has not kept its promises, harming the community and individual users in the process. An earlier attempt to negotiate some sort of deal between the ENF and Block.one resulted in the creators walking away from the talks. That decision triggered a freeze of the vesting for future EOS token earnings for Block.one. 

The EOS DAO serves the blockchain community and is formerly known as the EOS Alliance. From day one, the project aimed to put the community in control of the project as much as possible. Depending on how the community wants to handle the Block.one issue, things are bound to get interesting in the months ahead. Pursuing legal action would lend credibility to the DAO concept, as it confirms the people have the power. 

Balancer DAO

Decentralized finance enthusiasts are familiar with the name Balancer. It is one of the most reputable projects in the DeFi space with over USD 3.35 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) across Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The Balancer DAO, managed by the community members, has created a significant treasury over the past few months. Holders of the BAL token can weigh in on new proposals and ideas to further diversify the Treasury.

More specifically, the Balancer DAO aims to diversify its Treasury by holding little bits of various other DAOs. Doing so allows them to interact with each other’s governance aspects. Moreover, the alignment between different DAos is publicly visible on the blockchain, creating a broader degree of interconnectedness in the decentralized finance space. 

Furthermore, there is a new proposal to introduce a vote-escrowed tokenomics model. BAL holders would be able to lock up tokens to receive pegged veBAL tokens. The current token staking for governance rights has no locking mechanism, yet veBAL would change the game. Curve initially introduced the model to provide holders with booster yields, a share of protocol revenue, and governance voting rights. Balancer may take a similar approach, depending on how the DAO members respond to the idea.

GoodDAO (GoodDollar)

GoodDollar is one of the many DAOs in the DeFi space that aims to impact long-term. Its approach of establishing a universal basic income tied to cryptocurrency is intriguing, although challenging to pull off. Nevertheless, a recent update to the smart contracts and protocol increased the value of GoodDollars issued as UBI and introduced a new community-led governance model through the GoodDAO. 

The shift in control for GoodDollar saw the issuance of $GOOD tokens to the entire community. These tokens are non-transferrable, allowing those who actively engaged with the protocol to help determine the project’s future. The DAO concept will prove crucial in an environment where universal basic income is key. Moreover, it paves the way for broader global financial inclusion through decentralized finance. 

The push for a universal basic income continues to build strong momentum globally. Jack Dorsey is looking into ventures facilitating a UBI, either in cryptocurrency or otherwise. The lack of constraints with crypto makes it a more suitable candidate for a global initiative. Moreover, the GoodDAO ensures no intermediaries or centralized entities are involved in the process. 

Venus Protocol

The story of Venus Protocol is an interesting one. Despite noting initial success in early 2021, the project faced a setback due to a security incident. While that would mean a curtain call for most DAOs in the space, Venus is experiencing a resurgence thanks to a new team and a strong community willing to put forward new proposals, initiatives, and ideas. The new team lead has over a decade of experience working on financial institution structures, including crypto banks and Bank of America. 

Under the new management, Venus will resume its approach to being an algorithmic money market system focused on decentralized lending and credit. Moreover, the DAO concept is achieved through decentralizing its governance as community members gained control over the protocol in 2021. That vision is still in place today, ensuring the community retains control over the protocol while the new team introduces new features and enhancements.

The first release under the new team is the XVS vaults. Through these vaults, users gain voting power and rewards by staking their Venus ($XVS) tokens. It is another crucial step toward decentralizing the governance of the protocol and confirms the viability of a DAO-based approach. Additionally, Venus has regained the #2 spot for Total Value locked on the BNB Chain and is well-positioned to rise up the overall DeFi TVL rankings once the momentum in decentralized finance picks up again. 

Index Coop

The Index Coop project aims to make cryptocurrency investing simple for anyone through a trinity-based approach. The coop has a globally distributed community to create a global movement. Additionally, there are qualified partners known as export methodologists. The building of decentralized index and structured products is possible through leveraging contracts.

The community aspect of Index Coop is essential. It allows people from all over the world to contribute ideas, suggest new products, and explore new opportunities. Debates range from fixed income solutions to stablecoin products and thematic indexes. Anyone can join the community to weigh in on these matters. Moreover, the protocol provides access to tokenized ETFs offering exposure to blue-chip crypto projects. 

Additionally, the Index Cooperative serves as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). It has seven elected community members determining the long-term strategy for the fund. Additionally, the DAO consists of multiple working groups to handle operations, including governance and marketing. The DAO model introduces quick scaling and flexibility, two crucial elements when managing assets. 

Izumi DAO

The Izumi Finance team has hinted at a DAO-esque structure for a while now. In the current form, the platform provides liquidity as a service with Uniswap V3 and a multi-chain DEX. Additionally, Liquidbox offers high-yield liquidity mining solutions through incentive distributions in specific price ranges. Izumi’s approach creates an opportunity for protocols, projects, and communities to offer incentives to optimize liquidity distribution.

The Izumi DAO will use a very different governance solution compared to current models. More specifically, it utilizes the veNFT governance token. However, veNFT is not just about voting, it also introduces a share of dividends and boosts the farming pool APR. Acquiring the veNFT is possible by locking iZi tokens for a certain time. These assets are tradeable and any address can add iZi to any veNFT without disrupting the locked time.

Opting for the veNFT method helps reduce the circulation of iZI, providing a stability factor to the asset’s price. Holders receive dividends every month, and veNFT can be staked to boost farming pool rewards for significant periods. Moreover, the veNFT can be converted to iZi or sold through NFT markets like OpenSea, making it more liquid than traditional DAO tokens. 

BitDAO

The Treasury set up by a DAO will often dictate how successful the concept can be. That success can materialize in excitement or achieving goals. BitDAO tops the rankings for treasury size – currently USD 2.4 billion – and notes strong governance participation. More specifically, it has over 20,6k governance token holders, which is a healthy number. 

The purpose of BitDAO is to partner projects through token swaps and co-developmental efforts. Diversification of the Treasury is essential, similar to what other projects are doing. Additionally, the team wants to build products to make DAOs more efficient. BitDAO also offers grants to teams producing research or products as a public good. 

An intriguing aspect of BitDAO is how its Treasury receives recurring contributions from Bybit. Estimations put those contributions at roughly USD 1 billion per year, giving the BitDAO initiative many options to further diversify its Treasury. Currently used assets include BIT, ETH, FTT, USDC, and USDT. 

Krause House

When like-minded people come together, interesting things can happen. The Krause House is a unique DAO that aims to unify basketball fanatics. More specifically, the ultimate goal is to purchase an NBA team and manage it under DAO rules. It would mark a significant change in NBA team ownership, although it might be a necessary and welcome change.

All members of the Krause House DAO can participate in decisions affecting how the NBA team is managed and operators. That includes general management, ticketing, merchandising, partnerships, etc. All of the work is broken down into “seasons” to track progress and development. For example, the current season explores a new governance and compensation system, which is worth keeping an eye on. 

When projects like these arise, people wonder if it is even doable. Purchasing an NB team is no easy feat, and there are numerous obstacles to consider. However, the introduction of accommodating private equity for minority positions creates a window of opportunity. Figuring out which team to buy remains an ongoing process, and $KRAUSE holders can weigh in on this matter. However, the token is not a promise for the ownership of a team. 

Conclusion

These different DAO approaches and concepts highlight the versatility of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. That concept can introduce some exciting prospects beyond traditional voting and governance of protocols. Projects attempt to bring utility to being part of a DAO, whether it is helping to buy an NBA team or fast food place or to affect Treasury diversification.

The big question is how successful these DAOs will be in the coming years. Many opportunities are ripe for the taking, but it remains challenging to coordinate a global community. These eight projects show different approaches can be taken to achieve real-world change.