5 Top DAOs to keep an eye on in 2022
DAOs are the best, the future, a revolution in organization and governance. Ok, but how about a few actual examples?
It’s easy to point to Uniswap, with its whopping 3% market share, its survival of SushiSwap’s vampire attack, its token drop launching the airdrop cargo cult era, and — most importantly — its AMM being the go-to for ERC-20 token liquidity and swaps. We could point to MakerDAO, one of the OGs of the DAO world that recently provided unexpected proof of DAOs working when a narrow vote by MKR holders fired its entire Content group.
These are two of a number of cases where top DAOs grow, govern in the democratic DAO manner, and dominate markets while at it, proving their efficiency and power. Now let’s look at 5 other DAOs finding interesting, innovative applications of DAO principles and which are poised to continue their success in 2022.
*Note: none of this is financial advice nor does the writer hold interest in any of these; this is merely philosophical musings with the focus on potential DAO applications in general.
BitDAO
Yes, the “bit” part is for the crypto exchange, ByBit, which contributes around $1B of its revenue to the DAO — but doesn’t control it. BitDAO did raise a staggering amount of funds, including from the likes of Peter Thiel. This makes it a fascinating experiment of “Will the big/institutional investors dominate or play fair and accept occasional defeats by average Joe token holders?” With its massive and regularly topped-up treasury, BitDAO is basically your friendly neighborhood DeFi VC fund. The jury is still out on how effective their investments will be and how well everybody plays by DAO principles. If it succeeds, this may change the paradigm from trying to get a VC meeting to trying to get enough Discord users to see value and allocate treasury — and that is massive.
Decentraland DAO
In the early days of the United States (and many other countries), only landowners could vote. Decentraland DAO is bringing that back with the major difference of anybody being able to own the virtual Decentraland land: no matter your gender, religion, race, etc. (the beauty of the pseudonymous economy). The more land you own — the more voting power you have. Sure, initially, the power may seem a bit lame (city planning zoning isn’t the most exciting activity). But considering all the major international brands, artists, and celebs extending their business into the metaverse with very real money at stake, being a property owner/voter may end up being both lucrative and exciting.
FriendsWithBenefitsDAO
Ok, first of all, great name! On the serious side, this FWB is an exclusive social club operating on DAO principles. You need to hold their token for various levels of access (Discord access will set you back 75 FWB (about $3,650 at the time of writing). The positioning varies from providing alpha to just having a convenient place for creative and crypto-passionate friends to talk. Regardless, the idea of an exclusive club that anybody can join (for a price) and then get to vote on the rules and decisions in a decentralized, autonomous way is an interesting alternative to such clubs that are restricted to, for example, Harvard graduates, national leaders, or Silicon Valley who-is-whos.
RaidGuild
Imagine Upwork, the biggest freelancer marketplace, giving up control and becoming a DAO. Right, will never happen. But that’s the fate of the dinosaurs when DAO challengers come along. RaidGuild brings together designers and marketers (and maybe more later?) specifically focused on Web3. Instead of having a strict hierarchy and fierce internal competition to drive profit, RaidGuild operates on mutual respect among members and the collective voting power working towards a fair playing field for all members. Is it successful? Too early to tell, but its $6M (and counting) haul is certainly more than a few coins.
Gitcoin
Surprise! Gitcoin doesn’t even claim to be a DAO, yet “do as I do and not as I say.” The foundation created to support interesting but underfunded projects in the blockchain space, each round of Gitcoin grants is a celebration of people coming together to donate to their favorite promising project (or 100). And when Gitcoin surprised donors with a drop of its GTC token, it resulted in a large number of people who altruistically support the growth of the blockchain space now having a financial incentive in the success of the organization built to do good. Will Gitcoin ever become a full-on DAO? Will it in any way change its public good orientation? Let’s wait and see.
Under the radar…
Careful not to promote anything DeXe above, it can’t be omitted entirely. DeXe itself is in the final steps of outlining and publishing its DAO governing principles. Plus, there may be a surprise announcement from another member of our ecosystem next week ;). So definitely keep an eye on our ecosystem while exploring the DAO space.
About DeXe
Dexe.Network is an ecosystem of tools that bring professional trading to DeFi and DeFi to trading with free tools like Wallet Info and Wallet-to-WalletCopying, services such as 111PG and the Kattana Terminal, and more components that complement each other and solve pressing market needs. At the core is a decentralized social trading platform that operates via autonomous smart contracts and includes tools for virtual currency allocation and automatic rebalancing. It eliminates the risks of transferring digital wallet details such as private keys and API or any virtual currency data to a third party. Most importantly, the DeXe Network connects successful traders and followers in a transparent, verifiable way for the benefit of both groups.
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