Welcome to the DAO Times Weekly Newsletter, your DAO compass researched by Kaf and polished by Makoto Takahiro.

Each section provides insights and directions for further exploration. Scan the newsletter, identify topics of interest, and use them as starting points to explore areas aligned with your goals.

Highlight

The most notable observation of the week is that the SushiSwap core team, led by Jared, is manipulating DAO governance to transfer treasury funds to a new entity, "Sushi Labs."

By silently coordinating votes, acquiring loans for temporary voting power, and synchronizing proposals, the team appears to be effectively killing the DAO for financial gain.

Read more:

https://twitter.com/BrutalTrade/status/1776391778112782341

https://twitter.com/BrutalTrade/status/1775591081620439221

Grants & Opportunities 

Rika's 3-month experiment tackling the challenges of integrating new contributors into Arbitrum DAO. They'll establish an integration hub, a dedicated team, and weekly onboarding calls.

Chora Club welcomes you to start your journey as a delegate in DAO governance.

A new governance experiment on Optimism by Token Engineering Academy..

Coinsider is building a DAO for retail investors with no pre-sale or fundraising. They're seeking contributors for design, partnerships, exposure, and DAO operations. 

Decentraland DAO has launched a new grants program with a total budget of $2,425,885 for the next quarter, allocated to different categories like core units and virtual world building.

An opportunity to secure an Ed3DAO Micro-Grant to boost web3 and AI learning events. $50,000 available to empower educators worldwide.

Near Gaming DAO is accepting applications for its May Grants Program. They offer $62,000 in grants to support gaming projects on NEAR Protocol and Aurora platforms.

OPEN Ticketing Ecosystem is launching its DAO builder program and awarding grants to boost its blockchain ticketing platform.

DeepVerse DAO is hosting the MANTRA RWA Hackathon on April 6th and 7th in Jaipur. The hackathon focuses on developing new solutions in RWA tokenization. They offer a cash prize of $5,000 and grants and awards totaling $50,000.

Hyderabad DAO has partnered with HackVerseIND and Dimo_Hack, powered by XDCFoundation. They offer a prize of ₹3,00,000 and grants of up to $100,000, plus internship opportunities.

FoundersHUB DAO invites visionary builders to join the Coinweb Labs Grants Program to revolutionize NFTs on Coinweb.io. 

The OpenCivics Consortium offers grants of over $40,000 for projects promoting collaboration and coordination in civic engagement. The call is open until April 16, 2024.

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Community Voices

SlowMist expressed concerns about AssangeDAO's cryptocurrency activities following a 100 ETH transfer on March 10.

Rune, MakerDAO co-founder, outlines two DAO governance types: simple systems need minimal oversight, while complex ones require data-driven decisions. 

Joseph.eth highlights an oversight in DAO design: underestimating the time spent by certain individuals criticizing those contributing to the DAO's work.

Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of Messari Crypto, suggests that while many aspects of crypto may resemble Ponzi schemes, there are exceptions.

Tim Denning predicts AI companies with no human employees, leveraging blockchain and DAOs for interactions with other AI and robots.

QuickSnap Finance noted that many DAOs lack significant participation in governance votes, raising concerns about the distribution of power.

Gforce07 called out perceived hypocrisy in criticizing Bunjil's past salary from a DAO treasury while supporting a similar high salary proposal for JupiterExchange's DAO workgroup.

Mikko Ohtamaa emphasized the importance of public procurement for DAOs, advocating for competitive bidding, quality assessments, and mid-term contract termination clauses to prevent fund misallocation.

Martin Köppelmann asked which DAO has the best governance, emphasizing factors like frequent proposal acceptance, diverse proposer representation, and significant voter turnout.

Jon Hillis suggested that if one thinks DAO governance is flawed, they should consider the governance of the United States.

Federico Ast contrasted epistocracy with democracy in DAO governance.

Tyler Reynolds prefers the co-op model for governance in most protocols, emphasizing user control, particularly for depositors in lending protocols, over token holders.

Latest Readings

Miles Jennings and David Kerr, focus on Wyoming's recent law approving recognizing DAOs as legal entities, providing protections and promoting their growth.

Martin Schmidt warns about the risk of neo-imperialism in the crypto space due to Wyoming's new legal entities for DAOs, known as DUNAs. Schmidt questions the idea of establishing legal entities that could undermine decentralization and limit jurisdictional diversity in the DAO industry.

Simone Fantaccini, Laura Grassi, and Andrea Rampoldi, highlight how VitaDAO uses DAOs to finance longevity research. It shows the potential of collaborative and transparent systems in research funding but also points out challenges like coordination, regulation, and skepticism.

John Palmer explores the limitations of current DAOs and proposes pushing them to new heights. He advocates for reimagining DAOs to focus on their strengths, like enabling broad progress and permissionless participation, rather than replicating traditional structures.

Samuel Idongesit Udoema, analyzes how DAOs are transforming work in Web3. 

0xlght explores how ERC20 tokens can simplify and strengthen DAOs. It highlights the Higher project as an example of how ERC20 tokens can facilitate a decentralized and autonomous organization.

Rise Works explores effective governance and compliance principles for DAOs. 

The Financial Sense article explores how DAOs are causing an "institutional revolution," highlighting the evolution of the Internet to Web 3.0 and Bitcoin's role as the first successful example of a DAO.

This article examines MakerDAO's potential engagement with Ethena's sUSDe-backed loans, discussing financial risks and comparisons between different investment approaches.

Proposals Deserving Attention

A recent proposal by Aave DAO to set the loan-to-value ratio for MakerDAO's DAI stablecoin at 0% raised concerns about potential "walled gardens" in DeFi, while other recent moves also raised questions about loyalty and segmentation in the DeFi space.

MakerDAO proposed significant changes to parameters for implementing Spark's DAI liquidity in Morpho Blue. The proposal aimed to increase the debt ceiling of the Direct Deposit Module to 1 billion DAI, with an initial allocation of 600 million DAI.

GnosisDAO is conducting important votes, including approving new additions and service extensions, as well as discussing investments and reward programs.

Timeworx is participating in the Grant DAO Quadratic Funding Round organized by DoraHacks in collaboration with Injective.

Safe Governance is conducting votes on Snapshot for three proposals addressing the transferability of SAFE tokens, use cases of the SAFE token, and management of the SafeDAO treasury. The vote ends on April 15th.

Podcasts & Panels

X space shared by Morfyus regarding the intersection of DAOs and the evolving labor economy in the Web3 space. 

Tally's post discussing a proposal aimed at strengthening governance within Arbitrum DAO, covering improvements to the proposal process, governor contract updates, and highlighting delegate contributions.

An episode where the debate over investing in Squiggles versus purchasing 'elite' CryptoPunks is explored. 

Andrei Taranu, the Decentralist Product Manager at Homebase, provided insights into the role of DAOs in governance and discusses successful examples across different sectors. 

Other DAO News

ApeCoin shared their report for Q4 2023, showing their finances, where money came from and went, grant spending, and plans for more reports in Q1 2024.

Tally's latest update talks about crosschain governance with Wormhole, partnering with Hedgey Finance, offering free voting for ENS DAO, and growing in DAO Arbitrum.

Vana launched a DAO where users can control and sell their Reddit data, getting token rewards for sharing data, creating AI models, and providing computing power.

Galeon got €500,000 for medical research on reusing generic drugs. This money will fund studies to validate potential therapies using these drugs, chosen by experts.

Minswap Labs says 2.2 million ADA has been deposited in their early launch, with only 600,000 left.

Landshare announced that $LAND will be available on Mexc, along with a report on crosschain development, integration of DSSwap, and Landshare's ambassador program.

CoW Protocol records a record monthly volume of $3.42B, generating a surplus of $23.4M and making significant advancements in fees.

DappRadar DAO is activating its core and establishing a progressive decentralization workflow to deepen the community's role in DappRadar's mission and advance key capabilities.

Wormhole's W token will first launch on Solana and then expand to other EVM chains using Native Token Transfers, enabling token holders to participate in DAO governance through the multichain system.

SuperVerseDAO and AlturaNFT's collaboration promises to simplify game development with easy-to-use tools and marketplace solutions, improving distribution and cohesion across gaming titles.

College DAO teams up with EDCON2024 in Tokyo, Japan, from July 26th-30th, providing community benefits and special codes for students and developers to explore the future of blockchain and meet Web3 creators.

Core DAO's Core Ignition moves into a new phase, now open to all interested participants, offering opportunities to join the BTCfi revolution by connecting assets to Core Chain.

Cerebrum DAO announced the public sale of NEURON Token, its governance and utility token

The $CLARITY Taste Test has concluded with 1.48M ADA committed, marking an exciting start for Clarity DAO. 

Uniswap Labs celebrated a significant achievement, surpassing $2 trillion in total protocol volume. They also announced their launch on Blast.

Stacking DAO's Total Value Locked exceeds $120 million, contributing to the decentralization of Stacks by delegating deposited STX to Signers in V2, which improves network health. 

SPACE ID Protocol recently completed a $ID buyback and DAO treasury funding, utilizing approximately $835,000 in platform revenue. Additionally, SPACE ID announced collaborations with Micro3 for an upcoming event and Tako Protocol for a summit. 

Octavia aims to establish a significant presence in Web3 and AI, focusing on three revenue streams: venture investments, launchpad raises, and moderation tool revenue.

dYdX is moving part of its operations to the Cayman Islands to establish a legal entity. This step aims to offer legal protection to contributors amidst increasing regulatory scrutiny on DeFi protocols.

DeXe Protocol's DAO community voted to replenish its Treasury, improving transparency and governance. 

Reform DAO hints at significant developments in the near future, suggesting major progress in the coming months.

Nexera's DAO approved a proposal with 96% support, leading to weekly marketing updates. Goals include enhancing community growth and the utility of the $NXRA token. 

Jupiter's Core Working Group (CWG) budget proposal has been approved with 75% in favor, marking the CWG as the first Jupiter Working Group. The CWG plans to address community feedback by improving the voting process and ensuring accountability.

ApeDAO was excited to announce receiving a $2 million investment from the newly formed IOTA grants program. They promised to use the funds responsibly and organize top-tier ape parties.

YakDAO's $YAKS token has been officially launched.

infraX has announced a partnership with Rivus to offer a liquid staking solution using rsTokens, allowing users to earn staking rewards while staying on native DeFi networks like Ethereum.

The digital collective NEAR (NDC) highlighted the achievements of its OPS team in February and March, with a total funding of $446,295, mainly focused on grassroots projects.

KulaDAO partnered with Fireblocks to enhance the security and accessibility of Kula tokens.

ArbitrumDAO is currently electing 6 new Security Council members from 44 candidates, with two candidates from Polygon Labs excluded. This process follows the Constitution's compliance standards, involving candidate submission, voting, compliance checks, and final member selection every six months to ensure alignment with DAO values.

We need your help to keep this newsletter alive. If you find value in our content, please consider a small donation to support our work to ERC20 address: 0x5Fa20deBF99dA36a7524BF1F639579941571ACd0

See you next Monday!