Weekly newsletter of DAO highlights | Issue #29
From the latest happenings within DAO communities to the hottest DeFi news, we've compiled a list of some of the top stories in the DAO and DeFi space over the past week.
DAO Stats
As of July 3, 2023, there was a total of 12,730 decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Data on DeepDAO reveals that these organizations collectively held $21.5 billion in their treasuries, with approximately $18.3 billion being liquid.
Although the value of the treasury assets surged by $1.3 billion over the past week, it is still down by $334.5 million on a monthly timeline. Meanwhile, Arbitrum and BitDAO remain the two largest decentralized organizations in terms of treasury size, holding $4.1 billion and $3.5 billion worth of assets, respectively.
Major DAO highlights
CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee to discuss DAOs in an upcoming meeting
Following its recent “sweeping victory” against Ooki DAO, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has revealed that it will be discussing issues such as DeFi and DAOs in an upcoming meeting. An advisory body on technology issues within the Commission will be championing the discussion scheduled to hold on July 18 at its Washington D.C. headquarters. Confirming the plans, CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, the committee’s sponsor, said:
Decentralized finance (DeFi) models such as decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the Commission’s recent Ooki DAO case will be discussed, in addition to other DeFi issues.
ApeCoin DAO welcomes new members to leadership boards
ApeCoin DAO has elected new members to fill the vacant seats in its Special Council and Governance Working Group.
Pseudonymous ApeCoin DAO community manager Waabam and Bored Ape holder CaptainTrippy will be joining the Special Council to "administer DAO proposals and serve the vision of the community.” The pair are now occupying seats formerly held by Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, joining existing Special Council members Bored Ape G, Gerry, and Vera Li.
Similarly, All City BAYC and tiger is fine received the highest number of votes for the Governance Working Group Steward elections. The term of all the new officials began on July 1, 2023, and will last for one year.
Rari DAO to launch a delegate launchpad program
Members of Rari DAO have ratified a proposal seeking to debut a delegate launchpad program, an initiative designed to “attract new delegates and boost DAO participation.” The Rari Foundation will delegate a fixed amount of veRARI for a fixed amount of time as part of the program.
Decentralization News
DeFi protocols lose over $200M in Q2
According to a recently released report from Web3 portfolio app De.Fi, over $208.5 million was lost in DeFi hacks and scams in the second quarter of 2023. These Q2 incidents represent an “almost 7 times” year-over-year, with 117 incidents within the period. Comparatively, there were only 17 incidents in the same quarter of 2022. The five largest hacks of Q2 were against Atomic Wallet, Fintoch, MEV-Boost, Bitrue, and GDAC, collectively accounting for over 45% of the total losses in the second quarter.
Arbitrum-based Chibi Finance rug pulls
Over the past week, news broke that Chibi Finance had left investors hanging after carting away more than $1 million worth of various crypto assets. The team behind the Arbitrum-based project deployed a malicious contract that allowed them to steal user funds from the protocol’s smart contracts.
Regulators come hard on Kraken, requests for user info
In what could be best described as yet another blow for the crypto industry and proponents of decentralization, a federal court has ordered Kraken crypto exchange to provide the names, physical addresses, and social security numbers of its users to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The exchange will be required to supply full documentation for any user that bought, sold, or traded at least $20,000 worth of cryptocurrency between 2016 and 2020.
South Korea passes inaugural crypto bill to protect investors
South Korean crypto investors will finally have some respite following the government’s decision to approve its first standalone digital-asset bill to boost investor protection. Last Friday, the Parliament passed the Virtual Asset User Protection legislation, which integrates 19 crypto-related bills. Moving forward, authorities can impose penalties and liability for damages caused by unfair crypto trading practices.
DAO governance updates
Completed
- Gitcoin DAO has approved a proposal to withdraw and partially leverage the USDC balance in its treasury. The DAO will transfer 3M USDC from the treasury into the CSDO multisig to support workstream budgets.
- Bancor DAO has set the funding limit on several pools to zero as part of the process to sunset Bancor V3.
- Amid a growing concern to stay compliant, BarnBridge DAO will be retaining the services of Park and Dibadj LLP as legal counsel.
- Aave DAO is set to reimburse a number of recognized delegates who voted on-chain on Aave. Meanwhile, the DAO will channel 20% of GHO revenue to Aave Safety Incentives.
Active voting rounds
- A pool is currently ongoing in Uniswap DAO on how to distribute its ARB allocation.
- BitDAO, one of the largest DAOs by treasury size, is looking to approve the non-conversion of 3 billion BIT tokens currently held in the Mantle Treasury in hopes of optimizing MNT supply.
- An ongoing governance process may lead to the creation of a new Steward position called the "Network Steward" within VitaDAO. The Stewards will focus on “evaluating longevity jurisdictions, fundraising, and strategic contributor relations.”
- Bancor DAO is still voting to set the funding limit on some other pools to zero in a bid to sunset V3.
Upcoming votes
- Bancor DAO will soon begin voting on the cancellation of DAPP BNT and ACRE BNT rewards
- Voting on a proposal to implement the locked VSP (esVSP) token will commence on July 5.
