Weekly newsletter of DAO highlights | Issue #42

Weekly newsletter of DAO highlights | Issue #42

Hey DAO Enthusiasts, welcome to the new DAO Times Newsletter!

DAO Cartographer Kaf has compiled the latest grants, funding opportunities, community insights, and latest readings from the decentralized world.

Grants & Opportunities

  • Mode AiFi Accelerator offers up to $10M in seed funding and $100k in prizes for AI x DeFi startups.
  • Soneium, Sony's Layer 2 blockchain solution, has launched Soneium Spark, an incubator program offering mentorship, advanced tools, and market connections. 
  • ApeCoin DAO is gearing up for Thank APE's Season 7, rewarding valuable contributions with millions of $APE.
  • ETHGlobal Singapore's prize pool has reached $350,000, with final days to apply. Partners like AirDAO, 1inch, and Mina Protocol are each offering $20,000 in prizes for the hackathon.
  • Ethernity offers grants from $15,000 to $150,000 for projects in Games, Blockchain Infrastructure, DeFi, and more, with a total pool of $10 million.
  • Chainlink's first Certification event in Singapore offers 100 developers the chance to earn an official Blockchain Certification, in partnership with CollegeDAO.
  • ENS DAO has allocated ~$45K to grantees expected to meet milestones by year-end. Next Small Grants round is planned for month-end, with details on Questbook.
  • Octant's funding round is live with 35 projects competing for a 10 ETH matching pool.

Voices of the Community

  • PaperImperium argues that many DAOs are nearly broken.
  • Dr. Nick urges trust in only DAO-controlled or fully decentralized projects from day one.
  • Andrew N. Green resigned from the Arbitrum DAO's GCP Council, citing misalignment with the project's pace and vision.
  • Squiggly Hair Shanks criticizes DAOs, calling them mismanaged and prone to founders cashing out, leading to drained treasuries.
  • Jesse Walden proposes DAOs centered around AI, with humans at the edges, like BottoDAO.
  • Matt says rollups have revitalized DAO governance.
  • Niko believes DAOs will prove that collective action can surpass traditional philanthropy.
  • C-node argues DAOs are a regression from cypherpunk ideals.
  • TapTools questions the current relevance of DAOs.
  • Josh Stark argues that grants aren't always the right funding model and can sometimes harm projects.
  • Karel Vuong defends Treasure DAO's move to zkSync, stating it's about long-term vision and mass adoption, not grants.

Latest Readings

  • Recent token theft at Compound DAO exposes flaws in governance voting. Andrés Fábrega, Amy Zhao, and Ari Juels suggest improvements
  • ZKsync has announced on their blog the launch of their new governance system on mainnet, which is now fully decentralized and controlled by the community.
  • Former Apecoin DAO member Captain Trippy shared a 16-part thread on $APE, revealing why he believes the coin’s best days are ahead.
  • IDC forecasts that by 2028, decentralized technologies like DAOs and blockchain will become central to industry ecosystems
  • DeXe Protocol highlighted a deep dive on how AI can help DAOs scale and achieve their missions.
  • Nath C compared Arbitrum DAO's governance with traditional models.
  • Push DAO Marketing Lead draws parallels between roles in an ant colony—such as the queen, workers, and soldiers—and roles in DAOs, connecting their activities and communication methods.

Read more

Anaxi Labs and Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Unveil a Breakthrough Proof System

Anaxi Labs and Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Unveil a Breakthrough Proof System

Pittsburgh, United states, December 6th, 2024, Chainwire Anaxi Labs, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab, the university’s cybersecurity and privacy institute, is announcing a compiler framework for cryptography that resolves an impasse – building scalable applications with Zero-Knowledge require fundamental trade-offs. The elusive trifecta of scalable, cryptographically-secured and

By Makoto Takahiro