All About DAO (Part II): DAO as Investment Vehicles
DAOs are taking over — one even came close to buying the original United States Constitution.
Last time, we broke down what exactly Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are, AKA DAOs. In this piece, we’re going to take you further on the journey of understanding the concept of DAOs and all the different varieties there are.
These days, it feels like you can’t turn around without running into one. According the Headline Asia research, there are about 240 active DAOs all around the world, a 100% increase from 2020. In this article, we are going to be focusing on the DAOs that are run as investment vehicles.
Advantages of a DAO
DAOs are more efficient when it comes to pooling assets, and they offer a number of advantages when making investments as a group.
One of the most important benefits that a DAO offers is that the amount, return, and status of each investment is more transparent since investors no longer have to rely on fund managers to report the information. Rather, they can vote for each one and take a look at the blockchain later.
Another pro is that most partnerships and funds cannot be listed on public markets, so shares of a fund aren’t easily transferred. In contrast, DAO tokens can be listed on exchanges and transferred easily.
Investment Target and Process
Investment targets could really be anything, from tokens of crypto projects, equity of companies to NFTs to the market-making type of investments. In November 2021, one crypto group dubbed ConstitutionDAO even made a bid for the original copy of the United States Constitution.
Ideally, anyone who holds a governance token of the DAO can propose and vote on an investment idea. In practice, these kinds of DAOs usually start with a group of people who hold the majority of the governance tokens, so they can execute and make decision swiftly. After the DAO has built some investment track records, it releases more of its token to the public.
To increase the voting rate, some DAOs offer token rewards for voting. Some take a step further, rewarding a “Yes” vote on an outperforming investment and a “No” vote on an underperforming investment.
Active DAOs That Are Investment Vehicles
- BitDAO (Number of members: 14,526; Funding raised: $2.6B) : One of the initiative’s primary aims is to attract developer talent via token swaps and co-development efforts. The token swaps will enable the BitDAO treasury to accumulate a collection of the top crypto project tokens.
- dHedge (Number of members: 8,205; Funding raised: $534M): A project that focuses on non-custodial mimetic trading for synthetic assets on Ethereum.
- The LAO (Number of members: 99; Funding raised: $64M): Its co-founder Aaron Wright is the founder of OpenLaw and a main contributor to The Wyoming DAO Bill.
- MetaCartel (Number of members: 244,522; Funding raised: $78M): An community that was established in 2018 and was launched as a DAO on Ethereum in 2019.
- DAOSquare (Number of members: 55; Funding raised: N/A): A Web3 incubator that helps startups with token economy solutions, technology innovation, and community operations.
- Stacker (Number of members: 432; Funding raised: $3M): A community-run protocol initiating decentralized funds, accelerating portfolio investments through an involved community, and providing checks and balances to fund management.
- AladdinDAO (Number of members: N/A; Funding raised: $68M): A decentralized network to shift crypto investments from venture capitalists to the wisdom of crowds through collective value discovery. The problem AladdinDAO solves is to battle information asymmetry and help retail investors filter the signal from the noise.
- Neptune DAO (Number of members: 75; Funding raised: $42M): The first DAO to focus on Liquidity management. It aims to provide liquidity and support to DeFi/NFT and other protocols.
- Jenny DAO (Number of members: 24; Funding raised: $9M+): The first Metaverse DAO to be built on Unicly. It will build one of the best 1-of-1, collectively owned NFT collections in the world.
- PleasrDAO (Number of members: 69; Funding raised: N/A): A decentralized autonomous organization that rapidly organized on Twitter in order to purchase pplpleasr’s genesis NFT, whose proceeds benefit Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, among other minority groups.
- Flamingo DAO (Number of members: 73; Funding raised: $33M): An NFT-focused DAO that aims to explore emerging investment opportunities for own-able, blockchain-based assets.
- MEMEX (Number of members: N/A; Funding raised: N/A): A community started as a joke by the Product Head at Consensys and now working on launching a DAO on Fantom.
- Whale DAO (Number of members: N/A; Funding raised: N/A): Holds some of the rarest and valuable NFTs across blockchain gaming, digital art, virtual real estate, and other highly-coveted digital collectibles.