Welcome back for issue 65 of the Tally Newsletter, a publication focused on defi and DAO governance. We’ll keep you updated on key proposals, procedural changes, newly launched voting systems, shifting power dynamics, and anything else you need to know to be an informed citizen.
This week we cover UkraineDAO’s fundraising efforts, Fei’s new Tribe Launch product, plus brief updates from the DAO ecosystem!
UkraineDAO Organizes Crowdfunding Campaign
TL;DR: PleasrDAO and PussyRiot have launched a crypto fundraising effort to support people impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Crypto markets have seen significant volatility in the past week as geopolitical tensions have steadily increased. With yesterday’s invasion of Ukraine, these tensions have broken into the open and are causing broad disruption and danger to Ukrainian residents.
Following in the footsteps of the hugely popular ConstitutionDAO project last year and more recent FreeRossDAO (focused on seeking clemency for Silk Road darknet market creator Ross Ulbricht), a collection of web3 power users have banded together to direct DAO coordination and crypto funding towards real world impacts on the Ukraine conflict.
While the democratic government in exile of Myanmar previously made the headlines for recognizing Tether USDT as an official currency, responses to Ukraine invasion represent the first case of directly using web3 tools such as DAOs and NFTs in a conflict setting. This has huge potential for rapidly gathering and deploying resources, but will likely draw scrutiny from regulators fearful of terrorist financing and sanctions violations. There’s also risk of funds being diverted or even entirely fictitious crowdfunding schemes.
While the efficacy and exact beneficiaries of the UkraineDAO project remain to be determined, this effort will likely drive increasing interest in web3 coordination mechanisms. And the permissionless nature of crypto networks means that these tools can be utilized across the spectrum, including by less widely accepted causes.
Tribe Unveils Integrated DAO Launch Product
TL;DR: Tribe launch will offer DAOs immediate access to a range of liquidity and borrowing mechanisms.
Among all of the presentations at last week’s ETHDenver conference, Fei Protocol founder Joey Santoro’s talk stands out for the huge potential impact on the DAO ecosystem. He unveiled a new launch product, Tribe Launch, that will allow for simple DAO creation and immediately link the organization and governance token to a range of financial services provided by the Tribe DAO.
The core of the product is a pre-vetted token creation factory, which allows Fei Protocol to have assurances about code quality, token supply, distribution, and other key factors. With these details already addressed by default, this allows Fei to provide access to capital in a semi-permissionless fashion. For example, projects can launch with a Balancer liquidity bootstrapping pool and initial FEI stablecoin liquidity provided by the Tribe DAO. Further assets can also be rented with Fei’s partnership with Ondo Finance. Then once a substantial liquidity position has been secured, Tribe can offer a credit line of FEI tokens directly to the project’s pool on Rari Capital or through the Turbo lending system.
Tribe’s approach follows from the learnings of the Curve wars and more recently Andre Cronje’s Solidly project; DAOs themselves are the most important clients of stablecoin and liquidity protocols, rather than token holders or individual users. Creating a DAO through Tribe Launch can drastically reduce the friction involved in accessing the key financial services necessary to raise capital and build a successful network.
With several months before the product goes live, there are still many unanswered questions on implementation. On the liquidity and credit side, Fei Protocol will need to take care to defend against various forms of manipulation attacks and rug pulls, and it’s possible that this could require a tradeoff of less sovereignty from client DAOs. As an example, it might not be possible to change supply schedules or other aspects of token economics without Fei Protocol’s consent.
There’s also a question of what governance mechanisms will be supported by Tribe Launch. While snapshot polling or other off chain vote mechanisms can be set up easily for any Ethereum asset, on-chain governance mechanisms typically require key functions to be deployed within the DAOs token contract. And beyond low level contract infrastructure, we may also see growing demand for scalable DAO tooling and service providers (interfaces, payroll and HR systems, various SaaS and cloud services, etc) as barriers to DAO creation continue to fall and draw in a cohort of less experienced operators. Despite the clear challenges, Tribe Launch has a unique and attractive value proposition for the next cohort of decentralized organizations.
In Brief:
Tally News
Thanks to everyone who met with us or stopped by our booth at ETHDenver! We look forward to seeing you at the next community conference!
You can now launch your own NFT DAO with immediate integration to Tally’s governance app! Check it out at dao.new
Ethereum Ecosystem
Data analytics service Flipside Crypto joins the MakerDAO delegate cohort:
Paladin governance platform prepares for token launch and enabling transferability:
Core team behind Barnbridge tranching protocol leaves the project:
GCs of Blockchain Association and DYDX share thoughts on crypto legal landscape:
Compound grants program renewal faces organizational challenges
Aave’s experimental arm Newt launches platform for tokenizing contributor time:
Cosmos Ecosystem
Evmos, the first Cosmos chain with EVM support, planning for launch next week:
Juno Network prepares for several DAO launches, most notably the Junoswap DEX:
Binance’s Cosmos validator is ejected from active set and “jailed”, demonstrating risk of staking with an exchange validator:
Other Ecos
Arweave DAO platform community.xyz gets performance upgrades:
Thanks for joining us for Tally Newsletter issue 65. Be sure to check out the Tally governance app and join us on Discord for the latest updates!
Anything we missed? New developments or protocols you’d like to see covered? Drop us a line at newsletter@withtally.com
Best,
Nate, Tally