BitDAO — a new decentralized autonomous organization that aims to “promote and propel the mass adoption of open finance and [the] decentralized tokenized economy” — announced today the completion of a US$230 million private sale led by Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Dragonfly Capital, according to a statement. With the growth of decentralized finance to more than US$60 billion in total value locked, DAOs have emerged as the primary governance mechanism overseeing DeFi’s growth.
Fast Facts:
- UK billionaire Alan Howard, Jump Capital, Spartan Group, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of Synthetix are among more than 20 participants in BitDAO. As an initial proponent of BitDAO, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has pledged recurring contributions of 2.5 basis points of its futures contracts trading volume to the BitDAO treasury, which is expected to amount to more than US$1 billion annually, the statement said.
- BitDAO intends to focus on providing funding through grants and token swaps, R&D and liquidity to drive DeFi’s growth. According to the statement, the BitDAO treasury, with recurring contributions, will be one of the largest pools of assets controlled by a DAO. The assets can be used to provide liquidity to partners and finance new protocols, such as decentralized exchanges, lending and synthetics protocols.
- BitDAO will initially be built on Ethereum, but will be designed to be blockchain-agnostic.
- DAOs are governing entities that oversee the allocation of resources, and their members typically use tokens to vote on proposals. DAOs currently have more than US$500 million of assets under management, according to DeepDAO.
- DAOs are emerging as a popular way to manage tokenized assets and facilitate transparent governance within decentralized entities. Many major DeFi applications, such as Uniswap, Aave and MakerDAO, are governed by DAOs, which provide a mechanism for protocol development and treasury management through self-executing smart contracts on the blockchain.
