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This article was origin4ally published on Medium on October 20th, 2022. It has been republished here with minor updates for clarity.
The Who, The What, and The Why
You’ve heard of Solana, right? You know, this place:
This article was origin4ally published on Medium on October 20th, 2022. It has been republished here with minor updates for clarity.
The Who, The What, and The Why
You’ve heard of Solana, right? You know, this place:
The Solana ecosystem can at times feel like the Wild West. It’s just a little crazy and things tend to break (like, a lot). It’s also looked down upon by some in the broader web3 space. But regardless of your feelings on this corner of web3, there are some interesting DAOs building on this particular blockchain!
This overview will take you deep into the world of Solana DAOs. We’ll chat about the major communities–who they are, what they’re up to, and why they’re important
The first section will be a dive into the chaos that is NFT DAOs, as Solana has become one of the leading blockchains for NFTs (at least in terms of # of transactions over the last 30 days). The low transaction costs seemingly lead many beginners to start their NFT journey on Solana, and degeneracy is abundant. The transaction numbers are high, the prices are low, and everyone is trying to make a quick buck.
The second section will dive deep into two DeFi DAOs building on Solana. These DAOs are heavily focused on impacting and supporting the greater Solana ecosystem–and for good reason, as their long-term outlook depends on Solana’s sustainability!
Now, without further ado, let’s jump right in!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t start this article with the largest Solana NFT project in the world by floor market cap–and it’s not even close. As of writing this article, DeGods had a floor market cap of $94.15 Million. That market cap is >3x larger than the next largest collection and larger than the next 5 collections combined.
The DAO is funded via creator royalties on secondary sales. 6.66% of every secondary sale goes to the DeDAO treasury. DeGods currently has 1.1M SOL of volume on Magic Eden, meaning that based on some paper math DAO treasury has accumulated somewhere in the realm of 73k SOL since its launch in November of 2021.
But what does it do with those funds? Well, they bought a bunch of NFTs.
pical web3 fashion, DeDAO bought the 25 NFTs (at $25k a pop) that gave them the ownership rights necessary to fully own and run the team. A cool $625,000 purchase for a DAO–not bad at all.
DeDAO members also earn $DUST every day by staking their NFTs. This $DUST can be used to purchase raffle tickets, merchandise, and even mint more NFTs produced by the DeGods team.
On top of all of this, the team behind DeGods is also launching a new NFT project, y00ts, and each DeGods holder will have the opportunity to mint a y00ts NFT.
Oh, and the team behind DeGods just announced that their tech spinoff, Dust Labs, just raised $7M to build out the $DUST ecosystem.
DeDAO is one of the most exclusive and exciting DAOs in the world, and to join, it’ll cost you a cool 306 SOL, so get ready to break out the checkbook! (;
While much of DeDAO may be compelling to readers, where DeDAO seems to fall short is in the decentralization department. In many ways, it appears that DeDAO is a DAO in name only… While the “DAO” has held 5 votes, the last DAO vote appears to have been held on January 3, 2021, via Squads, the on-chain governance platform for Solana DAOs. Only 15 votes were counted for this proposal. It appears that DeGods leadership grew tired of basic DAO governance strategies (Exhibit A & Exhibit B). Instead, the DeDAO is now led by the following groups:
“1) The DAO Leads — The divine council of DeDAO and Community Leaders of DeGods
2) The Divine Council — Gods who are voted in by members of DeDAO. They approve proposals from the community and team before allowing the members to vote on it.
3) DeAlpha Team — A team of Alpha Gods who are abreast of the markets and have a proven track record of understanding and sharing consistently good Alpha in DeDAO.”
The logical next NFT DAO to cover is the one with the second largest Solana NFT floor market cap–MonkeDAO. While you may think that a collection with less than 1/3 the market cap of DeGods isn’t nearly as important, I’m here to tell you that MonkeDAO is not monkeying around.
MonkeDAO’s big claim to fame is being Solana’s first community-owned and operated NFT DAO, but being first doesn’t actually make you good. It just makes you early.
Fortunately for us all, MonkeDAO wasn’t just early, they’re also remarkably excellent.
MonkeDAO is a true trailblazer and pioneer in the web3 space. They refuse to just be a group of degens looking to pump the floor. Instead, they’ve become a true force for good in the space, and to their community members.
On July 18, 2022, a cohort of MonkeDAO community members traveled to the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. and met with regulators and lobbyists about DAOs and NFT communities. Their stated primary goal was to “educate potential regulators on different use cases for NFTs and DAOs. It was important that we thoroughly explained why NFTs should be separate from cryptocurrency and avoid similar regulatory action.”
A fi chat was held via Twitter Spaces on July 22, 2022, and some of the group’s participants relayed stories and experiences from the trip. The group met with the Department of Commerce, the House Energy & Commerce Staff, and the House Staff and Blockchain Association. While it seems that those that the MonkeDAO group chatted with definitely had their concerns and preconceived notions (like how to compare NFT communities and DAOs to corporations), the speakers noted how interested their audiences were in actually learning about and understanding the topics presented. I’d recommend listening to the entire chat if you have some spare time!
Beyond their important diplomatic work (Isn’t it hilarious that a community called “MonkeDAO” was asked to speak to the leaders of the United States of America?!?!), they’ve also done some really cool things, like purchasing the intellectual property surrounding the NFT collection on which the membership into their DAO is based, Solana Monkey Business, launched a MonkeDAO Validator and staking pool, and celebrated their 1st Birthday! You can keep up to date with all of the MonkeDAO goings on via their newsletter, Banana Split!
Meanwhile, to keep up to date with all things governance, you’ll need to be a MonkeDAO member, as the governance process appears to happen entirely within Discord. MonkeDAO members are able to create proposals that go through a 3-step process. First, they go up for community discussion in the #vote-proposals channel. After 5 days, the proposal will pass if it has 51% favorable votes and at least 3% of the DAO supporting it. Passing proposals then go to “Governance Review” by the Governance team and/or Monke Board. The Monke Board is comprised of 16 DAO members who are voted on by the DAO every 3 months. The purpose of this review is to ensure that bad faith actors don’t push proposals through and that passed proposals are actually feasible. Finally, proposals that make it through the first 2 steps will require a community vote, which happens on-chain via a separate Realms account or via their own on-chain voting tool which they built earlier this year. Each proposal exists within 1 of 7 proposal categories, each of which has a different minimum vote duration, minimum quorum, and minimum passing vote. More information on governance can be found in the MonkeDAO Gitbook.
I tried to cover the most relevant NFT DAOs, but relevance is a relatively arbitrary metric, so here’s a list of 6 other Solana NFT DAOs that you might want to consider researching a bit more!
With a treasury of $210 MILLION, Mango DAO is the largest Solana DAO (by treasury) and the community behind the popular DeFi tool, Mango Markets. Mango Markets is an open-source platform that “provides a single venue to lend, borrow, swap, and leverage-trade crypto assets through a powerful risk engine.”
With $192.6M in deposits, and $88.8M in borrowed funds (as of Monday, October 10th at 9 pm) Mango Markets is a highly used and respected player in the ecosystem. And as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.
Fortunately for the greater Solana ecosystem, Mango DAO seems to be a conscientious steward of said responsibility.
Holders of the $MNGO governance token comprise Mango DAO and are tasked with approving changes to the Mango Markets code. They also have the responsibility of voting on proposals and initiatives regarding how to use DAO funds.
One recent proposal displays both their commitment to the Solana Ecosystem and their concern about its sustainability. The DAO elected to fund a new company with $600,000 to employ engineers to focus on improving Solana so that Mango runs better. The proposal passed with flying colors and will provide Mango DAO with the opportunity to impact likely every other DAO on this list, should its new team of engineers meaningfully impact the reliability of Solana.
If you’re interested in participating in Mango DAO governance, you’re in luck. Their governance structure is significantly more straightforward than either of the NFT DAOs’, in fact, they’ll walk you through EXACTLY how to vote here. The TL;DR of it all is that they vote on-chain via Realms. Token-holder must deposit their $MNGO tokens to use them for governance, and each token grants its holder one vote. Successful votes require a quorum of 100 million “yes” votes, and the “yes” votes must outweigh the “no” votes.
The second largest Solana DAO treasury belongs to UXD Protocol, the DAO behind “the first fully-decentralized, capital-efficient stablecoin.” In January 2022, the project launched on Mainnet, allegedly solving “the stablecoin trilemma.” $UXD is designed to be (1) decentralized, (2) stable, and (3) capital efficient.
While being a member of a DAO often simply means voting on governance proposals and hoping that the token goes to the moon, holding the UXD Protocol’s governance token $UXP, comes with an additional set of responsibilities and benefits. $UXP tokens act as the final defense in support of the $UXD stablecoin. Should its insurance fund be depleted, $UXP tokens will be the last reserve to back it. However, this added risk does come with some additional upside! Should things go exceedingly well, UXP token holders can vote to distribute cash flow to themselves. Seemingly, joining UXD Protocol provides you an opportunity to take a little more risk, for a little more reward! Which is definitely something that may appeal to some of you degens.
However, for the time being, it appears that generally there won’t be much for $UXP holders to vote on. According to Kento, the founder of UXD Protocol, “The current voting scheme is, basically most decisions are made by team and for proposals that we think the community should decide, only the community votes and team refrains from voting. (Like the recent burn proposal.)” But when $UXP holders do get the chance to vote, it occurs at governance.uxd.fi. The Community currently holds 38.6% of the 7 billion $UXP tokens. This was recently reduced to 38.6% from 57% via a recent token burn.
I did find one particularly weird aspect of UXD Protocol that feels relevant to this article: A huge selling point of this whole project is that “Anyone can always mint 1 UXD for 1 USD.” However, if you are a resident of the United States, you actually cannot do this! This is because, “UXD PROTOCOL’S APPLICATION IS NOT AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS IN RESTRICTED JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES.”
So, if you’d like to get involved with UXD Protocol, you’ll have to get a little creative to get started! But if you are able to get your hands on some $UXP token
We’ve only touched the tip of the Solana DeFi iceberg here. There are so many DAOs that we could’ve covered, but time is not endless and we must pick and choose where we focus our energy.
If you’re feeling excited about Solana DAOs, here are some other DAOs I’d check out!
Metaplex — technically not a DAO (yet), but they likely will be soon.
I hope that you’re now feeling excited to go set up your Phantom wallet, buy some SOL, and start embracing your inner Solana degen by buying a DeGod. Or maybe just voting on some “exciting” DeFi DAO governance proposals…
At the very least, I hope that you feel like you’ve learned something over the last 5–10 minutes! Best of luck on your Solana journey!!
The Solana ecosystem can at times feel like the Wild West. It’s just a little crazy and things tend to break (like, a lot). It’s also looked down upon by some in the broader web3 space. But regardless of your feelings on this corner of web3, there are some interesting DAOs building on this particular blockchain!
This overview will take you deep into the world of Solana DAOs. We’ll chat about the major communities–who they are, what they’re up to, and why they’re important
The first section will be a dive into the chaos that is NFT DAOs, as Solana has become one of the leading blockchains for NFTs (at least in terms of # of transactions over the last 30 days). The low transaction costs seemingly lead many beginners to start their NFT journey on Solana, and degeneracy is abundant. The transaction numbers are high, the prices are low, and everyone is trying to make a quick buck.
The second section will dive deep into two DeFi DAOs building on Solana. These DAOs are heavily focused on impacting and supporting the greater Solana ecosystem–and for good reason, as their long-term outlook depends on Solana’s sustainability!
Now, without further ado, let’s jump right in!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t start this article with the largest Solana NFT project in the world by floor market cap–and it’s not even close. As of writing this article, DeGods had a floor market cap of $94.15 Million. That market cap is >3x larger than the next largest collection and larger than the next 5 collections combined.
The DAO is funded via creator royalties on secondary sales. 6.66% of every secondary sale goes to the DeDAO treasury. DeGods currently has 1.1M SOL of volume on Magic Eden, meaning that based on some paper math DAO treasury has accumulated somewhere in the realm of 73k SOL since its launch in November of 2021.
But what does it do with those funds? Well, they bought a bunch of NFTs.
pical web3 fashion, DeDAO bought the 25 NFTs (at $25k a pop) that gave them the ownership rights necessary to fully own and run the team. A cool $625,000 purchase for a DAO–not bad at all.
DeDAO members also earn $DUST every day by staking their NFTs. This $DUST can be used to purchase raffle tickets, merchandise, and even mint more NFTs produced by the DeGods team.
On top of all of this, the team behind DeGods is also launching a new NFT project, y00ts, and each DeGods holder will have the opportunity to mint a y00ts NFT.
Oh, and the team behind DeGods just announced that their tech spinoff, Dust Labs, just raised $7M to build out the $DUST ecosystem.
DeDAO is one of the most exclusive and exciting DAOs in the world, and to join, it’ll cost you a cool 306 SOL, so get ready to break out the checkbook! (;
While much of DeDAO may be compelling to readers, where DeDAO seems to fall short is in the decentralization department. In many ways, it appears that DeDAO is a DAO in name only… While the “DAO” has held 5 votes, the last DAO vote appears to have been held on January 3, 2021, via Squads, the on-chain governance platform for Solana DAOs. Only 15 votes were counted for this proposal. It appears that DeGods leadership grew tired of basic DAO governance strategies (Exhibit A & Exhibit B). Instead, the DeDAO is now led by the following groups:
“1) The DAO Leads — The divine council of DeDAO and Community Leaders of DeGods
2) The Divine Council — Gods who are voted in by members of DeDAO. They approve proposals from the community and team before allowing the members to vote on it.
3) DeAlpha Team — A team of Alpha Gods who are abreast of the markets and have a proven track record of understanding and sharing consistently good Alpha in DeDAO.”
The logical next NFT DAO to cover is the one with the second largest Solana NFT floor market cap–MonkeDAO. While you may think that a collection with less than 1/3 the market cap of DeGods isn’t nearly as important, I’m here to tell you that MonkeDAO is not monkeying around.
MonkeDAO’s big claim to fame is being Solana’s first community-owned and operated NFT DAO, but being first doesn’t actually make you good. It just makes you early.
Fortunately for us all, MonkeDAO wasn’t just early, they’re also remarkably excellent.
MonkeDAO is a true trailblazer and pioneer in the web3 space. They refuse to just be a group of degens looking to pump the floor. Instead, they’ve become a true force for good in the space, and to their community members.
On July 18, 2022, a cohort of MonkeDAO community members traveled to the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. and met with regulators and lobbyists about DAOs and NFT communities. Their stated primary goal was to “educate potential regulators on different use cases for NFTs and DAOs. It was important that we thoroughly explained why NFTs should be separate from cryptocurrency and avoid similar regulatory action.”
A fi chat was held via Twitter Spaces on July 22, 2022, and some of the group’s participants relayed stories and experiences from the trip. The group met with the Department of Commerce, the House Energy & Commerce Staff, and the House Staff and Blockchain Association. While it seems that those that the MonkeDAO group chatted with definitely had their concerns and preconceived notions (like how to compare NFT communities and DAOs to corporations), the speakers noted how interested their audiences were in actually learning about and understanding the topics presented. I’d recommend listening to the entire chat if you have some spare time!
Beyond their important diplomatic work (Isn’t it hilarious that a community called “MonkeDAO” was asked to speak to the leaders of the United States of America?!?!), they’ve also done some really cool things, like purchasing the intellectual property surrounding the NFT collection on which the membership into their DAO is based, Solana Monkey Business, launched a MonkeDAO Validator and staking pool, and celebrated their 1st Birthday! You can keep up to date with all of the MonkeDAO goings on via their newsletter, Banana Split!
Meanwhile, to keep up to date with all things governance, you’ll need to be a MonkeDAO member, as the governance process appears to happen entirely within Discord. MonkeDAO members are able to create proposals that go through a 3-step process. First, they go up for community discussion in the #vote-proposals channel. After 5 days, the proposal will pass if it has 51% favorable votes and at least 3% of the DAO supporting it. Passing proposals then go to “Governance Review” by the Governance team and/or Monke Board. The Monke Board is comprised of 16 DAO members who are voted on by the DAO every 3 months. The purpose of this review is to ensure that bad faith actors don’t push proposals through and that passed proposals are actually feasible. Finally, proposals that make it through the first 2 steps will require a community vote, which happens on-chain via a separate Realms account or via their own on-chain voting tool which they built earlier this year. Each proposal exists within 1 of 7 proposal categories, each of which has a different minimum vote duration, minimum quorum, and minimum passing vote. More information on governance can be found in the MonkeDAO Gitbook.
I tried to cover the most relevant NFT DAOs, but relevance is a relatively arbitrary metric, so here’s a list of 6 other Solana NFT DAOs that you might want to consider researching a bit more!
With a treasury of $210 MILLION, Mango DAO is the largest Solana DAO (by treasury) and the community behind the popular DeFi tool, Mango Markets. Mango Markets is an open-source platform that “provides a single venue to lend, borrow, swap, and leverage-trade crypto assets through a powerful risk engine.”
With $192.6M in deposits, and $88.8M in borrowed funds (as of Monday, October 10th at 9 pm) Mango Markets is a highly used and respected player in the ecosystem. And as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.
Fortunately for the greater Solana ecosystem, Mango DAO seems to be a conscientious steward of said responsibility.
Holders of the $MNGO governance token comprise Mango DAO and are tasked with approving changes to the Mango Markets code. They also have the responsibility of voting on proposals and initiatives regarding how to use DAO funds.
One recent proposal displays both their commitment to the Solana Ecosystem and their concern about its sustainability. The DAO elected to fund a new company with $600,000 to employ engineers to focus on improving Solana so that Mango runs better. The proposal passed with flying colors and will provide Mango DAO with the opportunity to impact likely every other DAO on this list, should its new team of engineers meaningfully impact the reliability of Solana.
If you’re interested in participating in Mango DAO governance, you’re in luck. Their governance structure is significantly more straightforward than either of the NFT DAOs’, in fact, they’ll walk you through EXACTLY how to vote here. The TL;DR of it all is that they vote on-chain via Realms. Token-holder must deposit their $MNGO tokens to use them for governance, and each token grants its holder one vote. Successful votes require a quorum of 100 million “yes” votes, and the “yes” votes must outweigh the “no” votes.
The second largest Solana DAO treasury belongs to UXD Protocol, the DAO behind “the first fully-decentralized, capital-efficient stablecoin.” In January 2022, the project launched on Mainnet, allegedly solving “the stablecoin trilemma.” $UXD is designed to be (1) decentralized, (2) stable, and (3) capital efficient.
While being a member of a DAO often simply means voting on governance proposals and hoping that the token goes to the moon, holding the UXD Protocol’s governance token $UXP, comes with an additional set of responsibilities and benefits. $UXP tokens act as the final defense in support of the $UXD stablecoin. Should its insurance fund be depleted, $UXP tokens will be the last reserve to back it. However, this added risk does come with some additional upside! Should things go exceedingly well, UXP token holders can vote to distribute cash flow to themselves. Seemingly, joining UXD Protocol provides you an opportunity to take a little more risk, for a little more reward! Which is definitely something that may appeal to some of you degens.
However, for the time being, it appears that generally there won’t be much for $UXP holders to vote on. According to Kento, the founder of UXD Protocol, “The current voting scheme is, basically most decisions are made by team and for proposals that we think the community should decide, only the community votes and team refrains from voting. (Like the recent burn proposal.)” But when $UXP holders do get the chance to vote, it occurs at governance.uxd.fi. The Community currently holds 38.6% of the 7 billion $UXP tokens. This was recently reduced to 38.6% from 57% via a recent token burn.
I did find one particularly weird aspect of UXD Protocol that feels relevant to this article: A huge selling point of this whole project is that “Anyone can always mint 1 UXD for 1 USD.” However, if you are a resident of the United States, you actually cannot do this! This is because, “UXD PROTOCOL’S APPLICATION IS NOT AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS IN RESTRICTED JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES.”
So, if you’d like to get involved with UXD Protocol, you’ll have to get a little creative to get started! But if you are able to get your hands on some $UXP token
We’ve only touched the tip of the Solana DeFi iceberg here. There are so many DAOs that we could’ve covered, but time is not endless and we must pick and choose where we focus our energy.
If you’re feeling excited about Solana DAOs, here are some other DAOs I’d check out!
Metaplex — technically not a DAO (yet), but they likely will be soon.
I hope that you’re now feeling excited to go set up your Phantom wallet, buy some SOL, and start embracing your inner Solana degen by buying a DeGod. Or maybe just voting on some “exciting” DeFi DAO governance proposals…
At the very least, I hope that you feel like you’ve learned something over the last 5–10 minutes! Best of luck on your Solana journey!!
TallyTally wrapped 2025
By the numbers. Featuring Arbitrum, Uniswap, ZKsync and more
TallyKYI and the institutional era of DeFi: building the foundation for trust
A collaboration between Tally and Bluprynt to bring institutional-grade compliance to token launches.
TallyDAO Governance: Challenges, Ideas and Tools
This article was originally published on Medium on May 14th, 2022. It has been republished here with minor updates for clarity.Guest post by Jan Ole Ernst and Simon Sällström of the Oxford Blockchain Society. Jan is pursuing a PhD in Quantum Physics and Simon is pursing an MPhil in Economics.Governance philosophy and challengesDAO’s have profoundly shaken up the web3 landscape, since making headlines in 2016 when funds where drained in the first and original DAO — essentially a decentralized ...
TallyTally wrapped 2025
By the numbers. Featuring Arbitrum, Uniswap, ZKsync and more
TallyKYI and the institutional era of DeFi: building the foundation for trust
A collaboration between Tally and Bluprynt to bring institutional-grade compliance to token launches.
TallyDAO Governance: Challenges, Ideas and Tools
This article was originally published on Medium on May 14th, 2022. It has been republished here with minor updates for clarity.Guest post by Jan Ole Ernst and Simon Sällström of the Oxford Blockchain Society. Jan is pursuing a PhD in Quantum Physics and Simon is pursing an MPhil in Economics.Governance philosophy and challengesDAO’s have profoundly shaken up the web3 landscape, since making headlines in 2016 when funds where drained in the first and original DAO — essentially a decentralized ...
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