Interest in decentralized autonomous organizations, better known as DAOs, has seen a sharp increase since the rise and fall of ConstitutionDAO, a group that raised $45 million in ETH last year in a failed attempt to buy a limited edition copy of the U.S. Constitution.
And while DAOs still primarily exist on Ethereum, the network that powers the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, they’re beginning to spring up on competing blockchains—namely Solana.
According to DAO analytics site DeepDAO, there is currently $9.5 billion held in DAO treasuries across all networks, with $1.3 billion held by DAOs built on Solana alone, and the remainder ($8.2 billion) on Ethereum. DeepDAO expanded its dataset to include communities on Solana earlier this week. "The DAO ecosystem is spreading to other chains, and it's our mission to model the entire ecosystem, not just the Ethereum one," Eithcowich told Decrypt.
⚒️ We are delighted to announce our first listing of @solana DAOs on https://t.co/s4S2fUrErh 🥁📈
The @solana's DAO framework provides governance, treasury, and discussions fully on-chain.
2 of the new DAOs enter into our top 5: @mangomarkets at #3 and @UXDProtocol at #4 pic.twitter.com/aO58losPXj— DeepDAO.io (@DeepDAO_io) March 15, 2022
Launched in February 2020, Tel Aviv-based DeepDAO is a data aggregator and analytics site for DAOs, currently listing over 4,832 organizations. DeepDAO founder and CEO Eyal Eithcowich says the Solana DAO ecosystem, while smaller than Ethereum's, is diverse, with decentralized organizations increasingly spinning up on the network.
Solana, like Ethereum, utilizes smart contracts—the self-executing computer code that makes it possible to create NFTs (like those Bored Ape cartoon images), build DeFi apps, and assemble the tools necessary to structure and manage DAOs.
A DAO is essentially an online community that uses Web3 tools to organize and spread control of the group among its members. DAOs often make use of a cryptocurrency or token to both incentivize their members and govern decision-making by the group.
The Solana DAOs now being tracked by DeepDAO include MonkeDAO, a community DAO operated by Solana Monkey Business NFT holders; UXDProtocol, a stablecoin protocol; Metaplex, a platform for launching NFT projects; and Mango DAO, which governs the Mango Markets decentralized exchange platform and protocol.
Eithcowich said when DeepDAO began integrating Solana DAO data, two DAOs immediately stood and entered directly into DeepDAO's top five by treasury size: Mango and UXDProtocol. According to DeepDAO’s data, Mango manages a treasury of $650 million and ranks third among all DAOs, while UXDProtocol ranks fourth with a $561 million treasury.
According to Eithcowich, DeepDAO also plans to integrate DAOs built on parachains, custom project-specific blockchains integrated within the Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) networks.