Episode Details

Across Protocol wants to retire its token in exchange for equity. Is the DAO model structurally broken?

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• Adaptive Security

With Across Protocol proposing to retire its ACX token in favor of equity, a long-simmering question in crypto governance is finally breaking into the open: do token holders actually have meaningful ownership, or just the illusion of it? 

As the regulatory environment under the new U.S. administration shifts dramatically from the Gensler era, the structures that crypto teams were forced to build may now be working against the very communities they were meant to serve. 

Ryan Yi, founder of OnChain Group, and Felipe Montealegre, co-founder and CIO of Theia, have studied these incentive structures closely, and what they have found is uncomfortable. From PumpFun's suppressed valuation to the perverse incentives baked into token buyouts, this conversation examines whether the DAO model was ever built to last, and what governance actually needs to look like if crypto is going to compete with global finance.

Guests:

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan Yi, Ex Coinbase, Coinbase Ventures, and CoinFund

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Felipe Montealegre, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer at Theia

  
  

Links:

• Read our Aave deep dive here

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