Welcome to MetaDAO
A fundraising and governance platform for high-quality founders and their communities
Community ownership matters
Projects grow faster when a community of committed owners supports them:
- Hyperliquid distributed 33% of its supply to its users. Its perpetual-futures volume increased sixfold.
- Yearn distributed 100% of its supply to its early users. Its total value locked rose from $8 million to $6 billion without incentives.
- MegaETH sold tokens in an Echo round to 2,900 people. Its Kaito mindshare 15xed.
The above graph shows Hyperliquid volume over time. Can you see the point at which they launched a token?
But most tokens are done poorly
There are many problems with the standard playbook for doing a token. These include:
- Rampant insider dealings have led to a loss of trust: undisclosed over-the-counter deals and special insider payouts from foundations have made many market participants wary of tokens.
- The tokens themselves have very little fundamental value: because there aren't any legal protections, nothing stops revenue from flowing to the team or a labs entity.
- Frontloaded demand and backloaded supply contribute to structurally lower prices over time: these tokens often launch at a high fully diluted valuation while most supply remains locked for two to three years. Maintaining the price then requires substantial new demand.
Felipe Montealegre, a liquid token market participant, describes these problems and others in his talk:
MetaDAO is for teams that want to build with community ownership
MetaDAO's core principles are:
- Fair launch early: instead of launching at a high fully diluted valuation, projects launch early through high-float initial coin offerings (ICOs) so they can grow over time.
- Real ownership and treasury protection: the project's intellectual property, funds, and token mint authority are controlled by market-driven governance. This gives the token economic value and reduces the risk of a team taking treasury funds against tokenholder interests.
- Pay-for-performance: insiders unlocks are proportional to the premium over the launch price. This keeps teams and participants aligned.
Many token launches optimize for short-term extraction. MetaDAO is built for teams and communities that want to create durable value together.