MetaDAO’s community has voted down a proposal to issue $6 million worth of META tokens to venture capital firms at a significant discount, signaling a strong stance against dilution and preferential treatment. The vote, which closed on October 13, 2024, involved a plan to mint roughly 1.47 million new META tokens for two VCs — DBA and Variant — at about 30% below the market rate during the voting period.
The discounted sale would have granted each VC firm the opportunity to acquire $3 million of META tokens at $4.0795 per token, compared to prevailing prices that hovered around 30-40% higher. The tokens were proposed to be fully unlocked immediately, a point emphasized by the MetaDAO team, who highlighted their policy of not locking up non-team token supply.
At the heart of this proposal was the project’s need to extend its operational runway. MetaDAO founders had previously communicated that without additional capital, the DAO’s cash reserves—currently near $1.8 million—would sustain activities for about two years. The small team comprising two founders, a part-time designer, and an intern aimed to secure these funds to foster growth and potentially expand the team.
Distinct from many governance platforms that rely solely on token-weighted voting, MetaDAO employs a futarchy governance model. This system combines prediction markets with community decision-making to forecast outcomes aligned with high-level goals, striving for more data-driven and effective governance.
Despite these ambitions, the community voiced concerns about the terms of the deal. Some members criticized the steep discount offered to VCs as unfair to existing holders. Following the vote’s rejection, Jon Charbonneau, co-founder of DBA, acknowledged in a Telegram message that the “too much of a discount to spot price” and “improper proposal structure” were key issues undermining support. He indicated that future fundraising efforts might adopt more traditional mechanisms, allowing pricing flexibility managed bilaterally rather than through public proposals.
Supporting the community’s engagement, Gabriel Shapiro, founder of MetaLeX Labs—an organization specializing in crypto legal technology—praised MetaDAO publicly. In an X post, Shapiro remarked that MetaDAO exemplifies genuine DAO principles and democratic governance, contrasting it with what he described as Ethereum DAOs being dominated by professional governance classes.
Following the vote, META’s token price surged over 16%, reaching above $6.95, likely fueled not only by the positive community action but also by MetaDAO’s earlier achievements. Notably, the platform played a pivotal role in the initial coin offering of UMBRA, a privacy-focused Solana coin, which experienced a 50x oversubscription—demonstrating investor interest and MetaDAO’s influence in the Solana ecosystem.
The Defiant reached out to MetaDAO’s team for further remarks on the now-dismissed funding proposal but had not received a response at the time of publication.