DeepDAO, a website aggregating data on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), has raised $3 million for future expansion in a round led by venture capital firms Hypersphere and DFG. An announcement asserts the “overwhelming demand for DeepDAO’s seed round shows strong interest in data products for the DAO space and the belief the DAO ecosystem will grow.” DeepDAO v1 currently provides data for more than 100 DAOs, aggregating data on organizations' treasuries, membership, and governance. According to the site, DAOs currently represent more than 66,000 members and $587 million in assets under management (AUM) — although the AUM has fallen 46% …

Opportunities for cryptocurrency usage have risen over the years as digital assets have become more well known. One operation, called Endaoment, is aiming to put charitable giving in the hands of the people and recently secured over $2 million to further its endeavor. “Endaoment facilitates tax-deductible giving of cryptocurrencies via its Donor-Advised Funds, a kind of charitable financial account, where donors give assets to charity, and later recommend distributions to non-profit organizations,” said a Wednesday public statement provided to Cointelegraph. “Endaoment also offers Community Funds, a pooled giving opportunity where grants are made around specific issue areas and identified by …

While much of the market reels from a devastating pullback that has dragged DeFi’s closely-watched total value locked (TVL) figure down from all time highs, one protocol is shrugging off the macro weight and surging up the TVL leaderboard. Ethereum-based Convex Finance cracked one billion dollars in TVL earlier today, rising as high as $1.14 billion and briefly entering the top-20 rank by size, per DeFiLlama. 2 weeks, 3 commas. $1,000,000,000+ TVL pic.twitter.com/NDOVabZB11 — Convex Finance (@ConvexFinance) June 1, 2021 Pseudonymous Convex team lead "C2tp" told Cointelegraph in an interview that the team has been overwhelmed by the support. “We …

One of the most intractable problems in decentralized finance (DeFi) may be facing a ecosystemwide effort as a growing number of protocols are beginning to get creative with their advertising and outreach efforts. Automated market maker Uniswap announced on Tuesday a collaboration with esports group Team Secret. Funded by the Uniswap Grants Program, Uniswap will become an official sponsor of the team in exchange for $112,500. In an announcement blog post, Team Secret said that it will be “developing exclusive content and esports activations” for the Uniswap community, as well as helping Uniswap reach a new user base. Team Secret's …

According to some estimates, coronavirus-related strains may soon force upward of one in every eight physical museums to permanently close, but despite the struggles, one metaverse-native museum is raising funds to transition to a community-governed model. The Museum of Crypto Art announced today the launch of the MOCA token, a Polygon-based governance and utility asset. The token will be used to vote on pieces added to the museum’s Genesis Collection and future exhibits, allow for community curation of museum assets, and establish a runway for the museum via a $1.5-million raise. Of the total MOCA supply, 5% will be airdropped …

Decentralized governance, a facet of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), is perhaps the most valuable application smart contracts could bring to humanity. DAOs can be thought of as living organisms on the internet, entities that would function autonomously according to distributed consensus mechanisms. Managed by a community through voting, DAOs are self-governing systems with a built-in treasury. Although they still depend on community members for certain tasks — offering an economic incentive from the liquidity pool in return — DAOs are almost entirely automated. Despite their potential, DAOs do not rank among the most popular decentralized technologies. Perhaps their reputation hasn’t …

A new peer-to-peer marketplace for NFT artwork is creating a digital art bazaar intended to make it easier for independent and amateur artists to showcase and sell their art while offering galleries and collectors an inexpensive venue. The market for nonfungible tokens exploded in the first few months of 2021, with NFTs going from a niche in the crypto industry to a mainstream medium for works that have been sold at the world’s premier auction houses, garnered prices in the millions and even tens of millions of dollars, and attracted creators ranging from celebrities like recording artist Grimes and NFL …

In a Twitter thread today, billionaire investor Mark Cuban weighed in on the current state and the future of blockchain technology and investment, ultimately concluding that while there are real obstacles to adoption asset prices are increasingly reflective of real “utility” and “demand,” and that the day will eventually come when crypto is “mature to the point we wondered how we ever lived with out.” Cuban posted the 10-tweet thread this morning, noting that as the asset class matures prices for cryptocurrencies often are now a byproduct of current use, as opposed to speculative eventual utility. Crypto and each implementation …

Decentralized finance alliance Open DeFi has announced it will create a decentralized autonomous organization to support its vision for an open and global cross-chain DeFi ecosystem. The alliance launched in late 2020 with the goal of bringing together Western and Eastern DeFi projects and has since seen some of the sector’s top projects join its ranks, including Aave, Synthetix and Balancer. The responsibilities of the Open DeFi DAO, or OD DAO, will include launching DeFi products across multiple layer-one networks and exploring multi-chain applications for emerging decentralized assets, including data tokens and nonfungible tokens. The DAO will also incubate early-stage …

WallStreetBets, the Reddit-based grassroots movement that achieved notoriety for short-squeezing hyper-leveraged financial firms, has launched a new blockchain-based application aimed at combating market manipulation in traditional finance. The group announced the creation of WallStreetBets Exchange Traded Portfolios, or ETPs, that can provide investors with broad exposure to various assets in a completely decentralized manner. The group explained: “WallStreetBets ETPs may serve as an alternative to kind of the market manipulation by opaque and politically connected banks and hedge funds.” The product is powered by a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, which means portfolio rebalancing is the sole domain of community …

One of the largest ETH 2.0 and Terra staking services is now looking to expand to other proof-of-stake chains, starting with upstart layer 1 Solana. In a proposal today on Lido’s governance forums, crypto infrastructure provider Chorus One laid out a plan to build “a liquid staking token (for now: stSOL) that will accrue staking rewards and represent staking positions with Lido validators on Solana,” similar to Lido’s current interest-accruing stETH token. Development funding to bring Lido’s services to an additional chain would come from the Lido Ecosystem Grants Organization, a program Lido’s governance kicked off in March. Chorus One’s …

Virtual land governance DAO Decentral Games is continuing to expand into the metaverse nightlife space with the launch of an Atari-branded casino. The casino will be the third such gambling establishment for the DAO, which purchases land in virtual worlds like Decentraland and opens digital businesses. Using brand assets from Atari, the provably-fair games are designed to be “nostalgia-inducting,” per a press release from Decentral Games. Gamers can play with a wide range of tokens, including DAI, ETH, and Decentraland’s MANA, and a “gaming mining” program is also in effect that rewards gamblers with Decentral Games’ governance token, $DG. Decentral …