The culprit behind AI’s flameout? The “daos.fun bubble” behind AICC’s plunge

Author: Ismay, BlockBteas

As a project that advertises as "de-VC-type investment DAO platform", daos.fun staged a restoration drama of "VC coins" over the weekend.

On January 11, Aiccelerate DAO's native token AICC, with advisory support from ai16z co-founder Shaw, Virtuals Protocol contributor #001 Ethermage and Story co-founder Jason, was officially launched for trading. After going online, AICC's opening market value once exceeded US$300 million. However, the brief moment of glory was quickly broken by crazy selling. Large investors concentrated on selling, causing the market value to drop sharply, triggering strong dissatisfaction in the market.

The sell-off immediately after the launch triggered public outrage

The momentum for Aiccelerate DAO started a week ago. Officials said that users who are interested in becoming partners and participating in the pre-sale can express their wishes and how to help the project by forwarding, liking and commenting on tweets. AiccelerateDAO will select suitable partners to participate in the pre-sale based on user participation and expected contribution.

Using the daos.fun platform, Aiccelerate DAO distributed tokens to 250 KOLs, each of whom received a quota of 0.5 SOL. These tokens instantly became 250,000 to 400,000 US dollars after going online. In addition, the project's advisory group can donate up to 5 SOL shares.

However, these whitelisted users not only failed to fulfill their commitment to support the development of the project, but instead chose to sell and profit immediately after the launch. On the one hand, the market value of AICC plummeted, and on the other hand, it also had a blood-sucking impact on other AI concept tokens on the chain. .

In this carnival of KOLs on the "Crypto+AI" track, the most criticized was the selling behavior of the crypto podcast Bankless and its VC Bankless Ventures after the AICC was launched.

The Rollup founder Andy tweeted that Bankless Ventures was selling tokens through a public wallet associated with their X account. “While they were promoting the project on YouTube with their co-founders, they started selling off the product on the day it was launched.”

It is reported that the two hosts of Bankless invested in 5SOL respectively. Ben Lakoff, who manages Bankless Ventures, invested in 2 SOL in the name of Ventures, and also personally invested in 5SOL.

Ejaaz, the founder of Aiccelerate DAO, once worked as a product manager at Coinbase. In November last year, Ejaaz began to be a frequent guest on the Banless podcast to talk about AI+Crypto.

After Andy's tweet fermented, Bankless co-founder David responded that he had repurchased the AICC shares sold by Bankless ventures, calling it "an impulsive mistake."

However, Bankless's brand image suffered a huge blow. Some people in the community criticized Bankless's program sponsors and called them accomplices of scammers.

In the latest Bankless Discord channel, Bankless co-founder Ryan responded that he and David had no knowledge of the token sale, and that the token sale was conducted by Ben Lakoff, who had no knowledge of the background of Aiccelerate DAO, for the purpose of stopping profits.

Will the market still pay for daos.fun?

In this token dumping rashomon, daos.fun’s whitelist mechanism has been the focus of market attention. This is because it is not possible for ordinary people to get a whitelist just by forwarding support in the project comment area. Usually, only KOLs with a large number of fans and a strong community base will get a whitelist, thereby building a platform for the project.

daos.fun is another asset launch star product after pump.fun, but daos.fun is a fund launch platform. The "fund" launched based on daos.fun's fundraising will operate in the form of a DAO and issue corresponding DAO token.

A small number of creators with invitation codes can set the fundraising target amount, fund expiration time and management fees. In addition, daos.fun’s fundraising process has introduced whitelist rules, and the team will selectively send content based on community interaction to Users are issued qualifications for fundraising participation, and they all need to associate their social accounts to achieve certain social reputation and moral constraints.

However, AICC slapped daos.fun in the face with its huge and luxurious KOL lineup and its chart that opened high and hit the market after its launch. On the one hand, the project party that initiated investment in DAO did not have clear standards for obtaining a whitelist, and on the other hand, On the one hand, users who obtained token chips at low prices through the fundraising stage cannot remain unmoved after the project's rapid rise.

Crypto KOL Skely believes that the ideal whitelist participant should be like this, "They sell at high points, then buy at low points, stabilize the price by providing a large amount of liquidity, and at the same time are willing to take risks and invest their SOL funds and tokens. "Inject it into the liquidity pool together." But obviously this is not a behavior that a person with a profit-seeking mentality would choose.

Skely believes that the current whitelist mechanism of daos.fun can be improved through the following suggestions, such as: exposing 10% (or more) of the whitelist quota to the public through auction, and using the funds from the auction for DAO or liquidity pool ( LP), because these people will basically cash out quickly. Allows staking and providing liquidity. And allow whitelist users to sell within a certain limit, but transparent rules need to be set to let buyers know their expectations while avoiding allowing full sales.

Daos.fun founder Baoskee responded that these suggestions are all possible.

At the same time, the community criticized AICC for being launched at an exorbitant valuation even before it had a product. This is exactly the same as the script of the previous crusade against VC coins. The pricing power is in the hands of the project party, and is packaged in the market and then sold to retail investors. Whether it is a core player who donated 5 SOL or a KOL who obtained 0.5 SOL share by "sweet talk", under the existing token issuance model, any process of "pre-sale + whitelist + listing and trading" is difficult to abandon purely Speculator.

After tearing off the gorgeous coat, "Crypto+AI" still needs sufficient product support and real usage scenarios to gain a foothold in the current fiercely competitive market. Rather than being bubble-packed as "AI concept stocks", it is better for users to truly feel the technical content and pragmatic long-term planning of the project. This is the only way for investors to return to rationality and reject "VC coins".