In the course of my research on crypto-focused VC, and their blockchain-based portfolios, I came across a very interesting project called Domination Finance (domination.finance). After digging a bit deeper into Domination finance (my next article in this series) I discovered that they are a portfolio project in the Open DeFi DAO Launchpad incubator. This led me to want to learn more about Open Defi DAO.

Opendefi.network

twitter.com/open_defi

Open Defi DAO was initiated by the Conflux Network (confluxnetwork.org ) in 2020 and is composed of DeFi innovators and flagship DeFi projects. The Open DeFi DAO currently has 30 members who represent key components of the DeFi ecosystem, including Sequoia Capital, Dydx, AAVE, Outlier Ventures, Ocean Protocol and DeBank.

While Open DeFi DAO began as a member network, they soon evolved into a DAO to serve the global DeFi ecosystem, with a special focus on onboarding the greater public — not just us early adopters and blockchain builders!


WE ARE LIVING IN A MULTI CHAIN WORLD
Look around, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we are at the dawn of multichain DeFi. The DeFi summer of 2020 was mostly an Ethereum-centric event. More than $150M of Multi chain DeFi activity in 2020 the sector has risen to over 30% of the overall defi market for a market value of 35 Billion in multi chain DeFi.

In 2020 multi chain DeFi activity only accounted for 150 million dollars, just a small drop in the bucket in comparison to the 10s of billions of dollars in DeF Activity on the Ethereum blockchain. Multi chain DeFi has risen dramatically in the last 12 months, now accounting for over 35 billion dollars and over 30% of the overall DeF market.

With the explosive growth of the last 12 months, we are still in the early stages of the movement where DeFi eats TradFi. Every day copycat projects emerge on newer L1 solutions (e.g. Solana, Avalanche, Alogrand). From lending protocols, stable coins and yield farms, similar, and in some cases the same (see: AAVE, Curve) are being copied or completely ported to new L1’s. As of today, most dApps are still running siloed, not yet talking to each other across chains. In order for DeFi to scale up to mass adoption there needs to be interoperability among the various DeFi protocols and blockchains.


ENTER OPEN DEFI DAO
Open DeFi DAO started as a member driven organization and now has evolved into a community driven DAO. Open DeFi DAO is focused on incubating and scaling the multichain DeFi ecosystem of the future. They go about this mission in two main ways: short term yield farming and incubation of launchpad projects.

The DAO makes use of its ecosystem crypto assets and project tokens in the Open DeFi DAO treasury to fund the incubation of launchpad projects. The DAO pursues short term yield farming strategies to generate fees that go back into the treasury in a reserve pool. These funds in the reserve pool are used to fund new projects and bootstrap liquidity. When Open DeFi DAO incubates a project, the DAO receives governance tokens for said project. These governance tokens are then entered into the DAO’s treasury where they are allocated to short term yield farming opportunities, and in turn help finance the next generation of DAO projects. This design constitutes a virtuous loop in which more and more projects can incubated by Open Defi DAO.

COMMUNITY
The true strength of DeFi is the community and users. The Open DeFi DAO leverages these strengths to help their portfolio projects and the projects’ contributors. Non-transferable contributor tokens will be issued to DAO members proportional to their contribution to the DAO and will act as a multiplier for voting power and rewards. The Open DeFi DAO’s community is currently over 10,000 members, and most active on Telegram, Twitter and Discord. The community regularly contributes to the growing list of accomplishments of Open DeFi DAO, including:

Produced two blueprints for security & disclosures measures
The team has participated in over 12 podcasts and Ted Talks
200k hackathon — over 22 project sponsors
13 incubated projects


LAUNCHPAD
Open DeFi Dao Established a launchpad in collaboration with its partner network March this year. This Launchpad is tasked with incubating early stage defi projects leaders of tomorrow. This Launchpad offers new teams access to collaborate with Alliance members who represent various protocols, venture capital and virtually every aspect of DeFi. The DAO has 13 projects currently under incubation. This Launchpad has potential to be one of the hottest launchpads with exciting projects due to launch tokens in the coming months. Two of their Launchpad projects I am really excited about are

Optify — opty.fi/
Domination finance — domination.finance


THE FUTURE
Open DeFi DAO has a bright future ahead of it. Keep an eye on them, as they have all the pieces it takes to be a major player in bringing the multi chain DeFi ecosystem from it’s current state, to the behemoth we know it can be.

A token generation event for Open DeFi DAO is coming soon, but the exact date remains unannounced (as of this writing, Oct. 7th, 2022). Keep an eye out for the many new and interesting projects taking off from their launchpad. These projects are vetted by a collection of the biggest industry players and can rely on the expertise of the members of Open Defi DAO to support them as they scale. As their community grows, there are many opportunities for people to contribute to the mission and gain valuable experience.

Next post, we’ll dive into another Open DeFi DAO portfolio project, Domination Finance. And in the subsequent weeks, more. Stay tuned, stay learning, and stay ahead of the game…it’s still early.