There are many problems with the standard playbook for doing a token. These include:
Rampant insider dealings have led to a loss of trust: hidden OTC deals, special insider payouts from the foundation, and the like have made many investors 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: because they generally launch at a high FDV and most of their
supply is vested over 2-3 years, these tokens need a large amount of incremental buy pressure to maintain their prices.
Felipe Montealegre, a liquid token investor, describes these problems and others in his talk:
MetaDAO is for founders who want to launch a token the right way
MetaDAO’s core principles are:
Fair launch early: instead of launching at a high FDV, projects launch early with high-float ICOs so that they can grow over time.
Real ownership and unruggability: the most important parts of the project -
the intellectual property, the funds, and the ability to mint new tokens - are controlled by market-driven governance.
This imbues the token with value and mitigates the risk of malicious teams rugging the treasury.
Pay-for-performance: insiders unlocks are proportional to the premium over the launch price. This keeps teams and participants aligned.
While much of crypto concerns itself with how to maximally extract value over the short-term, MetaDAO is built from the
ground up for long-term founders and their communities.
