MetaDAO's New Launchpad

We built a new launchpad. It could become the capital formation layer of the internet. Here's how and why.

How It Works

1. A founder posts a project idea and specifies a minimum amount of USDC they need to execute the idea
2. Funders have 7 days to deposit USDC
3. If the launch receives sufficient USDC: 10M tokens are distributed pro rata to all funders, 10% of the USDC raised is paired against an additional 1M tokens in a liquidity pool, and all remaining USDC and the ability to mint tokens are transferred to a futarchy DAO. Contributors can then raise proposals to pay themselves on some interval (e.g. monthly) and issue tokens to themselves
4. If the launch does not receive sufficient USDC, funders claim their original USDC back

If the founder walks away on day 1, anyone can raise a proposal to liquidate the treasury so that everyone gets their money back.

Why It's Better

Community ownership matters

One of crypto’s superpowers is community ownership.

Projects grow faster when they have an army of bagholders supporting them.

Consider this:

• Ethereum did an ICO for 85% of its supply. It remains dominant on metrics like stablecoin market cap and developers despite Solana being 10x faster and 1000x cheaper.
• Hyperliquid distributed 33% of its supply to its users. Its perp volume 6xed.
• Yearn distributed 100% of its supply to its early users. It then rose from a $8 million TVL project to a $6 billion TVL project without incentives.
• MegaETH sold tokens in an echo round to 2,900 people. Its Kaito mindshare 15xed.

Most projects don't leverage community ownership to its full potential

Instead, they allocate a significant chunk of the token supply to private rounds and airdrop farmers.

Vanity metrics and big raises are nice, but they pale in comparison to a community of people who want you to win.

Legacy ICOs didn't work

Historically, ICOs haven’t worked either. Historically, the raised money was either sent to the team directly or to a token-voting DAO. The two are equivalent: team control.

The problem with this model is that it creates misaligned incentives. The more successful an ICO like this was, the greater the incentive for the team to extract what’s in the treasury instead of growing the pie.

Solana has had three major ICOs: Parrot ($86M), Mango ($70M), and UXD ($57M). In each of these, the project failed and investors ended up with less than 20% of what they put in.

Futarchy enables ICOs to work

Futarchy, on the other hand, enables trustless joint ownership.

Whenever there’s a proposal that you don’t like, you can sell your tokens in Pass market. Then, supporters of the proposal need to buy you out to pass the proposal.

This is drastically different than token-voting, where 51% of the supply (and usually much less!) is sufficient to do whatever you want with the treasury.

This should improve the incentives for contributors and the outcomes for funders. No longer is there the incentive to soft rug, because if you do anyone can create a proposal to liquidate the treasury. As the founder, you need to grow the pie to get rich.

$MTN

The first project we’re launching is mtnCapital, a tokenized investment DAO created by @mtndao.

Everything from investment decisions to incentives for people who raise investment proposals will be made through futarchy proposals on-chain.

The token sale is planned for the week of March 31st, to stay updated, follow @mtndao and @MetaDAOProject.

Join the MetaDAO

If you're an early-stage (ideally pre-raise) crypto founder and you want some money to build and a community of people who want you to win on day 1, please reach out!

We're also paying a $10k bounty to anyone who connects us to a founding engineer (full stack, smart contracts, futarchy research) willing to relocate to SF to build the future of governance. The role is at https://jobs.metadao.fi/.