As controversy continues surrounding cryptocurrency media Bankless and its associated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), BanklessDAO, Bankless’ founders have proposed separating the brand from the DAO.
Bankless co-founders David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams plan to submit a governance proposal to BanklessDAO to separate the two companies. The co-founders took to
Hello CT
To lead with the obvious, we can better accept criticism of: @BanklessHQ.
I value Bankless very much and have natural reflexes to protect Bankless when I see him being unfairly attacked.
This clouded my ability to hear what CT was trying to tell me. pic.twitter.com/7L5ufQ1bAu
— DavidHoffman.eth (@TrustlessState) November 26, 2023
Hoffman and Adams’ decision to separate Bankless from BanklessDAO came in response to community criticism of BanklessDAO’s Arbitrum grant application. The application, submitted on November 20, requested 1.82 million Arbitrum (ARB) tokens from Arbitrum, a layer 2 scaling project for the Ethereum blockchain. According to data from CoinGecko, this amount is worth about $1.8 million at the time of this writing.
“There are concerns that BanklessDAO will not be able to make such an ambitious proposal without leveraging the clout of the Bankless brand, which they did not produce, is not theirs, and should not benefit from,” Hoffman wrote.
The BanklessDAO community was quick to criticize the plan, with many DAO members noting that the proposal asked for nearly 2 million ARB for content creation without providing detailed information on how the money would be used. In response, BanklessDAO committed to revising its proposal to reduce the one-year grant to three months and provide clear key performance indicators and milestones.
Debate between supporters and opponents of the proposal quickly escalated on social media. Some commentators, such as the anonymous Delegate Cash CEO Foobar, have accused Bankless founders of “legitimacy fraud” by pretending that BanklessDAO has nothing to do with Bankless at all.
Some Bitcoin (BTC) enthusiasts, such as Pledditor, have criticized the Bankless founders for claiming “they are not scammers,” citing Hoffman and Adams promoting projects like Nexo. “They later revealed to Nexo that they had received $31,000, not $250,000,” Pledditor wrote.
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Adams, Bankless’s co-founder, responded to this criticism by emphasizing that calling creators ad executors is essentially trying to free their products. He also said paying subscribers have always funded Bankless’ mission.
When you call a creative scammer to place an ad for you, please understand that you are asking them to do the work for free if you are not willing to pay for their product.
Is that fair?
Here’s how: If you don’t like the ads, you can pay $15 per month to remove them.
If you want encrypted media, apply.
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) November 26, 2023
Founded in 2019, Bankless is a cryptocurrency media company that promotes adoption and awareness of bankless monetary systems. In May 2021, Bankless launched Bankless DAO, a decentralized community that moderates and promotes bankless media, and launched the BANK token.
In April 2023, Bankless founders announced that they would be raising a $35 million venture capital fund to invest in early-stage Web3 companies.
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