Sunsetting Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO)

Conversation
22

Hello,

We’re new to the Cosmos forums but bring a wealth of experience in capital allocation. If there is anything i and missing, apologies in advance.

Our team has already manages money for TradFi endowments and pension funds, guiding them across a diverse range of asset classes, including on-chain investments and off chain, credit/ private equity etc.

From our perspective, many challenges in the DAO space arise due to misaligned incentives, limited institutional experience, and concerns over cost structures. Fundamentally, assets should never leave the DAO’s ownership without a well-thought-out framework; they’re best deployed through a professional, transparent third-party structure.

We already provide these services for institutional clients and would be thrilled to help DAOs achieve the same level of sophistication. For instance, we can explore a legal structure—whether DUNA-based or another customized approach—ensuring the DAO retains full ownership of its assets while partnering with an experienced allocator. This could take the form of a limited partnership with the DAO as the principal owner.

Our governance and investment approach is tailored to align with DAO values:

• Investment Committee: A DAO representative could have a seat at the table. Decisions would be supported by detailed, independent investment memos, with a robust due diligence process covering legal, credit, compliance, funding, and KYC requirements.

• Aligned Incentives: A low upfront fixed-cost structure ensures no excessive management fees. Our success is directly tied to the DAO’s success, with profits-and-losses (P&L) alignment replacing traditional fee models.

• Third-Party Agent and Asset Ownership: Assets remain the legal property of the DAO. The DAO would own the investment entity, with the manager serving as an appointed AFIM (Alternative Fund Investment Manager) under an independent board, ensuring professional oversight and alignment.

• Clear Mandates: Investment goals, hurdle rates, and target returns would be well-defined and measurable.

• Real-World Integration: We bridge on-chain opportunities with real-world industries to organically grow the ecosystem while diversifying returns.

As former investment bankers and experienced professionals, we understand institutional standards and are ready to bring that expertise to DAOs. We’re happy to discuss how this model can work, including governance structures, legal frameworks, and fee alignments.

If there’s interest, we’d be honored to present a concrete proposal. We’re open to starting with a hedge or capital allocation trial program. To be clear, we don’t charge for this initial engagement—our goal is to highlight what DAOs should expect from serious, professional partners.

Looking forward to connecting with the community and understanding how we can best serve your long-term capital needs.

Best regards,

Discere Team

1 Like
23

@Discere

So, you had nothing to say during quite some stories in or around AADAO, but are now here, offering your services?

All this entrance and not a single link that would verify anything you claim to be?

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Again, new here.

We aren’t selling anything as opposed to showing you really what you should have received in the first place. I may have missed the formal period, and again my apologies.

I mean I am happy providing you with relevant l links cv etc. In a full post, can type it up right away.

Not trying to be counterproductive to the long term capital allocation and value creation of cosmos. But rather, I don’t see why cosmos DAO should be treated differently than any institutional served endowment.

I am happy to provide you with required docs etc. May I ask, why is the trust a British Virgin island reg trust but regulated in Jersey?

Was there any legal advice that you received when setting this up, if so who? Again I might be missing something, hence why just want to figure out what exactly as the prior structure puts a lot of trust in the hands of “Enforcers” .

Note. My subjective/professional opinion if this was my companies or if it as creditor is to litigate whoever the AADAO was earning 14k base salary month and I am not a lawyer, just a creditor by profession.

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AADAO does not have an endowment.
It owns no assets. @Discere

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26

Thank you for clarifying. If the response you received was overly focused on the legal structure or jargon, it’s worth reiterating your broader point about the systemic issue of misaligned incentives and value destruction within DAOs. The essence of your argument is critical: the lack of sophisticated capital allocation frameworks, like those employed by university endowments or research trusts, leads to missed opportunities for sustainable, long-term value creation in DAOs.

You are addressing an important gap—DAOs often lack access to the kind of strategic financial advisory that could realign incentives toward growth and resilience. The emphasis should shift from purely legal or technical structures to frameworks that help DAOs achieve better financial discipline, resource efficiency, and incentive alignment, ensuring their protocols grow sustainably over time.

Framing your wider point in terms of actionable steps or parallels to traditional financial models (like endowments) might help direct the discussion toward practical solutions, avoiding a narrow focus on the past failures. I guess you are really the person lost knowledgeable here, I may have missed it, but would love to hear your thoughts on this?

Many thanks and as a ATOM holder thanks for all the work you have put into this!

1 Like
27

Hi,

would like to share a comment on my subjective view of this story through the experience we had in 2023 and since.

We proposed to pilot a deliberative process within the Hub as a way to improve the quality of governance. For this we applied for a grant from AADAO which was granted in Summer 2023. The minute we started the work, we were properly under fire from the “community”.

But “community” is not community. Actually this was the very reason why we proposed a deliberative process: To surface the views of the silent majority and not the loud minority. I think both are needed, but the silent minority is often … well silent. So the loud minority has a overproportional weight in the discussions (not judging the content of those voices, only the weight).

The case of the AADAO / Oversight conflict is typical of this logic. The oversight body emerging from the active minority has managed to put so much pressure on the AADAO that at the end the team decided to quit. So, in the end the “community” managed to overrule a process which was at some point mandated by the community through a Hub proposal. In terms of power dynamics, this is strange as it may seem that oversight is actually more sort of a higher court of justice. I would love to know the real feeling of all the people that have worked with AADAO over the time but do not articulate it because of so many reasons: for me it is for example because Atom governance is not my full time job, for others it is surely because they fear the repressive power of the “community” which again is a good safeguard against centralization but is in itself a centralizing force.

As we know from Montesquieu the most critical feature of any governance is to have a balance of power. And having the “community” without a balance of power is as bad as having AADAO having too much power.

This brings me back to the idea we had on deliberation as a way to escape some of the drawback of online chats discussions which tend to spiral into adversary discussions and carry a very high emotional load on participants.

Our project was almost killed by “the community” within a month. It was a pilot, it was experimental, and the fact that “the community” tried to kill it was for me in itself a proof that the community needed this.

So we pursued the project anyway mostly on own funding and it gave very interesting results which can be found on the forum somewhere.

The work with AADAO was good, and with the members of the community that took part to the process too. Bilateral discussions with members of AADAO often surfaced the challenge of working with “the community”. I think its the real reason why they decide to stop: If you ask me its probably because they are burnt out to have to dedicate 50% of their energy to respond to chats instead of doing their job.

Making it more personnal: I think Youssef did a great job with a lot of engagement and energy. I consider him as a good Human being. And this is the case also because we had the chance to meet in real life and share time. Online communities can not fully replace IRL experiences. And trust will go on being the mortar of society even with blockchains.

I regret that the AADAO itself had to fall to the pressure of “the community”. I think it sets back any effort to have a focused BD on the Hub. I also think that KPIs are not always the right way to measure success in such contexts. I have the impression that many comments here and in the AADAO telegram and other channels is a reflexion of this latent fear of retaliation from the “community”.

As a meta reflexion: I know this post is very subjective, could be much longer and developed, and will attract comments. Maybe its goal is to point to the elephant in the room.

To finish on a constructive note: I am happy to propose a deliberative design to think about what a reboot of the AADAO could look like. This could be a way forward.

2 Likes
28

Hey all,

Disclaimer: I write this reply in my personal capacity in light of my personal views, and not in the name of or as a representative of the dYdX Operations team, or any client represented by Axis Advisory.

I see a lot of people proposing designs, frameworks etc.

Let’s pause a bit here. Before working on any other incentive or grant program, we are of the opinion that a post-mortem needs to be carried out on AADAO to understand the pitfalls, pain points, areas of optimisation and where Cosmos can do better.

One cannot suggest a fix without first evaluating where the issues have arisen.

Additionally, and based on our experience, sunsetting a program with a legal wrapper (as is the AADAO Trust), is not done this way, at all. Jumping ship and terminating through a forum isn’t a legally enforceable mode of termination for DAO-established trusts (based on our experience, and assuming that the structuring of the Trust was done correctly by the initial proposers and involved parties).

Let’s not attempt to fix issues w/haphazard approaches. Sweeping everything under the rug isn’t the way here. I highly recommend conducting a post-mortem assessment of the (potential) several pitfalls so that, at the bare minimum, future grant-initiative proposers can have an idea of what was done right, what was done incorrectly, and optimise future frameworks.

Kind regards,
Joseph
Axis Advisory