Lido DAO votes no to selling $14.5 million in LDO tokens to Dragonfly Capital

Quick Take

  • The vote ended with almost a two-thirds majority against the proposal.
  • Lido was planning to sell 10 million LDO tokens at a flat rate of $1.45 per coin to Dragonfly Capital.

The Lido Finance community has voted against a proposal to sell 10 million LDO tokens for $14.5 million to venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital, according to a vote that concluded on Monday.

Monday’s vote ended with close to 600 DAO members, representing a total of 43 million Lido DAO (LDO) tokens, voting against the proposal. This figure accounted for 66% of all votes cast. Meanwhile, only two addresses, amounting to 21 million LDO tokens, voted in support of the token sale.

The token sale is part of a treasury diversification proposal for Lido. The DAO proposal called for the sale of 20 million LDO coins, with half of that amount allocated to Dragonfly. The latest vote was only to determine whether to proceed with the token sale to Dragonfly.

Lido’s plan to sell these coins to Dragonfly without any lock-up requirement had triggered a lot of criticism. The identity of the whale wallet that initially backed the proposal, as previously reported by The Block, also led to speculation of a possible conflict of interest.

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With Monday’s vote ended, the Lido team will have to do further work on the proposal. It is not yet clear if the DAO will move to vote on the other half of the plan.

Lido also has another pending treasury management-related proposal. This one calls for the sale of 10,000 ether from the project’s treasury into stablecoin. Lido’s treasury is currently worth $290 million and it holds 158 million LDO tokens ($251 million), 20,940 ETH ($32 million), five million staked ETH ($7 million) and small amounts of other coins.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Osato is a news reporter at The Block as part of the crypto ecosystems team that focuses on DAO governance, staking, blockchain layers, and DeFi. He was previously a news reporter at Cointelegraph. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, he enjoys crosswords, poker, and attempting to beat his Scrabble high score. Follow him on Twitter at @OsatoNomayo.