A Web3 accelerator originally founded as DeFi Alliance has recently rebranded itself as ‘Alliance DAO’; a move owed to the rising popularity of DAOs,which in turn attracts more adopters and helps to raise funds in a shorter span of time.
DeFi Alliance was launched in April 2020 by founders Jacob Franek, Imran Khan and Qiao Wang, originally named the ‘Chicago DeFi Alliance’. With a team of crypto veterans in partnership with top tier trading and venture firms, its main objective is to support crypto startup founders. The organisation has a strong community of veteran founders, technology experts, and executives, who work with crypto-startups to help them develop into sustainable, far-reaching businesses.
The Staggering Growth of DeFi
DeFi Alliance started by mentoring decentralized finance ("DeFi") protocols and helping them partner with liquidity providers and market makers. It provides mentorship and funding for early-stage tech teams working in the DeFi sector. In Q3 2021, the success of the genesis cohort of gaming track (Web3) sparked their migration to a fully-fledged Web3 accelerator.
According to Defi Llama, at the time when DeFi Alliance was launched, the total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi space was just $500M. The current TVL of DeFi firms is about $230B. A staggering increase of 45,900%.
DeFi Alliance itself has helped more than 90 startups, including 15% of the top 100 DeFi projects by market capitalization, like 0x, Alpha Finance, dYdX, Kyber, Olympus DAO, Paraswap, Ribbon Finance, Sushiswap, Synthetix, and Zerion. The admission rate into the accelerator has been well below 5% and the NPS (Net Promoter Score, a measurement of user satisfaction) across their 3 most recent cohorts has been 75 or higher, averaging 80. Their goal is to grow Web3 to 1 billion users by 2025.
The Transition to a DAO
On Jan 13, 2022, they transformed into ‘Alliance DAO’ aiming to be the world’s first digital startup nation and to help accelerate the best Web3 startups. They chose the DAO format for a few reasons:
- Primarily digital
- Always transnational
- Provides frictionless opt-in opt-out
- Allows for blockchain-enabled nation states
Alliance DAO community includes new founders, domain experts, service providers, lawyers, auditors, liquidity providers, market makers and more. Contribution will be measured and supported by tools and smart contracts with an incentive model designed for every citizen to capture nation-wide output and upside.
Alliance DAO raised $50M from over 300 contributors in its initial round, even before its inception.
Alliance DAO community has about 120+ mentors and 410+ network members.
Since early 2020, DeFi Alliance has helped the top 1% of Web3 founders start and grow their companies. The accelerator program lasts 9 weeks, is entirely remote and relies on 4 main activities - Educational Sessions with leading Web3 experts, 1:1 Mentorship from Alliance partners and extended network, Group Mentorship through weekly progress meets among founders along with partners, Demo Day where startups present to the network and graduate from the program. The accelerator program has 3 cohorts in a year.
In the future, the DAO aims to provide governance, recruiting, liquidity, marketing, advisory and other potential startup support services, materialising into a much larger digital nation state. They plan to issue a coin and the liquid token is expected to start trading in “six to 12 months” pending the regulatory scene. The DAO tokens are limited to vetted individuals limiting membership to approved founders.
Alliance DAO is entirely focused on founders supporting each other, sharing advice, forming partnerships and building together, to make their dream of 1 billion Web3 users by 2025, a reality.
