In the midst of the ongoing controversy surrounding cryptocurrency media platform Bankless and its associated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), BanklessDAO, the co-founders of Bankless, David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams, are proposing a separation between the brand and the DAO.
On November 26, Hoffman and Adams announced their intention to submit a governance proposal to BanklessDAO, advocating for the distinct separation of the two entities. Additionally, as part of this proposal, the co-founders expressed their commitment to burning all of their BanklessDAO (BANK) tokens.
Addressing the issue on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Hoffman acknowledged the need for the Bankless community to be more receptive to criticism. He recognized his personal inclination to defend Bankless when faced with unfair attacks, which may hinder the ability to objectively assess constructive feedback.
The decision to detach Bankless from BanklessDAO was prompted by community criticism directed at BanklessDAO's grant application to Arbitrum. Filed on November 20, the application sought 1.82 million Arbitrum (ARB) tokens from Arbitrum, a layer 2 scaling project for the Ethereum blockchain. As per CoinGecko data, the requested amount was valued at approximately $1.8 million at the time of the announcement.
Hoffman addressed concerns within the community, emphasizing the worry that BanklessDAO might be making ambitious proposals by leveraging the reputation of the Bankless brand. He pointed out that the Bankless brand was not created by the DAO and questioned whether it should benefit from it.
The BanklessDAO community swiftly responded to the initiative, with many members of the DAO expressing criticism. Key concerns included the lack of detailed information on how the substantial grant would be utilized for content creation. In response to the feedback, BanklessDAO committed to revising the proposal by reducing the one-year grant to three months and providing transparent key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones.