Crypto crash hits DAO treasuries as reserves crash to two-year lows

The overall crash of the crypto market is causing a long-term outflow of funds held in DAO. In the past week alone, DAO shed another $3.5B in value. 

Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are one of the trends affected by the sliding crypto market. In the past week alone, DAO treasuries declined by $3.5B in notional value. The biggest treasury, belonging to Mantle (formerly BitDAO), is at $2.3B, down 11.4% in the past week.

The collection of all DAOs tracked by DeepDAO currently holds only $14.6B, down from $42.5B in March 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, DAO treasuries declined by over $23B, driven by an outflow of users and a sliding price of ETH. Ethereum is home to hundreds of DAOs that use the token as collateral. 

The lost value of ETH also affects legacy treasuries from the earlier DAO. USDC and DAI are also among the top holdings of DAO, but some also hold UNI, MKR, SKY, and BNB as treasury assets.

DAO treasuries range from predominantly ETH-based reserves to treasuries of native tokens, as in the case of Mantle. DAO remains one of the biggest crypto reserves with the potential to be deployed or reinvested, but for now, their influence is limited by the overall market sentiment. 

Any crypto project can also be a DAO, as token holders are given voting rights to decide on protocol developments. DAO can be large-scale and have thousands of users or be limited to a small pool of voters. The leading Mantle DAO has 22.2K holders with potential voting rights, while newer DAOs like Euler Finance have around 2.2K holders.

DAO treasuries also have different ways of fundraising, ranging from initial token allocations to donations or earnings from activities. Some of the leading DeFi protocols also serve as DAO for fee distribution. DAOs were also formed with explicit fundraising tasks, such as buying copyrights for specific works of art. Some DAOs were also built around NFT ownership.

DAO voters slow down their activity

The loss of treasury value coincided with an outflow of voting activity. In January 2025, DAO usually led to as many as 1,500 decisions. In March, only 748 votes were held, with 73 votes in April to date. 

Voting activity is often tied to token-based incentives or rewards. With the overall drop in token prices, DAO participants may not have enough reasons to decide on issues. 

Some DAOs, like Jupiter, only have limited voting periods, which are heavily incentivized and marketed on social media. For others, there are almost no new proposals to vote. 

Additionally, DAOs rely on a small subset of power users, who often take part in hundreds of DAOs. Those power users also make up the bulk of new proposals. The influence of whales in voting may work against some DAOs, where retail holders are outvoted by whales. 

DAO tokens supported by Mantra (OM)

DAO tokens have lost value, following the general market trend. The overall market capitalization of DAO tokens is down to $23B, losing 4.51% in the past day. 

Mantra (OM) is the only token with strong gains. The asset also saved the high gains of the entire tokenized real-world assets (RWA) sector. 

Other major DAO tokens were mostly tied to DeFi, including UNI, MKR, AAVE, CRV, LDO, and COMP. Those assets slid as the DeFi narrative also suffered losses. Losses for DAO also came from other narratives slowing down in the past months, including NFT and Web3 gaming. The lack of new crypto startups also slowed down the creation of new DAOs, leaving the market with legacy organizations. 

The biggest problem with DAOs is that some were formed around narratives and ideas instead of products. For some DAOs, voting was either semi-centralized or depended on proxies and whales.  

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