The Story of New Order: Lessons for DAOs and DeFi Investors

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Saying goodbye to another DAO: New Order. New Order will soon merge into Synonym Finance, with the new token $SYNO replacing $NEWO. The story of New Order serves as a valuable lesson for other DAOs and DeFi investors alike: 🧵

New Order DAO spent 20-months incubating projects like Redacted & Y2K, now sees a "structural misalignment between its long-term vision & market demands." The $NEWO token looks like the majority of DeFi tokens, dropping by 99% from ATH to a current $1.8M market cap.

$NEWO is the ecosystem's governance token. They typically secured 5-10% of every incubated project's supply. And New Order has incubated quite a few products you might've heard: ↓

• @redactedcartel: DeFi liquidity & governance • @y2kfinance: Speculation on exotic DeFi derivatives • @H2O_data: Crypto data economy • Sector: Next-gen DeFi tools • @FrogsAnon: Premier DeFi research curation • Vybe: Feeless crypto transfers via Web3 & NFTs

But the NEWO team sees a misalignment between incubation goals and the immediate incentives sought by token holders. This has caused a rift between the DAO and the community. Thus, they proposed merging New Order DAO with Synonym Finance.

What is @synonymfinance? • Cross-chain money market backed by Wormhole Foundation • Seamless lend, borrow & yield across chains • Supported by Arbitrum, Optimism, Circle ecosystems • Launching on Ethereum, Arbitrum & more

The most interesting part: Synonym will inherit key assets like Redacted Finance ($BTRFLY) & Y2K Finance ($Y2K). Projects without issued tokens shift to a non-Synonym entity, in exchange for New Order core team tokens. New Order Foundation plans to dissolve after.

There will be a new token - $SYNO • NEWO tokens = SYNO tokens. No dilution • veNEWO lockers unlocked post-proposal • 800M SYNO tokens = 800M NEWO token

The vote is currently underway until August 25th, and it is highly likely to pass. Interestingly, this is the second (improved) proposal. It includes a provision that veNEWO lockers will be able to claim 50% of the yield from Incubated projects indefinitely.

After the vote, @synonymfinance will launch an Incentivized testnet: Mid-August 2023. Mainnet launch scheduled for October.

Finally, the team member @0xSami_ shared a concern: "The treasury is too low to start another project" in a year's time. It would be unwise to continue risking the treasury when there's a promising opportunity with Synonym. How many more DAOs are in this situation?