The New Trend of Investing in DAO: From Fund Launch Platforms to AI-Driven Vertical Sector Funds

Recently, the concept of Investment DAO has once again attracted attention. This type of decentralized hedge fund is managed by humans or AI, raises funds, and distributes profits to token holders. It provides fund managers with a convenient fundraising tool.

Investment DAOs are not a new phenomenon. When the concept of DAOs emerged in 2022, it existed as a branch primarily deployed on Ethereum, investing in popular areas such as NFTs, DApps, and DeFi. In the current cycle, AI Agents and Memes have become the mainstream of investment.

This wave has shifted from Solana to the Base blockchain. This article will focus on two representative projects on Base, daos.world and Vader AI fun, discussing their operational processes and technical features, thus initiating a reflection on Investment DAO.

daos.world:Investment DAO Launch Platform

daos.world is a platform for launching Investment DAOs, and its operational process is as follows:

1. The DAO manager publishes fund-raising ETH on the platform.

2. Whitelisted users purchase fund shares during the presale phase.

3. After the presale is completed, the platform will mint ERC20 tokens representing the DAO assets.

4. The fund manager invests the ETH raised on the Base platform.

5. At the end of the fund term, participants will receive profits/losses according to the proportion of tokens.

Profit models for various roles on the platform:

• Fund Manager: Obtain transaction fees and part of the profit
• Fundraiser: The fund matures to receive returns, or tokens can be traded in advance.
• Liquidity Provider: Earn trading fees

daos.world has technically designed a unilateral liquidity pool and implemented strict KYC processes and multi-signature to mitigate risks.

Vader AI fun: AI-driven vertical domain fund

Vader AI fun is part of the Virtuals ecosystem, an AI agency project on Base. It launched three DAO funds targeting AI Agents in different market cap ranges:

• Micro Cap: 100,000-2,000,000 USD
• Small Cap: 2-10 million USD
• Mid Cap: 10 million - 100 million USD

Vader AI fun is managed by AI agents, utilizing machine learning trading strategies to trade within a specific market cap range. Participants need to stake $VADER tokens to join the DAO and invest using $VIRTUAL tokens.

DAOs are divided into two types: passive ones managed by AI ( and active ones managed by humans ). Earnings will be distributed to participants in the form of $VADER.

Features and Risks of Investment DAO

The Investment DAO aims to achieve investment democratization, but there are still some risks:

1. The performance of the fund highly depends on the manager's ability.

2. The market value to asset ratio of some projects is too high, and the speculative atmosphere is strong.

3. The whitelist mechanism is not friendly enough to retail investors.

However, some platforms are improving, such as daos.world, which has launched a quantifiable whitelist acquisition method.

Conclusion

With the explosion of ai16z, Investment DAO has returned to people's attention. Currently, there are two major trends in this field:

1. The new Launchpad project addressing the pain points of the existing platform will be implemented on various public chains.

2. DAOs focused on vertical track investments are becoming a new direction, such as the current AI Agent and Meme funds.

The future development of Investment DAO is worth continuous attention.