In the Web3 space, the highly-anticipated decentralized autonomous organization HTX DAO ushered in its establishment, as announced by its core supporter Justin Sun on his social media account. On February 2, the HTX DAO 2024 and People’s Exchange launch ceremony was held in Singapore, marking a new chapter for both HTX DAO and the HTX exchange. This event signifies HTX DAO’s commitment to tapping into the community’s wisdom and power, transforming the leading crypto exchange into a truly people-centered exchange.
At that time, Sun had been with HTX for 14 months as a member of its Global Advisory Board. After navigating a challenging year of adaptation and adjustment, HTX is now firmly on track for success, achieving remarkable strides, including a fast turnaround and successful rebranding.
With its current trajectory, HTX could have remained on autopilot. But the launch of HTX DAO and $HTX has been a game-changer, electrifying the HTX community and sending ripples of excitement through the industry.
Ready to unlock the mystery of HTX DAO? Let’s dive deep into this project and explore the reasons behind Justin Sun’s enthusiastic support.
Community Autonomy: Shared Ownership
In stark contrast to HTX DAO’s decentralized approach, Sun pointed out that looking across the entire industry, the operations of centralized exchanges (CEXs) are still highly centralized. HTX aims to be the first people’s exchange, the first CEX practicing decentralization, and the first democratic and autonomous exchange, and all of this will be achieved through HTX DAO, he added.
DAOs are naturally more appealing to ordinary users than other organizations in traditional forms. They bring community members together in a flat and non-hierarchical structure, challenging the existing governance models. Community users form the foundation of a DAO, where everyone can be participants and contributors, and everyone has the right to make proposals. Once a proposal is approved, it is executed through smart contracts.
In line with this, “community autonomy” is the most frequently mentioned phrase by Sun regarding HTX DAO in multiple public speeches.
Embracing community-based governance means relinquishing some control. But the reward? Engaged members actively participate in key decision-making. This shift empowers them from users to co-builders, fostering a project’s future. The resulting emotional investment not only strengthens loyalty and a sense of collective ownership and responsibility, but also fuels innovation in the community-building approach, ensuring the project’s long-term success.
In terms of HTX DAO’s operations, a series of democratic measures have already been scheduled.
On January 25, HTX DAO created a buzz on its official social media by selecting the users with the most likes on their comments for a direct conversation with Sun and the HTX DAO Governance Committee, collectively exploring the path of governance for HTX DAO. The event poster was captioned, “The People’s Exchange, Built by the People.”
In addition to this, HTX DAO‘s further moves are also being planned, including representative elections, community voting for token listings, democratic forums, and the more transparent asset proof and private key storage mechanism.
This event attracted tens of thousands of viewers and sparked discussions, with ten ecosystem participants raising a series of questions. In response, Sun stated that the $HTX governance token will ideally be distributed to HTX DAO’s contributors and users. Regularly holding People’s Meetings by HTX department heads and HTX DAO will ensure users feel ownership and enhance transparency and community governance as the HTX exchange is evolving into the People’s Exchange 2.0.
Friedrich Hayek, a leading proponent of classical liberalism in the twentieth century, argued that the desirability of an order does not stem from its ability to organize individual elements, but rather from its potential to generate new forces that would otherwise remain dormant. In light of this perspective, it is evident that the community’s passion and wisdom, which can be kindled by HTX DAO, will invigorate and revitalize the cryptocurrency world dominated by CEXs.
Meme Mode: Decentralized Branding
After the release of the HTX DAO whitepaper, the community raised concerns about $HTX’s initial supply of 999,990,000,000,000 tokens. They questioned why a governance token would have such a high meme token-like issuance.
This brings us to the rise of meme tokens.
In the second quarter of 2023, Pepecoin emerged as a legendary narrative and created a new record as a meme token with a market capitalization of $1 billion and a spot among the top 50 cryptocurrencies.
Meme tokens have always been unique and peculiar in the cryptocurrency realm. They lack practicality but carry a sense of playful pride.
However, the emergence of meme tokens brings new changes in the traditional branding narratives across the crypto market, providing a fresh approach to attracting new users and traffic. Meme tokens can be seen as effective communication tools that align perfectly with the new paradigm of Web3, fostering social sharing and cultivating community awareness.
Regarding $HTX’s issuance, Sun explained that $HTX indeed draws inspiration from the meme token model. The reason behind this lies in the fact that meme tokens have minimal security attributes, making them compliant with regulatory requirements, while also enjoying the strongest community consensus.
Sun further elaborated that successful meme tokens are backed by strong community spirit and organizational power. He hopes that HTX, through the support of $HTX, can achieve higher greatness and establish an organizational structure featuring “centralized operations and decentralized branding/decision-making”.
Sun appears to be confident about this vision.
According to the whitepaper, the distribution of $HTX tokens is as follows: early contributors and public allocation accounts for 19%; community access program, 19%; developer grant, 10%; research and development, 10%; ecosystem supporter, 10%; partnership and collaboration, 15%; and platform development, 17%.
Besides the HTX exchange, HTX DAO has reportedly attracted more builders for its ecosystem, including projects and institutions such as Ankr, Spark Digital Capital, Double Peak Capital, Zebec, Merkle 3s Capital, TRON, BitTorrent, Poloniex, Spark, Stratified Capital, stUSDT, APENFT, etc. It is worth noting that, as co-builders, HTX, TRON, BitTorrent, and APENFT will contribute funds to support HTX DAO’s liquidity, jointly promoting the development of HTX DAO.
HTX DAO seems to have covered all the bases.
While many crypto founders preach decentralization, few take concrete steps in decentralizing their brand. However, Sun, always emphasizing branding and marketing, has achieved this feat by empowering the community with tokens and proposal voting rights, making them highly engaged members and staunch brand advocates.
A Journey With More Than Just Wealth
In 2023, the significant wealth effect created by HTX on token listings has garnered market favor and acclaim. This sets HTX apart from other exchanges with issues such as the lack of transparency in the listing process and the dissemination of exaggerated or even false information, which are prevalent in the exchange space and increase the risks of crypto investments and market manipulation.
Sun declared, “Breaking down information barriers and bringing absolute transparency to HTX, from a transparent listing process to future private key custody options. Ultimately, $HTX holders should become the true owners of the platform.”
Clearly, the core vision of HTX DAO and HTX is to provide the community with shared prosperity and constantly achieve it through empowerment and sharing. It also gives users the power and opportunity to think for themselves about the platform’s direction and how they can contribute to it.
However, measuring the success of a Web3 product lies not only in its appeal to blockchain natives but also in its ability to attract ordinary users who use the product solely for its functional purposes, rather than for making money. In other words, the product’s ability to break the barrier of its own community.
In fact, the exploration of HTX DAO and HTX not only opens up new paths for the crypto industry but also provides inspiration for traditional businesses. Instead of relying solely on product or service sales, HTX DAO’s business model emphasizes interaction and collaboration with the community. This is community-based collaboration that traditional businesses can learn from, igniting their exploration of new commercial value in the context of decentralized intellectual property and collaborative ecosystems.
Moreover, HTX has previously declared its goal of building a Web3 financial hub in the metaverse, providing financial services for 8 billion people worldwide, and enabling them to achieve financial freedom. It seems that this vision is not far off.
The post first appeared on HTX Square.
