We’re in the third decade of the 21st century and your bank’s giving you zero interest on your money. If your balance is above XX,000 the rate goes negative. You’re paying the bank to hold your ‘savings’.
Clearly you need to manage your money yourself. It’s time to dive in and swim. But investing is a deep sea. There’s a plethora of opportunities and an Internet full of dubious advice. You could dig in and build up your knowledge so you become a savvy investor. That takes time and requires a range of expertise. Given a field, it takes 10,000 hours to master it. That’s a long road to travel before you can invest your savings with confidence.
If you want to augment your decision process, join a team. Find a group of people with stellar goals and advanced skills. Get onboard.
• In TradFi (Traditional Finance) that means join a company or investment group.
• In local and networked society, it means join a collective or cooperative.
• Today you probably want to get involved with a DAO.
This is not financial advice. Do your own due diligence and gauge your risk tolerance. But there are many DAOs with the express purpose of maximizing savings. They explore, utilize, and create DeFi tools that bring in markedly high, sometimes eye-popping APR/APYs*. Here’s a tiny ranging subset: dHedge (transparent funds), Idle Finance (yield strategies), SyncDAO (perpetual vaults), DeFi Omega (insider diggers), PleasrDAO (art and collectibles), FlamingoDAO (NFTs and metaverse).
PieDAO
Time for a shill. I’m involved with PieDAO. It focuses on crypto index funds.
You know the S&P 500? That’s an index. You can buy shares in $SPY, a fund that tracks the index. This is known as passive investing, where you’re not picking individual stocks but assuming that the entire list will follow an upwards trend. It may dip now and then but those are buy opps.
PieDAO does the same with crypto tokens. An index is known as a Pie. They have general Pies, ecosystem Pies, and sector-based Pies. The ingredients of each Pie are decided by community experts in an open process of discussion, polls, and voting.
It’d be too much to list all products but here are the star players:
• BCP: Balanced Crypto Pie gives equal Bitcoin, Ether, and DeFi exposure.
• DeFi++: DEFI Index Pie is a diversified DeFi index. It includes both large and small market cap projects, with a focus on sector leaders and innovators.
• BTC++: contains four of the leading BTC tokens on the market. This pie is focused on risk minimization.
There are also Pies that earn yield known as Pie Vaults. Metagovernance, staking, lending, and interest-bearing assets are enabled by default and operate in the background without requiring any extra work from the Pie holder:
• YPIE: Yearn Finance Ecosystem Pie provides complete exposure to the Yearn network.
• PLAY: Provides exposure to the sub-sectors inventing the Metaverse. It tracks an index of blockchain gaming, infrastructure, and entertainment projects.
The $PLAY index is my favorite. It’s a vehicle to invest in an ecosystem in which I’m not involved and don’t understand but I think it has exponential potential. Like all Pies, $PLAY started at $1. It went up to $7, peaking in November, then retreated with the broader market. As it’s an index, all I had to do was watch. This is the chart since inception:
Team
What really impresses me about PieDAO is the caliber of the people. First the founders, now the crew. In a startup the skills of the team are critical. Venture capitalists might like an idea but will only invest if there’s a top team behind it. That’s because they know an idea will evolve, or even pivot, but if VCs think the team can execute they’ll back it.
PieDAO’s lead founder is a visionary. He’s technical too. The dude can code. That means he’s cognizant of the full gamut of product development. There’s a financial guy who finesses spreadsheets and groks the complex workings of DeFi. The underlying tech is architected by a Solidity wizard. Plus there’s a gifted designer who shapes the brand image and creates friendly UIs.
The team has expanded with more talent. A DeFi blockchain expert, a brilliant marketing guy, knowledgeable traders who manage the treasury, and insiders from niches of the ecosystem. The Forum and Discord activity is so intense it’s hard to keep up.
In a recent marketing brainstorm participants were asked to describe PieDAO in a phrase. I suggested “Easy access to financial independence”. The ‘easy’ aspect is the community. There’s a spectrum of expertise on hand and newcomers will find willing support as they advance through the DeFi learning curve.
Since it’s an open DAO there’s no barrier to entry. You don’t need to get hired, there’s no elite access fee, no collective/cooperative dues filter, and financial participation has no minimum. You get access to a gathering of experts, all intent on maximizing personal financial resources.
PieDAO is also a meritocracy. By contributing you help steer the direction of the enterprise. That’s how it works. The DAO derives from its crowd.
Forward
Due to the nature of indexes it’s in the interest of most projects in the ecosystem to collaborate with PieDAO. That cross pollination helps the work scale and boosts the power of its hive mind. Financial rewards increase too. $DOUGH stakers enjoy payout for governance, internal working groups get remunerated, the treasury is quintessentially a hedge fund, and the constant fee generation scales with the rest of the market.
Growth phases are always exciting. They’re also stressful and a ton of work but the visceral reward is seeing it progress. If PieDAO continues its current trajectory its growth will hit Dunbar’s number (150 active participants) in the future. That’ll require a restructuring, perhaps into sub-DAOs, but it’ll also be cause for celebration. Mission accomplished: financial independence achieved.
* APR/APY: annual percentage yield is compounded while rate is not.
