Bankless
Bankless is a cryptocurrency media brand and community that focuses on educating and empowering individuals to navigate the decentralized financial landscape. [1][2]
Overview
Founded by David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams in 2020, Bankless is a global community helping users on their crypto journey. [3][4]
Bankless aims to help people become financially sovereign by providing information, insights, and resources related to decentralized finance (DeFi), cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology.
Their mission is to guide users toward a world where they can manage their finances without relying on traditional banks or intermediaries.[2]
Bankless produces a wide range of content, including articles, guides, podcasts, newsletters, and videos hosted on YouTube by co-founders Hoffman and Adams. [4]
They cover topics such as DeFi protocols, yield farming, tokenomics, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and crypto adoption. The goal is to make complex concepts accessible to a broader audience. [1][2]
We're digital explorers navigating this new frontier alongside you, publishing everything we discover along the way in the form of articles and podcasts.[5]
Bankless & BanklessDAO Separation
In May 2021, Bankless launched a DAO called BanklessDAO. [6]
"The bankless movement is now larger than any single entity, newsletter, podcast, or person to contain. It needs an internet scale organization to achieve its goals. So the bankless community is launching a DAO." - the blogpost wrote[6]
The Bankless DAO acted as a coordination mechanism for a collection of participating media nodes and also launched a token, $BANK to facilitate the DAO coordination. [6]
However, in November 2023, BanklessDAO applied for a grant of 1.82 million Arbitrum (ARB) tokens from Arbitrum, a layer-2 scaling project for Ethereum. Concerns arose because BanklessDAO’s proposal requested a substantial amount of tokens for content creation without providing detailed information on how the funds would be used. Community members questioned whether BanklessDAO should leverage the weight of the Bankless brand, which it did not create, for such ambitious proposals. [7]
In response to community criticism related to BanklessDAO’s application, the co-founders took to X (formerly Twitter) on Nov. 26, 2023, to announce that they plan to burn all of their BanklessDAO (BANK) tokens and to also submit a governance proposal to BanklessDAO, aiming to formally separate the two entities. [7][8]
"The sharing of the brand between two independent entities, @BanklessHQ and @banklessDAO, is too confusing for the industry to accept." - Hoffman tweeted
"As for our next steps: 1. We plan to submit a governance proposal to BanklessDAO early next week to clarify the branding separation between these entities. 2. We also plan to burn all of our BANK tokens on the back of this proposal."[8]
The argument between the proposal backers and opponents escalated rapidly on social media. Some commentators like pseudonymous Delegate Cash CEO Foobar accused Bankless founders of “legitimacy grifting” by pretending that BanklessDAO was completely unrelated to Bankless. The controversy led to the decision to separate the two entities and address the concerns raised by the community. [8]