Shore of

Filigreen

A community bank for tokens

contact: josh@filigreen.org

The problem

Token price affects everything in a DAO. Ops, runway, community, team retention, governance.

Institutional liquidity guarantees volume, but it's expensive, time-intensive, and still risky.

DIY launches are cheap and easy but lead to extreme volatility and mostly fail.

The solution

A community bank that lends against a DAO's native tokens. Our loans help projects:

  • Support price by giving token holders an alternative to selling.
  • Anchor price on fundamentals, not hype or costly liquidity support.
  • Save money on institutional LPs and market-making fees.
  • Power growth more cheaply than grants.

"If there were a way for DAOs to keep their five biggest stakeholders from having to sell, that would be a game changer."

- Industry Leading Token Designer

Why now?

$1.34B

Average market cap of DAOs* listed on Aave

Point: huge value in the long tail.

$300M - $40B

Community bank loan book size

Point: community banks are big.

*isolated, non-stablecoin (ENS, UNI, CRV, BAL, LDO, MKR, 1INCH, SNX)

How it works

We operationalize the trust between top stakeholders within a DAO or token project.

DAO applies in minutes


Filigreen deploys a custom loan program


Key stakeholders borrow against native tokens


Stabilize token price


Recourse & collateral

If individual loans default, Filigreen works with the DAO and its token holders to ensure loans get repaid.

The community cures shortfalls in the loan program through cash flows or additional token collateral.

Filigreen works with the community to resolve any disputes with minimal disruption to token price or DAO cash flows.

So far

  • We launched at and won ETH Denver 2024
  • Raised $100k non-equity pre-seed for an experimental loan fund
  • Deployed two loans: $10k to ZuCasa (bullet), $25k to Refraction DAO (concluding in 2 years, on time)
  • Shipped product MVP: AI-first loan & governance logic, peer review system, token integrations
  • 50+ leading DAO builders, investors, and founders in our private community

Community

50+ of the leading builders and founders in DAOs and token communities in our private community blog (message us to access) Eric Alston (CU Boulder) George Beall (Gauntlet) Raymond Cheng (Open Source Observer) Spencer Graham (Hats) Griff Green (Giveth) Rolf Hoefer (Culture3) Nicholas Hu (GCC) Sara Horowitz (Mutualist Society) Joi Ito (Chiba Tech) Nathan Schneider (CU Boulder) Ori Shimony (Mechanism Institute) Raf Solari (Tally) Devin Walsh (Uniswap Foundation) Joshua Watts (dYdX Foundation) Jason Wiener (Jason Wiener P.C.) Kyle Weiss (Gitcoin) Matt Wright (Consensys) Reuben Youngblom (Stanford) Philipp Zahn (20squares) Michael Zargham (BlockScience) and many more… All community members Amandeep (Arbitrum Foundation) Eric Alston (CU Boulder) Theo Beutel (Ethereum Foundation) George Beall (Gauntlet) Camille Canon (Apiary) Raymond Cheng (Open Source Observer) Val Elefante (Center for Cultural Innovation) Charlie Feng (Agora) Cate Fox (Center for Cultural Innovation) Kiba Gateaux (Debt DAO) Spencer Graham (Hats) Geoist (IDriss) Griff Green (Giveth) Rolf Hoefer (Culture3) Nicholas Hu (GCC) Sara Horowitz (Mutualist Society) Joi Ito (Chiba Tech) Azeem Khan (Miden, UNICEF) James Kiernan (Octant) Philipp Koellinger (DeSci Foundation) Launamu (WAGMI LATAM) Eugene Leventhal (Scroll Foundation, Metagov) Daniel Liebau (Essec) Anke Liu (Stellar Foundation) Auryn MacMillan (Clr.fund, Gnosis) Jessica Mele (Center for Cultural Innovation) Vaughn McKenzie-Landell (Butter) Yalor Mewn (Metacartel, Metacamp) Richard Moore (Ethers.js) Mahesh Murthy (Karma) Will Papper (Syndicate) Isaac Patka (Shield3) Joni Pirovich (Cocounsel, DAOstar) Alex Poon (Charmverse) Jason Potts (RMIT) Austin Robey (Subvert) Ellie Rennie (RMIT) Mario Romero Zavala (Revert Finance) Hirad Sab (One Project) Nathan Schneider (CU Boulder) Tobias Schreier (Grow the Pie) Ori Shimony (Mechanism Institute) Raf Solari (Tally) Tae (Raid Guild) Val Elefante (Center for Cultural Innovation) Ketcher (Maker) Devin Walsh (Uniswap Foundation) Joshua Watts (dYdX Foundation) Jason Wiener (Jason Wiener P.C.) Kyle Weiss (Gitcoin) Matt Wright (Consensys) Yuet Wong (Clr.fund) Reuben Youngblom (Stanford) Philipp Zahn (20squares) Michael Zargham (BlockScience) Leeann Wallett (Center for Cultural Innovation) Fabien ! (Snapshot)

Market size

We start focused by solving launch problems for early-stage DAOs and token projects.

~$200M

Launch-phase market-making/LP services (TAM)

~$40M

Services within top-tier venues (SAM)

~$4M

Early-stage DAOs and protocols (SOM)


Alternate calculation based on crypto lending market

Market size (crypto lending)

We graduate into the larger crypto lending space once we have an established trust network.

$36.5B →

Crypto lending market (TAM)

~$7B →

DAO native token lending market (SAM)

~$100M

Small DAOs (SOM)

Business model

10-15%

Interest on loans

10-15%

Principal coverage through

equity/token warrants

Competition

Sources and methodology

If you want to do your own research, here's the Deep Research prompt we used: I am preparing a competition slide / graphic for Filigreen, a community bank for tokens. Filigreen combines an Aave-style lending protocol strategy with a traditional community banking play akin to Silicon Valley Bank. I have prepared a list of competitors below along with their associated websites. For each competitor, summarize their strategy, identify their relevance to Filigreen, identify whether they are focused on overcollateralized or undercollateralized loans, and identify whether they are more protocolized (permissionless) or individualized (permissioned).

We then asked: Grade each competitor on two dimensions on a 1-10 scale: Liquidity: from no expectations around token liquidity or no token (1) to only for highly liquid tokens (10). Trust: from trustless (more overcollateralized, permissionless, protocolized treatment) (1) to trustful (more undercollateralized, permissioned, individualized treatment) (10). Include columns justifying each number.

We then edited the output based on our own background knowledge and assessment of these projects.

Team

Joshua Tan

Product & community

Founder Metagov, DAOstar. 6x startups. CS PhD Oxford, ex Stanford, Princeton, MIT

John Garry

Risk & product

Venture capitalist, ex High Alpha, Notre Dame Investment Office

Joseph Low

Tech & infra

Hacker, 10x engineer Metagov, grand prize ETH Denver, ex- Treehouse

James Waugh

Token design & risk

Founder Fire Eyes, launched $ENS, $OP, $BAL, ex Metacartel, Hydra

Financials

We're looking for:

  • $5M in capital for loans across 5-10 DAO programs (revolving credit facility)
  • $500k for operations over 2 years, targeting growth

contact: josh@filigreen.org

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