Key Takeaways
Inside the billion-dollar crypto DAOs of ETH, SOL, Arbitrum & Uniswap. Discover who really controls the keys, manages the wealth, and the truth behind this power.
In the world of crypto, the treasuries have become the new throne rooms. Swollen with billions, the coffers of major crypto DAOs are starting to look a lot like the balance sheets of Fortune 500 companies.
This money isn’t just sitting there; it’s being used to steer entire ecosystems, bankrolling everything from basic coding to wild bets on real-world property.
But as the piles of digital cash get bigger, one question keeps coming up: who’s actually holding the keys?
AMBCrypto, then, decided to take a deep dive into the finances of giants like the Ethereum [ETH] and Solana [SOL] Foundations, plus top crypto DAOs like Mantle [MNT], Arbitrum [ARB], Optimism [OP], and Uniswap [UNI].
We found a messy and fast-changing picture of how this wealth is managed, governed, and constantly caught between the dream of decentralization and the reality of concentrated power.
Crypto DAOs: A look inside the titans
The amount of money these groups control is hard to wrap your head around, and most of it is paper wealth tied up in their own tokens.
Mantle DAO, born from the fusion of BitDAO and Mantle, is sitting on one of the biggest piles of cash in the game. On-chain data watchers at DeepDAO peg its value at about $2.7 billion.
Its vault is a cocktail of its own MNT token, a hefty amount of ETH, and a large stash of stablecoins, making it a serious player in both liquidity and investment.
The Ethereum Foundation (EF), while not a DAO, basically serves as the guardian of Ethereum’s core development fund. It doesn’t publish reports constantly, but when it does, it’s fairly open.
The EF’s 2024 report showed a treasury of $1.65 billion, mostly in ETH, with a smaller but growing slice in non-crypto assets.
The foundation has recently started to more actively manage this money, hinting that it plans to get more involved in DeFi and be more upfront with its accounting.
Still impactful Crypto DAOs
Uniswap, the exchange that started it all, has a DAO treasury that on paper is worth a jaw-dropping $2.9 billion, according to DeepDAO. The catch? The vast majority of that is in its own UNI token.
This is a gamble that ties the organization’s survival directly to the whims of the market. A separate Uniswap Foundation works with a much smaller, more stable pot of money to hand out grants.
The Layer-2 networks built to make Ethereum faster have also stacked up huge treasuries. Arbitrum DAO’s fund is worth around $2.5 billion, and Optimism’s is about $1.3 billion, both according to DeepDAO.
Like Uniswap, they’re overwhelmingly stuffed with their own ARB and OP tokens. But Arbitrum is trying to be smarter about this risk.
It kicked off a program to trade some of its treasury for tokenized real-world assets, mostly U.S. government bonds, to earn a steady income and protect itself from crypto’s wild swings.
Then there’s the Solana Foundation, which remains a complete black box. Even as its ecosystem has exploded, the foundation has been called out for not publishing regular, detailed reports about its money.
Everyone knows it holds a ton of SOL, but nobody outside knows the exact breakdown or market value, leaving its own community guessing about its true financial health.
So, who holds the keys?
To keep one person from running off with all the money, these billion-dollar vaults are secured by multi-signature wallets, or “multisigs.” These require a group of trusted people to sign off on any transaction.
Who’s in that group tells you a lot about how decentralized a project really is.
Optimism’s security council
The Optimism Collective’s treasury needs two signatures to unlock. One key is held by the Optimism Foundation, the other by a Security Council of well-known industry figures.
People like Kris Kaczor from Phoenix Labs and Jon Charbonneau from DBA serve on rotating terms to keep things stable.
Lido’s committee of experts
Lido DAO [LDO] hands its treasury management to a committee that requires transaction approvals from four out of seven members.
This group is a mix of people you know by name and others who are anonymous.
From guardians to self-governance
In a truly radical step, Ethereum Name Service [ENS] took the master key away from its crypto celebrities—including Chainlink’s [LINK] Sergey Nazarov and Metamask’s Dan Finlay—and gave it to the ENS DAO.
Now, the token holders have direct say over the protocol’s treasury and core code.
For some of the biggest players, though, it’s harder to see who’s in charge. Mantle‘s treasury is run by “core contributors” who supposedly answer to MNT holders, but you won’t find a public list of their names.
The main Uniswap DAO treasury is similarly opaque about who exactly can sign off on transactions, unlike its smaller grant-giving divisions.
Growth vs. crypto treasury management risk
Every major DAO is wrestling with the same problem: what should we do with all this money?
The old strategy of just holding a mountain of your own token is falling out of favor, replaced by a much more active, diversified approach.
The danger of a treasury full of your own token is massive. A sudden price crash can wipe out a DAO’s value overnight. We saw this when Uniswap’s treasury cratered from a peak of nearly $19 billion in 2022.
This is a terrible cycle: when markets are hot, the treasury overflows, but during crashes when the ecosystem needs the most support, the money vanishes.
The smarter DAOs are fighting back with a few key strategies:
Selling for stablecoins and blue-chips
The first move is to trade a chunk of the native token for reliable stablecoins like USD Coin [USDC] and DAI, or for established cryptos like Bitcoin [BTC] and ETH.
This creates a rainy-day fund to cover salaries and survive a bear market.
Buying real-world assets (RWAs)
MakerDAO started this trend, and Arbitrum has followed suit. They’re investing in low-risk, tokenized versions of traditional assets like U.S. Treasury bonds.
This brings in a steady income that has nothing to do with crypto market drama. MakerDAO has already funneled billions into RWAs to shore up the backing of its DAI stablecoin.
Putting the money to work
These treasuries are no longer gathering dust. DAOs are staking their assets, providing liquidity to exchanges, and lending on platforms like Aave [AAVE] and Compound [COMP] to generate extra cash flow.
Centralization and the illusion of democracy
For all the talk about decentralized rule, crypto governance often looks more like an oligarchy.
The “one token, one vote” system means that venture capital firms and a few mega-holders can easily outvote thousands of smaller participants.
A 2022 report showed that in many top DAOs, less than 1% of the wallets controlled 90% of the votes.
This power imbalance directly influences how the treasury’s money gets spent.
Whales and VCs can force through proposals that benefit their own portfolios.
This means making huge strategic investments or pushing for conservative strategies that protect capital instead of funding riskier community projects.
The blow-up over Arbitrum’s first-ever proposal was a perfect example. The Arbitrum Foundation tried to move nearly $1 billion in ARB tokens into its own “Administrative Budget” before anyone could vote on it.
The community went ballistic, calling it “decentralization theater”—a show of giving up control while secretly pulling the strings.
The backlash was so bad the foundation had to reverse course and promise to do better. Still, it was a wake-up call for everyone.
The evolving DAO
The job of a DAO treasury is changing fast. They started as simple funds for paying developers. Now, they’re acting like aggressive investment firms and corporate raiders.
Protocol-owned liquidity (POL)
Instead of constantly printing new tokens to “rent” liquidity from users, Olympus DAO pioneered a model where the DAO owns its liquidity pools outright.
By selling its own tokens at a discount for assets like ETH or stablecoins, a DAO builds a permanent capital base that earns trading fees and helps stabilize its token price.
Mergers & acquisitions (M&A)
We’re now seeing the first wave of crypto M&A.
The merger between Fei Protocol and Rari Capital and Gnosis DAO’s purchase of the CowSwap team show a new playbook for growing, grabbing talent, and cornering the market.
Crypto DAOs continue to grow
As these DAOs use legal tricks like Wyoming LLCs or Swiss foundations to interact with the traditional financial system, their power just keeps growing.
The transformation of their treasuries from simple grant funds into complex, multi-asset investment machines will shape the future of the entire decentralized world.
The fight for who controls these digital vaults is really a fight for what crypto will become.