ValleyDAO - A year in review, another in sight

Here's some of our highlights for 2023 and what to expect in 2024!

2023 has been an outstanding year for ValleyDAO as we made our journey from 0 to 1. We’ve grown the community by fourfold, hosted several in-person events, attended dozens of conferences, secured over $1M in funding, launched the GROW token and funded our first research project at Imperial College London! But while you might expect us to be celebrating and kicking our feet up for Christmas and the new year, it’s safe to say that we’re working even harder in preparation for 2024. Here we examine our progress over the past year and give a sneak preview of what’s to come in 2024.

2023 In Review

Zuzalu, Montenegro

In March, we took over Lustica Bay in Montenegro, along with hundreds of talented and creative minds from around the globe for Zuzalu - a network state experiment led by Vitalik Buterin and various volunteers from the Ethereum community. We hosted the Blockchain Meets Bio conference along with SynBioBeta at a stunning waterfront location and were blessed by fantastic weather throughout! Our biggest highlight was of course the fireside chat with SynBio visionary Drew Endy and our beloved blockchain pioneer Vitalik. With the sun setting behind them, on a boat in the middle of a beautiful lake, they patiently discussed how blockchain and the principles of decentralisation could be leveraged to create a more abundant future for humanity. John Cumbers wrapped up the weekend and dubbed it the ‘Future Planning Committee’ which we’re proud to be a part of. If you missed it this year, don’t fret… Zuzalu will be back next year and we can’t wait to see you there for another kickass SynBio summit!

Fundraising

Over the course of 2023, ValleyDAO’s community secured over $1M in funding! In the spirit of decentralisation, ValleyDAO has been community owned since day 0, with no pre-sale to other investors before the launch of the token. Everyone got to play the game under the same conditions. To those interested in our fundraising activities for 2024, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

IP-NFT Minted

We funded our first research project, marking a huge milestone in ValleyDAO’s growth. ~$260k was allocated to Dr. Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro’s Lab at Imperial College London to generate novel microbial strains and bioprocesses for the production of oils for foods, industry and energy production, with a particular focus to disrupt the $65b+ palm oil industry which is known for its pollution and animal habitat destruction. We’ve successfully recruited the talented Oliver Konzock who will work on this project starting Feb 1, 2024. Oliver brings a wealth of experience having worked under the supervision of Prof. Jens Nielsen and Prof. Jay Keasling, both pioneers in the field of synthetic biology.

If you want to find out more about the project, check out this exclusive interview and an article published by our friends at Molecule:

Spinout of Academic Startup

A big part of our work is to not only fund the creation of new technologies, but also to support the translation from academia to the market of already developed technologies that are stuck in academia. Early this year, we partnered with the lab of Prof. Pablo Ivan Nikel at Denmark's Technical University to support the commercialization process of their new-to-nature high performance biomaterials which will replace toxic ‘forever chemicals’ like PFAS. With the support of community members dedicated to this project, we successfully helped in the creation of a business model and in fundraising $600k. The BioHalo team is now part of the leading biotech incubator program at the BioInnovation Institute. We will continue to work closely with the BioHalo team so that the world one day can benefit from their sustainable materials.

Copyright: BioInnovation Institute

Token Launch

In Q3, we launched GROW to the public by setting up a liquidity pool and making the token tradable. We’ve come a long way since then, launching at $0.13/GROW to reaching a peak price of $0.7/GROW in recent weeks. We want to extend a warm welcome our 200 new token holders that have rolled in to the community in the last 2 weeks! It’s amazing to see the continued growth and adoption of DeSci as a viable alternative to the legacy research ecosystem and reinforces our commitment to being one of the leading projects in this space! To find out more about the GROW token, visit our website.

2024 Roadmap

Expansion of the IP-NFT Portfolio

Our research funding activities will continue as we enter 2024. During Q4 of this year, we’ve scouted approximately 4000 research funding opportunities of which we’ve chosen 3 projects to consider for funding at Stanford, Harvard and University of Zaragoza. These projects are now being negotiated with their respective universities to get a funding deal for ValleyDAO. We’re excited to be rolling out the funding announcements for these projects in Q1-Q2 of 2024

For one of these projects, we’re aiming to launch it through an Intellectual Property Token (IPToken) launch as previously leveraged by VitaDAO for the VITA-FAST project with Dr. Viktor Korolchuk at University of Newcastle. This implies that GROW holders will be able to directly fund and acquire fractions in the research project and co-govern the resulting intellectual property and the R&D data attached to the IPToken. We’re excited to pioneer this funding model in the synbio funding landscape as we believe it can increase the project’s success rate by the new collaboration incentives IPTokens create. To learn more about IPTokens go here.

Finally, the spinout process for BioHalo was a great case study for how global communities like ValleyDAO can support academic researchers in collectively incubating their work into real climate impact. In 2024, we’re looking to scale-up our spinout model and make our collective community expertise and network available to many more entrepreneurial researchers in synbio. We welcome all synbio researchers to apply for this support through our research portal.

Product Overview

Possibly the most exciting milestone for 2024 is the launch of our community-driven research platform. We’re creating a community platform that enables true decentralisation of research translation where we seek to minimise bottlenecks in translational science. Building on lessons learned through growing the ValleyDAO community and the lessons of other organisations with similar objectives, we’re creating an online innovation ecosystem where individuals can find funding opportunities, collaborators/co-founders, job opportunities and claim bounties for solving bottlenecks. Our solution will make scientific community onboarding and engagement easier and more personalised, ensuring everyone is able to find their role in the ecosystem and maximise their individual impact towards a collective goal. Even more exciting is how all of this will be powered by the GROW token, ensuring that GROW continues to fuel innovation in synthetic biology for climate.

We’re currently onboarding key partners for an exclusive pilot of the platform where users will be able to keep tabs on the entire innovation ecosystem without leaving the house. Stay tuned for detailed announcements coming in January/February next year. We are currently dedicated to creating something truly awesome that can drive new utility for GROW!

Community Growth

Our community has been the most essential part of ValleyDAO. Without it, the project wouldn’t have been where it’s at today. We want to extend our sincerest gratitude to those who were here building with us throughout the entire bear market.

Despite building a decentralised community, we truly understand the value of hosting in-person meetups. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how best to do that given our global presence and are pleased to say that we’ve come to a fair arrangement. In 2024, we will aim to host at least one in-person event per continent, every quarter. We’ve already got Q1 plans for Africa (Uganda), Latin America (Brazil) and Europe (Finland) - exact locations in Asia and North America are still TBD. We will also aim to host a quarterly meetup in London where a big part of our community is. For Q2, we’ll be posting an application form for community members to apply for grants to host their own events. As the community scales, we will look to expand this initiative and have multiple events in every continent, every quarter. 

Token Utility

Ask and you shall receive. Our tokenomics team is hard at work adding further utility to the GROW token. Our first implementation will be the use of Harvest Finance to provide LP incentives to GROW token holders. Subject to the passing of a governance proposal in the new year, GROW holders will be able to deposit tokens into the Uniswap pool and earn yield in both GROW and FARM (Harvest’s native token)!

In addition, we recently passed a delegated voting proposal which will allow community members to lock up a proportion of their GROW allocation in return for becoming an officially listed delegate. For now, only core team members can act as official delegates, but we’ll be sending out an application form soon so that you too can become a delegate and represent your community!

We’ll also be looking to onboard more partners to our partner program so that GROW holders can get more discounts and benefits. If you or someone you know is interested in a partnership, get in touch with us at people@valleydao.bio. 

Finally, we’re always curious to hear from our community about what we should add. If you have ideas/requests for token utility that you’d like to see next, fill out this form. If we use your idea, you’ll receive a little ‘thank you’ from us.

See you in the next one!

As 2023 draws to a close, ValleyDAO stands at the threshold of an even more ambitious and promising year. Our journey this past year, from hosting the Blockchain Meets Bio conference at Zuzalu in Montenegro to supporting innovative projects and launching our token, has set a strong foundation for the future of the project and our community. With 2024 on the horizon, we're gearing up for an even more impactful year, expanding our IP-NFT portfolio, scaling up our spinout model, and launching our community-driven research platform. The roadmap for 2024 is not just a continuation of our growth but an acceleration towards greater achievements in the synthetic biology and decentralized science space. We remain committed to our vision and invite our community to join us in this exciting journey ahead.