The DEX aggregator’s $415K treasury will be transferred to the protocol’s development company, along with future revenue.<\/p>\n
Cross-chain DEX aggregator Velora has become the latest protocol to see its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) vs. Labs structure come under pressure.<\/p>\n
Today, April 10, Velora, formerly known as ParaSwap, passed PIP-77: Governance Evolution & Operational Alignment<\/a>, a proposal to wind down its DAO and consolidate operations under Laita Labs, the development company that built the protocol. The proposal passed with 65.8% of voters for and 16.78% against the shift. 17.41% of voters abstained. Voting began on April 5, with Shutter shielding results until voting ended today.<\/p>\n The proposal transfers the roughly $415,000 remaining in the DAO treasury to Laita Labs to settle outstanding infrastructure costs. It also discontinues the DAO’s 20% protocol fee routing, retires the staking program with the exit lockup set to zero so stakers can withdraw immediately, and closes the futarchy<\/a> governance pilot with approximately $19,000 remaining from its original $50,000 allocation.<\/p>\n Per the proposal, going forward, VLR<\/a> becomes a governance-only token, with Snapshot reserved for structural decisions such as token migrations, new chain deployments, or activation of the contract’s 2% annual minting mechanism. Meanwhile, protocol operations, infrastructure, and revenue flow exclusively through Laita Labs.<\/p>\n Laita Labs framed the proposal as an alignment with existing reality: staking rewards and fee routing had already been inactive for months, governance participation had declined, and the DAO had primarily functioned as an off-chain signaling layer while the development team kept the protocol running.<\/p>\n Per DefiLlama data<\/a>, Velora ranks eighth among DEX aggregators by 30-day volume at $2.06 billion, compared to category leader Jupiter’s $11.2 billion.<\/p>\n VLR, which launched in September of last year, is down 99% from its high of $0.06 just after launch.<\/p>\n The proposal didn\u2019t pass without community pushback. In the proposal discussion, community member VeloCryptor, who said they have been staking since day one, proposed three compromises, namely a smaller 5-10% revenue share, a treasury buyback reserve, or a conditional sunset tied to revenue staying low for another 6-12 months. <\/p>\n Laita responded by rejecting all three suggestions, saying even a partial share “brings back the same complexity we’re trying to move away from.”<\/p>\n Another community member, 12342, argued the proposal “shifts the token from something that had a clear economic alignment with the protocol’s success into a pure governance token with no direct value capture.” Supporter citizen42 backed the team, calling it “not a sunset, it will be a sunrise.”<\/p>\n Another community member, 12342, said in the proposal discussion that they are \u201cstrongly against this proposal,\u201d arguing that it \u201cshifts the token from something that had a clear economic alignment with the protocol\u2019s success into a pure governance token with no direct value capture.\u201d<\/p>\n A separate response to the proposal from citizen42 was more positive: \u201cI have faith in Laita that when time comes value will return to token holders, in the meantime all in for operational simplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n The vote arrives as the DAO vs. Labs governance model shows cracks across DeFi. At Aave, a months-long dispute<\/a> over fee distribution between tokenholders and Aave Labs spiraled into a full-blown contributor exodus. Most recently, Chaos Labs became the third core contributor to exit Aave<\/a> in two months, following BGD Labs and the Aave-Chan Initiative, all citing governance misalignment.<\/p>\n At Balancer, a restructuring proposal published in March formalized the wind-down of Balancer Labs O\u00dc<\/a> and consolidated all activity under a BVI entity operating as a direct agent of the DAO, slashing the team and cutting the annual operating budget by 34%. <\/p>\nCommunity Response<\/h2>\n
DAO vs Labs Model Under Pressure<\/h2>\n