DeXe Protocol (DEXE): Empowering Decentralized Communities
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have become the most common governance model for blockchain networks and apps. The DAO model allows a web3 project to run its governance processes in a transparent and clearly defined manner. However, a typical DAO often suffers from drawbacks and inefficiencies, such as limited decentralized treasury management tools, overdependence on a small number of powerful stakeholders, poorly designed incentives and a lack of active involvement from eligible members.
DeXe Protocol (DEXE) is a decentralized platform that addresses these challenges by offering a set of tools that web3 projects can use to create highly customized DAOs. It allows developers to easily launch DAOs on a variety of blockchains, specifying conditions for treasury funds management, proposal evaluation processes, governance token launches, validator appointments, voting delegation and many more parameters. The protocol even supports the development of multi-DAO models, with a hierarchy of sub-DAOs and “mother DAOs” interacting with each other. In short, the DeXe network offers web3 projects everything necessary to launch the most sophisticated varieties of DAOs.
Key Takeaways:
DeXe is a decentralized protocol that provides tools for web3 projects to launch their own highly customizable DAOs.
Using the DeXe DAO Studio, project operators can design and deploy their DAOs without any coding required.
The platform's native cryptocurrency, DEXE, is used for governance, reward payments, protocol fee payments and treasury fund allocations. DEXE can be bought on Bybit as a USDT Perpetual contract.
What Is DeXe Protocol?
DeXe Protocol (DEXE) is a decentralized platform that helps web3 projects easily design and deploy highly customizable DAOs to support their governance. It offers developers unprecedented flexibility and a wide range of options when crafting the specifications for their DAOs. By providing a platform to efficiently deploy DAOs on a variety of blockchains, DeXe contributes to the industry-wide improvement of governance models.
Decentralized projects can achieve the following key benefits by using DeXe for the development of their DAOs:
Optimization of proposal and voting processes. DeXe offers a rich set of options to design the proposal evaluation and voting processes for a DAO.
Quick and easy deployment of governance tokens. The platform offers the option to create a fully audited governance token for a DAO.
Highly customizable governance asset specifications. Most DAOs are governed by members who hold or stake the project's native fungible cryptocurrency. DAOs created with the DeXe Protocol can be governed not only via fungible cryptos, but also using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), soulbound tokens (SBTs) or even a combination of these.
Additional governance actor types. DeXe allows developers to assign additional actors — Validators and Experts — to the governance process. They can be assigned specific responsibilities and restricted to accessing only certain types of proposals.
Designing meritocratic voting and reward systems. Many existing DAOs are unduly affected by a small group of stakeholders who tend to dominate the voting process due to their vast token holdings. Such a form of "plutocracy" goes against the very principles of decentralized governance. DeXe lets developers design voting and reward systems that try to avoid such scenarios.
Specifying democratic treasury allocation models. By using DeXe Protocol, web3 projects can specify treasury fund allocation schemes that benefit the user community rather than project owners.
Creating multi-DAO setups. The DeXe protocol also allows projects to develop a network of DAOs with a hierarchy of decision-making. For instance, Experts and DAOs can form a sub-DAO to propagate their decision to a mother DAO for a final vote.
The DeXe project was launched in 2020, initially as a decentralized social trading platform. It provided social trading functions, such as copy trading and mirror trading, for professional traders at all levels of expertise. However, in more recent times, the project team has focused its efforts on a different area: DAO development.
DeXe’s platform is supported by the DeXe Association, a Swiss-based nonprofit fully governed on-chain. The DeXe Association plays a crucial role in supporting the protocol's growth, development and popularization.
How Does DeXe Protocol Work?
To create a DAO through the DeXe protocol, developers can utilize a library of 50 different smart contracts that provide functions to specify custom rules for a DAO. All of the smart contracts on the platform are open-source, allowing blockchain developers to further customize them.
A fundamental setting during the DAO creation process is that of assigning roles for all the participating entities. The most common role is a Member, who can participate in voting, discussions and proposal creation. Any user who holds the governance asset of the DAO is a Member. As noted earlier, these assets don't have to be fungible cryptocurrencies; using DeXe, DAO membership can be defined using NFTs, SBTs or via more complex structures combining different asset types.
In addition to Members, DAO developers can specify two additional roles — Validators and Experts. Validators, typically a group of them, may be employed to provide an extra layer of security to the DAO. Members will then delegate their governance assets to Validators and Experts to assist in their various DAO duties and receive a portion of the rewards.
Maintaining Security Alongside Decentralization
In decentralized environments, there are instances when certain DAO members, sometimes operating in groups, may organize for malicious purposes, e.g., to siphon funds from the treasury or pass a protocol change that may create a security vulnerability. The role of Validators is to protect the DAO against such malicious attempts or technically unsound changes. To do so, Validators may be configured by the DAO developer to have their own vote on a proposed change, in addition to the vote held among Members.
Certain governance discussions and votes may benefit via input from subject matter experts (SMEs) or recognized individuals with a unique perspective. Such individuals may be assigned a Local Expert role within a DeXe-based DAO or appointed as a Global Expert in the DeXe Protocol DAO itself. Local Experts are delegated tokens from the respective DAO's Treasury, while Global Experts can be delegated tokens from any DAO within the DeXe Protocol.
DAOs and Voting
Besides membership roles, another essential property for a DAO is its voting logic. Developers will need to specify the key settings for voting, such as quorum (the minimum proportion of "Yes" votes to pass the proposal), duration of voting, early voting completion and execution delay (the period after the end of the main voting phase during which the proposal cannot be executed).
In addition to specifying voting rules, developers can set a highly customizable reward system for participation in their DAOs. One type of reward is reserved for voting, and is distributed to members who vote in favor of an accepted proposal. The second type, proposal creation rewards, are awarded to accepted proposals in order to encourage active member participation at the proposal development stage. Finally, there are transaction execution rewards, designed to offset the cost of executing transactions due to Validators and Experts required at the post-acceptance stage.
What Is the DeXe DAO?
DeXe Protocol not only offers other decentralized platforms tools to develop their DAOs, but also leads by example, having its own DAO as the basis of its governance model. The DeXe DAO is designed to discuss, scrutinize, vote on and implement changes and improvements to the protocol and its rules.
Most of the innovative settings DeXe Protocol offers to developers have also been implemented within its own DAO. For instance, the DeXe DAO uses the rewards system described above to promote active voting and proposal submission by users.
The primary governance asset of the DeXe DAO is DEXE, the native cryptocurrency of the entire DeXe ecosystem. DEXE token holders can participate in proposal discussions and votes taking place on the DAO. As of mid August 2024, the DAO features a total value locked (TVL) of $53 million, and has approximately 21,000 members.
What Is the DeXe DAO Studio?
The DeXe DAO Studio app provides user-friendly access to all of the features and capabilities of DeXe Protocol. Customizing and launching DAOs using the Studio requires no coding skills at all. Users are provided with interfaces for step-by-step, point-and-click procedures to design and deploy their DAOs.
Using the Studio web app, you can also get a bird's-eye view of the DeXe ecosystem, with a list of all the DAOs supported by the protocol.
Source: App.DeXe.io
To create a DAO using the app, you'll need to connect a supported wallet. The app supports the WalletConnect protocol, which provides access to more than 100 crypto wallets, including some of the most popular ones — MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Bybit Wallet and more.
What Is the DeXe Crypto Token (DEXE)?
The protocol's native cryptocurrency, DEXE, has been issued on both the Ethereum (ETH) and BNB Chain (BNB) blockchain networks, in ERC-20 and BEP-20 formats, respectively. With a total supply of 96,504,599, DEXE's primary functions include:
Governance. Holding DEXE tokens entitles you to participate in the DeXe DAO governance processes.
Reward payments. Members who actively participate in DeXe DAO's governance mechanism — through proposal submission, voting and proposal execution — are rewarded in DEXE for their contributions.
Protocol fee payments. Certain operations on the platform require payments in DEXE.
Treasury fund allocations. DeXe's Treasury allocates DEXE funds to promising crypto initiatives, public education programs, promotional events, conferences and other activities aimed at promoting the ecosystem and blockchain technology in general.
Where to Buy DEXE
Yon can acquire DEXE on Bybit through a Perpetual futures contract with USDT (DEXEUSDT) that allows you to trade DEXE with up to 12.5x leverage. The contract is also eligible for trades via Bybit's Futures bots, such as Futures Grid, Futures Martingale and Futures Combo.
DEXE Crypto Price Prediction
As of Aug 13, 2024, DEXE's price stands at $7.49, which is 76.3% lower than its all-time high (ATH) of $32.38, achieved on Mar 8, 2021, and over 1,000% higher than its ATL of $0.6716, recorded on Nov 6, 2020. The token's market cap is slightly over $400 million, and its latest daily trading volume figure is around $6 million.
Long-term price forecasts for DEXE are generally bullish.PricePrediction expects the token to trade at $15.17 in 2025 and $104.88 in 2030, whileDigitalCoinPrice predicts an average rate of $19.36 in 2025 and $56.11 in 2030.
Is DEXE a Good Investment?
Depending upon your investment preferences, risk tolerance, portfolio composition and overall trading goals, you may consider DEXE token based on the following factors:
As governance becomes increasingly crucial for web3 projects, the DeXe project might benefit. The protocol's tools allow crypto projects to launch their DAOs in minutes without any coding required, which can potentially attract more B2B customers to the DeXe platform.
Launched in late 2020, DeXe Protocol and its native token have been thoroughly time-tested in a market characterized by many newer entrants. Although the project's initial focus was in a different area (social trading), the token's market history demonstrates DEXE's resilience in the face of the many crypto crises and market ruts we’ve witnessed since 2020.
At the same time, note that the DEXE token has generally been on a consistent overall downtrend since late March 2024. Thus, if you’re a proponent of trend following, DEXE might be a potential candidate for short trading.
Source: Coingecko.com
Naturally, before making your final investment decision, it's important to do your own research and consider all aspects of this project, including its fundamentals, recent price history, public announcements and related news.
Closing Thoughts
For a long time, blockchain governance has been an actively discussed topic in the industry. However, reality and expectations haven't always aligned, with many DAOs suffering from low participation rates, misaligned incentive mechanisms, outright usurpation of power by a small group of actors and general inflexibility. DeXe is a key project aimed at changing the status quo.
Although the DeXe project has been around since 2020, its focus on flexible DAO development is a relatively recent initiative by the project’s team. It's too early to announce any significant impact of this project on the overall blockchain DAO ecosystem. However, the tools that DeXe Protocol provides are indeed innovative and rare in their ability to power the flexible design of DAOs. Customizability has long been a roadblock for many DAO endeavors, and DeXe Protocol has set out to remove this obstacle and open up a future where any web3 project can have its own DAO — one that's flexible, customizable and firmly aligned to the needs of the platform.
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