在本集中，dao5 创始人 Tekin Salimi 讨论了他从传统加密风险投资到构建去中心化自治组织 (DAO) dao5 的转变。他反思了加密领域的挑战和机遇，分享了对 DAO、风险投资以及区块链技术与人工智能交叉的见解，并探讨了 2024 年市场变化后不断发展的加密生态系统。Tekin Salimi 概述了他从 Polychain Capital 到 2022 年创立 dao5 的历程，期间他专注于创建一种独特的投资基金模式，并高度重视适应性。他在 dao5 中的方法与传统风险投资不同，他在去中心化框架内优先考虑人员和社区的形成。他深入研究了山寨币、代币分配以及风险投资向去中心化转变的市场动态。 Tekin 还强调了 dao5 未来的治理模式，决策将逐渐去中心化，但最初拥有强大的领导核心。讨论涉及当前模因币、机构采用以及 DAO 模型如何解决加密货币中的流动性、激励和治理等问题。他
最后对去中心化人工智能和加密集成的长期潜力进行了思考。音频转录由 GPT 完成，可能包含错误。完整播客请收听：YouTube：https://youtu.be/Amj3vBK825ASpotify：https://open.spotify.com/episode/3J7DdCAn5JnSCvgHQ0sE1J?si=aPzBKPxYQAOSYmHQeP1q1A dao5Ehan的介绍和背景：今天，我们邀请到dao5的创始人Tekin Salimi。 Tekin，欢迎——您能介绍一下自己和 dao5 吗？ Tekin：谢谢您的邀请。我叫 Tekin Salimi，是 dao5 的创始人。我于 2017 年在 Polychain Capital 开始了我的加密职业生涯，当时是加密货币风险投资的早期阶段，我是一名普通合伙人，并在职业生涯的大部分时间里进行了投资。2022 年，我创立了 dao5，以一些风险投资策略为基础
In this episode, Tekin Salimi, founder of dao5, discusses his transition from traditional crypto venture capital to building dao5, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). He reflects on the challenges and opportunities in the crypto space, shares insights on DAOs, venture funding, and the intersection of blockchain technology with AI, and explores the evolving crypto ecosystem in the wake of 2024 market shifts.
Tekin Salimi outlines his journey from Polychain Capital to founding dao5 in 2022, where he focused on creating a unique investment fund model with a strong emphasis on adaptability. His approach in dao5 differs from traditional venture capital by prioritizing people and community formation within the decentralized framework. He delves into the market dynamics of altcoins, token distribution, and venture capital’s shift toward decentralization. Tekin also highlights dao5’s future governance model, where decisions will be gradually decentralized, but with a strong leadership core initially. The discussion touches on current challenges in meme coins, institutional adoption, and how the DAO model can address issues like liquidity, incentives, and governance in crypto. He concludes with thoughts on the long-term potential of decentralized AI and crypto integration.
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Introduction and Background of dao5
Ehan: Today, we’re joined by Tekin Salimi, founder of dao5. Tekin, welcome — could you introduce yourself and dao5?
Tekin: Thanks for having me. My name is Tekin Salimi, and I’m the founder of dao5. I started my career in crypto in 2017 at Polychain Capital, during the very early days of crypto venture investing, where I was a general partner and spent most of my career investing.
In 2022, I founded dao5, building on some of the venture strategies we developed at Polychain, with a focus on highly technical teams and innovative projects, especially at the intersection of crypto and AI, including modular and application-specific infrastructure. In early 2025, amid market uncertainty, we rebalanced more heavily toward large-cap assets like Bitcoin and Solana. Today, dao5 runs multiple strategies: venture remains our core focus, alongside liquid investing, treasury bill provisioning, lending, and incubations.
At a high level, our guiding philosophy is that surviving long term in crypto requires adaptability even more than conviction. Crypto’s value proposition has constantly evolved — from digital cash with Bitcoin, to digital gold, to decentralizing the internet with Ethereum. Today, it increasingly functions as infrastructure for global dollar expansion through stablecoins. Our approach is to stay adaptable to these shifts and allocate capital based on where the market and long-term trends are heading.
Key Differences Between dao5 and Traditional Venture Capital
Ehan: What’s the biggest philosophical difference between dao5 and traditional venture capital funds?
Tekin: Good question. When I started dao5 in 2022, the environment felt very different from when I joined Polychain Capital in 2017. At that time, Polychain itself was an innovative model — there were very few venture funds that were truly crypto-native, and many were already moving away from traditional equity structures to focus purely on token-based upside with new development teams.
With dao5, I wanted to design the firm and its core ethos to be explicitly future-oriented. While there still aren’t many fully functional DAOs today, there has been extensive experimentation since the original DAO on Ethereum in 2016. Most of these experiments haven’t become sustainable yet, but we’ve seen early signs of success. I strongly believe that over the next decade, DAOs will become some of the most important entities in the global business world. Investment DAOs, in particular, could eventually manage assets that rival the largest allocators, potentially controlling hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars through decentralized or fully on-chain structures.
That’s what we’re building toward. Today, dao5 still operates as a fairly traditional venture fund. But over time, as we manage more investment vehicles and build operating businesses — such as running validators and other on-chain activities — we plan to bring all of these under a single DAO umbrella and gradually distribute ownership and control to our broader group of stakeholders.
dao5’s Focus on People-First Governance
Ehan: Is dao5 optimizing more for ownership, community formation, or on-chain coordination?
Tekin: That’s a great question. We haven’t fully locked in the exact balance between those elements yet, but I can explain our core philosophy and how it differs from most DAOs in the space. At its most basic level, a DAO is an on-chain entity where token holders participate in governance. That definition covers a wide range of models. In 2021, we saw investment-club-style DAOs like Flamingo DAO or PleasrDAO. On the other end, there are DeFi protocols with a very specific function — such as lending — that also incorporate token-based governance.
Most of these DAOs start with a clearly defined mandate: what the DAO does, how it generates revenue, and why people should join. Participants are attracted to that predefined mission. We’re intentionally flipping that model. Even in the name dao5, we put “DAO” at the beginning rather than the end to signal that inversion.
Our primary focus is on assembling the best people first. In many ways, even our investment fund is just a long-term process of curating exceptional founders, researchers, and advisors with whom we want to build multi-cycle relationships. Once that group is in place, the idea is to tokenize the business and the capital pool, and then let the direction of dao5 be shaped by governance. Instead of people being drawn to a fixed cause, we believe the people themselves should define and evolve the mission over time.
Vertical Focus and Investment Strategy
Ehan: dao5 recently closed a $222 million fund. What are the main verticals or themes you’re focusing on with this capital?
Tekin: We believe the altcoin universe — both in terms of the number of tokens and their aggregate market cap — will continue to expand for a long time. When I say altcoins, I don’t necessarily mean general-purpose L1s or L2s that captured most of the value in previous cycles. Instead, I think tokens are evolving into a distinct financial asset class that sits somewhere between mid- to late-stage private companies and public equities.
There’s a large opportunity in cash-flow-generating businesses — software companies and even more real-world, operational businesses — that don’t want to go public, or simply can’t, because they lack the scale. At the same time, they still want some of the advantages of being public. Binance and BNB are a good example of this model in crypto: the token helps build a base of financially aligned users who are also customers, and it provides a proxy for valuing the underlying business without the heavy costs and regulatory burdens of an IPO.
We see this as a kind of private-equity-like asset class for the future. You’ll increasingly see tokens similar to Hyperliquid or Pump.fun, where there are real, recurring cash flows from a core product. Those cash flows can be used to buy back tokens or be distributed directly to token holders. Over time, analysts can apply traditional financial tools like discounted cash flow models to value these tokens, much like they do with public equities today.
We’re still early in this trend. BNB has existed since 2017, but newer examples like Hyperliquid, Pump.fun, and projects like Geodnet on a smaller scale are relatively recent. We believe this focus on tangible, underlying financial value will drive the next major wave of innovation in crypto.
Institutional Adoption vs. Crypto-Native Innovation
Ehan: What’s your bar for institutional adoption versus crypto-native innovation?
Tekin: That’s a good question. I’m seeing a clear bifurcation in the industry, and this trend has been developing since the meme coin cycle of 2024. Crypto now effectively consists of two parallel universes. Meme coins were almost entirely retail-driven, powered by Gen Z and millennial participants, largely in the US but also globally. They were rooted in internet culture and a kind of grassroots, on-chain financial nihilism, and they were not an institutional phenomenon at all.
At the same time, over the past year, many infrastructure altcoins and other non-meme altcoins have continued to bleed. In contrast, Bitcoin — and to some extent Solana — has shown much stronger defensibility. That’s largely because the assets that achieve real escape velocity tend to attract institutional demand.
For future altcoins that want to become breakout successes, the real challenge is crossing the chasm from being a VC-driven or retail-driven asset into one that institutions are willing to allocate to. The playbook for doing that is still unclear. The most recent example we have is Solana. A lot of its early momentum in 2021 was supported by FTX, but it eventually reached escape velocity and found new use cases, particularly around meme coin launches and speculation.
Right now, retail and institutional crypto feel like two very different worlds. Over time, though, the biggest winners on the retail side are likely to attract institutional interest as well.
Shifting Focus Toward Enterprise and Compliance
Ehan: Are you seeing a shift in founder focus toward enterprise and compliance-first projects?
Tekin: Yes, I do see some shift. There are definitely founders now targeting enterprise-focused projects, and they don’t look like the typical crypto founders from the 2017 or 2021 cycles. These founders tend to be older, with more experience — they’ve been around the block a few times and are less likely to fit the Gen Z profile. In contrast, the founders behind more retail-driven projects still have a very different profile.
There are two distinct groups emerging: one focusing on institutional or enterprise-level projects, and the other focused purely on retail-driven speculation. Both sides are interesting and present promising opportunities. There’s definitely potential on both the institutional/enterprise side and the retail-driven side of crypto.
Performance of dao5’s First Fund
Ehan: From your first fund, which projects have generated the highest returns and which have been the toughest losses?
Tekin: I don’t want to go too much into specific names, but one of our biggest wins was Bittensor. We were among the first real buyers in the entire ecosystem, buying through Discord before there was any exchange listing, alongside just one other major VC in the network. We acquired early from miners and other early stakeholders. It was a big success, especially as the position became liquid through its fair launch. As we saw its success in 2023 and 2024, we doubled down by acquiring and running one of the largest validators on the network. We’re also looking to incubate subnets and have spent a lot of time in that ecosystem.
Other projects that have done well for us include Berachain, EigenLayer, Lombard, Sahara AI, and Allora. These projects launched with real liquidity during the last cycle.
Of course, like any fund, we have our losers. In crypto venture, a common reason for losses is that the team couldn’t find product-market fit, or there were internal issues, like founder infighting, that caused the project to collapse before even reaching the token generation event (TGE).
Overall, we didn’t allocate significantly to them — our position was modest — but it serves as a reminder that even seasoned investors can fall prey to the emotions of a bubble-like frenzy. It’s a good lesson to stay disciplined and stick to first principles, especially during cycles where there isn’t a lot of clear value. Being slow and steady in deployment is crucial.
Bittensor and dao5’s Role as an Incubator
Ehan: Speaking of Bittensor, what’s the vision behind dao5 as an incubator for Bittensor’s ecosystem?
Tekin: Bittensor is one of the few crypto AI protocols that we see as a truly grassroots, organic community. When I look at communities across crypto, especially those around upcoming or recently launched projects, you often see the same type of people — mainly farmers — who are interested in airdrops or participating in ICOs on token sale platforms. They typically come in to buy, dump, and move on to the next token generation event (TGE), usually at a professional scale.
What’s missing in many crypto communities, and what we’ve felt strongly since 2017 and to some extent in 2021, are people who genuinely believe in the protocol and stick around even when the price is down. Every protocol will go through drawdowns, and every token experiences market cycles driven by macro factors.
With Bittensor, the user base and community are quite different. Many users don’t hold any other crypto asset except Bitcoin. This makes the community more focused on the long-term vision. We continue to support Bittensor and want to be involved in its growth over the long haul. The early metrics for some of the subnets, like Shoots — which processed one-third the amount of AI tokens that Google did in 2025 — are already impressive. These are strong, breakout numbers that suggest Bittensor has massive potential.
As AI applications gain mainstream adoption, we believe there will be a shift where users don’t even realize the underlying infrastructure powering these apps is based on Bittensor’s subnets, not traditional cloud services. That’s when I think Bittensor will achieve its true product-market fit, and I feel strongly that this moment is closer than many think.
Blockchain and AI: Future Synergies
Ehan: How do you envision the intersection of blockchain technology and AI in the long term?
Tekin: I think many of the ideas currently being developed are directionally correct, but the implementation still needs refinement, and the models are not fully accurate yet. For example, concepts like GPU marketplaces for training and inference models or open-source large language models (LLMs), where weights, parameters, and biases are driven by stakeholder governance to reflect the community’s values, are truly innovative. These are things that can’t be created in Web2 environments, and I believe these categories are the right ones to explore. However, it will take time and iteration to get them right.
Also, as AI continues to grow as an industry, the demand for compute power and the global investment in provisioning this compute will increase. This growing market will make decentralized GPU marketplaces more viable.
To sum up, I think we’re on the right track with these ideas, but the timing isn’t quite perfect yet. It will take some time for these concepts to fully mature.
Shift in VC Return Expectations
Ehan: In this cycle, many VCs have struggled to match the outsized returns of the previous bull run. How do you view the shift in return profiles and LP expectations?
Tekin: That’s definitely true, and I think it’s a natural part of any asset class maturing. Crypto isn’t in its early stages anymore. Even if you look at Web2 venture funds, I’m sure the average and median DPI or TVPI for the sector is down significantly from the past five years compared to the five to ten years before that. I recognize that, but I also think it’s healthy. It means the market is maturing, getting smarter, and we’re entering a more competitive phase in crypto.
It’s an interesting shift because, in previous cycles, it felt like the founders of four different protocols that were essentially doing the same thing — competing for the same users — would all go on stage at conferences and speak as if they were best friends. Part of this dynamic came from the mindset that the entire industry was going to win as long as more users came in. The idea was that a rising tide would lift all boats. But that’s no longer the case. It feels like, by 2025, we’ve reached a point where new liquidity and new users have largely plateaued. Now, funds and founders will have to compete for a share of the existing market. This shift is going to separate the winners from the losers, and I think that’s very healthy for the space.
The Meme Coin Dilemma for VCs
Ehan: In a meme-driven market, what are the biggest practical difficulties for VCs in sourcing further incentives, liquidity, or token distribution?
Tekin: As a fund manager looking at meme coins, it’s definitely a double-edged sword. In 2024, we felt this firsthand — if you don’t participate in the speculative bubble and everyone else seems to be getting rich, you’ll face pressure from LPs asking why you missed the wave. However, if you invest in these meme coins and they fail, get rugged, or get hacked, as 99% of them do, it’s really hard to justify the loss in hindsight. The conversation will quickly turn to asking why you were foolish enough to invest in them in the first place. It really tests your emotions.
The fundamental issue with meme coins is that institutional or sophisticated investors — like venture fund managers — don’t actually have any edge in this market. It’s as much of a casino for everyone entering, except for the insiders who created and launched the coin. So, I actually don’t believe venture funds have much of a future in meme coins. Perhaps we could invest in the platforms or infrastructure that support these social phenomena, but as an investment class, there’s absolutely no edge in being a venture fund in the meme coin space.
Ehan: Do meme coins change how founders think about fundraising and token launch timing?
Tekin: To some extent, yes. Meme coins still capture a significant amount of liquidity and speculative interest in crypto. Obviously, founders or venture funds would prefer retail to speculate on assets that they have exposure to, or those with more fundamental value, backed by earnest, long-term founders. But in the end, crypto operates within a single global liquidity pool, and we’re all competing for the same dollars. In hyper-accelerated meme coin cycles like 2024, the pressure to launch projects faster intensifies, as everyone is competing for that same liquidity.
Transitioning to a DAO: Governance and Structure
Ehan: dao5 is raising a fund while transitioning into a DAO. How are you structuring governance and decision-making during this transition?
Tekin: The conversion into a DAO is still a few years out. We originally wanted to do it by 2025, but we feel the market sentiment and infrastructure aren’t quite ready for this transition yet. Our core approach is to retain maximum flexibility because, as I mentioned earlier, adaptability is crucial for survival.
I’ve seen several DAO experiments in 2021 that started with all the right people — the top stakeholders, fund managers, and founders. But these projects eventually collapsed or burned out into irrelevance. One of the challenges is that getting the right people isn’t always the hardest part. The real challenge is ensuring the right level of buy-in and incentive alignment so that people continue to engage and work over the long term. The most common failure is the “tragedy of the commons.”
For example, if I give 100 top people in crypto one token each, no one is going to care about the DAO. They won’t contribute or participate in forums because they’re all already wealthy. If one person does all the work, the other 99 token holders will just free-ride off that person’s efforts.
This might sound controversial, but I don’t believe DAOs should be purely democratic or egalitarian. There will always be a power law distribution. In the early stages, myself and the other core stakeholders of dao5 will hold the majority of control. But to create a functional system, you need to gradually open the doors to new participants. This is similar to recruiting for an early-stage company: your first 10 hires are crucial, and you need them to be both highly competent and culturally aligned. The initial alignment is key because those first 10 will influence the next 10 hires. If there’s misalignment early on, it compounds as the organization grows.
We apply this principle of gradual onboarding in line with Dunbar’s number, which is the idea that social groups start to lose cohesion after a certain size — typically around 150 people. While 150 might not be the exact number for us, we’re taking that mindset into the DAO transition, slowly admitting new people over time.
Ensuring Balance Between Small and Large Stakeholders
Ehan: During this process, how are you planning token distribution across LPs, builders, and the broader community?
Tekin: We haven’t finalized that yet. There will be opportunities for all of our LPs, founders, advisors, deal scouts, and even new people we haven’t built relationships with to participate. However, this will be an extended process, and it will take time to figure out the right approach. I’m not aiming to replicate some of the chaotic token distribution methods we saw in projects like Temple DAO or some of the Olympus DAO forks in 2021. Those involved long, confusing processes to get an airdrop or token allocation. I had someone from my team participate in those early forums, and they had to submit things like feed pictures and post them on Discord. It almost felt like a hazing process. But I do think that kind of complexity can create a sense of magic when building a community.
Ehan: As dao5 decentralizes, how do you ensure smaller contributors aren’t overshadowed by larger LPs or power users?
Tekin: This is a controversial topic, and it’s come up in many critical DAO governance votes over the past few cycles. I’ve already mentioned that I don’t believe DAOs should be purely democratic, and I don’t think democracy is necessarily the best system of governance. For example, I live in the UAE, which isn’t a democracy but operates as a benign monarchy, and it works extremely well. I do think it’s important to balance the interests of smaller stakeholders, but at the end of the day, there will always be a power law in incentives and decision-making across different DAOs.
There are various ways to address this, like using systems such as quadratic voting to limit the influence of larger holders who want to acquire more governance rights. Personally, as the founder, I would sometimes skew my voting to independently consider the interests of smaller holders. There are ways to address this, but none of them are perfect, and there’s also a limit to how much it’s important to address this issue.
Building Value-Aligned Community Participation
Ehan: What strategy are you using to onboard contributors and create value-aligned community participation?
Tekin: My approach since 2022 has been a bit unconventional. Running these investment funds, of course, is about making money and building a capital base, but the real focus is on curating people. The part of the venture business I enjoy the most is meeting young founders early, building lasting, multi-cycle relationships with them. As I build these relationships, I’m essentially curating people for a non-chain entity. That’s how I view it.
My strategy is simple: continue running dao5’s funds and have as many meetings with interesting people as I can. I aim to learn from them, and hopefully, they learn something from me as well. Over time, as these relationships are tested through multiple cycles, I believe we’ll be able to build a DAO that isn’t just a flash in the pan for a single cycle, but one that endures and preserves its core ethos across multiple cycles.
Handling Trust and Legal Risk with Pseudonymous Founders
Ehan: dao5 supports pseudonymous builders. How do you handle trust, accountability, and legal risk in these cases?
Tekin: That’s a tough question and definitely a learning experience for us. One of the first deals we did when we started the fund was leading the seed round for Berachain. All three founders I met were anonymous. I didn’t request that they reveal their identities, and they didn’t. But you have to do your own creative background checking and assess their character in multiple ways. You definitely need to build trust, even if they remain pseudonymous.
It’s important to meet founders face-to-face and get a feel for them. A founder who chooses to remain anonymous can be a huge red flag — there can be concerning reasons for that. However, as long as you feel comfortable with their reasoning — whether it’s for the benefit of the protocol, a broader messaging strategy, or due to factors like the legal risks in 2022 when I invested in Vera Chain under the scrutiny of the Biden administration’s DOJ and SEC — we were comfortable moving forward with pseudonymous founders. As long as you can build conviction around why they’re doing it, it’s possible to invest in them confidently.
The Future of Crypto VCs in a DAO-Driven World
Ehan: Do you think most crypto VCs will have to become DAOs eventually, or is dao5 a special case?
Tekin: I think most crypto VCs will eventually cease to exist, candidly. We’re in a testing and refining period right now, and those that continue playing by the old rules and fail to adapt are going to struggle to generate returns. As long as there aren’t new LPs who are experienced enough in crypto or familiar enough to allocate to traditional funds, they won’t be able to raise future capital. I think the two categories that will persist are those with medium-scale funds. Even if they don’t raise as much or only smaller funds, they can continue to operate purely on proprietary capital. The other group will be funds that manage to build trust with their LPs and perform well enough to attract long-term, loyal investors.
But I do think, in the long term, it’s essential for funds to take advantage of DAO mechanisms. You can have a DAO fund that doesn’t necessarily have full governance on-chain, but even just going through a fund audit is currently a very archaic and painful process. Any fund manager or back-office team will tell you how difficult and time-consuming it is. The second we can store all transactions and investments on-chain privately, using smart contracts and computer science to verify and audit them, that will be a huge efficiency boost. We already have the technology to do this — it’s just nascent in terms of adoption and regulatory acceptance. DAO features, such as being an on-chain entity, will definitely make the life of an investment fund much more efficient.
Western vs. Eastern Crypto Ecosystems
Ehan: What cultural or structural differences do you observe between Western and Eastern crypto VCs?
Tekin: That’s a very good question. I’d say Eastern VCs tend to be more business-savvy and financially literate. Western VCs in crypto, on the other hand, often have more idealism around the infrastructure, with a stronger focus on computer science. They also tend to care more about signaling, like being popular on Twitter. Both approaches have their merits. There are great funds that have successfully straddled both sides, investing in both Eastern and Western projects. We tried to do that in our first fund as well.
At the end of the day, different venture fund managers are playing different games, and they don’t necessarily share the same metrics for success. It really comes down to what an individual’s guiding beliefs are. For some funds, it’s all about returns — it’s a numbers game, focusing on AUM, DPI, and similar metrics. For others, it’s more about perception — being seen as the best or getting attention on platforms like Twitter. Both models are valid, but it depends on what your value system is.
Overcoming Gaps in Liquidity, Networks, and Regulation
Ehan: Is the biggest gap distribution, liquidity, networks, or regulatory posture?
Tekin: In the past, regulatory posture was a huge gap, especially because the US was extremely hostile toward crypto. For a few years, non-US funds had a natural edge — they didn’t face as many subpoenas or the burden of SEC investigations. That really slowed down Western competitors and added a lot of back-office and compliance costs.
As for liquidity, I think it’s largely the same. These markets operate within a single global liquidity pool, so there’s no reason why an Eastern VC should have more liquidity than a Western VC. That said, I would argue that most Eastern VCs focus more on liquidity, partly because they tend to be more financially literate. But both liquidity and regulatory posture are definitely gaps to some extent.
Ehan: Anything else you’d like to share with our audience?
Tekin: I want to emphasize this core idea: we’ve now entered a new phase in crypto, and it’s an exciting one. A lot of market participants since 2024 have seen significant losses or round-trips, and it’s been a strange cycle — especially with the Trump administration and the regulatory adoption of crypto not playing out the way people expected. But in the long run, this will be very healthy for the market. There is definitely a future for altcoins, and we’re seeing interesting innovations with cash-flow-generating systems like Pump and Hype. If we shift the focus from speculative investments to creating real value, I believe the industry will be much healthier and there will be plenty of opportunities. So, don’t lose hope.
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