Lido DAO Votes Against Selling LDO 10M Tokens to Dragonfly Capital

cryptonews.com:

The community members of Lido Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol and third-party staking pool operator for Ethereum (ETH) 2.0, have voted against a proposal to sell LDO 10m tokens to crypto investment firm Dragonfly Capital for DAI 14.5m.

The vote, which concluded on Monday after a four-day voting period, ended with 609 DAO members participating, representing over 64m Lido DAO (LDO) tokens. 

Of that tally, a total of LDO 43m voted against the proposal, while another 21m voted in support of it.

As reported, Jacob Blish, Head of Business Development at Lido, put forward a proposal seeking to secure around two years of "operating runway" for Lido DAO in stablecoins. The proposal aimed to sell 2% of the supply of LDO from the treasury, which equates to LDO 20m, in exchange for algorithmic stablecoin DAI.

At a price of USD 1.452153 per LDO token, the DAO aims to raise USD 29m in DAI stablecoin.

The latest vote was only to determine whether to sell half of that amount, or LDO 10m, to Dragonfly. If passed, the DAO would have received DAI 14,521,530 in exchange for 1% of the LDO supply (or 10M tokens).

The voting has not come without its fair share of controversy. In the early days of the voting, a whale address cast their LDO 15m token power to back the proposal, creating a more than 99% approval rate.

This led to many speculating who the whale could be and whether they had any connection with Dragonfly.

While crypto researcher Larry Cermak said it could be an over-the-counter (OTC) desk, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik shared a screenshot suggesting that the whale address that supported the vote was associated with trading firm Alameda Research, the parent company of the popular crypto exchange FTX.

Notably, Cobie, a well-known