Why did the celebrity Web3 project Across Protocol choose to abandon the DAO?

Original title: What Across Protocol’s going-private proposal really means for its token holders and DAO

Original author: Jacquelyn Melinek

Original compilation: Ken, ChainCatcher

Today, as many traditional companies dig deeper into the tokenization space, Across Protocol is proposing a different path for its token holders: making itself a private company by buying out their tokens, or exchanging them for equity.

@AcrossProtocol co-founder @hal2001 Lambur said on @TokenRelations’ @_TalkingTokens podcast: “The protocol is seeking to go private because its DAO structure is blocking its growth.”

“I’ve always been a token maximalist,” Lambur said. “We launched the Across token very early, when its market cap was extremely low, and we did a very broad airdrop—mainly because we wanted to build in the open and accumulate value for our community and users. But I think the macro environment has changed.”

Across Protocol connects multiple major networks (including @Ethereum and @Solana), allowing users to bridge or swap tokens across chains. To date, it has processed more than $35 billion in transaction volume.

But with institutional and enterprise demand growing, its structure has proven to be a bottleneck. Lambur believes the protocol “would grow better by adopting a more traditional structure.”

As far as we know, Across going private is a rare move, but it comes at a time when the industry is starting to acknowledge that a DAO is a difficult-to-operate organizational structure.

In August 2025, when @UniswapFND proposed creating the legal entity DUNI, the protocol said that a formal structure would bring more “capabilities and greater autonomy.”

And earlier this week, @Aave founder @StaniKulechov wrote about the friction that comes with operating a DAO. “Like we’ve always been operating, DAOs are unusually difficult, and that difficulty is different from the difficulty of building complex things. The difficulty is that you’re fighting with your own organizational structure every day.”

For Across, Risk Labs is the foundation and legal entity “currently responsible for signing contracts” and building the protocol, but Lambur said the DAO is separate from it.

The protocol currently operates under a “classic token structure,” meaning you own an on-chain protocol and a legal entity that loosely cooperates with that protocol. But Lambur said they are two separate structures. “That’s one of the reasons people criticize the DAO model, and in essence, what we’re trying to do is unify these two,” he added.

Before the proposal was published on Wednesday, Across had been considering the move for months. “It’s basically this: you look at the macro environment, see how undervalued these tokens are, and then you look at all the frictions you face when trying to run the business in a more traditional way.”

The proposal gives token holders two options: exchange their ACX tokens for equity in AcrossCo., or exchange them for USDC at a one-month average market price. Users holding large amounts of tokens can directly exchange tokens for shares, while users holding smaller amounts of tokens can exchange them through a special-purpose entity with no fees.

Lambur acknowledged that one of the biggest downsides of the proposal is that there are limits on how many token holders can transfer their positions into a potential S-corporation via equity. “This is based on U.S. securities law, and we designed it to be as inclusive as possible under the foreseeable assumptions.”

“A U.S. C corporation can’t have 5,000 entries on its capitalization table,” he noted, so some consolidation is needed. Even so, he remains optimistic that it will work.

Before the proposal is released to the community for a Snapshot vote or resolution, it will have a two-week discussion period.