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

As many traditional companies increasingly explore the tokenization space, Across Protocol, however, is proposing a different path to its token holders: making it 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 looking to go private because its DAO structure is hindering 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 an extremely 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 across chains or swap tokens. To date, it has handled more than $35 billion in transaction volume.

But as institutional and enterprise demand has grown, its structure has proven to be a bottleneck. Lambur believes the protocol “would do better with a more traditional structure.”

As far as we know, Across’s proposal to take itself private is a rare move, but it comes at a time when the industry is starting to acknowledge that a DAO is a kind of organizational structure that’s hard to make work.

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

And earlier this week, @Aave founder @StaniKulechov wrote about the friction caused by operating a DAO. “Like we’ve been operating it—DAOs are exceptionally difficult, and this difficulty is different from the kind of difficulty you face when 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 says the DAO is separate from it.

The protocol currently operates under a “classic token structure,” where you own an on-chain protocol and a legal entity that loosely collaborates with that protocol. But Lambur says they are two independent structures. “This is one of the reasons people criticize the DAO model—and in essence, we’re trying to unify these two things,” he added.

Before the proposal was revealed on Wednesday, Across had already been considering the move for months. “This is the situation: you look at the macro environment, see how undervalued these tokens are, and then look at all the frictions you face when trying to do 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 the one-month average market price. Users holding large amounts of tokens can directly exchange their tokens for shares, while users holding fewer tokens can exchange them through a no-fee special purpose entity.

Lambur acknowledged that one of the proposal’s biggest downsides is a limitation on how many token holders can move their holdings into a potential S-corporation via equity. “This is based on U.S. securities law, and we’ve designed it to be as inclusive as possible, given the artificially constrained premise.”

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

Before releasing the proposal to the community for a Snapshot vote or poll, there will be a two-week discussion period.