CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2556.62, up 2.1% (+52.39) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.

Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: SUI (+7.5%) and POL (+7.5%).

Laggards: FIL (-4.5%) and XLM (-1.6%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding aimed at scaling its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Tally is best known for the Tally Protocol, which powers infrastructure to help leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.

«We’ve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations,» Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. «We can take you from your idea to launching your token, to distributing your membership or ownership, all the way to the value accrual for your protocol.»

The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release.

«On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally,» Bertram said.

One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto.

«Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future,» he said.

Fixing vote turnout for better governance

One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.

Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.

Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.

Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent.

«Many of the people that you should expect to vote ‘no’ on something like this didn’t show up,» Bertram said in an earlier interview. «What it shows is that the democratic process of governing a DAO is imperfect and needs improvement.»

To address this, Tally has developed staking mechanisms designed to reward active governance participants economically. Users can stake their governance tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning passive, auto-compounding yields while retaining voting rights within DAOs.

“This fundraise is really about leaning into the original vision,” Bertram said. “Now that we’ve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, it’s time to really scale it up.”

Institutions are getting involved in DAOs

Bertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.

“With this clarity, we’re going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure they’re building on,” he said. “These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on.”

Ultimately, Bertram sees Tally’s role as pivotal in advancing decentralized governance and unlocking greater economic value for token holders by directly rewarding active, informed participants.

«Given the new acceptance of crypto as a key driver of future value in America, it’s time to scale it beyond crypto and make it a core primitive for creating new organizations,” he said.

The round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo amongst others.

Tally previously raised $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.

Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.

“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It’s moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.

ING declined to comment.

Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime [MiCA] requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the U.S. dollar).

MiCA’s stablecoin rules, which also require issuers to maintain significant reserves in banks based in Europe, have strengthened compliant offerings like Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC over its main rival Tether, according to a note early this year from JPMorgan.

Banks like ING entering the European stablecoin space means French lender Société Générale, the first big bank to offer a stablecoin through its SG Forge innovation division, will soon have some competition.

Read more: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered