DeXe Protocol: A Guide to the DAO Development Platform

DeXe Protocol (DEXE) is a decentralized platform that helps web3 projects easily design and deploy highly customizable DAOs to support their governance.

DeXe Protocol (DEXE) is a decentralized platform that helps web3 projects easily create their own highly customizable DAOs. It offers developers unprecedented flexibility and a wide range of options when crafting the specifications for their DAOs. By providing a platform to efficiently deploy DAOs on a variety of blockchains, DeXe contributes to the industry-wide improvement of governance models.

Key Takeaways:

DeXe is a decentralized protocol that provides tools for web3 projects to launch their own highly customizable DAOs.

Using the DeXe DAO Studio, project operators can design and deploy their DAOs without any coding required.

The platform's native cryptocurrency, DEXE, is used for governance, reward payments, protocol fee payments and treasury fund allocations. DEXE can be bought on Bybit as a USDT Perpetual contract.

What Is DeXe Protocol?

DeXe Protocol (DEXE) is a decentralized platform that helps web3 projects easily design and deploy highly customizable DAOs to support their governance. It offers developers unprecedented flexibility and a wide range of options when crafting the specifications for their DAOs. By providing a platform to efficiently deploy DAOs on a variety of blockchains, DeXe contributes to the industry-wide improvement of governance models.

Decentralized projects can achieve the following key benefits by using DeXe for the development of their DAOs:

Optimization of proposal and voting processes. DeXe offers a rich set of options to design the proposal evaluation and voting processes for a DAO.

Quick and easy deployment of governance tokens. The platform offers the option to create a fully audited governance token for a DAO.

Highly customizable governance asset specifications. Most DAOs are governed by members who hold or stake the project's native fungible cryptocurrency. DAOs created with the DeXe Protocol can be governed not only via fungible cryptos, but also using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), soulbound tokens (SBTs) or even a combination of these.

Additional governance actor types. DeXe allows developers to assign additional actors — Validators and Experts — to the governance process. They can be assigned specific responsibilities and restricted to accessing only certain types of proposals.

Designing meritocratic voting and reward systems. Many existing DAOs are unduly affected by a small group of stakeholders who tend to dominate the voting process due to their vast token holdings. Such a form of "plutocracy" goes against the very principles of decentralized governance. DeXe lets developers design voting and reward systems that try to avoid such scenarios.

Specifying democratic treasury allocation models. By using DeXe Protocol, web3 projects can specify treasury fund allocation schemes that benefit the user community rather than project owners.

Creating multi-DAO setups. The DeXe protocol also allows projects to develop a network of DAOs with a hierarchy of decision-making. For instance, Experts and DAOs can form a sub-DAO to propagate their decision to a mother DAO for a final vote.

The DeXe project was launched in 2020, initially as a decentralized social trading platform. It provided social trading functions, such as copy trading and mirror trading, for professional traders at all levels of expertise. However, in more recent times, the project team has focused its efforts on a different area: DAO development.

DeXe’s platform is supported by the DeXe Association, a Swiss-based nonprofit fully governed on-chain. The DeXe Association plays a crucial role in supporting the protocol's growth, development and popularization.

How Does DeXe Protocol Work?

To create a DAO through the DeXe protocol, developers can utilize a library of 50 different smart contracts that provide functions to specify custom rules for a DAO. All of the smart contracts on the platform are open-source, allowing blockchain developers to further customize them.

A fundamental setting during the DAO creation process is that of assigning roles for all the participating entities. The most common role is a Member, who can participate in voting, discussions and proposal creation. Any user who holds the governance asset of the DAO is a Member. As noted earlier, these assets don't have to be fungible cryptocurrencies; using DeXe, DAO membership can be defined using NFTs, SBTs or via more complex structures combining different asset types.

In addition to Members, DAO developers can specify two additional roles — Validators and Experts. Validators, typically a group of them, may be employed to provide an extra layer of security to the DAO. Members will then delegate their governance assets to Validators and Experts to assist in their various DAO duties and receive a portion of the rewards.

Maintaining Security Alongside Decentralization

In decentralized environments, there are instances when certain DAO members, sometimes operating in groups, may organize for malicious purposes, e.g., to siphon funds from the treasury or pass a protocol change that may create a security vulnerability. The role of Validators is to protect the DAO against such malicious attempts or technically unsound changes. To do so, Validators may be configured by the DAO developer to have their own vote on a proposed