On October 6th, 2020, the Index Coop was launched as an autonomous decentralized organization (DAO) by Set Labs. The community was made up of former TradFi professionals, engineers, and crypto enthusiasts. From the beginning we were united by a belief that decentralized finance is the future and that it’s up to us to make sure it includes everyone.
During that first year:
With a few early successes under our belt, what began as a small community of a few contributors soon grew into a large decentralized operation. At our peak in late 2021 we had 120 paid contributors and $500 million in TVL.
But even as we celebrated early success there were signs we were headed in the wrong direction. Disorganization and a lack of progress on important products frustrated some contributors. At times we failed to meet the needs of our external partners. We were dependent on Set Labs for the ongoing maintenance of some of our products and infrastructure. And a sober look at our balance sheet made it clear we couldn’t sustain our spend rate. We knew we had some hard choices to make. And our investors and partners saw that change was needed, too.
In April 2022, Set Protocol and 1kx published an open letter outlining their concerns. They asked us to:
These recommendations helped kickoff a series of difficult conversations. Through the Summer and into the Fall we addressed all of the concerns outlined in the open letter by:
The last two years have been a rewarding and transformative journey for our community and for DeFi as a whole. As we enter deeper into a global bear market, we could not be more optimistic about our ability to thrive and build products that are secure, accessible and simple to use.