HTX DAO: A Great Experiment in Response to the "People's" Call
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
HTX DAO: A Great Experiment in Response to the "People's" Call
What is HTX DAO? Why does Justin Sun so strongly endorse and support this project?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsThirty years ago, Kevin Kelly, inspired by the self-organizing behavior of bees, posited in his book "Out of Control" that "intelligence is no longer centrally organized but more like individual cells within a beehive." Today, from technology to cryptocurrency, from computing to Web3.0, this prediction is being validated.
Recently, Justin Sun, core supporter of HTX DAO and member of Huobi HTX’s Global Advisory Board, publicly announced the establishment of HTX DAO on his personal social media account, launching the HTX DAO 2024 and People's Exchange Initiative in Singapore on February 2. The goal is to harness community wisdom and strength, transforming Huobi HTX into a true people’s exchange.
At that time, it had been 14 months since Justin Sun joined Huobi HTX. After an extended period of integration and adjustment, he has gradually steered Huobi HTX onto a stable path, achieving key milestones such as turning losses into profits and completing brand upgrades.
Given its current trajectory, Huobi HTX could have continued progressing steadily. However, the launch of HTX DAO and $HTX genuinely shocked both the crypto market and the Huobi HTX community.
What exactly is HTX DAO? Why does Justin Sun advocate for this initiative so strongly?
Community Autonomy—Shared Ownership
In the HTX DAO manifesto, Justin Sun stated, “Looking across the industry, centralized exchanges are still extremely centralized in operation. Huobi HTX should become the first people’s exchange, the first decentralized exchange, and the first democratically autonomous exchange—and all of this will be realized through HTX DAO.”
Clearly, DAOs are more attractive than traditional organizational forms for ordinary users. A DAO challenges existing governance systems by bringing together community members in a flat, hierarchical-free structure. Community users form the foundation of a DAO; everyone can participate and co-build, and each person has the right to submit proposals—which, once approved, are executed via smart contracts.
Consistently, “community autonomy” is the phrase Justin Sun emphasizes most frequently when discussing HTX DAO.
Empowering the community and enabling community governance requires relinquishing a degree of control, allowing members to participate in critical decisions. This means community members are no longer just users but active participants and co-creators shaping the project’s future. This sense of belonging strengthens their emotional investment and loyalty, moving beyond top-down community building toward collective ownership and responsibility.
A series of democratic initiatives have already been scheduled under HTX DAO’s operational plan.
On January 25, HTX DAO stirred things up on its official social media: selecting the users with the most-liked comments to directly engage with Justin Sun and the HTX DAO Governance Committee, jointly exploring governance models for HTX DAO. On the promotional poster for this event was written: “The people’s exchange, built by the people.”
Additionally, representative elections, community voting for new token listings, democratic forums, and more transparent proof-of-assets/private-key custody mechanisms are also in development.
The event attracted tens of thousands of viewers and discussions, with ten ecosystem participants raising a series of questions. In response, Justin Sun said: “Ideally, the HTX DAO governance token $HTX will be distributed to contributors and users of the exchange. We will also regularly convene a People’s Congress with heads of various Huobi HTX departments, so users feel they truly own the exchange, ensuring the exchange wins through transparency and community governance, gradually entering the era of the People’s Exchange 2.0.”
Friedrich Hayek, the 20th-century master of classical liberalism, said, ‘An order is desirable not because it arranges elements neatly, but because new forces emerge from it that could not arise otherwise.’ Clearly, the enthusiasm and intelligence HTX DAO will unlock will breathe new life into the crypto world, which remains dominated by centralized exchanges.
Meme Model—Brand Decentralization
After the release of the $HTX whitepaper, the community raised concerns about its initial supply of 999,990,000,000,000 tokens: why would a governance token adopt a meme coin supply scale?
This brings us to the rise of meme coins.
In Q2 2023, Pepecoin made history with its epic narrative, becoming one of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap at $1 billion.
Throughout crypto history, meme coins have occupied a unique and peculiar space. They typically lack practical utility yet carry a sense of ironic pride.
Yet precisely because of meme coins, traditional branding narratives in the crypto market have transformed, offering a fresher approach to attracting new users and traffic. Meme coins serve as effective communication tools—they drive social sharing and foster community identity, aligning perfectly with the new paradigm of Web3.0.
Returning to $HTX, Justin Sun responded that the issuance of $HTX indeed draws inspiration from the meme coin model, primarily because meme coins have minimal securities attributes, complying better with regulatory requirements while maximizing community consensus.
Justin Sun further explained that successful meme coins are backed by strong community spirit and organizational power. He hopes Huobi HTX can achieve greatness again through $HTX, establishing an organizational structure that is “operationally centralized, but brand- and decision-making-decentralized.”
On this point, Justin Sun appears highly confident.
According to the whitepaper, the $HTX allocation is as follows: 19% to early contributors and public distribution; 19% to the community direct program; 10% to developer grants; 10% to R&D; 10% to ecosystem support; 15% to partners; and 17% to platform development.
Publicly reported, in addition to Huobi HTX, several institutions including Ankr, Spark Digital Capital, Double Peak Capital, Zebec, Merkle 3s Capital, TRON, BitTorrent, Poloniex, Spark, Stratified Capital, stUSDT, and APENFT have become ecosystem builders. Notably, as ecosystem builders, entities such as Huobi HTX, TRON, BitTorrent, and APENFT will contribute funds to support HTX DAO’s ecosystem liquidity, collectively advancing its growth.
HTX DAO’s launch has been comprehensive and well-rounded.
Across the entire crypto market, although founders often advocate decentralization, few have pursued brand decentralization. Yet Justin Sun, known for his focus on branding and marketing, has done so—because community token holders enjoy proposal and voting rights, becoming deeply engaged members and staunch advocates of the brand.
More Than Wealth—Poetry and Distant Horizons
It is well known that Huobi HTX created massive wealth effects in 2023 through new token listings, earning widespread market favor and acclaim. However, issues such as opaque listing processes and the spread of exaggerated or false information remain common in exchanges, increasing investment risks and market manipulation in crypto.
“Breaking the information black box, making Huobi HTX visibly transparent,” said Justin Sun. “Not only will the listing process be open, but even future choices regarding private key custody will be fully transparent. Ultimately, $HTX holders should become the true owners of the platform.”
Clearly, the core of HTX DAO and Huobi HTX is to offer the community a shared prosperity vision, continuously empowering and sharing benefits, while granting users full authority and opportunity to determine the platform’s direction and their own contributions along the way.
However, the key metric for measuring a Web3.0 product’s success lies in how many non-native blockchain users—those who aren’t solely profit-driven but use the product purely for its functionality—have been attracted. In other words, whether the product has achieved mainstream breakthrough.
In fact, this ambitious exploration by HTX DAO and Huobi HTX not only opens new paths for the crypto industry but also offers valuable insights for traditional businesses. Rather than relying solely on product or service sales, HTX DAO’s business model emphasizes interaction and collaboration with the community. This community-driven co-creation model offers lessons for traditional enterprises, prompting them to rethink how to uncover new commercial value in an environment of dispersed intellectual property and collaborative ecosystems.
Moreover, Huobi HTX once proclaimed its ambition to “build a metaverse Web3.0 financial free port, providing financial services for eight billion people globally and enabling financial freedom for all.” Now, that vision seems closer than ever.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@HTX_DAO
