With a weekly increase of over 1500%, what is the origin of DARK?

On April 17th, the Solana ecosystem AI Meme coin DARK's market value briefly broke through $32 million, reaching a historical high, with its market value growing 1500% in the past week. In the weak Crypto AI cycle, how has this AI project continued to rise against the trend? What is the team behind it, MtnDao? DARK is an AI that provides MCP for external platforms under the TEE protocol. The concept of TEE in CryptoAI is familiar, first created by developer Ropirito's "tee_hee_he" stone, which is an experimental trusted execution environment aimed at ensuring AI behavior is not influenced by humans. MCP can be understood as a USB-C interface for large models, allowing various devices to connect through the same interface. The DARK project, composed of these two well-known concepts, has pushed its market value to $30 million in the marginalized CryptoAI market, driven by two main factors: "founder's decision-making and efficiency" and "future expectations of the founder's team". The founder, Edgar Pavlovsky, is fluent in English and Russian, graduated from the University of Utah. After graduating, he worked at Uber and founded several startups. In the blockchain industry, he created the anti-MEV attack client Paladin and was a co-founder of Solana ecosystem margin protocol Marginfi. For DARK, he has a comprehensive product theory. His product direction is to build a consumer PWA application experience, attracting mobile users and replacing traditional applications through viral daily usage. From April 7th to 11th, DARK's token price fluctuated between $2M and $4M. He proposed a game AI product inspired by the blockchain game Dark Forest, where AI players compete in a private VPS environment. On April 11th, he announced the game's completion, and AI Agents began simulating wars the next day. The token price rose to a peak of $9 million market value. On April 16th, the product was officially launched, and within 24 hours, it rose 100% from a $14 million to a $32 million market value. On April 9th, MtnDAO, a developer DAO organization co-founded by Edgar Pavlovsky and Barrett, completed fundraising on MetaDAO for MtnCapital. In 7 days, 1,931 contributors raised $5.75 million.

The investment of this institution will be decided by traders, and the approval of the proposal depends on the trading behavior of those speculating on the MTN token price. It will make decisions based on the movement of its MTN token. In short, if traders believe a proposal (such as investing $100,000 in BTC) is beneficial to Mtn Capital, they will buy and push up the MTN price, ultimately passing the proposal. Conversely, if they think the trade is unfavorable to Mtn Capital, they will suppress the MTN price, ultimately causing the proposal to fail.

Is Dark a Preliminary Confirmation of the Futarchy DAO Concept?

This concept was not first proposed by MtnDao. The concept was proposed by George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson in a paper in 2007, based on the premise that speculative markets might make better decisions than purely democratic states. Hanson believed that participants in speculative markets "such as stock and betting markets" are motivated to conduct necessary research to understand the best outcomes that align with their interests, and they will trade accordingly.

Proph 3 t appearing at a Solana event wearing his own image mask

The founder of their chosen fundraising platform MetaDAO, Proph 3 t, is precisely an advocate of this concept, believing that "the goal of a DAO is to make better decisions, and market experience is superior to expert opinions." In MetaDAO, proposals from projects including Jito DAO, Sancutm, Ore, Drift, and others will appear in the proposal library using futures trading models.

MtnDAO and MetaDAO also have a long-standing connection. Besides the mysterious Proph3t frequently "appearing" in MtnDAO's shared office, founder Edgar Pavlovsky has already invested $2.2 million in MetaDAO in 2024, making MetaDAO the fundraising platform with MtnDAO as its first project.

Founder Barrett stated, "Mtn Capital will focus on Solana native projects because Solana is MtnCapital's destination and the place with the highest expected returns." Mtn Capital's investments in startups are separate from MtnDAO's portfolio, but the brands operate in parallel. The fund's investment approach is very flexible, capable of deploying funds across various investment opportunities from early private placements to highly liquid public token offerings.

Solana Labs CEO Toly at MtnDAO's hacker house in Salt Lake City

This flexibility allows mtnCapital to adapt to constantly changing market environments, regardless of its development stage or liquidity status, while obtaining guidance from the collective wisdom of the mtndao community through the futarchy governance mechanism. Founder Barrett said, "I believe its performance will outperform venture capital funds." He also mentioned that typical investment companies are initially more inclined to go long rather than short, so they chose to open fundraising at the market bottom.

Mtn Capital Treasury

The launch of Mtn Capital and DARK highly coincided, with the token deployment on pumpfun on November 24, 2024, five months early, which is certainly not a whim. This inevitably leads the community to speculate about the relationship between the two, on one hand, the expectation of whether the $5.85 million in liquid funds in the treasury will be used for DARK, and on the other hand, seeing the network of connections of MtnDAO and its founders in Solana.

These two reasons have driven the DARK token price to rise continuously, with DARK reaching ATH twice, both corresponding to the MTN token price on April 11 and April 17. As DARK's price broke through, MTN's price doubled the IDO fundraising market value to around $10 million (the initial IDO token market value was approximately $5.5 million). This might indirectly confirm the perspective of Mtn DAO and MetaDAO, suggesting that perhaps the continuous potential value output expectation (futures) is the true essence of DAO tokens, and Dark might just be the shadow of this mountain.