ROOK Investors Aim to ‘Rage Quit’ Through Plan to Liquidate $25M Crypto Treasury

Rook’s well-funded offshoot Incubator DAO is holding a vote on its financial future where the organization could liquidate its entire $25 million treasury for payouts directly to ROOK token holders.

The vote, which runs through Thursday, considers a proposal to “rage quit” Incubator DAO by divvying up its $25 million treasury among holders of the ROOK governance token. The vote is being orchestrated by activist investors who for weeks have debated the future of Rook (an Ethereum-based MEV project) on Discord.

Historically, ROOK owners had a say over Rook DAO, the governing body that nominally controlled the Rook project (once known as KeeperDAO) since mid-2021. But an entity called Rook Labs has largely taken over management of Rook’s day-to-day operations, creating friction with token holders who felt shunned.

As a solution, Rook Labs orchestrated a vote to divorce ROOK the token from Rook the project. The new organization, IncubatorDAO, got 60% of Rook’s treasury to do with as it pleased. In return, ROOK holders lost all their theoretical rights to Rook’s intellectual property and future profits.

Four vocal critics of Rook Labs were elected to Incubator DAO’s oversight body on a platform of dissolving it by converting its treasury of cryptocurrencies to stablecoins that ROOK owners can claim.

The prospect of ROOK owners receiving a share of the money has contributed to a tripling of ROOK’s value over recent weeks. It was trading at $42 at press time, slightly over the price that some community estimates have placed on each token’s value relative to its share of the treasury.