Tally Is Shutting Down

I have some difficult news to share.

Tally will not be moving forward with an ICO. After going through nearly the entire process, we came to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense in the current market. More importantly, we weren’t confident that we could fulfill the promises we would be making to token holders if we sold them tokens.

That realization forced us to confront a harder truth.

After more than five years, Tally is shutting down.

This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s the honest one.

What Happened

The simplest way to say it is this: there isn’t a venture-backed business in governance tooling for decentralized protocols, at least not yet.

Tally was built on a particular vision of the future. Like many others in the Ethereum ecosystem, we believed we were heading toward a world with:

• Thousands of decentralized protocols

• Millions of active participants

• Robust governance systems operating at scale

In other words, the “infinite garden” vision of Ethereum, a diverse ecosystem of protocols and communities that needed sophisticated coordination and governance infrastructure.

That future hasn’t materialized.

Crypto has certainly produced large and successful businesses. But over the past few years, the industry has largely found product-market fit in payments and speculation. The rich ecosystem of consumer applications, protocol communities, and governance-heavy organizations that we expected simply hasn’t developed at the scale required to sustain companies like ours.

For infrastructure companies built on that vision, the reality is difficult: the market isn’t there yet.

We’ve spent years championing the DAO vision. But at some point you have to accept the world as it is, not as you hoped it would be.

And the reality is that we can no longer build a viable business around this.

What We Built

Even though the company is winding down, I’m incredibly proud of what the Tally team accomplished.

Over the life of the company:

• More than $1 billion in payments flowed through Tally infrastructure

• At one point over $80 billion in value was protected through the systems we helped operate

• Over a million people used the site

• Hundreds of organizations governed themselves through Tally

• Tens of millions of token holder addresses participated in governance through our platform

Most importantly: we never had a major security incident.

Over the years we dealt with everything you might expect in crypto:

• DDoS attacks

• waves of suspicious job applicants (including a few North Korean ones)

• constant infrastructure pressure

• and the regulatory uncertainty of the “Gensler years”

Through all of it, we did our best to protect the ecosystem.

I’m proud to say that some of the greatest organizations in crypto used Tally. And yes — some of the more infamous ones too (I see you Ooki DAO).

But through the good and the bad, we showed that decentralized governance could operate at scale.

The Team

One thing I want to emphasize: the Tally team is exceptional.

They are some of the best engineers and operators in crypto. Full stop.

If you’re hiring, you should talk to them.

Raph and I will still be around for a little while to help with the wind-down process, but the team is actively exploring new opportunities, so feel free to reach out.

What Happens Next

The governance application will begin winding down at the end of the month.

We’ve been working with our major partners to establish continuation plans for enterprise clients, and the interface will remain live for some time while those transitions happen.

If you are a smaller organization using Tally, we may not have been able to reach you directly. In the spirit of decentralization, privacy, and self-sovereignty, we simply never collected contact information for many of the teams using the platform.

If that’s you, hopefully this post reaches you.

Looking Back

I’m incredibly proud of what we built.

I’m proud of the team. I’m proud of the organizations we worked with. And I’m proud of the role we played in defending and supporting DeFi when the ecosystem needed it most.

Tally may not be part of crypto’s future, but we were part of its story.

And that matters.

Looking Forward

Personally, I’m not entirely sure what comes next for me.

But I believe in crypto more than ever.

What I’ve come to realize, though, is that crypto is no longer “early.”

A few years ago I spoke with Simona Pop, one of Ethereum’s early innovators. We talked about how the ecosystem never really planned for what success would look like.

What happens when:

• the largest institutions in the world use crypto?

• the most powerful governments support it?

• crypto becomes infrastructure rather than rebellion?

We’re now discovering the rough edges of that success.

The industry is entering a new phase, and we’re all trying to figure out what the path forward looks like.

I only wish Tally were going to be part of that future.

But that’s okay.

Because we were part of the journey that got us here.

And for that, I’m deeply grateful.

To our team, to Raf my cofounder, Tyler who I think of as our late third-cofounder, our users, our partners, and our investors — thank you for believing in us.

I look forward to seeing many of you again somewhere down the road.

— Dennison Bertram