ArenaDAO’s governance token, ARENA, has seen a surge in value in the past 24 hours, rising by almost 50% following the opening of ArenaDAO’s vote to authorize a purchase of 150 million tokens or 15% of the total supply for $6 million USDC by crypto investment firm Paradigm.
The on-chain voting period for ArenaDAO opened earlier on Thursday, and since then, a total of 9 addresses have voted, providing unanimous support in favor of authorizing the DAO to sell its tokens to Paradigm.
If the proposal passes, the $6 million sale will be authorized and the funds will be used as working capital for the DAO to grow Code4rena, an audit platform that organizes security contests for smart contracts.
Code4rena offers “guaranteed payouts” for audit contests and had 46 users earn more than $40,000 for their efforts in uncovering vulnerabilities last year, according to its leaderboard data.
The author of the governance proposal expressed excitement over Paradigm’s expertise, stating that it would help Code4rena achieve its shared mission of making the web3 ecosystem more secure, while rewarding all contributors.
This move comes in the wake of $3.8 billion being stolen from DeFi protocols in hacks in 2022, as per Chainalysis data.
At present, ARENA’s fully diluted valuation or market capitalization of all tokens once released into circulation sits at $79.8 million, while the token’s 24-hour volume stands at roughly $61,000.
The voting period for the proposal will end on March 23. Data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen shows that 142 unique addresses hold ARENA, representing a 10% increase since Monday.