The Across team has been accused of manipulating DAO votes and misappropriating funds, triggering governance disputes.

At the end of June, the cross-chain bridge protocol Across fell into a vortex of controversy. An industry insider named Ogle publicly accused the Across team of manipulating DAO votes and misappropriating up to $23 million in funds. This accusation not only sparked widespread attention from the community but also once again brought the transparency and security issues of DAO governance mechanisms to the forefront.

Across is a cross-chain bridge protocol aimed at achieving seamless asset transfers between different blockchains. The project has received multiple rounds of funding, with investors including well-known institutions and angel investors. Its founding team members have previously held key positions in other well-known blockchain projects.

Across adopts a DAO governance model, allowing users holding governance tokens to participate in proposal voting, deciding on the allocation of funds and the development direction of the protocol. However, Ogle's accusations point directly to the core issues of this governance model.

According to Ogle, the Across team manipulated DAO voting through opaque means, bypassing the normal governance processes of the community. He pointed out that the team used multiple associated wallets to concentrate votes, creating a false appearance of community support, which actually goes against the original intention of DAO decentralization. More seriously, Ogle claimed that the team transferred $23 million of DAO funds to accounts not supervised by the community in this way, and did not provide public audit records or transparent explanations of the usage.

Ogle detailed two key fund transfer events. In October 2023, a proposal to transfer 100 million ACX tokens (approximately $15 million) from the DAO to a private company of the team was approved. On-chain analysis revealed that although the proposal was submitted by a public address, the actual voting mainly came from secret wallets of the team members. Less than a year later, the team proposed a "retroactive funding" proposal, requesting an additional 50 million ACX (approximately $7.5 million). Similarly, this voting was also mainly completed by wallets controlled by the team.

Ogle believes that this kind of "self-dealing" behavior is strictly prohibited in any other industry. He calls for Across to disclose the flow of funds and undergo independent third-party audits.

This event sparked heated discussions within the community. Some members support Ogle's viewpoint, believing that there are serious issues with the current DAO governance; others question Ogle's motives, suspecting that his accusations may have ulterior motives.

The Across team has not yet made a formal response to these allegations.

This dispute again highlights the challenges faced by DAO governance, including power centralization, insufficient voting transparency, potential security risks for funds, and ambiguous legal responsibilities. These issues exist not only in Across but are also prevalent in other projects that adopt the DAO model.

To address these challenges, the industry needs to seek improvements from multiple levels including technology, mechanisms, and culture. Possible solutions include adopting more secure smart contracts and voting protocols, optimizing token distribution and voting weight design, and introducing independent auditing mechanisms.

The Across incident serves as a warning for the blockchain governance ecosystem. As an ideal vehicle for decentralization, DAO embodies the community's expectations for fairness and transparency, yet its development still faces numerous challenges. The industry should take this as an opportunity to accelerate the improvement of governance mechanisms to achieve true decentralization and community autonomy.