What Across Protocol's going private proposal really means for its token holders and DAO

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As many traditional companies are diving deep into the tokenization space today, Across Protocol is proposing to its token holders that it go a different direction: become a private company by buying out their tokens, or exchange them for equity.

The protocol is looking to take itself private because its DAO structure was inhibiting growth, @hal2001 Lambur, the co-founder of @AcrossProtocol , said on @TokenRelations’ @_TalkingTokens podcast.

“I’ve always been a token maximalist,” Lambur said. “We launched the Across token very early, at a very low market cap, with a pretty broad airdrop specifically because we wanted to build in public and accrue value to our community and users. But I think the macro environment has changed.”

Across Protocol connects a number of major networks, including @Ethereum and @Solana, allowing users to bridge or swap tokens across chains. To date, it has processed over $35 billion in volume.

But as institutional and enterprise demand grew, its structure proved to be a bottleneck. Lambur believes the protocol “could be better served by a more traditional structure.”

To our knowledge, Across’ proposal to take itself private is a rare move, but it comes as the industry has started acknowledging that DAOs make for a difficult organizational structure.

In August 2025, when the @UniswapFND proposed the creation of DUNI, a legal entity, the protocol said a formalized structure would allow for more “capabilities and greater autonomy.”

And earlier this week, @Aave’s founder @StaniKulechov wrote about the friction involved in running a DAO. “DAOs, as we've been running them, are extraordinarily difficult, and not in the way that building hard things is difficult. They're difficult in the way of fighting your own organizational structure every single day.”

For Across, Risk Labs is the foundation and legal entity that “signs contracts today” and has been building the protocol, but Lambur said the DAO is separate.

The protocol currently operates under the “classic token structure,” in which you have an onchain protocol, and a legal entity that loosely works for the protocol. But they are separate structures, Lambur said. “That’s one of the things people have critiqued DAO models for, and in essence, we’re trying to unify that,” he added.

Across had been considering this move for a few months before it shared the proposal on Wednesday. “It's one of those things, where you look at the macro environment, you look at how these tokens are undervalued, and then you look at the frictions in trying to do business in more traditional ways.”

The proposal gives token holders two options: exchange their ACX token for equity in AcrossCo., or redeem it for USDC at a one-month average market rate. Those holding large amounts of the token can exchange the tokens directly for shares, while users with small pools can do so via a no-fee special-purpose vehicle..

One of the biggest negatives about the proposal is that there are restrictions on how many token holders can roll their holdings forward into the potential S Corp through equity, Lambur acknowledged. “This is based on U.S. securities law, and we designed this to be as inclusive as humanly possible.”

“A US C corp can't have 5,000 entries on its cap table,” so there needs to be some aggregation, he pointed out. Still, he’s optimistic that it can work.

The proposal comes with a two-week discussion period before a snapshot, or vote, is put out to the community.