80% of XAO DAO’s XRP Treasury Set for Firelight Deployment

XAO DAO co-founder Santiago Velez announced that proposal 66 had passed, authorizing the decentralized autonomous organization to deploy 80% of its XRP treasury into Firelight. The decision would put a large share of the DAO's XRP holdings to work in a strategy intended to generate returns for members while contributing capital to protection services for decentralized finance.

First Multichain DeFi Strategy

In his announcement, Velez described the proposal as, to his knowledge, the first time a DAO had deployed treasury funds into a multichain DeFi strategy combining decentralized insurance with yield generation. He thanked co-manager Fabio Marzella, Flare Networks co-founder Hugo Philion, and the Flare team for developing the Flare Smart Accounts technology, as well as Firelight for the opportunity.

XRP Market Position

Meanwhile, XRP itself was changing hands at $1.34 at the time of writing, having barely shifted in 24 hours but dropping nearly 4% of its value in the last seven days and over 11% across one month. It is also more than 44% lower than where it was a year ago, with the current price a 63% dip from its $3.65 all-time high attained in July 2025.

Governance Improvements

The treasury vote follows a wider push to improve how XAO DAO members take part in decisions. Marzella outlined updates to the governance app, including proposal management, discussion tools, XRP and RLUSD donation tracking, support for several languages and searchable records.

As reported in August, XAO DAO was preparing governance changes that included wallet delegation, revised quorum rules and community mini-grants. The broader concern was how to turn community participation and funding into lasting activity across the XRP Ledger ecosystem.