Unlock Protocol is a set of smart contracts for memberships. Anyone can deploy a lock, a contract that sells or grants keys, and each key is an ERC-721 NFT that carries an expiry date (PublicLock documentation). Most token-gating tools check a holding someone already has; Unlock issues the membership itself, with its price and its term written into the contract, so a lapsed member stops holding a valid key without anyone revoking it. The protocol is governed by the Unlock DAO, an OpenZeppelin Governor on Base that owns the protocol’s upgradeable contracts, and in September 2026 that DAO voted down a run of proposals, two of which would have moved its entire treasury to outside addresses. It sits in the membership layer of the DAO tooling stack.

Locks and keys

The protocol is two contracts (core protocol documentation). The Unlock contract is a factory: every lock is deployed through it, and it can confirm that a lock it is asked about came from it. The PublicLock contract is the template each creator deploys as their own lock, with its own address and storage. A lock sets a key price, a duration, a maximum number of keys and a maximum per address, and by default a wallet can hold one key (PublicLock). Keys can be renewed and extended, which is what makes recurring subscriptions possible; lock managers can disable transfers, and key granters can issue keys without payment. Hooks let a lock call out to custom code when a key is bought, transferred, granted or extended, and when the lock checks a role.

The factory also carries the protocol’s economics. A fee is taken when a key is bought or extended, and a swap-and-burn function converts collected fees into the governance token and sends it to a burn address; the token documentation puts the fee switch at 1%, and the Base factory’s protocolFee() returns 100 basis points (read 2 Oct 2026). Since version 14 of the Unlock contract, which the DAO voted in during December 2024, the governance tokens paid to referrers on a purchase equal half the protocol fee (Unlock contract documentation).

Unlock’s networks package lists eleven production chains, among them Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Gnosis and Celo (networks package); zkSync Era and Polygon zkEVM were retired on 31 August 2026. The organisations Unlock names on its homepage use it for tickets and credentials: DappCon ticketed its conference with it, and PlannerDAO issues its CDAA certification through Unlock. Its 2026 newsletters name current users: GreenGoods issues certificates with it, the TreeGens ambassador programme had minted 247 keys by February 2026, and P2E Inferno had issued close to 40 certificates on Base by April 2026. In October 2024 Unlock and Hats Protocol released an integration in which buying a key grants a DAO role, and letting it expire removes the role.

From UDT on Ethereum to UP on Base

Unlock Inc. launched the Unlock DAO on 28 September 2021 with an OpenZeppelin governor on Ethereum and UDT, the Unlock Discount Token, as its vote. It gave the DAO 100,000 UDT, a tenth of the pre-mine, and the LP tokens of the Uniswap pool that priced UDT. The first parameters were a 15,000-vote quorum, an eight-day vote and a one-week timelock. The governance documentation records a replacement mainnet governor in June 2023 at 0x440d…5591.

In June 2024 Unlock Labs proposed moving governance to Base, because gas made creating and voting on proposals on Ethereum expensive. The plan was a new token, UP, with a fixed supply of one billion on Base, a new governor and timelock using OpenZeppelin’s contracts without modification, and a swap contract, audited through Code4rena, that turned each UDT into 1,000 UP; the ratio follows from UDT’s supply of about one million. The first proposal on the Base governor, Swap UDT for UP on 11 September 2024, swapped UDT the DAO held for UP. Unlock Labs declared the migration complete on 23 September 2024, once the treasury had moved and ownership of the protocol had passed to the new governance. UDT still exists on Ethereum at 0x90DE…1517.

The move made the DAO the owner of more than the treasury. On Base the Unlock factory’s owner(), and the proxy admins of the factory, the UP token and the timelock, all resolve to the DAO’s timelock (read 2 Oct 2026). A passed proposal can therefore upgrade the protocol, the governance token or the timelock itself.

How the Unlock DAO decides

Every on-chain decision goes through one OpenZeppelin Governor, counted by token weight with delegation, and is displayed on Tally. Read off the contracts on 2 October 2026: a proposal waits four days before voting opens and is voted on for six; quorum is 3m UP, and only For and Abstain votes count towards it; a passed proposal waits two days in the timelock. The governor is the timelock’s only proposer, anyone may execute a queued proposal, and no address holds the timelock’s canceller role. These timings date from a November 2024 proposal that shortened them.

Proposing needs 50,000 UP of voting power. The DAO raised the threshold from zero in November 2024, describing a zero threshold as a security risk that invited spam. The governance documentation still says anyone can submit a proposal with no threshold, so the documentation and the contract disagree.

Most proposals are operating expenses: monthly payment rolls for stewards, retroactive funding for content contributors, half-year budgets, and grants to projects building on the protocol. Stewards hold named roles, chosen on the DAO’s Snapshot space and paid through on-chain proposals. That routine became harder to keep up after Unlock Labs stopped funding operations. In January 2026 the Q1–Q2 budget failed with 1.97m For and almost nothing against, short of quorum despite what the February newsletter called record turnout. The fix, executed in February 2026, delegated 2m UP from the treasury through a MultiDelegator contract to the seven most consistent voters over the previous ten proposals. Its text attributes the shortfall to “a hacked wallet belonging to one of our former main holders” and to whales who did not vote. Unlock Labs has also said its foundation would be dissolved during 2026, moving about 40% of the token supply to the DAO treasury (January 2026 newsletter).

September 2026: proposals aimed at the treasury

Between 11 and 28 September 2026 four addresses filed 48 proposals on the Base governor, against 26 filed in the whole of 2026 before that (governor ProposalCreated events, read 2 Oct 2026). Each address held at least the 50,000 UP the threshold requires. A steward’s proposal of 22 September describes them as “malicious governance proposals”, and the calldata supports that reading:

• Treasury transfers under a familiar title. 0xdd6b…5159 copied the title and text of the DAO’s monthly “Payment for the DAO collaboration platform” proposal. The 19 September version paired the usual UP payments with an upgradeToAndCall call addressed to the timelock; the 25 September version transfers the timelock’s whole balance – 48.5m UP, 5,297 USDC, 0.5 WETH and 6.4 ETH – to the proposer.
• A “security module” migration. Migrate treasury assets to enhanced UPTreasuryV2 security module, filed by 0x8db2…49cd on 19 September, sends the same balance to a new address and calls transferOwnership on the UP token in the proposer’s favour. The proposer voted For with 5.16m UP, more than quorum on its own.
• A cancel role that also grants admin. Introduce and Assign the Governance Cancel Role names six community members for a cancel role. Its calldata grants the canceller role to six steward addresses and the timelock’s admin role to the proposer, 0xf88e…ca10, whose first and last four characters match the DAO multisig’s, 0xf88e…cA10. It was filed again on 28 September.
• Empty filings. 0x6650…bc0f, holding exactly 50,000 UP, filed 21 proposals such as “Migration of the UnlockDAO Timelock Contract” whose calls carry no data, and 0xdd6b…5159 added 21 more titled “Proposal” or “Proposals”. Passing one would change nothing.

None had passed by 2 October 2026. Stewards voted against the filings one by one, and the address that resolves to unlock-protocol.eth cast 39.4m UP against the transfer and admin proposals, enough to defeat the treasury migration by 42.4m to 5.16m. The DAO’s own holding did not vote, because the UP the timelock holds is not delegated (UP getVotes, read 2 Oct 2026). The response is Defensive Delegation of UP Voting Power to DAO Stewards & Delegates, which would delegate a further 21m UP from the treasury through the MultiDelegator to eight stewards and delegates and the DAO multisig. It had 3.23m For and none against when read on 2 October 2026, with voting due to close that day. The 25 September transfer proposal stays open until 5 October, with 39.8m against it. The wider pattern is covered under DAO security and governance attacks and voter apathy.

Where it sits beside Guild and Collab.Land

Guild.xyz and Collab.Land are gates. They read what a wallet already holds, grant a role in a chat or an app, and remove it when a later check finds the holding gone. Neither issues the asset it checks. Unlock issues it, and puts time and price into the asset: a key expires on its own date, can be renewed, and can be made non-transferable by the lock’s managers. Because a key is an ERC-721, a gate that reads NFT holdings can read a key, so the tools stack rather than compete: a community can sell an expiring key with Unlock and let a gate translate it into a Discord role. The governance stories also differ. Collab.Land’s token DAO has gone silent while its product continues; Unlock’s DAO still passes proposals every month and owns the protocol’s upgrade keys.

How Caper approaches this

Unlock keeps membership and power apart: a key buys access for a term, and votes come from UP held or delegated, counted against a fixed quorum. A caper joins them: holding its token is membership, bought or sold on the bonding curve at any time, and ballot weight combines that holding with a soulbound vote record earned only by casting ballots (Voting). Neither design makes an absent electorate safe. A caper ballot has no quorum and counts only the weight cast, and in its second phase silence in the market counts as consent. Its defences sit elsewhere: every proposal costs a fee that is kept whether it passes or fails, which prices the kind of flood the Unlock DAO faced; an executable winner must also survive a market window in which selling is the veto (Proposals); and a member who has voted at least once and expects a bad outcome can leave with a share of the treasury at any time, the exit right UP holders do not have against the Unlock timelock. Unlock does what a caper does not attempt. It sells memberships that expire and renew, tickets and certificates, on eleven chains, to anyone who deploys a lock and with no governance token needed; a caper has no notion of dues or a term, and a caper that wanted paid, time-limited access for its members would reach for something like a lock.

References

• Unlock documentation – PublicLock (keys as ERC-721, expiry, roles, hooks)
• Unlock documentation – core protocol (the Unlock and PublicLock contracts)
• Unlock documentation – the Unlock contract (DAO ownership, swap-and-burn, v14 rewards)
• Unlock documentation – UP and UDT tokens (supply, swap ratio, 1% fee switch)
• Unlock documentation – Unlock DAO (governor and timelock addresses; parameters; threshold wording)
• Unlock blog – launch of the Unlock DAO, 28 September 2021
• Unlock blog – Migrating the Unlock Protocol DAO to Base, 28 June 2024
• Unlock blog – Unlock Protocol DAO completes migration to Base, 23 September 2024
• Unlock blog – Unlock Protocol and Hats Protocol integration, 29 October 2024
• Unlock blog – Unlock DAO newsletter, January 2026 (end of Unlock Labs funding; foundation dissolution)
• Unlock blog – Unlock DAO newsletter, February 2026 (quorum rule; TreeGens, GreenGoods)
• Unlock blog – Unlock DAO newsletter, April 2026 (P2E Inferno, Metopia)
• unlock-protocol.com – homepage (DappCon, PlannerDAO and other named users)
• Tally – Unlock Protocol governance (all proposals cited above by title)
• Basescan – UnlockProtocolGovernor on Base; votingDelay, votingPeriod, quorum, proposalThreshold, ProposalCreated and VoteCast events read 2 October 2026
• Basescan – UPTimelock on Base; roles, minimum delay and balances read 2 October 2026
• Basescan – UP token on Base; totalSupply, balanceOf and getVotes read 2 October 2026
• Basescan – Unlock factory on Base; owner, unlockVersion, publicLockLatestVersion and protocolFee read 2 October 2026
• Unlock subgraph for Base – lock and key totals, read 2 October 2026
• GitHub – unlock-protocol/unlock (pushed_at 2 October 2026 via the GitHub API; networks package)
• Snapshot – unlock-dao.eth