--- title: "GenomesDAO" url: "https://caper.network/wiki/desci/ecosystem/genomesdao" updated: 2026-08-27 license: CC-BY-4.0 license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # GenomesDAO | | | | --- | --- | | **Type** | DeSci DAO / biotech | | **Founded** | 2018 (Genomes.io) | | **Focus** | Genomic data ownership & privacy | | **HQ** | London, UK | | **Investors** | Pantera Capital, Modular Capital (2024) | | **Token** | GENOME (consolidated from GENE + GNOME) | | **Supply** | 1,000,000,000 GENOME, fixed and unmintable; 999,993,000.57 of it escrowed for Base (read 2026-08-20) | | **Networks** | Base and Ethereum, but only 6,999.43 GENOME floats on Ethereum | | **Governance** | [genomesdao.eth](https://snapshot.box/#/s:genomesdao.eth) on Snapshot: 21 proposals, 123 followers, no ballot since 18 February 2025 | | **Technology** | AMD SEV-ES encrypted vaults | | **Current focus** | NIOME, its privacy-preserving AI layer over sequenced genomes | | **Status** | 🟢 Active – [partnership announced 28 July 2026](https://genomesdao.medium.com/niome-partners-with-aspen-med-another-step-into-the-future-of-personalised-medicine-b512f4322e83), though no Snapshot ballot since 18 February 2025 | | **Website** | [genomes.io](https://www.genomes.io) | ## Overview GenomesDAO, built by [Genomes.io](https://www.genomes.io) (founded 2018, London), is a biotech [DeSci DAO](/wiki/desci/desci-daos) focused on the safe, private, and auditable monetization of genomic data — a leading example of [research data ownership](/wiki/desci/research-data-ownership). It combines [AMD's SEV-ES encrypted virtualization, blockchain, and DeFi](https://genomes.gitbook.io/genomes.io-docs) so individuals retain full ownership and control over their DNA data instead of surrendering it to a sequencing company or data broker. The project [raised a new investment round from Pantera Capital and Modular Capital in 2024](https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/genomesdao-secures-new-investment-round-from-pantera-capital-and-modular-capital/) to expand its encrypted-vault infrastructure. Its published work through 2026 has moved up a layer, from the vault to what can be computed over it. **NIOME** is the organization's [decentralised AI platform for genomic intelligence](https://genomesdao.medium.com/niome-partners-with-aspen-med-another-step-into-the-future-of-personalised-medicine-b512f4322e83), applying privacy-preserving analysis to vaulted genomes to support diagnosis, pharmacogenomics and treatment selection. On 28 July 2026 Genomes.io announced a partnership with Aspen Med pairing whole-genome sequencing, vault storage, genetic counselling and clinical interpretation with NIOME's output as an integrated service. That is where the organization's activity is legible: its Snapshot space has been silent since February 2025, but its operating record has not. ## How it works GenomesDAO works with clinical-grade providers to deliver 30x whole-genome sequencing that analyses 100% of the genome. User DNA is stored in fully encrypted "DNA Vaults" secured by AMD SEV-ES, so only the individual controls access. Pharmaceutical companies and research organizations query the data using GENOME tokens, with Genomes.io acting as broker — and critically, the user must approve each individual query of their vault: a query asks a single specific question and only the answer, not the raw genome, ever leaves the vault. ## The GENOME token GenomesDAO [consolidated its earlier $GENE and $GNOME tokens into a single $GENOME super-token](https://blog.genomes.io/genomesdao-launches-genome-on-base-77707048fcb6), launched on the [Base](https://www.base.org) network and also supported on Ethereum. GENE swaps 1:1 into GENOME and GNOME swaps 10:1, for a fixed total supply of 1 billion GENOME. That figure is a claim about a sum, and the two contracts the project's own [tokenomics page](https://genomes.gitbook.io/genomes.io-docs/technical/tokenomics) names do not add up to it in the obvious way. Read by `eth_call` at Ethereum block 25,797,736 (2026-08-20T17:10:11Z), the [Ethereum contract](https://etherscan.io/token/0x7ae4f8885f6cfa41a692cb9da3789cfa6a83e9f2) reports exactly 1,000,000,000 GENOME and the [Base contract](https://basescan.org/token/0x1db0c569ebb4a8b57AC01833B9792F526305e062) reports 999,993,000.57 more, a naive total of almost two billion. The reconciliation is the bridge: the Base token is a minted representation, and 999,993,000.57 GENOME, matching the Base supply to the wei, sits locked in the [Base L1StandardBridge](https://etherscan.io/address/0x3154Cf16ccdb4C6d922629664174b904d80F2C35) on Ethereum. So the supply really is one billion, but the balances are not additive, and the arithmetic says something the infobox row never did: 6,999.43 GENOME, seven thousandths of one per cent of supply, is all that floats on Ethereum. GENOME is a Base token with an Ethereum contract of record. The Ethereum bytecode carries no `mint` entry point at all, so the fixed supply is a property of the contract rather than a policy. GENOME is the deflationary utility token pharmaceutical and research buyers spend to query consenting users' vaults — a data-marketplace design where the token is the metering unit for access rather than a speculative governance chip. As with any traded token, live price and market cap move constantly; [CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/genomesdao-genome) carries the current figures. ## The upload campaign and the $GENOME Fund On 16 September 2024 Genomes.io [announced a DNA-upload feature and a dedicated $GENOME Fund](https://www.newswire.com/news/genomes-io-launches-a-dedicated-genome-fund-aiming-to-build-the-22425002), stating the goal of building “1 billion genomes within the next five years.” The feature accepts existing raw data files rather than requiring a fresh sequencing kit, and the release names the three consumer-genomics platforms it is aimed at by name: **23andMe, MyHeritage, and Ancestry.com**. Contributors accrued points rather than immediate tokens, with $GENOME distributed at the end of a campaign that ran through 31 December 2024. The pitch is worth stating plainly, because it sets up what happened next: GenomesDAO was inviting people who had _already_ handed their genome to a consumer sequencing company to move a copy into a vault they controlled themselves. As of August 2026 the Genomes.io site is live and carries no dated announcement after that campaign. ## The thesis got a live test: 23andMe, 2025 Six months after the upload campaign closed, the largest platform it named entered bankruptcy, and the resulting record is unusually complete because the company was SEC-reporting throughout. On 23 March 2025, 23andMe Holding Co. and certain subsidiaries [filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000119312525060817/d933650d8k.htm) in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Its common stock was [suspended from Nasdaq at the opening of business on 31 March 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000095014225001416/eh250629700_8k.htm) and moved to the OTC Pink market under the symbol “MEHCQ.” What was then sold was the database. The company's [annual report for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000162828025030786/mehcq-20250331.htm) puts it at “approximately 14.4 million and 15.1 million PGS customers” as of 31 March 2025 and 2024 respectively — a roughly 5% decline the filing attributes “primarily as a result of customers electing to delete their data” — falling further to about 14.0 million by 31 May 2025. The same filing reports that the share of customers who had consented to research “remained consistent at 80%” across both years. The sale ran as an auction. Bidding was held 14–16 May 2025 among [seven qualified bidders](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000095014225001416/eh250629700_8k.htm), with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals selected as successful bidder at $256.0 million in cash. TTAM Research Institute — a California nonprofit public benefit corporation and an affiliate of co-founder, former CEO and then-director Anne Wojcicki — then submitted $305.0 million, bidding was [reopened on 4 June 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000119312525141090/d75328d8k.htm), and on 13 June TTAM was selected as winning bidder at $305.0 million with Regeneron as backup at $151.0 million. The court approved the sale on 27 June and the transaction [closed on 14 July 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000119312525158551/d11473d8k.htm), transferring substantially all assets “free and clear of liens, claims, encumbrances, and other interests.” The remaining shell [renamed itself Chrome Holding Co. on 14 August 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000095014225002208/eh250668029_8k.htm). For a [data DAO](/wiki/desci/research-data-ownership) the sequence is the argument. Every customer's consent had been given to 23andMe; the database changed hands twice in an auction room regardless, and the only lever an individual held was deletion — which, on the company's own numbers, roughly a million people pulled. GenomesDAO's structural answer is the one described above: the genome stays inside an encrypted vault the individual holds, and each query needs that individual's approval, so there is no consolidated database to convey. Whether that holds at the scale a pharmaceutical buyer needs is still unproven — the vault model has never been tested against a fourteen-million-record incumbent's economics — but the failure mode it is designed against is no longer hypothetical. ## Governance: a ballot quiet since February 2025, and a strategy that broke the tally The project governs through [genomesdao.eth](https://snapshot.box/#/s:genomesdao.eth) on [Snapshot](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/voting/snapshot), the surface its own docs point holders at for adding new chains. Read on 20 August 2026 the space carried **21 proposals and 123 followers**, and its most recent ballot opened on 13 February 2025 and closed five days later on **18 February 2025**, drawing 13 voters and 2,735,547 GENOME, about 0.27% of supply. Eighteen months of silence on the ballot sits alongside a live company: the site, the vaults and the documentation are all current. The two are separate liveness signals and only one of them has stopped. The space also carries a concrete defect worth naming, because it is the kind that no link checker and no governance dashboard will ever surface. Voting power is folded from five strategies, and the fifth applies [`erc721-with-multiplier`](https://github.com/snapshot-labs/snapshot-strategies/tree/master/src/strategies/erc721-with-multiplier), with a multiplier of 1,177, to [0x963c…73D9](https://basescan.org/token/0x963ceee215e5b0B1dCB221C3bA398De66abC73D9). That address is not an NFT collection. It is `vAMM-GENOME/WETH`, an ordinary 18-decimal ERC-20 Aerodrome pool token, and it does not answer `supportsInterface(0x80ac58cd)` at all. The strategy reads its `balanceOf` as a count of items and multiplies. The result is on the public record. [The 8 May 2024 proposal to reward solo stakers with free sequencing](https://snapshot.box/#/s:genomesdao.eth/proposal/0xd1a3662663de26aa5d96b29599079b68236c41b897c5c46af1093aaae5fa8cc9) closed with a tally of **6,097,543,803,710,804,000,000**, roughly 6.1 trillion times the entire token supply, against a space quorum of 1,000. Every unit of it came from one address, whose four other strategies contributed about 108,000 between them; the remaining 28 voters are rounding error in their own DAO's tally. Divide the number by the multiplier and the holding behind it resolves to about **5.18 LP tokens**. The vote was unanimous, so nothing turned on it, and that is precisely why it has sat there for two years. The strategy is still live in the space. This is the failure mode that separates a configured ballot from a computed one. A Snapshot space is a JSON strategy list read at proposal time, and a wrong entry in it produces a number that looks like a result. Caper folds weight inside the casting transaction instead: `GovernanceVault::cast_inner` (`contracts/ballot/src/lib.rs`) reads the caller's staked balance and vote-token balance from the ledger and passes them to `compute_vote_weight` (`contracts/common/src/lib.rs`), the same function the exit path uses, so there is no off-chain list to misconfigure and no way for a tally to exceed the supply it is drawn from. The general lesson belongs to every DAO that publishes tallies, and is catalogued under [DAO metrics and analytics](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-metrics-and-analytics) and [token-weighted voting](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/voting/token-weighted-voting): a published tally is only as sound as the strategy list nobody reads, and the cheapest audit is to divide it by the token's total supply. ## How Caper approaches this GenomesDAO's model — a token that meters paid access to a member-owned asset, with each transaction individually consented — rhymes with how a [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) treats value. Where a research or data collective wanted a shared treasury rather than a per-vault broker fee, revenue from data licences would [flow into the caper's treasury](/wiki/markets/raising-funds), disbursements to contributors or infrastructure would run through governance-approved [PAYOUT proposals](/wiki/governance/proposals), and members would keep a [participation-weighted claim](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) on the treasury they built. Caper doesn't provide the confidential-compute vault GenomesDAO's privacy model depends on — that is the harder, domain-specific piece — but it does provide the treasury, spending, and exit rails a data DAO would otherwise assemble from scratch. ## External links - [Genomes.io — official website](https://www.genomes.io) - [GenomesDAO documentation](https://genomes.gitbook.io/genomes.io-docs) - [GENOME on Base — GenomesDAO blog](https://blog.genomes.io/genomesdao-launches-genome-on-base-77707048fcb6) - [GenomesDAO on X](https://x.com/GenomesDAO) - [genomesdao.eth on Snapshot – the governance record](https://snapshot.box/#/s:genomesdao.eth) - [GenomesDAO tokenomics – the fixed supply and both contract addresses](https://genomes.gitbook.io/genomes.io-docs/technical/tokenomics) - [Genomes.io launches the $GENOME Fund (16 September 2024)](https://www.newswire.com/news/genomes-io-launches-a-dedicated-genome-fund-aiming-to-build-the-22425002) - [SEC filings for 23andMe Holding Co. / Chrome Holding Co. (CIK 0001804591)](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001804591&type=8-K&dateb=&owner=include&count=40)