Aavegotchi Holders Push Back Against $3.2 Million Buyout Bid from Chinese VC

With two days left to vote, Aavegotchi holders are overwhelmingly opposing a $3.2 million acquisition offer from a Chinese venture firm, with nearly 90% of participating votes cast against the deal so far.

The proposal, introduced on July 22 by a community member acting as an intermediary, outlined an offer from Rongming Investment to buy out the DAO treasury — approximately 16 million GHST — at a 60% discount to the 14-day moving average price for roughly $3.2 million in USDC stablecoins.

Although the rationale behind the proposed 60% discount remains unclear, the deal outlined in the proposal would grant Rongming Investment full rights to use and market the Aavegotchi IP, dissolve the DAO, and distribute the proceeds to active community members.

With just over 2 million GHST tokens participating, the vote has reached only 28% of the required quorum. The vote is scheduled to conclude on July 25. If the current trend holds, the acquisition offer will be rejected.

Amid the vote, GHST is up 16% in the past week, according to CoinGecko.

Aavegotchi, a DeFi game revolving around digital “fren” avatars similar to Tamagotchi, migrated from Polygon to Base earlier this year after its community voted to make the switch.

Commenting on the decision, Daniel “CoderDan” Mathews, co-founder of Pixelcraft Studios and a lead developer of Aavegotchi, explained in an X post that the move was driven by Polygon’s limited support for crypto gaming, and involved re-minting NFTs on Base and shutting down Aavegotchi’s custom Layer 3 chain, Geist, due to its low adoption.

In March 2021, Aavegotchi sold 10,000 NFTs in less than a minute, and with additional sales of wearable and consumable NFTs, players spent a total of $5.5 million.