Alliance DAO Handpicks 12 Crypto Startups for Make-or-Break Accelerator Sprint
Alliance DAO just locked in its latest batch of founders for a brutal 90-day bootcamp—where ’graduation’ means survival in the bear-market thunderdome.
The cohort: A mix of DeFi gamblers, infrastructure grinders, and at least one team building yet another NFT marketplace (because why not?).
What’s at stake: Demo Day pitches to VCs who’ve suddenly remembered due diligence exists—now that play money is scarce.
Bonus finance jab: Somewhere, a hedge fund manager is shorting these startups while buying their tokens ’for the long-term thesis.’
About the cohort
Solana and Ethereum were the most-used chains by startups that applied to ALL14, and Base was the most-used L2.
35% of admitted teams are focused on AI, while 30% are focused on stablecoin innovations, a sign that both are continuing to trend in the startup world.
Alliance’s latest cohort offers an interesting glimpse into the future of crypto, AI, and where things might go from here.
- Slop Club
- Poof
- Wootzapp
Some of the teams’ pedigrees are pretty impressive, though. Think founders that are also Stanford engineers, have had stints at billion-dollar firms, or have worked at prior startups with top Silicon Valley investors before starting their new thing.
- 8020 (Moonshot for Asia)
- Zabio (P2P stablecoin exchange for LATAM)
- Lemonade Payments (Crypto payments in Africa)
- Zynk Labs (Instant crypto settlements)
- Fido (DeFi-powered neobank)
- Guess.best (opinion-based betting market)
- Junction (cross-chain DeFi toolkit)
- Ripe (stablecoin payments for Asia)
- Orbit (AI assistant for DeFi trading)
- Poof (vibe coding for dApps)
- Seismic (encrypted blockchain)
- Offline protocol (communication, payments without internet)
- GrandmAIsters (AI agent chess arena game)
- FactCheck (stablecoin-incentivized fact-checking)
:
- Slop Club (Tiktok for AI videos)
- Freedom GPT (Pagerank for AI)
- Wootzapp (Private data crowdsourcing for AI training)
- Afterschool (AI tutor)
- CollectiveScience (Academic peer review tool)
- CreatorGen (AI avatar marketplace)
Alliance also hosted an IRL event this week:
Loading Tweet..The application window for the next cohort closes on May 28.
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