#### Update on AstroDAO Hi everyone, I want to share an update for the DAO ecosystem on NEAR as some priorities have shifted heading into the new year. There are two core components that have been powering Astro: SputnikDAO smart contracts and the AstroDAO frontend, both of which were developed through Pagoda by a number of contributors. As of January 2023, all development of AstroDAO has stopped to focus on Discovery. Features of AstroDAO are going to be incorporated into the Discovery platform in the next few months. Pagoda is looking for members of the NEAR community to take over the Astro product and is opening applications for maintainers. The chosen team will take over the IP, server infrastructure, and Astro brand to evolve independently while the underlying technology will remain open source for the ecosystem to use. Stay tuned this week for a more detailed post on the DeveloperDAO Gigs Board outlining the process and criteria for selecting a new maintainer. Until a team is selected, Pagoda will run services but will not make active updates. For current DAOs using Astro: no action is required. Teams already using Astro tooling will be able to continue using it and are encouraged to onboard to Discovery as more functionality over SputnikDAO launches. AstroDAO launched as a way to bring together communities and give them tools to fund their work and make decisions in an organized yet decentralized way. Built on the underlying SputnikDAO tech, DAO tools on NEAR offered unique features to early digital cooperatives including smooth interoperability and customizable scaling options. The broader product strategy for NEAR now overlaps significantly with the goals for AstroDAO. With NEAR Discovery & NEAR Social offering the best way to build decentralized frontends and bringing the community / social features into a single platform, this will become the natural place for the value that AstroDAO has been trying to provide––all within a more unified environment that offers a smoother user experience even to Web3 novices. Until Pagoda selects the new maintainer of AstroDAO, users with questions or concerns should post on the NEAR Social feed. In the meantime, DAOs should engage with NEAR Social and Discovery as new community features emerge over the next few months––you are an important early user base for these platforms and the teams building Discovery will greatly value your feedback and collaboration.