Cookie DAO

What it does

Cookie DAODAODecentralised Autonomous Organisation. A way to coordinate decisions and manage a treasury using token-weighted voting instead of a traditional company structure. Token holders propose and vote on changes directly.Like a shareholder-run company where every shareholder can vote on every decision, the votes are public, and the company can't do anything the shareholders don't approve. The coordination is messier than a normal company but nobody has unilateral control.DAO in the glossary → operates cookie.fun, a data analytics platform that, by Cookie’s own account, indexes, tracks, and scores over 1,500 AI agents across crypto and ingests 7TB+ of live on-chain and social data feeds to calculate proprietary metrics, most notably Mindshare, a measure of an AI agent’s share of social conversation volume that has become a widely referenced standard in the DeFAI space.

The platform provides:

• AI Agent Index: a full directory of 1,500+ crypto AIDeAIDecentralised AI. An umbrella term for blockchain-based projects that build AI infrastructure (compute, data, inference, models, agents) without a single central provider controlling the system.Like the difference between streaming a movie from Netflix and sharing it via BitTorrent. Netflix is fast and polished but one company controls what you can watch and what you pay. BitTorrent is messier but no single operator can shut you out.DeAI in the glossary → agents with real-time tracking of on-chain activity, tokenTokenA digital unit of value or access rights tracked on a blockchain. Tokens can represent ownership in a project, a right to use a service, a share of future revenue, or simply a tradable asset with no underlying claim.Like a physical poker chip a casino issues. The chip itself has no value. What makes it worth something is what it lets you do at the casino, what the casino has promised, and how much other people will pay you for it.Token in the glossary → holders, market cap, and social metrics.
• Mindshare Metric: proprietary calculation of social conversation share, used across the industry to rank AI agent attention and momentum.
• Smart Following: tracks which influencers and smart money wallets are paying attention to specific agents.
• Cookie Data APIs: token-gated data feeds that AI agents and dapps can plug into for real-time analytics.
• Cookie Snaps: gamified social engagement rewards system launched in 2024, shut down on 16 January 2026 after X/Twitter changed its API policy to prohibit apps that reward users for posting. $5M+ in rewards was distributed during its run.
• Trading Interface: launched May 2025, enabling direct trading from the analytics dashboard.

Founded in 2021 by Filip Wielanier (CEO) and Wojciech Piechocinski in Tallinn, Estonia, originally as Cookie3, a MarketingFi analytics company. The pivot to AI agent analytics came with the DeFAI narrative in 2024. Both founders are doxxed. Team size estimated at approximately 15.

COOKIE is a LayerZero OFT token deployed at one address on BNB Chain, Base and Ethereum. On chain, about three-quarters of the supply sits on BNB Chain and the rest on Base, while the Ethereum leg holds none (September 2026 read). Cookie also lists Solana, but the three EVM legs alone sum to the full 1B. The token launched via IDOIDOInitial DEX Offering. A token launch mechanism where the initial sale happens directly on a decentralised exchange, with built-in liquidity pool funding. IDOs replaced ICOs as the standard launch model for many projects after 2018.Like opening a new shop directly inside an existing market hall instead of running a separate sale event. The shop is open, the market provides foot traffic, and customers can walk in and trade from day one.IDO in the glossary → on Polkastarter/ChainGPT Pad and IEO on Bybit/Gate.io in June 2024 at $0.025-$0.028. Total funding raised: $6.82M across pre-seed ($3.3M led by The Spartan Group), strategic ($2.5M), and public sale ($1.025M). Backed by Animoca Brands, GSR, CMT Digital, Big Brain Holdings, and others.

Value proposition

DeFiDeFiDecentralised Finance. Financial services like lending, trading, and yield farming built on smart contracts instead of traditional banks or brokerages. DeFi protocols are usually permissionless and global.Like a vending machine that can give you a loan, swap your currencies, or invest your savings. Nobody is behind the counter, the rules are written into the machine itself, and anyone with money in the right format can use it.DeFi in the glossary → needed DeFiLlama. AI agents need cookie.fun. That’s the pitch, and they were first to build it. The Mindshare metric has been adopted as a reference standard.

The numbers suggest meaningful traction: cookie.fun reports 60,000+ users, 1,500+ agents tracked, 5M+ COOKIE locked for premium access, $16M+ distributed to MAF stakers, and $5M+ in Snaps rewards. Cookie.fun reportedly attracted 20,000 users within 48 hours of launch. These are self-reported; no independent verification has been published. The Binance listing in January 2025 pushed market cap to $218M.

Token gating is the interesting piece. Premium analytics require locking 10,000 COOKIE. APIAPIApplication Programming Interface. A structured way for one piece of software to talk to another. In DeAI, APIs let applications request inference from a model without running the model themselves.Like a waiter in a restaurant. You don't walk into the kitchen and cook your own meal. You tell the waiter what you want, they tell the kitchen, the kitchen cooks it, and the waiter brings it back. The API is the waiter.API in the glossary → access for AI agents requires COOKIE. This creates verifiable demand beyond speculation: if you want the data, you need the token.

The counter-narrative is harsh but necessary. Cookie DAO is not a decentralised project. Despite the “DAO” branding:

• Zero open source code. Cookie’s GitHub organisations (cookie3 and cookiedotfun) hold zero public repositories, and the verified token contract is marked UNLICENSED (GitHub API read, 18 September 2026). The entire codebase (data pipeline, indexing engine, API, Mindshare algorithm) is proprietary.
• No verifiable governance. No public Snapshot space, no governance forum, no on-chain voting history. Cookie3 and core contributors make all decisions.
• Fully centralised infrastructure. Every component runs on Cookie3’s servers. If they shut down, cookie.fun stops.
• No audits. No third-party audit reports found for the smart contracts.

The docs acknowledge the centralisation: “In its early phase, the Cookie DAO data layer is being built together with core contributors from Cookie3, but in the future, an infrastructure will be put in place that will enable an indefinite number of independent contributors.” That future has no timeline.

This is a centralised data company with a token, branded as a DAO. That can be a fine business. Nansen, Dune Analytics, and DexScreener are centralised and valuable. But calling it a DAO is misleading, and the sovereignty implications bite: your data access, your analytics, your API feeds all depend on one company continuing to operate.

The 99% drawdown from ATHATHAll-Time High. The highest price a token has ever reached. ATH is usually quoted as a reference point for how far the current price has fallen (or risen) since the peak.Like the record lap time on a racetrack. It tells you what the car has been capable of at its absolute best, not what it will do today. Whether that record gets broken again depends on conditions that may or may not come back.ATH in the glossary → reflects a combination of aggressive insider unlocks (most vestingVestingA schedule that locks up tokens allocated to insiders, investors, and team members, releasing them gradually over months or years. Vesting prevents insiders from dumping on public buyers immediately after launch.Like a new employee's stock options at a startup. You don't get all the shares on day one. They unlock over four years so you stick around and do the work rather than cashing out and leaving.Vesting in the glossary → completed within 7 months) and market reassessment of whether analytics usage translates to sustainable token value.

Tokenomics

COOKIE has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens with 805.7 million circulating per CoinGecko (80.57%). Final unlock in June 2028.

Initial distribution was heavily insider-weighted: pre-seed rounds A/B/C (24.23%), team (9.5%), advisory (5%), strategic (6.14%) = approximately 45% to insiders. Public sale was only 4.38% and airdropAirdropDistributing tokens for free to eligible wallets, usually to reward early users, bootstrap a community, or decentralise token ownership away from a small group of insiders at launch.Like a supermarket handing out free samples to people who already shop there. The samples cost the supermarket nothing to print. The goal is to convert casual shoppers into loyal customers by giving them something tangible to talk about.Airdrop in the glossary → 2%. The vesting was unusually aggressive: 1-month cliffCliffA waiting period at the start of a token vesting schedule during which no tokens unlock at all. After the cliff ends, tokens begin releasing according to the vesting schedule.Like a probationary period at a new job. You don't get your stock options on day one. You wait 12 months to prove you'll stick around, then everything starts unlocking normally.Cliff in the glossary → + 6-month linear. Industry standard is 12-month cliff + 24-36 month vesting. Most insider tokens unlocked by January 2025, the same month as the ATH.

This review described two burnBurnPermanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an address that no one controls. Burns reduce total supply, which (all else equal) makes each remaining token worth more of the network's value.Like a company buying back its own shares and shredding them. The company's total value stays the same, but each remaining share now represents a slightly bigger slice of that value.Burn in the glossary → mechanisms for over a year: 10% of COOKIE locked in MAF (Multi-Airdrop Farming) pools, and 50% of API access fee revenue. Both were wrong, and the error was ours rather than the project’s. Cookie’s own documentation describes neither, checked page by page against the index its docs site publishes, and we never recorded where the figures came from.

The chain is blunter still. Read on 21 September 2026, the three supply legs (BNB 737,141,626.55, Base 262,858,373.45, Ethereum zero) sum to exactly 1,000,000,000, the full cap, so nothing has been destroyed by a burn() call. The two BNB burn addresses hold 2.17 COOKIE between them. A mechanism destroying 170,000 COOKIE a day since July 2025 would have removed roughly 72 million by now.

StakingStakingLocking up a cryptocurrency to help secure a blockchain network, usually in exchange for rewards. The locked tokens act as a security deposit that can be taken away if the staker misbehaves.Like putting down a large rental deposit for an apartment. You get the money back if you behave, you earn interest while it's locked, and the landlord takes it if you trash the place.Staking in the glossary → rewards shifted from APY-based to the Snaps points system in July 2025, making returns less predictable. MAF participants earn 10-20% of partner project reward pools and forfeit 10% of locked principal, though where that forfeited COOKIE goes isn’t something we’ve established.

Listed on Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Gate.io, Coinbase, Kraken, MEXC, and Bitget. Daily volume runs near a fifth of market cap (a 19% 7-day median turnover in September 2026). Public sale investors are deep in the red. Most of the supply is circulating, with final unlock June 2028; FDVFDVFully Diluted Valuation. The market cap a token would have if every token that will ever exist were already in circulation. FDV is what the project would be worth if all locked, vesting, or unminted tokens were trading today.Like valuing a startup based on what every share would be worth if all the unvested employee options had already been exercised. The number is bigger and uglier than the official market cap, but it tells you the true ceiling.FDV in the glossary →/MCap ratio is modest given high circulating supplyCirculating SupplyThe number of tokens currently in circulation and tradeable on the open market. Differs from total supply (which includes locked or unvested tokens) and max supply (the upper limit, if there is one).Like the number of cars on the road today versus the number ever produced. Some are in showrooms, some in junkyards, some still at the factory. Only the ones on the road count toward what people are actually driving.Circulating Supply in the glossary →.

How to participate

Use cookie.fun. Free tier available for basic AI agent tracking. Lock 10,000 COOKIE for premium analytics including walletWalletSoftware that stores the private keys needed to control tokens on a blockchain. A wallet does not actually hold any tokens. The tokens live on the chain. The wallet holds the keys that prove you own them.Like the key to a safe deposit box. The key doesn't contain your valuables. The valuables sit in the bank's vault. The key is what proves you're allowed to open the box and take them.Wallet in the glossary → distribution, sentiment analysis, and detailed agent metrics. Technical skill: basic.

Stake for MAF. Lock COOKIE in Multi-Airdrop Farming pools to earn 10-20% of partner project reward pools. Note: participants forfeit 10% of locked COOKIE, and Cookie’s documentation doesn’t say where it goes. Cookie reports $16M+ distributed to MAF stakers historically. Technical skill: basic.

Snaps (shut down). Cookie’s gamified social engagement product was shut down on 16 January 2026 after X/Twitter prohibited apps that reward users for posting. $5M+ in rewards was distributed during its run. Its replacement, Cookie Pro, is now open: pro.cookie.fun loads the research app with no eligibility gate (checked 29 September 2026), and Cookie’s September posts walk users through it and a partner programme. The posts we read don’t set out what role COOKIE plays in Pro.

Integrate APIs. Use Cookie Data APIs for real-time AI agent analytics in dapps or AI agents. COOKIE token required for access. API pricing not publicly documented. Technical skill: intermediate.

Honest assessment

Freedom Score: 22/100

Call it what it is: a centralised data company with a token and a DAO in the name. Nothing about the product is decentralised, and the governance claims don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Infrastructure Decentralisation: 3/20. Fully centralised. cookie.fun platform, data indexing pipeline, API servers, and Mindshare calculation engine all operated by Cookie3. No independent nodes, no permissionless data providers, no decentralised compute. The stated plan to decentralise has no implementation timeline.

Governance Decentralisation: 4/20. Token voting claimed but no public Snapshot space, no governance forum, no on-chain voting history could be found. Cookie3 and core contributors make all operational decisions. The DAO structure appears to be a branding wrapper.

Token Distribution Fairness: 4/15. Approximately 45% insider allocation across multiple pre-seed rounds, team, advisory, and strategic. Only 6.38% to public sale and airdrop combined. Unusually short vesting (1-month cliff + 6-month linear) enabled rapid insider selling.

Censorship Resistance: 4/15. cookie.fun is a centralised web application. The team can restrict access, modify data, add or remove agents, and gate features at will. No on-chain data layer exists. The COOKIE ERC-20 token itself is censorship-resistant, but the product isn’t.

Data Sovereignty: 3/15. Mindshare metric and agent scores are proprietary with no verifiable methodology on-chain. The 7TB data layer is entirely controlled by Cookie3. Cookie Snaps monitors user social activity on X for rewards. No independent data verification is possible.

Open Source Transparency: 4/15. Zero public GitHub repositories. The entire codebase is proprietary. No audit reports found for smart contracts. Verifying the token contract on Etherscan is the minimum requirement for any ERC-20, not a transparency credential.

Returns Score: 50/100

Token Utility: 13/20. COOKIE has multiple concrete use cases: premium analytics access (10K COOKIE lock), API access gating for AI agents, MAF airdrop farming (10-20% of partner rewards), and governance voting. 5M+ COOKIE locked for premium access is Cookie’s own evidence of demand, self-reported. Snaps, which was a meaningful engagement and utility driver, shut down on 16 January 2026 after X/Twitter prohibited reward-for-posting apps. The MAF and API gating mechanisms remain active. Cookie Pro, the announced replacement, was whitelist-only at the July 2026 review, which cost a point (14 to 13). By September it’s public: the app opens with no eligibility gate (checked 29 September 2026). Whether it restores token utility depends on what COOKIE does inside Pro, and the October review takes that call.

Value Accrual: 12/20. This score rested on a dual burn that we can no longer support. The 50% API fee burn and the 10% MAF pool burn appear nowhere in Cookie’s own documentation, and no burn is visible on chain: the three supply legs sum to exactly the 1B cap and the burn addresses hold a few COOKIE. Revenue share from API fees to stakers remains a stated intention with no disclosed revenue behind it. Cookie Pro, the product that would broaden any fee base, is public as of September 2026 but discloses no fees. The score is held at 12/20 here rather than moved. Correcting our own evidence settles what we can say; the scoring judgement belongs to the next scheduled review.

Supply Dynamics: 11/20. The fixed 1B supply is real and enforced by code: the contract mints once in its constructor, carries no mint function, and the three chain legs sum to exactly 1,000,000,000. What this section previously credited on top of that, deflationary burns, doesn’t show up on chain at all. About four-fifths is circulating per CoinGecko, with final unlock June 2028. The unusually short vesting (1-month cliff + 6-month linear) caused massive unlock pressure in late 2024/early 2025, likely contributing to the 99% price decline.

Revenue Sustainability: 6/25. Revenue sources exist: API access fees and trading interface revenue. $5M+ in Snaps rewards was distributed before Snaps was shut down in January 2026. Snaps campaign fees, which were a revenue stream for Cookie3, are no longer available. No annual revenue figure is disclosed, no DeFiLlama or Token Terminal data available. Product has reported usage (60K+ users) but revenue sustainability is unproven at scale.

LiquidityLiquidityHow easily a token can be bought or sold without moving the price. High liquidity means you can enter or exit large positions quickly at the quoted price. Low liquidity means even small trades can swing the market.Like the difference between selling a house and selling a share of Apple stock. The house might be worth more on paper, but finding a buyer at that price takes weeks. The Apple share converts to cash in one click.Liquidity in the glossary → & Access: 8/15. Listed on Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Gate.io, Coinbase, Kraken, MEXC, Bitget. Strong exchange coverage for a small-cap project, across about 40 venues in all. Turnover runs near a fifth of market cap, which is healthy for the size and no longer the above-100% figure this review once carried, and it is evenly spread, with Binance on top at about a fifth of the flow (CoinGecko tickers, 24 September 2026). LayerZero OFT enables cross-chain transfers. However, 99% decline from ATH means most holders are underwater, and small market cap means large orders could cause slippageSlippageThe difference between the expected price of a trade and the price you actually get when the trade executes. Slippage usually goes against the trader and gets worse with bigger trades or thinner markets.Like trying to buy 1000 bananas at the corner shop. The first few are at the marked price, but by the time you've bought them all you've moved the price up because there are no more bananas left at the original level. The shop has to restock at higher cost.Slippage in the glossary →.

Quadrant: C (Low Freedom, Moderate Returns)

Cookie DAO sits in Quadrant C. If Mindshare retains its status as the de facto agent ranking standard and cookie.fun grows API revenue, the token has a commercial case. But that case depends entirely on one company not getting outcompeted or shutting down. There’s no forkForkA point at which a blockchain or its software splits into two separate paths. Forks can be temporary (two valid blocks compete and one wins), planned (a software upgrade), or contentious (a community split into two chains).Like a road that splits in two. Sometimes the split is just a temporary detour and traffic merges back. Sometimes it's a permanent fork where different drivers go different ways and never meet again.Fork in the glossary →, no fallback, no decentralised alternative. Bet on the product, not the protocol.

Key risks

• Total centralisation. Cookie3/core team controls all infrastructure, data, and product decisions. “DAO” is branding, not governance.
• 99% drawdown. Most holders significantly underwater, including public sale investors.
• Zero open source code. Cannot audit, fork, or independently verify any technology claims.
• No audit reports. No third-party security audits found for COOKIE smart contracts.
• Unproven revenue. No public financials, no DeFiLlama listing, no Token Terminal data. No burn is visible on chain.
• X/Twitter API dependency materialised. Snaps was shut down on 16 January 2026 after X/Twitter prohibited reward-for-posting apps. This was the flagship engagement product and a meaningful token utility and revenue vector. The API-policy risk is no longer hypothetical.
• Snaps replacement unproven. Cookie Pro is public as of September 2026, but Cookie has published no usage, fee or token-demand figures for it.
• Short vesting enabled insider selling. 1-month cliff + 6-month linear vs industry standard 12-month cliff + 24-36 month linear.
• Narrative dependency. Value tied to overall DeFAI/AI agent market health. If the AI agent narrative fades, so does the analytics demand.
• Competition. Kaito AI, DexScreener, and others expanding into AI agent analytics.

Score change log

Date	Score	Change	Reason
2026-09-29	Data	N/A	Cookie Pro is public: the app opens with no eligibility gate (checked 29 Sep) and Cookie’s September posts promote it. Clears the July condition behind Token Utility 14 → 13; scores held for the October review.
2026-09-24	Data	N/A	Circulating bound (about 80%, was 77.7%), the stale “volume exceeds market cap” and “MEXC on top” lines corrected (Binance leads), leftover burn wording removed, chain legs and GitHub orgs restated from our reads, and Cookie’s usage figures attributed. Scores unchanged.
2026-09-23	Data	N/A	Integrity records re-cut: 1 claim now quotes Cookie DAO’s own pages verbatim and 5 are our own measurements. Scores unchanged.
2026-09-21	Data	N/A	The “50% of API fees + 10% of MAF locks” dual burn is withdrawn from every surface: it has no source in Cookie’s documentation or its archive, and on chain the three legs sum to exactly the 1B cap. The correction is to our record, not the project; Value Accrual 12/20, Supply Dynamics 11/20 and Revenue Sustainability 6/25 all held.
2026-09-06	Data	N/A	WS3b liquidity rail: the daily-volume-exceeds-market-cap line no longer holds (turnover is a 19.03% 7-day median) and is restated on both surfaces. All seven named venues confirm across 42 venues, MEXC top at 20.9%. Liquidity & Access 8/15 held.
2026-08-13	Data	N/A	Cookie’s documentation sits behind a signup wall, so the supply claim has no public source we can cite and is recorded as unattributed rather than pointed at an aggregator. Note the aggregators report 999,892,387 rather than a round billion. The on-chain finding is unaffected.
2026-08-12	Data	N/A	WS3 on-chain reconciliation added three claim-spine verdicts, no score change: supply_dynamics match (fixed 1B confirmed by summing the OFT legs, 744M BNB + 256M Base, correcting the prior BNB-only 777M anchor), plus censorship_resistance and open_source_transparency established anchors. Detail in the research JSON.
2026-07-01	Returns	52 → 50	Token Utility 14 → 13, Value Accrual 13 → 12. July monthly review resolves the June-deferred −1/−1, which was conditioned on Cookie Pro still being alpha-only. Confirmed 2026-07-01: Cookie Pro remains whitelist/early-beta only (cookie.fun redirects to a preview.cookie.fun eligibility gate; public site still labelled “1.0 Alpha”), so the utility lost when Snaps shut down (Jan 2026) has not been replaced by a shipped product, and the revenue base feeding the dual burn stays unproven. Both dimensions cut one point. Does not cross a grade boundary (D).
2026-06-26	Data	N/A	DefiLlama LlamaAI harvest cross-check, verified independently (CoinGecko + api.llama.fi). Refreshed the ATH drawdown to ~99% (CoinGecko -98.9% from $0.7536, 10 Jan 2025), from the ~97.5% previously cited as the token continued to bleed. Circulating ticked to ~77.7% (~777M of 1B) from 76.9%. Revenue still undisclosed and untracked on DeFiLlama (Snaps remains shut down, Cookie Pro unconfirmed); no score change.
2026-06-02	Data	N/A	Circulating supply corrected from 70.5% (~705M) to 76.9% (~769M of 1B) per CoinGecko, across body, TokenFactsStrip, frontmatter and Supply Dynamics evidence. June monthly review. Cookie Pro (Snaps replacement) still alpha-only; Token Utility / Value Accrual downgrade reviewed and held to the July review pending GA.
2026-05-03	Editorial	N/A	Snaps shut down 16 January 2026 (X/Twitter policy change broke scraping); article reframed to past tense, primary token utility story materially weakened. Score impact deferred to June. Initial publish row Freedom figure reconciled (was 20, should have read 22 per frontmatter).
2025-03-06	Both	N/A	Initial publish. Freedom 22/100, Returns 52/100.