MetaDAO META$3,872.29+5.3% has launched an Apps Program, a separate fundraising track for consumer app founders on its Solana launchpad. The first raise, for SAT prep app 1609SAT, is scheduled to open on 5 November 2026 at 11am PT (19:00 UTC) with a $100,000 goal, half of which MetaDAO has pledged to put in itself, according to MetaDAO's announcement on 4 November.
MetaDAO describes the program in three lines: apps raise smaller amounts than its usual raises, sell a smaller share of their token supply to backers, and let founders "begin selling earned tokens sooner, subject to performance milestones and sales limits." The 1609SAT terms show what that looks like in practice.
How MetaDAO Apps Program terms differ from a standard MetaDAO raise
MetaDAO's standard raises pay founders through a performance package: five equal tranches of tokens that unlock as the token's average price doubles from the raise price, at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 32x. Under the default setup in MetaDAO's performance package docs, every tranche also sits behind an 18-month cliff and price is measured over three months, "so the soonest a founder can unlock tokens in the standard setup is 21 months post-raise."
The 1609SAT raise page keeps the same 2x-to-32x ladder on a 90-day time-weighted average price, but lists no cliff, and adds a dollar cap on selling. For the first 18 months after launch, the whole 1609SAT team combined can sell at most $25,000 of unlocked tokens per 30 days, and unused allowance does not carry over. A smart-contract-controlled vault holds the tokens, enforces the limit and sends sale proceeds to the team. Unlocking more tokens does not raise the cap: the page says that even if all 87.1 million team tokens unlocked early, the $25,000 monthly allowance would still apply until month 18. Unlocked tokens stay unlocked if the price later falls, and tokens that never hit a milestone stay locked after the cap ends.
That cap is small in absolute terms but large relative to the round. By our arithmetic, $25,000 a month is a quarter of the whole $100,000 raise.
1609SAT raise: $100,000 for 10% of the token supply
The 1609SAT deal is listed as "$100K for 10%" at $0.01 per token, which values the project at $1 million at that price, per the raise page. MetaDAO takes 5% for its $50,000, a public sale offers another 5% for $50,000, 2.9% goes to liquidity and the team holds 87.1%. MetaDAO's stake is pre-committed: "MetaDAO puts in $50K first, then it opens to anyone." At the $0.01 raise price, the team's 87.1 million tokens would be worth $871,000 on paper, again by our arithmetic, though none of them can unlock before the price doubles.
On the raise page, the founders say the money goes mostly to distribution and staff: about $6,000 a month on growth through SAT content creators on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, about $8,500 on a small full-time team including one developer to be hired after the round, and about $1,500 on the question bank, AI, servers and legal costs.
What 1609SAT is: an AI SAT prep app with company-reported traction
1609SAT is a web-based SAT training app at 1609sat.com, combining practice exams, a skill-mapped question bank, mistake review and an AI coach that builds study plans, according to the raise page. Founder and CEO Alikhan Altaev and CTO Ramazan Shalgynbay list these company-reported figures as of 3 November 2026: about $5,000 in monthly revenue, about $3,500 in monthly profit and 15,000 users, with 400+ students paying for Pro in the first three months without outside funding. The team says a native iOS app is built and in final testing before App Store release. Free official practice tests are the main risk the founders list, and they argue that 400+ paying customers show its analytics and AI coach add value on top of them. The traction figures are the company's own and have not been independently verified.
Why the Apps Program matters for MetaDAO's launchpad model
MetaDAO, whose own futarchy governance token is META, runs its curated raises, such as the Credible Finance raise we covered in July, on the rules set out in MetaDAO's sale docs: backers are refunded if a minimum is not reached, and raised USDC goes to a treasury governed by markets. The Apps Program points that model at small consumer businesses, with MetaDAO itself acting as anchor backer. It sits alongside Backable, MetaDAO's permissionless raise platform, as a curated route for apps.
The 1609SAT round is the first test of whether a performance package with an earlier but capped exit works for a small app whose revenue comes from students paying for a product. Things to watch: whether the public half fills on 5 November, how the 90-day average tracks against the first 2x milestone, and which app follows. MetaDAO's announcement asks other consumer app founders to contact @mitchellsniffle.
