Q: Are DAO's the new GoFundMe? [38]
It’s clear that DAOs are emerging as an ad hoc funding vehicle, and are successful for the rapid formation (and if necessary dissolution) of capital without centralized intermediaries.
Hello my friend!
I feel like at some point all this rapid and radical change will become blase, somehow. I’ve been in the space for around ten years, now, and my consistent experience has been that no matter how fast I think things are progressing, it always accelerates far past the rate at which I think is possible.
This week has been exceptionally busy for me. A lot of the stealth projects I’m working on are getting very close to announcement dates, but in the meantime, the time I normally have devoted to writing is less than what I’d like (which is why this edition of the newsletter is going out very very late).
A couple of weeks ago we followed the one week lifespan of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization called ConstitutionDAO. This week, I’d like to call your attention to the existence of a new crypto-phenomenon: FreeRossDAO.
For those of you who aren’t aware, local Dallasite and University of Texas alumn Ross Ulbricht was convicted of running a website (called Silk Road), and was sentenced to two life sentences. Many of the agents who were involved in making the case against him were subsequently convicted sentenced of a variety of crimes they committed during the conduct of their investigation against him, and many believe (as I have come to) that Ulbricht was set up and not guilty of many of the things he was accused of.
Ulbricht has since become something of a cypherpunk folk hero to those in the blockchain and cryptocurrency community, as his missives from prison make their way to a twitter account maintained by his mother.
Early last week, his twitter account publicized that he’d put out a hand drawn NFT that would be auctioned on ETH-based NFT site “SuperRare,” a site known for its exclusivity.
After some initial controversy and infighting amongst Ross Ulbricht supporters and hardcore bitcoin maximalists over his usage of the Ethereum network, the consensus settled in to bid up what has become an epic auction.
I had hoped to participate in some of the early bidding myself, but by the time I grabbed my coffee and logged on the morning of the auction, I was already priced out at 92 ETH.
The bidding was then later dominated by a couple of whales, one of which created an ETH wallet just for the auction, and called themselves “toxicbitcoinmaxi,” a reference to the earlier controversy around Ross’s use of the ETH network. Right around the time this individual entered the fray, another entrant came into the battlefield: the FreeRossDAO, which was managed by a number of individuals in the community as well as a couple of folks close to Ross himself.
In much the same way the ConstitutionDAO operated, the DAO took donations and promised in exchange some governance tokens. Fairly rapidly, the base treasury was far in excess of the high bid for the auction itself, and over the next few days those bidders and the DAO jockeyed for pole position, until the DAO pulled eventually pulled away.
At this time, the DAO sits with 1,111 ETH in its treasury, and is expected to snipe the bid at the last moment.
We’ll talk more about what this means later this week in our next issue of ADB, but it’s clear that DAO’s are emerging as an ad hoc funding vehicle for a wide variety of purposes, and are successful for the rapid formation (and if necessary dissolution) of capital without centralized intermediaries.
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Blockchain Bulletin
Ethereum Scaling startup StarkWare pulls down funds from Sequoia Capital.
ZK-rollup Ethereum scaling solution startup StarkWare raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Sequoia Capital, reported TechCrunch.
Coinbase acqui-hires BRD wallet provider’s team.
Crypto exchange Coinbase announced that it has acquired some of the engineering team from BRD Wallet in order to expand its own web3 adoption and crypto-custody efforts, reported CoinTelegraph.
A land plot in Axie Infinity sold for a record $2.48 million.
An extremely rare plot of land known as a “Genesis Plot,” sold for a whopping $2.48 million (or 550 Ether) setting up web3 virtual economies for trillion dollar potential, reported Decrypt.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Fintech startup MoonPay secures $555M in first-ever funding round.
In its first funding round, MoonPay, which allows people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with conventional payment methods (credit and debit), pulled down $555 million led by Tiger Global and Coatue.
NFT marketplace Royal raises $55M in funding led from Andressen Horowitz.
The NFT marketplace that gives music artists the opportunity to share royalties (thus the name of the company) and give artists independence, raised $55 million to expand its platform.
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