Bankless DAO Weekly Rollup #15 | August 13
Catch up with what happened this week in the Bankless DAO.
This week commemorates 100 days since our genesis! bDAO is firin' strong: the Grants committee dropped 3M BANK across seven different guild projects, the Ultra Sound Bat NFT raised 5.88 ETH for Coin Center, and BanklessDAO topped $100K sales on Rarible last month! After just over three months of growth, the BanklessDAO has already made an indelible impression on the cryptosphere. Here comes the alpha!
Authors: Bankless DAO Writers Guild (tomahawk, siddhearta, Frank America)
This is the official newsletter of the Bankless DAO. If you were a Premium Member of the Bankless Newsletter as of May 1, 2021 you have been subscribed to this newsletter at launch. To unsubscribe edit your settings here.
Community Highlights
🛌 FEI Proposes to Get in BED with Bankless: The FEI protocol put forward a proposal this week to invest $2M into the BED Index, as well as creating a $4M BED-FEI pool on SushiSwap. 🌊 The main purpose for purchasing BED is to increase on-chain FEI liquidity and utility, helping to drive FEI adoption. There is also potential for a joint BanklessDAO, Index Coop and FEI deployment on Polygon, which could generate SUSHI rewards and potentially other opportunities.
👚 "Ultra Sound Summer Set" Shatters Sales Record: Last weeks MetaFactory sales were over $54k sales and set a new record for all of MetaFactory's merch sales. The bDAO will earn about 675 ROBOT in rewards based on a percentage of the sales.
🏦 Donation of 5.89 ETH to Coin Center: The "Ultra Sound Bat" has broken all of our NFT Showcase records with total sales topping 23.5 ETH. This was a collaboration between Ultra Sound money, Bankless DAO and the artist Rodrigo Salcedo. 25% of the sales were donated to Coin Center, helping to fight for crypto friendly regulation in the US.
🔥 Mask.io + BanklessDAO: Alpha leak, this will be announced next Monday, and runs next Tuesday, August 17-26. In short, this collaboration with Mask.io is called the "Social DeFi" Alliance and will involve some action steps by participants to earn prizes. This premiere high-visibility partnership will be focused on getting DeFi directly onto the major social networks and could be the most critical step towards large-scale user adoption of DeFi and Web 3.0 applications.
🏆 Bankless DAO ranked #5 in sales on Rarible: This past month, the weekly NFT auctions generated over $100,000 USD in revenue, much of which goes to the treasury! A huge thanks to Kouros, Crypto Bushi, and Satoshi's Mom for their incredible work promoting bankless culture.
What’s New
♟ "The Gang Plays Chess" on Top Signal: Watch the latest episode featuring a 2v2 decentralized chess match between Alexandra Botez and David Hoffman vs. Leighton Cusack and Cyrus Younessi, refereed by the enigmatic penguin 🐧 Michael Wong.
🎯 Bounty Board is LIVE: Tipping and bounties have fueled bDAO culture and incentivized participation since the beginning and the launch of the bounty board further builds out the economy around the valuation of BANK. The Dev Guild optimized the use of the bounty board by using DEGEN to operate the Bounty Board from within Discord. Create, claim, or complete bounties all within Discord channels. The future for DAO bounties is now.
💸 UMA Governance to add BANK as collateral: UMA protocol votes today, August 13, to approve BANK as a collateral type to fund KPI Options for the Bankless DAO. This request came about as a result of the collaboration between @SuperUmans and the BanklessDAO.
Get Involved
🥩 ETH Validator Workshop: Are you looking for a risk-free return from staking ETH? Would you like to learn how to run nodes for others in RocketPool? BanklessDAO members and guest passes are invited to join a ETH2 Validator Workshop this Saturday, August 14 at 1500 UTC.
🧑⚖️ Elect Ombuds Members: There are seven candidates for the five open seats on the Bankless DAO Ombuds office. The Ombuds office will be an informal, impartial, independent, neutral and confidential place for community members to address concerns. Members may contact the Ombuds office to report any forms or types of abuse, dysfunctions, shortfalls, delays, violations concerning the functioning of the DAO.
🙏 Sponsor: UMA — Diversifying DAO Treasuries. DAO Better.
Social Networks + NFTs = 💥
A Massive Sea Change is in Store for Art
Five months ago, the traditional art world stood aghast as Christie’s auctioned Everydays, a collage of the artist Beeple’s art posted daily online since 2007, for the massive sum of $69 million. Here was an artist without mainstream critical acclaim or even an art degree, whose digital-only piece fetched a higher auction sum than physical paintings from major artists like Goya or Seurat. It was the third-highest auction price ever for a living artist’s work. People simply couldn’t process this news. 🤯
Online comments posted on the March 12, 2021 New York Times article, JPG File Sells for $69 Million, as ‘NFT Mania’ Gathers Pace, show the collective incredulity of the non-cryptonative public. The vast majority of commenters consider the developments in NFT art to be nothing more than outright fraud or a money laundering scheme. Some bordered on paranoid delusion. Beeple’s art was criticized as kitschy, profane, and unsophisticated, and the whole idea of buying NFTs as a way for those with more money than they know what to do with to show off. Haters gonna hate, I guess. 🤷♂️
As someone who has spent long hours trying to convince friends and family that crypto is here to stay, I actually kind of get it. Numbers like this just don't make sense to a traditional art collector, when compared to everything else they have seen. Just like the price of bitcoin in a bull run, it doesn’t pass the sniff test for people who view the US dollar as a standard candle or unwavering unit of account. A price like $69 million for “just a jpeg” is so nonsensical to the average joe, it produces cognitive dissonance. 😫
Bankless podcast taught me that the NFT is not just a jpeg wrapper for blockchain, it’s a method of validating ownership and authenticating digital content in a permanent, censorship-resistant way. Helping others grasp these concepts and understand what gives NFTs value is part of the mission. We know that NFT mania is not just a fad, it’s driven by the network effects of these innovations getting adopted.
The level of shock and disdain we saw with the auction in March is actually a sign of how significant this sea change in the art and collectibles space really is. Beeple’s Everydays is a historic piece in this respect, a harbinger of the new order, and this adds a whole other layer of value to the piece. Those in the established art world sense that the game has changed, and it is deeply unsettling to them. The developments of 2021 have made it clear that NFTs are going to massively disrupt this market. And number-go-up means that crypto-wealthy collectors will have a huge impact on the direction of future art. 📈
Another takeaway is the power of digital communities. Beeple may not have had any support from critics or formal training beyond high school art classes, but what he did have was a large community of fans on Instagram, all of whom shared his political leanings and appreciated his gruesome, irreverent style and the emotional shock value of his work. Add to that the insatiable desire for unique art NFTs from crypto-natives and the historic, first of its kind, Christie’s auction of a digital-only piece, and you had a recipe for guaranteed success. The clear result is that it won’t be the last NFT auction that sends the art establishment into apoplectic fits. Like it or not, the value of future works will increasingly be driven by viral popularity and mimetic desire. Art critics and exclusive galleries would do well to pay attention.
This is how social networks are changing art, similar to how they have changed investing. Meme stonks like Gamestop weren’t just investments to those on the WallStreetBets subreddit, they were a call to action against big boi investment firms and clearing houses that don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. The story is more important than the object you buy. Likewise, NFTs don’t just give you immutable ownership rights, they are a way to showcase values and the groups you belong to. Popular NFT collections like CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club are great examples. A punk or ape avatar signals that you are part of the tribe, so the more people use them, the more their popularity grows. Digital scarcity does the rest. 🚀
BanklessDAO NFT Perks
Whether you are an NFT OG or have yet to wade heavily into the NFT space, BanklessDAO has you covered. The DAO is creating vibrant NFT art that speaks the values of our community and celebrates Ethereum’s coming of age. We aren’t just witnessing historic times, we are participants in the crypto revolution, and what better way to commemorate it than by collecting Bankless-sponsored NFTs? Pick up the latest drop soon!
📰 NFT Newsletter
This month will see the launch of a brand new newsletter from BanklessDAO, focused solely on NFTs and showcasing the artists that make them! The illustrious DAO members Grendel and Kouros will introduce us to a new artist each week and share their background. They will also cover the hottest news and trends in the space. Council of Writers is excited to help bring this to fruition. Stay tuned for the first issue due out next week!
Check out this two-week-old Discord channel for cross-DAO discussion of any and all NFT projects of interest. Major alpha is being dropped in this channel almost daily, as members shill their favorite collections and games. What NFT projects have captured your attention? Come and share. Some really exciting ideas are being floated here as well (spoiler: potential regular NFT raffles as a new perk for holding BANK??), so you will definitely want to keep an eye on it. This is one channel you’ll want to review often!
BanklessDAO Weekly NFT Showcase 🔥
🧑🎨 Artist: Sergio Occhipin (hybridcode)
🏦 Auction Type: Open edition
💰 Price: 0.015 to 0.5 ETH
This week we are featuring the "Burning the Monolith" collection, which draws inspiration from the ETH is Ultra Sound money meme. We are featuring four open NFTs on sale for 0.015 ETH. Collect all four editions from the primary sale and receive the "Unchained" animated NFT airdropped for FREE.
We are also featuring two 1/1 animated NFTs to be auctioned with a reserve of 0.5 ETH. The purchaser of these 1/1 editions will also receive three original sketches by the artist AND be airdropped the "Unchained" NFT for free.
All remaining copies will be burned on Monday, August 16 at 2pm EDT.
BanklessDAO Special Edition BED Index NFT 🔥
🧑🎨 Artist: Katana N’ Samurai
🏦 Auction Type: Open edition for 7 days
💰 Price: 0.015 ETH each
The latest drop features a two-part piece from Katana N’ Samurai, a project that creates traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e style art NFTs and records historical milestones in blockchain technology. These pieces commemorate the BanklessDAO and Index COOP breaking the bank with the release of the $BED index.
Grab these two limited release NFT’s while they are available.
#1 BEAT THE BANK and #2 IT'S TIME FOR $BED
Proposals in Discussion
🌱 Seed Club Media Node: This proposal would create a partnership with Seed Club as a media node. Seed Club is a DAO that builds and invests in tokenized communities. As a media node, Seed Club would be responsible for content and production of a podcast focused on Web3, DAOs, social tokens, and NFTs. BanklessDAO would be responsible for sponsorships and marketing the new podcast using its existing distribution channels.
💰 1000 BANK/hr for Work: This proposal by the Grants Committee would establish 1000 BANK/hr as the compensation rate for work done on Grants Committee Approved Projects. Since we are in the early stages of the DAO’s life, it’s important that we heavily reward the contributors that are putting in valuable time and work towards achieving the DAO’s mission. This rate may be different for internal Guild operations, but should serve as a point of reference for existing DAO compensation.
🍁 Season 1 POAP Design Contest: This proposal would create a POAP design contest to celebrate Season 1 at the Bankless DAO. The POAP would be available for all members that vote in the Season 2 snapshot. Contest restrictions would limit one entry per person and the contest will be managed by the Design Guild. The winning designer will receive 10,000 BANK.
Action Items
✍️ Subscribe: Stay up to date on what is happening in the DAO.
📊 Poll: Vote on your favorite Onboard domain name.
🏃♀️ Catch up: Review this week's community call notes or listen to the recording.
🙏 Thanks to our sponsor
UMA
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