PleasrDAO Paving the Way
If you were alive and on the internet during the mid 2010’s, the face of a sly shiba inu with its little paws crossed may be very familiar to you. The image was originally shared in 2013, and paired with little comic sans quotes, blew up on the internet. Its legacy continued with the infamous DogeCoin named after the meme.
Now imagine owning the original image of this cultural icon of the 2000s. PleasrDAO, a collective of early NFT adopters and DeFi leaders was able to acquire the image as part of being in a Collector DAO. This biggest NFT DAO was originally started by Emily Yang of PplPleasr and funded by Andreessen Horowitz, and now features over 30 members, all who are notable and active within the web3 space. The Doge image, along with Edward Snowden’s only NFT, a Wu-Tang Clan piece and other gorgeous digital art were all acquired by the DAO, with some of these pieces in the hundreds or even thousands of ETH.
How does anyone actually afford that? It’s about the distributed ownership.
The creation of PleasrDAO?
The DAO was born when rising digital artist Emily Yang aka “Pplpleasr” released the video named “x*y=k” which represents the price curve function behind Uniswap. In the video she depicted a unicorn wandering in a forest and searching for the “Ethereum wonderland”. After Emily auctioned off her first NFT a certain group of people immediately fell in love with this piece of digital art. Developers, artists, investors, and art enthusiasts all got together to raise funds with one thought in mind – They needed this piece!
In the end, a desirable piece of digital art was auctioned off for 310 ETH ($525000 at a time). And that is how the DAO was formed. However, PleasrDAO is more than just a distributed ownership of an NFT, PleasrDAO is an organization of like-minded individuals who share the same values and desires.
The DAO, started with Pplpleasr, continued its activity by bidding on unique pieces of digital art such as the NFT released by Edward Snowden – “Stay free”; “Dreaming Dusk” – the artwork representing The Tor Project’s first onion service; And finally, the Doge – the original NFT of the meme adored all around the world. All purchases made by the DAO directly supported non-profit efforts directed to assist various causes like freedom of speech, privacy and anonymity etc. PleasrDAO was set to be the biggest NFT DAO with its collection and influence.
Inside PleasrDAO
Despite being a community in which participants share the same ideas and values, PleasrDAO provides anonymity to its members. Most members of the organization have never met, and even though they are still able to participate in the DAO’s governance by using a group chat as well as have a distributed ownership of the organization in form of tokens. Anonymity does not seem to create any issues for the governance structure of PleasrDAO. If any of the members were to leave the DAO, their token of ownership will be available to be purchased internally by other members of the organization. Such flexible arrangements allow the organization to attract more peeps as well as creates an incentive to stay for existing participants.
Even though further focus of the organization is not crystal clear, after the purchase of Edward Snowden’s NFT, the organization seemed to be on their way to continue art collection and incubation as well as acquire an angel investment. While the acquisition of investment was seen as too ambitious by many people invested in following DAO’s activity, it did not take the organization a long time to receive their first investment from the venture capital Andreseen Horowitz (a16z). Unfortunately the amount of the investment was not disclosed by the company, however it was reported that investment accounted for less than 5% of the biggest NFT DAO’s governance tokens.
Apart from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), PleasrDAO also raise the interest of the “fellow” DeFi organization BitDAO. The organization voted to invest $6.5 million into the PleasrDAO collective, majority of which (95%) was paid in ether (ETH). BitDAO itself is a huge organization that assembled a treasury of $2.2 billion through a series of mega-raises. The organization is represented by “players’ ‘, well-known in the DeFi community, such as Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, and the Founders Fund.
Continuously growing investment interest after Andreessen Horowitz from various organizations suggests that PleasrDAO’s treasury reserves will grow exponentially as well as the organization’s headcount.
Current DAO Activity and Future Prospects
Currently, PleasrDAO, being the biggest NFT DAO, continues its activity, mainly searching for unique artists and contributors, to add their artwork in the organization’s collection. As of now the financial capabilities of the DAO are impressively vast, and the recent proof of that is the Wu-Tang’s unreleased album “Once upon a time in Shaolin” that was purchased by the organization. Digital artwork, Investment acquisition and the contribution to the various charity efforts, all serve as proof of DAO’s vast capabilities. It also shows that a collective, decentralized organization of like-minded individuals can achieve more than the conventional corporation ever could. The patrons of PleasrDAO believe that Decentralized Finance is the future that will lead the world to the financial structure free from the huge individualistic “Capital Holders’ ‘ such as government, mega corps etc. Empowered by distributed ownership, the main goal of the PleasrDAO as the community is to bring capital to the same state that was reached by information after the post-industrial revolution. As information was once released from the clutch of traditional publishers into the network, the capital should follow the same path and free itself from the weight of the systems of the past.
According to the documents acquired by The Block, the DAO’s total assets are expected to grow to $156.3 million after another investment (details undisclosed).
Going forward with Art and PleasrDAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are becoming more and more popular, bringing more people to the crypto markets. The market of digital art in particular has been immensely affected by DAOs. PleasrDAO presents itself as one of the pioneers in the collective collection of digital art and distributed ownership. Backed by renowned investors like Andreessen Horowitz, the organization accomplished significantly more than a single collector. The vast experience and network of the members of the organization create more opportunities for the DAO to acquire important pieces and add value to its collection. With Pplpleasr’s background in art, especially digital art, the DAO can continue to grow, whether it’s original pieces or buying big NFT’s
In the future, individual collectors will find it difficult to compete with DAOs in auctions, which calls for framework changes in the market of digital art. Organizations like PleasrDAO will shift the market and be pioneers in the upcoming art revolution.
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