Arts DAO: your bridge to wealth management in the Metaverse

Giving members-only access to high-growth metaverse projects through fractionalized ownership of NFTs, and redefining what it means to be part of a community.

Since the launch of Facebook in 2004, people have sought deeper ways of building connections, friendships and ultimately, communities in a world increasingly focused on the digital space. To some degree, this was achieved in the Web2 world, when platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Reddit provided a space for people to connect — by sharing media content from their personal lives through forums of niche interests.

The key limitation however was community members in Web2 were not able to ‘own’ the network or pool resources together and therefore directly participate in the financial gains from a community built on these legacy Web2 platforms. The advent of Ethereum, smart contracts and decentralization in Web3 changed everything. Members can become ‘token holders’ (which share similarities with being a company shareholder) by owning underlying assets held by a community through the tokenization of assets enabled by NFTs.

Since 2021, we have seen the Web3 space expand exponentially, with many calling it the future for the creator economy and how digital societies will be built through art, gaming, finance and of course, asset management. OpenSea, the most widely used NFT platform went from a monthly volume of $96m in early 2021 to almost $5 billion in January 2022 (a growth of 5160%!). Currently, the number of users buying and selling Ethereum NFTs on Opensea is estimated to be close to 1.2m people, which is expected to go up far more if one considers that more than 200m people worldwide own crypto.

With this in mind, we spent the past year building a large community of senior futurists, artists, collectors, entrepreneurs and creators whom we have brought together organically through monthly meetups to connect and build friendships around our mutual appreciation of Web3 and the NFT space. We have since built one of the most exclusive and premium NFT communities in Dubai, and regularly host meetups at premium locations for our members.

We realized that in a world increasingly focused on metaverses, discord groups, and Twitter DMs, people not only crave face-to-face interactions with likeminded people even more but want to work together and build something larger than just themselves — people want to be part of lively communities that support one another and which pool shared knowledge and resources together for the benefit of the whole. Enter: Arts DAO.

What problem does Arts DAO solve?

Great products or services often spring from the pain points of people with a collective or shared interest. Indeed, the tweet below by Greg Isenberg captures this brilliantly:

We have launched Arts DAO because of several issues we have noted from our community and the wider NFT space:

1. Pain: Searching for quality NFT projects to mint, buy or obtain whitelists for is effectively a full-time job now, causing wide-scale burnout and sleep deprivation, as people scramble to find time in their already busy lives to do this effectively and safely. There is also a constant stream of scam projects that emerge daily, and so an effective curation process is required to sift through thousands of projects to find high-quality gems.
2. Community: People want to network (in the real world!) with like-minded folks to learn, collaborate and scoop up alpha on projects being launched because it is impossible to keep track of the millions of projects happening everywhere.
3. Luxuries: people love luxury products — whether it’s a premium experience at a hotel, a fine watch or a rare art piece such as a Picasso. In the Web3 world, this may be owning a Bored Ape or a CryptoPunk, because they have clout and branding associated with them (and therefore higher value).
4. Money: People launch projects and invest in the NFT space because they ultimately want to make a profit on their investments, as we’re all on a journey towards financial freedom.

Arts DAO aims to address each of these issues by dropping a fixed number of NFTs that will raise capital for a fund. The fund will provide purchasers of our NFT with exposure to a balanced portfolio of the high-growth metaverse and blue-chip NFT projects. In effect, this means that we are creating an actively traded investment fund that will bring economic value to our members, as well as becoming a major global player that can invest in a collection of ‘blue-chip’, emerging and venture NFT / Web3 projects on behalf of members.

The DAO will employ a team to do this with the goal of returning value to members, but will also offer decentralized governance mechanisms to members who can vote (akin to shareholders), or delegate their votes to specific experts who will be employed to bring returns to members and the wider community. In this way, Arts DAO allows DAO members to outsource the challenges (and pain) of searching for gems to an expert team that will be dedicated to searching for alpha moves and buys.

Why are we DAOing it?

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) represent the future of how corporations and organizations will be structured. DAOs are organizations represented by rules encoded as a computer program (smart contracts on Ethereum) that are transparent and controlled by DAO members and not influenced by a central government or authority. Think of it as an internet community with a shared bank account by pooling capital together. For example, PleasrDAO members collectively decided to buy the Wu-Tang Clan album. After doing so, they created an NFT to represent a deed of ownership to the album. The members of PleasrDAO co-own the NFT deed, and in turn, share ownership of the album.

Thus, by pooling financial and knowledge resources together from the community we have built, Arts DAO will have a greater ability to become an NFT asset manager that can purchase some of the rarest and most desirable NFTs on the market (providing fractionalized ownership to members who otherwise do not have the capital or time to do so) to build long term value and seek alpha returns. Arts DAO will also seek to purchase virtual land or space in metaverses like Sandbox, NFT Worlds and play-to-earn gaming platforms — allowing DAO members to build or otherwise participate in the incredible innovations these projects are pioneering in the Web3 world.

The DAO will also act as a launchpad for creators and traditional artists who DAO members consider to be ‘diamonds in roughugh’ that just need a little polishing to grow and become successful. Since we have a community of experts (including art collectors, marketers, solidity developers and community managers) across the spectrum, the DAO will be well placed to build-out projects for creators. Therefore, aspiring creators (such as artists, musicians, or designers) that have little to no experience with Web3 can utilize the Arts DAO community to launch themselves within the space instead of having to do so alone. In this way, Arts DAO also aims to become a Web3 equivalent to Y-Combinator, which is famous for launching great startups like Coinbase, Stripe and Reddit.

Arts DAO X Kristel Bechara NFT Drop

Naturally, there is unlikely a better way to launch a DAO dedicated to collecting and launching NFTs than to raise the capital required through the drop of a genesis NFT project! The drop will be done in collaboration with Kristel Bechara, one of the founding members of our community and an award-winning multimedia artist based in Dubai. She’s one of the first NFT artists in the Middle East and had her drops widely collected on Foundation when she began dropping her work in early 2021 before the NFT market boom.

This drop is unique for Kristel (and in the NFT space more widely), as it will be a generative fine art piece — i.e. the works will be created at the moment they are minted through an algorithm that randomly pieces together the art from a range of prescribed traits, similar to how the CryptoPunks were created. Generative art is used to create collectibles/avatar projects, with famous blue-chip projects including the Bored Ape Yacht Club or the CloneX collection by RTFKT. However, the Arts DAO x Kristel drop will not be another avatar project at all. In fact, we hope it will be something you have not seen before.

The details of the drop are as follows:

• Drop: 2000 generative art NFTs in Kristel’s distinctive style, that will have a range of rare to common traits that will in effect merge the concepts that make up the collectibles space with her distinctive fine art style (stay tuned to our social media pages to get more of a teaser glimpse of the designs in the coming weeks!)
• Mint Price: 0.49 Eth for members of the whitelist (to be determined in due course), and 0.59 for the public sale.

Utility for NFT Holders:

• All holders of the Arts DAO x Kristel NFTs will get exposure to an actively managed and traded NFT fund (with investments in avatar projects, flipping NFTs, blue chips and seed-stage investments) through fractional ownership in the DAO. The NFTs will reflect the holder’s ownership in the Arts DAO portfolio, in effect representing fractional ownership to the NFT projects held by the DAO (and therefore any capital appreciation in those projects). The more NFTs you hold the higher will your percentage share of the DAO be. A more detailed plan on the tokenomics of this will be set out in a later publication, with details on how profits will be returned to DAO holders.
• Holders of the Arts DAO x Kristel NFT will also be eligible through a lottery system to have their NFTs ‘forged’ into a physical piece printed on acrylic which holders can hang in their homes!
• Holders will be entitled to attend the Arts DAO community events that bring together a collection of senior futurists, entrepreneurs, collectors, investors and artists which are held monthly at premium locations in Dubai. Food and drinks are offered at all these events free of charge to members.
• Arts DAO currently collaborates with a number of NFT projects and frequently receives a limited supply of designated whitelist spots. Members will be eligible to receive whitelist spots at new and upcoming projects in the space and exclusive access to a members-only Discord channel.
• Access to our monthly newsletter with updates and key information about the markets and top projects which we have researched.
• Arts DAO is building out a “Launchpad” to accelerate what we call the “diamonds in the rough” projects. And by holding our token you get direct exposure to and access to this.
• Holders will also be able to vote on the various initiatives undertaken by the DAO — this includes the social events held on behalf of community members as well as the creators and artists which the DAO aims to launch or build-out in the metaverse.
• Every month, holders of the NFT will be entitled to participate in a raffle where one person will have their NFT physically printed in acrylic and shipped to the member.
• Get discounts for other NFT events, with a VIP ticket raffled amongst holders.

We will be sharing additional elements going into this venture (such as the roadmap and governance framework), which comes from the collective experiences of our team, who have spent years at the intersection of blockchain, traditional finance, entrepreneurship, art collecting and law.

Roadmap

Q1

• Further growing our community online & offline of experienced NFT investors, artists and collectors
• Onboard top industry leaders into our Jedi Council from within our community
• Grow and expand our whitelist collaborations and partnerships
• Host exclusive NFT events in Dubai for future and existing members to meet and greet.

DROP (Mid March 2022 — Date TBA)

Q2

• Expand the NFT research and investment team to source the best blue-chip and high alpha opportunity projects in the market
• Offer whitelisting and partnerships to members
• Begin allocation and deployment of treasury funds
• Launch Arts DAO newsletter giving monthly insights and alpha

Q3

• Start the Arts DAO launchpad to help launch community member NFT projects and wider seed level NFT projects which may present high return-on-investment opportunities
• Create the digital Arts DAO gallery in a chosen NFT metaverse (to be determined) and offer members the ability to visit and build on this platform

Q4 and beyond

• Launch the largest NFT event in the MENA region
• Global expansion of the Arts DAO community to other leading international regions
• Build a physical space in Dubai for people to connect, build and host events.

The Degen Team

Alongside Kristel Bechara, Arts DAO is being built by a strong team of ‘degens’ (short for degenerate) which in Web3 lingo refers to those taking risks testing out all the various extraordinary things happening in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT space.

Co-Founders: Anas & Danosch

The co-founders of Arts DAO include Anas and Danosch, who are also the hosts of the Crypto Sheikhs Podcast, the leading crypto podcast in the Middle East, and who frequently speak at panels and discussions on topics relating to Web3 and blockchain. Anas was formerly with Checkout.com as a crypto / FinTech attorney working with major exchanges like Coinbase, Binance and FTX. Danosch is a serial entrepreneur having founded a number of companies and has been a crypto investor since 2017. Anas and Danosch frequently deliver advisory, consulting and other workshops and seminars to private and public organizations on topics in Web3.

Special Advisor & Design Lead: Rahim

Rahim entered the NFT space in early 2021 as an artist. With a background in 3D designing, cinematography and photography, Rahim sold some of his pieces as 1/1 works to art collectors on Foundation. He got in early on key projects that would later become ‘blue chips’ like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the Cool Cats, and Pixel Vault. Rahim has built a large audience on Twitter and is passionate about art and community building. He frequently hosts Twitter Spaces to help existing creators grow their audience on Twitter as well as aims to bring more people into the Web3 world, with the view of helping creators grow independently in the creator economy.

Strategy Lead: Sam Z

Sam has a background in entrepreneurship and community building, having successfully built and managed businesses dropping the rarest and most hype sneakers across London and Dubai. He recently co-founded “Malus Creations” NFT project, which has had over 350 Eth in volume after only 2 weeks following the mint. He also managed and deployed $2 million into over 30 projects including the Cool Cats, the Crypto Punks, Art Blocks Curated and the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The portfolio was sold in 3 weeks for $2.5 million and a long-term $1million was deployed into the super rare 1/1 Zombie Cool Cat. Sam built a Twitter account under @bornadoesntcare and amassed 15k followers and has become a prominent figure in the Dubai NFT community.

Community Manager: Zayaan

Zayaan comes from a family of crypto degens, having bought his first NFT for his brother in January 2021. His parents are both deep in the DeFi space and his brother runs a crypto hedge fund. Having been born in Australia, brought up in London and based in Dubai, Zayaan loves building international communities where everyone can mingle and network. He helped stage the first Arts DAO event and has proudly helped grow the community to c. 300 members together with the team.

Thank You

Thank you for getting involved early in the Arts DAO journey. We are dedicating every moment we have to build and being part of the evolution of blockchain technology, the NFT space and art more generally. We look forward to meeting with you either in one of our events or elsewhere in the metaverse!

We will be sharing further information about the roadmap, the team, governance and the tokenomics of this project soon! We will also keep you, the Arts DAO community, up-to-date with details of our upcoming NFT drop as well as other product launches.

Follow us here, and on Twitter to get news, and look out for our Discord for deeper connections with the community of futurists, artists, collectors and creators we have brought together.

You can also reach out to us via email at anas@artsdao.io!