13 posts tagged with "highlight"

Open source software plays a crucial part in the digital economy, in the same way that highways and communication systems play a role in our cities. With the emergence of blockchain, developers can now turn to funding their software onchain, as it allows builders to raise funds permissionlessly, transparently and make use of tokens. In this article we’re going to focus on how you can use Juicebox to fund your open-source software project.

You can follow along in this article, or a video by Matthew on the JBDAO YouTube:

What is Juicebox?​

Juicebox is an open-source protocol that is permissionless, community-owned, and built on the Ethereum blockchain. Juicebox is built by hackers, for hackers, making it a great launchpad for developers to take their projects to the next level. Let’s dive into some examples of projects using Juicebox to fund open-source software.

Example 1: Planet​

Planet is an open-source tool built by Xin, aka Livid, who previously built V2EX.com which is a popular community for developers in China. Planet lets you build decentralized websites using IPFS and ENS, so instead of hosting your website on a centralized server, Planet uses IPFS for peer-to-peer content distribution and lets you use an ENS address that you own or control as the URL. Planet has raised nearly 7 ETH on Juicebox, worth over 12.5 thousand dollars at the time of recording.

Example 2: Etherfunk​

Etherfunk is a tool that lets you interact with any contract on the Ethereum blockchain. Simply enter a contract address and Etherfunk makes it easy to interact with its read and write functions. You can also generate links with pre-filled values to easily share contract interactions in a predefined way.

View on the same contract on Etherscan (left) and Etherfunk (right)

Etherfunk was developed by Aeolian, one of the frontend devs at PeelDAO who manages the juicebox.money frontend. In order to make Etherfunk sustainable, he launched a project on Juicebox, stated upfront how much it costs each month to keep running, and managed to secure funding for an entire year in less than a month.

How Juicebox works for open source software​

So, how does Juicebox work for open-source software?

Launching a project on Juicebox lets you build a treasury out in the open, raise funds from your community or via grants, and issue ERC20 tokens or NFTs as benefits to supporters.

In addition to introducing your project and the story behind what you’re building, consider stating your fundraising goal and costs upfront in your project description. You can also use Juicebox’s onchain rules to set limits for how much can be withdrawn from the project so that supporters feel safer knowing that you can’t rug and take all the ETH.

• First, you decide on Cycles—which can be 3 days, 2 weeks, a month, anything you like—and all of your project settings will be locked for that period of time. You can always change your project settings, but these changes will only take effect in the next upcoming Cycle and supporters will be able to see this upcoming change on your project’s activity feed.
• Second, you can set-up Payouts which set onchain rules for where funds will go and how much can be withdrawn.

For example, let’s say your goal is to raise $1000 per month to maintain your project. You could set-up a Limited Payout of $1000 to your personal address and anything raised above that limit will roll into the next Cycle. Supporters can rest easy knowing that you can’t suddenly take all of the money from the project and disappear.

Juicebox tokenomics for developers​

In addition to Cycles and Payouts, Juicebox also offers advanced tokenomics features that allow you to issue tokens and NFTs, offer refunds, and more.

• When supporters pay your project, they receive tokens. Depending on whether you deploy an ERC-20 token or not, these will either be in their wallet or internally accounted for by the Juicebox contracts which is the default to save on gas fees.
• ERC-20 tokens are often used for governance. This could be something simple like letting token holders vote on upcoming features, or maybe you want your project to be community-owned and governed as a DAO with token holders voting on how to use treasury funds.

Project tokens can also be used to offer refunds. For example, let’s say you raised 2 ETH to start developing a new idea but for some unforeseen reason you can no longer commit to the project. You can Edit your upcoming Cycle to set Payouts to None, and this will let token holders redeem their tokens for the ETH that they contributed.

Artwork by [Sage Kellyn](https://twitter.com/SageKellyn)

In addition to ERC-20 tokens, you can also issue NFTs for payments made to your project with different tiers so that contributors can support you at different price points. For example, you could offer a $5 “buy me a coffee” tier with cute artwork or your project’s logo, as well as higher priced tiers that unlock premium features or access to a token-gated Discord server. NFT rewards can be anything from cool artwork as a “thank you” to membership or other perks: it’s up to you.

Example of Buy Me A Coffee NFT

Conclusion​

Launching your open-source software project on Juicebox lets you raise funds permissionlessly from around the world and build a community around what you’re building. And even if your product isn’t related to crypto, you can always start a Juicebox project alongside another platform like Buy Me A Coffee and help spread the word to members of the Ethereum community.

Resources​

If you have any questions about using Juicebox, come join the Discord or book an onboarding session at juicebox.money/contact.

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @Juicebox_Money

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

One of the core values of any charity or non-profit is accountability and transparency: non-profits are public organizations and should always remain accountable to their donors so that funds are used as promised. This lines up perfectly with the open and transparent ethos of Juicebox, so let’s dive into a couple examples of non-profits and fundraisers running on Juicebox.

You can follow along in this article, or a video by Matthew on the JBDAO YouTube:

Example 1: MCSA​

Marin County Swim Association is a 501(c) non-profit that was established to help bring more water polo opportunities to Marin County. Historically, Marin residents have had to travel outside of the county to participate in high level competitions and workshops. The MCSA helps break down these accessibility barriers by hosting tournaments for Marin residents and by bidding on USA Water Polo Pacific Zone events.

Photograph of MCSA tournament

In addition to raising funds IRL, MCSA founder Steve launched a Juicebox project to accept donations in ETH. On the MCSA project page on juicebox.money, you can see past contributions, how much has been raised so far, and where funds will go when withdrawn. Steve also offers tax receipts for US-based contributions upon request.

Example 2: Fighting Childhood Cancer​

Del Piero is a founding member of SharkDAO, a subDAO of NounsDAO that raised over 1000 ETH on Juicebox to acquire Nouns NFTs. In January 2022, Del Piero launched a campaign for his three year old son's cancer treatment and thank to the Nouns community he was able to raise over 21 ETH, worth over $60,000 at the time of the fundraiser.

Photograph of Dek Piero's son in the hospital wearing a Nouns hoodie

Recently, Del Piero launched another campaign after his son started resisting the previous treatments and has since raised an additional 12 ETH. Just like the MCSA, on his project page you can see recent contributions, how much has been raised so far, and where funds will go when withdrawn.

How Juicebox works for charities and non-profits​

So, how does Juicebox work for charities and non-profits? You can create a project for free on juicebox.money, share your story with your community, and start raising funds for your cause. Your project can be set-up with rules and limits in place that help build trust with supporters and prevent scams:

• First, you decide on Cycles—which can be five days, two weeks, a month, anything you like—and all of your project settings will be locked for that period of time. Of course you can change your project settings for future Cycles, and supporters will also be able to see this on your project page.
• Second, you can set-up Payouts which set onchain rules for where funds will go and how much can be withdrawn. Usually this is a specific fundraising target, which sets a limit for how much can be withdrawn in total per Cycle.

For example, let’s say you want to raise 5 ETH in 4 weeks. You can set your Cycle to 4 weeks long and set a limited Payout of 5 ETH, so within that 4-week period you’ll only be able to withdrawn 5 ETH from the project. Any extra can be redeemed by token holders or carried over to future Cycles.

In addition to Cycles and Payouts, Juicebox also offers redemptions which are a mechanism to offer refunds to supporters.

• When supporters pay your project, they receive tokens. Depending on whether you deploy an ERC-20 token or not, these will either be in their wallet or internally accounted for by the Juicebox contracts.
• If you want to offer refunds, you can set your project’s Payouts to None which will then allow supporters to burn their tokens and receive ETH in return.

For example, let’s say you’re fundraising to save a local business from going under and you weren’t able to raise enough in time. Rather than supporters wondering what will happen to their contributions, you can set Payouts to None for the next cycle and as soon as it begins, they’ll be able to redeem their tokens for the amount of ETH they contributed.

Another cool thing about fundraising on Juicebox is that you can issue NFTs as rewards for contributions. These NFTs could simply be artwork as a thank-you or they could also be used to unlock special perks like membership to a private Discord server, they could be redeemable for exclusive merch, or used for voting in onchain governance.

Conclusion​

Launching a project on Juicebox for your charity or non-profit allows you to fundraise for your cause out in the open. By managing funds onchain you can build trust with your community by showing supporters where funds will go after they contribute. The transparency and accountability of onchain treasuries is a perfect fit for non-profit organizations and can help you gain donors for your cause.

Resources​

If you have any questions about using Juicebox, come join the discord or book an onboarding session at juicebox.money/contact.

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

Since the launch of the Juicebox Protocol, crypto crowdfunding has emerged as a transformative force, redefining the traditional fundraising paradigm.

With its ability to connect projects directly with a global network of anons and bypass the limitations of traditional financial systems, crypto crowdfunding has a huge potential for the next generation of projects seeking new models of funding. Over the last couple years, this has been arguably the most popular way to use Juicebox. This article will dive into success stories of past projects on the protocol that launched successful crowdfunding campaigns on Juicebox.

You can follow along in this article, or a video by Matthew on the JBDAO YouTube:

Example 1: ConstitutionDAO​

In November 2021, ConstitutionDAO raised over $46 million in ETH to purchase an original copy of the U.S. Constitution on auction at Sotheby’s. The whole project started out as a meme on Twitter when the auction was announced with friends joking, “what if we put our money together and bought the Constitution???” A week later, the campaign managed to raise 11,600 ETH with over 19 thousand individual payments.

Example 2: MoonDAO​

In late 2021, MoonDAO rallied a community of space enthusiasts and raised $8.3 million to send a DAO member to space on a Blue Origin rocket. Their ambitious long-term roadmap goals include building a settlement on the Moon by 2030. Raising over 2600 ETH with 2600 individual payments, their unique mission demonstrates that setting ambitious and even outlandish goals can pay off when they resonate with your audience.

Tips​

In both of these examples, it all started with a meme-worthy idea that went viral. There’s definitely something to learn here: a thriving community is a necessity for a successful fundraiser. ConstitutionDAO leveraged Nicholas Cage from National Treasure as a meme and managed to get thousands to join their Discord within 48 hours. But in most cases, you’ll need to have an audience established before starting your campaign.

How Juicebox works for fundraising​

So, how does Juicebox work for fundraising? You can create a project on juicebox.money, put rules in place to build trust with potential supporters, and set-up payouts so that your community knows where funds will go. You can also issue fungible tokens or NFTs which can be used for governance, token-gated perks, or refunds if you need. You can also use NFTs to create pledge rewards if people meet a minimum funding criteria.

A crowdfunding campaign on Juicebox might look something like this:​

• supporters put ETH into your project and receive tokens in return
• ETH in the project can be paid out and put toward the goal of the campaign
• if the campaign goal isn’t met, refunds can be enabled via redemptions so supporters can burn tokens for ETH remaining in the project

Conclusion​

Crowdfunding on Juicebox means crowdfunding transparently and out in the open, so supporters can see where funds will go and what guardrails are in place to prevent scams. Rules like Payout limits and Cycles are hard-coded into smart contracts, so you don’t need to trust the project creator because it’s onchain. There are still risks though, so please do your own research before contributing to a project.

Resources​

If you have any questions about using Juicebox, come join the discord at discord.gg/juicebox or book an onboarding session at juicebox.money/contact.

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

How ConstitutionDAO raised over $40 million dollars in less than a week using Juicebox

In this article, we’ll cover how ConstitutionDAO used Juicebox to fundraise ~ $46 million (11,500+ ETH) in less than a week.

Nicolas Cage in National Treasure

The estimated value of the U.S. Constitution prior to the auction was $10-15 million dollars. In order to build trust with the crypto community and the wider public, the core team set up a 9/13 multisig with core team members and well-known figures in web3. They also set up a Juicebox project to fundraise transparently and out in the open with the community. And if they lost the bid, project contributors could get a refund using Juicebox’s overflow mechanism.

Spoiler alert: ConstitutionDAO did not win the auction. As a result, the core team enabled refunds and burned the keys to the project. In other words, the core team is no longer associated with or in control of the ConstitutionDAO project or the $PEOPLE token. On the Funding Cycle panel on the left, we can look in the History tab to see past funding cycle configurations. This article will break down the settings from Funding cycle #1 to see how they raised funds and Funding cycle #3 to see how they winded down the project.

Understanding ConstitutionDAO’s fundraising project configuration 🔎​

Taking a closer look at the configuration settings for Cycle #1, we can see that the following settings were used for their fundraise:

• Target: No target means that there is no predefined funding target (e.g. $15 million USD). This gave ConstitutionDAO the flexibility to raise as much as they could in order to try and win the auction. In other words, even if they raised $50 million USD, they could distribute the entire amount.

• Please note that Target is now Distribution Limit for v2/v3 projects on Juicebox, so in this example they set Distribution Limit to Infinite.

• Duration: Not set means that the project owner can start a new funding cycle with new configuration settings at any time without notice. This is a very flexible strategy but can seem risky to potential contributors because the project owner might change the project rules at any time. In ConstitutionDAO’s case, Duration could have potentially been set to 7 days to match the deadline for the auction at Sotheby’s.

• Redemption rate: 100% means that when claiming overflow i.e. funds in excess of the funding target, project contributors will be able to redeem their $PEOPLE tokens for ETH in the treasury at any time at the same rate at which they initially contributed. In other words, there is no incentive for holding tokens longer and redeeming later: all tokens have equal value regardless of when they are redeemed.

• Please note that since Target is set to No Target (same as Distribution Limit: Infinite), funds in the treasury will never be considered as Overflow and will therefore not be redeemable.

• Contributor rate: 1,000,000 PEOPLE/ETH means that project contributors would receive 1,000,000 $PEOPLE tokens per 1 ETH. This rate is the default setting when creating a Juicebox project but can be set to any amount desired.

• Discount rate: 0% means that the amount of tokens issued per 1 ETH will not decrease over time by a certain percentage. In other words, there is no incentive for contributing in Funding Cycle #1 vs. later funding cycles.

• Reserved $PEOPLE is set to 0% so project contributors would receive 100% of the 1,000,000 $PEOPLE per ETH with none set aside for addresses on the Reserved List. The core team made this choice to ensure that everyone had equal access to $PEOPLE tokens with no special team allocation.

• Payments: Enabled simply means that the project is currently accepting payments.

• Reconfiguration strategy: No Strategy means that there is no delay required before submitting a new Funding Cycle reconfiguration. If this were set to 3-day delay, the team would need to submit any changes 3 days before the next funding cycle begins. Delay periods give project contributors peace of mind by giving them advance notice of any changes being made to the project rules. Setting this to No Strategy has the same perceived risk as Duration: Not set.

ConstitutionDAO’s configuration for Funding Cycle #1

How ConstitutionDAO changed its project configuration after winding down 🤝​

After losing the auction at Sotheby’s, the core team reconfigured the project to indicate that they stopped fundraising and enabled refunds. We can see a few settings in Funding Cycle #3 that reflect this:

• Target is set to Ξ0. Instead of setting Target to No Target, the team set a target of Ξ0 meaning that since the target has been surpassed (obviously) all funds in the treasury are considered Overflow. $PEOPLE tokens could therefore be redeemed by project contributors for ETH in the treasury.

• Redemption Rate is set to 100%, meaning that ETH in the treasury could be redeemed at any time at the same rate as when funds were initially contributed. In other words, there is no incentive to hold the tokens longer and to redeem later: the same redemption rate will apply.

• Reserved PEOPLE is set to 100%. This looks confusing at first but due to the limitations of v1, this setting was the best way to disable the “Pay” button on the juicebox.money frontend in order to prevent any further project contributions. For v2/v3 projects, a project creator can simply reconfigure their project to Payments: Disabled instead.

• Duration: Not set and Reconfiguration Strategy: No Strategy typically present risks for project contributors since the project owner can start a new funding cycle with new configuration settings at any time without notice. In this case, the core team revoked ownership by sending the project to a burn address which meant that they could no longer control the project in any way. Therefore, this risk is no longer a factor and the project configuration settings are impossible to change.

ConstitutionDAO’s configuration for Funding Cycle #3

Relevant links 🔗​

🎙️ Listen to The Juicecast ConstitutionDAO Retrospective Part 1 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify), Part 2 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify), and Part 3 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

📙 Read the full story of ConstitutionDAO on the JB blog

🧃 See ConstitutionDAO’s project on Juicebox: https://juicebox.money/p/constitutiondao

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

A brief origin story of the Constitution of the United States 🇺🇸​

detail from the Dunlap & Claypoole original printing of the U.S. Constitution, 1787

Before we get into ConstitutionDAO, let's start with the Constitution itself.

In a way, you could say that the Constitution wasn't even the first Constitution. Before the Constitution came the Articles of Confederation which was an agreement between the thirteen original states that was approved by the Second Continental Congress on November 15th, 1777 and later came into effect after being ratified by the states on March 1st, 1781. The Articles of Confederation were drafted to establish and preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. Over time, though, delegates found that the limitations of the central government were in fact too limiting and revisions began to be discussed.

Fast forward to the Constitutional Convention which took place between May 25th and September 17th, 1787 in Philadelphia. Initially intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the four month convention was in fact the birth place of an entirely new Frame of Government: what is now known as the Constitution of the United States, the longest continuing charter of government in the world.

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Oil on Canvas, Howard Chandler Christy (1940)

What does the Constitution say? Here's the tldr;

• Articles I-III outline the three branches of the federal government: the legislative (bicameral Congress), the executive (the President and his lackeys), and the judicial (the Supreme Court).
• Articles IV-VI outline the rights and responsibilities of state governments, how states relate to the federal government, and the process of constitutional amendments.

The Constitution to ConstitutionDAO pipeline 📜​

Even though the story of ConstitutionDAO isn't about any particular person, we have to start somewhere. Our story begins with Graham Novak on Thursday November 11th, 2021. It's 9:55am and Graham is sitting in an office in Atlanta, Georgia where he manages crypto investments at 28th Street Ventures. A friend in a non-crypto group chat shares the link to an upcoming auction of the U.S. Constitution at Sotheby's with an estimated price of 10-15 million dollars.

The bid estimate seemed shockingly low to Graham. At the same time, he was researching group purchases by digital communities and in particular a recent acquisition made by FlamingoDAO. It also seemed odd to Graham that the Constitution was privately owned instead of being a public good: it was the longest continuing charter of government in the world and one of only thirteen remaining copies. Soon after, consensus was reached: let's buy the U.S. Constitution.

And from there it snowballed. Within the first day, ConstitutionDAO went from a group chat of friends to a Discord of over 2000 members with National Treasure memes spreading like wildfire. An initial email was sent to Sotheby's to start coordinating logistics.

First email sent to Sotheby's on behalf of the ConstitutionDAO campaign

Later that day there is a kick-off call around 8pm to start going over logistics and next steps. Some attendees were focused on the memes and having fun while others were deadly serious. Alice Ma, engineer and co-founder of Mad Realities, was one of the attendees for that first kickoff call:

On that first Friday night it was very obvious to us: why should this document be on sale to the highest bidder? Why is this not public property? That was the drive from the beginning. This was a National Treasure-style heist where we're heisting it from the next billionaire.

— Alice Ma

ConstitutionDAO pfp of Nicolas Cage from National Treasure

As they wrapped up the call, the clock started ticking. They had less than a week until the Sotheby's auction in New York City on November 18th, 2021.

ConstitutionDAO 🤝 Sotheby's​

Because Sotheby's wouldn't allow a DAO to bid, ConstitutionDAO partnered with a non-profit called Endaoment. They would hold custody of the document and bid on behalf of ConstitutionDAO at Sotheby's. Once the DAO won the auction, they would allow DAO members to draft proposals and vote to decide where the document would be displayed.

Nicolas Cage Banny by Sage Kellyn

ConstitutionDAO 🤝 Juicebox​

When it came time to raise money for the auction, ConstitutionDAO had three options: Mirror, Syndicate, and Juicebox. While each platform had a history of raising funds and starting DAOs, there were still concerns about putting millions of dollars into unaudited smart contracts. In the end, the team chose Juicebox because the overflow mechanism would allow refunds in the event that ConstitutionDAO didn't win the auction. It also seemed (somewhat) battle tested with SharkDAO previously raising several million dollars to buy the Shark Noun.

At 8:31pm on Sunday night (day 4), the Juicebox project launched on mainnet and the $PEOPLE token was deployed shortly after. Within ten minutes accepting contributions, ConstitutionDAO had already amassed $250,000 USD.

Artwork by Sage Kellyn

By Monday November 15th (day 5), the media narrative started to heat up. Core team members of ConstitutionDAO were being interviewed on CNBC, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and more. Everyone, including your neighbour, was starting to learn what the word DAO meant.

Core team members Alice Ma and Packy McCormick appear on CNBC news

Slowly and then all at once 📈​

At a certain point, fundraising started to plateau. Money was coming in but the momentum wasn't enough for the campaign to pass Sotheby's proof-of-funds requirements by Thursday, the day of the auction. Jon Hillis, core team member and co-founder of Cabin, had a plan:

We needed a big whale to make a contribution that would restart the hype engine and get us to the fundraising goal. So I set out to find a whale and in the end it was actually an anonymous address that put in $1 million right as things started to look stagnant. We then started seeing a lot more larger amounts coming in as well as a tremendous number of small dollar donations which set up the next meme cycle.

— Jon Hillis

Once the hype kicked in, money pouring into the Juicebox project was slow at first and then all at once.

ConstitutionDAO crossing $10 million dollars worth of ETH on Juicebox

Metaversal also committed $1MM live on the Andreesen Horowitz show on Clubhouse. The ball was rolling again and over the next 24 hours the treasury miraculously grew to over $40MM dollars. The money coming into Juicebox on the 17th going into the 18th made up more than half of the entire amount raised by ConstitutionDAO. The meme had reached escape velocity.

The last minute $46MM USD swap that saved the campaign 💵​

Leading up to the auction, the price of ETH fell ~15% from $4800 to nearly $4000 USD. In response to this, Sotheby's informed the core team that they would no longer accept ETH as proof of funds as previously agreed upon. This meant that ConstitutionDAO needed to swap 11,500 ETH (~ $46MM) OTC with FTX and they needed to do it fast.

The core team was (literally) sprinting to execute this transaction. They were calling family members and running around town to track down multisig signers in coffee shops they frequented or offices where they worked. The multi-sig was set up as a 9/13 meaning that nine signers were needed for this critical transaction to go through. It was set-up this way both for security and for the memes as the Constitution only became law once it was ratified by nine of the thirteen original states.

Not all of the multisig signers were core team members. Some were well known figures in web3 with a strong reputation and including them on the multisig was a way of building trust with the public. But beyond the challenge of public trust, there was also the challenge of coordinating 9/13 people to sign a transaction. For the OTC swap via FTX, ConstitutionDAO needed to execute a single transaction of 11,500 ETH to $46MM US dollars. On the afternoon of the 18th with only hours to spare before the auction, they managed to get the signers needed and were able to provide proof of funds to Sotheby's. The campaign was saved.

ConstitutionDAO's final act: the auction at Sotheby's 👨🏻‍⚖️​

Bidding escalated quickly and in the end, the winning bid was $41MM. ConstitutionDAO had raised $46MM, so they must have won... right? That's what most people thought, at least.

Over 11,500 ETH was raised by 17,000 contributors around the world, and in that final moment it all came down to... Brooke or David? Which bidder was representing ConstitutionDAO? While some core team members knew the answer, nobody in the broader community knew exactly what was happening.

Sotheby's had many requirements in order to bid on the Constitution. For one, the DAO needed to be able to care for the document. They couldn't just walk out of the auction with the Constitution in a plain manilla envelope, they needed to have funds set aside for proper care and maintenance of the document. And there was also the sales tax and other applicable fees which would be added onto the final hammer price. So even $41 million wasn't really $41 million, and the final sale price for the document ended up being $43,173,000 US dollars.

In the end, the winning bid went to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel and founder of Citadel Securities. In the coming days, narratives emerged around a billionaire winning the auction instead of the 17,000 people who came together for the ConstitutionDAO campaign. It is worth noting that Ken has never collected historical documents prior to buying the Constitution. And given that he has publicly criticized crypto as “anti-American” and stated that Citadel would never invest in cryptocurrencies, his motivations for pursuing the auction may have been largely ideological.

Brooke Lampley representing Ken Griffin at the Sotheby's auction

Takeaways from this epic saga​

While ConstitutionDAO didn't win the auction, they raised over $40 million in less than seven days, onboarded thousands into crypto, and introduced the idea of a DAO to the public. And just as we had to start our story somewhere, we also need to end somewhere. So we'll come full circle to conclude with Graham:

ConstitutionDAO is a democratic story. It's a story of the people, a story of the underdogs. At some point, there's going to be enough capital, interest, and coordination in web3 that when you've got a large aggregate of people who are attempting to buy, launch, or build something and they're going against a titan of the traditional world, they're going to overcome that. And it's going to be done with distributed technology, teams, and more effective coordination of people. I think [ConstitutionDAO] signifies where we're going with governance and blockchain.

— Graham Novak

ConstitutionDAO2 and second chances​

Almost exactly a year later, Sotheby's has announced another copy of the U.S. constitution is going up for auction on December 13th, 2022. You can listen to episode 17 of the Juicecast to learn more about how ConstitutionDAO2 (UnumDAO) are trying to win the auction on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Relevant links 🔗​

🎙️ Check out the Juicecast ConstitutionDAO Retrospective Part 1 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify), Part 2 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify), and Part 3 (Apple Podcasts, Spotify)

📜 Follow ConstitutionDAO on Twitter: @ConstitutionDAO

🧃 See ConstitutionDAO's project on Juicebox: https://juicebox.money/p/constitutiondao

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

Nouns and the urge to own one​

Nouns, the wildly successful NFT project and ecosystem around it, sprung on the scene like a kangaroo with hemorrhoids and has been going strong ever since. The concept is simple: a generative NFT sale, where only one NFT is sold every 24 hours in an auction format. Even today, as we find ourselves in a bear market and NFT trading down 97% since this past January, Nouns are selling for an average of $110,000 with a total market cap of over $50,000,000. That means they’re quite an investment; but at such a high price point, who can afford one?

Man plans, and God laughs​

SharkDAO was spun up as a solution to this high bar of entry into the NounsDAO ecosystem. It was a community aimed at bringing together resources to purchase Nouns and keep them in a shared treasury. Early contributors decided to throw together a Juicebox treasury to run the project, and plenty of folks you see around nowadays in the discord played a role, like dropnerd, jango, joshua fisher, goldy, kenbot-studios and others.

This was early on in the history of Juicebox, and it was quite an exciting way to test out how the platform could adapt to such a unique use case. That being said, the process was anything but smooth. Throughout the journey, however, the relative ease and flexibility of the Juicebox protocol sprung in to save the day. Over a call with jango— Juicebox founder and main configuration technician behind SharkDAO— I got the full banana split on the tumultuously marvelous SharkDAO inception and execution.

Duct tape, chewing gum and a whole lotta elbow grease​

Looking at SharkDAO’s configs, I have an obvious question: “So these configs, jango, they’re kinda all over the place. What was the thinking there?” There was a short pause. “Oh man,” jango began, “we were making it up as we go along.” And such is the story of SharkDAO, an organization that succeeded not because of careful planning, but because of a community working together with a highly flexible protocol.

“We learned a lot from it,” jango continued, “and the start of it was very clean. That said the real story is about how we had to adapt and come to consensus about which levers to pull, which configs to change.”

The beginning​

Where most may think of SharkDAO as a basic investment club, the mission statement was really much more about community and participating in the Nouns ecosystem. The only way to do this, of course, was by amassing some number of Nouns and leveraging that to join the Nouns community.

It started simple enough, but it didn’t take long for the plot to thicken. “Around the time we were on Noun 12, we’d began having some discussions about this ecosystem we were creating and there were factions within the discord. They all had great points to make, but they weren’t in agreement.”

These questions didn’t get any easier as time went on. For instance, what should a new funding cycle look like? If they kept fundraising at the same token issuance rate as they had before, then they were effectively diluting the value of the Nouns they had amassed. At the same time, if they pulled back issuance significantly, was this unfairly punishing contributors new to SharkDAO?

“You know how humans work,” jango said (compliment accepted!), “You start talking about numbers and then our impulse is to protect investments, and these feelings come on quickly and undulate as you feel out the process of making this thing work. It’s not linear at all. But we can punctuate those feelings we had at the time by looking at the funding cycle decisions we made.”

The almighty reserve rate​

“We were using the reserve rate as a stand-in pause button,” jango told me with a laugh. It’s true— a cursory dive into SharkDAO config history will show you a reserve rate that’s more jittery than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“There was a moment where we flipped reserve rate and we made a few big decisions that got us out of some holes,” jango recalled, “By using the reserve rate to manage issuance, we started getting around the problem that only one million project tokens existed. Then we also had a discount rate, which was maxxed out at 20%. So we used the reserve rate to taper outward issuance rather than making a ton of funding cycles at a 20% discount rate.”

Reflections and next steps​

The current gameplan is up in the air, but could include transitioning SharkDAO out of V1 into a world where it can contribute again and maybe even win some more Nouns auctions.

When I asked jango to reflect on his journey with SharkDAO, it’s telling that he went right back to the original missions statement and discussed the importance of community. “It was just wild. No one in charge, no head of command, everyone there doing the best they could with the tools that they had. It’s a huge testament to community and the people who showed up and had that attitude; there was no secret info, everything was happening out loud and transparently.”

In the messy world of web3, SharkDAO stands as a totem to how community and shared values trump all, and how the JB ecosystem and protocol is strong but loose enough to give you the tools you need. After that, it’s what you make of it.

How MoonDAO raised over $8 million (2600+ ETH) on Juicebox to send someone to space

There are nearly eight billion people on Earth and fewer than seven hundred of them have been to space. We all share a curiosity to better understand space but only the wealthy have the ability to actually experience it firsthand. What started as a space race between nation states is now a game being played out by corporations, excluding 99.9% of humanity from having a voice in how we explore and research outer space… that is, until MoonDAO.

Our whole world is divided up into nations and historically they have competed over space, but we now have tools that enable people to easily collaborate across borders. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, as long as you have an internet connection you can join the [MoonDAO] Discord.

— Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz

“Why NASA should be decentralized,” a thread by MoonDAO co-founder Kori Rogers

MoonDAO, a worldwide collective of space enthusiasts 🌐​

MoonDAO is a worldwide collective united by the mission of decentralizing access to space research and exploration. Set against the backdrop of a privatized space race controlled by a select few, MoonDAO is building a decentralized community of space enthusiasts working towards improved access to space exploration while continuing to push research forward. As the worldwide population grows while becoming increasingly atomized by borders, it is more crucial than ever to make space research transparent and accountable while remaining accessible to everyone regardless of their financial means or geographic location.

The Moon as seen from the ISS, shared by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (credit: NASA images)

The beginning of MoonDAO from the ashes of ConstitutionDAO 📜​

Despite the disappointment of ConstitutionDAO losing the auction to buy an official copy of the U.S. Constitution, community members were still buzzing in the aftermath as they considered the implausible events that had just unfolded and what might lay ahead for DAOs. Not long after, Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz, Kori Rogers, and a few others spotted a lunar asteroid going up for auction and started discussing crowdfunding the acquisition of the next meme object to be governed as a DAO. From there, MoonDAO started as a joke: let’s buy the Moon, one rock at a time.

Their goals quickly solidified and became more serious when Pablo and Kori hopped on a call to discuss what their values were, what MoonDAO could become, and why space should be a frontier for all humans. They shared a common vision for MoonDAO: a bottom-up, horizontal approach to space research that would reflect the thoughts and desires of humanity as a whole.

Banny on the Moon by Burtula from WAGMI Studios

Raising $8.1 million (2600+ ETH) on Juicebox 🧃​

The first goal for MoonDAO was to launch their governance token, $MOONEY. When they set up their project on Juicebox, there were no tokens set aside for founders or VCs. Project contributors received 500,000 $MOONEY per 1 ETH contributed with an additional 500,000 $MOONEY going to the community wallet which would later be governed by the DAO. “That was one thing that we wanted to emphasize in relation to our mission to decentralize space exploration,” says Kori. “I think it was the meaningful thing to do.” As opposed to giving power to co-founders or investors, MoonDAO was committed to giving every member equal opportunity to help shape the future of space exploration.

On December 17th, 2021, the MoonDAO project was created and their next goal was to raise enough funds to buy tickets for a sub-orbital flight on Blue Origin. “Juicebox is a bootstrapped community building from the ground up,” says Pablo. “It’s a community of regular people trying to do something new and I knew that we wanted to work with them over any other platform for crowdfunding.” By the end of January 2022, MoonDAO had raised over 2,600 ETH (~ $8.1 million USD).

MoonDAO's Ticket to Space NFT

The first person sent to space by a DAO 🚀​

The second phase of MoonDAO’s roadmap was to send someone to space. Literally. After their successful crowdfunding campaign they acquired two tickets for flights on Blue Origin. One ticket was reserved for a sponsor and the second was reserved for the winner of their Ticket to Space NFT raffle. For the latter, they launched a free-to-mint NFT and used Chainlink VRF to conduct a publicly auditable randomized draw. Following their commitment to transparency and equal access, this drawing method allowed any member of the community to verify the results for themselves.

For the sponsor seat, the MoonDAO community voted and chose Coby Cotton, member of the YouTube trick-shot group Dude Perfect. Nominations were gathered from a Discord vote that included over five thousand members’ input. Together, Dude Perfect and MoonDAO achieved something that has never been done before: a DAO sending someone to space. On August 4th 2022, Blue Origin successfully completed its sixth human spaceflight (NS-22) and Coby Cotton, along with five other astronauts, ascended to sub-orbital space.

Stay tuned for more MoonDAO updates as their next goal is to go to the moon in 2030 🚀

Coby Cotton with MoonDAO members and the Dude Perfect team after Blue Origin Flight NS-22 on August 4th, 2022

Relevant links 🔗​

🎙️ Listen to Kori and Pablo tell the story of MoonDAO on episode 7 of the Juicecast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

🌜 Follow MoonDAO on Twitter: @OfficialMoonDAO 

💬 Join MoonDAO’s Discord: https://discord.gg/5nAu7K9aES

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

A juicebox treasury and a business is born​

ComicsDAO formed in June 2022. It set out to create a DAO with the purpose of purchasing rare comics, scanning them, and then allowing members of ComicsDAO to digitally “rent” the comic so that they can read them in their original form. The idea was that rare original comics are aesthetically unique and should not be locked away indefinitely in some private collection. (More in-depth article about ComicsDAO here!)

ComicsDAO used Juicebox as its treasury. It sold its own token (”$COMICS”) to enable membership verification and for eventual voting rights. It also explored partnerships with other DAOs and organizations, and it used its Juicebox treasury to store any payments it received. It is actively operating as of the publication of this article, and you can check out its juicebox project page here.

I sat down with Gogo, the chief DAO operator behind ComicsDAO, to get his take on how the project came to life. Here’s how the project was configured, how it changed it’s configurations over time, and why.

Config breakdown​

Distribution Limit - $2500 with eventual change to $1500

“We started with a breakdown of what we needed to get this off the ground. I needed $1500 per funding cycle, and Adam (the founder) got $1,000. We also have an artist, Gabo, who I pay about 500 per funding cycle to.”

“So we knew operating expenses for the three of us were going to be $2500, and then we wanted to fund raise more than that to purchase rare comics. After the first two funding cycles, our founder Adam decided to forgo his $1000, to make sure the runway of the project could be longer (actually, he also gave back the $2000 he received from the first two cycles!). So our distribution limit has been set at $1500 since then.”

Duration - 14 days

“We picked this just because a lot of communities we wanted to work with or know are also on 14 day durations, and so we figured it would be good to sync with them.

Discount rate - 10%, then recently changed to 2%

“Early on, we wanted to go pretty aggressive to really incentivize early contributors, so we had a 10% rate. Once the bear market hit, we felt like maybe that big discount rate will scare away people, since now people were way less likely to invest in fun projects like ComicsDAO. So we decided recently to change it to 2%. This still gives some incentive to earlier contributors, but it makes it much more attractive for people to jump in later too.”

Redemption rate - 90%

“We had some conversations about this. We felt like a really low rate was kind of punishing, but a full on 100% rate was almost like charity. We felt like 90% was a good middle ground, where there is some bonus for sticking around longer, but it’s not a punishment.”

Reserve rate - 20% for most of ComicsDAO history, but recently adjusted to 50%

“We started it at 20% to incentivize early contributors. Those first contributors got a huge amount of tokens, and so it was a good reason to contribute early. After the bear market and as ComicsDAO started growing in partnerships, we decided we want the DAO to have more control in voting and its future. For that reason we put up the reserve rate to 50%, which gives us a good bit of control and safety as the DAO keeps expanding.”

Reconfiguration delay - 3 days

“This is just a good and safe few days so that we can make changes or stop anything we missed or an attack on the DAOs safety or treasury. It doesn’t make the governance go too slow, but it gives us a lot of peace of mind and control.”

How they’re leveraging Juicebox tooling to raise money​

“We’ve created some NFTs and are looking forward to using the Juicebox tiered NFT rewards system. The idea is we can sell different NFTs according to different contribution amounts. We’re also in partnership with Nouns which we hope will bring some revenue to the DAO and build our community. With Nouns, we will get 10% of the profit of the project we are partnering on, which is the creation of a comic book series and covers.

“Right now, the token doesn’t have much utility for us, but we are very careful in how we give it out in the configs because we will be using the token for our governance. We will also be using tokens to ensure membership for when we lend out the NFT rare comics that we have scanned (token and certain NFT holders will be able to access the library).

“The goal is to decentralize progressively. We’re still in a kind of central stage right now, but as our community and governance systems grows we hope to fully decentralize.”

Thanks and gratitude​

“A big thank-you to filipv who helped me set up the configs, and to the JB community in general. Also a thank-you to Adam, our founder, and Gabobena, our artist at ComicsDAO. Stay tuned and follow us on twitter!”

How StudioDAO is building the first million person green-light committee on Juicebox.

🥱 Prequels, sequels, reboots​

If you’ve streamed movies recently, you might have noticed that everything is starting to become homogenized. Superhero mix and match, cinderella with the latest celebrity, maybe an apocalypse or two. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are no longer paving new roads but rather returning to the same old well-trodden paths. The traditional studio model behind film production is, at least, partly to blame for this. And StudioDAO is trying to fix it.

These constant reboots are often favoured over new ideas that seem like too much of a risk to investors. And to make matters worse, the filmmakers don’t reap nearly as much profits as the financiers. Here is how films are funded in the traditional studio model:

• Filmmakers create a budget and pitch their film to financiers
• Financiers provide funding, get repaid once the film is made, and get an extra 20-30% of the films profit
• Financiers then receive ~ 50% of all revenue going forward and the filmmakers the other 50%

Other than the exorbitant take rates (50%? hmmm…), the problem is that financiers are assuming the risk of the success of the film. In other words, they are not incentivized to invest in new films without a proven track record and are much more amenable to franchises with successful past releases. This has lead to the franchise overload that we are currently experiencing where every movie in theaters or on streaming platforms seems to be a prequel, sequel, or reboot.

🟢 Enter StudioDAO, stage left​

Rather than relying on a centralized financier, StudioDAO is a decentralized movie studio working to become the first million person committee of fans green-lighting movies. By combining the power of collective action with NFT sales to fund films, anyone can participate regardless if they have 0.01, 0.1, or 1 ETH to contribute. For the first time ever the audience will have the opportunity to decide which films they want to fund and watch, all while building community and gaining behind-the-scenes access in the process.

Our goal is to have a million people come together to fund a movie for the price of a movie ticket

— Kenny

💸 StudioDAO’s hybrid funding model​

While the idea behind StudioDAO is simple—fans coming together to fund films—their innovative funding model is complex, so let’s break it down. StudioDAO has three methods for funding films:

1) Retail NFTs

Using Juicebox’s new NFT rewards feature (coming soon to a mainnet near you), anyone can support projects at three different price points: 0.01, 0.1, and 1 ETH. These NFTs help fund the film’s production budget and are also collectibles that grant governance rights to the StudioDAO community wallet.

2) Community wallet

The StudioDAO treasury receives 30% of profits from projects. This community wallet is controlled by members of the DAO and can help fill in the gaps for films in the StudioDAO network that are raising funds for production. This process democratizes the experience of movie production by allowing DAO members to vote on which films should receive treasury funds.

3) Film financing fund

Last but not least, this method opens the door to the traditional financing world outside of NFTs and the crypto community. This fund requires investors to KYC and work together with the StudioDAO community to reach an agreement.

🎬 How does this work for filmmakers?​

• Filmmakers receive 70% of all profits made from their films;
• Retain ownership of their film;
• Control the distribution of their film

A DAO member will act as a filmmaker’s representative, make a pitch to the DAO on their behalf, and seek approval via governance. All DAO members are able to create and vote on proposals, allowing the community to curate content and vote on which films they want to see come to life. Once the vote gets approved, the DAO opens a new Juicebox project with three funding tiers and fundraising begins.

❤️ StudioDAO’s first project: Unlikely Love Stories​

Unlikely Love Stories is a dark comedy animated anthology that explores the highest highs and lowest lows of unexpected love in the most unexpected places. The anthology is inspired by the real life love story of Oscar-nominated producer Rosa Tran (Anomalisa, Robot Chicken) and Emmy-winning VFX artist Derek Smith who met at the 2010 Emmy awards and fell in love 7 dates later. Part 1: Tender Vittles tells a hilarious, slightly fucked up story about love when a sweet mouse falls in love with a dangerous yet delicious gingerbread cookie.

The first goal for Unlikely Love Stories is to raise $305,000 USD for the pilot episode Tender Vittles. To continue the anthology, the project will be aiming to raise $2,000,000 USD to produce a half season and $5,000,000 USD to fund the entire season. 90% of proceeds go towards funding the project and 10% goes to the StudioDAO community fund governed by DAO members.

🧃 A transparent way forward​

The idea of crowdfunding films isn’t new: Kickstarter has helped raise $500M USD for films over the last ten years, including 5.7 million for Veronica Mars in 2019. Fast forward to 2022, crowdfunding on Ethereum has opened up new ways for fans around the world to support films, like filmmaker Miguel Faus who crowdfunded his film Calladita with tiered NFTs. Going one step further than a one-time fundraise, StudioDAO is building a regenerative model in which project creators get to make their dream projects while fans get unprecedented access to the green-lighting process. And all of this magic happens transparently and out in the open on Juicebox.

There is a two trillion dollar entertainment market and there is a clear scenario for a decentralized studio to do one billion dollars of production 3-4 years from now.

— Kenny

Relevant links​

🎙️ Listen to Kenny tell the story of StudioDAO on episode 9 of the Juicecast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

🟢 Follow StudioDAO on Twitter: @studioDao

💬 Join StudioDAO’s Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YxPGn9pcdr

🐦 Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

🚀 Trending projects on Juicebox

📚 Project Creator Docs

📹 YouTube Tutorials

Governance can be fun​

And funny. As Sean McCaffery, Co-Founder of JokeDAO and seanmc.eth#0163 will tell you, governance doesn’t have to be a somber affair. Along with their co-founders they’ve built JokeDAO, a DAO tooling option that can run everything from on-chain governance to shitpost popularity contests with ease.

JokeDAO 🃏 An open-source, collaborative decision-making platform.

Enter JokeDAO​

The schema is simple: create a contest, and deploy it. Users on the platform can then vote on your contest with tokens that deploy for just that contest (if you wish). The platform can handle anything from “What color birthday cake should we choose?” to “Tell me the best joke about hamsters” to “Which workspace tooling should our DAO be using day-to-day?” It does so on-chain and transparently, so you and your community can track progress, previous votes, and run a decision-making platform that’s open and honest.

https://twitter.com/jokedao_/status/1549053077046472705?s=20&t=F1--BE4uL7TiocEVd1EluA

Disposable tokens and their utility​

Central to JokeDAO’s platform is the unique way that tokens are used. That is, they are quite literally used. In many cases they are disposable and unique to a specific contest. This has some strong benefits, and is a facet that many other DAOs could learn from.

Token-voting mechanisms suffer a lot from the question of why. Why should some people have some much more voting power than others. Reasons abound. Maybe it’s because somebody was an early contributor. Maybe it’s because somebody contributed a boatload of funds to a project. Or maybe— bear with me here— a person has a really nuanced understanding of the topic at hand.

But that last case is a bit less common. After all, it would be nice to say, “You know what, we’re voting on solidity devs, so let’s give all the solidity devs a bit more voting weight for this proposal,” but current mechanisms make this difficult and cumbersome, and certainly not scalable.

JokeDAO, by employing tokens which expire with a single contest or vote, can easily address this issue. And this is just one of many use cases where it’s a potential game-changer.

https://twitter.com/jokedao_/status/1562100521334341633?s=20&t=BvRz0K1QwJE8AK5695G2AA

The future of JokeDAO​

Where JokeDAO will go is anybody’s guess, but current sentiments seem to point moonward. The platform has shown new ways to approach governance for DAOs, and offers tooling that is unique and easy to employ. What more could an anon ask for?

To follow JokeDAO, check them out on twitter. To learn more about co-founder Sean, find their twitter here.