10 posts tagged with "highlight"

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.

You ever wonder what people do with those collectible rare comic books that they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for? Not a whole lot, apparently.

“Because of the way the grading works, unsealing the comic almost by definition damages it. So you have these people who spend hundreds, thousands, or even millions on comics that they never look at. It’s like buying a Picasso and leaving it in a dark locked closet forever,” Adam (discord: Defaulteduser#2001), founder of ComicsDAO, explained recently on a call.

If that sounds underwhelming, well, that’s because it is. The real tragedy is that there are scores of comic fans around the world who would love to get a glimpse of these rare pieces of history. But now, thanks to Adam and a very cool piece of technology, that’s all going to change.

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology.”​

Central to the cause of ComicsDAO is a wild piece of technology that allows the unthinkable: scanning a closed comic book and getting a high-quality, readable image. It does it by “reading the air pockets at a very specific depth, and then measuring the metal content in the ink,” Adam explained. Whereas newer ink is non-metallic, the ink of olden days used metals, the content of which varied by color. By using both air pockets to calibrate depth, and what’s known about metal content in old ink, a totally closed and sealed comic book can be read page-by-page with striking clarity.

Don’t believe it? Check out this image Adam provided of an original, 1952 Donald Duck comic. The image you see below was extracted from a comic book that was closed and sealed. The scanning machine literally looked through the cover to reconstruct this image.

“We use something called T-Rays (think X-Rays, just a bit different) to read each page without opening up the book at all.” - Adam from ComicsDAO

Exciting, sure, but so what?​

To the chorus of voices who say fine, this is neat but impractical because let’s face it, reprints of all these comics exist and are readily available, Adam has this to say: the newer reprints of original comics are far from exact replicas. These newer versions are in fact redrawn comics, and thus quite different from their original, oftentimes-sealed counterparts.

Adam puts it like this: “It would be like if you had a poster an artist made on your wall of the Mona Lisa. It may look a lot like the Mona Lisa, but the artist who drew it wasn’t da Vinci, it was someone else. Does that mean you’d never want to see the real thing in the Louvre?”

For an example, the image below shows both an original (left) and redraw (right) of the same page of a comic. The first has some fading from the passage of time, but beyond that a quick glance will show you that the style and feel are quite different. That’s the difference between the real thing and a reprint, Adam argues.

The original (left) and the redrawn, re-issued reprint on the right.

ComicsDAO springs onto the scene​

Less than six months after springing up, ComicsDAO has over 300 followers on twitter and a growing community on discord. With Adam at the helm of twitter and talented artist gabobena doing art, the team still has allstar Gogo keeping it all together and working on infrastructure and strategy. A steady flow of good shitposts and memes coupled with in inclusive community designed to attract and marry comic book nerds and web3 enthusiasts seems to be finding much success.

Shitposting memes isn’t the only thing ComicsDAO slays at.

With the advent of the scanning technology, ComicsDAO also hopes to be able to offer glimpses of rare comics to its members. The goal is to source, fund raise and purchase old comics that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive for any single investor. From there, ComicsDAO will scan the comic and have it on loan as an NFT for members who wish to check it out to read it. This allows the whole community to share in the comic and to appreciate the unique artwork that would be otherwise completely unavailable, and it allows ComicsDAO to amass a collection of comics and build out a full library of collectibles.

And we haven’t even mentioned the partnerships.​

Beyond all that, ComicsDAO has also been creating partnerships with other DAOs in unique and fun ways. Two such examples (pictured below) are their cover-series, where they create comic-style covers for noteworthy DAOs. In the case of ComicsDAO, this has led to a partnership with NounsDAO that is poised to culminate in the creation of a paperback comic book to be distributed nationwide.

ComicsDAO cover collaboration with StudioDAO and NounsDAO. “This will be an awesome way to take something web3, like ComicsDAO, and put it back into the real world. Imagine being able to buy a NounsDAO comic book at your local bookstore!” -Adam from ComicsDAO

The state of ComicsDAO today​

A quick jump into the ComicsDAO discord will show you a bustling community spreading out in many different directions. Between partnerships, scanning collectible comics, unapologetic shitposting and building a community of active comic readers, the days are long and fruitful at ComicsDAO. Stop by and say hello in their discord if you want to learn more about what they’re up to and where they’re going. They’d love to see you.

Want to get in on the action? Join ComicsDAO on discord or follow them on twitter.

One Noun, every day, forever.

A series of Nouns generated in the Playground at nouns.wtf/playground

WTF are Nouns?​

Nouns is an on-chain generative NFT project and experiment in community building through avatars. Nouns are 32x32 pixel characters with heads that represent a noun like “igloo,” “skateboard,” or “peanut.” One Noun is auctioned every twenty-four hours, forever, with all proceeds going to the Nouns treasury. When one auction is settled, the next Noun is generated and a new auction begins. Each Noun is entitled to one vote in Nouns DAO governance which decides how the treasury should be used.

Auction bids for Nouns can easily reach over 100 ETH. As a result, owning a Noun is often limited to those that can afford to win these competitive auctions… unless you’re a member of SharkDAO ⌐◨-◨

SharkDAO, a shiver of Nouns enthusiasts 🦈​

Did you know that a group of sharks is called a shiver? SharkDAO brings together Nouns enthusiasts with the shared goal of acquiring Nouns and contributing to the Nouns ecosystem. Together they pool funds, participate in Nouns DAO governance, and partner with artists, developers, and DAOs to create Nounish experiences. This has taken the form of podcasts, NFT collaborations, and Nouns DAO proposals like e-sports initiatives and CC0 Story Bibles.

They currently hold six Nouns: 2, 5, 15, 33, 47, and 139 which have been named by the Shark community as follows:

🍍 Noun 2: Piña, named after its pineapple head

🪚 Noun 5: Bruce, a reference to actor Bruce Campbell who wields a chainsaw in the movie The Evil Dead

💊 Noun 15: Morpheus, based on Laurence Fishburne’s character from The Matrix

🐸 Noun 33: Froger, named after its frog head

🦈 Noun 47: Swimshady, the cool alter ego of the Shark Noun

🔒 Noun 139: Paddy, named after its padlock-shaped head

Left to right: Nouns 15, 2, 33, 47, 5 and 139

Building the plane while you fly it​

As an experiment in on-chain avatar communities, Nouns DAO’s mission is to spread the Nounish word with the help of Nouns holders who make up the voting body of the DAO.

While projects such as CryptoPunks have attempted to bootstrap digital community and identity, Nouns attempt to bootstrap identity, community, governance, and a treasury that can be used by the community for the creation of long-term value.

— Punk 4156

Holding only 6/300+ votes might not seem like much, but lurking beneath the waters SharkDAO is active in discussions, pushing ideas through the ecosystem, and able to get a lot more done than what their voting power implies. Since Nouns has no roadmap from the Nounders (founders), Nouns is community-owned which gives power to holders to propose initiatives and decide how to use treasury funds. In other words, the task of building community and shaping the future of Nouns belongs to community members who hold Nouns, rather than the founders. SharkDAO, as one of only a handful of sub-DAOs within Nouns DAO, is one of the groups building this roadmap on-the-fly.

“In short, sub-DAOs participation in a DAO is shaping and contributing a voice to that community so that the best ideas get surfaced, voted on, and make an impact in the world.”

— Dropnerd

SharkDAO and NounsDAO visualization from sharks.wtf

SharkDAO, the meme that jumped from Rinkeby to mainnet​

It all started with a small group of frens helping Nouns DAO test out their auction mechanism before it went live. Goldy, 4156, Dropnerd, Lithium, Kenbot, Del Piero and Defi Jesus were a few of these early swimmers. The Shark Noun was one of the first Nouns that was acquired on testnet by the group and they decided to build around that Shark identity. They launched a Discord, started bringing in contributors, and began planning how they were going to crowdfund to buy Nouns.

4156 announcing that the Rinkeby shark was acquired (tweet)

SharkDAO is a meme that jumped from Rinkeby to mainnet.”

— Kenbot in a Twitter Space hosted by nnnnicholas

When it came to figuring out how to fundraise in order to bid on the first Noun, Kenny dives into the Discord and suggests a cool project he heard of called Juicebox. Building a treasury on Juicebox would allow the group to trustlessly raise funds and manage their treasury, without the risks of YOLO’ing ETH into a multi-sig.

SharkDAO project page on Juicebox

From there, SharkDAO set up a Juicebox project on Rinkeby. Dropnerd was doing the testing and was still new to signing transactions. “I was very excited to see everything come together so easily without needing to interact with a bunch of smart contracts directly,” he explained. “The UI showed me exactly what was going on which made it a lot easier for the DAO. Looking back I can’t think of another platform where we could have raised 200+ ETH in the first few days without the help of Juicebox.

SharkDAO catching the Shark Noun 🎣​

Noun 47, the Shark Noun

Although new Nouns may seem random and impossible to predict, their traits are actually determined by the previous blockhash. And if you’re particularly clever, you can use the crystal ball to predict and even choose the next Noun that will be generated 🔮

Before the Shark Noun was generated, founding member Goldy was eyeing the Noun Crystal Ball every day for weeks. This magical tool shows you what the next Noun will look like if the auction is settled on the current block by calling the settleCurentAndCreateNewAuction() function in the NounsAuctionHouse contract.

Usually the winning bidder will settle the auction, but anyone can call settleCurentAndCreateNewAuction() at a particular block and help decide what the next Noun will look like. In a glimpse of a moment, Goldy saw the Shark Noun in the Crystal Ball and submitted the transaction before the next block to secure it.

The Noun Crystal Ball 🔮

SharkDAO had to act fast if they wanted the Shark Noun. The DAO established an auction committee, re-opened their Juicebox project, and expanded their multi-sig to include 5 members. Within the first few days of re-opening for contributions, they received over Ξ150 from community members.

Where there’s a will, there’s a wave 🌊​

The team suspected that someone was watching within the DAO and took their calls offline to discuss the details of their strategy in real time, including their final bid number. It wasn’t an easy auction to win though: the Shark Noun was desired by many and led to a jawesome bidding war. Over the next 24 hours the bidding quickly went past Ξ100 and then Ξ200 soon after. It became clear that the price of Noun 47 was going to swim past most Nouns auctions, apart from the very first Noun that sold for Ξ600. After their penultimate bid of Ξ244.82, SharkDAO was getting pretty close to exhausting the amount that they set aside for the auction. Though winning Noun #47 was non-negotiable, they also needed to conserve enough treasury funds to ensure that the DAO could continue to build into the future.

Timeline of some of the final bids on the auction for Noun 47.

If a bid is placed in the last five minutes of an auction, the timer is extended by another five minutes. Due to the cumbersome nature of bidding via a Gnosis Safe, the DAO came pretty close to losing the shark. There was even one bid where the last signer was executing the transaction with only 45 seconds left on the clock.

After a last minute bid of Ξ258.88 by 0xa8...0e7d, the team had minutes to coordinate and agree on the next bid price before multisig signers could approve the transaction. And on September 21, 2021 at 2:19am, SharkDAO won the final bid for 269.69 ETH.

Noun 47, the Shark Noun

SharkDAO celebrates their shark-versary​

Since their launch on August 8th, 2021, SharkDAO has raised over 1000 ETH on Juicebox, acquired six Nouns, and brought together over 400 sharks. As a sub-DAO, they’ve pushed several proposals over the fin-ish line in the Nouniverse including Nouns-based short films and FOMO Nouns. SharkDAO has also helped provide eye exams and glasses to thousands of kids in need, donated 5 ETH to the Coral Restoration Foundation, and started a new Juicebox project to raise 60+ ETH for founding member Del Piero’s son’s leukemia treatment.

The Shark Noun has become an icon and remains one of the most recognizable Nouns. In a particularly surreal turn of events, Noun #47 aka Swim Shady was featured in Yuga Labs’ Otherside promo video alongside Cryptopunks, Cool Cats, CrypToadz, World of Women, and Meebits. Not only were Nouns included as one of a handful of projects to represent NFTs a whole, but the Shark Noun was chosen as its iconic ambassador.

What’s next for SharkDAO? Stay tuned for future NounsDAO proposals like the Monthly Nouns Comics project currently being developed by DefaultedUser and ComicsDAO in collaboration with SharkDAO. The Shark Island pfp project is also currently in the works as well as the DAO’s growing collection of Shark-themed art.

Shark Noun featured in Yuga Labs’ Otherside promo video

The value of SHARK is derived not only from its ETH stored in the Juicebox contracts, but also from the NFTs the DAO has deployed treasury funds to acquire, from the JBX that the DAO has begun accumulating by paying platform fees, and perhaps most importantly from the productive community forming within the project that gives it boundless potential moving forward.

— Jango, from Juicebox V2: Protocol adjustments useful for adding treasury tokens to AMMs

Relevant links​

Listen to Dropnerd tell the story of SharkDAO on episode 5 of The Juicecast

Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

Follow SharkDAO on Twitter: @sharkdao

Join SharkDAO’s Discord: discord.gg/QNbuygdK3A

Set up a Juicebox project on Juicebox.money

How Lexicon Devils is building the metaverse, getting paid to do it, and managing their treasury on Juicebox.

Metaverse architecture and video games​

I spent the majority of my childhood exploring the internet and playing classic computer games like Age of the Empires, The Secret of Monkey Island, and especially The Sims. For hours and hours I would build, design, and arrange anything I could think up. Unbound by the limits of gravity, money, or even common sense, The Sims was an excuse to imagine what was possible rather than what was realistic. At the time this maybe seemed like a silly diversion, but like many of our early internet activities this turned out to be great practice for the future that was hurdling towards us. Spending hours customizing a Myspace page was, in retrospect, a great introduction to frontend development. And perhaps The Sims was the perfect introduction to metaverse architecture.

Old Town in The Sims (2000)

Lexicon Devils origin story​

Lexicon Devils, named after an EP by LA punk rock band Germs, is a guild of metaverse builders architecting virtual experiences in Voxels, Substrata, and beyond. They acquire parcels, design and execute complex builds, and organize interactive events including DJ sets, treasure hunts, parades, art exhibitions, and performances.

Around the time that Shark DAO was making waves, Peacenode got a call from Stav and started chatting with Nicholas and Dropnerd about this “beautiful infrastructure layer of the internet that we’re all building on Ethereum.” One thing led to another and Peacenode was soon talking with Mieos from WAGMI Studios about a cross-DAO collaboration to create a Juicebox metaverse experience and the rest is history.

I’ll never forget meeting Wacko, he was rocking the most insane wearables every 30 seconds. We just had to ask if he could join us and put him on the payroll.

— Peacenode

Rather than sending funds p2p, Peacenode explained that the Lexicon Devils project on Juicebox would issue payouts to a team of contributors on a set schedule. In other words: “I know you don’t know us, but let’s hang out.” Building in the open with a trustless, transparent treasury means easily building friendships and communities regardless of identity or credentials. Find your community, bring the good vibes.

And who knows, you might even end up making an ultra tropical banana-themed learning center complete with an animated gondolier.

The first iteration of the Juicebar and Juicebox Learning Center

A home for Banny: iterations of the Juicebox parcel in Voxels​

v1 of the Juicebar was built as a home for Banny, the iconic blunt-smoking banana mascot of Juicebox. It was also home to the Juicebox Learning Center, a juicy and playful institution where visitors could watch videos about the protocol, learn terms in the glossary, and participate in ongoing JB events. This tropical parcel quickly became an oasis for long-time Banny devotees and newcomers alike to learn more about the crypto crowdfunding protocol that enables anyone to fund the “thing” of their dreams on Ethereum.

As part of the growing bannyverse, WAGMI Studios and Lexicon Devils organized the first ever JB metaverse treasure hunt with clues that make up a seed phrase… but only with the help of a decoder. Prizes included 200,000 $JBX and a treasure chest filled with dope NFTs.

The Bannyverse Treasure Hunt

Since October 2021, the Juicebox plot in Voxels has gone through many iterations as a center for learning, discovery, and entertainment. It stands out from surrounding parcels with its attention to detail and references to IRL architecture and design. Through pixelated curves and large windows blending the inside and outside, the current Juicebox v2 build combines characteristics of mid-century modern design with a tropical Banny aesthetic. Bringing this all together in one big juicy cocktail, the v2 build is a utopian dream in line with the ethos that anyone can grow and fund their dream project.

v2 of the Juicebox Learning Center, Transit Center, and Juicebar

Lexicon Devils' wild and imaginative custom builds​

In addition to building for Juicebox, Lexicon Devils have designed and built a custom HQ for Dreams Never Die, a web3 music DAO, and a browser-based metaverse experience for NFT project Slothtopia. Wackozacco was also commissioned to design a number of custom builds on Architect Island which draw inspiration from Neo-Andean, Oriental, Tudor, and Structural Expressionism movements.

Dreams Never Die HQ at 31 Bran Ave

Custom builds by Wackozacco on Architect Island

left to right: 3 Schism Street, 7 Marayaco Ave, 2 Schism Street, 29 Marble Road

I never would have imagined [becoming a metaverse architect]. I was designing video game skins when I was younger, not really thinking about it. As I was growing up, I felt like I needed to do something more meaningful and then I found out that you could paid for doing stuff like this. It was a re-discovery of a passion and realizing that it can produce value.

— Wackozacco

Whether referencing the physical world or playing with what defies reality, Voxels and other metaverses allow for architects to focus on design and function rather than costs, materials, or bureaucratic mazes like zoning laws. Anyone is able to learn to build in the metaverse, regardless of their education or previous knowledge of architecture. Coming from a wide range of backgrounds, the team at Lexicon Devils has spent the last year creating metaverse experiences and custom builds for other orgs, all while managing their treasury on Juicebox.

If you had asked me in January 2020, I couldn’t have anticipated where I am today with my friends. It’s pretty amazing. Actually, when I was a kid, there was a stint where I wanted to be an architect. I was a Lincoln Log kid, so maybe it makes sense.

— Peacenode

Lincoln Logs, a popular children’s toy invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright, son of well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

FORMING and coming full circle with Juicebox​

As the pinnacle of their monthly Juicebox event series Lexicon Devils is hosting FORMING, an experimental hyperverse concert with a curated lineup of performances by web3 musicians. Lexicon Devils has created and funded a new Juicebox project through which all participating artists will be paid in ETH. By paying musicians through the project, artists also get a chance to learn first-hand about the Juicebox protocol and how it works.

“That’s the synthesis of our experience of learning about Juicebox. It’s not just an event at JB, but an event that gets people to learn about JB through our events”. — Wackozacco

Relevant links​

Listen to Peacenode and Wackozacco tell the story of Lexicon Devils on episode 8 of The Juicecast

Visit the Juicebox parcel in Voxels

Visit the Lexicon Devils HQ in Voxels

Follow Juicebox on Twitter: @JuiceboxETH

Follow Lexicon Devils on Twitter: @Devils_Lexicon

Set up a Juicebox project on Juicebox.money