LexART 4 - Becoming a DAO
In 2015, I read about Mycelia by Imogen Heap using blockchain to empower a more sustainable and equitable music industry ecosystem. Around that time, I learned about Ujo Music and the .bc project. These projects highlight blockchain’s technical capability to tackle issues that have plagued the music industry for decades. It wasn’t enough. Building a creative ecosystem powered by blockchain requires significant community support.
Last year (2019), art in the form of NFT exploded (see more in LexART 2). Community is growing fast, and it is here to stay. “For the incredible price of 97 ETH, "The Base" Layer of The Tribe by @muratpak is now owned by @MuseumofCrypto!” @AsyncArt “The Tribe” is truly a dope piece 🤯, damn.
But of course, there’s “art” that I am trying to understand. Like this or Pak’s pixel statement on tokenizing a single red pixel 🟥. Here’s Hazmuz’s writing on the red pixel, link. A really good read, if you ask me, as it provides a new perspective to looking at cryptoart.
DAO Rationale
Cultural creations like art, music, research, etc. are highly subjective, so purchase price is often not the most helpful in determining the value of the work itself. Surely volume in Ξ is a way to define success but Ethereum offers more I think. By adding complexity at the economic layer of NFTs, it may create fun dynamics in the NFTs themselves, maybe allowing artists and collectors to gather and raid on something to grow the pie. But to do so, more help is needed.
LexART started as an experiment to automate royalties distribution with smart contracts. It’s now an experiment to DAOify and capture the value of minting LexART NFTs as a collective, as a creative commons. How? 🤷. The DAO will decide.
Ethereum itself is a commons. Anyone can access it and anyone is free to use it, despite fluctuating gas prices that price people out of the network. Anything that lives on the Ethereum blockchain is similarly open for anyone to access and use. I am able to pull smart contracts of NFT platforms and deploy them as my own. Like other commons in the Web2 space, math theories, public writings, public parks and beaches, Ethereum is shared by a community of people with permissionless access.
But what is a commons? One definition is resources shared and enjoyed equally by a group of people. Generally, access to such resources is free and open to anyone in the group to take. The right to use the resources is also not authorized by a single entity or individual. In the existing NFT market, access is limited to the artist / collector as she may remove her NFT from public view at any time (through burning the NFT or just removing the metadata). Similarly, the right to use an NFT is presumed to be prohibited unless otherwise authorized by the artist / collector. Here’s what Fabin Rasheed had to say when he was faced with frequent inquiries, including one from myself 😅, about creating new works out of his Regalia.
“Anything you create with Chromology or Regalia is our collaboration, but I don’t expect anything monetary or otherwise in return for the creations.” (link)
Imagine a Wikipedia type resource for Web3 where anyone can produce, access, and use its content freely. LexART DAO can provide tools to creators to do the above, mint the work produced, and attach custom economic and legal layers to align certain interests between creators, collectors, and other parties. Finally, LexART DAO can profit from using the commons by licensing out tokenized cultural creations for commercial activities.
For example, I will mint 50 Regalia variations and contribute to the DAO. The DAO will receive a license to these images and may sell merchandise on my behalf. Any rewards go back to the DAO and are shared amongst its members. As members of the DAO license their creations to the DAO for it to perform commercial activities on behalf of themselves, the DAO is able to monetize cultural creations collectively.
Mol LeArt
“My name is Mol LeArt. My parents are Moloch and LexDAO.” ~ Mol LeArt
Everyone in LexART DAO is Mol, and all work is done by Mol. Mol makes decisions using Moloch. Mol gets smarter with more efficient legal engineering. Mol grows as a creative commons. The only way to grow Mol is to contribute to it.
Collectively, Mol is an expression of Web3, expressing ideas relating to Web3. We can bring ponzinomics to NFTs and create markets. Side note, decaying royalties structure does exactly that. By selling the cultural creation at a higher price, it benefits the creator and every collector along the way. For example, creators can set a specific royalties % to decay from, and future collectors will also enjoy a royalties % for owning the creation. So setting it at 10%, the creator would earn 10% royalties from all future transactions, the next collector would earn 9%, the one after at 8%, and so on. In the future, it’s expected to make bonding curves and other fun economic models available for experimentation 🧪
Adding a legal layer may help NFTs interface with Web2 by embedding certain business logic within the token itself. An example may be automated licensing patterns. A front end, guided by the legal layer, can walk licensors and licensees through legal patterns required to conduct licensing activities, so that any future disputes can reference recorded exchanges between parties directly from the NFTs. Of course, it is for the DAO to decide on how granular these recorded exchanges must be. In any case, I believe the LexART smart contract provides a decent starting point for future iteration.
Reflect
There are for sure more layers to be added, and that’s how Mol’s influence will grow. I’m very excited to get this started. The subject matter is cultural creations, Ethereum can document it forever. So no matter what you create, e.g., photograph, research analysis, music, you will be able to mint tokens representing your creations with built-in business functions.
Lastly, got some money for the DAO from DAO Hack Month. So looking forward to working with RaidGuild to bring Mol LeArt to life. ⚔️ RaidGuild x Mol LeArt 🎨