Preamble
NFT projects tend to destroy themselves by overproducing, creating collections that are not in the interest of their community. Diluting holders with bad art does not come with much concern for them though because all earnings from sales are delivered upfront.
Furthermore, responsibility for the longevity of such projects tends to fall to a single artist who will inevitably move on. When these communities are left to their own devices, there’s no structure left to facilitate that project’s movement into the future.
This problem touches digital communities of all types, and it is the founding rationale behind Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). DAOs, or decentralized, community-owned, and self-governed entities are a long-sought-after dream with a fitting first application in art: The most logistically simple and community-centric area of digital innovation. Yet their implementations are still missing in today’s NFT space.
Any project that calls itself decentralized should offer more, it should be on a path toward becoming a true DAO.
FP DAO is building an open-source NFT curation platform to be owned and controlled by its community. It has seeded a grassroots community of 1,000+ avid Ludo art collectors and ICP supporters, the ideal group to prove the dream of project self-governance. That said, decentralization isn’t achieved in a day. It’s a gradual process that starts with outsourcing the intelligence behind project decisions to its larger community — the first step for any DAO.
This collective opinion of a group, rather than a single expert, is called wisdom of the crowd. DAO V0.5’s purpose is to be a gauge for the wisdom of the flower family.
FP DAO V0.5 as an Experiment
FP DAO V0.5 is highly open and highly simple. Anyone who owns a flower can make a proposal to the DAO that includes a title, description, and up to ten voting options. Then flower holders can vote on those options if they like. If 50% of flowers vote on a given proposal, the winning option is “accepted” by the DAO. Rejected proposals can be repeated indefinitely. Any change can be repealed by another proposal being accepted in its stead.
Ludo and the flower team were faced with a tough decision with V0.5’s release. It could either start slow and safe with centralized proposal issuance, only admitting proposals to the DAO that have been vetted, or it could grant proposal issuance rights to every single flower holder.
V0.5 makes use of the latter, the more decentralized option, possible right out of the gate thanks only to this quality community and our belief in its ability to make responsible and constructive choices.
That said, the DAO must forego guarantees of decentralized enforcement of “accepted” proposals at this point, which is what makes V0.5 in the experimental phase.
For example, if some flower holder makes a proposal calling for every collection made through FP DAO to be airdropped in full to existing flower holders. That proposal would likely garner the votes to get accepted because it’s in the short-term interest of holders, but that doesn’t make it feasible or in the DAO’s best interest, as no good artists would join thereafter.
Another example would be a multi-select vote about the art: How many textures should the ICP Flower Have? One, two,… ten. Any holder can issue that proposal and it may capture a voting power quorum — but it’s a Ludo decision, not a community one.
There’s no decentralized or objective way to filter proposals as of yet, and so guarantees will be limited. The team will honor proposals accepted about what they specifically cannot do, but proposals about what the DAO must do falls to the whole community for fulfillment. Proposals made based on self-interest that jeopardize FP DAO longevity will be discouraged or ignored by Ludo and the team.
Later versions of the DAO will work away from this centralized way of operating, but even at this stage, there is still a hedge against the complete failure of the team. If Ludo and the core team went rogue, flower ownership remains decentralized and so anyone could build a new DAO website and carry the torch. This would be analogous to a blockchain hard fork and the FP DAO would go wherever its community followed.
FP DAO V0.5 Bill of Rights
For the time being, we, the founding FP DAO team will stand by the following guarantees, and will expand this over time with the DAO’s help:
- Finding and supporting quality art through wisdom of the crowd is the FP DAO’s foremost ambition.
- The Flower Power DAO cannot curate art collections without community approval via the DAO.
- Every BTC Flower is guaranteed 2 votes in the DAO. ETH and ICP Flowers are each guaranteed 1 vote in the DAO. No other collection will hold voting rights in the DAO.
- Every flower holder has a chance to be heard by the larger community through access to proposal submissions.
- Artists will choose the parameters through which Flower Holders get rewarded/exclusive access to art created by the DAO.
- FP DAO will curate no more than four collections from collaborations each year.
Collaborations
Eventually, the DAO will separate proposals into categories with separate characteristics and acceptance parameters, e.g., designating allocations of the DAO treasury for community services, formalizing constitutional amendments, allowing metadata upgrades, etc., will all have different processes.
FP DAO’s founding idea was to offer a launchpad for top-tier artists that otherwise lack the tools necessary for entering the digital sphere. For now, all DAO proposals will be generic and informal except for collaborations: The first and only proposal category of FP DAO V0.5, as it pertains to imminent project decisions.
As mentioned in the FP DAO Bill of Rights, the issuance of any new collection must go through the DAO. We plan to facilitate the process with a team-issued proposal (technically the same as any community proposal but promoted by the team) for the selection of a vetted artist to join the DAO:
- At a later date, the flower team will open up applications to all artists interested in doing a collaboration to be submitted via email or website. Each application must include the artist’s full bio, sample art, detailed plans for a collection, intentions, intended supply and launch price, and what they will offer flower holders, e.g., BTC Flowers get automatic preferential whitelist, ETH Flowers that voted on the collab proposal get a group two whitelist, the remainder goes to a public sale.
- Ludo will go through all proposals and narrow them down to three artists exhibiting mastery in their craft.
- Based on the technical complexity involved with the potential collection, the flower team and each of the three artists will agree on release prices, incentives for holders, a royalty split, and refined details of what a given collection would become.
- Those top three artists and their project details will be made public and issued as a DAO vote. The artist with the most votes will become the FP DAO’s latest collab.
- Ludo and the core team will provide all the technical, marketing, and advisory support to make that accepted artist’s dream collection a reality.
With all the voters having a vested interest in its success we imagine this process will force the DAO to source only the highest quality art while keeping its price and flower holder incentives fair in the eyes of the community.
For Ludo-specific collections, like the Pineapple Punks, there will be a simple yes or no DAO vote, but no formalized process.
Elastic Clause
This constitution is originally released as a medium post. It’s currently an unofficial document to inform the community of the soon-to-be-released DAO’s ambitions. This doc can be changed by the team at any time, though further changes are likely to go through DAO proposals.
Either V1 or V2 will add a refined version of this constitution to the FP DAO website and formalize the criteria for making constitutional amendments. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback, as the community should be involved in shaping this document.
