AIP-297: An NFT Community Vault Operating as an ApeCoin Sister DAO with a Goal to Advance the Mission and Influence of ApeCoin

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Hi @yatsiu

Thanks for the additional context. This helps a lot, actually.

@yatsiu

The principle idea behind the vault is to give the community a sense of ownership of NFT assets. You could say that BAYC holders (by virtue of the initial drop) also became ape holders, but how do ape holders also become BAYC holders? Its not feasible to have each ape holder also have an NFT.

Right. So, now we segue into the inevitable :

1. Why would the community want ownership of NFT assets?

2. Why would anyone in the community want to be BAYC holders?

Even in the affirmative, neither of the above yields a plausible answer to the ultimate question: How does this benefit the DAO?

Having governance over BAYC NFTs is the first step in giving them a certain sense of ownership.

Yeah, but why?

While the rental piece is not defined yet because it is structured as a sub-dao it means that it is defacto community owned and from ownership many network effects can then be derived from that so we view this as a foundation rather than its immediate utility.

Right. So, with the DAO not setup for any sort of inbound revenue stream, how does this get done?

Also, you’ve basically proven my point. Which is great because it means that my missive above was clear in that this is just an activity that is akin to a poster in a subway or a painting on someone’s dining room wall. How does the DAO benefit from it - at all?

The DAO is barely a year old, and it has a long way to go in creating the building blocks of prosperity. It’s neither a museum, nor a curated collector. I don’t see how owning BAYC assets is going to advance that - in any way, shape or form.

I am not even going to get into the mechanics of self-dealing (Yuga ↔ DAO) because that’s a whole discussion all by itself. The DAO was specifically - and sensibly - setup to be a separate entity for a myriad of reasons. Going back and buying Yuga branded assets - with DAO funds - is a five fire alarm bell that’s going to be very loud (amid a littany of bad press) if somehow this idea makes it into AIP - and passes.

What does being the center of web3 culture mean and how does holding apecoin matter? The expansion of apecoin utility is a primary goal and at the moment a lot of it is centered around using apecoin in some ways like a currency.

True enough. But the reality is that apecoin is a currency. It exists specifically for that purpose. The currency is completely separate from the IP that spawned it. There’s a reason for that.

Giving community ownership over a set of potentially growing NFTs adds to the utility in our view because the community can decide what to do with it, at minimum if it should be bought/sold or displayed somewhere. It could also decide to offer it for brand endorsements or fashion licensing opportunities, these NFTs like with BAYC come with commercial IP rights.

I disagree with this in its entirety. Plus, the DAO wasn’t setup to do any of this. Buying (self-dealing aside) IP that has zero utiity or benefit to the DAO is basically throwing money away. For that, we should setup a charity and get it over with.

We can barely get people to talk about the Yuga IP, let alone expand it beyond 127K ape hodlers, but somehow - a DAO that isn’t even setup to generate rev, license, bizdev or promote ape - is going to engage in activities that are tantamount to running a full-blown corp entity? Yuga has an entire professional team specificall for that. Lets set aside the fact that besides Alex, yourself, me and possible only two or three others that I have thus far identied in the community, there aren’t any working group or assembly leaders currently active in the DAO with the level of [corp] experience required to pull any of that off.

I would argue that a community vault is the beginning of building a long term sustainable capital base as a sub-dao.

Why should we hold different kind of NFTs and does the quantum matter? For budgetary reasons it does not make sense to have a large quantum of NFTs because the point of this sub-dao is not to control an ecosystem rather it is to say that it is a participant in a meaningful manner. In most cases owning 10 NFTs of anything of value makes you a top holder, maybe not the very very top but meaningful. It should also allow apecoin holders to have a legitimate voice in those various NFT communities as a result. Whether this be 10 NFTs or 50 or 100 is in many ways for the DAO to decide, the numbers could be viewed as illustrative.

These are all good intentions, but again, setting aside the machinations and propositions, I fail to see how this benefits the DAO.

Aside from that (and that whole self-dealing thing), this could be [incorrectly] construed as having all the makings of market manipulation because we’re basically buying a pool of NFTs in a bid to artificially prop the value of a token that’s also instrically tied to our DOA. And this idea basically coming on the heels of a severely depressed NFT floor price is just another alarm bell. This is bad. Completely.

And I absolutely do not see how the DOA holding other NFTs somehow gives us a voice in those other NFT communities. The great thing about Web3 has been the closely knit communities, with very little rivalry - if any. So, we already have a voice. It’s already a village that we belong to. We’re not asking for permission to join nor to opine on anything other than the desire to build and belong. Owning my neighbor’s mortgage doesn’t mean I get to throw a party on his lawn whenever I feel like it. Similarly, owning other NFT assets doesn’t grant us any “voice” we don’t already have. I mean, bragging rights? To what end? We’d get laughed at so hard, we’ll end up voting to auction off those NFTs so fast.

By demonstrating that an apecoin sub-dao is now a holder of a certain NFT collection (lets say for argument sake its coolcats or mocaverse) it informs those communities about apecoin. More importantly it brings apecoin members, should they so choose, to also claim those NFT assets as membership to those NFT community if they were, for instance, token-gated. Added utility. Of course if the sub-dao were to buy 100 coolcats it would have a lot more influence and that is a possibility but that would be for the community to decide. This is simply a vehicle for this possibility.

It sounds and looks good on paper, but I feel that you’re missing a critical aspect of this pitch: human nature.

You could say that is speculative but the point is that now that the sub-dao owns assets someone can offer 3rd party services that benefit the provider and the asset holder. A foundation of assets that one can compose experiences on, but you need to start with a set of assets first.

Please provide a single example of how this would actually work, and how it ultimately benefits the DAO (that being us).

I would specifically like to see an example of what types of experiences can be created from a “foundation of NFTs” that we own.

ps. The DAO isn’t setup to own, let alone sell, anything. And setting up a sub-DOA isnt going to change that without changing the structure and mission of the DAO. And going by current trends, that’s another hill to climb.

Finally, NFTs held in a DAO governed entirely by the community (i.e. apecoin holders) is very different than NFTs held by a whale who has sole discretion over what to do with it. This is not a hold and store value play, it is about community ownership and our assumption is that it will also create deeper engagement in apecoin because now they can decide on stuff apeholders actually “own”.

Yeah, but it is a “hold and store value” play, though. We’re going to buy items of value, store - and hold them.

We can’t even get the DAO to vote on AIPs that are intrisically beneficial (from the perspective of those who lost) to it, and gaming the whole process aside, how on Earth are we going to be able to decide what to do with assets that we “own” when the decision is held by vote in which there ARE bound to be winners and losers? It will never work. It never does. It’s not a negotiation whereby the aim isn’t to win, but for both sides to get something. Voting in a DOA is an all or nothing proposition in which the losers are going to be sore.

We should focus on achieveable and sustainable goals and activities which promote the culture and in turn, apecoin. Not curating and hoarding NFTs in the hope that, one day, we can actually do something with them.

ps: I realize that my opinions aren’t going to be popular among those who think that this is a fantastic idea, but nevertheless I offer them in the spirit of community, and because someone has to be an opposing voice of reason (saying “no” without explaining oneself, is just a waste of time - and also impolite) or we’re just in a echo chamber hug box.