It’s More Than A Feeling — It’s A Fully Community Owned NFT DAO

We are feeling quite excited to share with everyone a new thing that a wonderful community has been building. The feeling of excitement emerges from feelings of misgivings regarding some elements of the existing NFT space, for which we feel an amazing amount of love and respect.

As we’ve seen the cryptocurrency ecosystem mature, there are a few key technological and social trends that emerge that, we feel, should be essential to the NFT space, namely:

• Digital ownership
• Trust minimization
• Social coordination

NFFeels is the first NFT project to attempt to incorporate social coordination and trust minimization directly into the NFT from Day 1. Wojak and Feels memes are community created and with the first ever NFT Dao it will be fully community owned and governed with a not-for-profit distribution model.

An Issue of Implicit Trust

The purpose of decentralization is the removal of trusted intermediaries. Whenever trust is injected into any medium, it is a natural human tendency to abuse it after enough time. The concept of corruption should not be seen as a deviation from a standard. It is the inevitable end result of all human interactions. Removing trust has been a focus point in every sector of Web3 except one: the NFT sector.

While you retain sovereignty over the token itself, there are often implicit assumptions of trust that you would not deem acceptable in any other asset you hold.

This trust is mostly concentrated in how the NFTs are distributed. Distribution may seem trivial but it is the core of any healthy decentralized incentive network. When considering the incentive design of current NFT distribution models, there is an inherent conflict. The creator is incentivized to mint additional pieces to capture the value of their creation, which can dilute existing holders’ value. There is naturally a nuanced social dynamic around this that makes it much more complicated, and many creators are actively designing systems to align these incentives. But the succour of frothy markets will tempt the most stalwart of projects and creators.

Bringing the community on-chain

The communities generated by NFT collections are so rich with feeling. Love of the work, appreciation for the creator, camaraderie with fellow collectors. When viewing the social coordination potential of on-chain governance, it is a natural opportunity to organize a DAO structure to mobilize that community feeling. We’ve seen several DAOs form after the fact, validating the feeling we share, but the result is often lacking in full integration.

By bringing the community on-chain from Day 1, we are able to create a more comprehensive system that ensures collectors are also contributors and enables the project to grow organically into an emergent organization if it so chooses.

FeelsDAO Structure

In the coming weeks, we will be dropping the initial wojak NFTs with built-in governance rights to the DAO. NFT holders will then be solely responsible for minting and auctioning future wojak editions, custom wojak art pieces, or whatever else the DAO desires to build and do. From that point on, the DAO of existing wojak holders is the only source of additional wojak dilution — no trust involved, only on-chain governance.

Additionally, a portion of all secondary sales will be directed to the FeelsDAO, allowing for potential funding towards community initiatives, even without further auctions. There is and will be no owner or source of origin for the project.

Ultimately, we feel that this transforms a typically static NFT into a living, active piece of art. Rather than simply showing it off in your wallet and hanging out in the discord chat, you’re using your art on-chain as part of a community. The community can choose to build additional features to enhance the NFTs or they can choose to shut the DAO down and let the art live as is. The possibilities are endless and it will be a fun experiment to watch unfold. Doesn’t that just feel different?

Wojak Distribution

The drop will include a randomized distribution system with deployment costs pooled and funded via the community. The distribution is not-for-profit. Those wishing to participate and help fund the deployment costs will be assigned an unknown wojak to be revealed following the launch.

Contributors will receive wojaks, but there will be no monetary profit or compensation generated through the distribution process. If the initial community fundraising exceeds deployment costs by some margin, excess funds will be donated to the DAO and governed by NFT holders.

In order to prevent any one individual from receiving an outsized allocation of wojaks via technical or financial means, there will be various restrictions in the distribution process, such as a limit per address, EOA restrictions, etc.

Once the final number of wojaks has been determined, an estimated deployment cost will be calculated, and a set number of NFTs minted in order to cover the deployment estimate. Each NFT will then be updated with its image data, stored on-chain, to reveal either a rare custom wojak or a basic NPC wojak.

You can see a sample of the artwork below, and smart contracts are currently being written. We estimate an early April launch.

Final Feels

Satoshi had the foresight to know that to create a truly decentralized network, he too had to be anonymous. With his anonymity and eventual disappearance, he removed any social risks of centralization. At the base of every decentralized network are implicit social values accepted and codified into the protocol. One is the acceptance of authority figures. Who is the authority of Bitcoin? Its white paper and its community. That’s it.

I will perish after the launch of the DAO and the NFT drops for my work has been completed. Further, I put a ban on Mewn, Trent and Brock Elmore from having any positions in the DAO for at least the first 3 months to avoid further centralisation risks because they have been important in assisting and organising this effort. It’s preferred if they remain only as seeders into perpetuity and the community takes over with the tools released. I want the community to take over free of authority figures.

I thank @mewn21 and @trentelme for helping me write and propose this to the community, and thanks to all our artistic and technical contributors. I hope the community accepts these ideas and moves forward with them