Thread by @arjunmahadevan

22 Bored Apes...

215 CryptoPunks...

Only 100 members with a membership buy-in costing millions...

And an NFT portfolio now worth $1B

This is the story of @FLAMINGODAO a flamboyance of NFT collectors, curators, and artists:

At inception in October 2020, Flamingo collected 60 ETH from each member (approximately $23,000 at the time).

Now, new members are buying in at 3,000 ETH or about $8 million. That’s a nearly 350-fold increase in dollar terms over 15 months.

But let's take a step back, what is FlamingoDAO?

Flamingo is an NFT-focused DAO that aims to explore emerging investment opportunities for ownable, blockchain-based assets. NFTs are not just cat pictures.

They encompass digital art, collectibles, and in-game assets and other tangible assets. These new forms of digital property are poised to play an increasing role in helping to create, monetize, and incentivize online digital content.

NFTs are not interchangeable, and they thus introduce a new form of scarcity in the digital world.

They can represent digital or real-world assets, providing verifiable proof of authenticity and ownership (assuming they are created by the original author or owner) using a blockchain network.

Blockchain developers began introducing NFTs as early as 2016, with projects like Age of Chains and Rare Pepes using Bitcoin to create blockchain trading cards.

These early experiments morphed into larger projects during the halcyon days of 2017 to 2018, with the launch of Cryptokitties.

Seemingly overnight, Crytpokitties took the Ethereum ecosystem by storm, generating tens of thousands of transactions and clogging the network as users traded lovable cats with one another.

While interest in Cryptokitties may have waned in recent years, the mechanics and growth of NFTs has not. Next generation NFT platforms and marketplaces are incentivizing a new generation of creators to digitize artwork, digital land, and in-game items.

Recently, we've seen the emergence of next generation NFTs and platforms, expanding into digital art, land purchasing, and we're beginning to see NFTs intersect with trends in Decentralized Finance ("DeFi").

The growth of NFTs is just beginning, because NFTs represent the digitization and financialization of digital property and intellectual property. Trillions of creative works swirl around the Internet and are difficult to monetize, except through licensing models.

NFTs hold out the hope of bringing back to the Internet an ownership economy. Creators can create, sell, and fractionalize ownership in their works, opening up a new chapter for creative endeavor.

NFTs can be:
- fractionalized;
- combined into token sets;
- used as collateral for lending and stablecoin protocols;
and dynamic and interactive, incorporating outside data feeds.

Over the longer arc, NFTs hold out the hope of becoming increasingly financialized, interacting with other core blockchain-based financial primitives.

They may prove to be a core primitive for decentralized identity solutions, and may increasingly serve as a cornerstone for monetizing emerging metaverses and other gaming platforms.

Flamingo aims to develop a strong foothold in this emerging ecosystem, bringing together the "hive mind" of a DAO to the world of NFTs. Flamingo will give its Members the ability to develop and deploy NFT-focused investment strategies.

Purchasing NFTs with Ether or some other base digital assets pursuant to the terms outlined in these FAQs.

Once purchased, Flamingo could evolve in a number of different directions. Members will have the right and ability to factionalize its NFT holdings.

Any purchased NFTs can be lent, held, displayed in a digital art gallery, or used as collateral in other DeFi platforms. The direction is up to the Members.

The DAO has so far amassed 7,920 ETH to date in its treasury, using the capital to purchase some of the rarest and most valuable NFTs.

In addition to CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, popular profile picture projects, the DAO owns 246 Chromie Squiggles, 371 Cryptoblots, five Autoglyphs and several other bespoke NFTs, known as 1/1s (“one of ones”).

These NFTs can be cross-checked using blockchain data that traces back to FlamingoDAO wallet addresses. In total, the collection includes NFTs numbering into the thousands.

gallery.so/FlamingoDAO

@awrigh01, a @FLAMINGODAO founding member and founder of DAO tooling company @tributelabsxyz says that Flamingo’s members are primarily crypto-native individuals who have been in the space for a long time.

Members frequently signal their membership via a flamingo emoji on their Twitter profile or a mention of @FLAMINGODAO in their bio; they include crypto-industry heavyweights such as Aave founder Stani Kulechov and Artblocks founder Erick “Snowfro” Calderon, among others.

First, membership was first come, first served, but now, prospective members have to get invited in by an existing member or gain entry through involvement with one of Flamingo’s sister DAOs, which includes The LAO, the DeFi-focused NeptuneDAO, music-focused NoiseDAO or…

…metaverse-focused NeonDAO.

“The whales are all together,” said Wright, who describes Flamingo’s members as a mix of traders, developers, artists and builders. “That’s what makes these things so powerful. They’re horizontally organized.”

At any one time, Membership in Flamingo is currently limited to accredited investors, as defined under U.S. law. The total number of members will be capped at a maximum of 100 members.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and/or equivalent government bodies in other jurisdictions have not determined whether membership interests in Flamingo (represented as units) are securities.

In the abundance of caution, the limits in membership and accreditation status for U.S. contributors are put in place to:

- comply with U.S. securities law;
- prevent any one party from controlling a disproportionate amount of Flamingo;
- and limit the risk of look through issues for Flamingo Members that are organized as funds or other legal entities.

As Flamingo’s success sends its buy-in price skyrocketing, membership has increasingly attracted the attention of investment funds, said Wright.

As NFTs have seen soaring adoption among major consumer brands, Wright said he could see a future where NFTs make up the majority of crypto.

“I think a lot of people on Twitter are DeFi-focused, but I see it becoming a smaller part of crypto. Other segments are growing faster,” said Wright.

Derek Schloss, who heads crypto venture firm Collab+Currency’s NFT investments and is another co-founder of FlamingoDAO, is similarly bullish on the future of NFTs:

“NFTs are going to wrap all scarce non-fungible goods. Every major brand is thinking about NFTs and their Web 3 strategy.”

Full credit to this thread goes to:
- coindesk.com/markets/2022/0….
- flamingodao.xyz

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