So let me get this straight. There is an auction for a priceless (well, very expensive) item.
A group is trying to raise funds to buy this item, but is not guaranteed to win the auction anyways. Participating in an auction while having a publicly known funding cap feels like a poor position to be in.
Further, let's suppose the group wins the auction, and is now the proud owner of a copy of the Constitution. This entire end goal of this project seems dependent on finding a partner that is willing to cover all the costs associated with storage, display, security, etc of this high value item.
This feels like a whole lot of "ifs" for a project trying to collection $20M.
> We intend to put The Constitution in the hands of The People.
Like the US Archives aren't owned by the government of the people. Instead this will be owned by a very few ETH holders willing to participate.
But this might be one of the biggest fundraisers I've seen and it probably wouldn't have happened without the crypto ecosystem. For that, I am very excited.
>Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.
Had to laugh at this. I'd have a strong preference for others subsidizing my questionable decisions too.
It’s going to be a disaster. I hope Sotheby’s doesn’t let them bid.
Either they do whatever the random people who hold tokens tell them to do—including, if you read their Discord, destroy it—or you don’t. In the latter case, everyone gets all upset that governance tokens are not real things and blockchain is, once again, not in fact “code is law”.
The site has a total deposited and a "goal" number. When the total deposited passed $25 million, the goal jumped from $25 million to $30 million. When does it stop?
> Am I receiving ownership of the Constitution in exchange for my donation?
> No. You are receiving a governance token, not fractionalized ownership. Governance includes the ability to advise on (for illustrative purposes) where the Constitution should be displayed (...)
So some anonymous group is raising money to buy the constitution and in exchange you get voting rights? Which they totally pinky-promise will adhere to. Oh, and it's crypto, so it's a token.
This sounds like Victor Lustig selling the eiffel tower but with technology.
Not anonymous, team is very public. because of US law this is the practical way of actually doing it, the alternative seems to be not doing it and thatd be boring. theres been long discussions for days in the discord, if people have suggestions of a better way to do this come join in.
people are very open to how else could we do this and how it can be improved and secured.
remember this was just a joke in a group chat last week, that speed of development will have issues, but community and reputation matter, and we can lean on that as we solve the legal structure.
> So some anonymous group is raising money to buy the constitution and in exchange you get voting rights? Which they totally pinky-promise will adhere to. Oh, and it's crypto, so it's a token.
I'm not sure what structure they are using, but in theory they could setup an LLC that was required to adhere to what the token votes on (within some predefined bounds). Projects like RealT have property ownership / dividends based on token ownership, so there's no reason something similar / legally binding couldn't be done for this.
"Will the core team receive any of the raised funds for themselves or get compensated in any way from this?
The core team has not received or pre-minted any tokens. Following the purchase of the Constitution, we intend to submit a proposal to be voted on by the community. While this is unusual, we believe that it establishes a precedence of mutual trust between the core team and the backers of the ConstitutionDAO."
So anyone who funds this has to trust that a) You are not a dog, b) ConstitutionDAO will use the money to buy the copy of the constitution, c) All extra money will be returned, d) The above mentioned proposal will be in the interests of the community, and e) ConstitutionDOA will abide by the above mentioned vote.
Setting all of that aside, what mechanism exists for a "governance token" to actually have any power in this relationship at all?
Beyond this, there doesn't appear to be any explanation of how this works from a legal and tax perspective.
There's no mention of a legal entity receiving the funds, but at the same time, they state these are donations, not fractional ownership, so presumably from a legal perspective this is actually just giving the funds to the core team, who appear to be mostly in the US, but not entirely? And, while I had always thought that the point of DAOs was that they were autonomous, this appears to be just giving the core contributors direct control over the money? Surely, for example, the actual bidding is not coded into the contract?
So, considering this is now over $25m, wouldn't there be some tax involved if people pay you in this way? Maybe if you argue they are gifts (but are they?), and no individual donation is over $10k, but I suspect many are?
And at over $25m, Sotheby's is obviously going to have some ownership identification requirements. So who will actually be the legal owner here, and how will they account for this revenue?
It’s a physical thing and a DAO (mostly) isn’t a recognised legal entity so there is always a disconnect here irrespective of the crypto side of things. There’s an awful lot of trust being put into the honesty of the people organising this effort with little ability to hold them to account. Which is par for the course and why rug-pull is a turn of phrase.
Ignoring the questionable end-goal here, the 'crypto' aspect of this is apparently completely orthogonal to the fund-raising effort[1]. What's the point?
The crypto aspect serves a very important feature, hype. Anything tangential to crypto gets the attention of all of crypto twitter. This would not have nearly as much money in it if not for that hype.
One thing I do wonder though: at some point all this ethereum gets converted to dollars in order to buy the constitution. What does this DAO do with any "extra" dollars from the increasing value of ethereum?
>No, the crypto bit absolutely doesn’t do anything useful
None of this would have happened without 'the crypto bit'.
People are just annoyed that crypto is happening and theyve been betting against it. they were so focused on the 'currency' aspect they missed that groups of people can coordinate, they missed that a reddit group can become a political force, they missed that people are buying land together, the missed that coordination is the killer app.
HN and the cynics have been telling us for years that none of this would work, and when we get examples of it working we hear "you could do this without x".
yes, in theory you could have a mysql database and a company registered in deleware, and stripe processing payments, and also companies in other countries to handle international payments, and blah blah.....
Win the bid, then publicly burn this copy of the Constitution, as an act of sacrifice to imbue it's original rarity into a digital representation (some kind of NFT) that an unbounded number of people can own shares of, thereby transmitting the memetic essence of the object into the hyperverse to be preserved and treasured for trillions of years, long after all physical copies have disintegrated away.
Despite being seen as an unconscionable and horrific act of destruction by the citizens of meatspace, it could in reality end up being the most powerful act of preservation we could ever do.
Interesting idea. But doesn't this rely on public acceptance of the "imbuing of the original object's essence into NFT?"
How do you encourage people to associate the act of destruction with an act of value transfer?
As a counterexample, an art vandal destroying a piece of art does not inherit the value of the art, even though the vandal and art interact in a culturally significant way such that the art ceases to exist after the interaction.
It's so original you're the third person in this threat to propose it. Congratulations! So smart!
Unfortunately, that sort of self-aggrandizing pseudo-clever cynicism is what's driving this whole fad. There were times when a generation thought free love and rock & roll were the answer. Their children knew weed wasn't the answer, but it tuned out those voices asking questions. Now, their children believe they'll strike it rich on the PGA Tour of buzzword-bingo, and while they wait for what they obviously deserve to materialize, they'll get started on the tacky simulations of what they believe the lifestyle of rich people to be a.k.a. Instagram. And when that doesn't work, they get frustrated, do the closest their fragile will allow them to get to therapy (Proud Boys telling each other they don't need women) and reach their final form once they've made up their mind if it's jews, liberals, women, or "the elite" that's screwed them out of the good life.
So what’s the point? There is a copy of the Constitution that is owned by the American people. It’s on display in the National Archives in Washington, DC. So what’s the point of this DAO?
To me, it's more about the idea than the actual action on display here. Decentralizing a process than is normally very opaque and centralized is what's being attempted and it's a cool idea. Whether this is executed well or not, that's a different story.
This is a great example of the power of crypto. Millions of dollars raised in record time, meanwhile the marks have been fooled into thinking their tokens are actually meaningful while the masterminds of the scam have legal control of the document in question and are free to completely ignore any of the "voting" that goes on since blockchains do not exist in meatspace and mean literally nothing with respect to legal ownership of the document. This kind of thing simply wouldn't be possible without the web3 revolution, this is really exciting stuff!
I think I'd be a lot more excited about this if they had an innovative governance system underlying the DAO, as a way to talk about the future of governance. Considering the Constitution is a document about governance structure, it surprises and disappoints me that their system of checks and balances seems to be mostly missing, with maybe just a phrase of "pro rata" or whoever has the most tokens gets the most votes. Seems not much different than how most corporation voting works. Just seems like there's an opportunity to more deeply discuss what the future of online and offline governance will be, as geographic governing bodies struggle to deal with digital spaces. But memes seem more cool I guess lol.
This is an interesting experiment that I'm excited about. The fact that a financial flash mob is possible is incredible. Anybody from anywhere can participate and have voting power by joining the DAO. Regardless of the outcome, it's good to see the convergence of DAOs into meatspace.
except of course there is literally zero voting power from participating in this project because the "power" bit is always assigned by a source of authority and nothing about this project tells you how can this power be realized or enforced.
Well, I think they've been saying that the tokens guarantee voting power to advise the LLC which actually owns the physical document, not to actually own the document, because, as someone else mentioned, that may run afoul of US securities laws.
I say all this being excited about iterating on the future of governance, I also worry that such quick financial flash mobs could really screw people really fast.
I was initially excited because I think that a DAO for the collaborative generation of, commitment to, and maintenance of constitutions would be a really cool thing. You could cultivate reputation as a mediator, or as the champion of a group with ideological stake in the document, or as an editor. We could explore the space of amendment rules and figure out what practices work and which devolve into flame wars.
>ConstitutionDAO is seeking an esteemed partner to publicly display the Constitution. The eventual home must have the expertise to properly house, store, and maintain the artifact. Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.
Really putting the cart before the horse on this, aren't we?
> We intend to put The Constitution in the hands of The People. Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.
They should lend it to the US Government, it meets all these goals.
does it? what’s our president’s approval rating again? 41%?
American government, while better than what came before it, still isn’t perfect. Crypto and DAOs are experiments in government. The whole point is to (try to) do better than our existing institutions.
They are probably going to win the auction + gas fees included, but they would probably need more money to protect it than just simply 'owning it'.
> The eventual home must have the expertise to properly house, store, and maintain the artifact. Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.
The problem with DAOs is 'trust' which they are vulnerable to this trust being abused. Hence, I'm afraid that such 'DAOs' don't have a good history of being trustworthy, especially when there is little to no regulations involved, but we'll see.
Maybe to launder the $30M, would be to mint the Constitution as an NFT perhaps?
Why give governance tokens? The second blurb there states they wish to hand it over to some place that can house it open to the public free of charge, but then later state the purpose of giving you a governance token in exchange for contributing to the auction bid pool is you get a say in what will be done with it. It sounds like they've already decided what to do with it. Give it to a public national museum. Reserving the right to take it back and do something else instead doesn't make much sense. I'd rather fund a bid that promises to donate it and relinquish any further rights than get some tradable ownership share I can sell to someone else who decides they want to burn it ten years from now.
I have read approximately 100 times that this is a grand, endlessly interesting experiment and whatever happens it will be a new era for crypto. OK, sounds kind of cool but what is the hypothesis, or the interesting thing, or the thing that will change?
Only things I can think of are meta-crypto stuff, like that crypto hype can hype better than any other hype, that seems clear since Dogecoin. Or maybe how good/fast communities can coordinate using current web2 tooling, which is neat, sure. The speed and scale do feel interesting, but I don‘t really know why.
Anyway seems harmless and very fun for everyone involved.
How does ridiculous bullshit like this get 30mm while other promising projects fail because people don‘t want to pay USD 0,99? Has the entire world succumbed to simply whoever has the better marketing!
I'm confused, if an individual bidder bids more than the DAO, wouldn't that bring more to charity than the DAO?
Perhaps the argument is that the DAO is raising hype and therefore raising the price for the winning bid and the hype itself will increase the total going to charity, I just don't see how the DAO would necessarily be giving more to charity than an individual if the individual had a higher bid.
I'm very pro-crypto, and also very pro exploring DAOs as an organizing structure.
But this one feels so rushed that I won't be surprised if scandals and controversies follow. A lot has to be done properly here, and there's a lot of places things can go wrong.
If the aftermath has problems that are too spectacular, it could cause trouble for more carefully planned efforts.
[+] [-] nrmitchi|4 years ago|reply
A group is trying to raise funds to buy this item, but is not guaranteed to win the auction anyways. Participating in an auction while having a publicly known funding cap feels like a poor position to be in.
Further, let's suppose the group wins the auction, and is now the proud owner of a copy of the Constitution. This entire end goal of this project seems dependent on finding a partner that is willing to cover all the costs associated with storage, display, security, etc of this high value item.
This feels like a whole lot of "ifs" for a project trying to collection $20M.
[+] [-] parhamn|4 years ago|reply
> We intend to put The Constitution in the hands of The People.
Like the US Archives aren't owned by the government of the people. Instead this will be owned by a very few ETH holders willing to participate.
But this might be one of the biggest fundraisers I've seen and it probably wouldn't have happened without the crypto ecosystem. For that, I am very excited.
[+] [-] AutumnCurtain|4 years ago|reply
Had to laugh at this. I'd have a strong preference for others subsidizing my questionable decisions too.
[+] [-] tyre|4 years ago|reply
Either they do whatever the random people who hold tokens tell them to do—including, if you read their Discord, destroy it—or you don’t. In the latter case, everyone gets all upset that governance tokens are not real things and blockchain is, once again, not in fact “code is law”.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|4 years ago|reply
Also I feel like one of the only thirteen surviving copies of the US Constitution will sell for a lot more than $20M.
[+] [-] robodobo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] V__|4 years ago|reply
So some anonymous group is raising money to buy the constitution and in exchange you get voting rights? Which they totally pinky-promise will adhere to. Oh, and it's crypto, so it's a token.
This sounds like Victor Lustig selling the eiffel tower but with technology.
[+] [-] casi18|4 years ago|reply
people are very open to how else could we do this and how it can be improved and secured.
remember this was just a joke in a group chat last week, that speed of development will have issues, but community and reputation matter, and we can lean on that as we solve the legal structure.
[+] [-] xur17|4 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what structure they are using, but in theory they could setup an LLC that was required to adhere to what the token votes on (within some predefined bounds). Projects like RealT have property ownership / dividends based on token ownership, so there's no reason something similar / legally binding couldn't be done for this.
[+] [-] djrogers|4 years ago|reply
The core team has not received or pre-minted any tokens. Following the purchase of the Constitution, we intend to submit a proposal to be voted on by the community. While this is unusual, we believe that it establishes a precedence of mutual trust between the core team and the backers of the ConstitutionDAO."
So anyone who funds this has to trust that a) You are not a dog, b) ConstitutionDAO will use the money to buy the copy of the constitution, c) All extra money will be returned, d) The above mentioned proposal will be in the interests of the community, and e) ConstitutionDOA will abide by the above mentioned vote.
Setting all of that aside, what mechanism exists for a "governance token" to actually have any power in this relationship at all?
[+] [-] cge|4 years ago|reply
There's no mention of a legal entity receiving the funds, but at the same time, they state these are donations, not fractional ownership, so presumably from a legal perspective this is actually just giving the funds to the core team, who appear to be mostly in the US, but not entirely? And, while I had always thought that the point of DAOs was that they were autonomous, this appears to be just giving the core contributors direct control over the money? Surely, for example, the actual bidding is not coded into the contract?
So, considering this is now over $25m, wouldn't there be some tax involved if people pay you in this way? Maybe if you argue they are gifts (but are they?), and no individual donation is over $10k, but I suspect many are?
And at over $25m, Sotheby's is obviously going to have some ownership identification requirements. So who will actually be the legal owner here, and how will they account for this revenue?
Apparently, they're planning on setting up a (for-profit?) LLC? (https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/11/16/constitution...)
[+] [-] meheleventyone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papa-whisky|4 years ago|reply
[1]https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/11/16/constitution...
[+] [-] pkukkapalli|4 years ago|reply
One thing I do wonder though: at some point all this ethereum gets converted to dollars in order to buy the constitution. What does this DAO do with any "extra" dollars from the increasing value of ethereum?
[+] [-] tchock23|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] casi18|4 years ago|reply
>No, the crypto bit absolutely doesn’t do anything useful
None of this would have happened without 'the crypto bit'.
People are just annoyed that crypto is happening and theyve been betting against it. they were so focused on the 'currency' aspect they missed that groups of people can coordinate, they missed that a reddit group can become a political force, they missed that people are buying land together, the missed that coordination is the killer app.
HN and the cynics have been telling us for years that none of this would work, and when we get examples of it working we hear "you could do this without x". yes, in theory you could have a mysql database and a company registered in deleware, and stripe processing payments, and also companies in other countries to handle international payments, and blah blah.....
this is faster, easier, and more fun.
[+] [-] anonporridge|4 years ago|reply
Win the bid, then publicly burn this copy of the Constitution, as an act of sacrifice to imbue it's original rarity into a digital representation (some kind of NFT) that an unbounded number of people can own shares of, thereby transmitting the memetic essence of the object into the hyperverse to be preserved and treasured for trillions of years, long after all physical copies have disintegrated away.
Despite being seen as an unconscionable and horrific act of destruction by the citizens of meatspace, it could in reality end up being the most powerful act of preservation we could ever do.
[+] [-] mejari|4 years ago|reply
There is fundamentally no act of preservation in destroying a physical object, you have to twist all logic and reality to think so.
[+] [-] ericjang|4 years ago|reply
How do you encourage people to associate the act of destruction with an act of value transfer?
As a counterexample, an art vandal destroying a piece of art does not inherit the value of the art, even though the vandal and art interact in a culturally significant way such that the art ceases to exist after the interaction.
[+] [-] KarlKemp|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, that sort of self-aggrandizing pseudo-clever cynicism is what's driving this whole fad. There were times when a generation thought free love and rock & roll were the answer. Their children knew weed wasn't the answer, but it tuned out those voices asking questions. Now, their children believe they'll strike it rich on the PGA Tour of buzzword-bingo, and while they wait for what they obviously deserve to materialize, they'll get started on the tacky simulations of what they believe the lifestyle of rich people to be a.k.a. Instagram. And when that doesn't work, they get frustrated, do the closest their fragile will allow them to get to therapy (Proud Boys telling each other they don't need women) and reach their final form once they've made up their mind if it's jews, liberals, women, or "the elite" that's screwed them out of the good life.
[+] [-] mNovak|4 years ago|reply
>> the most powerful act of preservation
As if we don't already have scans / text of the constitution archived.
[+] [-] 2bitencryption|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerged|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barney54|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laluser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] root_axis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimkleiber|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguelmota|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keymone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimkleiber|4 years ago|reply
I say all this being excited about iterating on the future of governance, I also worry that such quick financial flash mobs could really screw people really fast.
[+] [-] __MatrixMan__|4 years ago|reply
That's not this. This is dumb.
[+] [-] Imnimo|4 years ago|reply
Really putting the cart before the horse on this, aren't we?
[+] [-] cdot2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EMM_386|4 years ago|reply
They should lend it to the US Government, it meets all these goals.
[+] [-] wallacoloo|4 years ago|reply
American government, while better than what came before it, still isn’t perfect. Crypto and DAOs are experiments in government. The whole point is to (try to) do better than our existing institutions.
[+] [-] rvz|4 years ago|reply
> The eventual home must have the expertise to properly house, store, and maintain the artifact. Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.
The problem with DAOs is 'trust' which they are vulnerable to this trust being abused. Hence, I'm afraid that such 'DAOs' don't have a good history of being trustworthy, especially when there is little to no regulations involved, but we'll see.
Maybe to launder the $30M, would be to mint the Constitution as an NFT perhaps?
[+] [-] nonameiguess|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kall|4 years ago|reply
Only things I can think of are meta-crypto stuff, like that crypto hype can hype better than any other hype, that seems clear since Dogecoin. Or maybe how good/fast communities can coordinate using current web2 tooling, which is neat, sure. The speed and scale do feel interesting, but I don‘t really know why.
Anyway seems harmless and very fun for everyone involved.
[+] [-] axiosgunnar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] washedup|4 years ago|reply
Very interesting. If Sotheby's accepts the DAO's bid, it will potentially bring much more money to charity than any individual bidder.
[+] [-] enragedcacti|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimkleiber|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps the argument is that the DAO is raising hype and therefore raising the price for the winning bid and the hype itself will increase the total going to charity, I just don't see how the DAO would necessarily be giving more to charity than an individual if the individual had a higher bid.
[+] [-] meken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holonomically|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keymone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TigeriusKirk|4 years ago|reply
But this one feels so rushed that I won't be surprised if scandals and controversies follow. A lot has to be done properly here, and there's a lot of places things can go wrong.
If the aftermath has problems that are too spectacular, it could cause trouble for more carefully planned efforts.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]