FiatLux is a collective of UC Berkeley alumni that came together over ~48 hours to pool together funds to bid on the first of two Nobel NFTs that UC Berkeley plans to mint, and grew into something much larger: A DAO with the mission of highlighting the importance of science and technology to society, while leveraging the power of crypto to fund breakthrough academic research in novel & more accessible ways. As the dust settles following the close of UC Berkeley's historic Nobel NFT auction and the excitement surrounding FiatLux's win, we wanted to take this opportunity to explain how and why FiatLux came together.

NFT

Just over three weeks ago, UC Berkeley made history as the first university to mint an NFT representing Nobel-prize winning research: the original invention disclosure of Jim Allison's work on cancer immunotherapy (the university also plans to mint an NFT representing Jennifer Doudna's work on CRISPR-Cas9). These invention disclosures, documenting the earliest stages of some of the most significant discoveries of the 21st century, represent critical moments in history.

The Fourth Pillar (UC Berkeley, 2021), designed by Maggie Valentine, depicts 10 never-before-public documents detailing Jim Allison's 1996 invention, “Blockade of T-Lymphocyte Down-Regulation Associated with CTLA-4 Signaling.” It describes a way to turn off the immune system’s aversion to attacking tumors, which Jim Allison demonstrated worked in mice while working as a professor at Berkeley. The disclosure includes hand written notes that reveal his understanding of the magnitude of this discovery, which established immunotherapy as the "fourth pillar" of cancer treatment alongside surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. This NFT not only represents profoundly powerful and life saving research, but also expands the scope and utility of NFTs. It was especially meaningful to Berkeley alumni since the bulk of the proceeds will go directly towards funding continued research at our alma mater, with a small portion reserved for Blockchain at Berkeley.

When we heard about the auction and internalized how momentous this event was, we thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Cal alumni were the ones who owned this historic NFT?" Some of us were members of existing DAOs and immediately thought that spinning up a DAO would be the best way to make this happen. We weren't sure if we were being too ambitious — it was a little over a day before the auction — but we decided it was worth it to try anyway. Crypto as an industry is full of experimentation, with huge ambitions to redefine finance, the internet, and corporate governance. In this spirit, we felt inspired to create something that had never existed before — an alumni DAO. We felt so strongly that this should exist that we convinced the UC Berkeley team to delay the auction so we could try to pull it all together. That gave us the weekend to launch FiatLux.

Somewhat ironically, technology was the easiest part of launching FiatLux. The more difficult part was the rapid coordination of a large group of people in an incredibly short period of time. To add to the chaos, this all took place during the Miami Bitcoin Conference. It was really Berkeley's crypto-native alumni base that made it possible for us to move so fast in forming and funding the DAO. Everyone already had ETH in their wallets, was familiar with how a a multi-sig worked, understood the difference between public/private keys and signing/sending addresses, knew we needed to have extra reserves for gas fees for on-chain voting/bidding, and most importantly, understood what this NFT could mean for the future of research and contributing to technological innovation.

https://twitter.com/thatguyintech/status/1403946894515003396

Medha and Justine were both part of Komorebi Collective, an investment DAO that recently launched. As a result of that experience, they were able to guide the group in forming the DAO. We were familiar with Syndicate Protocol, a crypto project founded by fellow Cal alum Ian Lee, and knew they would be a critical part of getting FiatLux up and running quickly. We reached out and they were incredibly excited about the idea, working with us over the weekend to make FiatLux a reality. We are so grateful our friends and fellow alumni trusted our vision, which was evolving throughout the process, and were so enthusiastic to commit to the DAO in its very early stages. Social trust was key — in the end we are a collective of friends and coworkers with a shared a set of values that wanted to come together to do something meaningful.

Even so, bringing 33 alum together asynchronously in 48 hours required two shifts of core members (east and west coast) working nearly 24 hours straight to coordinate. We set the minimum contribution at 0.5 ETH, so recent grads and current students could join, but the DAO didn't have any ETH in our wallet just one hour prior to the start of the auction. Yet, we ended up with the winning bid of 22 ETH (~$55,000 at the time of purchase). Albert, a FiatLux member, said it best: "It was blur, but in the best way."

We believe the future of funding will be made up of communities like ours coming together entirely online to co-invest in causes they care deeply about. With the launch of FiatLux, we join the ranks of many other mission-driven DAOs that we admire. We see a future in which we collaborate with these DAOs to create a larger impact than we could on our own through meta-governance and joint ventures. We also view FiatLux as the first-in-class of what will be many collectives on university campuses.

https://twitter.com/ronenkirsh/status/1402714211625713665

UC Berkeley's motto, translates to "let there be light" and FiatLux draws upon Berkeley's 150 year tradition of bringing light to new knowledge. We view this as a sort of MVP for a completely new way of funding and contributing to academic research, which is usually gate-kept with high barriers to entry, but with crypto can be made more accessible. If PleasrDAO is akin to an Internet MoMa, we view FiatLux as a digital Smithsonian, demonstrating not only the importance of science and technology to society but also the real world impact that crypto can have.

• Core Members:

  • Medha Kothari, cLabs, she256

  • Justine Humenansky, Playground Global

  • Ratan Kaliani, Blockchain at Berkeley

  • Ava Payman, Blockchain at Berkeley

  • Nick Zoghb, Google

  • Andrew Tu, Efficient Frontier

• Members:

  • Maggie Valentine, Uniswap

  • Jonathan Allen, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Decrypt Capital

  • Akash Khosla, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Anchorage

  • Ronen Kirsh, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Decrypt Capital

  • Kevin Chou, Rally

  • Sina Nader, FTX

  • Sunny Aggarwal, Sikka

  • Alexis Gauba, Opyn, She256

  • Aparna Krishnan, Opyn

  • Zubin Koticha, Opyn

  • Anthony DiPrinzio, Aleo

  • Dmitriy Berenzon, 1kx

  • Anjan Vinod, ParaFi

  • Ashley Lannquist, World Economic Forum

  • Luca Consentino, Oasis Labs

  • Albert Hu, Samsara

FiatLux is a collective of UC Berkeley alumni that came together over ~48 hours to pool together funds to bid on the first of two Nobel NFTs that UC Berkeley plans to mint, and grew into something much larger: A DAO with the mission of highlighting the importance of science and technology to society, while leveraging the power of crypto to fund breakthrough academic research in novel & more accessible ways. As the dust settles following the close of UC Berkeley's historic Nobel NFT auction and the excitement surrounding FiatLux's win, we wanted to take this opportunity to explain how and why FiatLux came together.

NFT

Just over three weeks ago, UC Berkeley made history as the first university to mint an NFT representing Nobel-prize winning research: the original invention disclosure of Jim Allison's work on cancer immunotherapy (the university also plans to mint an NFT representing Jennifer Doudna's work on CRISPR-Cas9). These invention disclosures, documenting the earliest stages of some of the most significant discoveries of the 21st century, represent critical moments in history.

The Fourth Pillar (UC Berkeley, 2021), designed by Maggie Valentine, depicts 10 never-before-public documents detailing Jim Allison's 1996 invention, “Blockade of T-Lymphocyte Down-Regulation Associated with CTLA-4 Signaling.” It describes a way to turn off the immune system’s aversion to attacking tumors, which Jim Allison demonstrated worked in mice while working as a professor at Berkeley. The disclosure includes hand written notes that reveal his understanding of the magnitude of this discovery, which established immunotherapy as the "fourth pillar" of cancer treatment alongside surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. This NFT not only represents profoundly powerful and life saving research, but also expands the scope and utility of NFTs. It was especially meaningful to Berkeley alumni since the bulk of the proceeds will go directly towards funding continued research at our alma mater, with a small portion reserved for Blockchain at Berkeley.

When we heard about the auction and internalized how momentous this event was, we thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Cal alumni were the ones who owned this historic NFT?" Some of us were members of existing DAOs and immediately thought that spinning up a DAO would be the best way to make this happen. We weren't sure if we were being too ambitious — it was a little over a day before the auction — but we decided it was worth it to try anyway. Crypto as an industry is full of experimentation, with huge ambitions to redefine finance, the internet, and corporate governance. In this spirit, we felt inspired to create something that had never existed before — an alumni DAO. We felt so strongly that this should exist that we convinced the UC Berkeley team to delay the auction so we could try to pull it all together. That gave us the weekend to launch FiatLux.

Somewhat ironically, technology was the easiest part of launching FiatLux. The more difficult part was the rapid coordination of a large group of people in an incredibly short period of time. To add to the chaos, this all took place during the Miami Bitcoin Conference. It was really Berkeley's crypto-native alumni base that made it possible for us to move so fast in forming and funding the DAO. Everyone already had ETH in their wallets, was familiar with how a a multi-sig worked, understood the difference between public/private keys and signing/sending addresses, knew we needed to have extra reserves for gas fees for on-chain voting/bidding, and most importantly, understood what this NFT could mean for the future of research and contributing to technological innovation.

https://twitter.com/thatguyintech/status/1403946894515003396

Medha and Justine were both part of Komorebi Collective, an investment DAO that recently launched. As a result of that experience, they were able to guide the group in forming the DAO. We were familiar with Syndicate Protocol, a crypto project founded by fellow Cal alum Ian Lee, and knew they would be a critical part of getting FiatLux up and running quickly. We reached out and they were incredibly excited about the idea, working with us over the weekend to make FiatLux a reality. We are so grateful our friends and fellow alumni trusted our vision, which was evolving throughout the process, and were so enthusiastic to commit to the DAO in its very early stages. Social trust was key — in the end we are a collective of friends and coworkers with a shared a set of values that wanted to come together to do something meaningful.

Even so, bringing 33 alum together asynchronously in 48 hours required two shifts of core members (east and west coast) working nearly 24 hours straight to coordinate. We set the minimum contribution at 0.5 ETH, so recent grads and current students could join, but the DAO didn't have any ETH in our wallet just one hour prior to the start of the auction. Yet, we ended up with the winning bid of 22 ETH (~$55,000 at the time of purchase). Albert, a FiatLux member, said it best: "It was blur, but in the best way."

We believe the future of funding will be made up of communities like ours coming together entirely online to co-invest in causes they care deeply about. With the launch of FiatLux, we join the ranks of many other mission-driven DAOs that we admire. We see a future in which we collaborate with these DAOs to create a larger impact than we could on our own through meta-governance and joint ventures. We also view FiatLux as the first-in-class of what will be many collectives on university campuses.

https://twitter.com/ronenkirsh/status/1402714211625713665

UC Berkeley's motto, translates to "let there be light" and FiatLux draws upon Berkeley's 150 year tradition of bringing light to new knowledge. We view this as a sort of MVP for a completely new way of funding and contributing to academic research, which is usually gate-kept with high barriers to entry, but with crypto can be made more accessible. If PleasrDAO is akin to an Internet MoMa, we view FiatLux as a digital Smithsonian, demonstrating not only the importance of science and technology to society but also the real world impact that crypto can have.

• Core Members:

  • Medha Kothari, cLabs, she256

  • Justine Humenansky, Playground Global

  • Ratan Kaliani, Blockchain at Berkeley

  • Ava Payman, Blockchain at Berkeley

  • Nick Zoghb, Google

  • Andrew Tu, Efficient Frontier

• Members:

  • Maggie Valentine, Uniswap

  • Jonathan Allen, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Decrypt Capital

  • Akash Khosla, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Anchorage

  • Ronen Kirsh, co-founder Blockchain at Berkeley, Decrypt Capital

  • Kevin Chou, Rally

  • Sina Nader, FTX

  • Sunny Aggarwal, Sikka

  • Alexis Gauba, Opyn, She256

  • Aparna Krishnan, Opyn

  • Zubin Koticha, Opyn

  • Anthony DiPrinzio, Aleo

  • Dmitriy Berenzon, 1kx

  • Anjan Vinod, ParaFi

  • Ashley Lannquist, World Economic Forum

  • Luca Consentino, Oasis Labs

  • Albert Hu, Samsara