On Sunday night, we went to see Hamilton live. What a show. Being in a theatre again, surrounded by people, having a shared experience, watching what is probably the best musical of my generation - I was blown away. Seeing it on Disney+ just doesn’t compare (even if it was the original cast… 🙄).
As much as I loved all that, my favorite part of the show was one small moment. In front of us was a grandmother and her [I’d guess 6 year old] grandson. It was clear from the moment they sat down that he was a super fan. He was staring awestruck at the empty stage, shuffling in his seat to make sure he could see without obstruction. No phone, no distractions - just pure joy.
About halfway into the show, I caught a glimpse of the pair of them. They happened to look at each other, smile, and laugh. Boom! Man, I was touched and almost teary-eyed. Such a brief, intimate moment, shared through 3 generations, inspired by events of 250 years ago.
The play really instills a patriotism that I think has been tough to find recently among the myriad of issues we’re deluged with every day. A constant reminder that we can do big things, we live in a great place, with great people, always striving to make this country better than it was yesterday. And that can get lost sometimes. I came out of that show feeling inspired. And that’s when I happened to start reading about the Constitution DAO.
Tangent:: What a great way to teach American history! Tbh, I thought this was one of the more boring subjects as I was growing up. It’s not that long, not too many wars, not too many epic characters… (These apparently are the attributes I ascribe to ‘interesting’ history). If I could have learned about our founding fathers via a rap musical, things would’ve been very different.
A group of over 5000 people have come together to place a bid to buy one of the 11 original copies of the US Constitution. Last sold in 1988 for $165,000 (~$386K in 2021 USD), it is being auctioned off this Thursday by Sotheby’s for an estimated $15-20MM.
What is a DAO? A DAO is a ‘decentralized autonomous organization’ formed using Web3 technologies, allowing for decentralized ownership. This structure has already been used for digital goods (Friends with Benefits) and physical goods (buying Wu Tang’s album, formerly owned by the notorious Martin Shkreli). Lots of good info here.
What a crazy idea. But I really do think it’s one that the OG cast of Hamilton (aka the Founding Fathers) would’ve loved. The people of this country (and even around the world) coming together to preserve the most important governing document of our country.
The goals are simple: raise enough funds to buy it, safely maintain it, and showcase it in a place that is free to the public, where anyone can appreciate it.
The fascinating parts here are how quickly this whole thing came together and what is now possible in the Web3 world. The founding team came up with the idea ~1 week ago, reached out to some key people in the space, and it has grown exponentially, purely organically. Over 1,250 ETH or $5.4MM (!) has been raised so far, with more coming in every minute. I’ve made a small contribution, as I think this is a cause worth preserving and will be another fascinating moment in the next phase of the internet.
5K+ perfect strangers (and growing), coming together for a common good. Using the power of new technology to do something previously impossible. Wooow.
Of course, should mention that they’re using a combination of new technology, scarcity (only a week to get the funds!), memes (heavy Nic Cage references), and a whole new organizational structure required to sustain a project of this magnitude. Folks across Twitter, Discord, and others constantly posting wagbtc aka ‘We are gonna buy the constitution!’
@ilemi created a KPI dashboard for the initiative here. One of my favorite parts of all this? No one user owning more than 5% and median contribution @ 0.05 ETH.
https://dune.xyz/ilemi/ConstitutionDAO-Funding-Tracker
I still don’t know if Web3 is capitalist, socialist, libertarian… Or some combination of the three. Users have an opportunity for high returns (capitalist?), contribute their time / resources to a larger social good (socialist?), leveraging distributed ownership that is independent of any institutional financial system (libertarian?). Time will tell.
But for now, Web3 and Hamilton have a lot in common. Cause Web3 is
"just like my country, I'm young, scrappy, and hungry." - Lin Manuel Miranda / Alexander Hamilton
For more info, Packy McCormick’s post on buying the constitution goes even deeper:
https://www.notboring.co/p/lets-buy-the-us-constitution
Contributions accepted here. And info on how to contribute here.