The Juicebox protocol has its eyes set on the FIFA World Cup this year. A new project called Defifa is set to launch on November 5th, and will allow players to purchase NFT flags of any of the 32 World Cup teams set to play this year.

(example of the Argentina flag NFT)

Where it gets it exciting is when the World Cup starts. From the first kick-off, all NFTs become non redeemable. The treasury that has amassed all the ETH for the NFTs will become locked, as well. As each phase of the World Cup takes place, the NFTs claim on the treasury will change proportional to their finalist ranking. Midway through the World Cup, the NFTs will also become non-transferable, meaning holders will be locked into waiting for the outcome of the games. At the end of the competition, all participants must ratify a scorecard to attest to the accurate results of the World Cup, at which point the NFTs will be come unlocked and can make their claim on the treasury. So if you purchased an NFT of a team that ended up winning, redeeming that NFT at the end of the World Cup could give you back more than you paid for it. For a short video breakdown, check out this explainer on twitter.

A protocol more flexible than an olympic gymnast​

The entire defifa.net is run on the very same protocol that ran ConstitutionDAO last year, and that is currently bringing Art Gobblers to the market (the new project by Rick and Morty co-Founder Justin Roiland). But for Defifa, there were some important tweaks.

The protocol has no idea who will win or lose in the world cup, and who will get knocked out. While one obvious solution is to appeal to an off-chain oracle, a much more interesting one was to have the NFT holders participate themselves. When a new game has happened, anybody can submit a scorecard which NFT holders must then vote on to ratify. Doing this allows the protocol to run more purely, but it also introduces some interesting dynamics.

A game of chance or cooperation?​

Anybody working on defifa will tell you that this is a grand experiment, the outcome of which can’t be predicted. In theory, the game should run smoothly— NFTs are minted, held, participants vote and at the end the NFTs can be redeemed against the treasury with their new (adjusted by the game’s outcomes) value. But what if that doesn’t happen?

What if some people refuse to vote, or vote in bad faith? Or what if so many people purchase the NFT of a favored team, that the claim on the treasury between all those holders is actually quite small? Statistically speaking, what is the expected value of purchasing a highly favored versus a long-shot team, and when does it make sense to trade your NFT and when doesn’t it? The beauty is that nobody knows, and those that play will all find out in real-time.

Where to learn more?​

Head over to defifa.net to learn some of the details of each game phase and to see the NFTs offered. To hear a short podcast episode with the defifa.net creator, jango, head on over to spotify. And if you’d just like to hang out and say hi, come to the Juicebox discord and feel free to ask any questions there.

ComicsDAO formed in June 2022. It set out to create a DAO with the purpose of purchasing rare comics, scanning them, and then allowing members of ComicsDAO to digitally “rent” the comic so that they can read them in their original form. The idea was that rare original comics are aesthetically unique and should not be locked away indefinitely in some private collection. (More in-depth article about ComicsDAO here!)

ComicsDAO used Juicebox as its treasury. It sold its own token (”$COMICS”) to enable membership verification and for eventual voting rights. It also explored partnerships with other DAOs and organizations, and it used its Juicebox treasury to store any payments it received. It is actively operating as of the publication of this article, and you can check out its juicebox project page here.

I sat down with Gogo, the chief DAO operator behind ComicsDAO, to get his take on how the project came to life. Here’s how the project was configured, how it changed it’s configurations over time, and why.

Config breakdown​

Distribution Limit - $2500 with eventual change to $1500

“We started with a breakdown of what we needed to get this off the ground. I needed $1500 per funding cycle, and Adam (the founder) got $1,000. We also have an artist, Gabo, who I pay about 500 per funding cycle to.”

“So we knew operating expenses for the three of us were going to be $2500, and then we wanted to fund raise more than that to purchase rare comics. After the first two funding cycles, our founder Adam decided to forgo his $1000, to make sure the runway of the project could be longer (actually, he also gave back the $2000 he received from the first two cycles!). So our distribution limit has been set at $1500 since then.”

Duration - 14 days

“We picked this just because a lot of communities we wanted to work with or know are also on 14 day durations, and so we figured it would be good to sync with them.

Discount rate - 10%, then recently changed to 2%

“Early on, we wanted to go pretty aggressive to really incentivize early contributors, so we had a 10% rate. Once the bear market hit, we felt like maybe that big discount rate will scare away people, since now people were way less likely to invest in fun projects like ComicsDAO. So we decided recently to change it to 2%. This still gives some incentive to earlier contributors, but it makes it much more attractive for people to jump in later too.”

Redemption rate - 90%

“We had some conversations about this. We felt like a really low rate was kind of punishing, but a full on 100% rate was almost like charity. We felt like 90% was a good middle ground, where there is some bonus for sticking around longer, but it’s not a punishment.”

Reserve rate - 20% for most of ComicsDAO history, but recently adjusted to 50%

“We started it at 20% to incentivize early contributors. Those first contributors got a huge amount of tokens, and so it was a good reason to contribute early. After the bear market and as ComicsDAO started growing in partnerships, we decided we want the DAO to have more control in voting and its future. For that reason we put up the reserve rate to 50%, which gives us a good bit of control and safety as the DAO keeps expanding.”

Reconfiguration delay - 3 days

“This is just a good and safe few days so that we can make changes or stop anything we missed or an attack on the DAOs safety or treasury. It doesn’t make the governance go too slow, but it gives us a lot of peace of mind and control.”

How they’re leveraging Juicebox tooling to raise money​

“We’ve created some NFTs and are looking forward to using the Juicebox tiered NFT rewards system. The idea is we can sell different NFTs according to different contribution amounts. We’re also in partnership with Nouns which we hope will bring some revenue to the DAO and build our community. With Nouns, we will get 10% of the profit of the project we are partnering on, which is the creation of a comic book series and covers.

“Right now, the token doesn’t have much utility for us, but we are very careful in how we give it out in the configs because we will be using the token for our governance. We will also be using tokens to ensure membership for when we lend out the NFT rare comics that we have scanned (token and certain NFT holders will be able to access the library).

“The goal is to decentralize progressively. We’re still in a kind of central stage right now, but as our community and governance systems grows we hope to fully decentralize.”

Thanks and gratitude​

“A big thank-you to filipv who helped me set up the configs, and to the JB community in general. Also a thank-you to Adam, our founder, and Gabobena, our artist at ComicsDAO. Stay tuned and follow us on twitter!”

Want to create your own web3 org or business?

Head over the juicebox.money and check out some of the awesome tooling they’ve got. You can set up a business treasury and structure in under 10 minutes and be a web3 operator in no time!