However, the concept gradually spread. By 2018, about 10 DAOs had been formed. According to DeepDAO, in 2020, there are nearly 200 DAOs of various types. Yes, embarrassing incidents continued, including many "rug pulls" - scammers collecting funds for the DAO's cryptocurrency offerings and then absconding with their loot, as recently as January of this year, BadgerDAO, an organization with 24,000 members , which lets people stake their bitcoins to earn interest, lost $120 million in a cyberattack.

According to OpenZeppelin, more than 50 companies offer blockchain security audits today. The number of DAOs is also proliferating — there are now over 4,000 with over $8 billion in their treasuries.

The global treasury management industry currently has over $100 trillion in assets, and Syndicate co-founder Ian Lee predicts that DAOs will hold at least 2% of assets within 10 years and are increasingly entering large pools of funds such as stocks and real estate.

What is PleasrDAO?

PleasrDAO is a collective of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists who have built a strong and benevolent reputation for acquiring culturally significant works with a charitable touch. Since The DAO purchased its founding work, plpleasr's Uniswap V3 NFT, the DAO has grown and advanced its mission to collect digital art that represents and funds important ideas, movements, and causes, commemorated on-chain as NFTs. PleasrDAO has set a precedent for bidding on unique works, many of which have powerful messages beyond cryptocurrencies.

Origin of PlaesrDAO

PleasrDAO started by quickly organizing on Twitter to form a Decentralized Autonomous Organization to purchase plpleasr’s genesis NFT. The animation, titled x*y=k, was created to celebrate the release of Uniswap V3, and all proceeds from the auction are intended to help the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as other minority groups - PleasrDAO made it clear They want to include it in their collection.

In addition, the thesis of PleasrDAO is starting to take shape. It stands for community, freedom and decentralization. It is a collective built by and for the community. While its early stages have been collecting iconic works, PleasrDAO looks forward to democratizing ownership of the DAO and the works within it.

However, the 40 members of PleasrDAO did not disband after collecting their first NFT. Instead, they doubled down on their vision and strategy, and soon raised interest again by collecting Edward Snowden's Stay Free NFT for 2,224 ETH (~$5.5 million) on April 16th . pay attention to. In addition to being in the news for its high sale price, the purchase of PleasrDAO also demonstrates the potential for DAOs to come together and pool funds in order to own high-value NFTs as a collective. Harnessing the power of smart contracts, PleasrDAO is one of many emerging DAOs that are forming to distribute digital ownership, giving each member a fraction of their assets. And, as a collective entity, they want to support good causes, stating that their goal is to collect NFTs that should "belong to the people."

Investment Case

PleasrDAO thus sets a precedent for bidding on unique works, many of which have powerful messages beyond the realm of cryptography, including:

Stay Free: NFT released by one of the most important whistleblowers in American history, Edward Snowden. The acquisition will directly support his nonprofit foundation, Freedom of the Press, which funds and protects free speech around the world.

Dreaming at Dusk: A historic and artistic take on the Tor Project's first onion service. The purchase of this artwork will support the nonprofit's efforts to protect online privacy and anonymity for all.

Doge: The only one of Dogecoin 's original NFTs, an iconic piece of internet history and one of the most popular memes of the decade.

Although most of its members have never met in person, and some remain anonymous, PleasrDAo has a philosophy: PleasrDAO distributes DAO ownership in the form of tokens, which allow each member to receive a portion of their assets -- Two NFTs and funds in the treasury. Each member participates in the governance of the DAO through group chat. And if someone quits the DAO, their tokens will be distributed internally to other members. PleasrDAO's chief "pleasure officer" Jamis Johnson is responsible for coordinating and managing PleasrDAO's strategy; one of his frequent refrains is "more like a CEO role, but more interesting".

Why PleasrDAO invests in NFTs

On April 27, 2021, Foundation.app interviewed PleasrDAO's chief "pleasure" officer "Jamis Johnson" about how the group came together to buy the fourth most expensive NFT ever sold.

According to the chief "please" officer, pplpleasr's work was chosen because she is an original DeFi artist and everyone in the crypto space knows her influence. For PleasrDAO, there is long-term value in investing in her work as she has that long-term reputation in the space and has turned MeMe in DeFi into truly beautiful art. She also donates all sales proceeds to Asian Pacific American organizations, which is also an incentive. Everyone at PleasrDAO is from cryptocurrency, so they want to support causes with positive incentives.

Since most members of PleasrDAO have programming backgrounds, they all recognize and appreciate Snowden's contributions to the field. The auction combined donations to the Freedom of the Press Foundation with personal freedom, and it really touched them.

If you program long enough, you'll start to see how much government influences individual freedoms online -- which also makes this an important cause for PleasrDAO.

PleasrDAO and NFTs

PleasrDAO is a native of DeFi. There are enough art collectors in the crypto world, and PleasrDAO is not trying to compete with them. It has an internal distribution of tokens, and more tokens are distributed each round - and, ultimately, PleasrDAO also wants the public to be involved so that everyone gets a share of ownership and uses some pricing mechanism in the public circulation.

In addition, PleasrDAO plans to define industry standards, drive the development of the entire system, and demonstrate the possibilities of DAOs from a technical perspective. Ultimately, the team will do things like show art, but they want to move more towards integrating smart contracts in the first place. You're getting a DAO and a collection of DAOs, and one DAO all the way. The DAO shares collective assets, whether it's an investment or an art portfolio, but all of a sudden you can divide your art and that part of the divide makes itself a managed DAO, so voting stake.

PleasrDAO's future vision

After buying Snowden NFTs, the future direction of PleasrDAO is still inconclusive.

But the main three goals will be art collecting, angel investment and incubation.

The group wants to make angel investments in early-stage projects, similar to MetaCartel -- but with a focus on NFTs. The members of PleasrDAO are very talented, many of them are venture capitalists, programmers and artists. The group hopes to use the coffers to advance the space and support the teams that are doing it.

PleasrDAO is also interested in being an incubator for people with huge, unique ideas that don’t necessarily get productized or turned into a full protocol. The organization hopes that people can pitch ideas internally and then allocate some of the funding to them. Ultimately, PleasrDAO is allocating resources to more exploratory ideas to help move things forward.

PleasrDAO Team Profile

Jamis Johnson - Jamis Johnson is the Chief Delight Officer of PleasrDAO. He is a machine learning engineer, blockchain investor, motorcycle enthusiast, elderly skateboarder, New York City history buff, crossword puzzler, cross stitch enthusiast, armchair economist, and stand-up comedian.

Tarun Chitra - Founder and CEO of Gauntlet. Tarun is an alumnus of DE Shaw Research (DESRES), Vatic Labs (an HFT company) and Cornell University. He entered the blockchain industry in 2011 when he was working on ASICs at DESRES and observed Bitcoin ASIC miners significantly delaying ASIC production at DESRES. For the past seven years, he has been working on simulation-based R&D at the intersection of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, and applying this knowledge to the blockchain ecosystem.

Matt Condon - Full stack software engineer with a strong interest in the developer community, blockchain and infrastructure. Matt is currently trading for PaperclipDAO, hosts Digitally Rare, is part of the Steak network, and is currently building XLNT.