Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR)

• 🏟 🏀 ⛹🏽‍♂️ Princeton 3x3 DAO is holding our token sale in July …

  • … and Token Holders = Princeton 3x3 DAO Part-Owners. Stay tuned for our “Flight paper” which will explain the mechanics of our DAO in more detail, and what it will mean to be a Princeton 3x3 DAO token holder.

  • Princeton 3x3 DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is now a bonafide professional basketball franchise. Read FIBA’s article about Princeton 3x3 DAO here.

• 📝📝📝 Check out Princeton 3x3 DAO’s Front Office …

  • … if you (or someone you know) want to get involved in a global professional sports franchise in the web3 space. We’re looking for contributors, from people with skills or interest in basketball operations, basketball analytics, medical/training team, community building, etc …

• 🗣🗣🗣 Spread the word about Princeton 3x3 DAO …

  • … with anyone you think may be interested in joining our community, especially on Discord or by subscribing to this newsletter. We already have former military defense engineers, DAO builders, professional 3x3 coaches and players from several countries in our community, as well as long-time fans of Princeton 3x3.

  • We’d also love to know if you’d be interested in participating in the Princeton 3x3 DAO token sale this summer, owning a piece of the franchise, and having the option to eventually participate in governing our organization. If you know someone that might be interested in those things, please forward them this email!

• 🏀🏀🏀 Team Princeton 3x3 had an excellent start to the season at the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Masters Utsunomiya Opener. We finished in 2nd place. You can watch us knock off the world’s #1 team in the first game of the season at this link, and see the rest of the games there on the FIBA 3x3 YouTube channel.

• Team Chicago 3x3 made its debut played this weekend in the Novi Sad Challenger.

That’s the high level. And if you have more questions, feel free to reach out directly to princeton3x3@gmail.com. If you have some time on your hands, read on!

What we’re doing …

PRINCETON 3X3 DAO is a professional basketball organization that is built to WIN on the FIBA 3x3 World Tour. We’re chasing a FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final Championship this year, and every year. And we’re building a community around a premier basketball brand in a nascent, global, and instantly recognizable sport.

Interest in 3x3 basketball is exploding after the sports Tokyo 2021 Olympic debut. It’s reminiscent of when Beach Volleyball debuted in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Now, new fans, organizers, potential partners, and sponsors are trying to figure out how to get involved in 3x3.

Princeton 3x3 DAO can give it to them. We’re building America’s first professional FIBA 3x3 basketball organization. And there’s a lot we want to do. We’re building towards what FIBA 3x3 basketball looks like 10 years from now.

Our community has the opportunity to build the premier FIBA 3x3 basketball brand in this nascent, but fast-growing sport.

LET’S WIN A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP TOGETHER.

Princeton 3x3 is the USA’s most successful FIBA 3x3 basketball program. As you (likely) know, our journey through FIBA 3x3 has been done part-time. Now, that’s changing.

Our roster of six (Kareem Maddox, Damon Huffman, Craig Moore, Zahir Carrington, Robbie Hummel, and Canyon Barry) has split into two teams. Because of the world ranking we’ve earned over the past several seasons, we can split up, and field America’s top 2-ranked FIBA 3x3 teams: Team Princeton 3x3 and Team Chicago 3x3. And we’ve taken several steps towards building the basketball organization we need for this sport.

In April, we held a training camp/trials in Chicago (thanks to The Godfather of American 3x3 basketball, John W. Rogers Jr.) to begin to fill out our remaining roster spots. The new talent is really good.

You can see what happened at that training camp, and with the team, on Instagram.

In May, Team Princeton 3x3 played in the first FIBA 3x3 World Tour of the 2022 season in Utsunomiya, Japan. It was a great showing. We entered the tournament the #9-ranked team, and knocked off the number #1, #5, #6, and #8-ranked teams in the world before running out of gas in the final for a 2nd place finish to the #1-ranked team (we played them twice). Before the tournament began, we promised team Princeton was back in top form. We said what we wanted to say … and this is just the beginning.

Meanwhile, we’re building out our DAO …

How we’re doing it …

If you’re unfamiliar with them, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) are often described as a “group chat with a bank account.” They allow a distributed group of people to pool funds, and pursue a common mission. It seems like a new business model, but upon a closer look, DAOs have roots in organizational structures that people have experimented with for centuries. The difference is now we have the tools to enable collaboration and coordination over distance.

Now, small groups of autonomous people, spread across the world, and pursue ambitious goals and accomplish what would have been impossible just a few years ago. Like own a sports franchise.

In fact, a professional sports franchise is the perfect use case for a DAO. The mission with any sports franchise is simple: win. And the passion and loyalty of professional sports fans is second to no other brand category, except maybe certain colleges and university alumni.

What can we unlock by giving those same fans fractional ownership in the franchise and empowering them to help build it with whatever skills and relationships they have to offer?

A lot, as we’ve learned since our launch … 

We focused on community first. We wanted to grow the organization from the ground up, and find contributors that want to build it with us. Like McKenna …

Let us tell you about McKenna Haire.

McKenna is a graduate student at the University of Hawai’i, where she is also playing on the Women’s Basketball team. She joined Princeton 3x3 DAO Discord after seeing our first post on Instagram. She introduced herself and started to learn about our DAO’s mission and team.

Within 48 hours, she (along with a classmate – Kallin Spiller – she recruited) had written Princeton 3x3 DAO’s first-ever press release, and started to create a Princeton 3x3 DAO look-book and social media assets. Like these:

They took it a step further, and created a Branding Guide for Princeton 3x3 DAO. And we will pay these two in a combination of $USDC — the cryptocurrency tied to the US dollar — and $THREEX, our native DAO token that represents a fraction of ownership in Princeton 3x3 DAO.

This is exciting, and not just because of the quality of the work, which we think is excellent. In the space of a couple of days, two marketing graduate students have earned the opportunity to get paid to lead the brand direction for a professional sports franchise. We think that’s remarkable.

Princeton 3x3 DAO would be even stronger if we had 300 McKennas and Kallins with skills and expertise in Basketball Operations, Construction, Facility Management, Event Planning, Physical Therapy, so on and so forth …

With a community like that, we can win a world championship together.

How we got here …

This spring held a lot of learning and building, both on and off of the court. We joined the Krause House Accelerator. Krause House is a DAO that raised roughly $5mm and built a community around the mission to buy an NBA team. They were instrumental in getting us up to speed on how to effectively and successfully launch and run a DAO, and will be our partners in building as we go forward. We credit them for helping us find ways to expand our vision.

Our Asks ...

• Please spread the word about Princeton 3x3 DAO with anyone you think may be interested in joining our community, especially on Discord or by subscribing to this newsletter. if you know someone that might be interested, please send this email their way!

• We’d love to know if you’d be interested in participating in the Princeton 3x3 DAO token sale this summer, owning a piece of the franchise, and having the option to eventually participate in governing our organization.

• Or just a quick reply letting us know you’d like us to subscribe your email to our newsletter for occasional updates, or that you’d like us to say less (to you)! It’s all good.

& One,

Princeton 3x3 DAO

Kareem Maddox, Zahir Carrington, Craig Moore, Damon Huffman

Website: www.3x3dao.xyz

Discord: https://discord.gg/9T5s5nSwtS

Twitter: www.twitter.com/princeton3x3dao

Instagram: www.instagram.com/princeton3x3

America’s top FIBA 3X3 Basketball team aims to become the first professional sports franchise owned and operated by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) — giving its community an ownership stake in their mission to win a World Championship together.

CHICAGO (April 26, 2022) – Princeton 3X3 DAO is building America’s first professional FIBA 3x3 basketball franchise and will start this year’s campaign with a training camp this week in Chicago, Illinois. The city of Chicago was selected to host the training camp because of its strong ties to Princeton 3X3 DAO through Ariel Investments founder John W. Rogers Jr.

“We can build a world-class sports franchise that is built, governed, and operated by a community of true part-owners. Though the mechanism of a DAO will be new to many, it happens to be the perfect model for a FIBA 3x3 basketball franchise. Our fan base is already distributed across the globe, we don’t have a home base in any one place, and the roughly 15 professional tournaments we play in happen in cities across the world. And moreover, players are already owners of their teams. So by making Web3 our home, and sharing that ownership, we can create a first-of-its-kind model for professional sports ownership. This week’s training camp is our first step toward making this vision a reality.”  --- Princeton 3x3

Coach Sydney Johnson (Air Force/Princeton University) will lead the roster of twelve players, six of which are returning to the court for Princeton 3X3 DAO. Kareem Maddox (Princeton University), Damon Huffman (Brown University), Craig Moore (Northwestern), Zahir Carrington (Lehigh), Canyon Barry (College of Charleston/Florida), and Robbie Hummel (Purdue) are the top six players in the FIBA 3X3 national rankings, respectively, and will all be in Chicago.

Six newcomers will join this core of players at training camp including Dan Alexander (Texas A&M/Grand Canyon), Austin Butler (Holy Cross/UNC Charlotte), Jérôme Desrosiers (Princeton University/Hawai’i), Alex Johnson (NC State), King McClure (Baylor), and Isaiah Wilkerson (NJIT).  

This week’s training camp will set the stage for the franchise’s fifth FIBA 3x3 Pro Circuit season as Princeton 3X3 DAO looks to add to their 4 USAB National Championships, their silver medal in the 2019 FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final, as well as support players in contention for spots on the USA’s FIBA 3x3 World Cup and AmeriCup teams in 2022. The camp is being hosted and sponsored by both Ariel Investments and Swish House.

The franchise is currently scouting contributors who want to actively participate in its history-making decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). With DAOs on the rise and the franchise’s token launch on the horizon, Princeton 3x3 DAO is welcoming contributors with all skill sets and backgrounds. Princeton 3x3 DAO is specifically looking for expertise in brand, sponsor, and partnership work, basketball operations, media, and content creation, community building, and event planning.

Related Links:

Website: www.3x3dao.xyz

Discord: https://discord.gg/YfXEaBpt

Twitter: www.twitter.com/princeton3x3dao

Instagram: www.instagram.com/princeton3x3

And America’s #1-ranked FIBA 3x3 basketball team is building a community that is out to WIN A GOLD MEDAL TOGETHER.

And to do it, we’re going to build a first-of-its-kind basketball franchise that is owned and operated by our community. Eventually, we’re going to create the first basketball franchise completely operated by our community of owners.

Welcome to Princeton 3x3 DAO

First, things first. What is FIBA 3x3 basketball?

3x3 basketball became an official sport in 2012, when basketball international governing body (FIBA) launched the 3x3 player community and tournament network. In 2021, it debuted in the Tokyo Olympics.

Think of FIBA 3x3 basketball like Professional Tennis.

In Tennis, there are a few marquee events every year. They are the Grand Slam tournaments: The Australian Open, The US Open, Wimbledon, The French Open. These are worth the most points that contribute to a players ranking, and have the most prize money available to win.

FIBA 3x3 follows a similar model. Our “Grand Slams” are FIBA 3x3 World Tour events, which culminate in the World Tour final in December.

And the sport has grown. It may be similar to the way that beach volleyball exploded in popularity after its debut at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games.

So who is Princeton 3x3?

Princeton 3x3 is America’s #1 ranked FIBA 3x3 basketball team. To date, Princeton has:

• 4 USAB National Championships [via USA Basketball]

• 4 FIBA 3x3 World Cup Gold Medals [via Team USA]

• 1 Pan American Games Gold Medal [via ESPN]

• 2 FIBA 3x3 AmeriCup Gold Medals [via Olympics.com]

• 2nd Place in 2019 FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final [via FIBA]

• $400,000+ earned on the FIBA 3x3 World Tour

Our origin story begins with the man we call the “Godfather” of American 3x3 Basketball, John W. Rogers Jr. Yes, the man that beat Michael Jordan in 1-on-1 in front of a crowd full of c-suite executives with Damon Wayans narrating.

After graduating from Princeton University — where he played for legendary coach Pete Carril — in 1980, John entered every 3-on-3 basketball tournament he could find with his friends, just because he loved the game. As his company, Ariel Investments, achieved success and John and his friends began to play less, he started bringing in younger players from the Princeton basketball family to field teams for tournaments around the country. Legends like Arne Duncan, Tavaras Hardy, Kit Mueller, and George Leftwich are just a few of the players that have played for Ariel Slow and Steady teams (which would become Princeton 3x3).

By the time FIBA professionalized 3x3, Princeton’s current team had more or less coalesced under John’s mentorship. Kareem Maddox (#1-ranked in America) played at Princeton under Sydney Johnson. Craig Moore played at Northwestern University under Bill Carmody. Damon Huffman played at Brown University under Craig Robinson. Zahir Carrington, Robbie Hummel, and Canyon Barry all joined the team as we branched out and sought to tackle the international FIBA 3x3 World Tour in earnest in 2018.

We’re going to dive into our backstory in another post, but here’s what’s important now: Because of Princeton 3x3’s FIBA 3x3 ranking, we can begin the 2022 season, with the top 2-ranked American teams — and build towards winning the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final and chasing that #1-world ranking, which is always our goal.

But it also gives us the opportunity to create a Decentalized Autonomous Organization (DAO) around our mission to win a gold medal.

Welcome to Princeton 3x3 DAO

We are gathering a community around our top American teams now, and building a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that owns and operates professional teams on the FIBA 3x3 World Tour.

We see a world-class sports organization. From the brand, to the facility, to events, to media ... all built and governed from within the Princeton 3x3 DAO community.

Dream-hoping

• We want our community to build a facility that is a home base for not just Princeton 3x3 teams, but a revenue generating, built-for-media, first-of-it’s-kind (in the USA) facility that our community shares access to.

• We want to reward fans for watching our teams, and helping us grow the sport of FIBA 3x3 basketball.

• We want our fans to become owners, and help us grow the sport on 3x3 basketball in the USA.

• We want to host global FIBA 3x3 events (which can be done this year, if we really put our minds to it).

• And we want to WIN A GOLD MEDAL TOGETHER. In Paris 2024, then Los Angeles 2028, then Brisbane 2032, and so on and so forth.

Together, we’ll figure out how members of Princeton 3x3 DAO can participate in decisions that affect our FIBA 3x3 World Tour teams. One day, we hope members of our DAO will have learned enough to spin up their own team DAOs. When players and fans are both owners, everyone can truly share in on-court success in a meaningful way.

Together, we can create the model for the sports franchise of the future. Starting right now ...

More Bonafides ...

We are honored to be able to say that we graduates of the first Krause House DAO Accelerator. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re the ones pioneering the sports ownership movement into web3. They — we, excuse me, are going to buy an NBA team. #WAGBAT

What next?

In the weeks to come, Princeton 3x3 DAO will launch for the 2022 FIBA 3x3 season. We’re scouting contributors who want to actively participate in our mission to win a gold medal together. All skill sets and skill levels are welcome, and we want to talk to anyone with expertise in:

• Brand, sponsor, and partnership work

• Basketball operations

• Media and content creation

• Community building

• Event planning

We’re building the world’s first fan-owned professional basketball franchise. Let’s win a gold medal together.

Website: www.3x3dao.xyz

Twitter: www.twitter.com/princeton3x3dao

Instagram: www.instagram.com/princeton3x3

https://discord.gg/wBkPSCGQ