The Bulletin Bored: Increased DAO Participation

Contributions to this week's newsletter made by @maariabajwa

Welcome back to another issue of The Bulletin Bored, where I provide news, metrics, and other information on the Apecoin DAO and broader BAYC ecosystem. With voting participation trending down for most of DAO’s existence, the number of unique voters has been trending up the past two months. Let’s see if it continues.

• Yuga Labs welcomed the first BAYC community council including Laura Rod, Josh Ong, Wave, Negi, Ethan, Sera, and Peter Fang

• We received an early look at Sandbox Miami 2035 over the weekend

• Ape Foundation to release a Governance Document on 10/15

A few days ago, I shared the September Apecoin DAO Voting Recap. In case you missed it, here is the tweet below.

While 11.32% of wallets voting on all nine proposals might seem awfully low, it’s actually much higher than it has been in past months. Let’s see if the increased voting turnouts continue to close out the year.

There are two proposals currently in the live voting stage, with voting concluding on Wednesday (10/12) at 9pm EST.

AIP-94: A pilot episode for Otherside animated anthology

The author of this proposal, Swarm, plans to make an Otherside animated anthology. This proposal is asking for $100,000 to create the pilot episode and receive feedback from the community if they want to continue with a full series. It mentions the pilot episode would take four months to produce. Below are the current voting results.

AIP-106: POAP Voting Rewards

0xSword is proposing to setup a system that distributes POAPs to people who vote on proposals. It is asking for 400 Apecoin to be used as rewards for the art contest. Anyone is welcome to submit their POAP artwork either by submitting it on Discourse or a Twitter post to be made by Art Gobblers. Voting on the artwork will be held on Discourse for 30 days and the four submissions receiving the most likes (by Discourse users with Trust Level 1 or higher) will each receive 100 Apecoin. POAP voting rewards will then be distributed to voters on an ongoing basis. Below are the current voting results.

Cameron Moulene, founder of Non-Fungible Films, submitted a DAO proposal over the weekend to create an NFF X DAO animated film series collaboration. The overall cost of the proposal is $1,000,000, which includes:

• $250k-$400k of this would be used to employ a Hollywood screenwriter, with options including Andrew Jay Cohen, Phil Johnston, Wellesley Wild, and Phil Lord + Chris Miller

• $150k to film a 1-3 minute teaser trailer

• Storyboarding the script into visuals

• Capturing a behind-the-scenes film to be distributed exclusively to BAYC/MAYC/BAKC/Otherside land plot holders

• Producer expenses

The proposal also includes having 10% of the back-end revenue of the tv/film series to be retained by the DAO. However, the DAO is not setup to allow this and this also brings up legal risks so this component of the proposal will need to be adjusted.

Also part of this proposal, the DAO will have some form of governance over certain elements of the development, casting and distribution processes. Licensing agreements are also mentioned as well.

You can read the full proposal here.

Due to a scheduling issue on my end, I had to postpone my podcast interview with Dan Carr, author of recently passed AIP-88, until Wednesday. I’ll include that conversation in next week’s issue.

As a bonus, you can check out my podcast interview of Jessica Wild Child below.

Crypto Weekly by Maaria

Apecoin DAO Board Member Maaria continues to keep the community informed on what is happening across the Web3 community. Below are some of the updates from her most recent issue. You can subscribe to the full version here.

• The SEC fined Kim Kardashian $1.2 million for promoting a cryptocurrency on social media without disclosing how much she was compensated for the promotion, despite Kardashian including “#ad” in the promotion. SEC Chair Gary Gensler released a video touting the news.

• Yuga Labs announced a community council composed of seven Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders who are active in its community. The council will focus on gathering and curating community feedback, and spearheading philanthropic efforts.

• Gaming technology startup Improbable is raising $100 million at a valuation of $3 billion. Improbable is working with Yuga Labs to create the “Otherside” metaverse.

• Tally Labs, the company behind the novel “Bored and Dangerous” using BAYC IP, delayed the release of its PFP collection Azurbala after its artwork reveal missed the mark. The company said they would redo the art from scratch.

• MakerDAO, the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, approved allocating $500 million of its reserves into short-term US treasury bonds and investment-grade corporate bonds. DAI is currently the fourth largest stablecoin with a market cap of $6.3 billion.

• A Moonbirds DAO is planned to launch in early 2023, and will be seeded with $2.6 million Ethereum and NFTs.

• Meta’s metaverse app Horizon Worlds is on “quality lockdown” until the end of the year after Horizon Worlds employees barely used the platform despite department mandates to do so.

• Gary Vee’s VeeFriends will sell plush and vinyl toys in Macy’s and its Toys R Us brand, which is relaunching within all Macy’s locations in the US later this month. The toys are based on 10 VeeFriends characters from Gary’s NFT collection.

• The number of US trademarks related to NFTs and other blockchain products have already tripled in 2022 compared to all of 2021. 2021 saw 2,142 NFT-related trademarks filed. By the end of September 2022, there have been 6,366 trademarks submitted.

• NFTs belonging to now defunct Three Arrows Capital through its Starry Night Capital fund are in the process of being liquidated. Starry Night Capital spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring high-value NFTs including Art Blocks, CryptoPunks, and Rare Pepe assets. Pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough managed the fund with Three Arrows Capital and will help with the liquidations.

• Opensea CFO Brian Roberts is leaving the company less than a year after joining as its first finance employee.

• Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive invested in a $40 million Series A round raised by Horizon, the developer behind NFT-driven competitive card game, Skyweaver.

• Matt Mazzeo is leaving Coatue Management to start a new investment fund focused on early stage startups. Mazzeo led the firm’s investment into NFT marketplace OpenSea.

• Japan's Prime Minister said the country plans to invest in NFT and metaverse services.

Thanks for reading this week’s edition! As mentioned above, a lot of ideas are being proposed on the Discourse forum nearly every day. If you have one of your own and are unsure where to begin, please reach out to me so I can help you get started.

Disclaimer: As part of Apecoin DAO AIP-66, my grant agreement includes the Ape Foundation sending me 400 Apecoin per month for delivery of this newsletter. Nothing said by me in this newsletter or on Twitter should be construed as financial or legal advice. All opinions in this newsletter are my own and not representative of the Ape Foundation or Apecoin DAO in any way. The purpose of this newsletter is to inform the community about news, proposals and what is happening inside the Apecoin DAO and BAYC ecosystem, not a promotion of Apecoin or anything else in any way. By subscribing to this publication you give consent to use your email to send you issues of its newsletters and podcasts. You can view my Privacy Policy here.