"Product Hunt as a protocol" or "grassroots AngelList" - vision for lobster... DAO?
Fancy words representing cope feelings of a pleb. Jk, actual ideas for what members can try to do with the collection and the holder base in order to create value.
This might actually be very interesting for teams and founders especially. Reach out in the chat if this is something you want to explore. The first few would likely get the most fun!
TLDR, a few days ago lobsterdao NFT was launched and was distributed to hundreds of community members based on a 3-year chat history & contributor efforts. If you saw the Paradigm framework, you might say it was done in the most genuine way. All of the details and steps can be found on GitHub, but for the lazy ones:
No sale, no auction, no FCFS. Weights (count) of NFT mints were based on the contributions of the past which has been accumulating since summer 2018. Over 1,000 members who were active in the chat(s) previously. And just a few pieces to punks, bayc, loot - to respect their contributions.
NFTs could initially be minted as generic dummy tokens, after which the path to the IPFS was defined based on the chainlink VRF seed. Lootbox = fun.
At this point, the holder count is about 1.3K, there is a 7/13 multisig and about 78 ETH in the DAO - waiting to do something.
See a cool video from the reveal ceremony by the artists.
So, what’s next? Hm… nothing. The art is here. It’s fun and it’s done.
This is a genuine response, since it’s not a project and never was advertised as such. It was a fun commemorative art collaboration for the community. It worked well, it was super fun - thanks to many devs and big brains who helped with ideas. People can exchange pictures and should expect nothing. It’s factually done!
Enjoy the art and piss off <3
OR… see it this way →
Every NFT collection has at least 2 components to it:
The art component, which is the true cool idea of NFTs as collector pieces. There is a fun seafood lore with some rare items, is unique and fun!
The holder base which can do many other things: coordinate, build, etc. Do they have to coordinate and do something? Do they need to be productive? No. You can just look at pictures and have fun. No need to overcomplicate things.
But IF you really want to play DAO games and create value, here is an idea:
Product Hunt as a protocol
You see, point #2 is very unique in lobsterdao, because it’s a list of community members who have been around for months or years in crypto, have contributed research & built things, and to this day constantly discuss & discover new projects. So if you strip away the art part, you end up with a list of wallets who are top of the top! It’s a community of very well-connected and experienced DeFi degens & researchers.
Founders, teams, projects - read:
This is the kind of people every new and even established projects want to get loyalty of and peak interest. When testing new products in beta, doing research on tokenomics, and anything of that nature - this is the group to be involved with. So as a founder or project manager, you don’t need to do some web2 marketing stuff or ask for shills - you can engage with the DAO directly and speak to your user base. This is what the future is moving to, where DAO organic marketing is the best.
Now, you might say this is also similar to DegenScore or what ARCx are doing: trying to establish the list of top degens / holders based on different criteria. And it’s an amazing idea! Imagine a “Log In as a Lobster” button on new beta product launches. Would be really cool. Perhaps those projects can add lobsters to their database?
Here are some thoughts on what needs to be done to make this a primitive.
What can founders expect, what can they get from this?
Duh, attention of one of the biggest DeFi communities?
The DAO should make a proposal sheet in github issues to propose to founders as a benchmark for what they could expect. Maybe a couple of stats tweets, a post in Blockchain Lobsters, help with testing, etc. The DAO should outline what kind of things lobsters can do: test new DeFi app, run a node, contribute some research, etc. So then there is not just an airdrop, but real value add.
What should founders contribute back?
Gib airdrop, exclusive access, etc.
Give airdrop to lobster holders (vested), give exclusive access, give part of NFT supply, something else. Founders get attention and brains of the most fresh and experienced DeFi community, so they must contribute something really valuable back to.
What list to use? Minters or holders?
Either holders or a weighted average, but respect holders and NFT count.
The DAO should consider the fact that about 30-40% of the initial contributor supply is missing. Ye.s those people didn’t mint on time, but they are still a valuable wallet list for founders. However, minting by DAO and sending pieces is quite a hustle + is gas costly, so this cannot be done for free. Initial ideas were here, and to add:
Open up the bot again for new registrations;
Reduce weights by a factor of 3 (so 3 pieces now get 1, 1 piece gets 1, and 9 pieces get 3). Most big portions claimed already, so it’s mostly 1 each.
Put some very long vesting to avoid previous late joiners from exploiting the market. Allow them to get their part of product hunt narrative, but make them work for a long time first. Put a new randomizer in place: the DAO claims the number required, each participant pays for its gas costs, and then DAO puts the tokens into a randomizer. Then people get assigned the tokens.
I think it’s important to either use the NFT holder list at different times and not the initial minter list. The reason for that is if you use the initial minter list, you exclude new minters as per idea above, you exclude new members who will join the community by contributing good work, and you will not get the loyalty of the newly joined purchasers. As such, I don’t think the minter list makes sense. So I would include the holder NFT list of people + respect the wights (the count of pieces). If you don’t respect the weights but just use wallets, you will get sybil’ed.
At least, that’s what “we” are planning to do 👀
Grassroots AngelList
If the Product Hunt idea works out and people will really add value to founders, it’s no wonder they would want to have a more close relationship. Perhaps, make a venture DAO arm out of lobsterdao. This could take time if at all, so don’t rush it.
The DAO doesn’t have to do anything, it’s not a project after all. It’s just cool fun art with a vibrant community. But if NFT holders expect anything like airdrops or exclusive access, they must contribute and produce value outside of the lobsterdao echochamber. Otherwise, why would founders care to give something? There is an idea of a task board, but maybe someone can refine it and put on GitHub issues.
And one more thing to add, I’d like to see the DAO keep some sort of standard when engaging with potential projects. Shilling half-fork shit projects won’t create value in the long-term. The selection criteria must be quite high.
I won’t be able to work much, and not promising anything. Busy with Gearbox.
Discuss this vision-idea here: https://github.com/lobster-dao/overview/issues/25
That’s it for today. As always, we are mostly Telegram deep sea dwellers, so find us there. Here is the channel with all the relevant links for you to check.
Happy swimming!
