An organisation of cryptocurrency fans has raised millions of dollars to buy the US Constitution. What has come of it?
In less than a week, a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) called ConstitutionDAO has raised more than $45 million in Etherium to buy the original stamp of the first US Constitution. It was put up for sale at Sotheby’s auction house tonight. The DAO had originally hoped to raise at least $20 million, as that is the estimated value of the document after an appraisal by auction house experts, but were able to secure more funds. Although in the end they did not get the lot. We tell you about the situation in more detail.
Recall, Decentralized Autonomous Organization or DAO is an autonomous organization, the rules of which are dictated by the rules of the blockchain code and do not depend on human factors. All financial transactions of DAO participants are recorded in blockchain and governed by smart contracts.
Accordingly, the risks here are only related to possible bugs and vulnerabilities in the code.
Who bought the US Constitution
ConstitutionDAO was created just a few days ago, but in such a short time, the organisation has managed to attract more than 17,000 participants. Each of them donated an average of $2,000 to the initiative. The largest donations were $1 million from investment firm Metaversal and another $4 million from an anonymous crypto-enthusiast, reports Decrypt.
In the end, cryptocurrency users who don't know each other - and there were 17,437 of them - raised more than $45 million.
ConstitutionDAO
ConstitutionDAO’s main mission is to win an auction for a copy of the US Constitution and make it public. One of the members of the DAO, Nicole Ruiz, explained that they don’t yet have a specified place to store the document, but members want to put it in some kind of museum with free admission. Some members expressed support for the idea of moving the copy to several locations around the world at once, so that as many people as possible could see it for themselves.
Money to support ConstitutionDAO was raised through the crowdfunding platform JuiceBox. The campaign was launched on November 14. According to DAO member Paki McCormick, the project raised more than $3 million in its first 12 hours of fundraising. So the organisers of the idea have managed to raise almost twice as much money as they originally expected. According to them, the money will be an “insurance policy” in case the auction gets delayed.
The best part: those who donated their money will get the “free” money back after buying a copy of the constitution. These will be distributed to bidders using smart contracts and JuiceBox tools.
Details of the auction on Sotheby’s website
Alas, the participants in the decentralised organisation were never able to achieve their goal. Although they raised more than $45 million in ETH, the final bid for the lot was $41 million – and it was made by someone else. Why the organisation’s representatives did not bid is unknown.
According to reporters, all members of the organisation will receive a refund in the form of management tokens within DAO. Accordingly, these coins will allow them to vote on decisions and influence the further development of the project.
In order to comply with Sotheby’s auction requirements, the organisation’s representatives had to create a shared account on the FTX exchange. There were 13 in total – the number of multi-signature holders the project has.
To recap, a multi-signature is a set of cryptographic signatures required to make a transaction from an account. A normal user signs a transaction with their private key only once, but in the case of a multi-signature, the transaction requires the signatures of all or most key holders. This increases asset security and makes it impossible to attack a single keyholder.
Sotheby’s auction
This news shows how useful blockchain can be in large-scale cooperation between people. ConstitutionDAO's rules are shaped and perpetuated in code, meaning the organisation is not subject to the negative influence of human error. It has also been able to raise a huge amount of money in the shortest amount of time precisely because investors put more trust in blockchain rather than centralised bodies.
Although the investors were unable to achieve their original goal, they created history anyway. It is likely that in the future there will be more and more such organizations. Well, the idea of acquiring a significant document or object for the common good is sure to find its admirers.
What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There we will discuss other important developments related to the world of blockchain and decentralisation.
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