What

What if a group of artists could form a cooperative by easily deploying their own minting platform, UI and DAO, with all NFT sales split between the artist & the co-op DAO?

In this co-op model, artists can support each other, creating a space for more collaboration and less competition. This means artists get revenue regardless of sales.

In addition to the revenue distribution, the cooperative can choose where to invest extra funds through DAO governance. What is the best balance for revenue splits between individual & group? Each co-op instance can choose the numbers that make sense for their use case.

Why

We want to create open source tools to foster cooperation. We see cooperation and mutual support already happening naturally in artist communities all around us. Our goal is to build the tech to automate some of those actions, and help them in creating a space for more collaboration and less competition inside their community.

Cooperation is a human need, and it’s one hardwired into our biology. The human species excels in in-group cooperation, even while we might perform out-group competition for limited resources. We are beautiful and complex social beings, and as modern research now acknowledges, “survival of the (individual) fittest” is a reductionist myth. Even people who are not evolution science scholars, by just looking around one’s life can easily see plenty of examples of cooperation. It just makes sense (and feels good).

How

On the back-end side, we are adapting existing open source contracts, as well as building our own solutions for parts that don’t exist yet.

We have built a distribution contract on the NEAR blockchain to plug into existing minting and DAO contracts. The next step is to develop a solution for Ethereum and EVM compatible blockchains

On the front-end, we want to provide an interface giving the foremost space to the art itself, inspired by success stories from other NFT art platforms, which in turn explore digital versions of what real world galleries have been learning for decades. What would a smart-white wall look like? We want to create a place where the art draws undistracted attention, but at the same time provides easy interaction with the tools web3 has to offer. Furthermore, how would a cooperative model be materialized in interface elements and counterpoint algorithm design trends currently favoring a winner-takes-it-all flow? UI design choices are an important complement to foster cooperation as well. We are in the process of developing our open source UI tools. Your support to this grant will help build them.

Progress

This is our project's current state (last updated August 2023)

NEAR blockchain version:

contracts - deployed to testnet and mainnet

interface - in progress

toolkit public release - still to be released

Tezos blockchain version:

contracts - deployed to testnet - in testing

interface - not started

toolkit public release - still to be released

EVM blockchain version:

contracts - not started

interface - not started

toolkit public release - still to be released

Impact Metrics

We haven't release impact reports yet. When we do, the metrics we plan to feature are:

Pre-release phase:

code deployed to testnet
code deployed to mainnet
feedback from interested users

Post-release phase:

number of users
revenues shared using toolkit
feedback from current users

Who

Meet the people behind Cöotoo and StatelessDAO:

Watch

Our presentation at NFT Berlin to learn more details about the project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYHwy014RCA

Our revenue distribution contract live demo presentation:

https://youtu.be/5cOPeEXnKK0

Follow

Our twitter account for updates:

https://twitter.com/StatelessDAO