PleasrDAO Investment

Background

PleasrDAO is an organization that primarily focuses on art curating and investing, that often acquires and enhances art pieces that have cultural significance.

PleasrDAO was formed as an initiative of Jamis Johnson to purchase artwork by the artist pplpleasr, who created a one-of-a-kind NFT animation titled “Uniswap V3”. The NFT commemorated the launch of the new version of Uniswap, which is a prominent decentralized exchange. Jamis and others formed a DAO, using the $PEEP governance token to manage their collective ownership and decision-making process. $PEEP is not sold publicly.

Structure, Governance, and Operations

The DAO invests in art that is culturally significant to internet or crypto history. For example, in December 2021 the DAO acquired an NFT that commemorated the first edit “Hello World” made on Wikipedia by its founder Jimmy Wales.

The governance of the DAO has evolved over time. Initially all actions were voted on including operational decisions such as salaries of employees, but as the DAO grew they were able to find a balance where some decisions would be taken by the advisory council and some decisions like the purchase of large new art pieces would be voted on as a DAO.

The DAO has a core team of full time contributors split into projects with their own mandates. A core leadership team supervises all teams and a seven member advisory council functions like a board. It currently has over 100 members and 8 full-time employees. The DAO is closed to the public and new members are only added by invitation. All employees who join automatically become members of the DAO are allocated $PEEPS tokens which vest over time.

Few of the art pieces purchased by the DAO have been spun off into independent projects with their own tokens. For example, the $DOG token which represents fractional ownership of the Doge meme NFT has a market capitalization of $8 million. PleasrDAO also owns physical art like the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin which was acquired for $4 million. The DAO also created a new DAO called Free Ross DAO to help raise $6 million for the legal defense fees of Ross Ulbricht.

Impact

PleasrDAO owns several NFTs that are culturally significant in internet culture, pop culture, and crypto culture. The organization has an estimated $32 million in its treasury.27

Resources

Website: https://pleasr.org/

Endnotes

1 There is no single, widely accepted definition of DAOs as of today, but for the purposes of this report, we define DAOs accordingly.

2 Crypto Fund 4. (2022, May 25). A16z Crypto. https://a16zcrypto.com/content/announcement/crypto-fund-four/

3 Ghavi, A., Qureshi, A., Weinstein, G., Schwartz, J., & Lofchie, S. (2022, September 17). A Primer on DAOs. The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2022/09/17/a-primer-on-daos/

4 DeepDAO. (n.d.). DeepDAO. Retrieved April 19, 2023, from https://deepdao.io/organizations

DAO treasuries surged 40X in 2021: DeepDAO. (2021, December 31). Cointelegraph. https://cointelegraph.com/news/daotreasuries-surged-40x-in-2021-deepdao

5 Impact Results | Gitcoin. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2023, from https://impact.gitcoin.co/

6 VitaDAO - Longevity DAO - Join us today. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://www.vitadao.com/

7 Kyiv Tech Summit. (n.d.). Kyiv Tech Summit. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://kyiv-tech-summit.devpost.com/

8 Educational project on cryptography and blockchain. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://osvita.diia.gov.ua/en/ crypto-and-blockchain

9 Starling Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://www.starlinglab.org/

10 Starling Lab and Hala Systems file Cryptographic Submission of Evidence of War Crimes in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court. (n.d.). USC Shoah Foundation. Retrieved April 20, 2023, from https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2022/06/33571starling-lab-and-hala-systems-file-cryptographic-submission-evidence-war-crimes

11 Announcing the Dai Foundation. (2019, December 31). The Maker Forum. https://forum.makerdao.com/t/announcingthe-dai-foundation/1046

12 » MakerDAO Has Come Full Circle. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://blog.makerdao.com/makerdao-hascome-full-circle/

13 MIPs Portal. (n.d.). MIPs Portal. Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://mips.makerdao.com

14 » The Maker Foundation Returns Dev Fund Holdings to the DAO. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://blog. makerdao.com/the-maker-foundation-returns-dev-fund-holdings-to-the-dao/

15 Maker Governance—Governance Portal. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/ Qmbndmkr#vote-breakdown

16 Sai Whitepaper. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper/sai/[https://makerdao.com/ en](https://makerdao.com/en)

17 Parameter Changes Proposal—PPG-OMC-001—24 November 2022. (2022, November 24). The Maker Forum. https:// forum.makerdao.com/t/parameter-changes-proposal-ppg-omc-001-24-november-2022/18925

18 Maker Governance—Governance Portal. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/ QmV3oNeX

19 Dai Stats. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://daistats.com

20 CityDAO. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2023, from https://www.citydao.io/ImPTBVoJtcq-UfbiC8QhcM4MhRqU2yp6om7JjBMHcA/

21 ConstitutionDAO Irks Donors as Gas Fees and Transaction Costs Eat Into Refunds. (2021, November 24). Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/constitutiondao-irks-donors-gas-fees-103424520.html

22 DeepDAO. (n.d.). DeepDAO. Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://deepdao.io/organization/30d12da9-5fd5-411a-8ca81422a4ce1373/organization_data/finance

23 etherscan.io. (n.d.). BitDAO (BIT) Token Tracker | Etherscan. Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Explorer. Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://etherscan.io/token/0x1A4b46696b2bB4794Eb3D4c26f1c55F9170fa4C5

24 Gibbons, L. (2022, March 4). BitDAO allocates $633 million in funding for Innovative DAOs. CryptoSlate. https:// cryptoslate.com/bitdao-allocates-633-million-in-funding-for-innovative-blockchain-daos/

25 Investing in Friends With Benefits (a DAO). (2021, October 27). A16z Crypto. https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/ announcement/investing-in-friends-with-benefits-a-dao/

26 State of Digital Carbon. (n.d.). KlimaDAO Carbon Dashboards. Retrieved April 17, 2023, from https://carbon.klimadao. finance/

27 https://deepdao.io/organization/50eab83c-1bcd-4c02-8958-1727e2738ea3/finance