The one-of-a-kind album titled Once upon a time in Shaolin New York hip-hop legends Wu-Tang Clan has already had an interesting journey since the lone copy was pressed in 2014.

It was sold for $ 2 million to the infamous disgraced “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, but when he was later convicted of securities fraud, Shkreli was forced to turn the album over to the US federal government.

In July the the federal government announced that the album had been sold to an undisclosed buyer and on Wednesday the collective said PleasrDAO turned out to be the new owner of the CD, which comes with a ban not to market it until 2103.

PleasrDAO describes itself as “a collective of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists,” on its website, adding that “DAO has evolved and elevated its mission of collecting digital art that represents and funds important ideas, movements and causes that have been commemorated on the channel as NFT.

While the output of Once upon a time in Shaolin predating the rise of NFTs, PleasrDAO’s head of satisfaction, Jamis Johnson, calls the album the exclusive, which comes with strict restrictions on duplication, distribution or public display, the “OG NFT”.

“The main intention of the one-copy concept was to spark a debate about the perception of music as an art form and how its monetary and experiential values ​​were being stifled by digitization,” explains Cilvaringz, producer and designer of the album, in A declaration. “Seven years later, the NFT suddenly succeeded in securing these values. At the very least, this album encouraged the journey towards this solution for digitizable art forms. “

Pleasr-what?

Thus, a collective of digital art collectors collected a work of art with a philosophical connection to the NFTs that set the world on fire last year. But that doesn’t answer the other question floating to the surface of this story: why isn’t it called Pleasr Collective? What is a DAO?

DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, which was defined in 2017 as “an organization run by rules encoded in the form of computer programs called smart contracts.”

If that doesn’t clear it up, think of a DAO as an organization that places parts of its governance or operating rules on a blockchain, allowing for transparency in financial transactions and decision-making, all of which theoretically work. outside the limits of geographies and conventional governments. .

“Think of them as an internet native company owned and managed collectively by its members,” it reads. the explanation of the Ethereum Foundation. “They have built-in treasuries that no one has the power to access without group approval. Decisions are governed by proposals and votes to ensure that everyone in the organization has a voice.

Some consider Bitcoin itself to be a DAO, but it’s famous, the first self-recognized DAO – simply known as DAO – was created on the Ethereum blockchain then quickly hacked and emptied of its funds.

A bit of DAO winter followed, but DAOs continued to emerge in the crypto world to create some of the most successful projects in the DeFi universe, including Uniswap and DAI stablecoin.

Now, for the past year or so, DAOs seem to be popping up everywhere and they’re not just about crypto-specific issues. Most operate through online chat clients like Discord, and many have issued their own crypto tokens.

PleasrDAO is one of several that use the framework to pool funds and invest in all kinds of assets. A DAO called The Krause house has a simple but bold goal: to buy an NBA basketball team.

A so-called social DAO named Friends with benefits which presents itself as “the ultimate cultural adhesion” is see the investment interest from A16Z; CityDAO is working to put physical real estate assets on the blockchain.

There are even now DAOs, like DAOists, with the mission of transforming as many organizations as possible into DAO. Metaverse, indeed.

The saga continues

All of these DAOs, and the many others that crop up every day, are still in their relative infancy. I have yet to mention the acronym to friends outside of the DAO universe and get the slightest hint of recognition.

But the same could be said of NFTs about a year ago. I have to wonder if PleasrDAO’s new acquisition of a famous cultural artefact with no real attachment to the crypto world could be a watershed moment for DAOs.

We’ll see soon, but the only Chief Pleasing Officer I know seems to think Wu-Tangs might be the perfect ambassadors for DAOs.

“Philosophically, the Wu-Tang Clan is the OG DAO: a collective formed to overcome the limits of a single individual; collaborative in nature to achieve a higher purpose, while leaving each member sovereign freedom to act on their own.

(Disclosure: In my quest to understand DAOs, I have joined several DAO Discord servers over the past few months and have since become an active member of DAOists.)