NFTs, DAOs and the importance of roadmaps

this JPEG can have sex with this JPEG and make a new baby JPEG? Say what?” When CryptoPunks started out in 2017, they seemed silly to many. They were just 128 X 128 pixels. Who cares about that? They weren’t really cool until Gary Vee had a mastermind call with influencers and said, “Crypto Punks are going to be huge, go get a bunch of them.” They went in and cornered the market and raised the prices.

Bored Apes was right around the same time as Gary was launching his project. They got big influencers together and said, “Let’s get these.” And so they all bought those, the prices rose over time. At one time, these cost 2 Ether (ETH). That was a lot back then! Now the floor is like 80 ETH. All these NFTs — CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks and Bored Apes — made big bucks.

Related: Which NFT collection has been the most profitable?

When I chatted with Gary early on in 2021 when he was thinking about NFTs, we discussed launching on Wax, which is a blockchain specifically for NFTs. It’s like WalMart but for NFTs. NFTs are much cheaper on Wax than Ethereum. Gary would go on to do a great job raising $90 million on his own putting them on ETH. I just don’t like those gas fees on ETH so much — it is a big drain.

I started to see the implications of what could be with NFTs. A lot of people look at NFTs as mere images; they’re just JPEGs, no different from a screen shot. There is so much more to NFTs than that, because they can truly unlock experiences for you. NFTs represent the next level of digital rights management. Essentially, your NFT can be video, images, text, audio, links, AR, VR, 360 video, and they can be a combination of all of those. They can unlock certain venues based on geo-proximity, etc.

An NFT can evolve over time, too. You can have a little baby NFT, maybe a little baby egg, which then turns into a baby dinosaur. It then turns into a toddler dinosaur, an adult dinosaur, and it can mate with other dinosaurs and have a baby dinosaur. The cycle starts all over. The stronger and more powerful the dinosaur, or a certain lineage of dinosaurs, the more valuable. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of real world applications to that.

There’s also more utilities for NFTs. If you have this NFT in your wallet, and you can prove that it is yours, maybe you can go backstage at a concert. There are a lot of loyalty rewards that can be done with these NFTs. If a band comes to your town, they can drop you something in your wallet, which gives you an additional experience.

Related: We haven’t even begun to tap into the potential of NFTs

An NFT is basically a programmable smart contract that can do anything you can imagine. It’s not just a JPEG — it’s proof of ownership that an item is yours. The surface has not yet been scratched when it comes to NFTs.

When you have an NFT, you are now part of the community of people who have these particular NFTs. You can go on the blockchain and see everyone, who is in this community with you — your fellow NFT holders. You could then drop them something in addition to that. These communities are best organized as DAOs.

DAOs

A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, which has no employees, no boss, no headquarters (physical location), no place you can call up and talk to somebody to complain. Sorry Karen, it’s a DAO.

Code manages a DAO. Let’s say there are three DAO members. We each have the right to vote and participate in the DAO, because we hold that NFT. We can participate in the governance of that particular organization. Not every DAO needs an NFT. Similarly, not every DAO needs a crypto token. Either way, if you have X amount of tokens, you can have a certain level of voting power. Alternatively, if you have a certain NFT or a certain number of NFTs, you can also have a level of voting power. It is a foolproof voting method to govern an organization unlike anything the world has seen before.

Related: The DAO is a major concept for 2022 and will disrupt many…