The Rise of DAOs and Other Governance Musings

Boardroom Governance Newsletter #20 | November 22, 2021.

From The Generalist.

“We did not win the bid for the copy of the U.S. constitution. While this wasn’t the outcome we hoped for, we still made history tonight with ConstitutionDAO. This is the largest crowdfund for a physical object that we are aware of—crypto or fiat.” Statement from the ConstitutionDAO.

Last week a DAO project raised +$47 million, uniting 21k people on Discord and 42k on Twitter in just 4 days. They lost a bid for a rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction (one of only 13 copies known to exist). The ultimate winner was none other but Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, who bid $43.2 million.

The interesting part of this story is not the ultimate winner of the auction, but the new watershed moment for DAOs as an organizational structure to coordinate large collective actions (ConstitutionDAO had over 17k donors, with a median donation size of $200). This opens up a new set of opportunities and challenges (such as the high amount of gas fees to pr…