I want to raise funds to support Ukraine in the ongoing war. I want to use a novel way for fundraising uniquely enabled by web3, NFTs, and CC0 art - an Infinite Auction.
The Idea
Create an NFT collection of Ukraine-themed nouns glasses. Build a website, where you can mint the tokens, but also “capture” already minted tokens, by paying more than what the previous owner paid. It is similar to an auction, but you own the NFT as long as you are the one that paid most and the “auction” never ends. 100% of the funds are transferred to the official Ukraine Ethereum donations wallet directly in the smart contract.
I believe this mechanism is quite novel and can create some interesting incentives. You can buy the NFT at a low price and your funds will go to charity. However, if you want to remain the owner of the NFT you will need to pay more or if somebody captures it from you, pay more money to re-capture it.
I think this dynamic may gamify the process and help raise more funds than by just creating a regular collection.
Plan and current state
I and @ianbydesign started working on this to build a small prototype. The current state is:
Smart contract - I have a working version of the smart contract implementing an ERC-721 token with the capture function to allow capturing an already minted NFT. It is deployed on Rinkeby here. Only some small polishing is needed.
Website - I have a prototype version of a React app website here. The copy needs some more polishing work and I need to connect it to the smart contract, link to the OpenSea collection, and host it on a domain.
Art - @ianbydesign created some first images for the collection (see screenshot and website) and he can create more in a style similar to SpecScapes (project already funded by the NounsDAO).
Funding
We ask for funding for the deployment of the smart contract on Ethereum mainnet, which I don’t think will be more than 0.4 ETH (depending on gas prices and final contract code).
Any feedback is of course welcome and we are flexible to adapt things if the Nouns community has ideas
This is a great idea! are there any other projects that have tried this? If you have held it at some point is there a POAP or something similar that might live in your wallet?
I’m not aware of any other project that has done something similar.
The idea with the POAP is actually great and can be done easily! I’ll convert the contract to ERC-1155 and will have all the original images as editions of 1. Then there will be a POAP token that will have unlimited editions and you will get one when you mint or capture and will not lose it. Thanks you!
Thank you! I’m not really sure what you mean with create a proposal? Do you mean something official that the DAO will join to raise funds for Ukraine by minting/capturing?
Thanks, but it seems I’m not able to create the proposal because I don’t own a Noun. We already have some people that proposed to fund the deployment of the contract so we are now working to finish the project.
As you say, once we launch it, we’ll need publicity and maybe we can then create a proposal for the DAO to buy one of the NFTs and in this way donate the money. What do you think?
We requested funding for this project both in the Nouns community (here) and the CrypToadz community (here). We received a lot of positive feedback and some interesting ideas from both communities. With two people already offering to fund the projects, we will now build it!
We were thinking of a way to involve both communities in the art for the project and @ianbydesign has a brilliant idea! There will be 20 Ukraine-themed images of CrypToads wearing the iconic Nouns glasses. By spending more money for charity than the previous toad owner, the toad NFT will hop into your wallet (it will be transferred and you will be the new owner). However, the toad will drop the Noun glasses as POAP in the wallet of the previous owner so they have a memento of their donation
In the next few days, we will build the project and launch it on a testnet and see this in action. We will also research to which organization we should send the donations to so that we are sure they will be used for humanitarian help.
Thanks again for the support - we’ll keep you posted! LFG!
P.S. Keep an eye on the #toadbuilder channel in the CrypToadz Discord for some sneak peeks:wink:
I’d be honoured to submit a proposal. Just suggest a good wording for it
Yes, I think nouns dao would gladly buy the NFT! It just has to be special and expensive enough such that it would keep it and the proposal would be meaningful.
I think at least 10eth. Maybe a 100? I’d be curious to hear other noun owners opinion
I love that the Nouns glasses will be the POAP - that is pure genius!!! Do you have a rough idea on the timeline for the Toadz? I don’t want to miss that!
Thank We are now working on it. I implemented the POAP in the smart contract and will integrate in the website next. If everything goes to plan I think end of this week we can be launching this.
Several people proposed to fund the project directly, but I prefer to have this funded by a community to give it more visibility. Since we got a lot of support from the CrypToadz community, we just opened an official Snapshot vote for funding there: https://snapshot.org/#/cryptoadz.eth/proposal/0xecc4f524a7c3a70cd8e627a4e163dd625b0439055e392e6e05d3893111c5a099. Everybody that offered help can still donate the money for Ukraine through the project by buying one of the NFTs
As a tribute to the Nouns community, all toadz will be wearing nouns glasses and will drop them as a POAP NFT, when somebody bids more for the toad
We are now working on finishing the project. I implemented the idea with the toad dropping the noun glasses as a POAP NFT when somebody bids more for it and this works nicely. The integration with the website is now almost done as well, but it needs a bit more polish. I’ll clean it up a bit and open-source everything and post the link here so anybody can review it.
In the meantime, @ianbydesign is creating some awesome art! Here is a sneak peek of two of the toadz and the POAP glasses
Hey everybody, we are almost ready to launch this project!
The CrypToadz community was so kind to fund the fee for the contract deployment and we’ve been busy building it and we are pretty much ready. We just need a bit more testing and polishing, but we have a launch date!
We will launch it officially on Wednesday, Match 30th at 16:00 UTC!
We would like to have some final feedback from the community on one topic - prohibiting sales on secondary markets. We have the novel functionality in the smart contract that everybody can get the toad NFT by matching or increasing the last donation - the NFT holder cannot block this. Therefore, selling on OpenSea doesn’t really make sense, because everybody can snatch your toad by donating. Furthermore, we want all the money from the project to go to charity and not to speculators.
For these reasons, we have blocked the listing functionality on secondary exchanges (the setApprovalForAll function). One can still transfer the NFT to another wallet, but not list it. What do you think?
@BigshotKlim - thank you for your kind offer! The timeline is too short to switch to different art, so we’ll stick with the 2D glasses that we have now. Appreciate that you wanted to help.
@Cairol - thank you! We will promote the project on Twitter and in a couple of crypto communities. We also plan to talk to several people directly. I also have several friends from Ukraine and I ask them to spread the word as well. However, the Ukrainian people need humanitarian help so my priority is first to engage with people that can donate!
