SpiceDAO

To recap Spice DAO: A dude (Soby) made a bunch of crypto by selling a cryptopunk to an NFL player that the punk kinda resembled. Then he saw that a copy of Jodorowski's Dune (the production bible, not the movie) was up for auction.

Being in immediate proximity to Constitution DAO, where a bunch of Reddit losers failed to win an original copy of the constitution that they were going to do ??? with, Soby decides to get a DAO to buy the book for him.

He hastily tosses together a crypto crowdfund and something that kinda maybe sort of resembled a DAO and starts aggressively promoting it based on vague promises of how doing so would "send a message" that crypto is a source of large project funding that "could even make movie"

The organization of the actual DAO software is picked up by a group called Remilia Collective.

He doesn't say "buy this and we'll make the movie that was supposed to be made from this" but the messaging is vague and the crowd convinces themselves that's the plan and little is done by Soby to disabuse this notion.

The entrance of Soby and his DAO into the auction creates a very strange bidding war and the counter-bidder taxes the DAO hard. While copies of the rare book typically go for ~$50,000 the price quickly hits $3m.

The DAO doesn't have enough crypto to cover the price + conversion + fees, so Soby liquidates his punk crypto, enters as a last second bidder, and wins the auction.

The DAO celebrates and immediately starts brainstorming their 11 hour anime version of Dune with celebrity casting and Grimes scoring and everyone's going to get to go to the premiere and it's going to prove all the haters wrong and also they're going to have a travelling exhibit to show off the book, called The Oculus, and it's going to go around to conventions and promote the DAO and they're going to be their own film studio and Hollywood will crumble

They pay a music video production company in LA with no experience in long form animation to do a prospectus on the series. The owner of the company just-so-happens to be friends of a "core" DAO member.

Non-crypto media get their hands on the story and the tone is basically relentless mockery, lambasting DAO members for convincing each other that buying the book would let them use the book's material and DAO leaders for letting that happen.

Soby, not enjoying being poor again in exchange for an impulse purchase, tries to work out having the DAO buy the book off him, which requires the DAO to exist as a legal entity that can own things in the process he demands the DAO also pay for the taxes he'll owe as realized gains from when he liquidated his crypto to get dollars to buy the book.

This creates a pretty deep rift, many members resent the idea of paying Soby's taxes, and people start to suspect that the leadership is just looking for excuses to turn SPICE into dollars (by selling treasury SPICE to members) that they can funnel to themselves and friends.

Soby, kinda fed up with the fact that his impulse resulted in actual work, takes the repayment as a buyout and resigns from the project.

The leadership finally starts trying to temper expectations by posting that they have failed to contact all the relevant parties and are basically unable to pursue any project that would use any portion of the bible, directly or indirectly.

Instead they will pursue an original IP based off the general vibes of Jodorowski's Dune and launch a writing contest.

The DAO also pays $24k for a member to create a 60 second silent animation called Tashka, and decides to put together a 10k profile pic NFT project for Frank Miller.

Most of these logistics are being handled by Fang, a member of Remilia Collective. It turns out Remilia Collective had previously invented a suicide cult based on Serial Experiments Lain and, allegedly, lured in a 17 year old Montreal boy who killed himself.

Fang is unmasked and leaves the project. Soby announces that the DAO will cease pursuing creating an IP and focus entirely on how they can even legally distribute the scans of the book to DAO members, though he's not a leader and has no power to enact this.

The new actual leader, Kortelin, says the goal of the DAO is now to "pioneer decentralized storytelling in Web3" but declines to provide any details of what that actually means.

After months of little progress on anything of note, Kortelin announces that they're going to launch a redemption program where SPICE holders can burn their tokens in exchange for a buyout in Eth.

Two days later he announces that Spice DAO is dead, the DAO is being converted to a wholly owned private company registered in the British Virgin Isles, the original project leaders will be excised entirely and replaced with his friends, and they'll be selling the bible next year

lol, while I was writing that up Kortelin stepped down and announced that everything is being handed back over to Soby.

"I followed Soby's leadership at every turn, but the ultimate direction the DAO has taken does not align with my goals for a productive, profitable and successful enterprise. The DAO under Soby's direction has led to a lack of value creation for token holders."

And now that announcement has been deleted and replaced with a message from Soby. Jesus I should have given this another day.

He's still selling the book and dissolving the DAO. So it's been an interesting...

What an entirely predictable and predicted outcome.