LinksDAO Analysis: The Golf Course DAO
According to Mike Dudas, he had an idea that goes, form a decentralized autonomous organization for golf fans to gather funds to purchase a golf course. It would function similarly to a traditional country club, but on the blockchain, giving members voting rights and, ideally, more influence.
Dudas, a well-known cryptocurrency investor, told his pals Jim Daily and Chris Maddern about the idea, and they were immediately sold. LinksDAO was established to build “one of the world’s top member-owned golf clubs.”
What exactly are DAOs?
You might be unsure what DAOs are. Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are an online community of like-minded people who pool crypto funds to invest in multimillion-dollar assets. These are assets that are owned collectively by members. Furthermore, because decisions are made from the bottom up, this online body has no central authority.
LinksDAO, an online golf community, has sold all of its membership tokens, netting almost $11 million in the process. The community’s purpose is to purchase golf courses through the selling of membership NFTs. According to the website of the community,
“Shortly, these NFTs will provide community access, governance, a wide range of rewards, and games. They’ll be required to gain access to LinksDAO’s first golf and leisure club.”
LinksDAO’s strategy, as published on its website, indicates that the community intends to purchase a golf course before the middle of this year and open it to community members by the end of the year or early in 2023.
NFTs aren’t the same as membership cards
https://twitter.com/LinksDAO/status/1491197221471395842?s=20&t=QShX2KH8TZD6MMJx_lLbjQ
The LinksDAO NFTs are not the golf club’s membership cards, but they are essential for community access, privileges, and control. The Non Fungible Tokens will be used to unlock membership for LinkDAO’s first leisure and golf club.
As expected, the selling of NFTs is merely a launching pad for the newly created company. The main goal of the LinksDAO business plan, as well as the development of the cryptocurrency $Links, which is expected to launch in the middle of the year, is to “identify the golf course’s list to acquire them. “
Next Steps
https://twitter.com/LinksDAO/status/1493246328075440128?s=20&t=QShX2KH8TZD6MMJx_lLbjQ
LinksDAO has announced that, in addition to the successful NFT sales, it will soon offer a LINKS governance token.
“I can’t give you a particular date, but the goal is to launch the governance token as soon as possible in 2022,” said Dudas, the founder and former CEO of crypto media site The Block and an employee at blockchain infrastructure startup Paxos. “We need to accomplish it in a compliant manner, with token distribution and governing rights set up in such a way that we can secure broad governance involvement.”
Within DAOs, governance tokens are utilized to decide influence and authority. Holders of LINKS (not to be confused with Chainlink’s LINK token) could choose the proposed golf club’s geographic location and vote on ideas connected to it.
The DAO has also just locked in members-only event access with SXSW for an amazing golfing tournament and leisure experience.
https://twitter.com/LinksDAO/status/1495156696574013445?s=20&t=QShX2KH8TZD6MMJx_lLbjQ
Mike Dudas, a well-known figure in the crypto community and an outspoken anti-bitcoin maximalist, is the group’s leader.
Global memberships at their best
https://twitter.com/michaelmiraflor/status/1495113600377098240?s=20&t=QShX2KH8TZD6MMJx_lLbjQ
The public minting of LinksDAO’s two NFTs — the Leisure Membership and the Global Membership — sold out in less than an hour, raising $10.5 million from a total of 9,090 NFTs. At the auction, LinksDAO held aside 10% of its NFTs, which will be used for giveaways and to form collaborations with existing golf organizations and athletes.
LinksDAO claims that purchasing the NFTs will grant holders exclusive benefits such as the right to join the first physical club LinksDAO purchases, savings on golf tee times, and access to members-only Discord channels with guest appearances by golf, business, and celebrity luminaries.
All of the benefits of the Leisure Membership would be available to the higher-tier Global Membership, as well as the option to purchase one.
What does the future hold for DAOs?
https://twitter.com/LinksDAO/status/1472305978813128711?s=20&t=QShX2KH8TZD6MMJx_lLbjQ
LinksDAO will also need to undertake some creative accounting if it works.
For compliance concerns, DAOs are not permitted to hold traditional assets such as real estate or corporations. The organization is currently in discussions with legal professionals about forming a new operating corporation named LinksDAO Inc., which will own the physical asset and run the golf course on a day-to-day basis.
The difficulty of LinksDAO in avoiding centralization reflects a problem that many DAOs have encountered: their fundraising capacity often outstrips their operational capabilities.
LinksDAO also intends to offer its DAO members the first opportunity to purchase shares in the operational firm, subject to legal snags. I realized, some NFT buyers may ostensibly gain equity in a physical golf course while also receiving financial flows.
The LinksDAO Roadmap
The LinksDAO plan is for the company to buy a golf course in mid-2022 and open it to the public by late 2022 or early 2023. LinksDAO intends to expand to new regions and build a global membership network of golf courses from there.
The DAO will keep 10% of each membership type’s supply to sell later to raise funds for marketing, partnerships, and strategic goals, similar to how a public corporation sells its shares to raise funding for expansion. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out, go LINK.
