I (almost) bought the US Constitution
yes, seriously. kinda.
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Now, if you swim in the crypto/web3 waters on Twitter that I do, you heard all about ConstitutionDAO over the past week. Many smart brains covered this story already, so if you already know the story, jump down to the What’s Next section. But for the rest of us Muggles who have no idea what I’m talking about, this story is for you.
We’re going to s̶t̶e̶a̶l̶ buy the US Constitution. That’s a phrase me and about 20k other weirdos were saying every day last week.
On Thursday the 11th of November, a new twitter handle called ConstitutionDao posted an article about how Sotheby’s was auctioning off one of the last privately held copies of the US Constitution. I don’t know the exact story of how the original conversation went, but it was probably like this:
Person #1: Dude, they’re selling the US constitution
Person #2: Dude, let’s try to buy it
Person #1: Dude!
Thanks to the magic of Twitter, this half-brained idea quickly became a THING. The ConstitutionDAO twitter account caught fire and spread across the Twitter-verse. Within 48 hours, it was EVERYWHERE. Or at least everywhere I looked, as my twitter feed is already crypto/edge-of-internet centric.
The premise was insane: Let’s raise a ton of money using crypto rails to crowd-fund the cash necessary to bid for and win the US constitution. The auction was just 7 days away, so time was tight.
The internet rallied. Oh boy did it rally. By the day of the auction, ConstitutionDAO smashed its fundraising target of $20 million, reaching the mid-40s.
Basically, all my internet friends we’re doing it, so of course I was going to do it too. I threw in a couple hundred bucks to the cause and patted myself on the back for being an early adopter of another cool internet thing.
We did not, unfortunately, win the auction. The issue with crowdfunding is the competing bidders knew precisely how much money ConstitutionDAO had and bid one dollar more than we could afford. But it was super exhilarating to watch the auction live, knowing that I and 20K other internet friends were in knife fight with the ultra-rich to purchase a real piece of American history.
So What?
While I’m disappointed we didn’t win, it was a heck of a fun ride. A lot of smart folks already covered the implications of the ConstitutionDAO’s expirement, so many of these thoughts aren’t unique or even my own. If you want to read more, Packy’s coverage is great.
The speed at which a few people with a hare-brained idea can rally tens of thousands of people from across the globe and get them to commit their hard-earned money (average donation was ~$200) was astounding. This was a huge win for the crypto and de-centralized finance community, as it showed the power and velocity it could mobilize itself for a cause.
The on-ramp between decentralized crypto finance and actual real-world fiat systems was a huge pain point. It cost money to donate to ConstitutionDAO (“gas fees”). So that $200 donation actually cost like $240-$270. To even donate, you had to own ETH coins and have a crypto wallet. The positive version of this is the cause of buying the constitution drove thousands of to try their hands at crypto for the first time. The negative is it probably forced thousands more to get frustrated and give up instead of donating.
The off-ramp was also a huge problem. After raising $42M, the DAO had to stop taking donations and move all that ETH to real-world fiat through a series of mechanisms. Had the DAO been able to keep raising funds, it would have easily reached $50M+ and could have potentially won the auction
DAOs are “decentralized anonymous organizations”, which can be thought of an LLC that uses code to enforce governance instead of corporate by-laws. Sounds cool, but there’s huge gaps between the idealic version of DAOs and what had to be done to bid for the constitution. Key members of the DAO were not anonymous because people had to be known in order to bid. In exchange for contributing to the DAO, you got tokens (‘People’ coins). The coins were not representative of fractional ownership of the constitution, but instead more like shares in the governance of the DAO. So none of use were really buying a piece of the constiution, it was a piece of the entity that would own the constitution.
The shortfalls between what crypto people imagine DAOs as vs. what a DAO can actually do in the real world made many people wonder if a DAO was even necessary. Couldn’t this have been a GoFundMe? Did we end up shooting ourselves in the foot because we were overly wed to the idea of using crypto?
The memes. Oh god, the memes. Somebody observed that memes are the language of the internet and ConstitutionDAO made that abundantly clear. Nic Cage was everywhere. The memes were a mechanism to voice support, rally newcomers, and signal to each other your level of commitment. As a meme lover, this was my happy place.
The ConstitutionDAO’s discord was absolute fire for the week running up to the auction as thousands of total strangers rallied to build the necessary legal and corporate frameworks to bid for the constitution, drove fundraising efforts across the world, and raised awareness. It was truly impressive and even as a passive observer, I learned a lot. It took a lot of people who donated their time, expertise, and money to make it a reality.
Final Thoughts
Beyond the obvious desire to own the US constitution, the saga of ConstitutionDAO tells us something about the changing nature of consumers. People want to be a part of something. Buying an original copy of the US constitution is a type of something that remains out of reach for 99.99% of us. But ConstitutionDAO made it possible to touch that something, even if we were just getting fractional ownership of governance over the entity that owned the constitution and not fractional ownership of the constitution itself. This idea was enough to light a fire across the internet. It was awe-inspiring to see so many people from around the world rally to the cause in a week’s time. Look at some of the donations that came in (from Packy’s article):
That’s some real shit right there. It almost doesn’t matter that ConstitutionDAO didn’t actually win the auction. Either way, these sorts of community-driven financial efforts are only going to become more frequent. The concepts of having your voice heard in decision making and those decisions being able to clash blades against the ultra-rich isn’t going away. As we speak, the DAO is deciding what to do next with its $50M and using it’s engaged community to steer that decision. I’m not exactly sure what we’re witnessing, but we’re just at the start. Buckle up!
Interesting, and a rollicking summary of a world is non-cryptofiles don’t see very often. I’m struck by the unneeded hit to carbon for questionable gains in anonymity & decentralization. Crypto = tons of electricity that for foreseeable future is carbon itensive to produce. Did the fancy math and meme culture deliver here? Didn’t parse the deeper coverage—so please flag any threads that address sustainability aspect of crypto.
Interesting. I didn’t have time to parse the deeper coverage. I’m pretty certain the amount of electricity expended on the blockchain does this cryptofile fever dream was a far greater carbon hit than fiat currency linked systems would have produced. Just another negative externality of crypto for uncertain positive societal gains…nice memes and fancy math problems tho!