What Is Constitution DAO?
Constitution DAO could be perceived as a sort of crypto experiment, which eventually failed. It was a single-purpose decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) formed on November 12th, 2021 with the purpose of purchasing an original copy of the United States Constitution.
In order to make the Constitution DAO go viral, the creators used Nicolas Cage memes from the movie National Treasure in which Cage tried to steal the Constitution and combined it with an Olympus’ crypto-specific meme (x,x).
What is a DAO? It essentially is an organization that is governed by the members of the community through voting. In order to join a DAO, you have to purchase DAO-specific tokens, in the case of Constitution DAO, it was PEOPLE tokens. More tokens equal more voting power. Take a look at the Constitution DAO price chart above to see the current PEOPLE price.
Getting back to the story of Constitution DAO, the initiators of the organization intended to raise money before Sotheby’s auction took place on November 18th, 2021 (they had 6 days to do that). Surprisingly, the organization managed to get up to 20,000 members and crowdfund almost $47 million in Ethereum coins.
The leaders of Constitution DAO planned to buy the U.S. Constitution and then transfer it to a non-profit managed by the DAO's donors. Unfortunately, the DAO lost the auction to Ken Griffin.
Since Constitution DAO did not reach its goal, it started falling apart. At first, the leaders thought about keeping the organization and finding a new goal. However, eventually, they decided to walk away from the DAO and refund money to those who contributed.
The Founders of the Constitution DAO
There was no single entity that founded Constitution DAO. It was a completely decentralized community-driven project. However, Brian Wagner and Liminal Warmth are perceived as some of the leaders of Constitution DAO. Wagner is a computer engineer while Warmth is a programmer who specializes in game development.
The Purpose of PEOPLE Tokens
PEOPLE tokens were supposed to be the governance tokens of the organization. By utilizing Governance DAO tokens, community members were supposed to vote on various decisions considering the placement of the Constitution. However, since the project failed, PEOPLE tokens do not have any purpose anymore.
Though they can still be traded or bought on various exchanges. Some members of the community are considering using the tokens for other projects.
Just note that the PEOPLE price tends to swing if you plan to buy ConstitutionDAO tokens. This happens because, same as how it affects the pricing of other digital assets, the volatility of the entire crypto market has an effect on the PEOPLE price.
