Doing Good through NFTs
How can NFTs bring up positive social changes? Doingud wants to create a NFT marketplace that contributes 5% of trading fees to social impact organizations and social causes that creators support. The market is created
The Founders
Manu and Andrew met in 2012 in Venezuela. According to Manu, they were both exchange students at the time and the two of them connected. They noticed that many individuals, creators and organizations want to do good, but encounter structural and behavioral barriers along the value chain. These barriers severely limit the amount of goodness that can and does get done. Hence they brought up an idea: a marketplace fully focused on the empowerment oF doing good. For Every purchase On the DoinGud marketplace, A minimum of 5% is streamed to social impact Organizations And social causes of the creator’s choice. DoinGud is their way to use crypto to create positive changes with close friends.
DAO
The idea of DoinGud is deeply influenced by Manu’s experience at Metacartel. DAO is where Manu’s interest in the crypto space is first ignited. He believes that the “D” in “DAO” stands not just for decentralized, but also for distributed and digital, because those words also represent the soul of DAO.
The nature of this organization is like the ancient Greek polis. Polis was the OG community in ancient Greece, it was the administrativev and religious city center, and also signified the body of citizens. In DAO, with cryptocurrency, what they tried to do was to empower the communities to build their own polis. In this DAO, people contribute by means of finance, Or by thinking up ideas.
The governance of DAO also requires a unique philosophy. Manu thought “hierarchy” was not necessarily a bad word. Hierarchy is acceptable for improving effectiveness given that the information flow in the organization is transparent and all members are duly aware of it. The key was about transparent communication within DAO. The decision making process requires delicate consideration, and since members in the DAO do not have the same level of knowledge, there exists a hierarchy dependent on expertise.
The Role of Token
To operate the DAO, DoinGud spent great effort while considering the token used to govern the community. Manu believes that reputation is the ultimate currency. In a community formed by people, it is the unique characteristics of the people involved that define and make them unique.
What does it mean to hold a token? Manu thinks many trade tokens with high hope of great economic return. However, are there more meanings embedded in tokens other than the traditional functions of money such as store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange? Can We start to use tokens like badges, diploma, proof of identity, or a proof of exclusiveness? These are the functions and meanings stemming from the “money” nature of cryptocurrency. It’s what makes it unique, yet it is still new to the general public.
Fragmented yet Overloaded Communication
The communication in contemporary society also changed drastically from the old days. Before the age of smartphones, we cared more about things that take place around us, the local things. After we have all the small devices in our hands, we start to see, notice and care about things happening thousands of miles away. That broadens our vision, but blinds us from seeing what’s happening near us.
We bragged about how we are connected with “the world”, all kinds of opportunities and channels of information, but forgetting we are disconnected from the people around us. For youths who are born into the immersive digital devices and the internet, this is the norm, this is the default setting. Therefore, their ways of online interaction is fundamentally different than the previous generations. We all create our own ways of social interaction with other people online.
Online communication also changes our behavior. Instead of face-to-face meeting, we hide behind avatars online, with many different personas, we can switch effortlessly between accounts and platforms. These channels overwhelm people, when we are connected with each other on multiple platforms, the information we share with each other starts to get spread out and fragmented.
What emerged from that fragmentation was skepticism of whether digital communication will be efficient and transparent. Would the technology be used for good or evil? As an optimist, Manu hopes these are used for doing good, and he intends to show the world that the amount of goodness and connection that could grow from properly using these technologies.
That’s where DoinGud comes in.
Founding DoinGud
The interest of DAO soon turns to the wish of making it into a platform that allows participation at a large scale. Manu wanted to make something that is centered around humans. His first attempt was to create a network called OneArtist around one year and a half ago. It was a network for colleagues in spaces where they could integrate and incubate talents. It’s about bringing all kinds of creators together and live together.
Then comes the coronavirus pandemic, the project has to halt. Manu himself tested positive for the virus after he went to the Infura community conference. He was ill for three weeks. While he was sick, the idea of DoinGud emerged. He wanted to create a space, a DAO, that helps people by collecting and donating money. DoinGud was basically a social media platform, to connect those needing help with those who can provide it. Manu received surprisingly huge support from the community when he started down this road. Around 300–400 people wanted to participate, and around 50 organizations in the technology industry had contributed software or credits.
As such ideas expanded, they started to think of the creation of an organization that connects human and social capital last November, when the idea of NFT started trending. One month later, they decided to shift the focus and try to integrate NFT into the project for the social cause. That’s who DoinGud started to emerge, it was an organization with people from other organizations. It shows to the world that they care about social impact.
DoinGud will act like a marketplace, a gallery, an auction house. They want To enable a multi-gallery system that any people, communities or collectors can become a gallery owner, have their own auction house, and their own way of distribution. Another thing that differentiates DoinGud from other NFT marketplaces is that the fee is much lower (5%), and creators can choose the social impact organization they want to support to transfer that fee. This resonates with the idea of DAO, that by participating, creators get ownership of the path they are using.
Building the DoinGud Community
By developing this project, Manu and Andrew started to build the DoinGud community. The first members of the soceity are those who believe in their vision, who wanted to learn, and who wanted to educate. Although the community hasn’t made any announcements, there are already people who started to realized that the founding of the community and started to reach out. The first members will be selected from around the world, implying DoinGud will be a global community. As Manu planned, the website will launch in five languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French and Japanese), with the support of volunteers around the world.
As Manu said while talking about the meaning of token, reputation will be the ultimate currency in the future, considering how huamnity is gaining increasing transparency.
Within the community, they prefer seeing members as individuals, living human beings, rather than just users. Members are from all around the world, Latin America, Asia, the United States, Europe and more places than you could imagine. DoinGud is a global, human-centric organization. In the future, as the community grows, launching social tokens could be the next thing on their agenda.
For community members who are interested in DoinGud:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoinGudHQ
Website: https://linktr.ee/doingud
