To get in, students must mint a “DAOphin” NFT by Process Grey, the artist behind the famous Goblintown collection.
Upstream, a business that builds infrastructure for Web3, will soon release an online class called “My First DAO.” This class will teach students what tools they need to build a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
In the 24-week training, there will be workshops on “tokenomics,” “governance structures,” and “compliance” that will help people who are interested in cryptocurrencies build their own online communities.
My First DAO will use a “learn and earn” approach, which means that students who take part in the program will be rewarded. Students must mint a “DAOphin,” a non-fungible token (NFT) with a dolphin theme made by Process Grey, who also made the famous Goblintown collection.
At the end of the 24 weeks, students will be able to burn their DAOphin NFT to get a piece of art that is similar to generated art but has built-in rarity traits. By going to class, students can improve their chances of getting an NFT with rarer traits.
Alex Taub, co-founder of Upstream, told CoinDesk that many Web3 builders don’t have the right educational tools to learn how to build a successful DAO.
“There are a lot of concepts around starting online communities that people don’t understand, such as tokenomics, governance and voting,” said Taub. “That’s also one of the reasons why it’s harder on adoption … I think putting together an amazing course about how to do it and why to do it will just unlock so many people’s brains.”
The DAOphin open-edition mint is open from now until May 29, and each NFT can be bought for 0.015 ETH, or about $30. The school starts on June 1 and ends in December with a wrap-up party at Miami’s Art Basel.
Last year at Art Basel, Upstream held its first DAO-A-THON, which was a shark-tank-style competition for DAO builders to pitch their early Web3 community ideas and get funds to make them happen.
At the end of this year’s program, students will be able to take over the NFT collection’s intellectual property (IP) and its supported DAO treasury. This will let them put the skills they learned in the course to use.
“As we spend more time online, DAOs don’t make sense for a lot of things right now,” Taub said. “But if you want to buy a digital asset with people, a DAO makes a lot of sense.”
