Solana Monkey Business IP acquired by DAO from NFT Holders

Solana Monkey Business (SMB) is one of the most valuable and prominent Solana NFT collections, and the project has been regularly supported by MonkeDAO – an independent collective of SMB holders. And today DAO announced the following disputes with the creators and the collection’s last owner, it has officially acquired the IP of the project.

MonkeDAO purchased SMB IP and all related keys, assets and accounts from Solana NFT trade Hadeswap for $2 million in a deal that was approved by a proposal for HadesDAO governance approved by nearly 97% of token-based votes.

“I think it’s a great solution for the community to be able to show ownership and responsibility for the management of a project,” said the pseudonymous MonkeDAO CEO and co-founder Nom Decrypt.

In social media posts, MonkeDAO – a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), or an exclusive online community with token-based membership –framed the occasion as its “independence day”, referring to a long road to finally owning the IP around which the members had built a collective.

Solana Monkey Business was one of the first notable NFT projects on Solana, launching in June 2021 with a small Gen1 collection before releasing 5000 pixels Profile pictures which has come to define the project.

In accordance CryptoSlam, the Gen2 collection has yielded a trade volume worth around $164 million to date. Secondary market prices start at just over 200 SOL, or about $4,375, per data from Magical Eden.

MonkeDAO took shape soon after the Gen2 launch, with members forming a community around the NFTs and pursuing collective initiatives such as in-person events, a DAO-managed Solana network validator, and even investments in startups.

But a dispute grew between the DAO and the original pseudonymous creators of SMB, with MonkeDAO asking for a share of secondary market royalties to fund initiatives it believed had added value to the project. MonkeDAO said its creators had promised some funding but only delivered a fraction of it.

In early 2022, MonkeDAO members considered “wrapping” their SMB NFTs as new tokens to divert royalties away from the creators and send those funds to the DAO treasury instead. In the end, however, the two sides reached an agreement on funding.

In February of this year, Hadeswap announced that it had bought the SMB IP from the original creators, with plans to expand the IP and “[bridge] the gap on its shortcomings.” It is unclear how much Hadeswap paid for the IP.

Nom told Decrypt at the time MonkeDAO had also been in the process of trying to buy the IP. MonkeDAO and Hadeswap appeared to be uneasy allies after the surprise deal, with DAO members pushing back against Hadeswap’s planned governance model.

“Hadeswap had plans around governance via HadesDAO, which ultimately did not match the governance incentives people expected through previous voting related to ownership of the actual SMB NFT,” said Nom Decrypt.

IN a recent Twitter threadpseudonym NFT whale SOL Big Brain said he provided a $1 million bridge loan to MonkeDAO to start the agreed purchase process with Hadeswap. Big Brain wrote it pseudonymously Hadeswap founder HGE did not want a dispute with MonkeDAO to “drag on for months”, and chose instead to sell to the collective.

“For the broad future, SMB and MonkeDAO represent the best community of builders, founders, developers and degenerates in the Solana ecosystem,” said Nom. “We are dedicated to providing not only better experiences and opportunities for our members, but also expanding what it means to be a part of MonkeDAO.”