Unchained - Unconfirmed: ConstitutionDAO Did Not Win the Auction. But It Demonstrated the Power of DAOs - Ep.291

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Will Papper, SyndicateDAO co-founder and ConstitutionDAO contributor, tells the story of how a group of internet friends came together as a DAO to crowdfund a $41 million bid at a Sotheby’s auction for a physical copy of the US Constitution. Show highlights: how Will and other ConstitutionDAO members feel after losing the auction the significance of ConstitutionDAO despite its loss whether Will knows who the other bidder was why museums began reaching out to ConstitutionDAO and seem to be excited about DAOs moving forward why there was so much confusion over who was the bidder for the DAO and whether it had won why ConstitutionDAO did not bid more than $41 million -- even though the crowdfund was at nearly $50 million why ConstitutionDAO did not have a crypto-whale help keep the bidding war going how ConstitutionDAO plans to refund participants what Will thinks about using a layer 2 solution to refund ETH for ConstitutionDAO donations how the idea for ConstitutionDAO came about what role Will had in the formation of ConstitutionDAO what lessons can be learned from ConstitutionDAO what’s next for DAOs in general Thank you to our sponsors! Avado: ava.do Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021    Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ      Episode Links   Will Papper Twitter: https://twitter.com/WillPapper LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wpapper    ConstitutionDAO Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConstitutionDAO  Website: https://www.constitutiondao.com/  Contribution page: https://juicebox.money/#/p/constitutiondao    Sotheby’s Auction YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TBa-9Lx3vc    ConstitutionDAO’s Statement After Losing Auction ​​https://twitter.com/ConstitutionDAO/status/1461527516670316544  https://twitter.com/ConstitutionDAO/status/1461498841820192771    Press Not Boring: https://www.notboring.co/p/lets-buy-the-us-constitution  Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2021/constitutiondao-the-need-for-trust-memes-and-reality/  New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/business/crypto-constitution-sothebys.html?smid=tw-share Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-investors-want-to-buy-rare-copy-of-u-s-constitution-at-sothebys-auction-11637071590  The Defiant: https://thedefiant.io/dao-constitution-4m/ CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/15/i-think-were-doing-this-inside-one-daos-20m-plot-to-purchase-the-us-constitution/  William Lobkowicz tweet thread: https://twitter.com/WRLobkowicz/status/1461401142953402371  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how their marking names and crypto are reacting to links top headlines and gets the insights keep on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering cryptos six years ago. And as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream meter reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the November 19th, 2021 episode of Unconfirmed. Wish you could earn crypto but don't want to spend thousands on hardware? Just download the Nodal Cash app on your smartphone. Visit nodal.io-unconfirmed. That's nodl.io-slash unconfirmed to start earning nodal cash today. With the crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code Laura, link in the description. Tired of your exchange taking 25% of your staking profits? The Avato blockchain computer allows you to stake Ethereum and other crypto at home and keep 100% of the rewards. Go to aVA.do. Today's guest is Will Papper, contributor to Constitution Dow. Welcome, Will. Thank you. Regular listeners may notice this episode is coming out a bit later than normal.

That's because Will and I are talking first thing Friday morning, the morning after the auction for the Constitution. So, Will, Constitution Dow did not win the copy of the U.S. Constitution as it had set out to do. Tell us how you and the other Dow members feel about how things went down last night. It was definitely disappointing to not win, especially when we had exceeded our target by so much, and that still wasn't enough.

At the same time, we had one of the fastest and largest crowd funds in history, and a significant number of the contributors were first time wallet addresses, who were contributing to this crowd fund and using Ethereum for the first time. So my own takeaway is we've onboarded an incredible number of people to Web3. There were 17,000 people who came together to unify under this one idea.

Well, we won't be stewarding the Constitution for the long term. The fact that everyone wanted to and helped gave us a very, very competitive bid. Where we were only one of two bidders remaining after our fundraise. When I heard at the beginning that they were going to be five to seven serious bidders says a lot. Do you think the fact that the amount that you raised was publicly known affected the outcome? I don't think so because there were rumblings of more serious bidders than the serious bidder who actually emerged. So I think a lot of people who saw the public amount knew that it was outside of our price range, outside of their price range because they knew how much we'd raised.

And as a result, dropped out. I don't think that the other bidder was affected by our public amount. They seemed very willing to continue to go higher. So it was something where I think there's not anything we could have done differently within the constraints that we had. For example, we were not able to continue fundraising because there was a very strict cutoff time for providing the funds. I think that within the constraints we had, there's, yeah, nothing, nothing I would have changed. And do you know who the other bidder was? We don't know.

So, yeah, we had the opportunity to bring the constitutional hands in the time. people. I hope that it was a museum or other person who plans to display to the public, but we knew that some museums were more interested in working with us than going through the bid process once they knew that we were involved. So something tells me that it's less likely to be a museum, given that museums were approaching us about the partnership instead of bidding directly. Oh, tell us more about that. You know, how did they reach out to you and why were they interested displaying a copy that you would obtain rather than obtaining it themselves? Yeah. So I think that what they saw was that the values of Constitution Dow were very aligned

with their values. So many of the museums and libraries we talked with, they had strong values around public access and participation. And they wanted to learn from us about Dow's. They were amazed by how much we raised. I've talked with people who are the directors of prominent museums and libraries who said that we raised in a week, what an normally takes them half a year to raise. And not only was the fundraising aspect, something that they wanted to learn from, but also the fact that this was an incredible participatory movement was something they wanted to learn from as well, because museums in particular are still very consumption-oriented experiences. You can look at the art, but there's not much of a way to

engage with it in a hands-on aspect. And Constitution Dow, gave people a very hands-in route to engaging with it. And that's something that excited people a lot. Yeah, I retweeted a tweet thread by Will Lopkowitz, who did that event, NF Castle in Prague last month or two months ago. I figured out when that was. They turned to NFTs to try to raise funds to preserve some cultural artifacts in the Czech Republic that his family owned because his family was the former royal family. his, I believe it was grandfather or great-grandfather abdicated the throne because he believed in democracy. But the family has like four castles and tens of thousands of cultural objects that they do not have the money to help preserve and maintain. And so they turned to NFT's to do that. So, you know, he wrote a thread kind of talking about how he felt like Constitution Dow was kind of in the vein of what they were trying to do and solved a lot of problems that museums and other types of institutions face.

So tell us a little bit more about your night. Like, where were you for the auction? Why did people not know which bidder represented Constitution Dow? I don't know if you saw the tweets about like, is it broker David? And then how did you all find out that you hadn't won? Because I'm sure you're aware that there were various outlets that did report that you had one. And then later, it was revealed that you hadn't. So there was a lot of confusion.

So, yeah, tell us a little bit more about your night. Yeah, so we were at a live stream party near Sotheby's, but not at Salapeas. And it was about 30 of us who had all been working on this with no sleep for the past week, who were together. And there was a lot of adrenaline. It was definitely excitement. It was definitely also nervousness. It was definitely also uncertainty. And we all waited around for the bid.

When the bid came on, the room alternated between completely dead silent. tons and tons of cheering. When we took the bid, due to the policies in place, we were not with option houses that I believe is standard for them. We were not able to reveal which bidder we were at the time. We had to wait until it was officially announced by Sotheby's. So that was something where, I'd say that was the biggest gap in community participation for us, where, because we were not able to reveal who we were until it was officially announced. There was this moment where the community didn't have as much information as we would have liked to be able to share. The interesting part is that a number of people guessed that we were David because we would bid very quickly. We knew what our

max was. So the fact that we would very quickly did whenever, whenever it was needed was something that helped people guess that it was David. But yeah, we definitely would have liked to reveal that. And yeah, unfortunately, it was not something we're able to do. I don't really know where the, where that we won articles came from. No one at the live stream event was consulted on it. None of us had any outreach about it. And I think that might have just come from rumor circled in Discord. It might have come from Twitter spaces that did not have particular information about the project, but thankfully we're able to put out a statement just a few minutes after those articles went live that corrected that, which was helpful for clearing up the confusion.

So it definitely was, there definitely was a 30-minute period between the bid and some of the articles saying we went going live where I think there was a lot of confusion, and we would have liked to clear that up. We had to wait until Sotheby's officially announced the auction results before we were able to clear that up. But then I think we cleared it up pretty quickly. And then now everyone's talking about the high gas fees on L1, Ethereum. So it's a new challenge to solve.

Yeah, we will actually cover that in a moment. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Join over 10 million people using crypto.com. The easiest place to buy, earn, and spend over 150 cryptocurrencies. Spend your crypto anywhere using the crypto.com visa card. Get up to 8% cash back instantly. Plus, 100% rebates for your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 with the code Laura.

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Back to my conversation of Will. So after the results were known, what did you all do? Yeah. So once the results were known, we're mostly commiserated. we were very hopeful and given how much we had raised and how much passed the estimate we were, we thought that we had a very good shot at winning.

And I'd say all of us going into that night thought we had probably about a 70 to 80% chance of winning and then coming out of that night, we knew the results. So yeah, we mostly commiserated. We put out the statement. And then I helped them move the funds back from FTXU.S. to the multi-zig. And then we at that point were ready to start thinking about the refund distribution plans. There's built-in refund functionality into Juicebox, the funders-gain portal we

used, which was why we selected it. But the gas fees are still quite high. So some people are talking about L1 refunds. Some people are talking about L-2 refunds. So we'll see what direction that goes. And so before we address that just quickly to explain for people, the Dow raised $47 million, but your bidder did not bid higher than the final bid of $41 million. So why was that? Yes. So the bid price does not include Sotheby's fees, nor does it include taxes. And Sotheby's also requires a buffer to make sure that you can pay. So between the fees, the taxes and the buffer, that all was a few million dollars. So not only did we go as high as we could, we had. We had had a max that we all agreed would be a really, really comfortable margin.

And then we had a max of if we're getting up bid, we can go here and we'll be a little tight on funds afterwards. But we want to try to do this with the community. So we went up to that very max where we would have needed to raise more funds to steward the Constitution comfortably. But it was something that we wanted to do for everyone involved. So we bid not only as high as it could, but even a bit beyond what we had planned in an attempt to win it. But the total that we could bid was the hammer price was pre-taxes and fees. And I have to admit, I don't remember if I saw this on Twitter. I have a feeling it was actually one of my sources who texted me, but I saw this sentiment somewhere.

You know, why didn't you just have some whales on hand to kind of cover? any amount that you had not previously raised. I'm not sure if I said, oh, maybe that's just against the values of the Dow, but I'm just sort of curious why you didn't have something like that in place. Yeah, yeah. The proof of funds cut off was very strict. It was at 3 p.m. So they would have needed to transfer it to our account in advance. And yeah, there was no ability to backstop the bid with Wales specifically, unfortunately. The only way to backstop the bid would have been to be able to have another interested bidder backstop it. That's one structure that's sometimes used where someone who wants to buy it but is open

to giving it to a cultural institution is willing to backstop a bid. So they'll basically say if you're the winner, I'll let you have it. If you get outbid, I'll take it instead. And that would have been the only option. But since we're outbid, it's a bit of a, the backstop wouldn't have made that much of a difference. Okay. So now let's talk about the gas fee issue. How are you guys expecting to handle that issue for the refund? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the median contribution was $200 or $250. So $100 in gas between depositing and getting the refund is significant. I don't think that there are perfect options because one is to use the refund functionality built into two bucks. That's good. their contracts are pretty optimized, but you're still looking at $40 to $50 in gas to refund.

Then the other option is to refund on an L2. So instead of having people claim, we just distribute out automatically for them. That trades off an easier refund experience with a harder user experience. Given that so many contributors were first-time users of Ethereum, L2s will be, I think, difficult to use which L2 we would deploy to would be its own can of worms, because it is a big onboarding moment of 17,000 people onto any particular L2. I think this is a good opportunity for governance. I think that letting governance holders decide do they want L1 or do they want L2 is valuable.

That being said, I think that the people who actively participate in governance are likely a more crypto-native group than the overall segment of contributors. So I think that governance is the best opportunity after navigating it. It represents the interests of every single contributor because a lot of contributors where first time might not be feel informed enough to make this kind of choice and might not vote in this kind of proposal. Okay. So, but are you leaning toward using a governance model to figure it out?

Or right now it just sounds like maybe there's no consensus. You're just weighing the pros and cons. So the plan we went into was with, the plan we went in with was using Juicebox refund mechanism. I think now we have a flood of different proposals. And it's also an opportunity to onboard people onto L2s, which would be nice and positive sum for everyone. That being said, someone still needs to write the refund mechanism, someone still needs to implement. We do have a refund mechanism already implemented.

And there are people who likely want their. funds back sooner. So allowing them to refund via what's already built and what's already been tested in production. Juicebox has worked with Shockdown, which is a doubt for acquiring nouns within the nouns project and the already of experiences and refund mechanisms. So something that's already been tested in production when you're handling $50 million is a very good thing. And yeah, I think that simpler is always better in these cases just for security alone. Okay, yeah, so we'll see. So, you know, we've been talking about kind of the outcome of everything, but for listeners who maybe are unfamiliar even with the backstory, let's just talk about how

Constitution Dow came to be. How did this idea to form a Dow to attempt to buy this document even come about? Yeah, so a few separate people had the idea at the same time. I was not in the very first day. I joined right after they reached out to me for help with, with compliance and getting through suburbies, KYC, setting up corporate entity and such. So the very first days were a group chat, where a bunch of people simultaneously saw the auction and thought, can we do this? Is this possible? It seemed like one of those absolutely absurd crazy ideas that could never happen. And then a giant Twitter DM group formed. And then that's when I joined up to help them. with compliance.

And then after that point, we kept going and it grew into a Discord. And then the Discord started gaining 200 people every hour. And we knew that there was definitely some interest. And then we put up the fundraising site on Sunday. And then it just absolutely took off. And I think that the major media coverage we got, not only was it very positive for Web 3, helping people understand that crypto can coordinate things in this non-speculative way where people care about stewarding this historical artifact. It also, in addition, it created this

just like groundswell of enthusiasm, this rallying point that people could engage with. And that really got to the participatory ideals that we have for the project. So I'd say that the way the project was built, executed, and even now we're thinking of it. about refund mechanisms in a participatory way. I'd say that even though we're not stewarding the Constitution right now and deciding how it should be displayed and where it should go and having a vote on

which museum or library should exhibit it first, we still have shown ever in the power of Web3 to coordinate for these causes. We've shown that there's a lot of things that Web 3 can do that would be impossible in traditional institutions like raising $45 million in, I think the final total when I transferred back to the multi-sequence, like raising $50 million in under a week,

is something that I think has a lot of people take notice of the coordination power of crypto and Web3. And where do you think DOWs will go next? Yeah, I think that this is a watershed moment for DOWs, because I think this is really the first Dow with massive participation. and I'm really honored to have been a part of it and to have helped them with compliance and to continue to help DAO set up via syndicate. So the advice we always give people at syndicate is that the best DAO's have a really clear way to contribute. This is what we say constantly.

We point to really great examples. And Constitution Dow, I think, is the primary example of this, where the way to contribute was very, very straightforward and well-known to everyone involved. You can contribute money if you want to the fundraise. You can help share the fundraise in social media. You can add the scroll, scroll, emoji to your Twitter bio, which people were using as they would signal that they're part of Constitution Dow. And you can also join the contributor team and help out on engineering, design, compliance,

writing, community management. And I think that this proves all the best elements of data. DAUs, where everyone knew how to contribute, everyone knew what to contribute, and the delegation was really, really good. There weren't too many moments of overlap. It was something that ran very smoothly throughout. And in a other week, we got from a Twitter DM to placing an extremely competitive bid at Sotheby's through a nonprofit via endowment. That's really, really incredible progress in a week and absolutely unheard of. And it would have taken in any web two world far, far, far longer to do something like this. I don't think you'd even have a bank account by that point,

let alone have raised $50 million. So it's something that I think is a really watershed moment for Dow's and Dow coordination. And I think also it's a story of Dow to Dow collaboration. One reason why it worked so smoothly was because Juice Box provided the fundraising portal, I helped with compliance based a lot of my experiences at syndicate endowment provided the nonprofit framework. And then there were a ton of supporting organizations as well. FDX, US was a lifesaver in the crypto to fiat conversions. The mirror team is really helpful in thinking about refunds. And something like this only really worked so well because everyone was able to play their part, either through the DAOs that they were a part of slash in personal capacities or just

the incredible organizing work by Julian and Alice and other people who had really taken on the mantle of a lot of these community components. All right. Well, I think it's historic. One other thing I will say is that so I just finished narrating my audiobook. So the book kind of cover what you could say was the last crypto bubble, the one, you know, that peaked at the end of 2017, early 2018. And so in the lead up to that, obviously, was the original Dow. And it's just fascinating to me, because having freshly narrated this and gone through the story myself, the original Dow actually did get participation from a similar number of people. Like they estimate kind of between $15,000 and $20,000. But the tools at that time were just completely

undeveloped. And so there were so many points when they would have wanted the community to do certain things. And they just couldn't get that to happen because there were just no tools available. And it was a similar situation where a lot of people brand new to Ethereum were, had participated. And so again, like they just kind of didn't even really have the knowledge. So it's just fascinating to me because seeing this, this clearly shows how much the space has matured in, I guess, what's like five and a half years. So anyway, yeah, it'll be fun to see where things go next. But congratulations on making history, even if the outcome wasn't what you wanted. And, yeah, we'll have to see where all this goes. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is a fantastic conversation.

remember putting 70th into the original Dow in 2016 back when that was not much money. And I kept on hoping for a moment like that again. And this feels very much in the spirit of it. It's the, it's the 2021 version of the Tao as a moment of the community. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it was much more effective. So okay, well, this has been super fun. Thank you for waking up so early to do this interview. And thanks again for coming on Unconfirmed. Thanks so much. Don't forget.

Next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Did you know that exchanges take up to a 25% cut on your staking rewards? But you don't need an exchange to stake. You can run a validator at home. Join thousands of solo stakers. Get an Avato device. Plug it in, deposit your stake, and earn the full reward.

Avato created the best hardware and specific software to stake. and keeps your validator on the latest version through auto updates. One-time investment, 100% profit. Go to Avato. That's AVA.DO. Thanks for tuning into this week's news recap. The biggest Bitcoin upgrade since 2017. On November 14th, at Blockheight 709,632, Bitcoin's taproot upgrade was activated, marking the first major protocol upgrade to Bitcoin in over four years.

With TapRu, Bitcoin transactions should be more flexible, secure, and efficient. TapRu implements three Bitcoin improvement proposals or BIPs simultaneously. BIP 340 introduces Schnur signatures, a new type of digital signature that is faster, more secure, and less data intensive than ECDSA, the previous cryptographic method. BIP 341 essentially compresses data from complex Bitcoin transactions, reducing fees, minimizing memory usage, and improving Bitcoin scalability. Bip 342 defines TAPScript, allowing for more flexible future upgrades. Put together, TAPRoot is a package of upgrades that increases network efficiency,

lowers the cost of lightning network transactions, allows for smart contract functionality, and improves user privacy, as described by coin shares and by chain aliasis, in two reports that I highly recommend. Taproot was initially proved in June when it reached a 90% consensus among miners. As Bitcoin is open source and decentralized, taproot is a voluntary upgrade, meaning that not all miners are required to adopt the new technology. As of writing, 54% of Bitcoin nodes are running taproot. According to chain analysis, getting even 50% of miners to accept taproot so quickly

should be considered a win. Bitcoin's last upgrade, Segwit, was only used by roughly 50% of transactions two-year after it passed. As of now, four years later, that proportion is 80%. President Biden signed the infrastructure bill. Now what? On Monday, President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act into law. The bill contains provisions that will require crypto exchanges dubbed crypto brokers by the Act to report certain transactions to the Internal Revenue Service. Under the current language, brokers must report to the IRS any proceeds from digital asset trading. the tax basis for digital assets, the transfer of digital assets to another exchange,

and transfers from exchanges to self-custodied wallets. In addition, all businesses, not just crypto exchanges, must report the receipt of more than $10,000 of digital assets in a transaction. The reporting will go into effect in 13 months at the beginning of 2023. In response to the bill, lawmakers are working to change the language regarding brokers. Senators Ron Wyden and Cynthia Lemis introduced a bill that would limit the broker definition to exclude miners and stakers, as well as wallet providers and developers. Senator Ted Cruz took it a step further by introducing a bill that would strike from the record

the crypto provision expanding the definition of a crypto broker, so it would be as if such section had never been enacted. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of nine members from the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the Keep Innovation in America Act. The bill seeks to modify the definition of crypto broker and the provision regarding tax code 6050I. Board Ape Yacht Club experienced a 400% volume spike this week. NFT numbers being down across the board, pun intended, did not stop board Ape Yop a collection of 10,0008 PFPs from having a crazy week. According to data from Cryptoslam.io, sales volume for the collection was up 400% over the

seven days prior to the 17th. At $112 million in volume, Bored Ape Yacht Club did nearly three times as much as Cryptopunks over the same period, at $43 million. The skyrocketing volume coincided with a few big headlines regarding Bore Ape Yacht Club. Last Wednesday, Rolling Stone collaborated with Mutant Ape Yacht Club, a derivative of the Bored Ape brand, to mint two NFTEs of special edition magazine covers. This week, the two covers sold for a combined 147th, or roughly $700,000. In addition to music groups have announced plans to launch Metaverse brands based on board apes. Universal Group is forming Kingship, a virtual band of four board ape NFTs that will perform in animated and virtual settings. Timbaland, a Grammy-winning artist, announced a similar move, dubbed

Ape In Productions. Ape In will soon release its first single and NFT collectible. Notably, Yuga Labs, the developer of Board Ape Yacht Club, grants NFT holders full commercial rights. This allows artists to use their Bored Ape NFTs in creating derivative art and products, like music albums. On top of the Rolling Stone collaboration and Metaverse Music, board ape Yacht Club also got a boost from Jimmy Fallon, the host of The Tonight Show, who tweeted about and changed his profile picture to a board ape. Pocate's first parochane auction sold for over $1 billion. Akala, a DFI platform, won the bidding war for Pocodot's first parochane slot after committing $1.3 billion in dot to the auction.

Overall, 10 projects competed for the first parachain slot, putting in roughly $3.5 billion in dot. While winning the first slot is historically significant, it makes no tangible difference, as the first five parachain winners will go live simultaneously on December 17th. Users don't always like the answer to when token. Paraswap, a dex aggregator, announced a retroactive air drop of a PSP governance token,

on Monday. The protocol is distributing 150 million PSP tokens or 7.5% of the total supply across roughly 20,000 wallets. Notably, the Airtrop introduced a heavy filtering process to ensure the PSP was allocated to users most relevant to Paraswap's vision, the team announced. According to Shreth Agarwal, an algorithm designer for Paraswap, to be eligible, users had to complete at least six pariswap transactions in the six months before the snapshot date of October 8. eligible users also needed to hold a minimum native token balance. Additionally, paraswap users based in the U.S. and China were excluded from the drop. As a result, only 20,000 wallets received an airdrop, just 0.015% of addresses that interacted with Paraswap.

Paraswap's founder, Munir Ben-Chim-led, suggested that the robust eligibility requirements were necessary due to so many users attempting to game theirdrop. In the lead-up, over 1.3 million addresses, more than one-fourth of all unique defy wallets on Ethereum, used the protocol. Bencham-led believes many of these addresses were not real users, as he explained to CoinDesk. The vast majority are farmers,

and some of them are quite sophisticated. They use bots, sending tokens to thousands of wallets, sometimes tens of thousands of wallets, and they're not real active users. The decision to drop a token comes like, less than two months after the protocol said it was not planning any such action. Quentin Tarantino is getting sued over Pulp Fiction NFTs. Last week, Quentin Tarantino announced his intention to auction off a collection of

uncut scenes from the cult classic Pulp Fiction as NFTs on Secret Network. However, it appears the NFT sale has hit an obstacle. Miramax, which produced Pulp Fiction, is alleging that it holds the rights to Pulp Fiction. In a recently filed complaint, Miramax alleged, alleges that Tarantino kept his pulp fiction NFT plans secret for Miramax and was undeterred by a cease and desist order. By the sound of it, Miramax thinks that Tarantino's decision to NFT work that has murky rights could lead to other artists making the same move. Tarantino's conduct has forced Miramax to bring this lawsuit against a valued collaborator to enforce, preserve, and protect

its contractual and intellectual property rights relating to one of Miramax's most iconic and valuable film properties. Left unchecked. Tarrantino's conduct could mislead others into believing Miramax is involved in his venture. And it could also mislead others into believing they have the rights to pursue similar deals or offerings, when in fact, Miramax holds the rights needed to develop, market, and sell NFTs relating to its deep film library, concluded Miramax. Consensus' $3.2 billion funding round comes amid legal action. On Wednesday, consensus closed a $200 million raise, valuing the Ethereum developer at $3.2 billion.

With the new funds, Consensus plans to enhance its presence in Asia, where it already supports 10 CBDC projects there. The company will also be hiring 400 people, marking a shift for a firm that laid off 20% of its workforce in 2020. The move to expand and hire comes as a group of former employees and shareholders are readying legal action against Consensus AG. According to CoinDesk, the group is alleging that Consensus AG improperly valued key assets, such as Metamask during an asset transfer to a new entity in which J.P. Morgan is an investor. Speaking of Metamask, the Digital Wallet Service reported that 21 million users actively use its platform each month. Note, it is unclear how Metamask measures users rather than addresses or wallets.

On a related funding note, this was a big week for funding rounds. Gemini, the Winklevosselaide Crypto Exchange, raised $400 million at evaluation of $7.1 billion. dollars. The information unveiled a report that both Anchorage, a digital bank specializing in crypto custody, and fireblocks, a crypto infrastructure firm, are also in talks to raise funding rounds at multi-billion dollar valuations. The information also reported that the NFT marketplace, OpenC, has received funding offers at a valuation of $10 billion, a more than 6x increase from OpenC's valuation in March. Time for FunBits. Ether on a balance sheet? It's about time.

ETH is hitting institutional balance sheets via Time magazine. The publisher is partnering with Galaxy Digital to launch a slew of Metaverse-themed products, starting with a 100 company list for the Metaverse and a weekly newsletter dubbed Into the Metaverse. Time will be financing both projects solely with Ether, which Time will hold on its balance sheet. ETH is the second cryptocurrency to make its way to Time's books. Time has been holding BTC since April. Also, NFL NFTs. The National Football League announced that fans attending games through the end of 2021

will receive commemorative NFTs via a Ticketmaster digital wallet built on Polygon. NFTs will first be distributed at the Chicago Bears versus Detroit Lions game on Thanksgiving Day. All right, thanks for tuning in. To learn more about Will and Constitution Dow, be sure to check out the links in the show notes. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yun, Mark Murdoch, and Daniel Ness. Thanks for listening.