LinksDAO raised $10.5 million in a sold-out NFT drop to support its golfing ambitions.
LinksDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization formed by Mike Dudas, has raised $10.5 million by selling out its first collection of NFTs. The monies will be used to shake things up in the real world by reinventing the country club, according to Dudas.
The DAO’s objective is to purchase a Top 100 golf course in the United States and turn it into a contemporary leisure club for a “global community of thousands of aficionados.”
While this may appear to be an overly ambitious crossover to the stuffy golf club experience, the initiative has already garnered a lot of attention and is banking on projects like the ConstitutionDAO’s recent success.
LinksDAO golfing startup could aid DAO adoption at the country club
A community-run golf club drew a lot of interest, and LinkssDAO was able to sell out a collection of over 9,000 NFTs in only hours following the debut, making a tidy profit of $10.5 million. The NFTs come with a number of privileges, including the ability to buy a membership at the club LinksDAO buys, discounts on golf tee times, and access to members-only Discord channels.
Users that purchased one of LinksDAO’s two NFTs (one representing a “leisure” membership and the other a “global” membership) will also get an allotment of LINKS, the project’s governance token, which will be released in the following months. Those who own LINKS will be able to vote on everything from the location of the planned golf club to the day-to-day operations.
There’s also the open market, where LINKS tokens may be traded for cash if you don’t want to cope with the complicated process of decentralized governance.
Mike Dudas, the project’s founder, believes that this will not be the case because the initiative has already gathered a large and enthusiastic community.
“We hope it shows sports communities that folks in crypto have passion, new ideas, capital, and conviction to create new models of membership, fun, and participation,” he said in an interview.
And the community will need to have quite a bit of passion in order to get the project off the ground.
We are buying a golf course— LinksDAO (@linksdao) January 2, 2022
A PGA-certified golf course may cost tens of millions of dollars to build, and millions more to keep running.
“It is not cheap to buy and operate a world-class gold operation. To do so, we will absolutely need additional funding,” Dudas said.
A significant portion of that money will have to be spent on some less-than-glamorous accounting. A DAO isn’t a recognized legal entity in the United States, thus it can’t possess assets or operate businesses.
LinksDAO will have to form a separate operational corporation that will hold the physical assets and run the golf course on a day-to-day basis in order to really own a golf course. The DAO is presently in negotiations with legal experts, according to Dudas, to come up with the appropriate solution for this.
LinksDAO also intends to provide its members with the chance to invest in the operational firm. If the project is successful, it will be the first time that NFTs have allowed holders to obtain equity ownership and, as a result, cash flows from the business.
Web3 and golf: a perfect marriage or a short-sighted management nightmare?
The mission in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/JV17oWXdHf— LinksDAO (@linksdao) December 18, 2021
The rapid surge in popularity of DAOs in recent months, mostly due to the rapid emergence of ConstitutionDAO, has given the LinksDAO community reason to be enthusiastic about the project’s completion. Dudas told Golf magazine that he was motivated to build LinksDAO by his dislike of traditional country clubs’ stodginess and strictness.
The Connecticut native, who started The Block, claimed that stiff rituals and restricted memberships were his least favourite aspects of golf when he was younger and that DAOs allowed him to avoid them.
Thousands of ardent golfers and DAO aficionados came to the project’s Discord channel over the last week to engage in a series of town hall meetings. However, like many others, the initiative may become a victim of its own success.
The euphoria around DAOs, as well as the fast-paced development cycles common in the crypto sector, may attract a lot of starry-eyed enthusiasts while discouraging those who are less romantic from participating. This is, at its foundation, a real-world commercial enterprise, and individuals who are already immersed in the world of DAOs may struggle to cope with the rigours of running a golf course.
There’s also the issue of long-term viability—how long can such an endeavour endure if the DAO fever fades? And how will the club deal with potentially tens of thousands of consumers if it doesn’t calm down?
Golf posed these issues as well, noting that the initiative was heavy on abstract references to “community” and “equality,” but weak on specifics about how things will operate in practice.
“It doesn’t take a cynic to imagine that a private club composed of thousands of golf- and crypto-fiends from around the world might turn out less like a laidback National Golf Links and more like a members-only Lord of the Flies,” the magazine noted.
Fortunately, Dudas and the rest of the LinksDAO team are very aware of the issues and are trying to resolve them. Dudas argued that pure utopian belief will not work in this case.
“Fortunately, we have people who are clear-eyed and skeptical and very committed to wrestling with tough questions. We’ll see how it goes.”
