The story of the IreneDAO NFT craze began in October when 28-year-old cryptocurrency influencer and model Yuqing Irene Zhao and her business partner Benjamin Tang came up with the idea of “So-Col.”
Irene explained to Cointelegraph that So-Col is an acronym for “Social Collectables,” a platform designed to help content creators monetize their content and build communities with their fans.
Billed as a “decentralized version of OnlyFans, Discord, Twitch, and Patreon,” the platform allows content creators and influencers to convert their social media content into non-fungible token collectibles. It is powered by StarkWare's second-layer solution, StarkEx.
Fast forward to last Tuesday, and Tang and Irene launched a sticker pack for Irene's Telegram community to use on the messaging app. The stickers superimpose a photo of Irene with slang words used by members of the crypto community, such as "gm," "wen Binance," and "yes ser."
According to Irene, the sticker pack garnered a lot of attention right away, racking up 2,000 installs in four days. On Wednesday, a fan named “libevm” reached out to her on Twitter, suggesting she consider converting the sticker packs into NFTs.
Irene agreed, and on Friday, they tokenized the stickers into 1,106 NFTs on the OpenSea marketplace. These NFTs are described as “access passes” to the DAO’s “Genesis Tribe.” They are currently trading at a minimum price of 1.47 ETH ($4668) with a total volume of 2000 ETH ($6,351,180).
Source: IreneDAO NFT Collection on OpenSea
"We at So-Col thought it was a great idea because we wanted to create a prototype for the core concept of a community-driven creator economy. We then expanded the idea into a DAO," libevm "and my co-founder Ben It came together in one day," she explained to Cointelegraph.
"What we didn't expect was that our test case would go viral. In fact, I don't even know when it was launched - I was out for swimming lessons! 40 minutes later when I came back from the pool , all 500 NFTs sold. I don't even have one of my own!"
Wait, so I now have a DAO? ?
— Irene Zhao (@Irenezhao_) January 14, 2022
Despite their success, neither "libevm" nor Irene have said they took a dime from the project. Instead, the money will be used by the DAO community to "experiment the best ways to integrate web3 into the creator economy."
When the DAO first launched, members could mint a free genesis pass by logging into the site. However, Irene explained that all 1107 passes were claimed within the first 30 minutes. By purchasing one of the sticker NFTs, the fan is also effectively purchasing a membership to the DAO.
Irene’s success may be a bigger factor in attracting more women into the crypto space than any other effort to date. It's crazy how far and how many opportunities a smart, capable, attractive girl can go in the field.
This is an apolitical correct view.
— Arthur (@Arthur_0x) January 16, 2022
"libevm" explained that "we are discussing in discord how to expand this to make it more inclusive", adding that they use these NFTs to "indicate how funds should be spent in this DAO".
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Irene’s success has sparked a polarized reaction in the crypto community. Some big names like Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz and YouTuber Logan Paul actually worked on the project.
“Irene, a proud member of the team, I love the raucous atmosphere. This young lady has built her brand in less than a year. NFTs allow her to bring her community together,” Novogratz said in a statement on Monday. wrote in a tweet.
Logan Paul’s OpenSea wallet also shows that he purchased a total of 20 IreneDAO NFTs for approximately 85.9 ETH ($280,000).
Big news: Logan Paul bought 20 NFTs of Irene Zhao (famous Instagram model) for over $270,000.
— Mr. Whale (@CryptoWhale) January 16, 2022
“Libevm” explained to Cointelegraph that they came up with the idea of turning Telegram stickers into NFT collectibles after the success of fellow crypto influencer Ghozali. Ghozali, a 22-year-old Indonesian boy, made $22 million selling NFT selfies on the OpenSea marketplace.
In fact, members of IreneDAO appear to have their eyes on a potential future collaboration. On January 14, Irene tweeted: "The DAO has stated its position, and I would like to openly invite you to cooperate."
Since then, someone has created an OpenSea account called "GhozalIreneDAO," which superimposes Ghozali's head on top of Irene's body.
So-Col recently closed a seed round with investments from a number of industry leaders including Animoca, Defiance, 3AC, and Mechanism.
In 2021, Irene made her mark in the crypto space by serving as the Chief Marketing Officer of Konomi Network.
Cointelegraph Chinese is a blockchain news information platform, and the information provided only represents the author's personal opinion, has nothing to do with the position of the Cointelegraph Chinese platform, and does not constitute any investment and financial advice. Readers are requested to establish correct currency concepts and investment concepts, and earnestly raise risk awareness.
In addition to being criticized by the community, the new Twitter feature also showed that Irene Zhao had been involved in multiple project scams.
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