As of October 30th, Buddles has been taken over by Lumineers_NFT
Buddles is aiming to bring long-term sustainability and accountability back to the NFT space through AI and DAO tooling. They plan to do this alongside a fun community-focussed culture and have identified three key pillars to a successful project.
Interestingly, absolutely none of the mint funds will be used to pay the team and instead me invested into the Buddles Project. The team will only be paid from a percentage of royalties earned on the collection.
Buddle Orbs are the Genesis Collection for the project and offer early supports exclusive utility and access in preparation for the main collection mint.
The main Buddles collection represents your membership pass into the Buddles Community and the value streams provided.
Not just another unnecessary Discord group. The Buddles DAO will primarily be funded from 45% of the mint revenue as well as 3% of every secondary market transaction. Holders will be eligible to vote on how these funds are used in determining future business ventures of Buddles DAO.
Buddles Labs aims to bring a suite of innovative new DAO and AI tools, marketing support and experiment designs on Solana. It will initially be funded by 30% of the mint revenue. The labs will incorporate:
The Valley looks to reinvent how communities interact, cooperate and grow in a fun environment on the Solana Ecosystem. The Buddles team will be introducing a range of initiatives to assist in built relationships, networking and fostering collaborations within the Valley.
On July 17th 2023, Buddles announced Season II through their Portals upgrade mechanism.
As early supports of the Buddles project, Orb holders will initially receive the following benefits:
In addition to the above, it has been noted that Orbs will always remain a quintessential element of utility for the Buddles Ecosystem in conjunction with a main collection Buddle
Despite the term ‘DAO’ being thrown around a lot in the space, there are very few resources available for a DAO to function in the way it really ought as per its definition.
Buddles lab will look to solve this through the creation of:
The tools created under this umbrella will be holder-gated to provide such utility exclusively to holders. They are focussed on optimising productivity and providing insight into the Web 3 space. These tools include:
Tool suites can be white-labelled for use by other projects to help provide the Buddles ecosystem with a revenue stream. A percentage of this revenue will be shared with holders. Details on how this will work specifically will be determined once the team has had the opportunity to navigate and establish partners for the adoption of their tools.
The Start-Up Incubator Program aims to create value for Holders as well as give back to the Solana Ecosystem as a whole.
As an endeavour of goodwill to the Solana community, Buddles will be actively exploring mutual beneficial acquisitions within the Solana space, whether that be de-rugging projects or paid acquisitions. These projects will be provided with a new foundation as well as the opportunity for a new leader to take over the project through the Buddles University Founders Program.
These ventures will both help distressed projects and provide Buddles holders the inside scoop on projects being acquired and turned around which could present a multitude of opportunities.
Community is widely recognised as the most important aspect of a successful NFT project and Buddle Valley aims to provide a truly unique community experience. Centred around rewarding engagement and building partnerships, it will represent a crucial component of the Buddles project.
Community participation will be incentivised with a questing system where winners can unlock special perks, rewards and roles within the server.
The Ambassador Program will help members of the community looking to increase their social presence and gain recognition in the space. Holders will be able to leverage their membership in Buddies to feature their tweets directly to the community with an audience ready to engage.
Buddle University has been created to be a frictionless platform for holders looking for careers within the Web3 space through direct support and hands-on learning through Educational Courses such as:
Those who complete the course will receive formal certification which will act as a recognition of their competency.
Riley Campbell a.k.a. Dystopian
Twitter: @bleakvalue
Matthew Morgan a.k.a. Mattious
Twitter: @BullishBleak
Anyone who knows me will be aware that I am certainly not an art connoisseur. Whilst bad art (in my opinion at least) can certainly turn me off of a project, I’m not someone who typically appreciates the better end of the spectrum. That being said, the artwork for this project is what caught my eye because it’s probably one of the few projects where I thought the art was absolutely stunning. The orbs are just gorgeous and I’m glad that there’s no intention for them to be burned into the main collection which in their own right, have very clean artwork as well.
I would however like to see some high-resolution close-up images for people to rock as PFPs as opposed to the full body shots.
Let me preface this by saying that I am typically a cynic. Especially when it comes to people. Admittedly, it’s refreshing to see a DAO that actually intends on functioning like a DAO and not just another glorified Discord chat that eventually dies down. That being said, I’m a big believer in the concept of ‘too many cooks’. In my experience at-least, DAOs only work if they are made up of a small tight-knit group that typically work well together, have a rapport and can hash out issues productively. Big groups who don’t know each other? Much harder to function peacefully and are susceptible to whales coming in and dominating the voting process. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong and I’d be very glad if I am.
I do wonder as well if the holdings within the DAO also create a ceiling on the floor price of the Buddles NFT. What I mean is, if every Buddle NFT is entitled to a share of the DAO, the value of that share will be reflected in the floor value of the NFT.
This is probably the part I’m most intrigued about at the moment. A clean interface for DAO management would be very useful for groups actually wanting to function like true DAOs.
I’ve got to be brutally honest, I’m not a huge fan of this for several reasons:
I am also extremely wary of the advertised ‘inside scoop on acquisitions’ for Buddles holders. Why? Because it means Buddles holders have the opportunity to buy into a project that is seemingly dead and buried for what will most likely be a very cheap entry. News of the acquisition gets out, maybe the project gets turned around and people start seeing value in it. Guess who is there ready to dump on everybody else buying in after the fact? The Buddles holders. Unless measures were introduced to freeze those who buy into the project from dumping on everyone else for a certain period of time, the cynic in me sees this as a potential glorified pump and dump.
My initial instinct is I honestly don’t know what they did in Season I before announcing their Season II.
Something that especially irked me was their recent Twitter campaign featuring a DeGod ‘giveaway’. There are few things that irk me more than a blatantly misleading campaign that gets off on a technicality but I’ll allow you to make that assessment for yourself as this is just my opinion.
The campaign encouraged more engagement from people on Twitter under the guise of potentially winning a DeGod – but that was never the case, at least in the way anyone would expect. They technically gave away a DeGod by giving it to their DAO with Buddles holders getting fractionalised ownership. As a marketing tactic, I guess it worked but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t irk me.