The next steps for Fingerprints

Fingerprints was able to become one of the main art collections and brands in the NFT space over the last 18 months. But the pace of new acquisitions has slowed down, and results of different new initiatives (incubation, launching artworks) have been mixed, we had no clear home runs. Our biggest value creation since inception remains our collection and our community.

I see the need to crystallize the value that has been created, making sure the DAO is truly set up for success in the future, in an increasingly decentralized and autonomous way.

So I see three clear next steps for us:

  1. Entrench our position as the top collector of the works we already collect. That could involve us being creative in gobbling up even more Autoglyphs to eventually get us to #1 (we’re currently the 3rd largest collection with 26 Glyphs. The #2 collector has 53 and Larva Labs has 93)

  2. make abundantly clear that PRINTS should be seen as a superior asset to the underlying collection, because it’s exposure to a branded collection with a community upside.
    For that, I see two sub-steps:
    2.1 Making PRINTS liquidity a higher priority and I would even propose for the DAO to use a sizable portion of its ETH to provide this liquidity. Some ideas have been discussed in two other forum posts (1, 2) but I think we’re moving slowly and we should be more aggressive on that front. The DAO should be willing to buy PRINTS below its NAV, because this would only amount to increase the exposure to the collection we already have, below market prices.
    2.2 The other part of it is moving the DAO from a multisig framework to a token-controlled treasury like Nouns DAO, so PRINTS holders would be sure that the setup is completely trustless and the collection is indeed ultimately controlled by the tokens.

  3. Rationalize compensation expenses, making PRINTS the primary asset for compensation, and only paying in USDC team members that have Fingerprints as its primary source of income. This would happen in the context of the working group org design.

The way I see it, these steps will make the DAO more sustainable, differentiated and community-owned.

The main thesis for Fingerprints from a member or from an investor standpoint would be to have exposure to a unique and leading collection, with a community upside (and all the perks that come with it – private events, access to noteworthy members, potential airdrops from the Studio etc). I’m more confident now than ever that these steps really help us get to a sustainable path to growth.

Curious to hear your thoughts and critiques

PS: note that these steps are not necessarily in order. I would probably argue that the order should be 3/2/1

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I agree with your sentiment that FP has positioned itself to be one of the best crypto art institutions to date. And that this reputation is a great platform to keep moving forward.

Here are some thoughts addressing each point:

  1. I believe we are already entrenched in this regard. I think becoming the TOP collector for any given collection makes a marginal difference and allocating more ETH to collect more AGs (which I’m down to do… a full set one day would be great) depends on market conditions (mainly, getting good value). Perhaps, rather than entrenching ourselves as the top collector for our collections, we can think of ways to be the best steward of our collections. This means thinking of ways to be more present in the traditional art world and allocating ETH to these initiatives that provide even more support to our artists and collections, in ways other DAOs have and haven’t.

  2. I agree here. We should provide liquidity to our membership market, and we have the team to think of more innovate ways to effectively manage the treasury and liquidity for memberships. Candidly, I would like to have discussion about transitioning to using an NFT as membership instead of $PRINTS. And I acknowledge this is experimental ground for all DAOs. Ultimately I’m curious what we think are the pros and cons of using erc20s vs erc721s as tokens for membership.

  3. This makes sense.

All in all, we have an amazing collection and I’m really proud of what Sam and everyone else on the curation team has put together. Challenges FP face are challenges many DAOs face, and I’m happy to help, bounce ideas, and lift all the amazing work we’ve been able to collect.

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Great initiative, let’s do it!

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Thanks for you comments @magicdhz .

On you point of collecting more vs. being better stewards I completely agree. But I do believe we should consider creative ways to really make our position entrenched, particularly with Autoglyphs, where we’re big collector, but not the biggest collector.

On (2) there has been a lot of discussion on making the PRINTS <> NFT conversion. I think this is a valid initiative, and we can keep discussing that on that post

Thaks @luiz for bringin this up. In order of your points:

  1. I agree with @magicdhz here – I think there are diminishing, possibly negative, returns in adding more and more woks of our current collection. Not only could we be seen as ‘running out of ideas’, but we may add a negative market sentiment to those collecitons as we’re seen as ‘the only buyer’ (or, worse, a potential future mass seller). I’d like us to (a) better communicate our curation thesis (b) extend out collection guided by this thesis and (c) present / steward our collection in the best way possible.
  2. I’m not a fan of us using DAO funds to provide liquidity beyond extreme sub-NAV buy-backs. We’re not here to be market-makers, we’re here to collect and curate. I’m in favour of helping the PRINTS market become more efficient without the use of our funds – and possibly also in favour of migrating to an NFT-based membership system (see separate post)
  3. Agree this should be enacted ASAP.
  1. Curious your thoughts on why you think buying more AGs is more creative?

  2. I will follow up on that conversation.

Ultimately I think there’s a big opportunity to be stewards of real crypto art. In my opinion, this means we should adapt traditional art world models and apply web3 tools and principles.

For example, a very simple idea would be to mint a limited supply of FP Artist Tokens that effectively give holders of those tokens discounts or priority on our artists’ newest drops as well as a direct connection to our artists’ biggest collectors. This would be a clean way to earn revenue and provide value to both our artists and their collectors. We may not make a killing right away, but I believe the potential value for this type of thing is big and, most interestingly, untapped. Experimenting with these types of models would be fun.

I really like what Yeche Lange had to say in their collecting thesis. We already have relationships with some of crypto’s best, most respected artists. Let’s think about how we can build around them and commit to the longevity of our artists’ careers.

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We’re exploring similar ideas for upcoming drops, but mostly tied to the Fingerprints membership itself rather than a standalone token.

is there more information about what ideas are being explored?

We’re thinking about using staking as a means to allow preferential access to future drops for $PRINTS holders, and also adding more perks on top of staking like the Traces — FP collection usage permission through PRINTS staking.

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