Minty primer

Minty is the platform for people to discover member-managed investment DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) or create one of their own. Minty members can explore and participate in DAOs composed of alternative assets—both physical (art, collectibles) and digital (NFTs, IP).

DAOs are coordination tools that enable people to connect and organize around a shared set of goals, rules, and governance. Since everything is codified on the blockchain, it is transparent and immutable, thus reducing the reliance on trusted administrators.

DAOs also enable novel, composable, DAO-to-DAO business relationships to grow between communities through compatible interfaces and an interconnected network of individuals. Through collaboration with other DAOs in the space, Minty enables new features for their DAO members and strengthens the overall ecosystem.

How Minty works

The Minty network consists of Collector DAOs that manage portfolios of both digitally-native NFTs and NFTs backed by authenticated and secured physical assets. Each member-managed DAO creates its own collection of assets and agrees on the rules that govern it.

Minty DAOs

Minty DAOs organize individual investors around shared interests, pooled funds, and an agreed-upon strategy. 

New DAOs are customized by their creators to establish investment focus, strategy and governance. Details such as membership dues, investment and exit strategies, and voting procedures are defined. Once a DAO has been formed, it can be easily replicated and modified. This is an efficient way to create DAOs that requires minimal effort and provides consistent member experiences. 

New member investors can join a DAO by contributing to its treasury or by offering their own assets for acquisition by the DAO. Treasury funds are then used to acquire additional portfolio assets that the DAO has agreed to acquire. 

Every DAO on the Minty platform is a member of Minty's governance and operations MetaDAO, which provides the structure and transparancy to ensure the fair, safe, and secure acquisition and allocation of both digital and physical assets. 

The Minty MetaDAO offers:

• A community-vetted network of physical asset custody providers

• On- and off-chain asset acquisition and tokenization options

• Appraisal and escrow services

• Pooled insurance options for physical collections

• Funding for platform evolution (cross-chain bridging of DAO assets)

• Managing the issuance of governance tokens

Minty strives to be secure and flexible. Members can rely on premium physical asset curation, storage, and insurance options for little or no cost. Removing these responsibilities makes it easier for members to focus on important things like creating and growing a successful DAO.

Minty’s DAO framework is built in close collaboration with DAOHaus and already has active DAOs live on the platform. Soon, Minty will support multiple DAO models through interoperable modules with Gnosis and Tribute.

Minty provides a framework for cross-DAO value and asset transfers, allowing for asset acquisitions, trades, and sales, through its integrations with external marketplace platforms. This opens the doors for composability within the blossoming decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape—providing additional ways for collectives to leverage their DAO shares, asset-backed NFTs, and more.

What problem does Minty solve?

Investing in alternative asset classes can be convoluted and challenging; investments are difficult to source, validate, and subsequently manage. Further, the financial barrier to entry can be prohibitively high on individual items. Minty solves these problems by organizing like-minded individual investors into Collector DAOs. DAO members define their charter, set the rules, and aggregate their purchasing power.

Rather than relying on drops and information controlled by centralized platforms, DAO members source, scrutinize, and value attractive alternative assets. This model makes investing in alternative assets far more accessible and transparent than it has ever been. Within a DAO, some members will naturally choose to be more active than others, and can rise to serve community interests through administrative positions. Whatever path members choose, they can rest assured knowing that every proposal, vote, and decision is 100% transparent to everyone.

Individuals with collectibles can diversify their portfolios by contributing their assets to a collection in exchange for shares in the DAO. Through its network of custody providers and auction platforms, Minty ensures that all physical assets held in a collection are secured, insured, and can easily be liquidated. This addresses a major logistical challenge for niche investors. With NFTs backed by authenticated, secured physical assets, members can unlock liquidity in their otherwise static assets through a range of emerging DeFi NFT derivatives platforms.

Most importantly, Minty solves the problem of accessibility. By providing a framework for investors to transparently collaborate on a shared vision, Minty opens alternative investments to almost everybody—allowing even those with limited knowledge of the asset category to confidently expand their portfolio. 

Collaboration is key

Minty strives to mitigate information asymmetry and give members a voice. The Minty framework enables investors to gain access to potentially cost-prohibitive assets and diversify their holdings. With Minty, better informed members, working off the same information, can collectively optimize their decision-making. This not only levels the playing field, but makes it more fun to play on. Since collectors and curators are part of the same DAO, it is in the best interests of the experts to source and acquire assets at a fair price, and to develop optimal strategies.

As big believers in community collaboration, Minty is developing relationships with a range of DeFi and DAO protocols to provide additional opportunities to participants. Minty will offer its tools and services to the greater crypto community. This will give both nascent and established investment communities the tools they need to better organize and manage their investments. Minty has already built integrations with the Rarible Protocol enabling DAOs to collectively buy and sell NFTs, in collaboration with the DAOHaus community.

One of my goals in building Minty is to demonstrate the power of composing many different elements from across the web3 space to build something new, while adding value where I can to strengthen the whole ecosystem. - Isaac Patka, co-founder

In the physical realm, Minty has established connections with appraisal, transportation, custody, and insurance providers. These relationships enable collectors, investors, and curators of all experience levels to participate in the asset tokenization process. 

Minty governance

The Minty governance token will be used to align interests, govern the MetaDAO, and incentivize behaviors that strengthen the community. The MetaDAO is responsible for the management and operation of the collective resources shared by the Collector DAOs, inspired by the UberHAUS structure developed by DAOHaus.

Benefits of the Minty governance token for individuals

• Membership: Provides a means to join the community, govern the MetaDAO, and grant access to the MetaDAO services.

• Community: Provides a mechanism for individuals to participate in broader discussions around strategy and general DAO management. These interactions make it easier for DAOs to help each other, and may also spark ideas for new DAOs. This is made possible through token gated channels using Collab.land. 

• Direct governance: Decisions are enacted through community elected delegates, somewhat similar to the Gitcoin Stewards. Delegates have voting shares and the control to govern token allocation and distribute treasury funds to working groups and service providers. 

• Signaling: Individuals can signal token-weighted support for DAO decisions using voting systems like Snapshot, or they can stake delegates who represent their interests and receive their voting shares in the MetaDAO.

• Curation: The MetaDAO maintains a high standard of quality for DAOs on the Minty platform by allowing the community to determine which collections to launch (similar to the Write Race system on Mirror).

Benefits of the Minty governance token for DAOs

For Collector DAOs, the Minty token provides a means to access the MetaDAO services and participate in governance.

• Accessing services: DAOs can get access to service providers that help with acquisition, physical asset storage, and insurance. DAOs pay for these services by depositing Minty tokens into the MetaDAO treasury.

• Governance: DAOs can collectively voice their support for proposals in the MetaDAO, including topics such as service provider selection and funding for platform evolution. As with individuals, DAOs can signal support for proposals, or can stake delegates to represent their interests.

Incentives

The MetaDAO is responsible for deciding which behaviors it would like to reward and what size those rewards should be. These decisions are driven by what is determined to be most beneficial to the overall community of DAOs. Examples of some behaviors that will be incentivized through distributions include:

• Operating or participating in a Collector DAO

• Voting on proposals

• Providing liquidity on exchanges

• Identifying and evaluating service providers

• Appraising collections using NFT appraisal platforms like Upshot

The Minty founders

Minty is backed by a veteran team with a wealth of experience in building decentralized products and fundraising. 

Isaac Patka is Minty’s CTO & Co-founder, and an accomplished engineer and builder who has been working in the blockchain space since 2017. Isaac is a regular contributor to the Rarible DAO and DAOHaus communities, Minty’s representative in Metacartel, member of the BuidlGuidl, and a regular speaker at Ethereum Devcon and EthGlobal conferences. He is widely considered to be a thought leader in the decentralized identity and Ethereum space.

Geoffrey Arone, CEO & Co-founder, is an established blockchain investor with more than a decade of experience working with investment funds. Geoffrey has an MBA from MIT and an ScB in Neuroscience from Brown, and is Co-founder of Arrington XRP Capital—a prominent crypto fund with more than $500 million in AUM. He boasts an impressive track record as an entrepreneur, having founded the popular social web browsing platform Flock (acquired by Zynga) and SafetyWeb (acquired by Experian).

A look ahead

Minty envisions a future where anybody can confidently and securely gain exposure to alternative assets. 

In Minty V0, Collector DAOs will primarily consist of asset-backed collectibles directly sourced and curated by the Minty team. These are built on the Polygon blockchain using the secure, versatile, and intuitive DAOHaus framework, using custom minion contracts for executing the will of the DAO. The initial technical framework is built in collaboration with other DAOs.

The first four Collector DAOs have already been launched on Polygon, and the team is set to unveil the public version of the platform in the fall. 

Minty hopes to have 10 Collector DAOs live by launch, each of which will have a different investment focus and strategy. In pursuit of this vision, Minty has already tokenized more than 900 collectibles—with values ranging from $1k to $150k—and is actively acquiring other highly sought-after assets, including a full Pokemon TCG first edition set. 

In total, Minty has more than 5,000 assets in its tokenization pipeline and has access to more than $100 million worth of collectibles and art from its founding team, investors, and advisors—helping it bootstrap its initial Collector DAO asset pools.

Minty aims to position its product as the leading technology and legal platform for asset-backed NFTs. Towards that end, it is integrating with top asset custody providers and laying down the pipelines to securely handle an increasingly diverse array of assets (based on user demand). The platform will also be forging relationships with a variety of NFT marketplaces and indexers to bolster liquidity for Minty NFTs. 

With this system, Minty hopes to inspire the next generation of investors who, for the first time, will be able to access investment opportunities that were previously reserved for those in the know.

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