The Hashmasks are just over a year old and remain one of the most influential and innovative NFT projects ever created. It is responsible for onboarding countless new people into the web3 space and has set the standard for what high quality art on the blockchain can be. As a living digital art collection boasting dynamic onchain naming capabilities, the Hashmasks project has forever cemented itself as historically significant in the NFT space. In addition, the originality and creativity of Hashmasks continue to inspire more and more new projects that enter the space every day.
The Hashmasks launched with no roadmap, no team, no marketing and no secondary sales fee. It was always planned to be a project that was led by a vibrant community of passionate collectors. The incredibly in-depth mysteries and puzzles were left to be solved and discovered with no help from the founders. The community is as much a part of defining the art as the images themselves. This is what makes Hashmasks so special. In support of further developing and building the community, the founders funded numerous initiatives via grants. One such initiative was the formation of MaskDAO that would provide a structure for the most active members of the Hashmasks community to build and elevate the project. The first step toward making a community led project a reality was implementing a 2.5% secondary sales fee where 100% of the fee would go directly to the DAO. On September 28th, 2021, the first disbursement was received and the DAO was officially funded. A dedicated team was positioned to focus on growing the Hashmasks community.
The DAO immediately got to work on developing governance, a marketing strategy and a budget. They launched The Mask Museum, curated and displayed The Hashmasks at the SCOPE Art Show in Miami during Art Basel week and brought the community together with weekly Twitter Spaces and Town Halls. The community led DAO was a success on many levels but struggled to fulfill the original goal of building a strong and active community.
A new path forward is launching.
The Changes
Socials
Going forward The Hashmasks brand will be the only active source for social media accounts Discord, Twitter, Instagram and the website. The MaskDAO socials will direct to The Hashmasks official sources and provide a unified channel for the community to learn about what The Hashmasks are doing within the Metaverse and in real life (IRL). Twitter Spaces hosted from The Hashmasks official account will connect active, disengaged, and new community members with the latest events and opportunities.
Community Grants
Grant proposals will be an opportunity to leverage resources in order to support initiatives for the community’s overall benefit. MaskDAO’s proposal system will be replaced with a streamlined two week Community Grants process. There is going to be an efficient structure where community members are incentivized to participate in brand promotion and Hashmask engagement activities. The current MaskDAO voice verification voting system is slated to be used until The Hashmasks + BrightID system comes online. This will ensure that every voter is a unique person with one vote.
Grant proposals must be well thought-out and can only be submitted by verified Hashmasks owners. The person or team submitting a Community Grant needs to be prepared to answer questions and respond to comments in both voice and written format.
More details on the Community Grants process are available in this Slide Deck.
New Team
The opportunity to contribute and help Hashmasks reach its full potential will be available to everyone in The Hashmasks community. An election is going to determine a new team to lead the project’s strategic direction.
MaskDAO’s team was an all-or-none slate made up of the most active community members at the time. The team roles were defined but duties were often shared among team members. Their focus was split between growing the brand while also being highly receptive to community feedback which meant that proposals were executed slowly (if at all). The team’s ability to elevate the brand was diminished by the DAO’s heavy focus on community engagement at all levels of decision making.
The NFT space is competitive, requires high engagement levels and efficient processes to execute on all initiatives. Even DAOs with healthy engagement can be frontrun by centralized teams that have the ability to act more quickly.
The Hashmasks will take a major step forward in the community-led handover process on March 16th. There will be a one-off voting process to select the Hashmasks Team. They will have access to treasury funds and the 2.5% sales fee that funded MaskDAO. The sales fee will be used for Hashmasks Team salaries, operational costs and community grants. The elected Hashmasks team will run day-to-day operations to raise awareness of The Hashmasks brand in the NFT space and beyond. This will allow for fast, fluid and dynamic brand development.
More details on the roles and election process are available in this Slide Deck.
The Future
The Hashmasks encompass an engaged and vibrant community who already participate in many ways including: solving mysteries, bonding over name change initiatives, displaying their Hashmasks in the Metaverse and in real life to name a few. The community is strong, and this transition will help it build on a solid foundation of art and technology growing the project to new heights for years to come.
