Action NFT 1 Closed
Reviewing Lessons from Action NFT 1
The After-Action Review is one of several retrospective techniques to review events quickly after their conclusion for the purpose of learning. If you have thoughts on our first campaign, please drop them in the comments. This is how we continually improve!
1. What did we expect would happen?
We launched Action NFT 1 with the purpose of raising funds to remove the irrelevant and much-maligned cryptocurrency language from the cryptocurrency bill. We had the following expectations:
We provided the capability of up to 3000 mints of the common NFT, not necessarily expecting we would hit this mark, but certainly hopeful it could hit.
We added a capability to claim a 90% refund within 30 days of an unsuccessful action. The intent was to give people more confidence and willingness to run up the pot to a ludicrously higher level.
We always hope to provide everybody satisfaction with their purchase and keep their NFT for the long haul.
To capture potential extreme upside, we released a rare NFT that could accommodate any degree of bidding war.
We hoped a side effect of the Action NFT would be to generate interest for our Founder Token, active campaigns, and general social media presence.
The Action NFT would ideally drive attention and engagement we could turn to influence and action in Washington DC.
Although a full success (removal of the crypto language from the infrastructure bill) was always a long-shot, a successful fundraise could be useful to prove the concept as a viable strategy for political influence.
2. What actually happened?
For the common NFT, 90 unique addresses purchased 292 NFTS for a total of 19.9981 ETH. The withdraw window opened but no data collected yet. [Etherscan | Opensea]
The rare golden NFT attracted 10 bids from 8 bidders, accumulating a total of 4.76 ETH for a range of 0.420 ETH to 1.200 ETH for the winners. [Etherscan | Opensea]
Another NFT in the series, branded as “uncommon” was released towards the end. The proceeds were not connected with the Action NFT, but general fundraising for the DAO. The price was fixed at 0.05 ETH and 20 had been minted at the close of Action NFT 1. [Etherscan | Opensea]
In other related action, a bonus NFT for holders allowing users to claim up to 5 NFTs for holding any balance of any of PACDAO’s previous 5 releases was also released. [Etherscan | Opensea | Github]
3. What went well?
Some successes from the campaign:
We ideated and launched the entire campaign in just two weeks. Great turnaround time!
A lot of participation from the community across legal, marketing, and dev.
Some social media attention around the concept brought in new users.
Most users reported coming from some promotional campaigns, giving us learning on effective channels for future campaigns.
PAC DAO established a track record of progress and community led execution.
We overperformed the launch of the Founder Token in terms of total assets raised, (before the effect of refunds).
Commissioning the artwork of high profile artist Rebecca Hendin turned around incredible artwork. Whatever may have happened with the campaign, the artwork will be a great memento.
Great refinement of our legal scope to operate and proof of concept.
We ended up getting a few conversations with some DC lobbying heavyweights as a result of our campaign. They assured us our numbers were “very good” relative to our stage, and it opened up some doors for more conversations.
4. What could be improved next time?
Future launches could be improved with more marketing activity at time of launch:
Follow-through on our idea to coordinate raids of Discord NFT servers
Recruit ahead of time influencers to co-brand or promote the project on launch.
Improve utilization of the community. We have a few hundred members, probably 10 - 15 actively participated.
With the launch of the gov token, more directly small tasks to get members involved.
Better mechanisms to incentivize users to refer friends.
Authorize pre-mints in advance, and build the mechanic into the smart contract.
Adjust tokenomics on future launches. Some open questions:
Was 3000 a good or bad number?
Did a small linear ramp drive any perception of scarcity or urgency? (relative to the faster exponential ramp or a flat price)
No major security issues uncovered, but still would be useful to have additional security testing on future drops.
Future drops that include a price ramp need a mechanism for partial mint when price ramps occur to prevent gas spent on reverts. Since price ramps appeared effective, this is a necessary consideration for v2.
A refund mechanism in future campaigns would seek to improve upon lessons from this campaign:
Congress took much longer on the bill than expected, making some users skittish. Future drops can add a mechanism to provide an early refund at a lower level.
Users may be reluctant to sacrifice DeFi yield in the event of a longer action. The $100K+ we had sitting idle which amounted to the loss of several thousand dollars worth of yield. Users may be more inclined to support our cause if they didn’t have to sacrifice yield for the duration, although the legal team would need to carefully consider the legal ramifications of such assistance.
Future drops may also consider a time lock that would automatically kick in if the admins do not trigger an end time.
Also possible to have no refund on future tokens, but the refund capability was cited as a factor in some users’ consideration to ape.
To plug issues with our front-end talent, utilize the services of contractors.
Provide simple messaging templates for the purpose of sharing with colleagues as well as to put in front of Congress people to push their action.
In future campaigns, a topline number of all money raised would be useful to display — either on web, or as a bot in Discord. Otherwise it becomes too difficult to see “number go up.”
Consider ways to build out the platform for more broad usage — a factory for anybody to launch their NFTs as a part of a political, marketing, or influence campaign may be a valuable bullhorn.
Consider launching on sidechains. Gas has been very expensive, as has ETH. Opensea supports Polygon and launching there could be quite easy. Question: does this require an NFT bridge contract to move between chains?
Surely you all have many more ideas about how we can improve our next campaigns. Leave your thoughts in the comments, as our next campaign is presently in the works.