IreneDAO NFTs causing a stir on crypto Twitter

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The sto­ry of the IreneDAO NFT craze start­ed in Octo­ber when 28-year-old Chi­nese cryp­to influ­encer and mod­el Yuqing Irene Zhao came up with the idea for “So-Col” with her busi­ness part­ner, Ben­jamin Tang.

So-Col is short for “Social Col­lec­tables,” Irene explained to Coin­tele­graph, and the plat­form aims to help con­tent cre­ators mon­e­tize their con­tent and build com­mu­ni­ties with their fans.

Brand­ed as the “decen­tral­ized ver­sion of Only­Fans, Dis­cord, Twitch, and Patre­on,” the plat­form allows con­tent cre­ators and influ­encers to con­vert their social media con­tent into non-fun­gi­ble col­lectible items (NFTs.) It is pow­ered by StarkWare’s lay­er-two solu­tion StarkEx and lever­ages the decen­tral­ized ID protocol.

Fast-for­ward to Tues­day last week, Tang and Irene launched a stick­er pack for Irene’s Telegram com­mu­ni­ty to use on the mes­sag­ing app. The stick­ers fea­ture super­im­posed pho­tos of Irene with meme slang text used by mem­bers of the cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty like “gm”, “wen Binance”, and “yes ser.”

A timeline: sticker pack, to NFT collection, to DAO

The stick­er pack imme­di­ate­ly gained a lot of trac­tion, reach­ing 2,000 instal­la­tions with­in four days accord­ing to Irene. On Wednes­day, she was con­tact­ed by a fan called “libevm” – who told Coin­tele­graph they would pre­fer to stay anony­mous – on Twit­ter, who sug­gest­ed that she con­sid­er turn­ing the stick­er pack into NFTs. 

Irene agreed, and they tok­enized the stick­ers into 1,106 NFTs on the OpenSea mar­ket­place by Fri­day. The NFTs are described as an “access pass” to the DAO’s “Gen­e­sis Tribe,” ini­tial­ly dis­trib­uted with a free mint. They’re cur­rent­ly trad­ing at a floor price of 1.47 Ether ($4,668), with a total vol­ume trad­ed of 2,000 Ether ($6,351,180).

Source: IreneDAO NFT col­lec­tion on OpenSea

“We at So-Col thought it was a great idea as we want­ed to cre­ate a pro­to­type for our core con­cept of a com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven cre­ator econ­o­my. We then extend­ed the idea into a DAO, and “libevm” and my co-founder Ben hacked it togeth­er with­in a day,” she explained to Cointelegraph. 

“What we did­n’t expect was that our test case was an instant hit. In fact, I was not even aware when it was launched – I was out for a swim­ming les­son! By the time I came back from the pool after 40 min­utes, the entire 500 NFTs were gone. I did­n’t even have one to myself!”

IreneDAO polarizes the crypto community 

Despite its suc­cess, nei­ther “libevm” nor Irene say they have tak­en a cent from the project. Rather, the mon­ey will be used by the DAO com­mu­ni­ty to “exper­i­ment the best ways of inte­grat­ing web3 into the cre­ator economy.”

When the DAO was ini­tial­ly launched, mem­bers were able to mint a free gen­e­sis pass by log­ging onto the web­site. How­ev­er, all 1,107 pass­es were claimed in the first 30 min­utes, explained Irene. By pur­chas­ing one of the stick­er NFTs, fans are also effec­tive­ly pur­chas­ing a mem­ber­ship for the DAO. 

“We’re dis­cussing it in the dis­cord on how to extend it so it becomes more inclu­sive, explained “libevm”, adding that they use the NFTs to “sig­nal how funds should be used” with­in the DAO.

Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, Irene’s suc­cess has led to some polar­iz­ing reac­tions in the cryp­to com­mu­ni­ty. Some big names like Galaxy Dig­i­tal CEO Mike Novo­gratz and YouTu­ber Logan Paul have actu­al­ly bought into the project themselves.

“Proud mem­ber of team @Irenezhao_ I love the hus­tle. This young woman has cre­at­ed her own brand in less than a year. And NFT’s allows her to pull her com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er,” wrote Novo­gratz in a Sun­day tweet. 

Paul’s OpenSea wal­let also indi­cates that he pur­chased 20 of the NFTs for a total of approx­i­mate­ly 85.9 Ether ($280,000).

Is a collab between Ghozali and Irene Zhao on the cards? 

“Libevm” explained to Coin­tele­graph that they came up with the idea to turn the Telegram stick­ers into an NFT col­lec­tion fol­low­ing the suc­cess of fel­low cryp­to influ­encer, Ghoza­li. The Indone­sian 22-year-old has made $22 mil­lion sell­ing NFT self­ies on the OpenSea marketplace. 

In fact, mem­bers of IreneDAO already appear to have their sights set on a poten­tial future col­lab­o­ra­tion. “The DAO has spo­ken,” wrote Irene in a Jan. 14 tweet. “I would like to extend an open invi­ta­tion to you to work on a collaboration.”

Since then, some­one has cre­at­ed an OpenSea account called “Ghoza­lIreneDAO,” fea­tur­ing some ques­tion­able edits of Ghozali’s head super­im­posed onto Irene’s body. 

Relat­ed: An Indone­sian 22-year-old makes $1M by sell­ing NFT self­ies on OpenSea

So-Col recent­ly closed its seed invest­ment round, with invest­ments from many indus­try lead­ers includ­ing Ani­mo­ca, Defi­ance, 3AC, and Mechanism. 

In 2021, Irene rose to promi­nence in the cryp­to space through her role as Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer at Kono­mi Network. 



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