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Teia Newsletter #16 - June 2023

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Where Art Meets Tokens, Pride Meets Tezos, and Fountains Flow

It has been quite some time since the last newsletter. The active Teians have been focusing on the next steps of building the Teia DAO and distributing the Teia DAO governance tokens, and this newsletter will update you on the DAO development and the currently running community vote, but also on Teia’s fountain that is still pouring, this years #TezosPride event and a look back at Teias showcase at NFTNYC last month.

Table of Contents

#TezosPride 2023

June is Pride Month and we will be celebrating once again with the second annual #TezosPride event! 🌈

You can find the TezosPride event feed on Teia's website here!

Big thanks again to NFTBiker for creating an event page for this year's event which can be found here. To check out and collect artworks from last year’s event page from NFTBiker, please find it here.

There are several ways to participate

No edition or price limit! We are a part of a big beautiful ecosystem and you are encouraged to mint on any marketplace, but remember if you mint on Teia, #SwapOnTeia !

2SLGBTQIA+ Artists:

  • Mint artwork with the hashtag #TezosPride!
  • Submit your work to this submission form before 12:00PM ET Sat June 24 to be included in a TezosPride Showcase during the final week of June!

Ally Artists:

  • Mint artwork with the hashtag #TezosPride!
  • Consider minting it as a collab fundraiser by selecting a 2SLGBTQIA+ supporting beneficiary such as the Teia Equity Representative Multisig or group doing similar work to contribute to providing support to Queer artists year round!

Collectors:

  • Search for artworks with the hashtag #TezosPride and collect to your heart's content!
  • Consider creating twitter threads or your own galleries using Oncyber.io, Gallery.so, or similar tools to share and celebrate artwork from the event!

Community Leaders:

  • Consider hosting Twitter Spaces or Silent Shill spaces to celebrate the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and showcase artists participating in the event!

If you are looking for more information about how to make a fundraiser collab with a beneficiary, please check out this helpful guide and more information about the Teia Community Multisigs! For any other questions, hop into the Teia Discord!

Call for representatives

By the way, we are working on our Teia Community Equity Representative development currently and we are seeking input and participation from 2SLGBTQIA+, BIPOC, Women/Nonbinary, CIND (Chronically ill, Immunocompromised, Neurodivergent and Disabled) as well as regions within the Global South! If you or someone you know may be interested in contributing please join the conversation in discord in the #Representatives channel!

DAO development

Teia is about to take a huge step forward in its quest for decentralisation: we will soon conduct the first round of Governance Token distribution.

Currently, Teia is governed by a multisig of 19 members who hold legal responsibility and ownership over Teia's newly established Teia DAO LLC until the Tokens are distributed and ownership will be distributed among the Token holders. To ensure democratic and equitable governance, the initial DAO setup for Teia will be governed through token-based voting and a multisig contract of community representatives (more info on that on our wiki).

VIDEO - And Now DAO: Investing in Art in a New Age (May 9, 2023)

The Center for Art Law hosted a talk on DAOS, their legal frameworks, and their interaction with the crypto and art world. The event featured Alex Liu, an attorney and Director of Operations at Tezos Commons, and Merchant Coppola, an artist and core team member of Teia. Alex Liu, leveraging his expertise as a crypto attorney, focused on the legal aspects of regulating DAOs, covering topics such as company formation, security regulations, and intellectual property protection while Merchant Coppola shared their experience as a community member of Teia DAO and explored the purpose of art DAOs, delving into the history of Teia and envisioning the future of DAOs in the art world. The talk is available on Youtube:

Youtube Link:

Distribution what?

We want to reward all the contributing factors to Teia so far and ensure that the voting power for the Teia DAO is distributed proportionally to everyone's interest and contribution to the ecosystem around the Hic et Nunc OBJKT Tokens used by Teia.

Teia's DAO Tokens will mostly be distributed based on activity and contribution to both Hic et Nunc and Teia. Additionally, there will be a 1:1 reward for each hDAO token.

Note that no token value above being a voting token is implied. The Teia DAO Token is solely intended as a governance token and should not be treated as a financial/investment asset. Due to its non-profit nature, Teia can't and won't distribute profits and can only use funds generated to maintain operations, fund exhibitions, and support education, art, and cultural exchange in general.

For everyone who would like to learn more about Teia's DAO Token and read up on all the details of the distribution model, we have prepared a fact sheet with an extensive FAQ section that should cover most information about the tokens and distribution.

We want your vote!

Teia is currently holding a community vote about the total supply of Teia DAO Tokens that will be minted.

Since Teia Tokens will have a fixed supply and hDAO has a fixed supply of 650k Tokens, the overall supply of Teia tokens will determine the voting power allocated to hDAO rewards. The bigger the overall Token supply is, the smaller the relative voting power allocated to hDAO rewards.

You can take part in the vote here on vote.teia.art, but we highly suggest first taking a look at the Voting thread on Discourse and the distribution sheets for the different supplies. The vote will end on June 20th, 2023 at 00:00 UTC.

We got audio

In order to inform the community about the Token distribution and vote, we organised twitter spaces in early june in different languages, that are now available to be listened back on twitter as recordings. In these spaces we gave the community a general update on the DAO setup, the token distribution and the token supply vote.

Here you can find the recordings:

Did we miss you?

IIf you have made a substantial contribution to Hic et Nunc and/or Teia and think you satisify one or multiple of the contribution criteria but did not receive a "contribution_level" of 1 or 2 in row E of the sheets, please contact us at [email protected] and describe your contribution. We will discuss adding you to the contributors list within the core team before setting up the actual token drop.

What’s next?

A few weeks after the vote has concluded, the total supply of Teia Tokens will be minted and then distributed via a token claim page. The distribution period, during which tokens can be claimed, will be roughly 2-3 months.

Once the distribution period is over, we will enter the DAO beta phase, where Teians can already use the DAO contracts and Tokens to set up proposals and vote. We will need to test the DAO contracts this way before assigning ownership to the smart contracts and token holders.

For example, one of the trickiest parameters in the DAO votes will be the “quorum”: how many votes are needed at minimum for a proposal to be able to pass. This is an important way to control random or malicious proposals from passing during times of low interest.

After the DAO contracts are properly tested, the core team will assign ownership of the Teia DAO LLC to the DAO contracts and its members (=Token holders), at which point Teia's quest to becoming a truly community-owned platform will reach its first major goal: true collective ownership. Of course, the DAO setup will need to be changed and evolved constantly by its members.

Meet the current core team

So, who is currently behind all of this? For 1.5 years, Teia has been kept running "somehow," but the people behind the operations never formally introduced themselves. The core team multisig is currently the legal owner of the Teia DAO LLC, and we want to be transparent about who is a member of that multisig.

Last month, we published a Twitter thread in which all 19 core team multisig members gave a brief introduction and officially greeted the community. We also added the bios to our wiki here, so everyone knows who is behind Teia currently and building the structures needed for our DAO to be fully community-owned.

Teia still relies fully on pro bono work by the whole team; no one from the team gets monetary compensation. In spirit, Teia is supposed to be run by its users and relies on volunteer contributions by the community. Everyone (yes, you too) can help make Teia a better place or develop/organize the next cool development or event for Teia. If you are interested, please join the Teia discord and ask about volunteer opportunities or bring your own ideas on how you can improve the space.

Next up, we will publish a similar Twitter thread that includes all the regular/active contributors from the wider team who are not part of the core team multisig but are also heavily involved in keeping Teia running. So stay tuned!

Here is the twitter thread:

core team tweet

Teia Discord showcase: Education Channels

Are you looking for a platform to discuss education-related topics and find useful resources? Look no further than our Discord server! We have two dedicated channels for educational resources and discussions:

  1. #teia-edu: This channel is specifically designed for individuals who are passionate about education and tutoring. Whether you are a student, teacher, or simply interested in the field, this channel provides an ideal platform to share your thoughts and engage in meaningful discussions with like-minded people.
  2. #resources: This channel is focused on sharing tutorials and guides related to various fields of education, including art, onboarding, our ecosystem and general tech info. If you are looking for helpful resources to enhance your learning experience, this is the perfect channel for you.

Join our educational community on Discord today and make the most of these incredible resources and discussions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Teias fountain: still dabbling

Are you an artist who needs their first Tezos tokens to start minting in the vast Tezos NFT ecosystem? The Fountain has got you covered. New artists with an empty account can apply for a drop of 0.5 free Tezos, donated by the community and distributed by The Fountain team, to help make Teia (and other Tezos marketplaces) more accessible to people without access to crypto.

How to get a tez drop

Please fill out the Fountain Application Google Form.

After completing the form, please send us a message either in the #fountain channel on the Teias Discord or via email at [email protected] and let us know that you have completed the form.

How does the fountain work?

The Fountain is semi-automated, meaning a team of volunteers checks applications and an open-source bot developed by ir8prim8 sends out the drops.

The treasury of the Fountain is located at https://tzkt.io/KT1EsvmkijLKPQmcJMbjDeKRXdwky1LWvwpG/operations/.

Post mortem: Teia @ NFTNYC 2023

We close our Newsletter with a small look back at our presence at NFTNYC!

IMG_3296

We were invited by the Tezos Foundation for a last minute curation opportunity to exhibit work from the Teia Community at their NFTNYC event. The team decided to celebrate mints from #SwapOnTeia and took efforts to select artworks from a variety of mediums, regions and identities to showcase the wide range of participants in the Teia community.

Thank you to all who have minted and participated in #SwapOnTeia ! All fees from Teia swaps goes toward supporting Teia and paying for the cost of maintaining the marketplace!

Click here to take a look at all the selected pieces as a Versum Board

Cover of the Teia NFTNYC selection

Discuss on Twitter • View on GitHub