Decentralized transformation, Museum of Crypto Art launches governance token MOCA, and the rule of never selling collections will be incorporated into DAO

According to statistics, one in eight physical museums has been forced to close due to the epidemic. But despite this, a museum based on the metaverse is raising funds so that it can smoothly transition to a community governance model.

The Crypto Museum of Art today announced the launch of the MOCA token, a Polygon-based governance token that will be used to vote on works added to the museum’s Genesis collection and future exhibitions, allow the community to curate museum assets, and build an art collection platform for the museum through a $1.5 million funding round.

Of the total supply of MOCA, 5% will be airdropped to wallets that have purchased collectibles on OpenSea before December 2020, and another 5% will be used for liquidity mining.

MOCA can be visited for free in virtual reality through Somnium Space. MoCA co-founder Colborn Bell told Cointelegraph that the museum has completed seven solo exhibitions of artists through the incubator program. He hopes that with the investment of external funds, the MOCA Foundation can become an artist’s club to help define NFT standards and formulate policies, such as mandatory royalties on secondary sales.

“We are initiating an art movement through MOCA that is providing a visual language for ideas of cryptography, which is making something that is inherently incomprehensible tangible and visual,” he said.

<img alt="MoCA (Museum of Crypto Art) on Twitter: "#MoCAmuseum featuring a new #DigitalArtist @theAngieTaylor with her "CryPtoFaMily" (#NFT single edition) @SuperRare_co, plus a "She Art poster - medium Print Edition" (1 of 50" src="https://images.bitpush.news/cn/20210527/162204516920348758.jpg">

Part of this defining work is collecting and showcasing the art of NFT evolution, a storytelling task that Bell believes decentralized organizations are particularly well suited to.

"We are a museum, we are supposed to take things slow." However, it remains to be seen whether and how a community-organized museum can survive, let alone thrive.

While $1.5 million may seem like a pittance (especially considering the eye-popping prices NFTs have fetched recently), the museum has an unusual acquisition model. 50% of the total MOCA token supply will be used exclusively to expand the museum’s collection.

Collectors can apply to sell artworks to the museum’s “Genesis Collection” program in exchange for governance tokens. Bell and two seven-member committees composed of artists and collectors will review the submissions, and if approved, the Nonfungible.com team will make a final assessment of the work’s value.

Bell said MOCA, which has a nonprofit legal entity in the Cayman Islands, has a "clear obligation" to never sell works that are included in the collection, and that eventually, that rule will be hard-coded into the DAO. It's an idealistic vision that runs counter to the money-first market attitude. I even want to avoid the token itself becoming a speculative asset, in part because NFT collectors basically don't need to speculate.

“All the value that I want to bring to this project will be through the token itself. I want to make sure it gets to that point eventually. There’s enough wealth generated in this community, broadly speaking, that there’s no chance that people will fail this project.”

Ultimately, Bell hopes to move away from rhetoric about cryptocurrency being used for crime and, instead, highlight art that represents the highest ideals of the space. Ethereum, as an open market access system, enables the freedom of identity, privacy, and data sovereignty. Early NFT artists and collectors worked on these concepts as artists also sought to express them in their own way, an "organic" and "collaborative" effort.

"How do we paint a beautiful picture here, and how do we leverage early-stage, global creators to do this collectively?"

While the evaluation system will initially have a semi-centralized committee, MOCA tokens will eventually be used to enable permanent, distributed evaluation and curation. Reneil, MoCA’s head of technology and strategy, noted that blockchain can be used to permanently record a community’s response to art, not just the art itself.

While the specifics are still in the planning stages, the team is planning a reputation-based system that takes into account event attendance, interest in the art, and holdings of MOCA tokens to grant users the ability to write the collection’s history, a community-curated profile of the museum.

If MOCA ever loans a work of art, the museum that receives it is required to include these labels as part of the artwork.

Reneil said, "We hope to preserve the early history of the crypto art space in an unchangeable way, restore an objective reality, a history that cannot be tampered with from all parties."

Partnering projects will also be invited to sponsor and curate their own museum wings. Projects with strong culture and followings will be able to tell their stories in their own way and make experimental changes to the governance parameters of their collections. The team is already exploring the possibility of building a wing with Aavegotchi, an asset-backed NFT project with a large and ardent fanbase.

Bell believes these collaborative, experimental efforts are why virtual museums will continue to thrive while the physical collecting world struggles.

“I expect traditional museums and galleries will increasingly face similar issues as younger generations demand deeper digital experiences around art, wanting more Meow Wolf and less Gagosian at the Met,” he said.