Project Title: Little Heathens NFT Fundraising & Legal Platform
Description: Little Heathens is a non-profit DAO aimed at providing legal assistance to small crypto-related projects and entities that are unable to defend themselves against regulatory action. It leverages NFTs and donations to create a community-driven platform that aims to level the playing field and encourage innovation in the crypto ecosystem.
Manifesto/Vision: Little Heathens aims to keep the regulatory battle honest and promote integrity in the actions of regulatory agencies. It seeks to create a culture of support and eliminate fear of regulatory action, enabling small projects to continue their march of innovation without having to worry about future regulations.
Keep the regulatory battle honest and help out the little guy!
Problem: The regulatory landscape in the crypto industry is constantly evolving, and small crypto-related projects and entities often lack the resources to defend themselves against regulatory action. This leads to a culture of fear and hampers progress in the industry.
Solution: Little Heathens provides legal assistance to small crypto-related projects and entities through donations and partnerships, Little Heathen NFTs, and continued Little Heathen NFT mints as new cases are levied against crypto organizations. The platform aims to level the playing field by providing access to legal aid for all, regardless of financial resources.
Product Features: Little Heathens will mint 10,000 NFTs based on 100 high profile projects/entities/organizations that have faced legal action from the SEC. These NFTs will serve as a fundraising tool for the development, recruitment, marketing, and operations of the platform. As new legal actions are levied against crypto organizations, they can petition Little Heathens for a project-specific mint of 100 NFTs, which will be auctioned off to bootstrap a legal defense. 5% of auctioned funds will go directly to Little Heathens for continued operations, with the remaining 95% being deployed for the defense.
Validation: The current regulatory landscape in the crypto industry poses significant challenges to small projects and entities, and Little Heathens aims to address these challenges by providing legal assistance. The platform leverages NFTs and donations to create a community-driven support system for small projects, encouraging innovation in the industry.
Progress: Little Heathens is in the early stages of development, with plans to mint the initial 10,000 NFTs soon. We’ve sourced our artist, our community manager and our developers for the project and are currently looking towards community growth & partnerships.
Differentiation: While there are many, many, LAO’s which provide legal assistance to entities in the crypto-sphere, there are several key problems with the current landscape for this support:
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Many LAOs are for-profit: This limits access to only those who can afford it.
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Many LAOs are protocol-specific: This limits access to a subsection of the crypto ecosystem.
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Most LAOs have virtually no identifiability: While non-profit, non-protocol-specific entities exist (shoutout to “The Blockchain Association”!!) they very much have a branding issue. Most people don’t even realize these organizations exist. Naturally, this limits access to those who are “in the know”.
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There is no banner to rally under: A consequence of the fragmented and divided LAO ecosystem is weakness. Weakness makes for easier targets, which results in the problems we described earlier in this paper. If “Ape Together Stronk”, why shouldn’t we channel this strength through a medium which is attractive, fun, and visually represents the cerebral frustration faced by the crypto-community as a whole?
With all this in mind, we believe NFTs are the perfect medium for this purpose.
Not only have NFTs proven themselves as an extremely powerful fundraising tool (which is great for a non-profit DAO), but they have shown themselves to be an indomitable means through which to make noise, drum up support, and build a community. Specific to our use case, we understand:
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NFTs are controversial: Controversy breeds discourse and draws the public eye. These are two key ingredients which make up the “Court of Public Opinion”. We want every case, every action taken by the SEC to be as visible as possible, regardless of how small. This increased visibility will encourage (though by no means enforce) integrity in the actions of the SEC as the legal situation develops.
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NFTs symbolic: Symbols often possess more power than the rhetoric on which they’re built. They’re easy to understand, they’re immediately recognizable as a symbol, and are consequently extremely memetic. If 100 high profile twitter users change their profile picture to the most recent Little Heathen NFT to show their support, you can be sure people will be talking about it.
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They’re fun. Too often discourse and interest fizzles out for even the most compelling controversies (e.g. how many people stopped following the situation in Ukraine?). This is something the powerful understand, waiting for the dissipation of the public eye before they continue on their merry way. Through the virtue of being fun, NFTs have a longer “shelf-life”, encouraging these entities to act honestly for a longer period of time.
Team: The Little Heathens team consists of three individuals (for now):
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James Kurtak is the CEO of TuffDAO, a DeFi/NFT hybrid platform for DAO Treasury management. With over three years of experience as a CEO, 5 years as a software developer and two years as a project manager, James provides effective leadership and direct experience navigating a crypto project through all stages of development.
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Daan Verfaillie is a crypto community manager at Aircoins and TuffDAO. With over six years of experience, he possesses an intimate understanding of the NFT ecosystem and has close connections with countless projects and founders in the NFT space.
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Hara Rosset is a Senior Motion Graphics Manager with over 14 years of experience in Graphic Design and 7+ years of experience in Managerial Creative Positions. She currently oversees the Motion Graphics capability at LRW for over 500 employees and is an active freelancer for all things “digital art”.
Grant Request: $5,000
What the Funds Are For: The grant funds will be used to cover the operational (primarily art) costs for the creation of the first 10,000 NFTs.
Help Requested: Little Heathens is seeking support in the form of partnerships and donations. Even a small donation, or merely vocalizing your support of the project would be awesome!
Additional Resources, Links, Portfolio:
We’ve still got quite a bit of work cut out for us. We’ll have the website and socials up and running in the next two weeks. For now, here’s a link to our lite-paper.