Park County Land Near Clark Purchased by Blockchain Group
Written by Andrew-Rossi on November 9, 2021
Park County makes cryptocurrency history, as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization becomes the first to buy a piece of land to create a city of the future.
CityDAO is “an experiment in decentralized ownership of real-world assets,” in their own words. According to the group’s website, they finalized the purchase of their first physical asset in Park County on Tuesday, Nov. 6. And this is “only the beginning.”
The inspiration for the project was the Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Law. The law – passed by the Wyoming Legislature in July 2021 – permits blockchain-based entities in which members vote on the group’s direction with tokens. However, all entities must be registered as companies in the state.
CityDAO’s overall goal is” to build the city of the future on the Ethereum blockchain by tokenizing land, rights, and governance.”
Now, CityDAO’s future utopian experiment will begin in Park County, not far from Clark.
CityDAO is proudly showing off their first land acquisition: Parcel Zero, a 40-acre parcel of land to the west of Clark. A tweet from CityDAO’s Twitter shows their flag proudly waving behind a small butte on their property.
CityDAO is the first of these organizations to acquire land legally in Wyoming and the nation. Soon, the Clark acreage will become a non-fungible token (NFT) owned collectively by the DAO and its citizens. And the collective “owners” all have a say in how their asset is managed.
There’s no statement on how much CityDAO paid for their piece of Clark. However, a timeline on their blog shows the DAO had $250,000 in the “city treasury” in August 2021.
Today, CityDAO is officially the first DAO to own land, using the new Wyoming DAO LLC law. This is just the beginning. pic.twitter.com/gfqIvssuc4
— CityDAO (@CityDao) November 1, 2021
Already, CityDAO administrators are asking their partners to contribute their input for their new asset.
Several areas of importance are presented on the DAO’s website.
- Legal
- Navigating the intricacies of DAO law and property rights and zoning in Wyoming and Park County.
- Development
- Building the future of real estate ownership on-chain thru the platforms Solidity and Web3.
- Marketing
- Finding adjacent communities and “sharing the gospel of the City.”
- Land Use
- Asking members how the land should be used, governed, controlled, and how mechanism design should be employed for the public good
- Meme making
- “Nuff said – troll the nets and make dank memes.”
- Sustainability
- Building more sustainable communities
This may not be the only group aiming for similar goals in the future. In the words of Balaji Srinivasan, a successful entrepreneur and bitcoin miner, “DAOs are now legal in Wyoming, and land is cheap there, so it’s a great place to do this.”
Nevertheless, CityDAO stresses that their Park County acquisition isn’t perfect.
“This parcel is a proof-of-concept parcel,” says a tweet explaining the asset. “It’s not in the most convenient location, nor does it have an abundance of natural resources. It does have a well for water, a flat area for building, and is 45 minutes from an airport.”
That airport is Yellowstone Regional Airport in Cody. And anyone who knows Clark can attest to its lack of “convenience.”
Park County will serve as the model for future endeavors. CityDAO’s leadership plans to embark on similar ventures nationwide, using their Clark parcel simultaneously as the flagship and “ground zero.”
Courtesy CityDAO
Anyone can become a “citizen” of CityDAO and its piece of Park County – for a hefty price.
There are three categories of citizenship within CityDAO – Citizen, Founding Citizen, and First Citizen.
A Citizen can access land drops (after the First & Founding Citizens), get access to Citizens Discord channels, and has voting power, all for a cost of 0.25 ETH. As of Tuesday, Nov. 9, that’s equivalent to just over $1,200.
A Founding Citizen gets the same privileges but earlier access to land drops – and there are only 50 spots available at the cost of 10 ETH – $48,000.
Finally, there is only one First Citizen. In addition to first access to land drops, this person will get to name the newly acquired acreage in Clark. That honor sold for 6.52 ETH, surprisingly less than a Founding Citizen is asked to contribute.
It’s unknown how or when the future city of CityDAO will commence. Still, the first steps have been taken towards an unexplored frontier – Wyoming land bought and governed by out-of-state cryptocurrency.
“Our hope is that CityDAO is able to buy land all over the US and world,” says the CityDAO website. “We are starting in Wyoming because of the state’s new 2021 DAO law, which recognizes DAO governance of LLC corporations. Because LLCs can own land, this creates a powerful pathway for decentralized land ownership.”
