“Value Flows,” a pop-up show curated by the decentralized JPG community opens as part of NFT Paris. Artists including 0xDEAFBEEF, Kim Asendorf, Dmitri Cherniak, Simon Denny & Guile Twardowski, and Sarah Friend contribute works revealing the “on-chain transactions and mechanisms, or off-chain interactions between humans, that live at the core of every blockchain system.” Rippling with DIY energy, it juxtaposes ad-hoc pyramids of analogue displays (image) with the backdrop of a bustling trade show.

After ‘squatting’ the Ethereum domain of Germany’s Bundeskunsthalle in July 2021, provoking questions about ownership of public art institutions, German artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl and the Berlin-based Department of Decentralization launch Strike DAO, an “experiment in participatory governance of blockchain art institutions.” Three models are put up for a vote, and visualized through a vote-based re-edit of Steyerl’s eponymous 2010 video piece.

Silicon Valley venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, responsible for the phrase “software is eating the world,” invest in the Friends with Benefits (FwB) DAO. Perhaps the most well known tokenized community, FwB is praised as the “de facto home of web3’s growing creative class” and for onbarding influential artists and creatives into crypto ”by putting human capital first.” The exact details of the funding remain undisclosed, but presumably the ‘get’ here is access to innovative intellectual property, and an inside view of a 2000-member DAO as it evolves from insular community into a (more) prominent cultural producer. “In addition to borderless resource assembly, DAOs enable bottom-up innovation and community building, from which new ideas can be incubated and scaled” note the VC firm’s Carra Wu and Chris Dixon.

Kei Kreutler answers the question of the moment: what is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)? Linking think tanks, libertarians, and MMORPG Guilds, she maps a prehistory of emergent governance, to contextualize (post-crypto) community tokenization. Noteworthy DAOs, both active and defunct get air time, as do tools and protocols; ultimately Kreutler schematizes DAOs as “tokens, teams, and missions” (image), and “compelling environments players want to inhabit, recognizing narratives, aesthetics, and goals held in common.”

Artist and composer Holly Herndon launches Holly+, her own AI twin that will interpret any polyphonic audio uploaded to holly.plus. Problematizing voice ownership and artist compensation, Holly+ and subsequent AI voice tools are owned by a DAO cooperative, and any income generated will go toward new developments. “Vocal deepfakes are here to stay,” states Herndon. “A balance needs to be found between protecting artists, and encouraging people to experiment with a new and exciting technology.”