MonkeDAO Plans to Buy Rights to Popular Solana Monkey Business NFT Collection for $2M

MonkeDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) launched in 2021 on the Solana blockchain, has announced plans to purchase the rights to the popular non-fungible token (NFT) collection Solana Monkey Business (SMB).

The organization, which calls itself "the first NFT DAO on Solana," was formed by enthusiasts of SMB, one of Solana's earliest NFT collections. To join MonkeDAO, you must own an SMB NFT.

SMB launched "Gen1" of its collection in June 2021 and then released "Gen2" in August 2021, with the collection of 5,000 pixelated monkeys gaining widespread appeal. At the time of writing SMB has a floor price of 223 SOL (about $5,427) and has done over $1.8 million SOL (about $43 million) in total sales volume.

In February, decentralized Solana trading protocol Hadeswap acquired SMB from its original founders and transferred its ownership to HadesDAO, promising to respect the project's legacy. On Thursday, HadesDAO passed a proposal that would allow MonkeDAO to purchase the SMB intellectual property (IP) including "all rights, assets, accounts and keys from HadesDAO" for $2 million USDC. According to the proposal, this includes any legal registrations for the brand, SMB website code, ownership over the SMB Twitter and Discord channels and more.

"MonkeDAO believes the SMB project and all holders of the SMB Gen2 NFTs will benefit from this acquisition and that HadesDAO will benefit more from money in its treasury rather than maintaining ownership of the SMB project," the proposal says.

The announcement was received generally favorably on Twitter, with some calling the purchase "historic."

Ariel Givner, MonkeDAO's legal counsel, told CoinDesk that SOLBigBrain, an active MonkeDAO community member, gave the organization a $1 million USDC loan at 0% interest to facilitate the acquisition. She added that MonkeDAO will soon launch its own NFT collection titled The Monkes in order to supplement funding.

Since its launch, MonkeDAO has set out to become the "premier Web3 community," by investing in and helping to scale emerging projects. The community boasts over 2,730 unique SMB NFT holders and hosts community events around the world.