“Simplicity, Integrity, Meaning, and Purpose” -Irene DAO
What kind of wonderful, altruistic organization is proudly standing behind such lofty goals? Are they feeding the hungry? Clothing the poor? Rescuing puppies?
No. This is crypto ser.
This is the tagline for a SIMP DAO for 28-year old crypto “influencer” and model, Yuqing Irene Zhao. (Get it, Simplicity, Integrity, Meaning, and Purpose = SIMP. Simps are guys who obsess over online girls and support them financially).
Irene Dao has been blowing up in crypto news, especially after Logan Paul & Mike Novogratz bought her NFTs. This isn’t a rug (yet), but I think we can file this under the title of “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”.
What is the story of Irene Dao and how did we get here?
What Is Irene DAO?
To be honest, it isn’t clear what the long-term focus of the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is. Irene DAO looks like a standard NFT collection, with a limited number of jpegs being released. There may potentially be some utility for Irene DAO NFT holders in the future. The proposed utility is having access to the online club that may be created. Actual details around all of this are scarce however.
On the site it states “IreneDAO was created for a purpose: to help creators like Irene focus on what they do best: creating content and connecting with their fans and communities.”
Additionally, “IreneDAO is a global grassroots movement aimed at disrupting the creator economy. IreneDAO is for the people, by the people.”
Irene DAO is certainly describing itself in very revolutionary terms. Also, all the money raised on the fees of the NFTs will go back to the community, allegedly.
Each Irene Dao NFT takes a picture of Irene from her telegram sticker pack. They are all put on a mint green background with common crypto-twitter phrases like “NGMI”, “Damp it” (after the Bagdanoff twins), “Have Fun Staying Poor”, etc. Green was chosen as it is Irene’s favorite color, in case anyone is looking to simp for her with a gift.
What is the Background of Irene DAO
How did Irene DAO come from no where to take over crypto news for a few days?
Irene & her partner business partner Benjamin Tangg released a sticker pack to telegram for their company SO-CAL (“Social Collectibles”). The sticker pack was to raise some online buzz for the online persona “Irene”.
This sticker pack saw decent success and one fan decided to reach out to Irene and ask if he could turn the pack into an NFT collection. The fan, libevm.eth, wrote his up a post on his side of the story describing how he became involved in the Irene DAO. (More details below on how Libevm’s involvement helped this explode on twitter).
In short, Libevm saw the sticker pack and saw mutually exclusive groups of online friends downloading it. He saw the potential for these pictures to be big. Therefore, Libevm asked if he could turn the stickers into an NFT collection and Irene agreed.
The NFT collection is described as the first attempt to monetize fans for a creator under Irene’s larger SO-CAL brand. If you look up SO-CAL, it is also described as a “platform [that] aims to help content creators monetize their content and build communities with their fans.”
Irene DAO had a free mint for all 1,107 of its NFTs, which it calls Tribe Passes, at launch. Since all 1,107 Tribe Passes were minted there will be no more created and you need to purchase them on the open market.
It isn’t entirely clear what the Tribe Passes get you as of yet, but there are currently almost 500 unique wallet owners of the NFTs.
What is Driving the Success of Irene DAO?
Irene DAO has leaned into the entire simp culture narrative. This includes the tagline which is an acronym for SIMP.
The term simp, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means a simpleton. But internet culture has further defined it to mean a male who obsesses over a female they can never have. Classic examples are lonely guys sending extra money to minor instagram celebrities when they ask or the whales who lavish support on OnlyFans girls. In all cases, the male is not interacting outside of the online space.
SimpFi (Simp Finance) has already been thriving in the non-digitial world. Stephanie Matto, of “90 Day Fiance” ‘fame’, made $200,000 selling farts in a jar to her fans. She then was hospitalized for ‘trying to fart too much’? Or Belle Delphine who sold jars of bathwater for $30 and has over 4,000 monetary supporters through Patreon.
Additionally, memes and viral projects can take on a life of their own. Do you remember Ghozali everyday?
Ghozali took almost 1,000 pictures of himself in front of his computer stone-faced. One picture a day was taken over a few years between his ages of 18-22.
His collection has over 380 Eth total trade volume as of this writing.
Irene DAO has caught the intersection between viral campaigns and simp culture at the right time and took off.
The big news came when Logan Paul purchased 20 Irene DAO NFTs totaling almost 86 Eth (nearly $270k). This may have marked the top for Irene DAO however.
Why Was Twitter Exploding Over Irene DAO Recently?
When Irene DAO started trending, the news came out that the creator running the collection was not actually Irene, but Libevm. Libevm describes himself as a male of Boomer age, but otherwise wants to be anonymous.
Twitter had a field day with people mocking simps buying NFTs of a model from an old man. There were many comparisons to Soya, the 50-year old Japanese biker who became famous posing as a young girl and gaining a huge following of simps.
On the other side, the Irene DAO supporters say this is going to raise money to help content creators and bring more women’s interest into crypto. Both Libevm & Irene have said they haven’t taken any money out and want to use all money raised to “experiment the best ways of integrating Web3 into the creator economy.”
Regardless of what you think about the story, SO-CAL just raised money in a seed round which was subscribed by Animoca, Defiance, 3AC and Mechanism.
Therefore, this is likely not the last you hear of this story.
