Introducing Hashes Collections!
Smart contract infrastructure tailored to projects built on the Hashes NFT primitive
Hashes are a foundational construct that can serve as an origin point for users, while providing content creators an infinite source of entropy and versatile distribution network. To learn more about Hashes and HashesDAO check out the introduction in this medium post.
Motivations
Since its formation, HashesDAO has organized work across several project silos called ‘Permutations’. Permutation 1, aka “The Harvest”, led by Meltem Demirors focused on acquiring a portfolio of high profile NFTs for the DAO treasury. Permutations 2 and 3 started to think about ways for Hashes to be used as input to generative artwork, while 4 looked for creative ways to tax-loss harvest NFTs. This type of work organization is necessary for DAOs, so that small and focused groups can make meaningful progress in specific directions.
However, we began to notice one of the risks of these siloed workstreams — large variation in the way projects were being approached and lack of cohesion. On one hand, small teams driving projects is essential. Hundreds of DAO members contributing ideas for a single project is not productive (i.e. “too many cooks” syndrome). But, breaking off into silos can also lead to repetitive/overlapping/incompatible engineering work on smart contracts and UIs, which is costly and reduces the DAOs velocity.
Such inefficiencies also tend to happen at traditional companies — this is commonly referred to as “shipping the org chart”. The risk seems to be even greater within a DAO where diversity of membership is high and un-gated. The challenge becomes: how can we harness the power of that freely flowing collective while still ultimately representing the DAO as a single entity?
What we built
Hashes Collections is a registry of cloneable Hashes-oriented smart contracts that can be leveraged and expanded upon by Permutation teams. It is meant to serve as the basis for cohesion between otherwise isolated projects, leading to increased efficiency and positive-sum collaboration. To start, we’ve released three contracts which are ready for immediate use:
- Collection Factory — the contract registry, at the center of the infrastructure
- NFT Collection V1 — an ERC-721 contract pre-configured to work within the Hashes ecosystem
- Collection Payment Splitter — a modified version of OpenZepplin’s PaymentSplitter utility
We’ve also developed automatic mint page infrastructure for instances of NFT Collection V1 (hosted on thehashes.xyz). NFT collectors will immediately have a place where they can use their Hashes to mint collection tokens. Mint pages are customizable to include cover photos, description text, and more details on eligibility criteria.
Hash holders will be able to browse all collections and see which projects their owned Hashes are currently eligible for.
Who can use it?
Following the openness of the web3 ethos, we decided to make the Factory and cloneable contracts available for anyone to use. Permutation team members, curious artists, and external collector curators can clone our NFT contract and immediately have the infrastructure ready for a project based on Hashes. We put a lot of thought into the various roles of the system which we will outline in a technical deepdive post.
This means that we may have multiple types of collections in the future: Permutation projects (coordinated and funded through the DAO), as well as open contributions (akin to ArtBlocks Playground/Factory concepts).
Medleys
Days after launching the infrastructure, the first hashes collection NFTs were brought to life as part of the Medleys series (aka permutation 2). This was the primary opportunity to test whether the reusable infra was flexible enough to accomplish what was needed for a real drop, a challenge that Collections passed with flying colors. Hashes DAO member Kintsugi is the organizer of Medleys and will share more details on the collaboration process in another post.
The limited pre-season drop, Europa: Conamara Chaos featured generative artwork from Joshua Davis (aka praystation), Jana Stýblová, and music from KØWCH.
The pre-season drop quickly sold out, after which collectors joined the artists and organizers in a Twitter Space for the reveal, and to ask questions about the process. Stay tuned in the Medleys discord channel for more info on the season 1 drop.
What comes next?
One of the key decisions for the DAO to make will be deciding the HashesDAO NFT mint fee and royalties fee. Stay tuned for a snapshot poll and then an on-chain proposal.
If you’re interested in some of the lower technical details of this new system, stay tuned for our technical deep-dive post coming soon. Also, check out the Hashes discord to start a discussion if you have an idea for a specific project! Many channels are token-gated, so if you want to be first to know whats coming up — mint a Hash!
