- FreeRossDAO has won an auction for Ross Ulbricht’s NFT collection
- The jailed Silk Road founder auctioned off a series of artworks to raise money for his campaign
- FreeRossDAO took in over $11 million in ETH, with the winning bid coming in at $6.27 million
The NFT auction of Ross Ulbricht’s artwork has been won, appropriately enough, by the Free Ross DAO, a DAO backed by PleasrDAO, for $6.27 million. The DAO, which raised over $11 million in the effort to secure the works, will now fractionalize the works and distribute them pro-rata to those who participated in the scheme in the form of ROSS tokens. FreeRossDAO now has a surplus of $5.7 million worth of ETH in its treasury, which it says will be “managed by the community of token holders”.
I’m just getting bits and pieces from here in prison but it sounds like there is a lot of support for what we’re doing with this NFT.
My deep and heartfelt gratitude goes out to the whole community. https://t.co/Sj0rVHEINH
— Ross Ulbricht (@RealRossU) December 1, 2021
FreeRossDAO Wins Auction With $6.27 Million Bid
Ulbricht auctioned off a collection of his artworks spanning his life on NFT auction site Superare, dubbing it the Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection, with proceeds going towards his campaign for release and an art charity. A group of Ulbricht supporters immediately set up FreeRossDAO on PleaserDAO in order to raise community funds to try and secure the collection, receiving 2,836.862 ETH ($11.5 million) in total in less than two weeks.
The auction closed with a winning bid from FreeRossDAO of 1,446 ETH, with the DAO operators tweeting out next steps, including what would happen with the remaining funds:
WE DID IT. Over 1,320 people raised over 2,800 ETH in a week (over $12m at todays price) to win the auction for Ross’s NFT (sold at 1446 ETH – about half of our treasury). Crypto is amazing.
Here’s what happens now 👇👇👇
— FreeRossDAO (@FreeRossDAO) December 9, 2021
Contributors Wait to Hear How Money Will be Used
The success of the FreeRossDAO project is in contrast to ConstitutionDAO, which raised $47 million but missed out on its prize. With FreeRossDAO going one better, attention will turn to where the proceeds of the auction will go.
No details have yet emerged on how the $6.27 million will be split between fighting for Ulbricht’s release and how much will go to the Art4Giving, but whatever funds the FreeRoss campaign receives will massively help raise awareness of the story behind Ulbricht’s incarceration.
