Since our team started working on AfrofutureDAO, we’ve focused on building a Web3 platform for Africa rich culture, through its creative industries and historical archives to successfully launch into Web3. The explosion of African culture into the global mainstream through films like Blank Panther and artists like Burna Boy reflects Africa’s immensely valuable cultural assets. Unfortunately, cultural institutions and museums that are stewarding Africa’s historical archives are severely underfunded and artifacts are not being properly stored.
We envision a future where Africa’s young creatives are empowered to connect and engage with the continent’s history and leverage it to create an exciting and positive future. We believe Web3 provides that platform, along with the ability to unlock new forms of monetization and community building.
Today we’re excited to announce the launch of a $1 million grant fund, called the Africa Metaverse Fund. This is a grant fund for Africa’s creative industry stakeholders to launch projects in Web3. This fund has been created in collaboration with The HBAR Foundation to support Africa’s creative industry in being a first mover into Web3.
Grants will go towards supporting projects, artists, and brands in Africa to launch Web3 pilots and activations across 5 categories:
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Museums
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Art Galleries
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Musicians
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Artists
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Sports & Entertainment
Applications will open on Monday, February 13th. Follow us on Twitter to be first to know when the application form goes live!
As a part of the announcement, we are also launching our first product, Derived.
**Derived (https://derived.art) **is a co-creation platfor to remix and collect historical archives and cultural artifacts from around the world. NFT creators can remix historical moments into their own art and sell it on the Derived Marketplace. Museums and cultural institutions can upload their archives, enable them to be remixed, and receive royalties.
Our mission with Derived, is to create new forms of monetization for cultural institutions worldwide to drive funding towards history preservation and ignite engagement and education towards history. Derived is a space for museums and artists to co-create, and to engage with each other through Web3.
Introducing Collection Drops
We started our journey in partnership with The Mohammed Amin Foundation, who opened up access to the largest unexplored historical archive in the world. We’ve organized 5 NFT drop activations since Spring 2021, generating 38.95 ETH in total revenue. 20 African creators have been commissioned with our DAO’s token, and have created an NFT as a part of these drops with the theme of Afrofuturism.
Collection drops are gamified activations where museums will launch new archive collections on Derived for artists to remix into their own work. We plan to host frequent drops with museum partners across the world, starting in Africa. This is how new archives will be uploaded to the platform.
We will officially be transitioning away from our quarterly drops to conducting rolling applications for artists to join the Derived platform.
Token Re-issuance
We will be re-issuing the Afrofuture governance token on the Hedera blockchain and have taken a snapshot of the Ethereum and Polygon chain at February 7th, 12:01 AM East Africa Time. We will redistribute tokens on Polygon to the 92 holders as reflected here.
Starting in Africa, soon to the world 🌍 🌎 🌏
From the AfrofutureDAO team