What is Fight Club?
The Bankless Fight Club is a sub-DAO of BanklessDAO that includes a platform of venture DAOs, educational programs for venture analysts of diverse backgrounds, and apprenticeships that help bring financial tools to the unbanked.
Fight Club has begun by starting the “Genesis Fund'', which is a pool of capital set aside to support web3 projects across the crypto ecosystem. Fight Club allows each member to bring investment proposals to the DAO, where investing members will subsequently vote on them. Each member has the right to ragequit at any time.
“Our mission is to shake up the current crypto investing ecosystem. By creating venture DAOs and educational programs, we will bypass the traditional financial analyst framework and enable people from all backgrounds to participate in crypto investing. We invest in social programs that aim to bank the unbanked and flatten social economic inequality.” - Tesa Ho (Fight Club OG, Fight Club Champion)
This is separate from the Fight Club (FC) treasury, which operates as an endowment that co-invests with venture DAOs. The FC treasury supports educational programs that level-up the venture investing skills of web3 communities. Fight Club started this series by teaching BanklessDAO (bDAO) members about web3 venture investing in collaboration with FTW.DAO.
Access to early-stage investments is limited to venture capitalists due to the exclusive nature of VC networks. Our mission at Fight Club is to democratize access to deal flow and give people economic freedom.
"I joined fight club because I could sense the potential of the bdao community and what that could mean in terms of the paradigm shift of venture capital, happening in web3. Fight Club, to me, stands for harnessing the rebel mentality of the community to effect positive change." - fibo (Fight Club OG, Project Manager)
The Origin Story
Fight club began as a project within the bDAO community where members could share ideas and insights about the web3 venture capital ecosystem. Founding members are early crypto investors, tradfi VCs, portfolio managers, and angel investors who wanted to create an inclusive investment DAO. But due to US regulations regarding investment funds, members were not allowed to openly market the fund to the public. Thus the name Fight Club was chosen.
“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!” -Chuck Palahniuk
Members were only allowed to answer questions about Fight Club when asked, discuss Fight Club amongst other Fight Club members, and invite interested bDAO members to join the weekly call.
But since launch, Fight Club has evolved from its original conception as a single venture DAO to become an umbrella structure with an arm for venture DAOs (aka funds) and other Fight Club projects. The original “Genesis Fund”, alluded to earlier, will include an entity for accredited investors and a non-US entity for non-US Fight Club members.
How does FC work?
Governance
Fight Club is governed via the membership NFTs (The Gloves). Currently, there are three tiers of NFTs that will affect how much weight your vote carries. The membership tiers as of 4/5/2022 are:
Each NFT has a weighted governance vote over the operations and Treasury of Fight Club. Currently, the governance vote is split 50/50 between FCGG and FCRG holders, but there’s a proposal to determine the governance weight of FCBG holders. Additionally, in pursuit of a more equitable governance mechanism, FC is developing a structure that uses each member’s contribution history to help determine the weight of their governance vote.
Value Flow
FC will operate using an endowment model. The Treasury will initially be funded via an NFT sale which will then be co-invested in the venture DAOs in the Fight Club ecosystem. Revenue from the venture DAO service provider fees and returns from the Treasury investments will cover FC expenses and educational program costs.
"Web3 is ushering the investing ecosystem into a new era of diversity and equality. Novel technologies give underserved populations access to sophisticated economic tools, bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots. However, this opportunity comes with additional risk, especially for inexperienced investors, which underscores the importance of pairing our powerful investment platform with in-depth learning sessions and educational tools." -NFThinker (NFT Advisor)
Perks
Owning a Fight Club NFT gives you:
- Access to the FC discord server
- Access to educational programs provided by Fight Club
- Governance votes over FC operations and Treasury
- Access to IRL events
- Eligibility to participate in FC ventureDAOs (subject to ventureDAO accreditation criteria
What has Fight Club accomplished so far?
Fight Club has already completed its OG and bDAO NFT sales, growing the community to 32 FCGG holders and 120 FCRG holders, and the education arm of FC has already launched and graduated its first cohort of venture analysts.
The education program consists of a series of webinars on venture capital processes, due diligence, and investment within the web3 space, broadly. Completion of this series of webinars makes you eligible to participate in FC’s investment research process and become a junior analyst; where analysts can be promoted to managers based on performance on deals and the judgment of their managers.
What is Fight Club’s roadmap?
Fight Club will open its public NFT sale in the beginning of September. This is the “Black Glove” NFT that will give holders governance power over the DAO. Tokenomics and governance processes are still being determined, and look out for analyst and manager onboarding in the future.
How to get involved?
Fight Club Public Mint NFT will be launched September 1st of this year. There will be 1000 NFTs minted on the polygon network for $650 equivalent in MATIC each. More information about the NFT mint can be found here and we have NFT minting support channels (how-to-mint & minting-support-✋) in case you run into any problems.
If you have any questions visit our website and join the FC Discord. If you don’t have an NFT, you can still poke around with a guest pass, and membership can be earned through contribution. In any case, our #public-square channel is open to all—even those without a guest pass—so drop in and say hello! Finally, follow us on Twitter @fight_club_vc to stay updated!
Notes/Resources
Article by Jake and Stake
Jake and Stake is a writer and editor at BanklessDAO. He is the Writers Guild’s Governance Coordinator, creator of the DeFi Download Newsletter, and leads the State of the DAOs Newsletter. His background is in software engineering and cybersecurity.