Welcome to Botto's Monthly Roundup, a snapshot of news and updates from the previous 4 weeks. February was one of the most significant months in Botto's history, with several major developments in sales and events. 

I. Top News
⁠II. Botto IRL
⁠III. Sales & Rewards Report ⁠
IV. Top Unminted Fragments ⁠
V. Top Active Proposals ⁠
VI. Curation Competition
VI. Editorials ⁠
VIII. Town Halls

Blockbuster Secondary Sale Sets Twitter Alight

A wild month for Botto kicked off as Phantom Scribbler acquired Genesis Period work #13 on secondary for 41.447 ETH from the collector Ben.

The sale kickstarted a wave of discussion about the work, and led to several Spaces talks throughout the week, including a chat with Roger Dickerman with Phantom, Ben, and members of the Botto team.

Farcaster Frame Goes Wild

February also saw Botto's entry onto Farcaster, where it introduced an entirely new means of voting via a custom Frame. The DAO awarded voters with a free access pass, the first BottoDAO NFT minted on Base, and a mind-boggling 8,200 passes were minted. Expect more Farcaster voting frames, and if you're on the platform, follow us here.

Taschen Marks Botto as part of NFT History

This month, major artbook publisher TASCHEN released On NFTs, an ambitious monograph that surveys the history of art on the blockchain to date. Botto was recognized in this title, and a robust selection of work accompanied by a wonderful essay by Oscar Hormigos.

TASCHEN was kind enough to offer BottoDAO royalties on sales of the book via the affiliate link here.

Botto Exhibition at Glitch Marfa

We're pleased to share the news that select Botto works are now on view at glitch Gallery in Marfa, TX through the month of March for an exhibition titled Interpret Complete.

To accompany the show, Malte Rauch wrote an outstanding essay about Botto, which you can read here. It’s an excellent piece to share with those who are seeking an introduction to Botto.

The above special edition exhibition poster is also available to collect on the exhibition page, and is offered in an edition of 1000 for .02 ETH. Proceeds help offset the costs of the exhibition, with a small percentage going to the BottoDAO treasury.

NFT Paris Recap

We had an amazing time at NFT Paris, and the event was a great chance to both meet new friends and catch up with old ones.

At Paris, we were happy to offer a limited edition print, Overt Flow, to collectors who purchased its accompanying token via MakersPlace. This week, a raffle will be held for those collectors for a chance to win 10k $BOTTO. 

From this token/print, we achieved $6,600 in sales, with the DAO receiving 60% of the proceeds.

February saw the openings of 5 1/1 auctions, which, coupled with royalty fees, achieved 39.6 in total revenue. 

Total Rewards February

Active Rewards: 19.804 ETH
To Treasury: 19.804 ETH

#005, Bronze Kiss in Interstice
Acquired by: @krybharat_vault on February 2nd | Price Realized: 9.69 ETH    

#006, Inverted Realms of Perception
Acquired by: @hudsonsims on February 9th | Price Realized: 4.862 ETH  

#007, Intersections of Existence
Acquired by: @ben_vault on February 16th | Price Realized: 6.05 ETH

#008, Suns Roam: Pathway Unseen
Acquired by: @deezevault on February 23rd | Price Realized: 4.421 ETH  

#009, Waters on Lone Territory
Acquired by: @yck on March 1st | Price Realized: 13.37 ETH   

While not (yet) minted, here's a glimpse at the current top-voted fragments from the Interstice Period. 

Dance of Dividing Creation
Origin Rd: 100 | Total Votes: 5667223 | Score: 39.71

Communion of Harvested Worlds
Origin Rd: 100 | Total Votes: 5321849 | Score: 41.68  

Suspended Passage into Fiber
Origin Rd: 100 | Total Votes: 5282835 | Score: 43.09

1. BIP-42 V2: Liquidity Mining Extension and Transition to Protocol-Owned Liquidity ⁠

⁠This proposal opens for conversation the idea to extend Botto’s Liquidity Mining (LM) contract one year to October 2025 while pursuing long-term liquidity solutions such as OTC investments to raise funds earmarked for protocol-owned liquidity (PoL).  

2. BIP-XX: Put Botto's Treasury to Work

This proposal suggests that Botto allocate 200ETH from its treasury to invest in staking through Lido, and by doing so create steady revenue for the project that could be used to contribute to all types of activities, such as tech development, human resources, marketing activations, or simply help extend Botto’s operational runway.

The 4th Bottoful Curation Competition is now open! Free for all to participate, our curation competitions allow community members to take a deep dive into Botto's archive of fragments to form selections of work around a common theme. 

Curations are voted on within the DAO, and winners receive prizes in the form of $BOTTO and Botto Pipes. 

Interstice Mid-Period Reflection

As the Interstice period crossed its halfway point, there was much to be gleaned from the first 6 works minted. Not least of which may be the wild unpredictability that goes hand-in-hand with a theme that has such a plurality of interpretations.

Week-by-week, the DAO has been subject to regular surprise as the work seen thus far spans from abstraction to photo realism, and from meta-commentary to Modernist callbacks.

In this piece we explored Botto's nature as a democratic artist, explore themes of movement and contradiction in the period's first half, and surveyed the first six works of Invisible Alchemy, Botto's first use case of the new ERC-7160 token standard

Read more here

Townhall #017: LSTs, APs, BIPs and VPs: Our Hot Topic Acronyms

In our latest townhall, we dived into the secondary sale that sparked lively debated across Twitter. We then discussed active improvement proposals and other hot topics in the DAO, including liquid staking tokens, protocol owned liquidity, and the DAO venturing onto layer 2s. This townhall features DAO members including choobie, carter, caleb, booshpanda, and sync.