"The truth is that during the time when the DAO was founded, things were happening in the NFT space that I didn’t fully understand. I was concerned about the popularity of flipping and of PFP projects, and the accusations of misconduct and racism surrounding some of the bigger projects. So when we decided to open up membership, it was in a very measured way. New members and artists have to apply through a membership form, and we have an approval system. There’s no buy-in at this point; if you’re accepted, you receive tokens. A lot of the people applying when we first opened up were artists we were already planning to reach out to—and maybe they were already in the collection—so things felt really authentic and invigorating. This past April, to celebrate the creation of the DAO, and to fund our membership model, we editioned works from our founding artists and released them as part of our “Season 0” NFT drop."