A new decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) has been formed with the goal of buying the Blockbuster brand from Dish Network and turning it into a film studio and streaming platform.<\/p>\n
Blockbuster Video is an American video rental company founded in 1985 which once had 6,000 stores globally and was valued at over $8 billion, before it shuttered almost all of its operations in 2014. It is currently owned by Dish Network and operates just one store in Bend, Oregon.<\/p>\n
The DAO interested in \u201cliberating\u201d Blockbuster from Dish Network is the aptly named BlockbusterDAO. The DAO explained in a Dec. 26 tweet its plans on rallying a grassroots effort to buy Blockbuster by raising at least $5 million through a Blockbuster DAO NFT minting event. Each NFT will be valued at 0.13 ETH. <\/p>\n
BlockbusterDAO plans on turning Blockbuster into a decentralized film (DeFilm) streaming studio. DeFilm is an experiment launched in July which proposes to \u201cactually make a movie with decision making happening on a blockchain.\u201d \u2018Block\u2019 buster seems to be a fitting name for such a project.<\/p>\n
The DAO is currently composed of about 9,000 netizens on Twitter and a Discord server who deliberate over how the DAO can achieve its goals. <\/p>\n
The BlockbusterDAO appears to be tapping into the social media led desire to resurrect memestock brands such as Gamestop and AMC, while following a similar path to that laid down by ConstitutionDAO (PEOPLE) just over a month ago. ConstitutionDAO aimed to buy an original copy of the Constitution of the United States of America from the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation at auction.<\/p>\n
ConstitutionDAO ultimately failed to achieve its goal as hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin paid a total of $43.2 million for the copy in the Sotheby\u2019s auction on Nov. 19. Following the auction, the DAO offered full refunds for anyone who donated. Those who did not take refunds kept their PEOPLE tokens.<\/p>\n