In November 2021, a group of crypto enthusiasts launched ConstitutionDAO with a single goal: crowdfund enough money to buy an original copy of the US Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction. The project raised over $47 million in ETH from more than 17,000 contributors in less than a week. It was the largest crowdfunding event in crypto history and one of the fastest examples of collective action the internet had ever produced.
ConstitutionDAO lost the auction to Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, who bid $43.2 million. The loss was devastating for contributors, many of whom had been genuinely excited about collectively owning a piece of American history. The project dissolved, and contributors were offered refunds — minus the gas fees they’d spent to contribute, which in many cases exceeded the value of their contribution due to Ethereum’s high gas costs at the time.
The PEOPLE token, originally just a governance token for the DAO, took on a life of its own after the auction. Despite the DAO’s dissolution, PEOPLE became a memecoin representing the spirit of collective action, and it continued trading for years afterward. The token became a cultural artifact — a permanent reminder of the moment when the internet briefly believed it could buy the Constitution.
ConstitutionDAO matters because it demonstrated the raw power and the raw limitations of crypto-native collective action. The power: raising $47 million from strangers in a week with no formal organization. The limitations: high gas fees, legal complexity of DAO ownership, and the reality that billionaires can always outbid the crowd. The project inspired dozens of subsequent “bid DAOs” — groups that formed to collectively purchase everything from golf courses to sports teams — most of which failed. But the template was established: crypto could coordinate collective action at speeds traditional organizations couldn’t match.
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