Basketball DAO, Dogecoin Wallet App to Buy BIG3 Team Stakes via NFTs

After last week’s news that Solana NFT project DeGods will purchase a team in rapper and actor Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league, now two more Web3 projects have signed on to do the same: a DAO that was formed to try and buy an NBA team, and a Dogecoin wallet app from notable tech investor Bill Lee.

BIG3 announced today that Krause House—a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) formed last November with ambitions to buy an NBA team—will purchase a controlling ownership stake in one of the league’s 12 teams. Krause House will acquire the stake in Ball Hogs, a team that is coached by retired NBA champion, Rick Barry.

Also today, the league revealed that Lee purchased a controlling stake in another BIG3 team, Aliens, and paid for it entirely in Dogecoin. The league billed it as the “largest commercial transaction in history” for the leading meme-inspired cryptocurrency.

Lee is the founding chairman of Dogecoin wallet app MyDoge, which will be tied into the team. MyDoge branding will feature on Aliens team jerseys, at events, and in BIG3 broadcasts. Additionally, MyDoge plans to implement a feature that lets fans and viewers tip BIG3 players, coaches, and teams with Dogecoin on Twitter.

Krause House and MyDoge are acquiring their respective stakes via BIG3’s new NFT ownership initiative, in which the 3-on-3 pro basketball league will offer ownership interests in the form of Ethereum NFTs. An NFT acts like a blockchain-backed proof of ownership, and in this case will represent a stake in a BIG3 team, with an array of benefits provided to owners.

Each organization will purchase all 25 Fire-tier NFTs for one of the 12 teams, effectively giving the group control over certain team decisions. As a result, the owners will be able to select their respective team’s CEO, president, and VP, as well as create team merchandise, interact with league officials, and more.

In Krause House’s case, the DAO put the decision up to a vote via a proposal, which passed with 100% positive votes. The DAO will use treasury funds to pay $500,000 in USDC stablecoin for the 25 Fire NFTs—an overall discount from the previously stated price of $25,000 for each. Bill Lee paid $600,000 for his team stake of 25 Fire NFTs, according to a press release.

“The Doge Army and I look forward to making Dogecoin the people's currency while helping our team hoist the championship trophy,” said Lee, in the release. “I can't think of a better NFT experience than that today.”

As with the BIG3’s recent deal with DeGods, Krause House will also be able to offer its community members access to purchase up to 500 total Gold-tier NFTs for Ball Hogs, which offer benefits such as free game tickets, merchandise, and more. Krause House members will be able to buy those for $4,500 each, a 10% discount from the public price.

Decrypt asked a league representative if MyDoge will similarly be able to offer its community whitelist spots to purchase BIG3 Gold NFTs, but we did not receive a response by the time of publication.

From BIG3 to the NBA?

As Decrypt covered in November, Krause House was formed with the intention of buying an NBA team—a goal that could potentially cost billions of dollars to achieve. Even if the DAO had those funds to work with (which it currently does not), it might not have the reputation, infrastructure, or regulatory standing to be taken seriously by the NBA.

“We know if we snapped our fingers tomorrow and had $2 billion in the treasury, and we called the NBA to go do this,” said pseudonymous Krause House co-founder Commodore, “they're going to be like, ‘Under what legal structure? How's this going to work?’”

Krause House sees the BIG3 team acquisition as the first step of potentially many—which could include acquiring additional teams in other alternative or international leagues—that gradually lead the collective of basketball enthusiasts towards their goal of owning an NBA team. “This is part of our portfolio of success,” said Commodore of the DAO’s plans.

As far as operating the team, he said that Krause House is still considering how best to balance what he sees in the BIG3 as a desire for a “player-first league” with the idea of letting 10,000 DAO members weigh in on team decisions.

Commodore suggested that Krause House’s earliest impact for the upcoming season—which starts in June—could come via bringing analytics insights from DAO members. He said that the group has “five or six PhD-level basketball minds” that can potentially feed data insights to Coach Barry to help him make courtside decisions in games.

Beyond that, Krause House will tap its membership for longer-term ambitions like creating merchandise, drafting future players, and other decisions that go into potential ongoing success for Ball Hogs in the BIG3.

“Our mission is to figure out how a community of 10,000 people with a variety of different skill sets from all over the world can help the team win,” pseudonymous co-founder Flex Chapman told Decrypt.

The BIG3 is shaping up to be a Web3-centric league, not only with NFTs representing club ownership stakes but also projects like Krause House, DeGods, and MyDoge buying into teams—and bringing their branding and communities along.

Even rapper Snoop Dogg, an NFT creator and collector, said that he plans to buy a team or two—although a league rep said that nothing is official yet on that front. In any case, the league’s increasing interest in NFTs and decentralized communities could create unique opportunities for collaboration and experimentation going forward.

“I think it's gonna be really fun to think about different ways that we can engage either communities or DAOs against each other,” said Commodore. “Because we're going to have crypto-native communities owning different teams, we could start to collaborate on really interesting experiences.”