On Saturday, May 22, 2021, PizzaDAO will be giving away over $200,000 worth of free pizza in over 100 communities around the world. Why May 22nd? In 2010 Laszlo Hanyecz made the first bitcoin transaction and paid 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 slices of pizza, now legendary, it’s been deemed Bitcoin Pizza Day ever since. Fast forward, this story inspired a conversation in a Clubhouse room ironically called The Room About Nothing, and sparked a simple idea to make and sell NFT art that can pay for actual pizza. On February 18, 2021, Rare Pizzas was born. The goals became about supporting small businesses affected by the pandemic and providing free pizza to the masses to address hunger. As more people got on-boarded the project exploded.

 

 

The group started off with reservations for a Rare Pizza Box (1 of 100 designs) with a “fully cooked” digital Rare Pizza NFT and raised approximately $1.25 million. The pizzas, once released, will be randomly generated and programmed to give the appearance of having been “cooked”. For instance, attention was given to the curl of basel in the oven over time. The group also created 30 flavors of Pizza Pop and a wide range of pizza sticks with special sauces, which continue to sell. 

 

Over 300 artists from around the world have collaborated on the project to create hundreds of unique pizza toppings. A team of more than 100 developers, managers and marketing people have contributed to creating the website, programing the NFTS, and creating content on social media. It’s been a busy couple of months and interest continues to grow. There are more than 2,200 people on their discord.

Want Free Pizza?
Want free Pizza?

 

For the big day PizzaDAO partnered with Slice to distribute over $55,000 worth of pizza to customers across the country. Another partnership is with World Pizza Champions, supporting 80 different pizza shops. Mostly, the group reached out to local places through their global artists network. In one instance an artist in India took the time to scout street pizza vendors and taste tested them to ensure the best ones were considered. The group spent the last month calling to order $500 worth of pizza with a $125 tip for staff. Many of the calls took place live on Clubhouse. Half the time they were met with disbelief, until they honed their pitch and then the list grew rapidly.

 

The biggest challenge was actually trying to give the money away. PizzaDAO had to form an LLC in Wyoming, get a bank account, a paypal account and an American Express card in order to pay some of the vendors, since most of them aren’t accepting crypto currency yet. Fortunately, the financial  gymnastics was figured out and the party is on! Check out their website and discord and consider jumping in to buy some NFTs at their store. You can also find a Rare Pizza Box NFT, soon to be populated with Rare Pizza, on the secondary market on OpenSea.

 

Rare Pizzas Pizza Party

You can redeem a free pizza from your local pizzeria by downloading the Slice app and using the code FREEPIZZADAY on May 22nd. 

Follow #RarePizzas and  #FreePizzaDay on social media

‍Website: RarePizzas.com

‍Twitter: @Pizza_DAO and @RarePizzas

Instagram: @RarePizzasNFT

‍Discord: Join

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Many people in the crypto and NFT space are looking for ways to innovate their philanthropic efforts – from individual artists, to groups to organizations. For instance, in April many artists got together in Club House to sell their NFTs to support a young child battling cancer and were able to raise $60k in one night to go towards medical bills. Rare Pizzas, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), are using the funds from their collectible NFT sales to support local pizzerias all over the world by paying them to offset the cost of pizza for the masses. Project Ark has gathered artists to raise money for the World Wildlife Foundation for a project that is rewilding buffalo in the Carpathian Forest in Romania. Leyline, a new nonprofit, is taking the idea of leveraging the blockchain, NFTs, collectibles and gaming for philanthropic efforts to a whole new level.

“We want to do everything we can to eradicate poverty and solve the climate crisis.” says Leyline founder Jeremy Dela Rosa, “…by focusing on the blockchain and NFTs, and bringing gaming and technology into the philanthropic space to innovate.”

Leyline is a membership platform that provides a loyalty program for doing good deeds. The ladder of engagement begins by first taking care of oneself and then scales to larger commitments. To start, Leyline Points (LLPs) can be earned from things like sleeping enough hours or doing some form of exercise. People can claim points for doing small local acts like donating blood, cleaning up a beach or volunteering at a soup kitchen. They can also have a global impact by donating computing power to cancer or climate change research through a partnership Leyline has with the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Interestingly, the community is about to break 200k hours in donated computing power. The promotional video below focuses on the BOINC partnership and how members can get involved.

The organization is preparing to integrate an NFT marketplace where creators donate works into a prize pool and members on the platform can use their Leyline Points to collect and trade digital assets. In the coming weeks they will be partnering with influencers and celebrities to raise the visibility of the platform and increase participation. Right now users are able to trade in their points for gift certificates from places like Burger King and Sephora, as well as redeem items from a variety of games like Fortnite and Lost Castle. Leyline is building on Klaytn, which does proof of stake, a more energy efficient blockchain and will make NFTs available on OpenSea. Ultimately, the goal will be to allow members to move their NFTS into different metaverses and operate on different blockchains.

Many of the people on the Leyline team come from some of the biggest video game companies in the world, which is no surprise since founder Jeremy Dela Rosa hails from Blizzard Entertainment, a well-known player in gaming. As a result, expect to see high quality NFT artworks for fans.

Leyline has been gradually building its community, so far it is made up of approximately 1700 people with over 70 volunteers from the crypto, gaming and philanthropic worlds. The core users are in North America and Western Europe with expansion happening in Latin America and Asia. The aspiration is to grow the platform and community with the anticipation that as the crypto/NFT space matures the platform will be positioned to further strengthen an ecosystem that is built on doing good and making a significant social impact around the world.

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