Lobby Lobsters NFT drop raises $4M in one hour to support DeFi lobbying efforts

Published at: Sept. 6, 2021

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) depicting cartoon lobsters in suits have raised more than $4 million to support lobbying efforts supporting the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.

On Aug. 5, NFT platform and community Universe sold out of its Lobby Lobster NFTs in less than one hour, raising roughly $4 million.

Wow Already $4m raised for lobbying efforts in DC. Let’s go Lobby Lobsters community. pic.twitter.com/VeT1XymMoL

— Universe.XYZ (@universe_xyz) September 5, 2021

Each NFT was minted for 0.1 Ether (roughly $390), with all of the 1,000 Ether (ETH) raised through primary sales set for donation to “a non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies.” In a blog post, Universe revealed that the beneficiary has been selected; however, the name of the organization will be made public soon. 

Proceeds from resales will also be deposited into the Universe decentralized autonomous organization’s multi-sig wallet, with monthly communal votes slated to determine which organizations to disburse funds to. Additionally, 7.5% of secondary sales will be directed to support lobby groups located outside of the United States.

The Lobby Lobsters drop attracted praise and participation from many leading figures from the DeFi and crypto ecosystem, including Foobar, Fiskantes and Delphi Digital co-founder Tom Shaughnessy.

The idea for Lobby Lobsters emerged from discussions between Uniswap’s Hayden Adams and Synthetix’s Kain Warwick regarding how to fund lobbying efforts supporting the DeFi industry.

Someone should do a punks style NFT drop where all proceeds go to @coincenter @crypto_council @BlockchainAssn and @fund_defi (including % of all future sales)I bet literally everyone on crypto twitter would buy

— hayden.eth (@haydenzadams) August 6, 2021

Related: DeFi literacy: Universities embrace decentralized finance education

The Lobby Lobsters drop comes amid the backdrop of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigations into Uniswap’s development team, Uniswap Labs.

The broad support shown for Universe’s Lobby Lobster drop stands in contrast to the recent controversy surrounding the allocation of 1 million UNI tokens (worth roughly $20 million at the time) from the Uniswap treasury to fund lobbying and advocacy efforts of the recently formed DeFi Education Alliance.

In July, the organization came under fire for abruptly dumping half of the UNI allocated to it for cash, despite having indicated tokens would be sold gradually over four to five years.

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