Shutdown Tezos NFT Marketplace Revived by Its Community, Begins Transition to DAO

After popular Tezos non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Hic et Nunc shut down its services last week, founder Rafael Lima stepped back and the community banded together to transition the marketplace into a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).

Community Bands Together

Lima took to Twitter to explain that the marketplace’s services were now “discontinued” and a message sharing Hic et Nunc’s smart contract was posted to social media, fuelling speculation among users.

Only days later, the Hic et Nunc marketplace community has banded together around a clone of the original marketplace named “Hicetnunc.art”, after its founder opted to leave the project in the hands of the community. As it stands, Hic et Nunc is again fully operational and the community is transitioning the marketplace to a DAO.

The ecosystem is forging into the future in a transparent, open process, and is in a first-of-its-kind Web3 transition from platform ownership to community ownership.

When Hic et Nunc discontinued its services, it did not entirely go away. The ecosystem is built in open source by default, and metadata, sale data and image files were stored on the Tezos blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) directly, not on the marketplace’s website.

Hours after the website was discontinued, over 50 mirror sites went live where artists were able to continue browsing, minting and collecting NFTs on Hic et Nunc.

Fees Lowered to the Limits

Following the speculation surrounding the entire ordeal, Lima lowered the platform fees to one percent. Although he remains the founder and developer, Tezos infrastructure-provided TezTools has become the caretaker of the original Hic et Nunc smart contract until a DAO is set to take over the operations.

Although Hic et Nunc is still a very contentious topic of conversation, and it is now a community-driven project, many believe a name change would be appropriate if Lima were to leave the project completely.

Would you agree?