107. Crypto and Museums Part 1

In November 2021, an extremely rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution was put up for auction at Sotheby's in New York, attracting a unique bidder: ConstitutionDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. This group had formed just weeks earlier with the sole purpose of acquiring the Constitution – and would not have been possible without crypto technology.

While museums and crypto don't commonly coexist at the moment, they may increasingly intersect in the future. They actually address similar fundamental issues: trust and historical accuracy. Both can help answer the question: what really happened? To explore this overlap, we speak with Nik Honeysett, CEO of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative in San Diego, who helps trace the story of ConstitutionDAO's bid for the Constitution. We explore key crypto concepts like blockchains and smart contracts, and how they might apply to the wider museum world – particularly around questions of provenance and institutional trust.

Image: Nicolas Cage in 2004's National Treasure. Supporters of ConstitutionDAO drew parallels between his character's fictional theft of the Declaration of Independence and the DAO's real-life attempt to purchase the Constitution.

Topics and Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:15 Auction of the U.S. Constitution
• 00:43 Constitution DAO
• 01:36 The Role of Governance Tokens
• 02:02 Nik Honeysett
• 02:45 Balboa Park Online Collaborative
• 04:29 Museums and Crypto
• 05:24 Blockchain and Provenance
• 07:40 Smart Contracts and Museum Governance
• 09:56 The Outcome of the Auction
• 11:58 Museums as Trustworthy
• 14:00 Museum Archipelago Ep. 39. Hans Sloane And The Origins Of The British Museum With James Delbourgo
• 16:41 Conclusion and Future of Crypto in Museums
• 17:44 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖

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