Omar Morales, is one of the founders and the CEO of the Xolo DAO. He has been working in the financial industry for more than 15 years. As an investor he has developed a passion for analysing and understanding how businesses work and operate. He has been an advocate of financial education in Mexico and enjoys creating new ventures. He is an angel investor of some Latam companies, and he has been a mentor of many start-ups in Mass Challenge helping them to generate financial projections, strategy and product and market fit.
He enjoys traveling, music, photography, and arts. When he talked to Manu about a vehicle to invest in artists in Latin America with NFTs they decided to analyse different methods of creating it, they started planning the XoloDAO 1 year ago and now that they are building the company, he is excited about the opportunity that this technology can bring to Latin America
Chris: XoloDAO is a community-based DAO promoted by content creators. What is the whole concept of the NFT?
Omar: The concept of the Xolo NFT is your participation in the DAO or the company. The Xolo NFT is the key access to the governance of the XoloDAO. We are using the NFT as the enabler to our private Discord, website, and as your credentials on our governance mechanisms. In a traditional way, you may consider it your share of the company.
Chris: By the same token, what were the first inspirations that drew you to develop this NFT?
Omar: Our inspiration for developing XoloDAO was the enormous opportunity that exists nowadays in Latin America. The region has a lot of potential to increase adoption and we are seeing a convergence of finance, culture, and technology. We are at the point where the creative industry has the benefit of a direct digital distribution channel, as well as the financial tooling to take control of the economics of the relationship with their audience (rather than the platform).
We were inspired by the technology and the opportunity to create the DAO in order to operate as a tech enabler in the region that is community driven and centered with a purpose to share, educate, connect and grow together. We think that our DAO can be used as a platform by companies and content creators to enable Web3 projects that are transparent and efficient in order to increase adoption in the region.
Chris: So, what are the key features of the token that make each one of them unique? In other words, what are the different traits of the digital piece of art?
Omar: We took inspiration from our heritage and ancient legends to choose the character, the Xolo Dog. We decided to use Xolo as the main character of our collection because of the powers it possesses to connect with the two worlds. As we are building a company that connects the traditional and the digital worlds, we want the Xolo to be our guide on this journey.
The collection was generated by a first time NFT artist that has experience in the media and design world. He is Mexican and since this is his first project, we decided to buy the designs from him. The traits of the Xolo are different variations of 6 fundamental traits like the background, color of the Xolo, eyes, clothing and accessories, mouth, head accessories with 13 variations each.
The combinations were randomly generated with our own proprietary algorithm and we established a hash provenance system on our NFT metadata to ensure fairness for all of our participants.
Chris: In the same way, what are the benefits accruing to the investor when he buys the XoloDAO token? What else can the user do with the NFT?
Omar: The benefits of our Xolo NFT Holder or Xolder are twofold: First, it's being a part of the DAO as a company. All the benefits that the DAO will generate from investing and staking are directly passed to our Xolo NFT holders. We will be funding and investing in projects with the main goal of generating revenues, and all the revenues from sales will go back to the community wallet generating more value to our Xolo NFT holders. As we will be staking Audius tokens to distribute the audio content created by our community, we will be generating passive income for our community wallet. The treasury vault is designed to be able to stake ETH that has not been allocated to projects, which creates additional income. The last financial benefit for our Xolo Holders are the royalties. All the royalties go to the community wallet to increase the capability of funding more projects. Second, it's what we call "real life benefits". As we invest in projects, it will entitle us to the benefits of the projects we fund. These benefits might include pre-sales, exclusive access to events and content, access to the creators and to the events that are part of the launching process, etc. We want our investors that are sharing the risk of the projects we fund to also share the benefits and the potential for future projects, so all the tangible benefits and the real life benefits are passed along to our Xolo NFT Holders. In terms of utility of the NFT, the holders will use the NFT to access the gated content sites and communication channels like our private Discord. The Governance mechanism uses the NFT as the access to information, reports, and private content for our DAO members. Think of your NFT as your lifetime membership to the benefits, information channels, and systems of the company.
Chris: You seem to have a small team working on the token. Please share more about your team members and their contributions toward the token
Omar: We are a small but dedicated team, organization is key among our team to accomplish our goals. Manu has expertise in the marketing and art industry. He is in charge of enabling traditional brands with our services and our technology proposals. Paul is in charge of building the community in Discord and our social media channels (Twitter, Instagram), and both of them are working on the overall marketing strategy with specific KPIs that have helped us to be efficient with our budget and to generate the content that we want for our community and our ambassadors program. I am focused on the development side and overall strategy. As we grow we envision bringing more people to our DAO to work with us in many areas like curating the projects we fund, generating reports and content for our investors to follow up and also some specialists to generate educational content to increase penetration and adoption of the Web3 across Latin America.
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Chris: More importantly, when is the minting date for the public? How many tokens will be available for minting at the public sale?
Omar: Our Mint date is on Thursday April 28th at 11:11 CT, with the limit of 5 Xolos per wallet. During this first stage, 2963 Xolos will be released, including 50% of the rarest tokens in the collection.
Chris: Also, what would be the price of one Xolo DAO NFT at public minting? Do you also have minting limits for every transaction?
Omar: The price of each Xolo NFT during this first stage will be 0.09 ETH, and 5 Xolos per wallet will be implemented
Chris: In the end, please describe the key milestones of your roadmap. How do you plan to retain the interest of the investors?
Omar: The key milestones in our roadmap are the following. The first one is the establishment of the community wallet and the Gnosis Safe to give security and transparency to our investors. Then another important milestone is the release of our dashboard and our NFT access exclusive content website and discord for our Xolo NFT holders. And the most important milestone before our second phase minting window is enabling 2 projects that we are currently developing under our pipeline. We think that delivering to our community and showing results is the most important milestone to reflect that we are working for creating long term value for our projects.
