---
title: "ConstitutionDAO"
url: "https://caper.network/wiki/daos/social/constitutiondao"
updated: 2026-09-03
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# ConstitutionDAO

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Name** | ConstitutionDAO |
| **Type** | Single-purpose ("flash") crowdfunding DAO (Ethereum) |
| **Active** | November 2021 — roughly one week |
| **Goal** | Win a first-printing copy of the U.S. Constitution at [Sotheby's](https://www.sothebys.com/) |
| **Raised** | ~$47M in ETH from ~17,000 contributors (median ~$217) |
| **Crowdfunding rail** | [Juicebox protocol](https://juicebox.money/#/p/constitutiondao) |
| **Outcome** | Outbid by Ken Griffin (~$43.2M); dissolved and refunded |
| **Token** | $PEOPLE — a redeem-only refund token, "no rights, governance, or utility" |
| **Site** | [constitutiondao.com](https://www.constitutiondao.com) · [Juicebox project](https://juicebox.money/#/p/constitutiondao) |
| **Related** | [$CAR (SHL0MS)](/wiki/daos/social/shl0ms-car), [Nouns DAO](/wiki/daos/social/nouns-dao), [PleasrDAO](/wiki/daos/investment/pleasrdao) |

**ConstitutionDAO** was the canonical _single-purpose_ (or "flash") [DAO](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao): an organization that formed in days around one concrete goal — buying a rare first-printing copy of the U.S. Constitution at auction — raised roughly **$47 million** in ETH from about **17,000 contributors**, lost the sale, and then dissolved and refunded its backers. Its founders called it ["a beautiful experiment in a single-purpose DAO."](https://www.constitutiondao.com) It remains the industry's most-cited example of how fast a [crowdfunding DAO](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/types-of-daos) can assemble a treasury — and a case study in the operational problems that speed leaves unsolved.

## The one-week raise

In November 2021 an ad-hoc group crowdfunded the bid entirely through the [Juicebox protocol](https://juicebox.money/#/p/constitutiondao), a no-code Ethereum funding rail: contributors sent ETH to the project's Juicebox contract and received $PEOPLE tokens in return. In under a week it took in roughly **$47 million** worth of ETH; [the median contribution was about $217](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionDAO), and the campaign drew an estimated 17,000 people — many making their first-ever on-chain transaction. The speed was the point: a single, legible goal plus an open funding contract let a leaderless crowd out-raise most professionally organized funds in days, without a legal entity, a token sale roadmap, or a governance framework in place first.

## The auction and the loss

At the [Sotheby's](https://www.sothebys.com/) auction on 18 November 2021 ConstitutionDAO was outbid by Citadel founder [Ken Griffin, whose winning bid totaled about $43.2 million](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionDAO). A structural handicap shaped the loss: because the DAO's treasury sat in a fully public on-chain wallet, rival bidders could see exactly how much it held, and it had to hold funds back for insurance, storage, and display of a fragile document — so it could not simply bid its entire balance. The transparency that made the raise trustless also made its bidding strategy legible to a single well-capitalized competitor.

## Dissolution, refunds, and the gas problem

Having lost, the organizers [made full refunds available](https://www.constitutiondao.com) — contributors could _claim_ their $PEOPLE or _redeem_ it back to ETH. But the refund exposed a hard limit of naïve on-chain crowdfunding: at 2021 gas prices the fixed cost of a transaction did not scale with contribution size, so [some backers paid more in Ethereum fees to donate and then reclaim than they had given](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConstitutionDAO), and weeks later a large share of the funds still sat unredeemed. The episode became a standard reference for the [treasury and operations](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-treasury-management) problems — gas, custody, coordination, wind-down — that a purpose-built DAO has to solve, not assume away.

## $PEOPLE and the afterlife

The $PEOPLE token was never a governance share — the official site is explicit that it carries ["no rights, governance, or utility other than redeeming them for ethereum,"](https://www.constitutiondao.com) at a fixed 1 ETH : 1,000,000 $PEOPLE ratio, and that the DAO "cannot and will not endorse any future plans for the token." In other words, it was a refund IOU, not a claim on an ongoing organization. Even so, a community kept it trading as a memecoin long after dissolution — a reminder that a token can outlive the entity that issued it, and that "what does this token actually entitle you to?" is the first question a [DAO's tokenomics](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) has to answer.

It is the counterexample to [PleasrDAO](/wiki/daos/investment/pleasrdao), the collector DAO that _won_ its trophies and fractionalized them into working, tradeable shares — where ConstitutionDAO's token became a refund IOU, PleasrDAO's became a live claim on the asset.

## How Caper approaches this

ConstitutionDAO proved a DAO can crowdfund a treasury around a single goal at astonishing speed — but its token was a pure refund IOU with no standing rights, and the only "exit" was a one-time, all-or-nothing dissolution vote after the mission failed. A [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) keeps the fast, single-transaction raise but makes the token a durable claim rather than a receipt. Funding flows through a continuous [bonding curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) into a [treasury](/wiki/markets/raising-funds) the holders govern by [proposal](/wiki/governance/proposals), and — verified in the contract — every member who has voted or traded holds a standing [exit right](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights): they can redeem their tokens and vote record for a treasury share sized by their canonical vote weight at any time, individually, without waiting for the whole organization to wind down. If a caper's mission stalls, no group refund vote is needed — each member simply takes their share.