Danny Yang was part of the team behind what he calls a historic crypto transaction when his non-fungible token (NFT) project became the first to mint 10,000 tokens in a single run. Although the project, called OnChainMonkey, mimicked the format of many so-called "profile picture" NFT series before it - including the wildly popular Bored Apes - it was a technical achievement.
And it serves a social purpose, Yang said. The Apes NFTs were for charity, and minting all the NFTs into a single blockchain transaction helped lower fees. This means that other charities looking to get into cryptocurrency have a more cost-effective way to do so.
This article is part of Road to Consensus.
"We actually have technologies that can solve problems," Yang said in an interview with CoinDesk. "We [can] really bring people in line."
Yang, a Harvard graduate with a PhD in computer science from Stanford University, worked in the crypto industry for a long time before moving to NFTs. He helped build one of Taiwan's largest crypto exchanges, he said. His latest venture is now participating in the first Web 3 Pitch Fest, hosted by Extreme Tech Challenge and CoinDesk and part of the Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas.
"The big vision and goal is to really make a difference and solve some of these exponential problems that we're facing," he said, mentioning climate change and COVID-19 in particular. "These are problems that start small but quickly take on the whole world.
Although Metagood is focused on philanthropy, it is a for-profit company. Yang said these sometimes conflicting goals are easy to achieve using cryptocurrencies, as NFT opens up investment opportunities for everyone and can build digital communities.
He said OnChainMonkey is one of the "most profitable" NFT collections in terms of percentage of profitable businesses. The startup has donated a portion of its revenue to a number of charities through its Metagood Giving Fund.
It has donated to UNICEF and other United Nations agencies, provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine and helped fund the evacuation of Sharbat Gula, a famous Afghan refugee.
Metagood, a 15-person company only a year old, may have a real claim to defining what "community" means. Behind Metagood is an extensive network of crypto experts, award-winning artists, and social impact professionals, including Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and Sebastien Borget and Jeffrey (Jiho) Zirlin, co-founders of influential NFT projects The Sandbox and Axie Infinity.
In addition, Bill Tai, a venture capitalist, kite surfer and environmentalist, serves as chairman. (Other well-known figures such as actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson and Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, are also supporters.
As for near-term plans, Metagood will focus on his decentralized, autonomous organization and this month's upcoming Karma NFT coin.