FreeRossDAO Buys Ross Ulbricht’s ETH NFT To Set Him Free: Report

The FreeRossDAO has just mobilized to start raising funds and win the auction of the Ross Ulbricht NFT in order to gather money and focus on setting him free. In our latest cryptocurrency news today, we are taking a closer look at DAO’s plan.

The DAO’s goal is to win the auction but also to facilitate prisoner reform. The FreeRossDAO was led by the members of the Pleasrdao Community. DAO’s were trying to buy all sorts of things but are they able to buy a man’s freedom?

Today, SuperRare users won the Genesis Collection which is an NFT collection of art, journal entries, and other memorabilia that was created by the Silk Road Founder, Ross Ulbricht, and paid 1445 Ethereum. The user who won is a member of the PleasrDao according to a spokesperson. The spokesperson said they had some multisig issues and had one of the members place the bid on their behalf so basically the multisig refers to a multi-signature crypto wallet where key holders have to approve a transaction before it is executed.

Ulbricht has been in prison since 2013 so he now put up his NFT for auction on SuperRare from December 2-8. The proceeds were to go programs that help families of prison members as well as his clemency efforts. In order to position itself to win the collection, the PleasrDAO community amassed a treasury of 2,836,637 ETH in a few days and now the DAO says its mission is to free Ross, advance prison reform, and share his work with teh world in order to give everyone an opportunity to own a piece of it. In alignment with that, PleasrDao member Camilla McFarland wrote that all of the proceedings of the sale will be used for the prisoner support fund and to also help Ulbricht’s freedom efforts.

In 2011 Ulbricht launched Silk Road which was a dark website where anything could be bought and sold using BTC. The Silk Road website was shut down in 2013 after his arrest and he was convicted of conspiracy to launder money, computer hacking, and narcotics trafficking as well as running a criminal enterprise. He is now serving consecutive life terms in prison with additional 40 years on top and the PleasrDao Twitter account said that it seeded FreeRossDAO with 240 ETH to represent the length of the sentence.

We are officially launching @FreeRossDAO🕊, an open community aimed at buying Ross Ulbricht's NFT collection and funding the mission to #FreeRoss and fight for prison reform. https://t.co/TnDiYQR71X
freerossdao.eth

Let’s save a life 👇https://t.co/q7lP2ztTWS

— 🕊✨ PleasFreeRoss (@PleasrDAO) December 2, 2021

The campaign for Ulbricht to receive a pardon started in 2013 and the website FreeRoss.org said over 457,000 people signed the petition for clemency. So far, three US presidents who hold the power to pardon him ignored the calls to “free Ross.” A long time supporter of the initiative to free Ross and also the founder of Entopic said:

“Typical crowdfunding lacks decentralized governance. A DAO allows for transparent management and execution of funds. This route will encourage more attention, involvement, and support from the crypto community.”