Original source: MetaEra
In the context of the crypto industry, philanthropy is often seen as an unpopular topic, DAO is used as a governance tool, and disco seems to belong naturally to the entertainment area. But RaveDAO is breaking these stereotypes: it uses live music, Web3 tools and real donations to weave the originally separated emotions and technologies, desires and goodwill into a resonant field.
In November 2023, an after-party with only 200 participants quietly took place late at night at DevCon in Istanbul - that was the starting point of RaveDAO. In less than a year, this experimental project, initially called Disco DAO, has expanded rapidly: from Dubai to Brussels, from Seoul to Singapore and Bangkok, with an average of 3,000+ participants per party, and has reached 30,000+ users in total.
If you want to choose the most out-of-the-box scene for Dubai Token 2049 in 2025, the answer may be hidden in Terra Solis deep in the desert. RaveDAO presented a futuristic awakening night in the resort built by Tomorrowland. As the only DAO that has in-depth cooperation with the worlds top music festival brands, this event attracted more than 20% of the attendees of the main venue of Token 2049, becoming the most popular side event in the industry consensus. The event swept the Web3 circle that night and was featured in the Wall Street Journal, which was regarded as a paradigm turning point for entertainment-driven Web3.
But what is the difference between a RaveDAO event and the rave parties we are familiar with? Can the DAO mechanism really mobilize real-world behavior? How do music, on-chain voting, and public welfare donations work together? Compared with those DAO projects that are still struggling with the governance proposal voting rate, how does RaveDAO use rhythm and consensus to attract global attention?
With these questions, we talked to Ron, the core planner of RaveDAO. As a key member who has participated in the operation and strategic design of the project since its early stage, he will take us to dismantle the technical logic and cultural motivation behind this disco DAO, and how it completes the generation of global consensus in one beat after another.
A realism experiment that started at an after-party
The creation of RaveDAO did not come from a grand white paper, but from an impromptu action of giving it a try.
In November 2023, after DevCon in Istanbul, Ron and his team temporarily organized a small afterparty of about 200 people. At that time, they had been honing in the field of Web3 activities for many years, planning dozens of industry conferences, project releases, and community gatherings, but they always felt that something was wrong: the atmosphere was lively, but the links were cold; the forms were rich, but the emotions were empty.
“We realized that what Web3 activities lacked was not functional design, but emotional design between people,” Ron recalled.
At that party, they tried to do something different: no project talk, no banners, just music, lights, and free connections. They invited a local DJ who was not very famous to play music for the crowd according to a playlist of RaveDAO. Unexpectedly, the effect was explosive. Not only did the attendees say that they finally felt the human touch of the crypto community, but many people also took the initiative to ask: Who did this? Can I still play with you in the future?
That night, they suddenly realized that if activities could be reconstructed into a community laboratory, and if DAO was not just a form for discussing proposals, but a structure for triggering behavior and generating consensus, then perhaps a new cultural model could emerge.
Thus, RaveDAO was born. It is not called Rave Agency, nor Music Club, but DAO - because its thinking from the first day was not what content should we create, but how can we make others become co-promoters.
Music is a carrier, not background music
To understand the underlying mechanism of RaveDAO, we must first understand a premise: it does not use music as a decoration for activities, but regards music itself as a core engine for social collaboration.
“Music is not something we use to ‘live up the atmosphere’; it is the starting point and original intention of our design of the entire system,” Ron said bluntly.
The teams thinking about music goes far beyond selecting DJs and setting up stages. They believe that rhythm, emotion, and resonance are essentially a protocol that does not require translation - the oldest and most efficient decentralized connection mechanism in the real world.
“It doesn’t ask for your wallet address, doesn’t require a technical background, and doesn’t look at what country you are from. You just come in, feel the rhythm, and you can connect with others,” said Ron.
This is the fundamental difference between RaveDAO and traditional DAO projects. They do not rely on task incentives or proposal governance to activate the community, but mobilize peoples emotional flow and willingness to participate through real music scenes. On-chain behavior is not the goal of cold start, but a natural extension of offline resonance.
“We often discuss these ‘crazy-sounding but not far-fetched’ ideas internally,” Ron added. “For example, will different BPM live broadcasts affect the rhythm of user participation and interaction? Is it possible to trigger a certain on-chain behavior at a certain drop point? Will the theme of the music affect people’s emotional identification with NFTs?”
“We haven’t reached perfection yet, but we are very clear that we are not hosting an afterparty for the crypto community. Instead, we are creating a cultural experiment, gradually refining the Network State for the new era,” Ron concluded.
How does RaveDAO drive real participation without token incentives?
In the crypto world, tokens are often seen as the engine of everything: attracting users, binding interests, and driving governance. However, RaveDAO has built a high-density, high-heat community participation system without any token incentives, which is almost counter-common sense in the current Web3 ecosystem.
Rons answer is simple: Dont design incentives at the beginning, but ask why someone would care about what you do? Will someone like, use, and continue to use your products and services?
“Instead of talking about governance models and revenue right away, we started with a question: ‘If we don’t talk about making money today, would you still be willing to stay?’ ” he said.
RaveDAO’s solution is to “hide incentives in the experience and design participation into the rhythm.” They don’t have airdrops, but every event gives participants a reason to “stay there”:
NFTs are not just tickets, but emotional snapshots of an event that unlock future participation rights and community identity;
There will be on-chain charity donations after each event, and participants can vote to decide where the donations go and gain actual influence;
Artists are not just performers, but co-creators, who work with the DAO community to develop virtual/physical peripherals, co-create content, determine the location of the next performance, or curate the theme.
“Our participation design is ‘emotion-driven,’” Ron emphasized. “You are not attracted by ‘Token rewards’, but by some kind of emotion: the impact of music, a common sense of rhythm, a real public welfare goal, or the appearance of an artist you like.”
In todays world where the industry still generally relies on airdrops, task systems, and incentive pools, RaveDAO undoubtedly provides a rare paradigm of de-financialized participation model. It proves that: there can be motivation without tokens; there can be connections without incentives; as long as you are building a space with warmth, direction, and culture. Perhaps, inadvertently, RaveDAO has created another form of RWA (real world assets).
When charity becomes an unintentional movement when you dance
In the Web3 world, philanthropy is often packaged as a noble but alienated narrative: written into white papers, made into donation pages, and ultimately landed on token transfers and KPI reports. But in RaveDAO, charity is not an attached module, but a behavioral instinct designed into the experience that is naturally triggered.
At least 20% of the revenue from each RaveDAO event is used for real-world charity projects. This is not future tense or promises - it is an action that has already happened, is verifiable, and has actually changed some peoples lives.
For example, the Tilganga Eye Center in Nepal is using the funds to perform free cataract surgeries for more than 400 blind patients; Nalanda West is using it to support more than 150 meditation and psychotherapy courses to serve the neglected emotional health population.
These changes are not generated by form-based voting, but come from the teams new understanding of the nature of donation: it is not a choice that you have to stop and think about, but an action you do when you are excited; it is not a sacrifice, but a way to continue emotions.
“What we want to do is to integrate charity into the rhythm, rather than putting it outside the rhythm,” said Ron.
In the design of RaveDAO, NFT tickets are not only an entry qualification, but also a traceable record of empathy on the chain. It carries the beat of a night, the connection of a space, and a proof that you have indeed influenced something. There is no coercion, no promotional video, only that you realize at some point that your happiness is bringing changes to others.
“We often say that what we do is not a donation system, but a ‘social energy redistribution engine’,” Ron concluded. “It does not rely on persuasion, but on infection.”
In this contract-driven industry, RaveDAO puts forward a concept that is difficult to quantify but extremely penetrating: charity does not have to be a cost, it can be an aftertaste.
When memories can be generated, who can determine our identity?
In the past, NFTs were used to prove what we owned; in the world of RaveDAO, it is more like some kind of evidence that you have resonated with something.
But as we move forward, a new idea is quietly emerging: if technology can generate memories, can identity also become a synthesized emotion?
We are no longer obsessed with the superficial logic that NFT is a ticket, an asset, or a right, but are asking: Can it become a continuously growing digital consciousness? said Ron.
Can your participation in a certain night be preserved as a visual track on the chain?
Can the beats you skip and the people you meet be reorganized by AI into your own emotional montage?
Could your resonance with a song become a sonic interface for community co-creation in the future?
If all this becomes possible, will what we call self also change from a static identity to part of a fluid consensus?
RaveDAOs collaboration with more than 40 top international DJs is building a prelude to this possibility. Musicians are no longer just performers. They are willing to open up their work data and visual materials, and invite the community to remix memories together in an on-chain form. NFT is no longer a commemoration of a night, but a cultural medium that continues that night.
When AIGC becomes the new emotion co-creator, we are no longer just minting a mark, but letting the mark grow its own personality and the path to the future.
While the crypto community is competing to talk about culture, RaveDAO is already talking about resonance
Web3 has been developing to date and is currently undergoing a “narrative reshuffle”.
From the initial on-chain efficiency, governance model, and token incentives, to the subsequent DeFi protocol and GameFi craze, and now to the rise of social protocols (such as Farcaster), creator economy (such as Zora), and cultural DAOs, the entire industry is gradually shifting from computing power capitalism to attention redistribution.
In this transition process, RaveDAO is one of the experimenters at the forefront.
It did not try to challenge the old order with a new set of protocols, but chose to use music to evoke peoples sensory re-cognition of Web3. This is a narrative method that starts from the experience layer, the emotional layer, and the sense of value layer, and is challenging the traditional logic that DAO can only do governance.
And this new narrative is winning responses from the industry:
· Since November 2023, RaveDAO has held offline activities in Istanbul, Dubai, Brussels, Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok and other cities;
· An average of 3,000+ participants per session, covering more than 30,000 users in total (70% of whom are from the Web3 industry and 30% are the general public);
· Partner brands include: BNB Chain, Polygon, Bitget, Trust Wallet, OKX, Huawei Cloud, etc.
· The total exposure on the entire network exceeded 150 million times; the event was featured in mainstream media such as the Wall Street Journal
· The number of KOLs linked exceeds 500, covering multilingual markets in Asia, Europe, America, and the Middle East;
· We have collaborated with more than 40 world-class DJs and artists including Don Diablo, Lilly Palmer, Bassjackers, Mariana Bo, Popof, Nifra, Layla Benitez, Pretty Pink, etc. They come from the main stages of top music festivals such as Tomorrowland, EDC, Ultra, Afterlife, Awakenings, etc.
These collaborations are not superficial exposure, but real co-creation. Artists participate in the design of modules such as NFT joint-branding, visual art curation, public welfare consensus voting, and on-chain content drop, making each RaveDAO event no longer just a music festival, but a place for on-chain cultural experiments.
“We are not making a project for the Web3 circle to enjoy itself,” Ron concluded. “We are making a system that can truly break down circles, connect people, and stimulate emotions, so that people will begin to believe that Web3 is not meant to make you more lonely, but to connect you more closely with the world.”
Where will you be when the next beat hits?
The next step for RaveDAO is not only to expand the map, but also to deepen the emotions.
On October 3, during Singapores Token 2049 and Formula 1, RaveDAO will bring one of its annual flagship events, EN L1 GHT. This large-scale immersive feast will be held in a century-old building formerly known as the Urban Power Station, awakening the resonant energy of the audience under the symbol of old energy. This is not only a new chapter for RaveDAO in Singapore, but will also become one of the offline events with the highest degree of intersection between Web3 and art that week.
Next, on October 23, RaveDAO will go to Amsterdam and join hands with the world-renowned music platform 1001 Tracklists (with over one million Instagram followers) to co-host the annual event, the Top 101 Producers, an awards ceremony for the worlds best 101 electronic music producers during the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), a traditional music festival renowned in Europe. This is not only a joint challenge to the mainstream music system, but also a participation in the global art power structure through the DAO mechanism.
Rave for Light is heading to more cities. We are trying to do an experiment: when the pulse of electronic music is in sync with public welfare actions, caring about the world is no longer a burden, but an instinctive reaction of the body.
This is not a charity event in the traditional sense. In the dance floor where darkness and light alternate, every movement generates new emotional codes. Rhythm, space, body language, these seemingly improvisational elements will eventually be compiled into a collective memory, redefining the boundaries of resonance, co-creation and consensus every night.
If change must happen at the perceptual level, then maybe we really need to start with a party.
About Ronald Yung
Ronald Yung - Responsible for the core planning of RaveDAO, graduated from Harvard University with a major in organizational psychology. He has been responsible for strategy and organizational management in world-renowned private equity funds, Web3 investment incubators and many high-growth companies. He has long been concerned about the psychological state and emotional expression of entrepreneurial groups under high-pressure environments. In RaveDAO, he combines psychology with the concept of decentralization to create a warmer offline experience around music, allowing Web3 to return to the real connection between people.
