DAO-governedETHDenver finalist
Play the show. Get paid. Automatically.
No invoices. No chasing a promoter at 1am. The guarantee sits in escrow the moment both sides sign, and it releases itself when the show is done.
01/ 05Contract
- Date
- Nov 14
- Set
- 60 min
- Guarantee
- $400
- Backend split
- 70 / 30
You and the venue agree the terms and both sign. Nobody can change them later.
The manifesto
We are not launching a product. We are launching a war.
We are the house show DIY kids. The bands that never got paid. The artists who slept in vans. The fans who scraped change from ashtrays and cup holders to get in.
We are not here to fix the music industry. We are here to burn its prison to the ground.
The contracts are ours now. The tickets are ours. The guarantees. The riders. The merch cuts. The payouts.
The music is ours. On-chain. On our terms. Forever.
This is cultXAO. A music cult born in basements and bootlegs. We are the system the industry is too scared to build.
Decentralized. Permissionless. Ours.
Built for the ones who create, not the ones in control.
No LiveNation. No handshake deals that vanish. No inboxes that “got missed.” No guarantees that ghost. No more fucking artists over.
We meme until the dApp drops. We riot until the venues are on-chain. We mint what we want to hear.
This is cultXAO. You don’t join. You realize you’ve always been in it.
01How it works
Contract, escrow, performance, verification, reputation, next booking. Every completed show makes the next one easier to get.
Connect your wallet
Sign in with any wallet through Dynamic.xyz, or with an email that mints one for you. Xao does not KYC you and stores no identifying information. Your wallet is your identity.
Find the other side
Artists find venues, venues find artists, promoters find both. Open a direct thread from a profile instead of chasing a booking through DMs and dead inboxes.
Negotiate the terms
Set times, guarantees, deposits, riders, splits and cancellation policy, hashed out over end-to-end encrypted messaging on Waku. No middlemen, no hidden clauses.
Mint the contract
The agreed terms are written into a performance contract, stored on IPFS and referenced by its on-chain hash. Immutable, timestamped, and impossible to quietly rewrite.
Both sign. Escrow funds itself.
Each party signs from their own wallet, and the venue deposits the guarantee straight into the contract. The contract is the escrow: no third-party wallet ever holds your money.
Play the show. Get paid.
Tickets mint as NFTs and scan at the door. Payment is stored in the contract. The contract releases the escrowed funds according to the agreed splits, and both parties' reputations compound for the next booking.
02The flywheel
Every completed show strengthens the next one
This is not a platform you rent. It is a coordination layer that gets more valuable every time it is used.
Terms are agreed and signed by both wallets, timestamped and immutable.
The venue funds the guarantee into the contract itself. No third party holds it.
The show happens on the terms both parties put their names to.
Ticket scans, timestamps or mutual confirmation prove it was fulfilled.
The escrow releases and both records grow. Trust becomes measurable.
Visible reliability wins the next show, and the wheel turns again, faster.
and back to the start
Reputation compounds. Trust becomes measurable. Risk becomes visible.
In the traditional industry, reputation is rumour. In Xao it is recorded: earned by performing shows and honouring contracts, lost by cancelling irresponsibly.
It is domain-weighted and time-sensitive, so it decays without participation. Whales cannot buy it and bad actors cannot hide from it.
The more Xao is used, the more valuable it becomes, until refusing to use it is the thing that signals risk.
03Features
Every part of the system replaces an exploitative industry process with autonomous code.
Self-executing contracts
Set times, guarantees, riders, splits and cancellation terms are written into the contract, signed by both wallets, and stored on IPFS under an on-chain hash. Immutable, timestamped, and enforced by code instead of corporate policy.
Contract-native escrow
The contract is the escrow. The venue deposits the guarantee into the agreement itself, and no single wallet can move it. Release depends entirely on contract state. Fulfilled pays out, cancelled refunds, disputed pauses.
AI Arbitration Agent
When a show goes wrong, the contract routes to a neutral on-chain judge that reads the terms and the evidence, then rules breach or no breach. The step before lawyers and judges, rather than backroom brawls.
On-chain reputation
Honor contracts, earn reputation. Cancel irresponsibly, lose it. It is domain-weighted, decays without participation, and cannot be bought by whales. Reputation becomes the new booking currency.
Encrypted negotiation
Terms are hashed out over Waku's end-to-end encrypted, peer-to-peer messaging. There is no central server holding your conversation. You have control of your privacy.
NFT tickets + door scan
Every ticket is minted by the event contract itself. Scanning one at the door verifies the holder and confirms the show actually happened.
Wallet or card checkout
Fans buy from a wallet, or with a debit or credit card through Coinbase Onramp. Both routes deliver the same on-chain ticket, so nobody is priced out by a learning curve.
DAO governance
Artists, venues, fans and devs form the Hodlr Assembly. Voting power is shaped by on-chain contribution and reputation, not by how many tokens you bought.
Financial & tax stats
Every settled show, escrow release and ticket sale is written to chain, so revenue, payouts and tax-ready reporting come out of your actual history rather than a shoebox of receipts.
04Who it's for
Two sides of the same booking
The same contract, seen from both ends of the stage.
For artists & bands
Never chase a promoter for your money again
You played the set. You should not have to corner someone in a back office at 1am to get paid what was agreed. The money is already locked in the contract before you load in.
- The guarantee is funded up front. Escrowed at signing, released when the show is verified.
- Terms that cannot be rewritten. Set time, fee, splits and rider, timestamped on-chain.
- Reputation that travels with you. Every honored contract makes the next booking easier.
For venues & promoters
Book faster, and keep more of your profits
Emails, DMs, PDFs, third-party ticketing, last-minute cancellations. Streamline your booking, protect yourself, protect your events, and keep more of your profits.
- Standardized offers take you from first message to a signed, funded contract in one session.
- No-show protection from dual signatures, timestamped terms and neutral arbitration.
- Own your ticketing with NFT tickets minted by your own event contract.
- Visible reputation turns reliability into an asset instead of a claim.
Unfakeable tickets
Tickets are not QR codes or PDFs. They are NFTs minted by the event contract itself. That ticket can be sold or transferred, but it cannot be duplicated or faked. When a ticket is scanned at entry, that transaction confirms on-chain that the ticket is legit and owned by that user.
- No scalper marking it up 3x, no Facebook fake-ticket scam, no arguing at the door about a screenshot.
- Fans without a wallet pay by debit or credit card through Coinbase Onramp and still receive a real on-chain ticket.
- That drawer full of stubs from every show you ever went to? It just went on-chain: a permanent scrapbook, and a proof-of-fan credential inside the DAO.
- Dynamic.xyzWallet connect and embedded wallets
- WakuEncrypted peer-to-peer negotiation
- IPFSContract storage, hashed on-chain
- Coinbase OnrampCard checkout for ticket buyers
- USDCEscrow deposits and payouts
05Token & governance
Fuel for the fire
A fixed supply, a DAO-held treasury, and a protocol that only earns when value actually moves.
- Public offeringNo vesting35%
- TreasuryDAO-managed25%
- Liquidity + staking pools20%
- Community rewards10%
- Team4-year vesting7%
- Advisors3%
Value only moves with value
A small flat percentage of funds flowing through an enforceable agreement. Predictable, non-dynamic, applied equally. No subscriptions, no enterprise licensing. If contracts are not used, Xao earns nothing.
Reputation-weighted governance
Token holders participate broadly; reputation holders shape outcomes through demonstrated contribution. Reputation is earned in epochs and decays without participation, so influence tracks who is actually doing the work.
Domain-based decentralization
Specialised domains (engineering, marketing, governance) hold localised authority under the Constitution and the Genesis Document, rather than one central administrator.
Allocation figures are from the XAO Cult whitepaper and describe the protocol’s intended design. Nothing here is an offer to sell, a solicitation, or investment advice.
06Roadmap
Ship the enforcement layer first, then the tools that let a scene run itself. This is just the beginning.
Phase 01: Soft launch
- Deploy the core Xao dApp
- Full event-contract flow end to end: ticketing and escrowed payouts
- Onboard early artists and venues to pilot live events
Phase 02: Real-world activation
- Contract graph expansion
- Mini-Orgs
- Native app
Phase 03: Identity & ecosystem
- Stakeable events
- Point of sale
- Xao identity
What comes after phase 03?
Join the DAO and learn about 04 and 0507The crew
No CEO. A Commander.
No departments, just Guardians. No boardroom, just the Hodlr Assembly. Coordinated by code, accountable to the people using it.
Founder · Commander of XaoDAO
Kelvin McDaniel
Kelvin is the founder and product lead of Xao and Kelvin’s Inferno Studio, where he leads vision, system architecture and execution, directing development and technical decisions alongside the engineering team.
Xao is Kelvin’s conception, from identifying the market need to designing protocol flows, governance structures and UI/UX. His insight comes from years of firsthand experience in the independent music industry. Under his leadership, Xao found victory at ETHDenver 2025.
Sameer Khalid
“Btree”
Systems engineer
Award-winning Web3 and blockchain engineer with multiple ETHDenver hackathon wins in 2024 and 2025, including Top 3 in the DAO & Communities track and the MetaMask SDK bounty. 15+ years of full-stack engineering, with senior roles at Swisslog Healthcare and BlackRock.
At Xao, Btree focuses on backend infrastructure, translating protocol design into robust systems.
Mudaser Iqbal
“Crypto Hawking”
Lead Solidity engineer
Senior blockchain engineer specialising in smart-contract architecture and token engineering. CEO of Blockchain Expert Solutions and founder of TheHash.io, with 200+ tokens launched. Holds a Master’s in Computer Science and founded Qisst.pk and Blisfix.
At Xao, Mudaser leads all on-chain development. He was instrumental to Xao’s ETHDenver 2025 victory.
Umer Aftab
Full-stack & interface engineer
The primary front-end engineer behind Xao, responsible for most of the platform’s interface and dApp integration. He turns complex on-chain logic into a clean, intuitive experience without sacrificing power or flexibility.
Holds a Master’s in Computer Science and played a critical role in taking Xao from concept to a working product.
Hassan Javed
Full-stack & blockchain engineer
Senior full-stack and blockchain engineer based in Islamabad with 6 years shipping production platforms for Web3 startups: React and Next.js, Node.js on AWS, and Solidity smart contracts.
At Xao, Hassan writes smart contracts and integrates them end to end, connecting on-chain logic to the dApp artists, venues and fans use.
The Hodlr Assembly
Every artist, venue, fan, dev and staker who contributes, proposes, builds or votes. It holds final authority on governance, ratification and protocol change.
FAQ
This is what we stand for
The Constitution sets out the rights every member holds. The whitepaper and the Genesis Document cover how the protocol runs.