ConstitutionDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that was gunning for the US Constitution, will be calling it quits after failing to purchase a rare copy of the document at Sotheby’s auction house last week.

Despite failing to fulfill its primary mission, organizers believe that the DAO “still made history” in its attempt to rally the decentralized community to buy the historic document. According to them, their efforts “have educated an entire cohort of people around the world — from museum curators and art directors to our grandmothers asking us what ETH is when they read about us in the news.”

ConstitutionDAO managed to raise $48.9million from 17,000 donors to help buy the Constitution. It lost to Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund investor.

According to Graham (NYSE:) Novak, a ConstitutionDAO organizer, “the community has taken all actions that it was organized to accomplish.” Consequently, the group has announced that it will be shutting down.

What about the money raised? The big question is what happens to almost $49million that was raised. Although there were discussions on keeping the project running and shifting focus to a new idea or organization, the group’s primary purpose was to win the US Constitution.

“Ultimately, we’ve come to the decision that continuing on without the unifying mission of buying the constitution, setting up more official governance and embarking on a new chapter is not something that we as a core team are able to support,” the team said in a tweet.

The DAO is promising to give back the donated funds to the community. Some members were concerned by the return of how much.

For clarity, the donations are being held in a multi-signature wallet that is controlled by 13 “core contributors” to ConstitutionDAO. Before any funds are transferred, nine of the thirteen contributors must sign a transaction. For the return of funds, it will follow the same procedure.

After careful consideration of feedback given by our community members and partners, we’ve decided to issue donation refunds through the same Juicebox mechanism by which donations were originally collected, rather than attempting to immediately launch a new governance plan and token at the same time as the refund.

There are many allegations that this may not turn out to be the simple solution. Sunday Nike (NYSE:) Bax accused the core contributors of “making internal decisions that are causing insane volatility.”

At ConstitutionDAO, the core team of @ConstitutionDAO is either malicious or incompetent. The internal decisions they make are producing insane volatility. These are the types that insiders can trade on. Do you know of an analyst on the chain who is able to identify these types? https://t.co/V8dAxTeHOS pic.twitter.com/afQu1tKmkL

— Nick Bax (@bax1337) November 22, 2021

Bax goes further to explain that a snapshot of the holders of the group’s governance token, PEOPLE, was taken at a specific blockchain on Friday (at around 6:12 UTC) despite warnings from Juicebox against the downsides of such an approach.

Soon afterward, PEOPLE holders sold the token for Ethereum. The token’s value in relation to Ethereum plummeted by 82% just minutes later. Former PEOPLE holders decided that the tokens were no longer needed as a snapshot of them had been taken. The token’s value was falling, so speculators bought it quickly. Later, the team announced it would no longer use snapshots.

Noting that gas fees will be charged to donors to get their ETH, it is important to note. Dune Analytics estimates that donors have spent almost 200 ETH, or $866 918, on fees. They will lose their original investment at this rate. This is especially true for smaller investors, as their fees could be more than the contribution they make to the Ethereum network’s current transaction costs.

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