The Perpetual Donation Machine: FAB DAO and the Project % Social Experiment

A Flag as the Starting Point of a Revolution

The moment Huang Dou-ni threw down his stethoscope, no one anticipated that this physician-turned-artist would use a "press-on-ball flag" to rewrite the rules of Taiwan's philanthropy game. This meme artwork — seemingly simple — became one of the most commonly encountered symbolic landscapes in Taiwan, and more importantly, it opened up a brand-new question: if donations can become collectibles, if philanthropy can become a perpetual motion machine, does our understanding of "giving" need a thorough reconstruction?

In 2022, as the NFT bubble was bursting, Huang Dou-ni and new media artist Wu Che-yu — then living in New York — jointly founded FAB DAO (Formosa Art Bank DAO). The name itself was a manifesto: what it aspired to become was simultaneously a bank, an arts institution, and a social experiment laboratory.

Redefining the Public Services Layer

FAB DAO's core philosophy can be summarized in one sentence: "Donating is collecting." In the traditional philanthropy model, a donation is a one-time consumption — the money goes out and doesn't come back. But in FAB DAO's design, what the donor receives is not a thank-you certificate but an NFT that can be traded and has artistic value. What does that mean? It means philanthropy now has the possibility of a "perpetual motion machine."

When you buy an NPO-NFT, you simultaneously complete three actions: you support a nonprofit organization, you collect a piece of art, and you participate in a decentralized social experiment. More importantly, if this NFT appreciates in value in the future, you can choose to sell it and let the funds continue flowing toward philanthropic purposes. This is the core logic of the "donation perpetual motion machine."

FAB DAO positions itself as a "Web3 public services layer," helping nonprofits, artists, and cultural institutions cross the technological threshold. It has successfully helped arts communities, Losheng sanatorium, animal conservation, and transitional justice and other issue organizations issue NPO-NFTs — all sold out. Behind this success rate lies a deep understanding of the resilience of Taiwan's civil society.

The Artistic Ambition of Project %

If FAB DAO is a declaration of principles, then "Project % (百岳計畫)" is the most ambitious implementation of those principles. 10,101 generative art NFTs, divided into three series: %-Wanluan (10,000 pieces, 0.025 ETH), %-Hundred Peaks (100 pieces, 10 ETH), and the unique %-Yixian (not for sale).

"A hundred mountains rise up, becoming an island; a hundred people step forward, writing a season of civilization" — this is Project %'s poetic manifesto. Each NFT is a uniquely code-generated work themed around Taiwan's hundred peaks, carrying the creative philosophies of six artists.

These six artists each represent different facets of Taiwan's generative art: Wu Che-yu (Island) is an international-caliber artist on the Artblocks platform; Lin Yi-wen (Vegetation) is a co-founder of Fxhash; Wang Hsin-jen / Aluàn (Summit) created the first Taiwanese generative artwork to appear on Artblocks; Wang Lian-sheng (Civilization) is a Lumiere Award winner; Lin Ching-yao (Secret Territory) is a former C-LAB director; Huang Hsin (Inclusion) holds the Facebook AR/VR award record.

This lineup configuration was no coincidence. It reflects the complete face of Taiwan's generative art ecosystem: from international platforms to local experiments, from academic research to commercial application, from technological innovation to social practice. The ambition of Project % was to let the energy of this ecosystem, through blockchain technology, transform into sustainable philanthropic momentum.

The Clever Design of the Capital Flow

Project %'s capital allocation demonstrates precisely thought-out social design thinking: 20% for upfront costs, 10% as artist fees, 10% to help other NPO-NFT projects, 20–45% as public acquisition funds, and 10–15% invested in DAO technical development.

This allocation logic embeds an important shift in thinking: artistic creation moves from individual expression to collective action, from work sales to social investment. When you collect a Project % NFT, what you've bought is not just a work of art — it's a share in a social vision.

More interesting is that collecting more than one Project % NFT produces a visual-linked easter egg effect. This seemingly simple technical design is actually testing the depth of the collector's participation. The question it's asking is: are you a passing speculator, or a long-term participant who believes in this experiment?

International Recognition at Linz

In 2022, Project % appeared at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz — the world's most influential media art event. The Taiwan Creative Content Agency and the Ars Electronica Center Linz co-produced a Taiwan special exhibition, showing the international community Taiwan's unique contribution to the field of Web3 social innovation.

The Linz curators' evaluation was quite meaningful: they called Project % "a social action proposal from the future." The emphasis of this evaluation was not on the advancement of the technology, but on the innovation of the social model. As Huang Dou-ni observed, Linz deliberately kept its distance from the speculative hype around NFTs, but placed very high value on the social implications of NFTs.

This kind of international recognition carries important symbolic significance: it demonstrates that Taiwan's Web3 experiments are not blindly following Western technology trends, but an original exploration grounded in its own social soil. At a time when the global NFT market was caught up in speculative frenzy, Taiwan proposed an alternative approach with greater social responsibility.

The Digital Extension of the g0v Spirit

The emergence of FAB DAO was no accident. It is deeply rooted in the unique traditions of Taiwan's civil society, especially the "decentralized civic action" spirit represented by g0v (gov-zero). g0v reimagines government services through open-source collaboration; FAB DAO reimagines the philanthropy model through blockchain technology.

The common ground between the two: both believe technology can lower the threshold for participation, both believe decentralization can increase transparency, and both believe the collective wisdom of citizens can create better social solutions. The difference is that g0v focuses mainly on making government governance transparent, while FAB DAO focuses on making philanthropic resources sustainable.

Taiwan's unique position in the field of Web3 philanthropy comes precisely from this combination of democratic governance and digital community resilience. In authoritarian countries, such experiments would be seen as threats; in fully marketized societies, philanthropy is often marginalized. Only in a society like Taiwan — where civil society has enough autonomous space, and enough social care — can Web3 philanthropy find real fertile ground.

Redefining Value Creation

The deepest contribution of FAB DAO and Project % may lie in how they have redefined the logic of value creation. In the traditional economic model, value creation often means competition and exclusivity: your gain is my loss, resources are finite, distribution is zero-sum.

But in FAB DAO's model, value creation becomes a positive-sum game: artists receive creative income, collectors receive artworks, nonprofits receive funding, and society as a whole receives a better philanthropy model. More importantly, this value creation process is sustainable, because NFTs can continue to circulate on secondary markets, continuing to generate philanthropic effects.

This kind of model innovation has special significance for Taiwan's society, which faces resource scarcity. It offers a new line of thinking: through technological innovation and institutional design, we can create greater social value under conditions of limited resources.

The Social Imagination of the Future

Looking back today at FAB DAO and Project %, what we see is not just a successful Web3 philanthropy experiment, but a kind of imagination about the future society. In this imagination, art is no longer an elite privilege but a tool for social transformation; philanthropy no longer depends on charitable mindsets but is built on the basis of shared interests; technology is no longer just a means of commercial competition but a driver of social innovation.

Of course, such experiments also face challenges. The complexity of blockchain technology is still a threshold for the participation of ordinary citizens; the volatility of NFT markets may affect the stability of philanthropic funds; the efficiency issues of decentralized governance also require continuous improvement.

But just as Huang Dou-ni once decided to leave the hospital and pick up a brush, true innovation often requires the courage to face the unknown. The value of FAB DAO and Project % lies not in providing a perfect solution, but in opening up new possibilities.

On this island, a hundred mountains are rising up, and a hundred dreams are sprouting. And each one of us can choose to become a participant in this social experiment, writing the chapters of the next season of civilization in our own way.

Further reading:

• Wang Hsin-jen (Aluàn) — Creator of Project %'s "Summit" series, the first Taiwanese generative artist to appear on Art Blocks
• Wang Lian-sheng (zh only: 王連晟) — Creator of the mountain-and-water recursive algorithm peak works in Project %, 2017 Lumiere Award Sculpture category first prize winner
• Taiwan New Media Art — From video art to generative art, the Taiwanese new media art context where FAB DAO operates
• Taiwan Contemporary Art (zh only: 台灣當代藝術) — The position of blockchain art in Taiwan's contemporary art ecosystem

References

1. FAB DAO Official Website: https://fabdao.world/
2. FAB DAO GitBook White Paper: https://fab-dao.gitbook.io/fab-dao
3. Project % Official Website: https://project.fab.tw/
4. ABMedia Report (2022/06): https://abmedia.io/20220630-charity-dao-fab-dao-project
5. ARTouch Linz Interview (2023/03): https://artouch.com/art-market/content-84864.html
6. c2x3 Blockchain Art Media Matters Introduction (2022/07): https://matters.town/a/fe3n38t5khdb
7. Charmingscitech Feature: https://www.charmingscitech.nat.gov.tw/post/art_tech_nft_block_chain
8. NFT News Report: https://nft.org.tw/?p=20219