LinksDAO Launches Community Token to Enhance Its Crypto Golf Club Mantra: "We're Gonna Buy a Golf Course"

The coin is expected to launch in the coming months on the Base blockchain. A third of its supply is earmarked for LinksDAO NFT holders.

LinksDAO is set to launch its own community token, adding a new and highly tradeable asset to its nearly 10,000 membership non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as the crypto golf club continues its quest to buy up golf courses.

The coin, called LINKS, will debut on Base blockchain, a network spearheaded by Coinbase. A third of its total supply will be airdropped to LinksDAO NFT holders, with smaller allocations earmarked for members of other NFT communities, including Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The launch is expected in the coming months and will mark the latest chapter in LinksDAO's ambitious and unorthodox effort to redefine golf club ownership. The group's mantra is: "We're gonna buy a golf course."

NFTs aren't as hot as they were in early 2022, when LinksDAO sold its membership tokens for a collective $10 million. The market euphoria that led Beeple artwork to fetch hundreds of millions at auction has long since passed.

CryptoSlam's NFT Index is down nearly 97% since its inception in January 2022, indicating that market interest has shifted elsewhere – to memecoins, for instance, in crypto's short attention span economy. Even Trump has one.

But LinksDAO will have a coin now, too: LINKS.

"We are going to be launching a community token that has deep culture, that's embedded in the game of golf, that's embedded in the community, and that's permissible under the f---ing regulations that we have to deal with," LinksDAO founder Mike Dudas said on a community call late Tuesday.

LinksDAO bought a golf club in Scotland in mid-2023, and the club's executives recently signed an agreement to become partial owners of a second course in Kansas City, a deal that's still subject to a vote by LinksDAO's NFT-holding members, said Cooper Sherwin, head of community and co-founder.

Hillcrest Golf Course is an 18-hole course designed by Donald Ross in 1913, during golf's so-called Golden Age. He once called it the finest course in the world, but it fell into disrepair over the ensuing century, according to project members.

That created an opportunity for LinksDAO to cut a deal: Current owner Robb Heineman, a Kansas City businessman who also owns that city's Major League Soccer team, closed the club down for a few years back to pursue a $30 million renovation project.

Heineman did not return a call from CoinDesk, but in a press release he said LinksDAO "shares our forward-thinking vision for what a golf club can be."

LinksDAO will become a minority owner of Hillcrest and gain a board seat, though project leads declined to share specific financials behind the deal. The deal will seek the approval of LinksDAO's NFT holding members, who vote on proposals but don't have full legal power over the project's decisions.

Some 200 members showed up on Tuesday night to hear the dual announcement of course acquisition and token, a sign that despite its decentralized aspirations, LinksDAO is not actually a "decentralized autonomous organization."

Hillcrest's national membership program will become a LinksDAO operation open only to holders of its NFTs.