28-year-old Singapore-based Chinese influencer Yuqing Irene Zhao raked in over $5 million in only 10 days after selling her photos as NFTs. The NFT collection, titled “IreneDAO”, consists of 1,107 items. 

Each of the NFT has a picture of the influencer superimposed to green mint background along with crypto meme slang text, such as “Up Only”, “Wen Moon”, “gm", “wen Binance”, “Damp It” and “yes ser”.

The collection was first listed in OpenSea on 14 January, and reached a trading volume of 2,300 ether (around $5.5 million) less than two weeks after its launch.

Currently, the cheapest NFT “Have Fun Staying Poor” is priced at 0.94 ETH, or approximately $2,228. The collection currently trades at a floor price of 1.47 ETH (approximately $4,668). 

The NFT project was started after Zhao created a sticker pack on Telegram. A fan identified only as “libevm” encouraged Zhao to turn the sticker pack into an NFT collection after learning about the success of Indonesian college student Ghozali.

Zhao said that she decided to develop the IreneDAO NFT collection with libevm and business partner Benjamin Tang as part of their plan to create a decentralised platform called "Social Collectibles" or "So-Col.” She describes it as a “decentralised version of OnlyFans, Discord, Twitch and Patreon” where content creators can monetise their content by converting them into NFTs.

“We thought it was a great idea as we wanted to create a prototype for our core concept of a community-driven creator economy. We then extended the idea into a DAO, and libevm and my co-founder Ben hacked it together within a day,” she said.

“What we didn't expect was that our test case was an instant hit. In fact, I was not even aware when it was launched — I was out for a swimming lesson! By the time I came back from the pool after 40 minutes, the entire 500 NFTs were gone. I didn't even have one to myself!”

YouTuber Logan Paul and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz bought the IreneDAO NFTs.