{
  "slug": "botto",
  "name": "Botto",
  "category": "experiments",
  "tier": "experiment",
  "url": "https://botto.com",
  "founded": 2021,
  "last_verified": "2026-10-16",
  "one_liner": "Decentralized autonomous AI artist that creates weekly and sells its own work at auction, steered by a voting DAO.",
  "what_the_agent_does": "Each week Botto's AI engine generates hundreds of candidate images around a theme; BottoDAO members vote, Botto mints the top piece as an NFT and auctions it, and the votes feed back into its taste. Research agents now build Botto's knowledge-graph memory, and newer periods let it pick its own themes and descriptions.",
  "business_model": "Primary 1/1 NFT auctions plus secondary-sale royalties; sale proceeds are split between community voting rewards, protocol-owned liquidity and the DAO treasury ($BOTTO token governance). Revenue is crypto-denominated, so USD figures move with ETH",
  "team_size_text": "Created by artist Mario Klingemann and collective ElevenYellow; run by BottoDAO core contributors (project co-lead Simon Hudson)",
  "tags": [
    "crypto",
    "nft",
    "art",
    "dao",
    "autonomy"
  ],
  "lessons": [
    "Pair an autonomous generator with a paying human taste loop: the DAO's votes decide what ships and earn a share of the proceeds, so curation is a paid job, not a favour.",
    "Scarcity sells better than volume: Botto makes hundreds of images a week but mints about one, and that weekly 1/1 auction is what turned output into revenue.",
    "Treat crypto revenue carefully: totals are quoted in ETH and USD at sale time, so year-over-year comparisons partly track the token price."
  ],
  "metrics": [
    {
      "label": "Revenue",
      "value_usd": 1843484,
      "as_of": "2025-12",
      "value_text": "$1,843,484 (644.735 ETH) from artwork sales in calendar 2025 before marketplace fees: 49 weekly 1/1 auctions, the p5.js release, a 100 ETH Genesis sale and 22.03 ETH of royalties (BottoDAO year in review, Jan 5 2026)",
      "source_name": "Botto: 2025 Year in Review (Jan 5 2026)",
      "source_url": "https://botto.com/dao/digest/2025-year-in-review",
      "age_days": 305,
      "older_figure": false,
      "source_sync_stale_since": null,
      "superseded": false,
      "link_check": {
        "status": "ok",
        "code": 200,
        "checked": "2026-10-16"
      },
      "verification": null
    },
    {
      "label": "All-time revenue",
      "value_usd": 3900000,
      "as_of": "2026-10-16",
      "value_text": "over $3.9M in sales since launch on Oct 8 2021 (Botto timeline page, read Oct 16 2026)",
      "source_name": "Botto timeline",
      "source_url": "https://botto.com/timeline",
      "age_days": 0,
      "older_figure": false,
      "source_sync_stale_since": null,
      "superseded": false,
      "link_check": {
        "status": "ok",
        "code": 200,
        "checked": "2026-10-16"
      },
      "verification": null
    }
  ],
  "agentic_origin": "agent-native",
  "url_profile": "https://mrrledger.com/b/botto/",
  "annualized_revenue_usd": 1843484,
  "annualized_revenue_basis": "Revenue",
  "confidence": null,
  "source_sync_stale_since": null,
  "older_figure": false,
  "verified_corroboration": null,
  "headline_verification": null,
  "age_days": 305,
  "tier_label": "Experiment",
  "tier_note": "Agent-run or research experiment rather than a conventional company.",
  "independent": true,
  "ownership": null,
  "ownership_watch": null,
  "last_ownership_check": "2026-10-16",
  "revenue_disclosed": true,
  "badge_url": "https://mrrledger.com/badge/botto.svg",
  "badge_plain_url": "https://mrrledger.com/badge/botto-plain.svg",
  "growth_series": [],
  "related": [
    {
      "slug": "truth-terminal",
      "name": "Truth Terminal",
      "category": "experiments",
      "tier": "experiment",
      "category_label": "Agent-run experiments",
      "tier_label": "Experiment",
      "one_liner": "Semi-autonomous X bot that accrued crypto via grants and memecoins.",
      "annualized_revenue_usd": null,
      "revenue_disclosed": false,
      "confidence": null,
      "source_sync_stale_since": null,
      "url_profile": "https://mrrledger.com/b/truth-terminal/",
      "compare_url": "https://mrrledger.com/compare/?a=botto&b=truth-terminal",
      "score": 8,
      "why": [
        "same category",
        "same tier",
        "shared: art, autonomy, crypto"
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "project-vend",
      "name": "Anthropic Project Vend (Claudius)",
      "category": "experiments",
      "tier": "experiment",
      "category_label": "Agent-run experiments",
      "tier_label": "Experiment",
      "one_liner": "Claude ran real office shops; phase one lost money, phase two cleared most loss weeks and booked $2.6k revenue.",
      "annualized_revenue_usd": null,
      "revenue_disclosed": false,
      "confidence": null,
      "source_sync_stale_since": null,
      "url_profile": "https://mrrledger.com/b/project-vend/",
      "compare_url": "https://mrrledger.com/compare/?a=botto&b=project-vend",
      "score": 6,
      "why": [
        "same category",
        "same tier",
        "shared: autonomy"
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "andon-market",
      "name": "Andon Market",
      "category": "experiments",
      "tier": "experiment",
      "category_label": "Agent-run experiments",
      "tier_label": "Experiment",
      "one_liner": "SF brick-and-mortar boutique managed by AI agent Luna (Andon Labs).",
      "annualized_revenue_usd": null,
      "revenue_disclosed": false,
      "confidence": null,
      "source_sync_stale_since": null,
      "url_profile": "https://mrrledger.com/b/andon-market/",
      "compare_url": "https://mrrledger.com/compare/?a=botto&b=andon-market",
      "score": 5,
      "why": [
        "same category",
        "same tier"
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "adspirer",
      "name": "Adspirer",
      "category": "indie-solo",
      "tier": "indie",
      "category_label": "Indie & solo",
      "tier_label": "Indie",
      "one_liner": "Paid-media agent that runs ad accounts across Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok through a chat with your AI assistant.",
      "annualized_revenue_usd": 656208,
      "revenue_disclosed": true,
      "confidence": null,
      "source_sync_stale_since": "2026-06-29",
      "url_profile": "https://mrrledger.com/b/adspirer/",
      "compare_url": "https://mrrledger.com/compare/?a=botto&b=adspirer",
      "score": 2,
      "why": [
        "similar scale"
      ]
    }
  ]
}