ZAO Festivals
6/10 sections recovered · name · leaderboard description · match catalog cover · match catalog tags · match catalog funding · leaderboard submissions · match catalog
$7,689 displayed raised · 1 fund applications (1 curated) · 2 seasons · best rank #278 in Season 7
Free, community-owned music festivals that bring independent artists to real stages.
ArtBlockchainCommunityCultureEventsMusicPublicgoodsSocial ImpactWeb3 decentralizedarts-mediacommunity-economyculture-identitymusic-performance
Project details match catalog
About
A free outdoor music festival where independent artists play on a real stage and anyone can come listen. We have thrown them in New York and Miami. The next is in Ellsworth, Maine on October 3rd. Free to attend, and the artists get paid fairly.
Impact
We give independent artists a real stage and fair pay, and give a small town a free day of live music. The crowd that funds it owns it. We are building a model any community can run, to make more community-owned culture in more places.
Progress
Two festivals done: ZAO-PALOOZA in NYC and ZAO-CHELLA in Miami. ZAOstock 2026 is set for October 3rd in downtown Ellsworth, with a 27-person team, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, the venue secured, and a lineup coming from our community.
Team
I am Zaal, founder of The ZAO. Our community has thrown festivals in NYC and Miami and built the tech, the team, and the local relationships in Ellsworth. We build in public, and we pay our artists fairly and on time.
Funding
| Sales | Venus | S+V | Match | S+V+M | Venus extras | Prize | V2+M+P | V2/S | (V2+M)/S | (V2+M+P)/S | Raised | Available | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season 6 | $410 | $0 | $410 | $1,180 | $1,590 | $0 | $20 | $1,200 | 0.0x | 2.9x | 2.9x | $0 | — |
| Season 7 | $750 | $4,567 | $5,317 | $1,680 | $6,997 | $240 | $50 | $6,537 | 6.4x | 8.6x | 8.7x | $7,689 | — |
| Total | $1,160 | $4,567 | $5,727 | $2,860 | $8,587 | $240 | $70 | $7,737 | — | — | — | $7,689 | — |
Fund applications
| Season | Fund | Status | Applied |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 7 | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | curated | 2026-07-17 |
Season totals as displayed on the platform's public accounting — not a statement of amounts paid out. V2 = Venus sales + Venus extras. The original page also broke each season down by fund drive and showed an Available (unclaimed) balance; that level of detail survives only on the preserved snapshots.
Leaderboard page (offline): https://artizen.fyi/projects/zao-festivals
Wayback: leaderboard page ↗ · Wayback: platform page ↗
Not recovered: creator, links, drives, snapshot. Sources: "snapshot" = verbatim Internet Archive page · "platform metadata" = archived artizen.fund page metadata · "leaderboard" = the artizen.fyi public accounting tables · "match catalog" = the platform's public fund-matching catalog (captured 2026-10-15, generated 2026-09-07) · "community catalog" = a June 2026 platform scrape preserved in a community repo.
Top siblings
Projects that applied to the same funds.
| Project | Shared funds | Raised | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | TDF Music Studio A creator-led studio reconnecting music, community, and land. | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $220,078 |
| 2. | civil monkey ecosystem weaving connecting dots on the way to a Protopian future | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $128,914 |
| 3. | Hip-Hop Africa: Building Pan-African Hip-Hop Infrastructure Building a unified platform for African hip hop through community, Online Radio, events,… | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $111,237 |
| 4. | DreamStarter.xyz ✨ The right to dream, for every human being. Free AI agents that do the marketing so your d… | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $101,599 |
| 5. | CL-067 Network Open infrastructure for training AI as a public good — decentralised, privacy-preserving,… | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $82,228 |
| 6. | Crypto Endowment Network (MfT Studio) Make crypto work for humanity. General fund for MfT studio and CEN start up | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $81,514 |
| 7. | ATÉ CHÁ Nomadic Tea House Tea as medicine, culture and social infrastructure for new ways of gathering and our coll… | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $45,170 |
| 8. | The new album Peace Of Mind by Marie Chain My music inspires, heals & connects. I want to finish my new album and I need your hel | ZAO Fund for Emerging Culture | $41,998 |
Other funds of top siblings
WildSeed Creators Fund Apollo Fund for the New Renaissance Feÿtopia Fund for Extitutional Communities Ipê Fund for Internet-Native Institutions Creative Wellness Fund for Community Healing Resonate Fund for Sonic Pioneers Paradiseön Fund for Art, Earth & Regeneration MDRN Fund for Community Radio