ZAO Festivals.
Live events run by the community rather than a promoter. ZAOstock is the flagship: one day, October 3, 2026, in Ellsworth, Maine.
What it is
ZAO Festivals is the umbrella for The ZAO's live events. The flagship is ZAOstock, a one-day music festival in Ellsworth, Maine on October 3, 2026, built for 200 to 300 people at the Franklin Street Parklet.
It is small on purpose. A real event with real costs, run by a community of 100+ artists and builders rather than a promoter.
The actual economics
These are the working projections for ZAOstock 2026, not a hypothetical.
- Grant income: 3,000 dollars targeted from the Fisher Fund
- Sponsor income: 1,000 to 2,500 dollars from local businesses
- Ticket income: 4,700 dollars on the current ticketing model
- Projected revenue: 8,700 to 10,200 dollars
- Estimated expenses: 5,000 to 7,000 dollars for venue, production, artist pay and insurance
Tickets are the single biggest line. That matters for anyone designing a funding model: the thing people already pay for is admission.
How it is funded today
Three sources, all one-directional. Grant applications through arts funders, local business sponsorship, and ticket sales. Match funding through Artizen is an active path, where a single project curated into several funds unlocks matching money from each.
Ticketing itself is decided: Unlock Protocol on Base for the attendee ticket, POAP for proof of attendance, and non-transferable tiers for sponsors, so that sponsor identity stays part of the record rather than something resold.
The open problem
This is the part we have not solved, and it is the August Finals bonus challenge.
Every funding path above is either a grant, a sponsor, or a ticket. All three are one-directional: money comes in, the event happens, and the people who showed up own none of what they helped make. There is no way for the community that funds something to share in it afterwards.
What already exists inside ZAO, so you are not rediscovering it: a creator-coin launcher with multi-recipient fee splits (Sparkz, shipped), a decided ticketing stack of Unlock plus POAP for ZAOstock, an evaluated set of event treasury tools, and a raw idea for a group crowdfund that was never scoped. What does not exist is fan co-ownership, anything that works across more than one event, and any way to reward people after an event rather than before it.
Design one of those and you are inventing something. Build another creator token and you are rebuilding what is already running.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page traces to a source. If one looks wrong, it is checkable.
- ZAOstock budget projections and grant status: ZAOOS research doc 1372
- Festival funding strategy, Artizen match funds and event treasury tools: doc 846
- Ticketing architecture decision, Unlock plus POAP on Base: doc 557
- Event date, venue and scale: ZAOstock planning docs and the live tracker