The Wu-Tang Clan's exclusive album, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," is set to go on sale for an astonishing $1 price tag, a drastic drop from its initial valuation of $4 million.

The album, minted on Base, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling network from Coinbase, will be released via encrypted Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that will unlock more tracks over time. This unique NFT will be sold for a ridiculous amount, leaving many wondering what led to this drastic price drop.

PleasrDAO, a crypto collective that collects objects of cultural relevance, announced its plan to sell encrypted on-chain copies of the Wu-Tang Clan record. The items will be available for purchase on June 13 via a dedicated website, priced at $1 each.

The Wu-Tang Clan entered an agreement with the owners of "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" in 2015, prohibiting them from commercially exploiting the record until 2103. This unique agreement plays a significant role in the current situation.

PleasrDAO confirmed that it has been working on this project with the album producers for about half a year, investing significant effort to acquire exclusive commercialization rights to as much music on the album as possible. As it stands, PleasrDAO has successfully acquired rights to 16 music out of the 31 tracks on the album.

The plan is to share progressively larger pieces of that selected library with purchasers of the encrypted album over time, effectively decrypting the album for holders, piece by piece. This strategy aims to tackle the devaluation of music using blockchain technology.

The NFT deal has its roots in a decade-old protest against the broken model of valuing music in an increasingly digital world. The Wu-Tang Clan sold a single copy of the album in 2015 to question what it means to value music in the digital world. Integration with blockchain technology was seen as the answer to valuing music the right way.

"This album was created to question what it means to value music in the digital world," said Leighton Cusack, one of the founders of PleasrDAO.