LinksDAO Struggles to Deliver on Promises

LinksDAO, a virtual golf club backed by cryptocurrency, burst onto the scene with an eye-catching pitch: by selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs), it would raise enough money to buy a “top-100 golf course” and bring about “a new era in golf.”

Over the past year, LinksDAO’s foray into golf development has hit some roadblocks. Initially, though, the digital start-up’s achievements seemed to match its promises.

LinksDAO’s NFT launch on New Year’s Eve 2021 made headlines, racking up $10.4 million in 48 hours. In March 2023, the club purchased Spey Bay Golf Club on the Moray coast of Scotland — not a top-100 course by any stretch of the imagination, but an attractive seaside fixer-upper dating back to 1907. Two years later, LinksDAO announced that it had acquired Hillcrest Country Club in Kansas City and would partner with owner Rob Heineman on a $30-million overhaul of the struggling club’s facilities and Donald Ross-designed golf course.

Recently, however, construction at Hillcrest stalled amid claims that the club is behind on its bills.

Last week, Fried Egg Golf staffer Meg Adkins reported on the work stoppage at Hillcrest. Meg’s article stated that, according to Heineman, LinksDAO does not have an ownership stake in the club and is simply incentivized to drum up national memberships. This information came from a recorded phone conversation between Heineman and Meg, in which Heineman said, “They don’t have any ownership. They’ve got some profits interests that they can gain through membership sales.” This contradicted LinksDAO’s assertions to both media and its own NFT holders.

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After publication, LinksDAO leaders contacted us and insisted that they do have a minority ownership stake in Hillcrest. When asked for documentation of ownership, LinksDAO CEO Chris Bruce replied that he “unfortunately can’t provide any of the documentation externally.”

We reached out to Heineman for a response to LinksDAO’s claims. He told us that he looked forward to discussing the Hillcrest project with us “next spring” but did not address our questions about the ownership issue.

Last November, while initially reporting this story, we sent several questions to what we believed was Bruce’s email address. We did not receive a reply, and we have since learned that the address belongs to another member of the company with the same first name. We apologize for the mix-up. However, we stand by our initial report of Heineman’s characterization of Hillcrest’s ownership structure.

We can also confirm that the design work at Hillcrest, headed up by architect Tripp Davis, has stopped, with no specific plans to restart. Reached by phone last week, Davis explained that he had produced a full set of plans for the renovation and that his team had begun rough shaping before the club “started having some financial issues” last summer. The project has been in limbo ever since, and Davis is not aware of when construction might resume.

Multiple liens related to the Hillcrest renovation have been filed against 635 Holdings, a private investment firm led by Heineman. The first two liens were filed by the City of Kansas City for water and sewer services and by Hufft Projects, an architecture firm, for work on Hillcrest’s new clubhouse. Kansas City and Hufft sought payments of $30,593.74 and $96,289.81, respectively. We also recently discovered a third lien against 635 Holdings, filed last October by construction company Matrix Golf. Matrix claimed that it was owed $431,927.19 for work performed in May 2025.

With financial issues stacking up, as well as significant construction remaining to be done, including the installation of a new irrigation system, we find it unlikely that Hillcrest will open for preview play in late 2026, as planned.

Spey Bay Golf Club, which LinksDAO owns outright, appears to be on more solid footing. In 2023, LinksDAO announced plans to work with the firm Clayton, DeVries & Pont (CDP) to reimagine Spey Bay as a “fully reversible 18-hole championship layout with up to 22 greens and five different routings.”

While the reversible design has not yet been implemented, LinksDAO has made several improvements to Spey Bay and its facilities. The course’s staff has widened fairways, removed gorse, built nine new tees, reconfigured the fourth and fifth holes, begun the construction of on-site cabins, refurbished the bar and restaurant, and added a “Himalayas”-style putting green. Chris Haspell, a well-known agronomy consultant, has advised on turf issues.

However, CDP has not been directly involved in these changes and is uncertain about the future of the larger transformation of the course. A CDP spokesperson told us, “We were last on site at Spey Bay in June last year. We are not sure what the timing might be on our involvement in the next stage of the work.”

Bruce explained that Spey Bay still intends to establish a reversible layout, but to avoid a full closure, the course is taking a deliberate approach to the implementation of CDP’s master plan. LinksDAO also needs to sort out planning permissions related to water supply and sand extraction before significant reconstruction can occur. “We’ve loved working with the CDP folks,” Bruce said. “They are great. We certainly plan to continue to work with them.”

Fried Egg Golf's Meg Adkins and Garrett Morrison contributed to this report.