Will Content NFTs Spark the Next Bull Market?

GM web3 explorers! 

It’s time for the Weekly Rollup, the web3 newsletter that breaks down the latest innovations and events in our favorite sandbox. 

In this week’s edition:

• Are content NFTs the next best thing since sliced bread? 🤔

• Forget on-chain, Moonbirds are going in-chain ⛓️

• A macro discussion about the future of wallets and on-chain memberships 🌐

• Web3 Person of the Month. Hint: He plays a vital role in TreasureDAO and its Smolverse 🤏

• Some spicy JUMP community alpha from founder Jeff Kaufman who joined us on the podcast 🔥

Let’s go, frens! 

🤝 Together With Lens: The Evolution of Social Networking 👀

🟣 TOKENIZED CONTENT

The Bull Case for Content NFTs

With the rise of web3 social and publishing platforms, such as Mirror and Paragraph, content NFTs are gaining attention. 

Wait, content NFTs? 

Yup, that’s right. Content NFTs can be almost any form of media online—for example, podcasts, social posts, music, blogs, etc. It could even be an IRL piece of content, such as a book, but for now, we’ll stick to online NFTs. 

Right now, there are two sides to the content NFT argument. On one hand, people believe that these NFTs can become a new form of monetization for creators, i.e., selling pieces of content. 

But on the other hand, some people, like Kyle, can’t really justify why anyone would buy a piece of content for a significant amount of money. 

So Kyle posed the question to the giga brains of crypto Twitter and here’s what we learned 👇

Many people believe that NFTs are just a new form of internet infrastructure—technology that will replace downloadable content which helps preserve provenance, ownership, and discoverability. 

Another angle is that content NFTs will replace “likes” on social media and essentially become a new metric that creators and businesses can analyze. Except with NFTs, creators can dive deeper into the purchasing habits and interactions of a particular wallet to learn more about its holder.  

However, Jeff Kaufman, the founder of JUMP, believes that content NFTs will in fact be a new business model for creators. He believes that it’s about supply and demand, so if there’s high demand for limited pieces of content there will be people who are willing to pay for it. 💰

He also believes that content NFTs can create new opportunities downstream. For example, entrepreneurs who can connect their disparate content NFTs into a cohesive package may be able to generate some form of revenue. 

This could look like curating quotes or informative pieces and viewpoints from top web3 minds and turning them into a book. 

From our perspective, we’re leaning more towards content NFTs becoming a useful way for businesses and creators to craft experiences and learn more about their audience. 

For example, you could determine which types of content are most popular with your audience by looking at their wallet and double-down on them. 💪

🟣 QUESTION

What's Your Stance on Content NFTs?

A. They're a new revenue stream for creators and businesses.B. They're just a new social metric for people to analyze.

👉 Let us know by replying in the comments with A or B!

🟣 UX TINGS

The Future of Wallets and On-chain Memberships

Wallets and on-chain memberships will be huge in the coming years. 

On one hand, wallets are how we interact with web3. We use them to buy crypto, use protocols, and store NFTs—they’re basically our home base for all things web3. 🏠

And on the other hand, we’re social animals who always strive to be part of groups that share our interests and goals.

This isn’t a new phenomenon that rose solely from web3. It looks like our annual memberships to local clubs or even buying a house in a particular neighborhood because you like the community. 

Another reason we’ll have more subscriptions is that there is tons of value exchange in the membership model. 📈

Think of Spotify or Netflix, would you rather fork out millions of dollars to own all the content on their platforms? Or would you rather have a tiny $10/month subscription to access current and new content in the future? 

Safe to say it’s the latter. 🤷‍♀️

Subscriptions and memberships also allow creators and businesses to migrate their audience wherever they please—which is a lifesaver if a particular platform shut down. 

That’s why Unlock Protocol created Flockers, an app that lets Twitter accounts create on-chain membership contracts in minutes. It’s a way to build a portable cross-platform social graph that isn’t beholden to a single platform. 

For example, if someone holds your membership NFT, it can unlock content almost anywhere on the internet, such as on WordPress websites, Discord, Paragraph, etc. So instead of having to follow someone on every new platform, these NFTs can allow holders to automatically follow all of your social accounts. 

And where will we hold all of our membership NFTs? Web3 wallets, of course. ✅

This brings us to the recent updates from Phantom, Solana’s most popular crypto wallet. They recently announced that users will now be able to interact with not only Solana but also Ethereum and Polygon through their Phantom wallet. 

This is huge news because right now, the UX of web3 is extremely segmented. If I want to do something on Polygon, I have to probably start on Ethereum and bridge my tokens over using a different app, then use Uniswap to swap the token to something specific that I want to use on Polygon—for example, a JUMP token. 

What a pain! 💀

And as web3 expands, this experience will only get worse—unless we have wallets that simply the user experience like Phantom is doing. 

In our opinion, over the coming years, wallets will simplify more and more of the complex web3 processes we use to interact with the space. For example, instead of having to bridge and manually swap our tokens, it’s likely that everything will be done with one click within the next decade. 

So if you have ETH in your wallet but you want to buy an NFT on Polygon, we think that future crypto wallets will do all the necessary swaps and bridging in the background—all you have to do is sign a single message. 🤯

One thing that’s important to note is that people will still have to learn about web3. We tend to always say that the UX of web2 is so great and is what web3 needs to go mainstream. 

While that’s true, it’s simply because we know how to use web2. If we gave web2 tech to someone who’s never seen it, the chances are they’ll have a poor user experience.

So in the end, the way we onboard billions is by creating intuitive experiences based on user psychology. 

🟣 SOCIALS

Thread of the Week

🟣 UNLOCKING NEW NFT USE CASES

Moonbirds Go In-chain 

Being on-chain is old news, and that’s why PROOF is taking Moonbirds in-chain (saying they’re in-chain is just a PROOF marketing play to highlight that they’re different from other collections).

Without getting into the weeds, it basically means that Moonbird NFT metadata will be stored on a blockchain. This is novel because most NFT collections aren’t completely on-chain because storage is expensive. 

So most collections store their tokens on-chain but keep their metadata (images, gifs, content, NFT info) off-chain in a decentralized storage solution like Arweave or IFPS. 

However, PROOF has found a way to create viewable images (the JPEGs that are synonymous with NFTs) that are constructed from art layers that are within smart contracts stored on-chain. 

Now, one thing to be careful of is that we always like to look at this industry in black and white. We see some innovation, like in-chain NFTs, and we think that the whole industry needs to follow suit. 

This can’t be further from the truth. ❌

Being on- or off-chain isn’t important, it’s about how we can use this technology to cater to our specific communities.

For example, for Jeff’s community, JUMP, it makes more sense to store NFT metadata off-chain. He prefers to use high-quality imagery for the JUMP NFTs while allowing the token branding to change as the community evolves. 

But if you’re treating something as pure art and you want it to remain that way forever, this is where being on-chain matters.

In the case of Moonbirds being a CC0 (no copyright reserved) project, it makes sense to be on-chain as it makes building derivative community projects much easier. It also unlocks extra functionality, such as being able to customize a Moonbird using the other NFTs in your wallet. 

Overall, it’s not just about putting NFTs on-chain. Yes, it offers the community extra use cases, but it’s also about the new infrastructure that the giga brains at PROOF are developing and how this tech may shape other storage-heavy computing projects in the future.

🤝 Together with Unlock Protocol: Create Memberships and Subscription NFTs in Minutes! ⚡

🟣 WEB3 PERSON OF THE MONTH

Mike Lau: From DTC to Web3

In our last poll, we had some excellent candidates for Web3 Person of the Month, including one of our earliest DAO members, Yakuza. 

We also featured Mike Lau from Treasure DAO, Carly Reilly from Overpriced JPEGs, and Keith Grossman, a Time Magazine board member. 

And this month’s winner with 76% of the votes was…

… Mike Lau! 

Congratulations to Mike on a well-deserved win. 🎉

Here’s why Mike’s our Web3 Person of the Month: 

Mike is part of the growth marketing team at Treasure DAO with a focus on building the Smolverse brand—one of the DAO's metaverse gaming ecosystems.

And the reason why we nominated Mike for this month’s poll was that he helped get Smolverse featured on former NBA star, Scottie Pippen’s Twitter by getting him to change his PFP, generating some serious exposure for web3.

Outside of that, Mike is a serial entrepreneur, having exited multiple businesses and has even worked at Shopify. 

With his DTC (direct-to-consumer) expertise, he plans to take the Smol Shop (Smolverse’s marketplace) to the next level with new products, experiences, and collaborations. 

What we love about Mike is his passion for bridging the gap between web2 and web3 through physical products and experiences. 

Editor’s note: We actually have a podcast coming out with one of the co-founders of TreasureDAO soon where we’ll dive deep into the “Nintendo of web3”. Make sure you don’t miss it!

🟣 WEB3 ALPHA

JUMP Community Announcement

Since Jeff was a guest on the Weekly Rollup podcast, he wanted to share some spicy alpha with you, our web3 explorers. 

What is it? 

In a nutshell, JUMP is launching a proper media brand to share and break down the latest web3 news—just like we’re doing today. 

They’re doing it because one of the things that the Sky Club community has done well is curate and talk about the news. So Jeff and the community decided to launch a proper startup around this shared passion. 

The difference is they promise to do it in a fresh, web3 way 👀

With the lofty goal of being the first media brand to reach 1 million NFT holders, the first phase of JUMP’s master plan starts on December 15th and will consist of three phases across roughly three months. 

On the 15th of December, JUMP will open its pre-launch website which will entail subscribing and minting an officially branded JUMP News Rocket. Then a month later, the official media property will go live and the rocket will not be mintable anymore. 

So make sure to schedule the launch in your calendar! 

Jeff can’t tell us much more without spilling too much alpha, but he promises three waves of fun, media, tech, and innovation that everybody can participate in. 

Damn! We’re excited already 🤩

🟣 NUMBERS TO KNOW

3,999

That's the amount of NFTs that are spread across Thailand. Through a scavenger hunt, participants have until December 14th to collect them. Source

$358

Is the cost for Sony's newly launched Mocopi, which are motion-tracking metaverse wearables. Source

$150,000,000

That's the amount raised by Fenix Games to fuel next-generation blockchain gaming. Source

🟣 AROUND WEB3

Other Web3 News

• NFTs are now officially tradeable on Uniswap. Source

• Keith Grossman, President of TIME takes the role of President of Enterprise at crypto payments infrastructure app, MoonPay

• ApeCoin DAO launches a community-driven NFT marketplace with help of start-up firm Stag Solutions. Source

• Game7, a Web3 gaming-focused DAO unveils a $100M grant program. Source

• Goblintown NFT project teases a toy release. Source

• Chimpers NFT partners with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Paramount. Source

• Magic Eden launches protocol to enforce creator royalties. Source

• Coinbase disabled mobile NFT transfers after Apple demanded a 30% tax on the gas fees used to transfer NFTs. Source

🟣 FOR THE DOERS

READ

Fancy content NFTs as the next web3 bull market? Learn How to Build and Monetize an Audience in the Creator Economy.

JOIN

Head over to the Web3 Explorers Club to join our 8-week community-cultivated mastermind!

LEARN

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