Black Dave Utility Season

Hey again. Been a while. A lot has happened since my last post, here’s a quick recap then we’ll get to the post: • I dropped on sound.xyz right before my last post. I didn’t say anything about it on there. • I produced an EP for Matt Monday that dropped on Catalog (and every song is still available to collect as of this post). • I dropped an EP on Mint Songs. 2 out of the 3 songs are still available (here and here) but it’s worth peeping. • I was featured on the Snoop Dogg 4/20 Mix that dropped on sound.xyz. My song Justice was in that mix. • I (We) announced Koodos, the physical/digital NFT album experience by Matt Monday, under our new web3 umbrella company, Project Phäros. We mint May 28 for 0.3 ETH.

Okay! I’ve been thinking a lot about what music NFTs actually are and what they mean lately, and I’m a decently documented “utility” maximalist, but even defining that can be hard. In an effort to work toward what that means, I’ve come up with a few different ideas that will work as different homes for the types of people who are into what I have going on, as a person, in web3, as an artist and beyond. I’m struggling to make a smooth transition into the next section, so let’s just dig in.

As I build more things and participate more in this digital wallet connected (read: web3) world, I wanted to find a way to create a reward system for people who have supported me while also making sure they’re involved in the continued journey, so I decided to release a community NFT that grants you access to different things along my continued path in the space.If you look at my bio on most platforms, marketplaces and social media, you’ll see that my bio says “Aspiring Gundam pilot” and I even have a story created that puts me in the position of owning my own Gundam (see: description of Triple Beam on Sound.xyz), so I decided to use that as the theme for my utility NFTs. I’ll never stop loving the Gundam universe and story, so this makes sense for me, and can stand the test of time. The NFTs, modeled after (and in the future using) the VMU, which is the memory card for the Sega Dreamcast gaming console, are designated as keys to the Gundam I own. As the owner of the key you’re also along for the ride.There are 4 styles of the key, each representing a different tier of experience, the tiers are as follows:

Some examples of the things you’ll be looking at receiving for owning this:

• Presale minting access for Koodos

• Presale minting access for my next drop on Sound.xyz on June 8

• Free clothing & other shit, designed by yours truly.

• Discounted clothing & other shit, designed by yours truly.

• Airdropped collaborative NFTs, depending on which color you hold.

• Presale minting access, as well as airdropped NFTs for future Project Phäros NFT releases.

• Tickets and/or discounts to shows, depending on which color you hold.

• Token gated links to music, media & other shit I post there.

Using a utility NFT as access to experience feels to me like a good way for fans to be able to move in and out of the ecosystem as long as there’s demand for people to enter it. This also lessens the burden of feeling like you’re selling yourself out of my community when you let my art and music based NFTs move around. Something about music NFTs is that we don’t want people to exit the community, only enter, and through this and then the reselling of the original work doesn’t have you feeling out of the Black Dave community as long as you hold a Gundam Key.

Before I exit this part of the conversation, I will say that the visual for the keys themselves will be updating over time, as I get better at 3D, and to represent folks that I work with - as well as sometimes hide easter eggs. Hope you guys enjoy this one.

The second part of utility season for me is linked to my upcoming social token, $KURO. I haven’t made it yet but I’m going to tell you guys the vision, and let you go from there. I was in a conversation recently about trying to find ways to differentiate those who like me, the individual from those who like the work I create, and I think the social token is the perfect dual-use layer for that. I’m a firm believer in the social token existing as a token that has no monetary value but is something that’s earned by participating in the community that the token represents, in this case, me! I speak to this in Season 1 of the Water and Music Stream report, about how things like retweets and listens and helping people in the discord and pulling up to my events online and irl are ways to gain tokens. This allows people who rock with me to have an in to being a deeper member of my computer, while allowing those interested in the art itself (and the speculation around it I guess) to participate in that. Taking advantage of an ERC-20 token working as currency allows for some really fun experiences. Here are some of the ideas I have for what you’ll be able to do and buy with $KURO:

• Buy unique NFTs (with $KURO)

• Discounted clothing & other shit just by holding

• Presale minting access for future NFTs

• Token gated links to music, media & other shit I post there.

I touched on this in here already but wanted to create a more centralized location to talk about why I’m choosing doing both models as an artist as opposed to just one. I like to replace the word “utility” with “experience” so hopefully this section helps you understand my mind around that as well.

The community NFT is a reward for people who purchase my NFTs and support me along that part of my journey. I want to offer them something special for doing that. I want to offer people who participate in supporting me in non-financial, but still crucial, ways something special as well. This is an effort to try to create an experience that is centered around Black Dave the creative and another experience centered around Black Dave the individual. Being a “thought leader” in web3 has in many ways put a damper on everyone’s perception of me as an artist, and as I continue to lean into being an artist, I want to make sure I’m able to identify which camp folks belong to, as well as create useful and interesting experiences depending on the camp you’re in.

Thanks for checking this out. This is relatively stream of consciousness, but is intentionally redundant because I know not many folks are doing something like this in the music NFT space right now. I wanna give a special shout out to Manifold for making this process simple and affordable. Join my discord or tweet at me if you have any questions about the Gundam Keys, how I made them, or anything else. Later.