Thoughts on Community Support

Hey again. Maybe it’s “Hey” for the first time. I don’t know. Hey.

I think this full piece is worth reading but here’s the CliffsNotes version:

• Mint this NFT by Shawntel by Saturday, July 30.

• Claim a free new song of mine as an NFT on Saturday. Link on Saturday.

• We’re exploring new models of supporting each other as artists in web3.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how artists can support each other more in this world of web3 and NFTs outside of a retweet, outside of coming to a drop party, outside of pumping each other up on social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about how as creators of NFTs we talk about the concept of building community but that conversation is primarily focused on a community of potential buyers and supporters. I often wonder what we can do for each other that might be able to create a more direct impact than what we’re doing on social media.

There are too many people in this realm who feel like they have answers to questions that don’t have specific answers. I’m often one those people. This specific article is me being one of those people.

One potential solution I’ve come up with is creating networks of support around our NFT sales. I think we have been doing a great job with token gating, for instance. Early sales for our previous collectors, allow lists for our early non-financial supporters, raffles and the like. Taking this model but applying it to be artists you want to support as opposed to collectors of your work has an opportunity to create a network effect, not only for you, but for the artists you support.

One of my all-time favorite folks in web3, Shawntel, has been dropping a handful of art lately on Zora, and has recently been hit with a need to generate funds. As someone who doesn’t have much money (you guys should probably buy my NFTs) but has a lot of ideas, I’ve decided to create a song that will be FREE TO MINT if you acquire an edition of the Lotus Flower Bomb NFT of Shawntel’s on Zora. She made 20 editions of this, so there will be up to 20 editions up for grabs. I’ll take a snapshot at midnight on Saturday, July 30th (that’s when Saturday starts, eastern time), and the NFTs will be available for the wallets who have collected the NFT by then.

This is a great question for you to ask yourself. Aside from the work itself being fire, there are few in the NFT space who advocate for other artists like Shawntel does. She created a huge directory of NFTs by Black folks via twitter that’s easy to browse and easy to share. Aside from the work itself being fire, she’s created a community for Black folks in the space aptly named “WE BLACK AF ON THE BLOCKCHAIN” which has been a hub for Black creatives worldwide to share work, talk through things, collaborate and grow together. Aside from the work itself being fire, Shawntel shows up for you and advocates for you when you aren’t around and is an all around gem of a person. She’s definitely a model of what someone who creates community and supports others looks like, and we should support her in kind.

Honestly, the whole process is clunky as fuck. New tools constantly emerge and while one of the greatest features of this tech is to be able to build on top of it just through using tokens, it takes a little bit for things to catch up. Even on Mirror (where you’re reading this), I can’t embed the NFT directly because it’s built on a new Zora feature set. You’re gonna buy the NFT on Zora. I’m gonna mint my song on my own ERC-721 smart contract using the (also new) claim page feature in Manifold Studios. I have to wait until Saturday to mint the song, because there isn’t a proper token gate created for this yet and I have to import the addresses from the snapshot at the time of minting.

It is all very clunky, but to support others it’s worth it.

Yes, very. I’ll talk to you guys later.