Designing an L2 as if I actually knew what I was talking about.

This won’t be a series like A Non-Technical & Highly Speculative Look at Memes, but we are continuing from a previous essay.

https://mirror.xyz/lght.eth/F593LtANSK0J2eqOHesalji-mg7H2tozYS4eHF66MB0

This is where we ended last time.

Now we’ll run a thought experiment on how we would design an L2 on Ethereum, specifically with the onchain creative community in mind.

First off, we need some contextual fabrics to play with. Let’s quickly examine one of my creative fascinations, Tyler the Creator.

What is of interest to us here are Tyler’s aesthetic-narratives he weaves into his various albums (Flower Boy, Cherry Bomb, Igor, Call Me If You Get Lost, Wolf). Add in music videos, merch, album covers, topics in radio rounds, etc.

You could view the entity that is Tyler the Creator as Ethereum Layer 1. Each album is built on top of his brand. Each creative decision is paid for by him (trying to think in parallels to L2 leveraging your L1 eth).

Yet, each fan will resonate with certain albums more than others. The contextual narratives, color choices, topics discussed, all the way down to the beat tempos are signals for honing in on the collective meant to enjoy them most. This is the silhouette we will be playing in during this thought experiment. We are designing an album (chain) for onchain creatives.

Ok. First question:

• What does an onchain creative do?

Answer: Create media, content, art, music, entertainment, literature, or some other form of data and upload a file to the blockchain, for permanent records.

• Why is Layer 1 not enough on its own?

Answer: Gas too expensive. Too much overlap with degens, defi, devs, and narratives unrelated to fostering the onchain creative space.

• Does our Layer 2 solve this?

Answer: Gas yes. The rest no.

• Why not the rest?

Answer:

1. No incentives to bridge.

2. High friction when bridging and low trust when doing so.

3. No buyers market.

4. No protocols of genuine interest for the creatives to play with.

• How would we fix some of those issues?

Answer:

1. Art from household names &/o new-names to first X amount of bridgers??

2. Aesthetically maxed-out bridge UI/UX and trusted video content tutorials??

3. Art from household names &/o new-names to first X amount of buyers?? Serialized NFT achievement unlocks?? Some form of layer-scare quality content as a reward for helping foster the new space?? Aesthetically maxed out collection portals and meme-prop social hyperlinks??

4. Token gated websites with specific L2 NFTs?? Nouns builder on L2 seems like a slam dunk?? Some cryptoart-aesthetic marketplaces?? -- abstract artist marketplace, glitch artist marketplace, etc and then buyer wallets that show all their collection regardless of market??

What I come away with from this brainstorming session is that feeling was indeed the right vertex to work from. Layer 1s are home to onchain creatives by default. But they don’t make us feel like we are doing what we are actually doing. Ushering in the next cultural innovation of a global scale.

@Zora is great (and has an L2 in the works). @Manifold is great. @Objkt is great. This is no slight on them. It is the realization that we have half of the equation in front of us.

The collector experience can not be neglected. The diversity of creative enterprise can not be neglected. The funnel from creating/minting to collecting/enjoying has to be designed for the future we all exist in right now.

It has to feel like we are playing at the forefront of the galaxies next cultural structure

So what we have left when distilling everything is:

1. Aesthetics of the bridge are crucially significant. The bridge is the entry/exit point to our new world. It needs to supplant the meme of the chain into the back of the users mind immediately, and provide a UX so enjoyable that bridging itself is a pleasure. (meme = you are part of the next cultural update)

2. The marketplace meta needs an upgrade. Instead of Walmart onchain, we need to build a town of intermingling, genre-specific marketplaces that encourage diversity of growth and exploration from both creators and collectors. We would build the various homes under the same construction company, which allows collectors to aggregate their various collections to one page and trust using them.

3. Nouns builder on our L2. Easy win.

4. Collection portals need to be introduced. Tech is currently a large bottleneck here, but at minimum, we need websites dedicated to presenting your collection aesthetically and allowing you to tailor it to your liking as much as possible. Until 47” digital displays are the price of two hoodies we need to deal with the frames we currently have - the phone and the computer. Collectors should be able to screen share this site on their tv and it compliment the room they are in.

The nuance involved in an L2 feels like the next level map area in a video game like Skyrim. My hunch is that we end up with something like the defi chain, the gaming chain, the collectibles chain, and the creative chain. ‘Servers’ like playing World of Warcraft, but instead they are industries of global TVL’d hyperstructures.

It is early days, and Ethereum Layer 1 most likely will hold some of the most valuable creative IP, but it probably won’t hold the majority of it.