In recent weeks, there has been a huge change in the way people in web3 mint their work. NFTs have gone from a "free mint" meta to a "low cost" meta, largely driven by the smart contract upgrade to Zora and the introduction of Rodeo Club contracts (by Foundation).
This change has sparked controversy between collectors, creators, and consumers. This controversy is unfortunate because there are few enough people in the world that value digital assets as it is 😔.
We need to get aligned on how the new minting metas fit with our existing understanding of digital assets if we are to build a better Internet with web3; one that avoids the devaluation we saw with web2 social media.
To start, I think we are confusing supply & provenance, tokens & posts.
In my opinion, the minting contract & platform context are not being properly considered in the determination of value.
To take an analogy from the physical world:
stickers cost < $1
posters cost ~ $20
museum quality prints cost > $200
In the physical world, an artist (e.g., photographer) can use the same photo on all three mediums with ~no~ negative consequences from a collector of the museum quality print.
However, in the low-cost mint meta, many artists & collectors are afraid that if they mint on Zora/Rodeo Club, they are "not allowed" to mint that same piece as part of a limited series or 1/1 on their own contract without facing angry collectors of the low-cost mints or the 1/1s. This fear has stopped many artists from minting on Zora or Rodeo Club, which is a shame given the opportunities they offer artists through Farcaster.
We should not be shaming people for their use of one platform over the other. The goal of web3, as I understand it, is to leverage blockchain technology to produce a sustainable digital economy for all creators, builders, and knowledge workers. A better Internet, one not ruled by advertising revenue and the perverse algorithmic incentives that arise as a result. An Internet that preserves the value of human creativity, especially in the Age of AI.
I think we are looking at this minting "controversy" in the wrong way.
In my opinion, the context & contract are hugely important in the valuation of the minted digital asset. Minting an open edition on Zora or Rodeo Club for $0.30 should be considered more of a sticker than a museum piece. The provenance of a 1/1 sovereign contract should be valued vastly differently than a "post-like", low-cost sticker mint, thereby enabling the same piece to be used in both.
In other words, we should think of this new meta as introducing a new type of asset, a hybrid between the web2 post and the web3 token. An asset that may or may not hold long-term value, which is beside the true point: to preserve the fun of collectibles without skewing the long-term value of an artist.
I'm calling this new asset the Post Token.
Let's dive in ✨
Note: at the end of this entry, I include some practical suggestions on how to deal with the new mint metas for creators, collectors, and builders ✨
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Post Token & Smart Contract TL;DR
Smart contracts are like vending machines: you put in tokens and receive something in exchange. But the type of vending machine dictates how much the good is worth.
With the low-cost mint meta taking off in web3, it's time we started taking a more serious look at how smart contracts (and the platforms that produce them) impact the artistic value of NFTs.
Without the ability to distinguish material quality in the digital realm (like we can in the physical art world), we need to use smart contracts as the contextual factor governing our valuation of art. Given the changes to Zora and the introduction of Rodeo Club, we should consider some tokens more like stickers while others can be considered more like "fine-art".
This distinction can allow artists and creators to leverage the meta of the day (low-cost mints) for promotional purposes (stickers) while retaining the cultural right to use their art in low-supply, sovereign contracts that are culturally valued for their context.
We can avoid diluting the supply of higher valued art with lower valued Post Tokens, preserving the value of art that has been minted over the last few years, while future-proofing artistic value in the years to come.
Definitions
Meta: a cultural fad or trend.
Token: a digital asset produced from a smart contract, linked to blockchain.
Smart Contracts: autonomous code that can produce tokens and control economics of currencies via blockchain.
Zora: a minting platform that traditionally enables low-cost or "free" mints; the goal is high volume, low price - think Instagram.
Rodeo Club: a new minting platform from Foundation (an NFT marketplace) that has 24 hour minting limits - think Instagram.
Farcaster: a decentralized social network protocol - think Reddit + Twitter (X).
Attention Economy: the commoditization of attention, often through advertising revenue, but can be any transfer of attention for value.
Provenance: the record of origin and ownership history of artistic assets.
Self-Sovereign: the ability to govern oneself - in this context, to control the settings of a smart contract and the tokens that come from them independently from a centralized platform.
Smart Contract Analogy - Vending Machines
In order to get the full value of this newsletter, you should have a basic, practical understanding of smart contracts. No, these are not the same contracts you think of in a legal sense - a document that two parties sign to form a legally binding agreement. Instead, think of a smart contract as as an autonomous computer program.
Smart contracts are auto-executable code. A program that is triggered to action when a stimulus occurs. In the case of most NFTs, smart contracts are triggered when someone pays the gas & fee to mint a new token.
A great analogy for smart contracts is that of a vending machine. You put in a coin (ETH), the vending machine accepts it, you select what you want to buy, and the vending machine spits out the good (token).
In other words, a smart contract is a way to predictably produce a token, in the same way that a vending machine is a predictable way to autonomously buy a good.
As with vending machines, not all smart contracts are created equally. Some vending machines produce a $0.30 candy or a sticker, others distribute $2000+ electronics at the airport. Similarly, some smart contracts produce tokens that are sold for $0.30, others produce tokens that are sold for $50,000- $69 million.
With the same technology powering both scenarios, how can we distinguish between the value of tokens? How can we introduce stability to that value over years or decades?
My History With Smart Contracts
To answer that question, I want to take you back a few years to when I began first seriously researching NFTs - Autumn 2021. I truly began in 2018 when I was researching solutions to fake news by time-stamping digital files with a blockchain registry, but, at the time, this technology was not colloquially known as "NFTs".
After taking a few years away from web3 (while I built up my career as an IP lawyer and became a patent agent), I entered the art world more seriously as a photographer in 2021 and found my way onto crypto twitter.
I had heard of people earning thousands of dollars by selling digital art, which clearly interested me as a photographer who was burning out at my law job. I had dreamed of becoming a full-time artist when I took a break after my legal internship to visit Africa for 3 months and fell deeper in love with the artistic path.
To set the scene, this was September 2021 - art was beginning to pop in ways never seen before, but so was the pfp market (profile pictures like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or Crypto Punks). Some NFTs were being sold for a few dollars and others were being sold for a few thousand or million dollars. As a new entrant into the ecosystem, I was understandably confused - as many people still are with NFTs and web3. Valuing digital, intangible assets is a weird concept to get used to.
Putting the pfps aside, what seemed to confuse people the most was why one artist could sell a piece for $1000 and another for only $10.
One answer is clearly related to supply and branding, which I will touch on later in this article. The other answer has to do with the minting medium itself: the smart contracts the pieces were minted from seemed to vary the price a token was able to be sold for.
Some vending machines seemed to produce art that was more highly valued than others.
Why? 🤔
2021 NFT Context
A big element with investing in art (distinct from collecting art because you like it) is that the art becomes an encapsulation of value that, at a minimum, will hold its value in the long run and, ideally, increase in value. This value hold is one reason why art is often used as a way to transfer generational wealth in families in the traditional art world.
In other words, the more stable the investment, the lower the risk, the more likely it is that someone would invest higher amounts of money into the asset.
An issue in 2021 was that many NFTs were being minted on shared smart contracts: a single smart contract that all artists used to create their works and list them on the same marketplace. The OpenSea shared contract.
Other artists were minting on platforms like Foundation and SuperRare, which gave each artist their own smart contract (not a shared contract like OpenSea). However, these contracts were still under the control of the platform, not the artist, and required an invite to access.
With Foundation and SuperRare being invite only, the vast majority of artists got their start into NFTs on OpenSea.
Personally, I felt there was something wrong with minting onto a shared contract: how was I supposed to control my own provenance? How was I supposed to introduce stability and long-term value to my collectors if I couldn't control my own contract? Something was missing.
The market seemed to agree with me. While some OpenSea pieces sold for higher values, most collectors were investing in artists on Foundation & SuperRare. Exclusivity and independent contracts seemed to hold a lot of sway in the minds of investors. They cared about provenance.
Thankfully, in December 2021, Manifold unlocked their contract factory to creators at large, opening the door to self-sovereign contracts.
Sovereign Contracts: Manifold
Manifold changed the game by introducing a contract factory. Users could create their own smart contract and mint their own tokens. They could customize the title, token name, author name, all metadata, and ASCII art. It was a game-changer.
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"Finally", I thought to myself, having waited for months to mint my own art, not wanting to mint onto the shared contract of OpenSea, "I can mint my own art onto my own contract". I could have self-sovereignty over my digital assets. I could control both supply and provenance (two distinct and incredibly important factors in the valuation of art). I could build my own vending machine.
I was so excited that I made an entire YouTube series teaching people how to mint on a Manifold contract. I was sure that Manifold was providing a new paradigm for smart contracts, opening up sovereignty and provenance for all. The beginning of true web3.
Foundation began allowing the indexing of Manifold contracts via a white glove service. Then SuperRare did the same. At the time of writing, Manifold contracts are automatically indexed on Foundation and can be manually indexed by importing them into SuperRare.
The landscape of smart contract development was changing.
With the addition of self-sovereign contracts, some collectors and investors began to see the light: if they wanted to have a lower-risk investment with stability in the artists they were investing in, the artist should not be minting on a shared contract.
Some collectors, investors, and artists (like myself) began to boycott OpenSea, saying that they didn't trust the future of shared contracts.
In March 2022, we were proved right.
The OpenSea Debacle
In March 2022, the US put out sanctions against Iran, forcing OpenSea to deplatform their Iranian users.
All of the sudden, Iranian users could not access their accounts, which included works they had already minted onto the platform. The NFTs themselves were removed from the platform.
If you were an investor of an Iranian artist and thought that the artist was going to continue to have a long and profitable career, banking on those tokens going up in value (or at least holding it), you thought wrong.
A lot of people were shocked and, understandably, outraged: the promise of web3 was digital ownership, independent from centralized control, including governments.
At the time, I was not surprised. It was only a matter of time before a platform in the US was mandated by the government to behave in a way that went contrary to the web3 ethos.
Operating within corporate networks introduced inherent platform risk, a lack of stability of building on a platform in the long run. For more on platform risk and corporate network attract-extract cycles, I recommend reading Read Write Own by Chris Dixon.
The status quo changed. Collectors began refusing to purchase NFTs that were minted on shared contracts.
Instead, collectors preferred to purchase tokens from smart contracts they knew the artists would have control over, indefinitely. Why would a collector spend $1500 on an NFT from a contract that the artist might lose control over in the future? Or worse, buy a token that could be unilaterally (single-handedly) removed from the platform where it was minted?
This scenario shows us something that, 3 years later, people have begun to forget: the contract context matters a lot more than people think.
Welcome to the power of provenance.
Context in Contracts
This section may be a bit basic for people well versed in blockchain and NFTs, but I think it's worth reviewing in the context of the current hullabaloo of what has been happening to web3 lately, especially on Farcaster.
To understand the nuance, we must first understand the fundamentals. To understand the fundamentals, we must understand how we got here in the first place.
Physical Provenance
Provenance is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. In other words, provenance tracks the history of an object (traditionally art) across time, including its origin.
Museums use the provenance associated with pieces of art to determine, in part, if a work is authentic or not. If someone brings a new piece of art to a museum and tells them it is an original da Vinci, but cannot trace the history of the piece from owner to owner across the centuries, the museum will be hesitant to accept the work. Accordingly, the value of the piece is only as good as its provenance.
Certificates of authenticity are a way for people to increase the validity of an artwork. If the piece comes with the original certificate of authenticity, there is a higher likelihood that the work of art will be considered legitimate.
At least... for physical art. There is no way to truly trace the provenance of physical art in a fool-proof way 🤷♂ we must rely on (trust) the art authenticators.
Digital Provenance
Traditionally (pre-blockchain), there was no easy way to trace the provenance of digital assets. The Internet is built on a system of copying files to display them across different websites, so there was no possible way to actually track the movement of one image to prove that it was the "original" image. Almost nothing on the Internet is original - it is displayed on multiple websites via copying.
Enter blockchain. Blockchain created a new form of digital asset called a "token". A token is effectively a way to encapsulate digital value. The token is given an ID and a title tracer, an ownership indicator. Tokens can be unique digital assets.
Effectively, a token is a certificate of authenticity that is linked to a digital asset, often stored on the "permaweb" of Arweave or as pinned content on IPFS (international planetary filing system). The certificate of authenticity, along with the content ID, Token ID, and the owner name, is filed in the ledger of blockchain.
The type of blockchain itself is also incredibly important. Some blockchains are sufficiently decentralized, meaning no single power can control the "truth" of the ledger, while others are not, meaning they are susceptible to manipulation.
It is also worth noting that the digital file itself is not stored on blockchain in most cases. Instead, the digital file (image, video, text) is merely a link that is included in the token URI (uniform resource identifier) that is filed on blockchain. That's a topic for another day (another recent source of controversy related to Known Origin and IPFS).
Limitations of blockchain decentralization and file storage aside, with NFTs came the ability to trace provenance of digital files.
But to begin tracing the provenance, there must be a genesis moment, a moment of creation. An origin.
The first token produced by a smart contract, signed by the creator.
Once the token is produced, we can begin tracing the ownership from the creator to the first collector, to the second collector, to the third... you get the idea. The title is traceable with blockchain - aka digital provenance.
The NFT can be either created by:
the creator signing a smart contract and inputing cryptocurrency to pay the gas to fund the onchain transaction, or
the creator producing a mint page that a collector (or creator) funds with cryptocurrency to mint the token into their own wallet.
In both cases, the smart contract, like a vending machine, receives cryptocurrency and outputs a token.
But, as I mentioned briefly above, not all smart contracts are alike 👀
Types of Tokens: Fungible, Non-Fungible, Semi-Fungible
In order to understand the nuance of the current tokenomic shift we're seeing with the post-esque, low-cost mint meta, you must first grasp the distinction between types of tokens. Note that this section will focus specifically on Ethereum due to the confusion surrounding the latest tokenomic trends.
Each smart contract can produce a different standard of token. There are three main ones that I want to touch on today, though there are many more that are suggested/created as part of EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal). The three are: ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155.
ERC20 tokens are fungible. Fungible means that one token is equal to the next, perfectly exchangeable. While not a perfect analogy due to serial numbers, you can think of ERC20 tokens like traditional currency. $1 = $1.
ERC721 tokens are non-fungible. ERC721 tokens are the original Non-Fungible Tokens, aka NFTs. Each NFT on the ERC721 token standard is unique. Each token receives a unique identifier. Token 1 =/= Token 2.
ERC1155 tokens are... confusing. ERC1155 contracts bridge the fungibility of ERC20 tokens with the non-fungibility of ERC721 tokens. Each contract is customizable to enable the production of both fungible and non-fungible tokens. This bridge is why ERC1155 contracts enable "semi-fungible" token creation, which increases the efficiency and lowers the cost of token transfers of both 721 and 20 type.
In more practical terms, ERC20 tokens do not have a unique identifier, ERC721 tokens each have a unique identifier, and ERC1155 tokens may or may not have a unique identifier depending on the smart contract & use of it.
Examples
$Degen and $Moxie are examples of ERC20 tokens. 1 $degen = 1 $degen. 1 $moxie = 1 $moxie. This fungibility makes it easy to establish a liquidity pool of degen or moxie, where you can input and output tokens and it does not matter which tokens you are giving or taking, since they are all perfectly exchangeable with one another.
In the art world, 1/1 or limited editions can be examples of ERC721 tokens. For example, my first NFT "Awe" is on a 721 contract. This animation is a unique, non-fungible token with a unique token ID (Token ID 0). The next token on this contract "Reflection" gets a different identifier (Token ID 1). The third token in this collection "Gezellig" is Token ID 3. Each new token increments the ID by 1, giving each token a unique certificate of authenticity.
Similarly, my "Earth's Shadow" Limited Edition is also on a 721 contract. Even though the image is identical across all of the pieces, each token that is produced by this contract gets a unique token identifier. I.e., there are tokens 0, 1, 2, 3... and so on.
However, with the Earth's Shadow limited edition piece, I could have used an 1155 contract. If I had used an 1155 contract, there would have been a single token ID for that photo, ID 0, and all 30 pieces of art would have shared that single ID. The next token I put on that contract would get ID 1 and all 30 pieces of that single image would share the ID.
In a sense, 1155 tokens are semi-fungible because they are equally exchangeable with the same token ID (Token ID 0 = Token ID 0), but not equally exchangeable with another token ID (Token ID 0 =/= Token ID 1). This makes 1155 editions more liquid than 721s, because there can be a larger pool to pull from.
Now that we've gone through the logic of the technology and how supply of tokens are produced by smart contracts, let's apply them to one of the most complicated systems of value the world has ever produced: art.
Feel free to take a few deep breaths or a break to process what I just explained if the technical elements are overwhelming 😊
Artists, Economics, & Non-Fungibility
Artists are an interesting use case for tokens because art is inherently illiquid & non-fungible.
1 Callum Token =/= 1 Cath Simard Token (as much as I would like that to be true 😂)
When an artist, let's say they're a photographer 👀, mints a photo onchain, the type of token they select has a large impact on the price they are able to justify when selling the token to a collector.
The reason the token selection is so important has to do with the most basic law of economics: supply & demand. The supply of a token and its subsequent demand will have the greatest impact on the price the artist is able to charge for their art. For now, let's leave the demand element aside, as that will entirely depend on the branding of the artist, not the technology they are using. If you want to learn more about branding & digital identity, I have a YouTube video and article that go in-depth on this concept.
If the token minted is a unique, 1/1 token (a non-fungible, 721 token, or an 1155 edition of 1), a single token will be more inherently valuable than if a token is part of an 1155 edition with a supply of 1000.
Similarly, even if the supply of an individual token is low (let's say less than 10), but the artist consistently puts new pieces out every day and charges almost nothing for them, the overall artist's tokenomics can be diluted and devalued.
As we've learned from history above, if the token minted is on a shared contract or a contract outside the control of the artist themselves, the long-term value of the art is put into question, which increases the risk and decreases the price an investor is willing to invest in the art. A collector may still be willing to purchase the art, but they likely hold no notions that the art has a high likelihood of retaining or increasing its value; they merely collect because they like the art. A sticker, not a museum print.
This type of collection devalues the perceived value of the artist, especially if they consistently put out low-cost works.
Posts vs Tokens vs Post Tokens
A few weeks ago, Zora forced an update on all of their contracts to make them pseudo-timed edition 1155s. Zora then introduced an update where, after 200 mints, the mint would automatically end 24 hours later, before converting to a secondary market. The previous OpenSea secondary market was deprecated.
Zora unilaterally determined that this update would occur, causing a lot of artists to feel betrayed and abandoned. Artists thought they had built their own style of vending machines on Zora, only to find that Zora could change the supply and pricing of tokens that came out of the vending machine by default.
The default price on Zora on the Zora Protocol shifted to 111 sparks (a new ETH measurement they invented), equivalent to 0.000111 ETH. This price is 7 times cheaper than the 0.000777 "free mint" previously on Zora's Protocol. At the time of writing, 111 sparks is $0.28 USD.
Effectively, while Zora allowed for independent contract creation, these contracts were not self-sovereign, under the full control of the creator. Zora had the ability to force push an update that removed features that many creators (including myself) had come to value.
Why would Zora do such a thing? Well, because they have changed their focus from being a contract marketplace for creators to a social minting platform to align with their new Instagram-like app.
To be fair, I think the app is smooth, works great, and likely will make minting seamless and fun for many people who overthink minting or find web3 too confusing. That's a great development and shouldn't be understated. If millions more users came onboard to Zora via their new app, that's amazing for the ecosystem as a whole. The issues are that it came at the cost of removing stability from the creators that had helped to make the platform successful in the first place and it shifts the culture closer to the web2 devaluation of free art through social media.
Zora also introduced a secondary market liquidity pool powered by Uniswap. A portion of Zora mints go to this liquidity pool to power the trading of tokens. The idea is clearly that, once a mint ends, if a creator increases in value, there will be a secondary market for their tokens. Zora is banking on speculation markets.
Interestingly, this update to Zora occurred at approximately the same time that Rodeo Club was launched. The unique feature of Rodeo club is that the 1155 mints only last 24 hours. Creators have no control over this time frame or the supply of tokens that are produced during this period. Each token also has a set price of $0.30.
Sound familiar? Is it a coincidence that both Zora and Rodeo Club happen to launch new protocols that standardize minting at a standardized cost?
I think not.
Post Tokens
We are effectively seeing the introduction of a new web3 meta: the Post Token.
Rather than minting a token or posting on web2 social media, we are seeing a hybrid of the two.
Rather than minting fine art at low supply, generating the potential for high value along with higher demand, we are seeing (theoretically) high volume mints at very low costs. While this will, in theory, increase demand (the average person can afford $0.30 to collect), this paradigm is, in my opinion, completely decoupled from the digital art paradigm we've seen develop over the past 4 years. This meta incentivizes artists to mint many pieces, increasing the supply of their unique tokens to keep up with the high volume requirement of low-cost minting.
These Post Tokens are, I believe, intended to replace web2 social media, to provide a place for creators to sell many pieces at (hopefully) high volume, tapping into the virality we often see with web2 media.
These Post Tokens are not, in my opinion, intended to replace the existing art market we have been working to establish in web3. This new meta does not wipe out the art minted in previous metas, since the Post Tokens are minted on a different type of contract.
To link back to the beginning of this article, Post Tokens should be considered stickers, not prints.
I do not say this merely so I can mint a photo on Rodeo & Zora, only to mint that same photo as a limited edition or 1/1 on Manifold (though, I likely will) I say this because, if we do not establish a new, culturally accepted paradigm for Post Tokens, we risk devaluing art back into "content", the same way art became devalued content in the posting frenzy and infinite abundance of web2.
Rather than valuing the ability to introduce scarcity via NFTs in the pure abundance of the Internet, we will instead incentivize artists to mint as many pieces as they can to make a living from high volume, low-cost mints. As we saw in web2, this system is not sustainable, leading many creators to burn out trying to keep up with the algorithm.
The current assumption of the average Internet user is that content should be free, since that is the paradigm that companies like Meta, Instagram, X, etc. have established in web2 via their algorithmic feeds.
If we want to build a better Internet, one that values those that contribute value to networks, we must establish ground rules for this new paradigm before we accidentally devalue the existing art that has been minted over the last few years, and all future art to come.
Preservation of Value in the Era of Social Tokens
Many people in 2021 and 2022 (and since, though much fewer) collected high priced, 1/1 or limited edition NFTs. Collectors are, understandably, concerned with the shift towards a high supply, low cost minting meta. What happens to the works they've already collected? How will they preserve their value if the world shifts towards a massive minting strategy?
In my view, the best way to preserve this value is to create a clear cultural distinction between social mints and non-fungible or low-supply editions. The best part? We already have a way to make this distinction: smart contracts.
A token minted on Rodeo Club or Zora's app (with the 200 mint cap --> secondary market) should, in my opinion, be considered more like minting content than minting of fine art. Post Tokens. Stickers, not prints.
Art is not mutually exclusive from posting or content. Art is content, content can be art. I post my photos on Instagram and sell the same photo as a print and sell the same photo as an NFT. What changes in the above scenario is the context in which the sale occurs.
Instagram is worth $0, a print is worth $30-500, and a 1/1 NFT could be $1000+. The issue that I see is we are diluting the pool of “art” tokens with low cost “post” tokens, but tokens themselves are merely an encapsulation of value. It's up to us to contextualize the encapsulant itself.
Tokens are produced by contracts, which have the signature of their context (e.g., on my 1/1 Manifold contract where the pieces have sold for $1000+ OR on a Zora contract where they sell for $3). The issue is not whether we should consider art as posting or not, the issue is devaluing other forms of art that ~aren’t~ Post Tokens, given that the context of a post is the platform that produces it. The format/content of the post, whether or not it is "art", is irrelevant. What matters is that it is produced from a contract that gives the buyer the expectation of low value. A sticker, not a fine art print.
By creating a clear boundary around platform mints, like Zora and Rodeo Club, we are able to remove these social tokens from the artist's "art" supply. Instead of allowing low-cost mints to dilute the artist's supply, we can extract them and put them in their own realm of social post mints. Post Tokens.
This boundary extraction gives the power back to the artist to produce their own limited supply (1/1 or low editions) on their own sovereign contracts, while posting tokens on platforms like Rodeo Club & Zora, thereby allowing for a clear distinction between stickers and fine-art.
The number of tokens minted will forever continue to increase (assuming there is no massive burn). To retain the value of limited supply, self-sovereignly provenenced tokens, we must clearly establish high-volume, low-cost Post Tokens to be their own ecosystem. Cultural context.
Supply & Provenance
The issue is not one of volume, but rather one of provenance. An extremely high volume of tokens is completely fine, and encouraged, when in the context of a Post Token Contract. The provenance of the supply matters. The vending machine can produce low-value stickers or high-value electronics.
The issue isn’t the volume of minting of new pieces, but of the confusion surrounding the context of the mints and the contracts that produce them. IRL, no one would ever confuse a sticker with having the same value as a museum piece; we need to make the distinction this clear with digital assets. If we can factor the low cost mints out of the supply of unique/limited edition tokens on sovereign contracts, we inherently attribute more value to that sovereign context.
If we shift the standard of post-like mints (low cost mints) to be one of a “posts” rather than a fine art collection, definitionally distinguishing them, we attribute more value to previously collected works that are part of the fine art category.
By creating a boundary of contextual provenance, we keep the door open for artists to sell high value works (assuming their branding enables it) AND mint their post tokens without destroying their value or trust with collectors.
We can use Post Tokens to promote artistic work, to test works in progress, to experiment with new styles of art, all within the context of a Post Token so that we do not shoot ourselves in the foot, preventing us from selling those works at high price as part of limited supply with sovereign provenance (self-sovereign contracts).
If we clearly distinguish the supply of each type of provenance, we can build a culture around Post Tokens that enable micro-monetization for creators, while leaving the door open for macro-monetization of fine art. The best of both worlds.
Practical Advice For Artistic Post Tokens
All that said, I am only one person, with my own opinion. I know many artists that have refused to mint on Zora & Rodeo Club because they are worried once they start selling their art for $0.30, it will be a race to the bottom that they will never recover from.
A valid fear, given the commentary and cultural understanding of minting that I am seeing in web3 at the moment. A shame, considering that micro-transactions are one of the major perks of operating on blockchain, a perk that I think will enable sustainable creation for far more people as the creator economy evolves.
Whether you are comfortable minting your art as Post Tokens or not, I thought I would give some suggestions that might enable you to mint your art as a Post Token without destroying your ability to use that same art as highly priced fine-art limited editions or 1/1s:
Option 1: Low Resolution
Rather than mint the Post Token in the highest resolution possible, you can intentionally export your art in a lower resolution specifically for platforms like Zora or Rodeo Club. Thanks @kristinpiljay for the suggestion 🫡.
If a collector wants the fine-art version of the artwork, they can pay the higher price for the higher resolution. This solution is similar to printing on a different quality of paper in the physical world.
Option 2: Watermarked Post Tokens
Add a watermark to your Post Tokens so that it is clear they are clearly marked as a sticker, not fine art. If a collector wants the fine-art version to display on their TV, they can pay a premium for it.
Option 3: Create A New Class Of Derivative Works
Rather than minting Post Tokens of your original work, create a derivative specifically for low-cost mint platforms. In other words, use your existing art in different ways that retains the original piece for fine art sales.
As an example, I have created trading cards of my photography as a derivative work. I am comfortable selling these cards of my art because they are a new class of art I created specifically for this purpose. (these are being released soon 👀 stay tuned on Farcaster for my announcement).
The goal is more for the promotion of the original fine-art, higher value works, rather than trying to monetize as much as possible with the low-cost mints.
Option 4: wips & bts
Similar to creating a new class of derivative works, create a class of works in progress (wips) or behind the scenes (bts) for your post tokens. This type of Post Token enables promotion of the end product that can be sold for higher prices on other marketplaces.
Option 5: mint whatever you want and don't give in to mass opinion
In my opinion, smart contracts speak for themselves. The only way to ensure long-term provenance of art is through your own self-sovereign smart contract, so I think we should incentivize creators to create high-value art on their own contracts.
Post Tokens should inherently be considered stickers and should inherently have a boundary as a result of their smart contract origin. Note, this doesn't mean stickers can't be worth a lot, all types of collectibles can be part of a speculation market, which is what Zora is banking on.
We should not allow centralized platforms dictate the culture of a decentralized movement like web3.
Let me know if you have any other ideas for how people can leverage Post Tokens!
Conclusion
In summary, the context of smart contracts and the relative contextual sovereignty (creator control) matters. We should culturally value the art produced from contracts where the creators have full control over how they are used more than "Post Token" art produced on platform contracts like Zora & Rodeo Club. As we saw with Zora recently, the platform has unilateral control over updates to contracts, which, in my opinion, makes these platforms more centralized than we would like to see in web3.
The goal of digital asset ownership in this modern renaissance is to produce assets that people value due to their scarcity (supply) and provenance (contractual context). If we continue diluting the supply of tokens with low-value Post Tokens, we will never align web3 culture and will end up back in web2.
I want to leave you with a quote from Steve Jobs:
“Incentive structures work, so you have to be very careful of what you incent people to do, because various incentive structures create all sorts of consequences that you can’t anticipate.”
If we incent artists to produce low-cost mints that preclude their ability to sell the same art at a higher value with lower supply and greater provenance, what does this incentive structure do to the onchain creator economy?
I worry that it will devalue art back to the web2 era, where consumers expect everything for free.
Post Tokens have their place; Zora & Rodeo Club add a lot of value to the ecosystem and I am not arguing otherwise. I am merely cautioning against the cultural shift I am seeing where artists must yet again devalue their creations to make the consumer happy.
Let's build a better Internet together, one that incentivizes predictable synergistic consequences between all parties in this onchain world ✨
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