Token Fundraising (newsletters, cabins, villages)
Since last week, I've been busy with my Metamask wallet supporting a number of projects.
I bought a Dirty NFT to fund a newsletter (94/100 sold)
I bought the above NFT (can see it animated at my Opensea) on this page on Mirror to support the first NFT driven media company that's educating around Web3.0.
Kyle Chayka, the co-founder states:
With this crowdfund, we’re pioneering a way to fund media through NFTs, with a newsletter built on social tokens and NFT sales.
The total 10 ETH goal will provide funding for Dirt’s first season of content, including writing, editing, freelancers, marketing, and NFT art
I will be airdropped $DIRT-S1 social tokens as a reward that represents the Dirt community. As the post on their Substack says:
Think of the token like a membership card or a magazine subscription: It’s another form of content.
And the coolest bit:
Funders will be able to contribute to the success of the project and will be encouraged to participate, give feedback, grow the email list, write for the publication, etc.
That's true community building.
When I was scaling my paid substack (exited), I had to hire a writer/editor, podcast producer and deals analyst out of the cashflow of the publication. This meant I had very little paid marketing budget.
Using NFTs and social tokens is a much better way to scale.
In fact, a $165K Gitcoin grant was awarded to the Bankless newsletter to help it get on a solid footing and scale (see my newsletter on the Bankless Dao).
If only I knew this was an option back then.
There is already a trend away from Web 2.0 platforms such as Substack to Web 3.0 such as Mirror. Kyle states:
On Mirror, I’ll develop approaches for integrating NFTs into editorial and creating a connection between NFTs and storytelling, with the goal of eventually moving the entire project onto Mirror. Traditional paywalls will be avoided in favor of patronage and crowdfunding.
Supporters of crowdfunding writing with NFTs are actually able to cash out their portion of ETH held by the contract whenever they choose by simply hitting the Redeem button on the page on Mirror they backed the project.
I bought $CABIN to fund a creator retreat
A group of creators who have been living at a cabin retreat outside of Austin, TX are launching a creator residency program funded through the $CABIN social token.
We want to bring more people out to the cabins to help answer the question, so we're starting a creator residency program. It's an experiment in universal creator income, tech stacks for decentralized cities, and the physical manifestation of DAOs.
They are over 60% of the way to their 24 ETH target that will fund 12 creators to come for one-month stays. $CABIN holders, through a DAO, will vote on who should stay and will help creators to use web 3 technologies.
Check out the fundraising page, and if you're interested in applying for residency you can opt-in here.
I will be buying the SEED token to help regenerate
Future Thinkers are about to sell NFTs to fund their smart village in British Columbia, Canada (where I spent a ski season back in the day).
The SEED token is a collectible, evolving art piece (explained in the video below) they are creating on Async and they are being supported by The Commons Stack.
For every NFT sold, they will plant a tree to regenerate the land they purchased, and the holder will receive a badge to show their contribution.
But that's not all, as every NFT gets access to a private community on Mighty Networks and, as a bonus, they will be dropping (at random) additional NFTs to SEED holders that will give access to accommodation stays and events.
Access to events was what Gary V did with his Veefriends which has just sold out - over 10,000 NFTs and the contract address is showing over 2700 ETH which is currently $7.5M.
All the other NFT projects mentioned here mint them on Ethereum, but Smart Village are choosing Polygon, the layer 2 scaling solution due to environmental / energy concerns. Polygon is proof of stake whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum are proof of work which consumes a lot of energy (Ethereum 2.0 is happening later this year where it's moving to proof of stake).
As such, NFT transactions on Polygon will be super cheap and super fast using the Matic token.
See you next week
Cheers!
Richard
ps my application to the Friends With Benefits community (last week's newsletter) was declined, I will try again in a few months time :)