Tattoo NFTs? Here’s Where Metaverse Ink Stands in Web3
When we die, what happens to our tattoos? Are pictures the only viable way to commemorate the beautiful, sentimental, and often expensive pieces of art that we have permanently affixed to our skin? Of course, you could have someone remove your flesh to preserve your tattoos, which is a process that happens more often than you’d think. But placing a piece of your loved one’s body on display might be a bit too macabre for most.
So what is the best method for maintaining the legacy of someone’s tattoos? Asking your artist for a physical or digital version of the initial mockup is always an option. But why keep an extra copy of something that’s literally attached to you? The real deal probably looks much cooler on your body anyways.
Tattoos have permanence, but nearly every attempt at preserving them seems somehow temporary, even fleeting. There needs to be a more robust way to hold onto both the image and experience that comes with getting a tattoo. And in 2022, we have ways to digitize and immortalize them, namely; tattoo NFTs.
Are tattoo NFTs really a thing?
The short answer is: yes. Tattoo NFTs are most definitely a thing. But they are a bunch of different things at the same time. Much like how “generative art” encompasses a broad variety of methods and use cases, “tattoo NFTs” are also, for the most part, a blanket term.
Some tattoo NFTs start as physical pieces before being digitized. Others exist as digital art NFTs imbued with real-world utility. And others still are simply tradeable tattoo-style tokens. The world of tattoo NFTs is both diverse and sparse at the same time, and that’s because this sector of Web3 remains broadly underpopulated.
For now, the tattoo NFT market is a wild west. Countless tattoo artists may be interested in Web3, but few yet have taken the steps to fully venture into non-fungibles. Those who do seek to bring their unique styles onto the blockchain often must do so in unprecedented ways.
Some opt for releasing 1/1s, or editions, while others prefer generative collections. But each case capitalizes on the digital nature of their creative process. Others, like Scott Campbell, have even created entire marketplaces for tattoo NFTs, further expanding the budding ecosystem. Even beyond individualistic undertakings, tattoos are being collated and incubated into a type of digital wearable. Currently, there are a few projects, like Swallow, that are in the early stages of attempting to enable Web3 communities to show off tattoos on the “skin” of their metaverse avatars.
Henry Lewis – Grace Hanya and Sasha Tattooing – Peony
Yet, despite the slow growth of the tattoo NFT market, this sector could surely still be characterized as just a wide range of unconnected one-offs. But it would be illogical to overlook the trend that is clearly emerging. And to truly understand what tattoo NFTs are and what they could be, we must first understand who’s behind them.
Tattoo artists versus tattoo NFT creators
An important distinction must be made in considering those who have ventured into tattoo NFTs. While many (if not all) within this budding sector are seasoned tattoo artists, they are, first and foremost, simply artists. Much can be said about the art form and practice of tattooing, but it’s rare to come across a tattoo artist whose sole medium is free-handing. For tattoos to be conceptualized and created, creativity must exist in other forms.
For many tattoo artists, this creativity exists through illustration — in digital form, or using a pen or pencil and paper. Before ideas can become a reality, they go through the iterative art process. Whether it concerns creating flash (pre-made designs) or penning a custom design for a client, artists utilize their unique skills to give their inspiration an outlet.
In considering what differentiates the tattoo NFT sector from others, let’s take Gossamer Rozen as an example. Now a prominent name in the NFT space, before becoming notable on the blockchain, they practiced several artistic disciplines, eventually gaining a following as a tattoo artist. Even at the beginning of their Web3 career, their identity as a tattoo artist helped shape their pathway to success.
Through collections like Squishin Kitties, Internet Graffiti, and TZttoo (see what they did there), Rozen effectively transferred their skills as an illustrator and tattoo artist into their NFT endeavors. While they also attempted to bring their multitude of disciplines (like sculpting) into Web3, it was tattoo NFTs that stuck first.
By creating a crossover between their crypto-art efforts and real-life incentives, Rozen found themself at an incredibly unique and niche intersection in the NFT ecosystem. While the link between physical and digital goods had just begun to emerge through metaverse fashion and IRL garments, Rozen was one of the first to bridge the blockchain and meatspace gap by allowing a collector of theirs to redeem a Squishin Kitty NFT for a tattoo.
“The reason why I was able to make it happen was that the collector and I got to know each other and we talked about it ahead of time,” Rozen said in an interview with nft now. “So there was kind of a vetting process in place, because we both decided this is what we wanted.” Although this event was somewhat of an outlier for Rozen, it undoubtedly helped solidify the possibilities for tattoo NFTs.
Collectible limited series “SQUISHIN KITTIES!” available, 6 more designs dropping soon! At 0.07 ETH inspired by tattoos and street arthttps://t.co/7ot02zG1iT pic.twitter.com/6Xgd3dFcuV
— Gossamer Rozen NYC (@grelysian) April 6, 2021
It’s easy now to look back at Rozen’s early endeavors and see why tattoo NFTs are unique from other forms of NFTs. Truly, it’s the tattoo factor that gives them their distinctive characteristics. Just as generative avatars are known for their use as profile pictures and photography NFTs are set apart from the pack as a burgeoning form of tokenized nostalgia, tattoo NFTs cannot be grouped with the general population of digital collectibles.
To Rozen, the mix of tattoos and NFTs is a comment on the permanent nature of both. Speaking about their own tattoo x NFT projects, Rozen made the point that tattoo NFTs are in fact permanent tattoos. “They are permanently minted on the blockchain. So in that way, it mirrors how tattoos are permanent on a human being in the real world. Marrying those two things was always on my mind,” Rozen said.
Ultimately, Rozen’s endeavors in the tattoo x NFT sector took a pause as they hit their stride in Web3, going on to create an IP empire around their beloved tiger character. But the link they helped solidify with their early pieces can still serve as an archetype to many of the tattoo NFT projects that continue to emerge.
When we delve further into the tattoo NFT space, undertakings like Campbell’s aforementioned Scab Shop — an exclusive curated platform that lets NFT collectors redeem tokens for tattoo appointments with some of the world’s most renowned artists — also serve to illustrate the developing nature of tattoo NFTs. Surely, the line between NFTs and IRL utility is interesting. And it isn’t the sole use case of tattoo NFTs. But even so, the sector has struggled to gain a foothold in the greater NFT market.
Why aren’t tattoo NFTs more common?
The individualistic element of tattoo NFTs has made the sector, as a whole, difficult to track. While numerous tattoo NFT projects have come and gone throughout 2021 and 2022, there there are no popular hubs for creating and collecting tattoo NFTs. At least, not like music or street art NFTs have.
Similarly, there are no popular frameworks or even well-known best practices surrounding tattoo NFTs to help creators strategize success in a systematized way. In light of this, compounded by the fact that “tattoo NFT” is such a blanket term, many tattoo NFT collections miss out on being labeled a part of this larger trend or even circulated within relevant communities and spaces.
Due to an apparent lack of sustained interest in tattoo NFTs, which could be linked to the absence of profitability in the sector (as opposed to music, photography, or even generative NFTs), creators at the intersection of tattoos and NFTs often find themselves moving away from the sector over time. Then again, it could be a lack of interest in showcasing their other skills and talents in Web3 that lead them beyond being pigeonholed into tattoo NFTs.
One tattoo artist that fits this bill is Snuffy. When the renowned New York-based tattoo artist Snuffy first entered the NFT space, he took a somewhat similar path to Rozen. With his first few releases, he offered collectors the ability to redeem their NFTs for physical tattoos. Yet he soon realized that the potential of NFTs, for him, didn’t lie solely in tattooing.
“If I make a piece of art and you hang it on your wall, that piece of art can go and be sold for $10 million. I can charge a much higher price for that piece of art vs. art I put on your skin. Because when I put it on your skin, it’s not a commodity,” Snuffy said in an interview with nft now. “NFTs have turned my tattoos into a commodity. Whereas before it was a commodity only for the owner of the tattoo.”
Leaning into this commodified blueprint, Snuffy went on to transform the first 555 tattoos he ever completed into an NFT collection. But as his catalog grew, he stepped further away from the intersection of tattoos and NFTs, venturing into several blockchain and IRL exhibitions and installations that have helped present his works as the unique creations they are. While he is still known for his tattoo work, these days he is seen, in Web3, as more of an innovative fine artist than a tattoo NFT creator.
A selection of stencil’s from Snuffy’s 555 NFT release
As illustrated further by the endeavors of world-renowned tattoo artist Trudy Lines, NFTs are promising but still somewhat elusive to many. In Trudy’s case, the influential creator aimed to combine movement and computer coding together with ambient audio to generate NFTs in the form of smoke particle simulation. Her collection Movement of Mind felt like an extension of her creative prowess, but lacked the tattoo-leaning factor that many of her fans might’ve expected, which Trudy says was kind of the point.
“I didn’t want to have a tattoo design and just turn it into an NFT… I think some [tattoo artists] are probably money motivated. They think ‘oh, there’s money in NFTs — let me put a design on-chain and sell it to multiple people,’” Trudy said in an interview with nft now. “I personally don’t even want to relate my tattoo NFTs too much to tattooing. [With NFTs] I saw a window to have my art outside of the tattoo world.”
Trudy, Snuffy, and Rozen’s path into Web3 shows that while clout and experience as a tattoo artist can help kickstart an NFT career, they likely cannot help sustain it. For artists, it surely seems only natural to lean into what works best on a professional level. This is precisely why many tattoo artists, like Trudy, seek space to create unique and sometimes grandiose endeavors when entering the NFT space. But a focus on innovation isn’t the only thing that will help push the tattoo NFT sector forward.
The case for a more robust tattoo NFT ecosystem
For tattoo NFTs to become a more sustainable part of the NFT ecosystem, we would need to see a boost in both innovation and infrastructure. There needs to be more to tattoo NFTs than rare collection launches and infrequent collaborative drops. A central hub for this sector would undoubtedly benefit both the creators and the collectors interested in the intersection of tattoos and NFTs.
Currently, platforms like Ethernaal seem to be a promising first attempt at what tattoo NFT marketplaces could look like. With Ethernaal, artists can convert their designs and flash into NFTs without any technological know-how. Similar to other prominent marketplaces, minting is simple and accessible on this non-exclusive platform.
Aside from Ethernaal and Scab Shop, there aren’t many other promising platforms looking to push the boundaries of tattoo NFTs. Additionally. building a new one may not be easy, considering the colossal amount of planning and effort required from both creators and developers. Perhaps the difficult nature of this undertaking is one of the reasons why there’s a disproportionate focus on innovation as it pertains to building out the tattoo x NFT sector.
While innovation is undoubtedly a driving force in the NFT space, it seems to almost be harmful to tattoo NFTs. As previously mentioned, tattoo artists like Snuffy and Rozen have innovated in their own careers and moved away from the tattoo x NFT sector in search of new horizons. Even those coming into the NFT space with innovative ideas, like Trudy Lines, are leaving their identities as tattoo artists off-chain.
This is why, for the tattoo x NFT space to truly flourish, infrastructure and innovation must go hand in hand. Innovation would need to come from builders and developers in the form of infrastructure and ease of use, leaving room for artists to iterate down the line. Surely this is possible in Web3, but for now, we’ve yet to see it happen.
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Physical NFTs? One Potential Mainstream Use-Case Explained
Understandably, when most people think of NFTs, they do so under a primarily digital framework. That makes perfect sense. After all, the underlying technology that makes minting an NFT possible in the first place mostly exists as software — blockchain technology. But can NFTs be physical objects? The answer is yes.
Despite how the prevailing mainstream conversation around NFTs is continually misdirected toward “expensive monkey JPEGs,” there’s so much more possible with this technology than enabling the sales of digital images. And it all starts with how people have been minting NFTs tied to physical objects.
Why mint physical NFTs?
Minting a digital asset as an NFT comes with a broad range of benefits. For one, it’s a great way to ensure that something stays put online indefinitely, thanks to the way NFTs work. When an NFT is minted, its existence is effectively etched upon the respective blockchain that’s hosting it. And that NFT will remain in an inalterable state for an indefinite, if not endless, amount of time.
The same goes for records of its sales — or any transaction related to the NFT. These are also etched into the blockchain — marked down on a digital ledge for the rest of time. Thanks to these benefits, NFTs enable a greater degree of security and transparency in online — and at times offline — transactions.
These qualities of NFTs are precisely why use cases are extending far beyond the digital realm. So where exactly do NFTs fit IRL?
NFTs and the art industry
In the larger art industry, this technology can potentially prove to be a massive boon to all parties involved. One issue plaguing museums around the world is the issue of provenance, as reported on an October 2022 episode of Last Week Tonight. One particularly egregious example mentioned in the episode was an authentic Egyptian sarcophagus put on display at the Met. The problem? It was stolen during the 2011 Egyptian revolution — and purchased by the Met for a whopping $4 million despite lacking comprehensive certification for its authenticity and provenance.
With NFTs, considerable progress can be made in avoiding the possibility of bad actors fetching stolen goods via disreputable channels. Should someone with bad intentions try to nab an artifact or physical piece of art, all a prospective buyer has to do to ensure authenticity is to check its transaction history — provided of course that it was minted as an NFT beforehand.
NFTs are also a great way to ensure that high-value auctions for physical objects and artifacts go smoothly, since they can also function as a uniquely secure and irrefutable certificate of authenticity. Such was the case when several objects from the famed Apollo 11 mission were auctioned off for millions of dollars earlier in 2022. Without their NFT certificates of authenticity, that might have not even been possible, considering that the objects in question included a pen and a broken fuse switch.
A million-dollar pen. Source: Sotheby’s
In some cases, Web3 development firms like Americana have developed technologies to enable users to ‘mint’ virtually any physical as an NFT via what’s called a Universal NFTA Chip. With that, Americana has essentially opened up the NFT art landscape to artists who specialize in strictly physical mediums. Take the medium of sculpture, for example. Sure, you can mint a photo of a sculpture, but it isn’t the same as minting the sculpture itself. Which arguably, can only be fully appreciated in all its glory in person where it can be viewed freely from any angle.
The collectible market
NFT collections often drop with several thousand pieces of varying rarity, but some individuals in the NFT space have approached the purchase, sale, and trade of NFTs as something of a collectible affair. Several projects like NBA Top Shot have emerged with hopes of replicating the massive surge in popularity that physical collectibles enjoy.
But NFTs don’t need to serve as competitors to physical collectibles. Several firms, like Collect9, have also used NFTs as a way to digitize ownership of physical goods — particularly, collectible items. Sports trading cards often sell for millions of dollars on the open market, which gives owners the chance to further secure their potentially multi-million dollar assets with immutable records of ownership and possession. And that sounds like a proposition capable of benefitting all parties.
The concept of ownership has been a hot topic in Web3, to put it lightly. However, what makes the world of NFTs truly unique is the headway it’s made in enabling users to effectively and easily share ownership of a high-value item via the purchase of a fractional NFT. Through these types of NFTs, users can purchase a share or portion of a high-value NFT, instead of the whole thing. For NFTs as pricey as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, that makes all the difference. It also makes committing to these investments less risky.
Physical pieces of art or rare IRL collectibles continue to be expensive, so minting these items as NFTs can provide buyers with the same utility. Regardless of your feelings on Logan Paul, the YouTube mogul has shown to be cognizant of that possibility with the launch of his Liquid Marketplace. Through his platform, users can co-own a wide range of rare collectibles for prices that make more sense for their respective budgets.
The mundane is fair game
Although discussion so far has mostly remained contained to minting exclusive, high-value physical assets or items as NFTs, not all potential applications of NFTs in the physical world need to be that hyped. Potentially, NFTs could also enable all sorts of mundane — but important — utilities for people worldwide. For example, the Romanian government is considering the tokenization of government documents.
In June 2022, Romania’s National Institute for Research and Development In Informatics, in partnership with Elrond, announced that an institutional NFT marketplace was in the works for Romanian citizens. Through this marketplace, Romanian citizens would gain the ability to securely access, transfer, and store official documents on the blockchain as an NFT.
“NFTs represent the provenance of creation and ownership for digital assets,” said Elrond CEO Beniamin Mincu in an earlier interview with nft now. “Being recorded on a distributed public ledger, everything is transparent and traceable, thereby the sharing of data between government institutions can be enhanced, reducing bureaucracy and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government services.” A mundane application for sure, but one that’s sure to be felt by the 99 percent of people in the world without high-value items lying around the house waiting to be sold and minted as an NFT.
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Fashion Design and NFTs? A Guide to Help You Break Into Web3
Fashion is one of the purest forms of self-expression, acting as an integral touchpoint for social connection and communication. And as the divide between our real and virtual lives becomes increasingly blurred, consumers are now directing more focus toward digital appearance.
This trend has already started to play out in the gaming industry, where the lion’s share of the revenue is generated by selling in-game virtual cosmetic items and goods. Fortnite has sold billions of dollars in cosmetic avatar skins in the last year, pulling in more than $50 million on NFL partnership skins alone.
Fortnite
As we embark into the new age of Web3 and metaverse’s growth, our avatars’ digital fashion may become as important as how we dress our human bodies. Digital fashion NFTs will play a massive role in this transition.
This raises the need for an entry point that creators and digital fashion designers can use to navigate the world of digital fashion NFTs, and we’re here for it. We’ll cover the pros and cons of fashion NFTs, how and where to mint, pricing, community building, and much more. By the end, you should be equipped with everything you need to start your Web3 fashion journey.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
What is digital fashion?
Digital Fashion is the process of creating and wearing computer-generated garments, accessories, shoes, and other items that only exist within their digital environment. Unlike physical garments, which are designed and modeled using tools like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, digital fashion garments are created using 3D design software such as Clo3D, Blender, and Marvelous Designer.
Digital fashion can provide enormous benefits, and legacy fashion brands have begun to take notice. For example, Gucci released virtual sneakers. Nike filed patents for “CryptoKicks” and acquired RTFKT, and Megan Kaspar was styled in virtual Fendi for her Haute Living cover story. Still, even with this experimentation, very few companies have focused on the indie creator.
Credit: Haute Living
While the idea and use cases for digital fashion are still nascent, recent advancements in Web3 and NFTs have made it possible for digital fashion designers to launch digital fashion NFT collections directly to the blockchain.
What are digital fashion NFTs?
Digital fashion NFTs are digital garments minted to the blockchain as non-fungible tokens. Once minted, these garments can be bought, sold, and traded on the open marketplace.
The main principle of NFTs is ownership. The same way we own the dresses and t-shirts in our tangible closets, we can now fill our virtual closets with our favorite digital garments. And, of course, digital avatars can then wear these garments across many different environments, including games, metaverses, and communication applications.
Benefits of digital fashion NFTs for fashion designers
Creative freedom
Despite being the creative force behind many of the traditional fashion industry’s brightest trends, designers often face long hours and low pay. Even with the skill and drive needed to launch their own collections, most fashion designers are bogged down by the upfront cost required to bring their ideas to life. Between multiple rounds of sampling and high minimum order quantities (or the surcharges that come from not meeting them), releasing an initial collection can cost upwards of $10,000. This leaves much of the best talent either undiscovered or heavily filtered by the creative demands of a large corporation.
Digital fashion NFTs even the playing field, enabling the best talent to shine while requiring at a fraction of the upfront launch expenses. While physical garment creation comes with many production limitations and feasibility concerns, in digital fashion, practicality is an afterthought. Why wear a normal dress when you can wear a lava catsuit?
Sustainability
It’s safe to say that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Fast fashion releases more annual carbon emissions than international aviation and maritime shipping combined, and textile dyes rank as the world’s second-largest water polluter. Meanwhile, the production of digital apparel requires no manufacturing, packaging, or delivery vehicles, thereby emitting 97 percent less CO2 than the production of a physical garment and, on average, saving 3,330 liters of water per item.
Additionally, digital fashion lends itself to a shorter, less wasteful product development process with little to no sampling needed. This leads to better-informed buys and fewer markdowns.
Of course, digital fashion isn’t ready to overtake traditional fashion, and likely never will be. After all, we’ll always need physical clothing in our closets. 3D digital modeling enables the creation of more realistic digital samples, which will still positively impact the industry, regardless of whether the final garments are ever minted to the blockchain. While NFTs carry their own environmental consequences for climate-concerned fashion designers, digital fashion is a step in the right direction.
Phygital
Designers with physical and digital design talent can experiment with Phyigtal collections, which blend IRL experiences with digital elements. This is already popping up at fashion shows and through the introduction of augmented and virtual reality fitting rooms.
Financial benefits
In addition to increased profitability due to low manufacturing and labor costs, NFTs provide an economic model that the legacy fashion industry has never seen. For the first time, designers can benefit from the secondary royalty structures programmed into smart contracts. With the rise of secondhand fashion, this trend will likely carry over to the digital world, delivering value back to the designer each time a garment changes hands.
But the impact of benefits reaches beyond the designers. Digital material designers can also earn more by selling their patterns as NFTs. With the use of proper token standards, NFTs can be composable and modular in nature, allowing material designers to earn a royalty each time their pattern is commercially used in a master garment.
Drawbacks, and the limits of ‘digital dressing’
The biggest drawback of digital fashion is also its most significant advantage: It’s so damn early. The digital fashion community is tiny, and the consumer market is even smaller. Even within the Web3 space, digital fashion has yet to gain the serious recognition it deserves. While this allows rising creators to be big fish in a small pond, it can also hamper their earning potential.
Much of the apprehension is currently directed toward the limitations around the utility and functionality of digital garments. The most used technology around digital fashion is digital dressing, or the rendering of digital garments on real people through photoshop or augmented reality filters. Through platforms like DressX, consumers can purchase digital fashion assets and submit a photo of themselves for “virtual try-ons.” These photos can then be used as flashy Instagram posts or profile pictures, or simply a digital mode of self-expression. Outside of digital dressing, fashion NFTs are mostly viewed as collectibles, with utility expected down the line.
credit: DressX
The industry is severely constrained by technical bottlenecks preventing garment owners from wearing their gear across different digital environments. Until interoperability and further advancements in augmented reality are achieved, digital fashion will remain siloed and purely style-based.
Deciding what blockchain to mint on
There are several factors to consider before deciding which blockchain you’ll use to mint. These include network size, creator costs, consumer spending habits, security, and community input. Most digital fashion designers choose between Ethereum and Polygon. But some decide to experiment with both, so let’s break them down further.
Ethereum
Ethereum is the primary blockchain of the Web3 and NFT ecosystem. It’s the most popular, secure, and expensive to interact with. Users must pay a gas fee to execute any on-chain Ethereum transactions, like minting, buying NFTs, or accepting offers. The price of these fees depends on the number of people using the network, which has significantly grown. Despite being more expensive for both you and your consumer, Ethereum provides access to the largest audience and is compatible with all NFT marketplaces, whereas Polygon is not. It also allows for multiple sale formats, including fixed price and auction listings.
credit: followchain
Polygon
Polygon is a protocol designed to help Ethereum scale through the use of sidechains, or subsidiary blockchains, tied to a two-way peg. Sidechains allow for much faster and cheaper transactions, which is why Polygon has emerged as a fan favorite for decentralized finance transactions and other Web3 activity. However, Polygon is typically used by more experienced Web3 users and can be fairly confusing to beginners. People already have a tough time figuring out Ethereum, so your audience size shrinks when you throw a new protocol and a few extra steps into the mix. Polygon does not offer auctions, but if you’re tight on funds, mass minting NFTs with Polygon and selling them for a fixed low price may be your best option.
Bottom Line: Given the size of the digital fashion market, designers should optimize for accessibility, audience size, and ease of purchase. Gas fees aside, Ethereum is the largest and most secure network making it the best blockchain for digital fashion creators to use. While we wouldn’t recommend listing the same garment on both blockchains, there is certainly no harm in minting different work on each.
How to mint an NFT: Platforms and fee structures
With dozens of new NFT marketplace options popping up daily, deciding where to mint can be challenging. While most creators will list on multiple platforms to maximize their reach, each platform comes with its own considerations and risks around audience size, royalty structure, and copyright authority. One thing is certain regardless of where you choose to mint: you must have a MetaMask wallet loaded up with Ethereum to cover minting costs and gas fees.
So let’s break down marketplaces into two categories: General and Fashion-Specific.
General marketplaces
Between OpenSea, LooksRare, Rarible, SuperRare, and countless others, the NFT marketplace landscape is rather fragmented. While OpenSea still reigns king, as far as users and network effects go, each marketplace comes with it’s own pros and cons around listing styles and fees, royalties, and general user experience, all of which are covered in our simple guide to NFT marketplaces.
Fashion-specific marketplaces
DIGITALAX is by far the most robust and powerful digital fashion ecosystem to date, with a community of designers, developers, modders, gamers, and crypto enthusiasts determined to advance the future of Web3 fashion. A pioneer of fractional garment ownership, the DIGITALAX marketplace allows indie garment and material designers to sell their work and even stake it for DeFi yield. It’s also home to the Global Designer Network, the first on-chain, digital, and physical web3 fashion designer DAO hosted entirely on the Polygon network.
As of February 2022, all content released on the DIGITALAX marketplace must be Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which means creators must waive any copyright protection and agree to have their work live completely free in the public domain for use, reuse, or adaptation. While it’s not uncommon for NFT projects to be CC0, this is the first time a platform has made it mandatory.
Although initially met with some skepticism from designers, Founder Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee strongly believes that this is the only path forward for digital fashion: To grasp the significance of CC0 in both a web3 fashion, in addition to an open metaverse context, “we first have to ask ourselves where do success, prosperity and self-sovereignty come from in a decentralization of creative production setting,” said MacKinnon-Lee to nft now.
To MacKinnon-Lee, there are “four major areas where CC0 gives creators unparalleled strength:”
Creators require “abundant, diverse, and unlimited sources of creative material and inspiration,” said MacKinnon-Lee. “CC0 provides that far better than anything else can.”“Creators also need a reliable and fierce method of defense against the other players in the market that have accumulated a diverse concentration of power from malicious actions in the old economy over a period of decades and sometimes centuries,” added MacKinnon-Lee.
MacKinnon-Lee explained how CC0 reduces the power of people setting themselves up as robber barons in the market, cutting down on abuse in the system “by making it impossible for them to cut off access to content or to litigate creators into oblivion.”
It lowers the difficulty for new people to create something based on works creators have made, just like how open source software enabled a technological revolution, according to MacKinnon-Lee. This fosters a close-knit community creating reciprocal relationships of success.
“The value of this is substantially more than simply having a customer base or loose community, said MacKinnon-Lee. “Network effects from a wide-spanning mesh of interrelated creators and their success have the far-reaching capacity to generate economic returns orders of magnitude greater than embittered clinging to ever-shrinking territory by those who go at it alone ever could.”
“Finally, in a fully globally connected lightspeed communications medium, the ability to draw attention to your works and gain amplification through the quality and reach of your story is pervasively enhanced by CC0,” added MacKinnon-Lee.
Royalty:
The DIGITALAX Treasury takes a 15-percent cut of all primary marketplace sales, with a portion of this fee distributed back to the holders and liquidity providers of $MONA (DIGITALAX’s utility token), along with stakers of DIGITALAX’s Genesis NFT. The remaining 85 percent is split amongst the garment designers and material designers of the master garment.
Garment designers then receive 10 percent of all secondary royalties, with an additional 6 percent set aside for the DIGITALAX Treasury and additional token rewards for $MONA holders, liquidity providers, and NFT stakers. This leaves 84 percent of the sale price in the hands of the secondary seller.
Bottom Line: DIGITALAX is the most comprehensive Web3 fashion ecosystem, and provides indie creators with a suite of resources to bring their ideas to life. It’s hosted fully on Polygon, making it more affordable for creators and consumers, but it adds an additional layer of complexity. While CC0 is oft-considered a fundamental pillar of Web3 and the open metaverse, it’s sometimes counterintuitive for those looking to make a sustainable living off their work.
The Fabricant Studio
Powered by Fabricant, one of the leading digital fashion houses in the space, The Fabricant Studio recently pivoted toward creator empowerment. Still in early beta, The Fabricant Studio was designed to help anyone with limited design experience participate in the digital fashion economy. Fabricant plans to serve as a great entry point for beginning designers, allowing them to collaborate with top 3D artists and brands, using platform-exclusive digi-garment blanks, materials, and trims. Unlike the other options mentioned above, The Fabricant Studio will run on the Flow blockchain, enabling low gas fees and smooth transactions. All garments created in-studio can be used in environments like the Sandbox or AR filters. Similar to Rarible, Fabricant plans to be community-governed through its own DAO.
Royalties:
The Fabricant Studio royalties are split across all garment collaborators:
It’s important to note that a skilled designer will usually wear multiple hats as the sole garment creator and material creator, earning him or herself a larger percentage of the royalty. Similar to DIGITALAX, whose material library is open-sourced, The Fabricant Studio opens up the value chain for blank garment and digital material creators to sell their work for use by co-creators.
Bottom Line: While still closed to the general public, Fabricant Studio is positioned to be one of the largest digital fashion marketplaces in the industry, and will become a premier platform for the creation and distribution of fashion NFTs.
Artistant:
Artistant is a new marketplace specifically designed for wearable collectibles and digital fashion art. Similar to DressX, the platform places a consumer focus on digital dressing, allowing purchasers to submit artwork for a “virtual try-on” photo. Like Fabricant, Artistant offers downloaded blank digi-garments to use and modify for any project. There’s a minting fee, but no listing fee.
Royalties: The creator receives 85 percent of the primary sale, with the additional 15 percent going to Artistant. Creators do not currently receive secondary royalties, with 95 percent of the secondary sale price going to the seller and the remaining 5 percent back to the platform.
Bottom Line: Artistant is a new platform focused on onboarding designers into the digital fashion ecosystem, but it’s also still an early arrival to the space. The lack of secondary royalties hurts designers’ earning power.
Pricing a Digital Fashion NFT
While pricing your work is subjective and situational, most creators consider the following:
Exclusivity and ScarcityQuality and Brand AuthorityUtilityRoyalties
Exclusivity and Scarcity
Exclusivity and scarcity go hand in hand. Producing a limited amount of a garment, or limiting where and when a consumer can purchase one, often triggers an emotional response that drives up consumer demand and justifies the higher value. A 1/1 garment, compared to a mass-produced collection, will carry a different price tag.
Quality and Brand Affinity
You wouldn’t pay the same price for a cotton Gildan T-shirt for a satin Balenciaga Tee, right? The same applies to digital fashion. The time and complexity of the garment’s production justify its higher value.
Further, many consumers purchase clothing simply based on the brand name. Many well-known brands can often command the value of their brand equity alone. When starting out with little to no buzz around your work, it’s sometimes safer to set your price on the lower side. Let the quality speak for itself as you build your community of true fans.
Utility
As technology advances, the utility of digital fashion will be a strong selling point for consumers. The utility can come in the form of accessibility (owners of a digital t-shirt get access to IRL events or exclusive merch drops), wear-to-earn mechanics (get paid in exchange for wearing this garment while you game), or even by staking the garment NFT for DeFi yield. Even though much of this is still in its infancy, it’s the perfect time to begin thinking about how it plays into your overall price structure.
Royalties
With secondary royalties serving as the main revenue stream for many creators, it’s easy to get greedy and max out your royalty percentage. Even though 50% of each secondary sale sounds great, it’s important to consider how this impacts the market for your art. Many consumers, especially in these early stages, view NFTs as investment assets, speculating that the price will rise over time. A high royalty percentage means less potential profit for resellers. Too high of a secondary royalty may drive away initial purchasers, which is why most creators max out at 10% (The OpenSea maximum).
How to build a community for your NFT collection
A vibrant and enthusiastic community is at the forefront of any digital fashion collection. Building this community, however, is no easy task. The first step is creating a high-quality product, one that evokes emotion and feeling from those who collect and interact with it.
“You need to produce high-quality work for people who care and relate to your art,” said Kevin Tung, Indie Creative Director and Digital Fashion Designer. Try to build real friends that want to collect your work instead of making something you think will sell. More often than not, people want authenticity and a genuine connection to the artist.”
credit: Kevin Tung
Authenticity and genuine connection are key, especially in Web3, a land flush with cash grabs, scams, and get-rich-quick schemes. Not only do collectors want to feel connected to the brand, but they also want to be a part of it. Through DIGITALAX Designer Realms, indie creators are forming DAOs, individual marketplaces, and utility tokens around their labels, providing early collectors with governance power and skin in the game.
“Designer realms ensure that web3 fashion creators are truly and recursively self-sovereign. A realm provides guide rails, tooling, and infrastructure to make the promise of community activity around NFTs, and other decentralized assets real. It’s a direct way for a designer to go beyond a collection, gallery, or some other kind of ephemeral exhibit, and stake the abstract/virtual ground expanding around everything they do. These realms are topographical slices of the metaverse, interoperable by default, and relentlessly keeping with web3 principles across decentralization and open access.” – Emma Jane McKinnon, Founder DIGITALAX
With the introduction of Realms and other community-building tools, digital fashion designers can form a connection with faithful fans that no traditional fashion designer can compete with.
Conclusion
You should now have a solid foundation of knowledge as you begin your journey as an indie fashion creator. Remember, with digital fashion, the only limitation is your imagination. Inspiration can come from anywhere, so pay close attention to all of the fantastic artwork in the space listed on the NFT platforms mentioned above, and digital fashion retailers like DressX and The Dematerialised. Above all, the best thing to do as a beginner is to integrate yourself within the community through IRL and digital events. Communities like GDN or The Fabricant Studio are great places to start. If you can’t find one you like, create your own. Reach out to artists you admire. Seek out collaborations. Share your creations with the world, and most importantly, stay persistent and creative. Our digital closets need you.
The post Fashion Design and NFTs? A Guide to Help You Break Into Web3 appeared first on nft now.
Who Buys NFTs?
An NFT is indeed a unique token on a blockchain that cannot be replaced. NFTs could be drawings, music, photos, movies, or any sort of digital asset. Interestingly, NFTs could be used to indicate ownership like any unique object, such as a digital or physical deed. This means that tokens are transferable but not reproducible.
When non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were originally released to the public, only several people were aware of what they were, and even fewer were actively trading in these digital assets. NFTs are becoming more popular in a range of industries, and the number of individuals who buy NFTs is growing as well.
If you wish to learn more about NFTs before investing, you can do so at Enefty Gallery. We have a wealth of information regarding NFT development and trading that will help you in every way. Visit other entries in our highly informative and diversified blog for more information. Our goal is to build a global community of artists and collectors who can share ideas,..
How to sell your digital art as NFTs
You can turn your digital art into NFTs using a computer and a set of creative abilities. What are NFTs? Tokens using NFTs are non-fungible. […]
As the crypto industry matures, demand for talent becomes less market-dependent
As the all-time highs from the previous two-year bull market fade and a new bear market appears to be settling in, only talented individuals with strong convictions will be able to find the motivation to devote themselves full-time to Web3, blockchain, and crypto.
Many curious professionals with an interest in disruptive technology have flirted with the idea of working for startups in the space during the good years of a rising crypto market. Because there are a limited number of people with the experience required to navigate this fast-paced industry and willing to embark on a new project, the demand for talent usually outpaces the supply.
Bull markets attract talent and educate newcomers about what can be accomplished with this disruptive technology. Bear markets put even the most steadfast minds to the test, rewarding those who are patient enough to wait. As the industry expands over time, more talent will be required to fuel innovation.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if bear market vibes continue in 2023,” Raman Shalupau, founder of CryptoJobsList, a platform for Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrency job listings, said. If there are no further major collapses or regulatory surprises, we may be approaching a productivity plateau in terms of full-time opportunities in the industry. More clear business models, as well as a lot of investor money, are fueling a lot of land grab opportunities, all of which require human capital.”
While the crypto market continues to cool from all-time highs and projects tighten their budgets until the next bull cycle, finding a full-time job during a bear market does not appear as appealing and may be more difficult than during a bull market.
The current state of the crypto job market
The amount of hiring in the market can be used to gauge market sentiment.
According to CryptoJobsList data, the number of job listings and talent interested in the space has decreased by 30% to 40% when compared to the hiring frenzy at the peak of the previous bull market in February 2022.
“Hiring and talent demand have been leveling off in recent months.” Following hiring freezes and layoffs in May and June, we are seeing more companies deploying capital to hire for key positions,” Shalupau said. “As a result of some of the layoffs, we now have more talent with industry experience.”
Negative price activity has impacted demand. The abundance of talent currently looking for work can be beneficial in an innovative field like Web3. Because of the excess supply, new projects can hire qualified talent that would otherwise end up at a larger organization.
With new projects still figuring out their business models and inexperienced talent learning industry standards and best practices, it is reasonable to expect price activity and volatility to be reflected in the number of job listings.
“Typically, there is a period of uncertainty and caution that most companies exercise right after a 10% or more sell-off,” Shalupau explained. Of course, this is dependent on the nature of the business and how the treasury is managed, as many projects have allocated funds asymmetrically between fiat and stablecoins, volatile assets like Ether (and Bitcoin or risky yield farms in decentralized finance) (DeFi).
The uncertainty that comes with price volatility affects professionals’ willingness to invest their time and effort into a project. Having such a dynamic at work raises concerns among many professionals who believe that the downturn is a bad time to enter the industry. This is likely to have the greatest impact on professionals on the verge of making the full-time switch to cryptocurrency.
“Those who are still unsure whether they can make it in crypto full time get their doubts reaffirmed with the price drop and fear that follows,” Shalupau said. It may seem counterintuitive, but the reality is quite the opposite: a bear market is the best time to start working in crypto and looking for work.”
The previous cycle’s lessons
Projects tend to chase specific technical talent to add to their team at the top of each bull market, and high-level management positions such as chief technology officer are in high demand.
From 2016 to 2018, projects were required to hire Solidity developers just to launch an initial coin offering (ICO). The race then was to hire smart contract engineers to develop nonfungible token projects from 2021 to 2022.
Crypto salaries advertised in the crypto industry (United States)
As the demand for crypto jobs grew, salaries began to rise in lockstep. “However, I believe the main driver is the amount of VC money in the space, which is chasing a limited talent pool,” Shalupau explained. “Projects are going for talent with a strong technical background and desire to learn crypto, rather than talent with strong prior technical experience.”
Technical jobs, such as engineering for smart contract programming languages like Solidity and Rust, have grown the most, while job responsibilities have largely remained unchanged. However, given the number of new integrations that most projects must perform these days, the amount of work may have increased.
Projects developing a cryptocurrency wallet, an interchain bridge, analytical tools, or DeFi products such as a decentralized exchange are requesting multichain support from their engineering team. When developing a product, each piece of the puzzle has its own nuances and frequently necessitates a distinct approach.
Future cycles will be repeated and improved.
The cyclical job patterns observed at the end of the 2018 bull market and into the transition period of the following years are similar to the current job landscape observed in 2022 and what is expected to occur in the coming years.
With each cycle of the space, the crypto job market gradually consolidates a stable demand for talent independent of market price action.
“Because more projects are raising in USDC, equity, and token warrants, market swings don’t impact hiring plans as much as they used to in 2016-2019 when most raises were via ICO and in ETH,” Shalupau explained, adding, “Bear market purges all the short-term opportunistic companies, and leaves space for well-funded, serious businesses to continue hiring and building.”
Established projects can continue to hire during market downturns. Proper financing enables the formation of new teams and the utilization of various skill sets that promote growth.
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Why the US is one of the world’s most crypto-friendly nations
It may come as a surprise to some, but the US is undoubtedly one of the friendliest nations when it comes to crypto.
With the most Bitcoin and Ethereum nodes, it ranks first, and regulators are particularly interested in the topic. President Joe Biden’s administration published a number of federal reports in September that discussed possible regulations for cryptocurrencies in the next year.
Crypto adoption
In those papers, the Office of Science and Technology stated that it is the role of the government to “defend” people from the harmful effects of cryptocurrency-related pollution and climate change. America’s largest-ever investment in renewable energy, climate resilience, and greenhouse gas emission reduction is President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. A $370 billion incentive fund, including green energy tax credits, is set aside as part of the plan to encourage the widespread development of clean energy technology and advance the electrification of American society.
By enabling distributed energy resource coordination, the use of blockchain technology in power microgrids has the potential to support “the techno-socio-economic innovations for the restructuring of the sustainable energy supply chain.”
The most popular blockchain, Ethereum, recently underwent a transition to the more environmentally friendly proof-of-state (PoS) consensus process through its Merge event. The network now offers a tempting payout on staking, and the upgrade increased its viability, security, and took steps to increase its scalability.
According to a report released in September 2022 by the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute, Ethereum’s switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake has lowered the amount of electricity the network uses and its carbon footprint by more than 99.992%. This should assist the United States in achieving its climate targets, which are “a 50% to 52% decrease in GHG emissions by 2030, a carbon pollution-free power system by 2035, and a net-zero emissions economy no later than 2050,” according to the Office of Science and Technology.
Bitcoin adoption
Some of the biggest asset managers have entered the digital asset space as a result of the crypto market collapse, including MassMutual and BlackRock. Five years after its CEO Larry Fink referred to Bitcoin as a “index of money laundering,” BlackRock launched an investment trust that tracks the price of the cryptocurrency.
Asset management company KKR’s $491 billion Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II will be tokenized by digital asset developer Securitize Capital. And a brand-new cryptocurrency exchange called EDX Markets, which is scheduled to open in November, is being launched by Charles Schwab, Citadel, Fidelity Digital Assets, and others.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase declared in September that it will contribute financially to a lawsuit against the Treasury Department that contends it overstepped its authority by ruling against the Tornado Cash crypto mixing business.
The federal government is willing to create central bank digital money
In July 2022, the Office for Financial Research of the Treasury Department published a working paper that examined the potential effects of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the stability of the larger financial system. Two potential effects of a CBDC on financial stability were noted: “First, banks undergo fewer maturity transformations when depositors have access to CBDC, lessening their vulnerability to depositor runs. Second, by keeping an eye on how money enters CBDC, regulators are able to respond to stressful situations faster, which reduces the motivation for depositors and other short-term creditors to withdraw assets.”
In the meanwhile, stablecoins and a CBDC were examined for the Treasury Department’s September 2022 report “The Future of Money and Payments,” which noted there is a “natural use case” for a CBDC. In order to “create the future of money and payments,” “promote U.S. global financial leadership,” “advance financial inclusion and equity,” and “minimize risks,” the study takes these aspects into account.
NFTs on the Green side
In an interview with me, John Crain, co-founder and CEO of nonfungible token (NFT) platform SuperRare, elaborated on the effects of PoS, saying: “Artists have always been at the forefront of progressive causes, so proof-of-stake Ethereum is really a game changer in terms of solving for one of the biggest issues in NFT technology. […]
We believe this will benefit crypto art and anticipate it will only help the sector flourish. The revised PoS Ethereum mainnet will host one of the first viable NFT collections, according to ConsenSys, which was founded by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
Crypto used for illegal purposes
The alleged crimes concerned a former product manager at Coinbase, according to the Department of Justice, which reported in June 2022 that it had detained three persons in connection with the “first first cryptocurrency insider trading tips operation.”
To support its “efforts to combat the growing threat posed by the illicit use of digital assets to the American public,” the department published its “The Role of Law Enforcement in Detecting, Investigating, and Prosecuting Criminal Activity Related to Digital Assets” report in September 2022 and established a national Digital Asset Coordinator Network.
Attorney General Merrick Garland stated, “We must work in tandem with departments and agencies across government to prevent and disrupt the exploitation of these technologies to facilitate crime and undermine our national security as digital assets play a growing role in our global financial system.”
“Developments in digital assets have created a new landscape for criminals to exploit innovation to further significant criminal and national security threats domestically and abroad,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. He added: “Through the creation of the DAC Network, the Criminal Division and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team will continue to ensure that the Department and its prosecutors are best positioned to combat the ever-evolving criminal uses of digital asset technology.”
Regulatory Framework
The White House recently released a fact sheet outlining a regulatory framework for digital assets to protect consumers by “issuing guidance, increasing enforcement resources, and aggressively pursuing fraudulent actors.” This was done in accordance with Biden’s Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.
The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department also updated its guidance for the cryptocurrency sector on how individuals and organizations can continue to comply with its sanctions against Tornado Cash, the Ethereum privacy mixer that was blacklisted over claims that North Korean hackers used it to launder money. According to the government, individuals may apply for an OFAC license to remove funds related to Tornado Cash.
IMPT Token Presale
IMPT.io is a brand-new project focused on using blockchain technology to create a greener world, and it’s currently on pre-sale, having already raised over $1.8 million.
This blockchain-based ecosystem aims to transform the opaque carbon credit market by incentivizing individuals and companies to reduce CO2 emissions.
IMPT’s primary service is streamlining the process of obtaining and trading carbon credits, which play a fundamental role in the fight against climate change. These carbon credits are essentially contracts that allow the holder to emit a specific amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. Each carbon credit typically relates to one ton of carbon dioxide emissions.
Interestingly, these carbon credits can also be traded, with prices decided based on the laws of supply and demand. The whitepaper for this project can be consulted here.
IMPT raises over $1.8 million in the first few days of the presale
The presale for IMPT has started, and the project has already managed to successfully raise over $1.8 million. As the presale progresses, the price will steadily rise, meaning that the earliest buyers are the ones who will end with the best deal.
Right now, IMPT is in its first presale phase with IMPT tokens being sold for just $0.018. There are a total of 600,000,000 tokens (3 billion IMPT is the max supply) up for grabs during this round, with a further 660 million to be sold for $0.023 during round two, and another 540 million to be sold during the third and final presale phase for $0.0280.
The price will increase progressively throughout the presale, so the earliest purchasers will end up with the best value.
Related
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Tamadoge – Play to Earn Meme Coin
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Maximum Supply of 2 Bn, Token Burn
Now Listed on OKX, Bitmart, Uniswap
Upcoming Listings on LBank, MEXC
Maximum Supply of 2 Bn, Token Burn
Now Listed on OKX, Bitmart, Uniswap
Upcoming Listings on LBank, MEXC
Why Giveaways Pay Off
As the individuals believe in and realize the value of cryptocurrencies, they keep gaining worth. The greater the number of individuals who possess crypto, the more probable it is that it will be widely embraced and appreciated over time.
Cryptocurrency continues to grow appeal among individual traders, businesses, and even whole nations, according to CoinMarketCap. Giving out cryptocurrency for free has shown to be an effective marketing strategy for introducing digital assets to a larger audience as well as for launching new tokens.
Let us first take a look at what exactly are giveaways.
What are giveaways?
A giveaway is anything that is given away to the users, particularly as a gift or premium. For example, in the real world, it could be a small calculator given away with every new magazine membership, or a discussion game on a television or radio show wherein prizes are given out to the winners. In the case of the cryptocurrency world, cryptocurrency exchanges provide giveaway..