Roles & Rewards for Art in the age of DeFi & NFTs
Hey explorers of the Metaverse. We have the chance to witness the beginning of the DeFi Era, where we do not need to sign endless sheets of paper and bow down to banks just to be able to work. We can take it in our own hands to build our own incentivization structure and create our own success, and that is amazing.
This article presents the different Roles & Rewards that make sense in the Digital art world and Metaverse Era. It presents what motivates people, and might also help you decide what profile you personally fit in.
In simple terms, all work deserves to be rewarded. This article details:
- Roles: what type of work is needed in the Digital Art domain
- Rewards: What types of reward, new and old, exist for all this work
I will be using the example of our community project The Metaverse Exposition, world’s biggest NFT Exposition, in Augmented Reality in Paris at the Eiffel Tower, throughout the article to illustrate my points.
I) Roles
Here is the list of roles that I will be defining for the world of Digital Art:
- Artists
- Landlords
- Ambassadors
- Organizers
- Curators
- Investors
- Patrons
- Agents
- Collectors
- Fans
- Visual Techs
- Developers
Artists
Artists are of course the center of expositions. If their work is short of great, then there is no exposition to display.
In digital art expositions, you will find:
- 2D Digital artists: Painters, illustrators, drawers, anything in between
- 2D physical artists: It is now possible to display physical work in AR thanks to numerisation.
- 2D animators: Anime, animation, GIFs, you name it. 2D in movement.
- 3D Digital artists: Digital Sculptor, Character makers, object makers. One important type of 3D artist for the exposition is World Builder: people that make 3D environments.
- 3D physical artists: Physical sculptors, makers, etc. Numerisation is now as easy as having an iPhone 12 and its LiDAR.
- XR Artists: The most important type for AR events: artists that specialize in using the potential of eXtended Reality, and especially Augmented Reality.
Artists are looking for:
- Revenues: It’s hard to make a living being an artist. Most struggle, and will need cash on a regular basis to sustain themselves.
- Quality exposure: Making themselves famous is part of the work of the artist (unless s·he is working with an agent, more on that later). However, exposure has to be of quality (prospects for sales mainly), and does not replace revenues.
- Self-expression: The point of being an artist is to express something that they have in them. Some projects are going to interest them for this reason.
Depending on the current situation of the artist (part-time → full-time but struggling → starting to make it → famous), their interest in the different rewards types will be different.
Landlords
The Landlord is someone that has land that is relevant to the project. In our exposition this is OVRLands specifically on the Champs de Mars in Paris, but this can be digital space anywhere in the Metaverse. He·She invested in a piece of land with the intent of helping the world and making a profit while doing it.
Landlords are looking for:
- Passive income: This can be in the form of renting their hexes to display things. It can also be a cut of the NFT sales on the hexes, which have the advantage of potentially being very large.
- Land sales: The landlord might like to sell some of his lands for a profit. He has probably in mind a price for which he would like to start to sell. This price might change depending on what is happening in regards to the land situation.
- Property value increase: By proxy, anything that can potentially increase the land value is going to be interesting for the landlord: Proving that he chose a good location, use-case for AR on his land, anything that is making his particular property special, thus rare.
Ambassadors
Ambassadors are people that are convinced by the project, and love to tell everybody about it. The most effective ambassadors already have a platform, a community of people listening to them. This can be a YouTube channel, a follower base on social media, a very strong network, etc. They will usually have a specific audience type.
Organizers
The organizer helps with the general organization of the event. It is someone with good organizational skills, that is not afraid to sort things out in a giant Excel spreadsheet.
Curators
Curators are the good-taste champions of the exposition: They hunt, select, and contact the artists that are exposed. They decide what part of their work will be displayed, and how (with the collaboration of the artist of course). The Metaverse Exposition the is divided into Sections (ex. “A.b”), each curator having the responsibility of one section.
Curators can be anyone with good social and organizational skills, and a knowledge and taste of digital art. We are not necessarily talking about needing to schmooze with digital champagne glasses on a daily basis: If you are part of the digital world and have a good eye for things, that is what you need.
Curators are looking for:
- Revenues: Like everyone else of course. Curators are however less likely to do it on a full-time basis, and so their rapport to it will be different.
- Collection extension: You are not a curator if you do not like art. If you do, it is pretty likely that you will want to extend your collection. All kinds of deals are possible here with the artists.
- Network extension: A good curator is going to want to find new artists (finding the next Genesis piece?), and proxies to just that (Patrons, investors etc.).
- Collection sales: If it’s the right time, the curator will also like to send some of his·her pieces
Investors
Investors have the finger on the pulse of society and the future. Their role is to understand how people and things are, and how that might change in the future, to direct money to the most promising futures. Put simply, they help fund projects when money is needed.
They also have wealth, that came from one or several sources (high-paying job, real-estate, crypto gains etc.) that they want to invest to make it grow. They usually function by sector (they will invest in a narrow list of fields, because they need to understand them well), and by ticket (they will have a somewhat defined ticket size — the amount of money they usually invest — and ticket number — the total amount of investment they can make). All of the tickets they invested represent their portfolio of investment.
Investors are looking for:
- Return On Investment (ROI): There will have an equilibrium between risk (the likelihood of the project to succeed or not) and reward (how much their investment can be multiplied by).
- Project leaders: By proxy, they will be looking for great people, innovators, creators and leaders in particular, because these people tend to make projects with great ROIs
Patrons
Art Patrons are a specific type of investor. They invest specifically in artists, mostly by buying their pieces, and helping the artists financially. They will typically have a small number of artists they are invested and believe in.
Patrons are looking for:
- Opportunities for their artists : They are vested in the success of their artists, and believe in them, so will try to help.
- Great artists : Being exposed to great up-and-coming artists. Patrons are often submerged with demands from struggling artists.
Collectors · Fans· Visual Techs · Developers
[coming soon]
II) ETH & LANDS: Rewards
Art Rewards in the age of the Digital Economy are based on two founding blocks:
- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s): These are the proof of ownership of digital content. They can be bought, sold, exchanged on open markets like openSea.io.
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Decentralized finance allows us to make specific things with money without the need of an external force. For example: “You have the access to this NFT for a time period if you promise to give me this amount of money”: this is called lending, and can be done in a trustless manner (meaning there is no way for someone to not deliver on the promise) thanks to DeFi protocols.
Rewards will be explained layer-by-layer, in order for us to keep our sanity. It can get pretty complex, and a lot of aspects (DeFi in particular) are very new.
Most artists make the mistake of not wanting to share the sales they make. It’s their art after all! What they do not realize is that creation is only a part of Art. Getting it to be enjoyed by an audience is integral to “Art” a social construct. Art is subjective by essence, and value is derived from how many people it moves (in whatever way). Sharing profit makes sense in this space. In the physical Art space, it is usual to share 30 to 70% with intermediaries. This figure might go down in the digital space thanks to DeFi allowing for fewer intermediaries, but the goal is not to get to zero.
1 —Basic Exposure: Artists & Landlords
First, there is the artist: He has made a bunch of pieces, and needs a place to display them. That’s where the Landlord comes in: The landlord has an asset that has inherent visibility (in our case the OVRLand), and that is why he gets rewarded.
Incentivization solutions here are:
- Renting: The Landlord can rent the use of the space for a fixed price. Usually per unit of time (day, week, etc.).
- Commission: The landlord gets a cut for each sale made during the time of the exposition.
Or combination of the above. A smart-contract of renting or commission allows us to do that in a trustless manner (which is desirable, and the new standard in the age of DeFi). In our use case, Dreamkollab.com allows us to do that, and OVR will also before the end of the year.
2 — Making noise: Ambassadors & organizers, curators
Once the basic setup is in place, it is in the interest of both parties to give themselves more visibility.
They partner with people that have the right profile to help:
- Ambassadors: Neither the artist nor the investor have time on their hands, or access to large communities. That’s why Ambassadors are the perfect fit: they either have a community that listens to them or a lot of time to build one around the artist.
- Organizers: Once the initial traction is here, things get messy very quickly. That is why people with time and skills, organizers, will make sure that everything that should happen happens, and well.
- Curators: The visibility attracts a lot of artists, that are looking exactly for this. This is where curators come into play to find the best ones and manage the relationship with them.
Incentivization solutions here are:
- Payroll: Those are 3 profiles that need to spend a lot of time on the task. It often makes sense for them to be on payroll, if the project can afford it (see “making the future a reality”).
- Commission: Those profiles can be incentivized by commission, although the cut is generally smaller than for other profiles, and varies largely with the profile (for example, “does the Ambassador have 1M followers or not?”).
- Insider perks: Free NFT drops, exclusive access to NFT collectibles, discounts on NFTs or pre-auctions, access to AR/VR spaces and events are all perks that members of the team should expect.
3 — Making the future a reality: Investors, patrons
Most projects need help to really make it into the crowded space of Digital Art. This is when the now team of people reach out to investors to help realize their dreams.
Incentivization solutions here are:
- Commission: Offering a direct cut on sales is a straightforward solution, and is often done. The % will vary depending on the need for investment and the state of the project when the investor enters
- Secondary-market: Thanks to NFTs, it is now possible to buy & sell investing shares, as NFTs. Project can issue NFTs that represent their project, potentially linked to a smart contract to generate yield. More on that later.
- Insider perks: Here the perks will be centered on ROIs: pre-auctions, and exclusive access to art in particular. Some Flex perks, reserved for top investors, can also play a big role.
4 — Building the Metaverse: Developers & Visual Techs
A growing part of the community.
[coming soon]
5 — Bringing in the world: collectors & fans
The missing piece of the OVR ecosystem: Collectors flexing their NFTs.
[coming soon]
This article is in construction, but I feel it has already had enough content to be worth the read. Let me know on Twitter your comments & reactions, and what aspects I should detail more!
Have fun exploring the future,
Lester
