A Weekend with Gary

That's Mint Staffer Caitlin with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuck at the first-ever VeeCon, a NFT mega-conference/giant party/techie Mecca. The three-day conference was filled with presentations on web3, NFTs, and cryptocurrency by an assemblage of musicians, artists, filmmakers, and even a congressman.

Here are the No Fun Team's takeaways from the weekend:

1. Passion - people are super passionate about their NFTs. Regardless of which project (Doodles, World of Women, and of course VeeFriends) people showed up and represented their NFTs with costumes, merch, cheers, and bundles of energy toward their fellow NFT holders.

2. Variety - The Web3 space is vast and there are so many different ways to get involved from NFTs to DeFi and DAOs. I spoke to a person launching an NFT for his beauty salon, a panel that formed a DAO to buy an English soccer team, and a trademark firm that is working to stop IP infringement of NFTs. Pick an industry and in the next five years, it will have some sort of Web3 component to it.

3. Momentum - Despite a bear market, there is a feeling of inevitability and momentum moving toward Web3. People are as excited as ever about the space, and builders are heads down creating the next great innovation, tech startup, or cultural phenomenon. Those builders and early believers will be rewarded, but it won't be without hard work and dedication.

4. Together - The word "community" is thrown around a lot in the web3 space, but we experienced it firsthand this weekend. The energy and excitement to be together and connect with like-minded people was tangible, and it was incredibly fun. A community built online through web3 truly can translate into a powerful in-person community experience.

The 2022 State of Crypto Report is Here

For the first time ever, a State of Crypto Report was created. The 2022 State of Crypto Report, gives a tremendous amount of insight into the crypto industry and how its growth is affecting the NFT market. Here's what we found most interesting

Price-Innovation Cycle

The Price-Innovation Cycle, a term coined by the team that wrote the report, is a very good summation of the current web3 industry. For those that don't know, crypto has been around for a while (2009 to be exact). Since then, the industry has gone through three to four of these cycles. The cycle starts with low prices that drive new interest, which leads to new ideas and new projects that take the technology further and further.

Why is this important? The short answer is that it seems we are entering another one of these cycles. Crypto is trading at low prices and people are buying the dip. New NFT projects are making headlines, established brands are beginning to enter the space, and countries are even beginning to use crypto as their official currency.

Take Rate

Nowadays, creators rely on centralized platforms like YouTube, Meta, Spotify, or the Apple App Store to sell their creations to the masses. Unfortunately, these platforms take nearly all of their income. The specific term for this is take-rate. In short, take-rate is the reason why Meta, Twitter, and Google are so filthy rich. Decentralized web3 platforms such as OpenSea are changing all of this. We are going to see a major change in the e-commerce landscape as soon as creators realize that they can make substantially more on decentralized platforms.

I'd recommend checking out the report in its entirety. It's a quick read and is a great cross-section of the industry as a whole.

NFTs are Changing the Music Industry

Currently, web2 platforms like Spotify or Apple Music are the main way that people around the world listen to music. Subscribers pay anywhere from $5-$10 per month to access the service, and in return, gain access to the catalogs of nearly every artist on the planet. Spotify is making some changes to their platform to allow artists to utilize NFTs, which makes them the first music platform giant to make an adoption into the web3 space. The integration will allow artists to promote their NFTs.

How NFTs are Giving Artists New Avenues to Generate Revenue

Music NFTs are just like any other NFT. In this case, the file that is uploaded to the blockchain is just a music file. If a musician owns the copyright of their song or album, they can mint it on a platform like Zora, Catalog, Sound, or OpenSea.

How does this even work? And why would they do such a thing?

An artist could mint a project for a few reasons, here are a few:

• So it could be treated and valued as an art piece (1/1 editions).

  • Think about it like a special, unreleased album.

• To be a part of a collectible series. These can include perks and incentives for collectors.

  • An artist could release a numbered set of an album. With it, they could include tickets to live shows or other incentives.

• To be the centerpiece of an NFT project (specifically audiovisual ones).

At this point, music NFTs have a pretty small market. Artists primarily use web3 to build community with fans, especially superfans that want to get as close to the artist as they can. Tech-savvy artists also use web3 services to have more ownership of their projects and cut out the middlemen that take much of their profits. It's unlikely that web3 will completely unseat web2 platforms, but it's cool to see how creators are using the new space to better the overall fan experience and create new revenue opportunities for themselves.

Enlightenmint (get it..?!)

Crypto conference season has officially begun. A slew of interesting announcements were made on stage at conferences like VeeCon and Permissionless, but one that we at The Mint found most enlightening for NFT beginners is Coinbase’s integration of Ethereum Name Service (ENS) into their Coinbase Wallet.

ENS allows you to register an .eth address, just like a website has a .com address, so that instead of a string of letters and numbers to identify your crypto wallet you can use an .eth domain (even Jimmy Fallon uses a .eth). The public address to my NFT wallet is 0xcB1dAC0C1a5F87dc410a56F0F82E7E3A56bE1499, but it’s much easier to send an NFT to johntmeyer.eth.

Watch the Loom video below to learn how to register your own ENS domain!

Today’s newsletter was written by Austin and John.

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That concludes this week's version of The Mint! Thanks for reading, and make sure to share your freshly-minted knowledge with your friends and coworkers.