Nike Proves It Builds Differently With New Web3 Platform "Dot Swoosh"

Nike is quietly building an industry giant in plain sight.

This week, the iconic footwear brand announced the launch of a new platform, Dot Swoosh, to support its continued up-leveling in the digital and virtual space.

While web3 and NFTs have been slaughtered in the recent bear market, Nike has been steadily building and showing a long term conviction in the power of web3.

If we look back in history, Nike is always first when it comes to innovation. They led the charge with redefining athlete sponsorships back in the day, by not just using them as corporate sponsors, but by elevating them to god-like cultural figures. See: Michael Jordan.

Nike was also early in playing with having a simple web page. When other companies didn’t understand the new technology, Nike was playing with it. The same came be said with YouTube. When it was just considered a place to watch trivial cat videos, Nike dropped its athletes into the mix and created viral sensations that transformed how people thought about the platform and what it can do for a brand. See: Ronaldinho Crossbar Challenge and Kobe Jumps an Aston Martin.

Nike did stumble when the Amazon-ification of the world first rolled out, as they still leaned too heavily on traditional retail and distribution. However with the appointment of CEO John Donahoe, former CEO of PayPal, the company completed a full pivot to a digital offense and its direct to consumer business has started to really drive profits.

Maybe this led to Nike’s early bet on the metaverse.

With the splashy acquisition of RTFKT in 2021, Nike signaled belief in the emerging web3 space. A space that makes a natural fit for Nike with its easy analogs in digital and virtual fashion. They even filed all the right patents for creating virtual footwear, “Cryptokicks”, and entire platforms based around the buying and selling of virtual shoes and apparel.

A big issue at play here, is Nike now has a direct path to tap into the robust sneaker re-selling market. How it used to work was people would buy exclusive kicks from Nike, and then turn around and sell them for three, four, ten times more in high end sneaker shops or online. This is big business. And one that Nike can’t get its claws into. However in a world where every physical sneaker comes with a virtual “twin”, there will effectively be a receipt or proof of ownership for every pair of shoes you buy. Cutting out the cheap knockoff market and adding a layer of authenticity to re-selling.

Imagine if you had proof that you owned the first Air Jordan? Or Air Max 1? This kind of social proof, is exactly what the promise of NFTs is built on. People will find value in the virtual authentic sneakers, just the way they pay 10x for sneakers they never intend to wear, but hold onto for investment purposes. Before today, it was a black market. From today, we can see Nike is intending to build a platform and peer-to-peer marketplace where you can buy, sell and trade those virtual sneakers to others.

This has never been done, and it’s hard for the uninitiated to imagine. But it’s basically the fashion and physical goods equivalent of Steve Jobs pulling out an iPod and saying “music will never be the same.” Only in web3, there is this notion of creator royalties and smart contracts that truly have the potential to level the playing field. If Nike can continue to operate in an open source, web3 ethos, this could be a seriously game changing move.

It potentially gives an individual creator the ability to create a Nike shoe, and sell it for others to use across the metaverse, in popular video games, in Roblox, in Fortnite, in a million other games and services and avatars not invented yet. Nike has enable digital sneakers, digital products to go live and have ownership tying back to the individual creators. Not only Nike will benefit from this. In web3, because of the nature of the smart contracts, the financial incentives are spread out.

No longer will you just be a consumer of shoes or jerseys, you will now be a part owner. It’s like a mix of owning the product and a share of the company. It’s a new behavior that is still undefined, but what Nike is signaling and building is nothing short of revolutionary.

It’s like, if you used Amazon back in the day when it launched, and every time you bought something, you also earned a fractional share of Amazon stock. That’s the promise of web3’s mantra: Read. Write. Own.

And in Nike’s case, for fans of the brand, you might also say Read. Write. Own. Just Do It.

If you are interested in Nike, shoes, fashion, digital or simply the evolution of business, ignore this move at your own peril.

Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation and IKEA. You can check out his work on his website.

Spotify to Integrate NFTs

How do you onboard a billion users into web3?

That's the question every NFT startup is asking themselves every minute of the day.

And sure, perhaps one of those startups will crack the code or come up with the killer app that ushers the masses into web3. But a more likely scenario is already established giants entering the web3 game and offering their hundreds of millions of users an enhanced (and profitable) experience using NFT technology.

Imagine YouTube suddenly enabling NFTs and issuing some kind of token based on your lifetime viewing hours on the platform. Or imagine Facebook converting all of the times your content was liked and issues a similar token. Suddenly users will have thousands of dollars worth of NFTs just sitting there and waiting for them to convert. Perhaps the haters will still hate, but history shows that most people love free money. And that's what NFTs are turning out to be in a lot of cases.

Spotify is the latest web2 giant to throw its proverbial hat into the web3 game as they've announced that NFTs will be integrated into the platform. We have yet to see the details of how this will take shape. Will they let artists mint NFTs that lead to gated merch? Will artists be able to mint unheard tracks and demos as NFTs? Will every single track eventually be an NFT? We'll see in the coming months what they have in store for the platform.

The interesting thing I see with music NFTs is how they fundamentally change how musicians are compensated. With the actual smart contract of the NFT, royalties become fair and automated. A fixed, artist favorable percentage will flow back to the artist. This already is a huge course correction to an industry that has famously undercut the very people creating the value. However looking at how smart contracts can revolutionize the music industry gets even more intriguing.

In the past, musicians would collaborate with other musicians and enjoy a split in royalties. Or one artist would ghost write for another artist, and get a cut of the pie. What music NFTs offer, is the chance for this collaborative spirit to work at an unprecedented scale. Instead of artists needing to work with lawyers to broker royalty collaborations with other artists, the collaboration rights are already built into the smart contract of the NFT. This opens up a wild new way that collaborations could work.

With music NFTs, artists can sell their tracks, or samples, or stems, and their listeners will be able to collaborate with them and participate in a fair share of the profits. Imagine an artist minting a track as an NFT. Their fan buys it and has the rights to use it as the track on their TikTok video. As the video is played, it generates royalties that will be split between the artist and the fan. Imagine if the TikTok video goes viral and gets millions of views. Add this royalty multiplier to the NFT and the smart contract is rewarding the artist and the fan automatically. Now imagine an artist creates a hit song that thousands of fans use to create their own content. Suddenly the artist is getting a whole new stream of revenue from every fan who is creating content using the song. This model doesn't exist now, but is precisely what music NFTs can offer.

As Spotify enters the NFT space, they could be the ones to establish the ground rules on this new model. They could empower artists on their platform to mint songs as NFTs and earn additional revenue beyond their streaming money (which has been much maligned). By adding a new way for artists to make money from their music, they could incentivize artists to stick with the streaming service as they pivot meaningfully into the NFT space. This would be the equivalent of Netflix pivoting from DVD sales into the streaming game. This could be the first meaningful web2 to web3 transformation. And with the pivot, 400 million Spotify users could turn into newly minted NFT users overnight.

Of course, YouTube or Facebook could also make the pivot to web3 and bringing their billions of users along for the ride. At some point, they will all make the switch. Maybe at first in a small, experimental way. Or maybe they will boldly go all in with a splashy token airdrop that announces their pivot and rewards all the NFT naysayers with fat stacks as a balm for their potential hate. Once people see how NFTs don't really change things, and that they only empower people to profit from doing what they are already doing, the tides of sentiment will change on NFTs and we will officially enter the widespread adoption of web3.

And once we go full web3, we will never go back to an era where we didn't own our content and where we didn't have the opportunity to be co-owners of artists content. We are about to enter the era of artist to fan mass collaborations. We don't know what this will mean, but the possibilities are fascinating.

ApeCoin Marks The Start of NFT Execution Season

Roadmap season has officially ended.

With the launch of the Bored Apes Yacht Club affiliated coin token, ApeCoin, we are officially moving into the next phase of our shared NFT journey. Trading on the meteoric success of their illustrated profile pictures of apes, Yuga Labs is looking to build out the business. With their recent acquisition of Larva Labs and the Cryptopunks franchise, they are clearly looking to become the Amazon of NFTs.

The ApeCoin will trade on all major crypto exchanges tomorrow, which marks the first mainstream NFT project to launch their own coin. Smaller projects and artists have launched social tokens before, but this is the most famous project in the space making a big bet.

Details around the utility of the coin are vague, but the creators and holding company have gone out of their way to emphasize a community centric distribution. Previous holders are rewarded with tokens. As is an independently formed DAO. As is a flow of profits going to the Jane Goodall foundation.

There are promises of utility and ability to spend and earn ApeCoins in an upcoming suite of currently in development games. On paper it seems roughly to be aping a similar model as trailblazing play-to-earn darling, Axie Infinity. What the Ape themed games are, remains to be seen as there have been no leaks at this time.

The launch of an entire financial ecosystem is a big play. It's the first tangible round of infrastructure utility from the NFT superstar. For a year now, Bored Apes have dominated headlines and become a poster child for the NFT space with outlandish sales prices and a continuous string of celebrities aping into the project. Holding a Bored Ape has become the ultimate status symbol of web3. It either denotes you were crazy early into the space and were able to mint them at around .08 ETH. Or it signifies that you can afford the seven digit asking prices. Either way, Bored Apes took the momentum of Cryptopunks and came out of nowhere to become the bluest of chip projects.

Now the metaverse will watch and partake of the token era of Bored Apes. No doubt there will be an immediate spike as the ApeCoin represents the first widespread entry point into the Ape-verse. The fate of the ApeCoin will be decided by the quality and breadth of the ecosystem Yuga Labs is able to build out. If the upcoming games prove to be on the level of adoption and financial appeal of an Axie Infinity, the ApeCoin will no doubt continue to see a value boost. Within the ecosystem they can also offer tangible benefits like being able to buy gated merchandise with only ApeCoins. Or having future Bored Apes booster NFTs or airdrops exclusively set aside for hoarders of the ApeCoin.

Other projects will be watching what Yuga Labs does here. Will NFT projects launching their own coins simply be a repeat of the ICO bubble of a few years ago? Will be become oversaturated with derivative token projects now? Of course it's possible that meaningful projects, with passionate communities will be able to support their own distinct coins. Imagine traditional companies eventually offering their own tokens that act as loyalty programs. Imagine Nike or Starbucks giving you tokens for every purchase and letting you spend those tokens on exclusive, gated products and benefits. It's like a mailing list and rewards program on steroids. Marketers are going to go wild for this. And if these programs and implemented so that actually value and desired access are set as the rewards, it will create a win-win for brands and their customers.

The power of the blockchain is that it is transparent and trackable. Brands will be able to reward exactly those who are most invested in their communities. No more blind mailers. No more wasted resources. If a wallet holds your project, you can reward that wallet. This maximizes the value for both sides.

So check those exchanges tomorrow and see how the ApeCoin fares on it's initial offering. Tomorrow it will be traded on hype and speculation. The future value of the ApeCoin will come down to the execution and value that Yuga Labs is able to build into their ecosystem. Will this be a novelty in the history of NFTs? Or is it an important inflection point that will determine which of these blue chip projects has the business model and demand to still be around and vital in ten years?

Branding 3.0

In my career in advertising, I remember encouraging brands to take a look at YouTube when it just launched. They laughed at me. I didn't understand media, they said. It was small time, they chided. TV was king, they assured me. I took my lumps and dug deeper into offering them more "traditional" campaigns.

It didn't take long for the early "virality" of YouTube to spin its way into the consciousness of brand managers. Suddenly I started getting briefs to "make a viral video." Oh, the clients loved this. They'd see a group of no name kids who kicked a football against the cross bar, and suddenly they'd "re-imagine" the idea with famous global football stars. Narrative was dead they said. YouTube was all about the quick, magical stunt. Kobe Bryant jumping over a car. Wayne Rooney hitting targets with the ball. The only goal of YouTube was to game the system and make a video that got passed around.

This is the phase we are at with the emerging web3 and NFT scene. Brand managers are looking for 24-hour derivative turn arounds that result in pfp projects and virtual beer/deodorant/pizza. I get it. It's intoxicating to join the hot, new conversation that your audience is aware of. Just like it was exciting to "make virals" back in the day for YouTube. But savvy brand marketers will realize that behaviors and possibilities are changing radically. It's a fundamental shift. It has implications for your business, not just for making a cheap "WAGMI" joke on a Tuesday afternoon.

Eventually, YouTube didn't go away. It grew into THE platform for digital video. People flocked to YouTube for everything. To learn things. To relive their childhood culture. To laugh. To sing. To feel. YouTube ate all of digital video. It was no longer about being "viral" or trying to capture or fake some unbelievable stunt. YouTube just became a platform to tell stories and give information on. Eventually all the marketing budgets starting pumping into YouTube as the place to get your TV ads seen. Showing up early on YouTube, this didn't come as a surprise. It was easy to see that what YouTube was on launch, wasn't what it was going to always be. It ushered in a new fundamental form of online behavior. Suddenly video was king. And it hasn't gone away since then.

This is where we are at in web3 and NFTs in March, 2022.

Brand managers are looking to make "viral" projects. They are thinking about the next two weeks, and that's it. What they are failing to realize, is that NFTs, and the underlying technology, is doing what YouTube once did to online behavior. NFTs let you own your presence on the web. No more like buttons. No more hearts feeding straight into a marketing algorithm that prints money for their holding companies.

For the first time, users, individuals and people matter.

That's what NFTs represent.

You have to look past the headlines and the easy memes about bad drawings or right-click-and-save crusaders. This is just the first volley. This is "everything has to be a viral video" phase. No. This is just the first chapter. It's the early innovators playing around and casually defining one form or use case. From here, the pie gets bigger. From here, behavior gets normalized. From here, the jargon goes away and "digital ownership" starts to become tangible.

People in charge of brands need to realize that the digital world is evolving. It's not just a passing lightweight meme. The fundamentals are changing. The visionary and the first movers will catch this early, and they will start building out their actual business models to fit into the evolution of our digital lives.

That's exactly what Michael Jordan and his son are doing with HEIR. They have founded a web3 and digital culture company that will bring elite athletes and their fans closer together. This is an actual business. This is not a weekend project. HEIR will use Jordan's legacy as a centerpiece, and then build their business around this generation's co-signed athletes to offer digital products (NFTs), access and physical merchandise. To align with this, they have filed a series of relevant patents to stake their claim to the space strategically. Nike has done the same thing. The smart businesses are not just going for the one-off campaign or cash grab. They are adapting their business to where digital behavior and commerce are leading us.

It's easy to be a hater. It's easy to look at the stupid, amateurish videos that first came out on YouTube and dismiss the entire platform. How is it premium? How can it compete with TV advertising? But for those who look deeper and consider the operation and potential in emerging technologies, they give themselves a chance to see a longer runway. And those who get their first and create a tangible impact early, will be able to define the space and position themselves and their companies as first movers. This in itself is a branding win. The Nike's of the world are consistently early to emerging technology and it has helped them to control and distribute their message, brand and products consistently with where culture is gathering.

If you're spinning your wheels trying to come up with the perfect blockchain pun to post on Twitter, you're probably not gonna make it.

So keep your antenna up as these evolutions in technology speed up. If you pay attention enough, see what is being done, you'll start to see gaps where you can do something differently. That's where the wins for a brand lie. And unlike media only innovations, the emergence of the blockchain brings together media and business possibilities.

If you haven't realized, every brand is a tech brand now. The winners will be the ones who opt in earliest.

Limewire: From mp3 Piracy to NFT Marketplace

Millennial music pirating darling Limewire sprang back into headlines this week after decades of dust and silence. The once foundational music piracy service, was buried in lawsuits and eventually out-scaled by legitimate streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify.

However, as we've seen, companies and IPs can undergo radical transformations and reimaginings in the web3 era. And so, next up is Limewire, who according to new management is fully pivoting into music NFTs. While there have been a host of web3 native music NFT platforms coming into the limelight, none of them have yet to reach a widespread adoption or traction. Could a former major player have the brand recognition needed to jump start the official beginnings of the web3 music revolution? It's only a matter of time until someone gets a critical mass of artists on board, sorts out the smart contracts and begins allowing artists and listeners to participate in the growth and profits of musical acts.

In their initial volley, Limewire is looking to launch with artists unreleased, live and bonus tracks. Effectively giving artists an easy route into NFTs, by only requiring them to test out the platform with their forgotten or cast aside tracks. If the traction gains momentum, you could imagine artists starting to launch new albums onto the service and finding out what the financial and fan reach rewards might be. Musicians, long unfairly squeezed for mere pennies per stream on Apple and Spotify, represent a key demographic to demonstrate the freeing powers of digital ownership. And abstract concept that needs its Robin Hood moment. If a struggling musician or group of musicians could come out and declare that they have become profitable off of their music NFTs, that could create a watershed moment similar to how struggling visual artists have found success in the initial phase of jpeg based NFTs.

Expanding into music, would also allow NFTs and web3 in general to prove that an "NFT" is really just a bit of coding, with the power to raise any sort of digital content. This isn't about the shoddily illustrated animals that have dominated early NFT branding. NFTs are simply like "html" or "http", they are a protocol, like web pages that can be applied in infinite ways. To say that you "don't like NFTs" is like saying you "don't like websites." Do you not like all websites? Do you not like the internet? NFTs, like webpages or the internet are not one thing. They are simply the underpinnings that allow for passage of digital ownership. I feel like once music NFTs rise into public awareness, the depth to which people understand the emerging technology will grow. This is simply the evolution of the internet and a new frontier of what is possible with digital behavior.

When you "buy" an NFT, you are not "buying an NFT." That's like saying you "bought a receipt" when you bought a piece of art or a book. The NFT is simply the record of the transaction. There is nothing inherently valuable in that. It's just the record of who paid what for what asset. The record of ownership, combined with the digital asset is what gives NFTs their power and value.

In the future with music NFTs, you could imagine it working like this. Say an unheard of artist released an album on a music NFT platform like Limewire. Fans would be able to buy a share of the album or an individual track. From here, fans would then be able to "stake" their album and generate passive income every time the album or tracks were streamed. The artist themselves would generate the highest percent of income every time the track was streamed. If the artist happened to blow up and get millions of streams, the early owners of the music NFT would see their investment rise. The initial NFTs would be more valuable based on the popularity that the artist gained. If the artist didn't blow up, there would still be proportionate profits based on the size of their fan community.

Imagine an already established artist like Kanye West dropped a music NFT. Let's say Donda 3 was dropped onto Limewire. It would be like any high profile NFT drop, and there would be a massive queue of people trying get get one of the limited edition NFTs, that would allow them to earn profits based on the crazy amount of streams they imagine Donda 3 will receive. With the staking of music NFTs, the longer you stake, the more you stand to gain. So if you consistently buy blue chip artists on their release, you will create a steady stream of income based on the number of streams they get. Currently, all of that action is going back to Apple Music and Spotify. The artists, unless they have separate deals directly with the streaming services, get mere fractions of pennies per stream. It can not support their careers. Web3 stands to use smart contracts to guarantee sizable profits go back to the creators of content. Whether they be visual, motion or music artists. Their name and contract is baked into the NFT, and every time someone interacts with or buys the NFT, the profits automatically go where they are deserved. No record labels. No middle managers stealing profits. It's all out in the open.

Record companies and streaming services could adapt to web3 and get in on the profits by creating their own native web3 music platforms. That way they would be able to offer distribution and a more fair deal to artists to stay involved in the process. Of course, artists like Kanye would be better served to create their own web3 music platforms, where they have the scale and power to recruit other acts, give them a fair deal, and get percentages of all of the action. Major athletes like Michael Jordan and LeBron James are already establishing their own web3 native brands, which will give them massive scale and influence in the space. All public creators need to be taking this seriously, as the earliest ones to get in will profit the most and dictate the ground rules of web3.

Limewire will be one of the first public tests of music NFTs. It will take a combination of major acts and independent artists to move the needle in this space. But due to the nature of smart contracts, a more profitable future is guaranteed to artists in web3. And the interesting addition is that early fans of artists, also stand to profit alongside the music they like. This is the nature of web3 and potential benefit of merely participating and engaging with the new era of digital culture.

NFT Branding: 101

The cat is out of the bag on the technical side of NFTs (or should I say Crypto-Kitty?) Every day, new services pop up that make it easy to drag, drop and mint your own NFTs. The barrier to entry to create your own digital items is low. And this has led to a flood of criticism that NFTs are a bubble. Who wants to buy all of this crap art?

But just because it's easy, doesn't mean it's easy to win in this space.

Take T-shirts. In the 1950s, if you wanted to sell t-shirts, you had to own or have connections to a factory that physically made them. Then there was shipping. Then there was distribution. Etc. Flash forward to 2022, and t-shirts have been "drag-and-droppified." Technology has eliminated the barrier and the middlemen. Does this mean that t-shirts are a bubble? Does this mean that people will no longer buy t-shirts just because now everyone can make them? No, they'll buy the shirts they want.

People buy t-shirts that fit their style, make them feel cool or fashionable or have some personal meaning to them. T-shirts are a form of self-expression. People will always need to express themselves and differentiate themselves from the people around them. Brands and creators that can use t-shirts as a vehicle to transport their own worldview and ethos, will sell. Generic knock offs., or random t's uploaded to Amazon will get ignored. As in all things; T-shirts to NFTs, it's survival of the coolest. Survival of who can create the most meaning and emotional connection.

NFTs aren't cheesy illustrations of animals. They are units of brand identity. They are signal boosters. Just because you can technically make an NFT, does not mean you're going to make it. The digital items that thrive are just like the t-shirts, lunch boxes, branded candy bars, hot sneakers and cool cars that people keep buying. The creators that imbue their NFTs with meaning and manage to mint culture, will make it. All others will fade away.

Maybe in 2017, the superstars who moved the needle in the space were the coders who technically enabled non-fungible tokens to be created. But in 2022 and beyond, the technical abilities have spread out and are no longer the differentiator. The value and importance of digital items will be in the hands of brands that can put their cultural cool into digital amber, preserving authentic meaning on the blockchain.

There will be low hanging fruit as always. A shallow, profit printing way to get involved at some layer. Think: world-beating IPs like the Disneys, the Marvels, and the imagery that you can put on a pair of underwear and socks and manage to sell out on autopilot.

There will be newcomers, like Bored Apes, who seemingly come out of nowhere, capture the cultural zeitgeist and manage to start up a legacy from ground zero.

There will be niches in every category you can imagine. Artists and musicians who connect with the heart and soul of their fans. This will create a symbiotic relationship where both sides will contribute and benefit from the increased exposure of the creators as they push further into culture.

Those who know branding, will win.

It could be personal brands, legacy brands or new cultural phenomenon brands.

But the ones who rest on their digital laurels at merely being able to technically show up at the NFT table, or who copy and paste derivative ideas onto the blockchain will be ignored. In our attention culture, we crave meaning, story and values. We look for things to cheer for. And we want easy ways to express our values. This is what branding is an onramp for. Without branding and meaning, NFTs are hollow vessels. A collection of directionless pixels taking up space on the vast sea of the distributed web.

Brands with sharp POVs and clearly communicated world views will have lasting power. Just because the medium of communication has changed, doesn't alter the basic rules of branding that have proved successful at each iteration of culture.

Brand your project or be forgotten.

Azuki NFT Releases First Fractionalized NFT

We have hit a wall with NFTs. The word is out. You either love or hate them. But whichever side you fall on, you feel like you know what they are about. And it's either for you or not. Of course those who are writing off NFTs already, are sounding a lot like the people who dismissed the Internet as a fad back in the 1990s.

Yet, even as a convert to NFTs and the potential of web3, I can understand where the hate is coming from. It's like when the Internet only had a few web pages and you had to get access by getting "minutes" on a physical CD. The infrastructure of web3 doesn't exist yet. It forces you to use all of your powers of imagination as to what the space could look like once that infrastructure is built out. Leaving value to the power of imagination alone looks an awful lot like speculation.

But I just ask myself a simple question: Will people's lives become more digital in the future? Or will people start abandoning technology. Will the Internet become the fad that it was predicted to be in the 1990s? If you think people's lives will be more digital than they are today, then that is a vote of confidence for web3.

But if web 3.0 is the destination for mainstream adoption, we will start needing more than imagination and speculation to get us there. This means we need innovation. We don't need cryptopunks version 47. We don't need 394 different flavors of monkeys. We need honest innovation that unlocks the next chapters of this story. We need NFT projects that make people go "oh, I never thought of that." We need NFT projects that move the needle and start filling in the wild imagination of early adopters.

This brings me to a new wave of NFT projects that are standing out. Projects like Azuki NFT, an anime inspired PFP project that comes with a blue chip pedigree and an ambitious roadmap to match. Azuki started out as a series of anime inspired characters and a promise for future metaverse integration. Its members have worked for Marvel and Disney before, and what they are looking to accomplish is directly related to that path. Instead of designing characters that raise the stock prices for Disney shareholders, these creators are looking to mint original IP that will fund their own vision that they will be able to control and profit for. No longer putting their hard labor in for the House of Mouse, they are out to make an impact for themselves. This is the promise of web3. Digital ownership that many can participate and profit in.

The Azuki NFTs quickly shot to the top of the NFT rankings and their floor price quickly vaulted out of reach for most. Which makes their recent offering intriguing. They have just "fractionalized" one of their IP's core characters, a bean farmer named Bobu, and offered those fractions at an affordable mint price for new members to join the community. There were 50,000 such fractions minted and they went fast.

Azuki is promising that the Bobu fractional NFTs will be an experiment in project governance. Effectively creating a DAO based around one of the characters in their world. It's like if JK Rowling suddenly decided that Hagrid was going to be owned by the fans and offered shares of ownership in the character. Holders of the fractional Bobu NFT will be able to vote in the community to help decide the direction of the character. The projects roadmap lists ambitions to create animations, games and even films around the Azuki universe, and Bobu's fate will be fan controlled. This is having a stake in the game. And as word of the project moves forward and sales of the fraction continue to rise, they will keep generating more funding that goes towards fulfilling their future ambitions. It's a brilliant marketing move that has brought more attention to the Azuki brand, and has also lived the spirit of web3 by giving those who missed the initial wave an affordable entry point into the project. It's a show of innovation that could be adopted by other out of reach NFT project like Bored Apes, should they look for ways to acquire new members in a future wave of the project.

It's still early innings for these projects, but every time one project decides to try something new, the whole space can learn and benefit from the attempt. And hopefully, we will see more of these properties taking risks and trying to add new innovations to what they are offering. One of these days, someone will add a new use case that will serve as the springboard to mass adoption of web3. We are still playing in tech savvy, early adopter spaces. But with every new attempt, the mainstream gets a little closer. Innovation is the only path toward opening the floodgates. Because everyone who already cares about NFTs is here and content. It's the 99% that need to get excited about this space, and so far, they haven't seen anything that gives them enough FOMO to join. Yet.

Shibuya NFT Creates Web3 Native Film Platform

Hollywood has long been looking for new ways to fund and market films. With the emergence of NFTs and web3, filmmakers and film producers have actively been searching for ways to harness the exponential fund-raising potential that the space has demonstrated. As out-of-nowhere, original IP like Bored Apes have vaulted into the spotlight, Hollywood has been left on the outside looking for where they can plug in their IP.

Yes, we have seen traditional IP money printing NFT launches around the typical tentpoles. Marvel and Star Wars minting one off collections for a limited number of fans. But these moves are a flash in the pan. Web3 has moved on from the quick flip, cash grab days, into having a large concentration of smart and creative people looking how to build out meaningful ecosystems within the space. With web3 native creative projects, it seems like eventually, the next Star Wars or the next Harry Potter could be spun out of passionate creative team delivering surprising characters and worlds to an adoring and high-spending audience that funds higher production ways to bring those creations into the world.

The latest web3 film attempt to step onto the stage is the Shibuya project by crypto-creators @pplpleasr1 and @maciej_kuciara. What they have brought to the table is a stylish website and the opening moments of an original animation that hearkens to the style of Japanese anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli. The website features a stunning and modern version of Tokyo's central hub, Shibuya, rendered in a metaverse friendly style that has all sorts of future leaning implications. The film, is an Alice and Wonderland style animation, which ends with a cliffhanger of Alice standing in front of two doors, left and right.

As you get into the project details, you see that you can mint a "Producer Pass" which acts as a governance token to the project's DAO. With the NFT, you can vote for which door Alice should open. It's like the interactive films that Netflix has been playing around with, only in this case, you vote with buying into the ecosystem. Once the votes have been cast, it will unlock Chapter 2 in the story, upon which a new round of Producer Passes will be minted and the process of deciding the main character's fate will be in the hands of the community again.

The project also has "White Rabbit Tokens" that will be generated based on how early users join the project. The earlier you get in, the more tokens you will accumulate. At the end of the film, the film itself will be fractionalized into an NFT, and all participants will be able to stake an ownership in the final film.

Hopping into the Discord and AMAs you find that there are plans of this being the first film in a web3 film platform, where original stories will be created, and then delivered "direct-to-community." It's like Netflix meets Patreon or other crowdfunding analogies from the web2 era.

Again, reverse engineer your favorite franchise, and you can start to see how a launchpad for characters and stories could escalate. Luke Skywalker could have been introduced this way. George Lucas could have presented the opening atmosphere of Star Wars and allowed fans to buy into it from the get go. Imagine owning an NFT minted in 1977 that represented a share of ownership in the character Darth Vader. The future is impossible to predict, but creative minds are actively looking how to scale their original stories and turbocharge their development and funding via the power of web3.

It's also possible that eventually Hollywood will see the profit potential in fans wanting to have some skin in the game of the franchises they love. What if instead of having an Ironman lunchbox, you could own a part of Ironman, and participate in the success and profits of the character moving forward. Suddenly we aren't talking about fleeting animal illustrations. We are talking about cultural forces opening up and rewarding fans' for their passion and promotion. Think of the money big studios could cut from their marketing budgets, if they just allowed an energized and invested audience to preach the good word and hype up the latest release. We are several steps from this point, but all signs and ingenuity are pointing this way.

Until then, check out the Shibuya project and see if the community will send Alice through the door on the left or right.

Michael Jordan Enters the Metaverse

Quickly and quietly, things are picking up with basketball legend Michael Jordan's involvement in the web3 space. There have been reports of the hoops icon meeting with multiple web3 and NFT companies over the past months, and now we are starting to see some of the fruits.

Jordan's company that he founded with his sons, HEIR Company, have minted their first NFTs on the Solana Network. The genesis collection is called 6 Rings and consists of 3D bulls with six rings displayed on their horns. The bulls come in various colors and finishes, set against a range of Chicago Bulls colored backgrounds. Each NFT comes with a unique code that the project's Discord community is frantically trying to decode like the DaVinci Code. The codes appear to be linked with the different years that Jordan played in the NBA, but no utility has been revealed.

The details are sparse, but HEIR is promising to create a new era of digital culture, that gives a platform to premium athletes, from high school to the pros, to interact with their fans on a more personal level. Buy in to get this exclusive access will come in the form of athlete NFTs. The 6 Rings collection is considered the "founder token" and will grant early access to subsequent offerings within the app. The app has not been released yet, nor have the roster of athletes been revealed.

Many athletes have jumped into the web3 and NFT space in various capacities. But no one has so far set up an entire company dedicated to the space. MJ and his team, led by his son, seem to looking to create a long turn, new value offer in the emerging web3 and metaverse. With the most iconic and successfully branded athlete of all time setting up the beginnings of a media empire, it's worth taking a look at.

Again, no utility or specifics have been offered at this time. The collection has just dropped and sold out, and there is already frenzied activity on the marketplace as pure speculation fuels the early interest. People are speculating which athletes will be involved, and if at some point there could be a crossover collaboration with Jordan Brand and an exclusive line of sneaker drops. Again, all speculation, but not entirely out of leftfield considering Michael Jordan himself is a part of the company and listed as a strategic advisor. With MJ's connections and clout, any premium collaboration or partnership could be expected in the future.

What gets me excited is the long term thinking. This isn't a one off PFP project, or a dashed off in a weekend project to rug a bunch of fans like we've seen other athletes hastily put together. And it makes sense that Jordan would not go that route. He is famously selective when it comes to where he will allow his image to be used. Not to mention his world-class business and branding acumen that have re-invented the rules in multiple industries on how to market products and services.

As a lifelong MJ junkie, this project is a no brainer. He has never been "just another athlete." He has been the standard bearer and trailblazer that has expertly created and grown every platform he has been involved with. He fueled the globalization and interest around basketball and turned the NBA into the world's second most popular sport after decades of the sport receiving almost second class pro citizenship. He turned Nike into something we'd never seen before with his mix of charisma and marketing savvy alongside the brand and its partners. That he would turn his attention to web3 is not surprising. The money and business opportunities are there. And knowing what a legendary competitor MJ is, you can imagine him sitting back, seeing what other athletes and celebs are doing in the space, and then setting out to blow them away with quality and innovation like we haven't seen before.

I expect MJ to play a role in raising the bar on what an NFT or web3 project can be. If he truly puts his focus on the space, I'm riding with him all the way. Time will tell. But if history is any indication, you don't bet against Michael Jordan once he sets his sights on something.

A DAO is Trying to Buy the Denver Broncos

As we rocket through 2022, the web3 and NFT space continues to evolve at warp speed.

Grabbing headlines today, is the latest DAO with an ambitious moon shot set out before it. The aptly titled, BuyTheBroncosDAO is attempting to do exactly what its name pitches, become the first DAO to buy a major sports franchise, in this case the NFL's Denver Broncos. The latest estimate on the value of the franchise is sitting at around 4 billion dollars.

BuyTheBroncosDAO is the latest in pithily titled and boundlessly ambitious DAOs set out to do something extraordinary and culture changing. Sports teams have famously been publicly owned before, like the Green Bay Packers, but this would mark the first time that a professional sports team went fully web3 native, should the DAO succeed in their mission.

Part of the DAO's team include former blue chip tech lawyers and entrepreneurs with solid looking track records. The team is doxxed and their reputations seem legit and built for a project along these lines. The team has also smartly wrangled some political players into the early PR for the project, with Colorado governor Jared Polis being quoted heavily by business blogs and coverage. Polis comes out entirely in favor of the DAO succeeding, which looks to serve his state's political agenda of becoming a crypto first state. This is PR where everyone can win.

While web3 famously generates insane amounts of capital, a funding aim of 4 billion dollars is still a highly ambitious target. This is acknowledged by the founders of the DAO, unlike previous DAOs which have set an all or nothing approach to their financial goals. The founders of BuyTheBroncosDAO have lower tiered contingency plans that include raising only a portion of the 4 billion dollar franchise valuation, and then partnering with traditional investors to round out the purchase. It appears they are willing to stick with the project while having a firm grounding in reality.

The founders have also undertook a bit of financial engineering, which has caused previous DAO attempts to stumble when it comes to regulation. Instead of creating a separate LLC business entity for the DAO, which would be subject to high taxation and regulation, the founders are looking to establish a co-operative, much like how the outdoor brand REI is structured. This would give governance to the members of the DAO, while avoiding the scrutiny of higher taxation and regulation. Again, it seems the project has their financial and legal ducks in a row as they head into their opening sales.

The project has a launch target set for early March, and are currently hitting the PR trail hard and trying to drum up support for the ambitious cause.

We are still so early in the history of web3 and DAOs specifically. We haven't even really stepped onto the ambitious roadmaps they have set out. Only time will tell if this is a feasible and revolutionary way to organize group efforts and funding. On paper, it is all very sexy and exciting. Of course, once the first DAO succeeds, and changes history, it will only accelerate the momentum of the movement to push the boundaries further.

I can't help but think this whole group financial thinking was triggered by the success of reddit's Wall Street Bets and their single minding mooning of the Game Stop stock. This episode proved that even the most money loaded institutions are actually vulnerable to collective passion and pooled resources. This is the promise of web3, NFTs and DAOs. Right now we are seeing a million archers pulling back their bows with hopes of revolution. With hopes of re-writing the tired stories of a world that has forever been dominated by the 1 percenters. If these bands of rebel archers can band together and focus their passion and resources, they have a chance to chip away at the control of the old world and old money.

This is an exciting promise.

This is what deciding to invest in something like BuyTheBroncosDAO represents. Before this time, there was never a chance for someone off the street, with no connections and no qualifications to be a part of bidding on a major sports franchise. If they succeed in achieving the impossible, what else previously considered untouchable will fall next?

Street Fashion in the Metaverse

Street fashion might not sound like a perfect analog for the NFT space, yet early on it's seeming like a match made in metaverse heaven.

Lately, Bobby Hundreds, owner of the street brand, The Hundreds, has become an NFT uber-evangelist on full blast across his social channels and podcasts. He's turned into this inspirational, almost Steve Jobs type figure, who has made it his mission to open up the NFT space and personally onboard as many people as possible.

Last year The Hunrdeds had their own NFT drop called the Adam Bomb Squad, consisting of illustrated bomb characters that have graced the brand's streetwear for decades. The founder of Hundreds ah-ha moment was when he realized they were sitting on this deep legacy of IP and a super passionate community: the two main drivers of a successful NFT project. After a few tests, The Adam Bomb Squad was a success. Selling out its first mint and now experiencing a healthy life cycle on the secondary market. This has only fueled Hundreds enthusiasm and conviction in the space. And like I said, he's bringing as many people with him as possible. Including all of his OG streetwear friends, which means street fashion could really be the next big thing to follow art into the metaverse.

Another early streetwear foray into the metaverse famously came from RTFKT and their fusing of meta-video game, hyper aesthetics to create a line of virtual sneakers and become the first famous metaverse fashion brand. Nike took note and acquired RTFKT just when their heat couldn't get any hotter.

Streetwear circles tend to be tight and insular, so it was no surprise, yet also a pleasant surprise, when RTFKT tapped streetwear legend Jeff Staple to bring his game-changing and iconic Pigeon Dunks into the metaverse. The alchemy of the old and new came together to create an instant classic. What must have first felt like an experimental lark for Staple, turned into his own ah-ha moment in the NFT space as he witnessed the awesome community embrace and power that comes when an authentic creator offers something meaningful and heartfelt in the space.

And so after the hype of the drop settled down, Staple is approaching the metaverse again, this time with his own solo NFT project.

Enter the Stapleverse.

A connected community universe built around Staple's iconic Pigeon brand. Here, hypebeasts will be able to mint "Feed" and later have the option to risk throwing their feed to turn it into either a "Pigeon" or "Poop." It's the kind of risk it all layer that we've seen implemented in a few NFT projects. Like the Bored Apes Serum, which takes away your original Ape forever and gives you a brand new Mutated Ape in return.

The website is slick. The passion and creativity leaps off the screen. The art for the first drop is perfectly executed by illustrator B. Thom Stevenson. This week, Chapter 1 dropped. It presents a series of graphics that represents the highs and lows of living in New York. As the project builds out, Staple envisions adding references to new cities around the world to the Stapleverse.

There is a roadmap for the Stapleverse, and it's already clear that Staple has the passion and energy to keep creating in the space. With a known, authentic creator behind the project, confidence rises that this will not be a rug pull. Staple has already been a part of NFT history and now is looking to build off his legacy in the space.

There is a strong psychological connection between hypebeast street culture and NFT culture. Both worlds center around literal "drops" of their products. In both space, catching wind of early hype is credibility and currency, as well as often the difference between those who ape in early and those who live with FOMO in perpetuity.

For those who need the right Nikes that no one else has, or the t-shirt that only came from one single shop, NFTs area a kindred spirit. For streetwear and NFTs are both markers of status. And as our lives turn increasingly digital, it figures that we will need more than just a follower count to signal our status and what we are into. Found out about Bored Apes before anyone else? Your Twitter profile will be the judge of that. Get in on the first Stapleverse drop? Just flash your wallet. From now on, your cool points will be stored on the blockchain, available for all to see and judge. It's Supreme drops, but for the web3 savvy.

You won't see the long mysterious lines of people with insane kicks in questionable New York or Tokyo alleys. Instead, these early streetwear adopters will be going on whitelist quests inside of Discord servers. All hell bent on finding out first, where the the latest cool is at.

Hipster Velociraptor NFTs

I’ve been studying and playing around with NFTs and web3 for a little while now, and now I’m ready to jump into the space as a creator. I just minted my first batch of Hipster Velociraptor NFTs over on OpenSea. You can check out the collection here.

Hipster Velociraptors are a PFP or “profile picture” project along the lines of Bored Apes and Cryptopunks. The latter have helped accelerate NFTs and crypto-art into the mainstream, as their art has sold for astronomical prices. Hipster Velociraptors are each crafted by hand on the computer. I put together the traits and accessories, and then mint each one into a unique and verifiable NFT.

While I am jumping into a newly established trend, Hipster Velociraptors are an original illustration project that I have been working on for years. I’ve struggled to find the right avenue to put them out into the world. And then I saw the emergence of NFTs and PFP art, and realized right away, that Hipster Velociraptors would work perfectly in that context.

Like all NFT and crypto-art projects recently, I do have a general “roadmap” in mind. While it hasn’t been finalized, some things I am thinking about include web comics, original content series, commissions and limited edition drops to holders. We are all so very early to this space, and the rules and best practices are literally being written every day.

Hipster Velociraptors will be my personal NFT studio to create and experiment with the form. As of this writing I have created and minted 7 unique Hipster Velociraptors. I plan to keep adding to this series. The hope is that over time, more collectors will come to discover the collection, and will be curious to look back and see what the original Hipster Velociraptors look like.

Watch this space for more updates on the project moving forward. If you are reading this, then you too, are very early.

Go pick up a Hipster Velociraptor of your own here!

Here Come BALLERZ NFTs

NFT mania is the trend that just can’t seem to go out of style. As we hold our breathes to see if they will go the way of fleeting cultural moments like Beanie Babies or Laserdisc, each day sees them setting new sales records and grabbing more splashy headlines across the internet. Some argue they are merely jpeg files that anyone could simply right click and save to their desktop, while others claim they are the units of a global (intergalactic?) revolution.

As I was exploring the space and falling down various Discord rabbit holes, I came across a quirky little project that caught my attention: BALLERZ NFT. Like many pfp (profile pic) project, they featured 8-bit characters in various iterations. In this case, all wearing basketball jerseys and gear. Digging around surfaced precious little information. There was a website, with a high level and vague “roadmap” promising future utility and hinting at a variety of potential developments from some type of basketball arcade game, to real world meetups and parties.

The hype in the project’s Discord server fanned the flames of early members’ imagination. There was the documented fact of several project investors, Mark Cuban and Roham Gharegozlou, as well as rumors that various celebrities such as Jay-Z had already minted their own BALLERZ NFTs. Needless to say, all the talk was intriguing, even if the future was uncertain.

Then there was the steady march and countdown to the pre-sale, for which only qualified “OG BALLERZ” from the early days of the Discord were invited to participate.

Intrigued, and given early access, I minted three BALLERZ and waited for the reveal event several days later. When I signed back into the site on the Gaia marketplace, I was greeted with the following squad:

After the reveal event, the community went nuts. Hackers and coders were pulling meta data of the BALLERZ and creating all sorts of assets, from old school style basketball cards, to digital magazine covers, to 8-bit inspired team logos. All the while, the number of Discord members grew, leading up to the official public sale several days later.

With hype in overdrive, the rest of the 10,000 generative BALLERZ sold out in less than three hours. The admin of the project confirmed that there would never be more minted. This was it. Which only served to drive more FOMO and tweet storms from thirsty would-be BALLERZ looking to grab a player for themselves.

In a few weeks, the public marketplace will official open. There is wild speculation about the floor price from .5 to 20 ETH as die hard holders of the NFTs claim they will never sell. Meanwhile, the community has taken to Twitter campaigns to put the 8-bit ballers everywhere. From NBA player shoes to getting their own sneaker deals for their characters to billboards in Miami and NYC.

There’s no telling what the next chapter will reveal, but for now, the sky is the limit for this league of non-fungible ballers.