The internet was supposed to be a level playing field where anyone could share their content and make a name for themselves. But in reality, the biggest and most significant social platforms have become dominated by a few large corporations, who reap the majority of the benefits.
The current state of the creator economy is one in which content creators are not paid fairly for their content. This is due, in part, to the challenges of these social media giants. That is why a new system must be implemented for it to boom.
We have seen the possibilities of blockchain and NFTs applications and how this technology empowers content creators in building better communities. Creator economy is one of the major verticals that is going to be the focus of NFTs in the coming year.
If you are a newcomer who wants to start your first NFT collection or to build your gated community and expect to know “how to make $100 in 5 minutes with NFTs” after reading this article, you need a reality check!
This is not how things work.
Cold truths are hard to swallow for a reason and who likes to be told that?!
But here are three truths that I want to share with you from my experience as a crypto project founder and user.
NFT Space is Full of Cash Grabs
First and foremost, it is crucial to learn the landscape of the cryptocurrency market for NFTs. There is a big distinction between the dream that we are all looking forward to: NFTs can become a good representation of ownership towards a community, an artist, and decentralization.
The reality right now is that NFT hype is being generated in a very short period of time. Sadly speaking, many projects are coming out for cash grab and causing the NFT community to become very transactional. Most people come to Discord to make money and often ask ‘wen listing’ and ‘wen moon ser’.
There are still ways to go before NFT can realize its full potential for creator adoption. More education and use cases are needed to drive the application.
Web3.0 Projects and Creator NFTs are Different
The fundamentals for Web3.0 projects and content creators are different when it comes to NFT applications. For Web3.0 projects, whether you are a P2E (play-to-earn) project or digital identity, usually they are seen as a brand or company producing products/services for their customers from scratch. That is a different angle of selling culture, products and brands. But a lot of creators out there, especially the ones still in Web2.0, already have their own community way before they start creating their NFTs. How are NFTs and Web3.0 helping them to strengthen and connect their audience and fans?
This leads to the key question for one to succeed — what utilities creators are actually providing and to whom?
We see a lot of creators tapping into this rising trend and creating NFTs to better serve and connect their existing community, such as Irene Zhao and Gary Vaynerchuk. Whether these use cases generated good and successful results in terms of popularity and resell value, they did great connecting their communities, giving direct access to the creator and offering exclusivity. At Only1, we are creating that unique linkage for content creators to engage their community.
We are Too Early for Mainstream Adoption
For Web3.0 social to take off, work and developments on infrastructure and user experience are much needed.
We have been onboarding creators from Web2.0 but the challenge we see and experience here is that more education and simplified procedures are needed. The team and I always have to explain everything from scratch, such as what blockchain is and how to make a transaction, when we talk to Web2.0 creators. This is certainly a challenge for both of us.
To facilitate mainstream adoption, we need to simplify the Web3.0 user experience by introducing more Web2.0 elements for users. For example, using Web2.0 application with email and password for account sign up and hash that into private keys which represent user’s account.
There are more uncomfortable truths about NFTs that I could talk about, but limit it to 3 for the time being because that is probably all any person could be expected to handle in one sitting.
If you are interested in knowing more about the untold truths about NFT and the creator economy, feel free to check out the panel discussion of CoinMarketCap’s The Capital Conference.
Web3.0 and the NFT market are yet to be perfect but here we are trying our best to build a system that works for everyone.
