Blockchain represents ownership, and ownership implies independence.
Written by: a16z crypto editorial team
Translated by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor's note: This article mainly discusses the connection and interaction between creators and technology, highlighting the potential of blockchain and NFTs in creation, ownership, and community connection. Despite the growing demand for enforcing on-chain royalties, challenges remain in distinguishing between different types of NFT transfers. Newer royalty designs attempt to balance ensuring royalty payments with the composability of NFTs, while introducing two new methods that leverage incentive mechanisms.
The following is the original text (edited and reorganized for readability):
This article discusses the relationship between creators and technology, particularly how blockchain and NFTs demonstrate potential in creation, ownership, and community interaction. While there is an increasing desire to enforce creator royalties on the blockchain, difficulties persist in distinguishing between different types of NFT transactions. Recent royalty designs attempt to ensure royalty payments while maintaining the flexibility of NFT usage. Additionally, two new methods utilizing incentive mechanisms are introduced.
Feature Report: Fixing the Economic Ecosystem for Creators
Author: Chris Dixon
This should be the golden age for creators: today, technologies such as the internet, media hosting sites, streaming platforms, social media, and mobile devices provide unprecedented equal opportunities and broader audience reach for creators. However, most creators today still struggle to maintain a healthy income from their work.
Although tech platforms help us discover and connect with more artists, especially independent creators, they still rely on a few powerful tech companies that make all the decisions for them. Despite these companies being entirely dependent on the user base that uses their platforms and applications, they do not share much control, ownership, or revenue with these creators.
Large creators may cope, but small and medium creators find it difficult to thrive. The key issue is how to return control to where it rightfully belongs—into the hands of creators and fans. A future defined by blockchain will return power to creators and users. Blockchain represents ownership, and ownership implies independence.
Resources: Creators Unlocking New Possibilities with Blockchain Technology
This week, we launched Voices Onchain, showcasing creators who are unlocking new creative possibilities through blockchain technology. They have established deeper connections with fans through blockchain and explored more monetization methods. Click the link below to learn about the stories of the first batch of creators and help nominate other artists/creators working on the blockchain.
Also see:
- About "Art, Authenticity, and Anarchy" — FEWOCiOUS has been creating art since the age of 13. After selling his first painting at 17, he continued to create and sell artworks through a series of successful NFT releases, including auctions held in collaboration with Christie's.
- About "Creators on the Path to Self-Sovereignty: The Answer Lies Within" — Latashá is a music artist, world builder, and emerging tech enthusiast. She founded TOPIA, a Web3 media brand dedicated to guiding and highlighting independent artists; she also served as the community lead for the NFT company ZORA, combining technologies like NFTs and MIDI controllers in her work as a creative singer, rapper, producer, and performing artist.
- About "Art and Awe in the Age of Machine Intelligence" — Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist (a visiting researcher and lecturer at UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts). Last year, one of his artworks was acquired by MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art in New York), becoming the first tokenized artwork to be included in the museum's permanent collection. Anadol's NFT designs encompass data block sculptures, quantum computing, and space metaverse projects in collaboration with NASA JPL.
- About "Telling the Journey of Creators: Pleased 2 Meet U" — Emily Yang, known as pplpleasr, is a multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of the decentralized content studio Shibuya. She transitioned from creating visual effects for films like "Batman v Superman," "Wonder Woman," and "Star Trek: Beyond," to defining the visual style of the DeFi movement and creating the first NFT cover for Fortune magazine.
On the Role of Community Ownership and the Power of Decentralized Media
Author: Cuy Sheffield (2021)
Every day we consume popular entertainment centered around characters. A successful group of characters can serve as the foundation for a franchise spanning decades (such as "Star Wars," "Marvel," or "Harry Potter") and can be successfully integrated into products across various platforms and media types.
However, most successful characters are owned as intellectual property by a single company. This means fans have no governance rights, let alone direct ownership, and can only passively consume the products and storylines created by the company.
Today, blockchain and crypto technology offer a new model for character development and ownership that not only deconstructs creative media but also lowers the barriers for online communities to introduce new characters. These technologies allow characters to more fully represent the communities that support them.
Creators, Creativity, and Technology
with Bob Iger (2022)
In this in-depth conversation with Disney CEO Bob Iger, the interaction between technology, content, and distribution is discussed. The conversation covers the journeys of various creators, particularly during the industry's evolution: from television and cable to the rise of the internet/Web 1.0, to distribution models like Web 2.0 and streaming, and business models like advertising, leading to emerging technologies like Web3, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR).
The podcast also discusses related hot topics such as intellectual property (IP), decentralization, remote work, and other themes of concern to both companies and community builders: such as the innovator's dilemma, whether to build or buy, and how to manage creative personnel.
Related Content:
On the Art of Technology, the Technology of Art
with Simon Denny & Sonal Chokshi
We know that technology has changed art, and artists have evolved with each new technology that emerges. This is a story that has existed since the beginning of humanity, from cave paintings to computers. Behind it is an endless debate about invention and hybridization, commerce and art, fringe art and classical art, and how art reaches new audiences.
In this episode of a16z's Web3 podcast, contemporary artist Simon Denny from Berlin discusses how artists experiment on emerging technology platforms (such as web browsers, iPhones, and social media), how generative art finds its "native" medium on the blockchain, and why NFTs have become a focal point; he discusses whether we are in a globalized online monoculture, and more.
How NFT Royalties Work: Design, Challenges, and New Ideas
Authors: Michael Blau, Scott Duke Kominers, and Daren Matsuoka
In the secondary sales of NFTs, automatically executed royalties have been a significant value proposition. Ideally, creators can set royalties on-chain, and royalties will be automatically paid regardless of where the work is sold on the internet, without relying on markets or other third parties to fulfill royalties in good faith.
However, the demand for enforcing on-chain royalties has outpaced the actual progress made. The challenge lies in distinguishing which NFT transfers should be considered sales that pay royalties and which are other types of transfers (such as transfers between users' wallets, gifting NFTs, etc.). Newer royalty designs attempt to address this challenge by identifying different types of transfers and enforcing royalties where appropriate, but these mechanisms face significant trade-offs between strict royalty enforcement (ensuring royalty payments) and composability (the ability of NFTs to interact with other on-chain applications).
This article discusses the pros and cons of existing NFT royalty designs and their balance between enforcing royalties and achieving composability. The authors introduce two new NFT royalty methods that leverage incentive mechanisms to encourage market participants to respect royalties. The goal is not to advocate for a specific method but to help developers consider different design options and their associated trade-offs when building NFT royalty designs.
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