Launching the 100xARt District: Sunday, Jan 31 (7:30pm UTC)

Back in August, 2020 I started collecting NFT Art. Both as a bonafide collector but also to ‘dog food’ the space and help inform my thesis as a professional venture investor at Outlier Ventures in the underlying primitives, infrastructure, marketplaces and content studios. I called this 💯xArt and began collecting up and coming artists promoting the fact through a hastily made Instagram channel and created a small virtual gallery in Crypto Voxels.

Accidentally making a home for NFT collectors

Very quickly it struck me that collectors didn’t really talk to other collectors seeing each other more as competitors (to bid against) than collaborators (to grow a market with). A little lost I asked a couple of collectors I knew who were deeper in the space to help me quickly throw up a Discord Server and invite a few other credible people to swap notes in a closed group.

Before I knew it we had a hand curated community of 💯+ of the world’s leading collectors by most measures as well a smaller collective of our favorite artists, with a fantastic signal-to-noise ratio. Very quickly it became a ‘go to’ for me and its members for what’s going on in the fast paced and insanely innovative NFT market and has really taken on a life of its own.

One such example is the totally organic birth of an entire district full of virtual galleries dedicated to NFT Art in Decentraland*. Something I am happy to announce will launch late this month..

*Keep in mind the official launch is on Jan 31st, so many gallery builds are still in progress.

But firstly a big thanks

As a relative outsider (to NFTs specifically, rather than crypto generally) all I can say I initially brought was, by chance rather than design, a new perspective. The community has absolutely been created and driven by pretty much everyone other than me.

So I need to do some shout outs..

In viral marketing terms the ‘mavens’ were Gabby Dizon who really lent me and the server their reputation in the early days, and brought the momentum of their networks to catalyze its initial growth.

In the absence of any formal curation Strawberry Sith stepped up and took the reins and we take great pride in having an incredibly collegial vibe and a great balance of collector / artist.

Collectors have selectively invited other collectors and those we classed as the ‘whales’ of the group, each bringing a small handful of their favorite artists.

I personally sometimes might not check in for 24 hours in a busy week and always go on to find new channels created and crazy threads full of insights and alpha.

So I would like to extend a big thank you to everyone involved. You people are fucking relentless.

The 100xARt District

As we began to build momentum and a culture began forming as a community someone asked if others were intending to build virtual galleries, and if so where. Before we knew it (with the help of Matty, DCL Blogger) we were buying up a whole district off the beaten track to create our own art district in DCL. At the time of writing this includes 408 parcels of land and over 20 galleries owned by both collectors and artists. You can jump into the district straight from your browser without the need for a VR headset.

As land parcels were individually bought up by members next to one another we thought it might be a good idea to collectively buy a decent space in the middle of it all to serve as a shared public space. What is now called The 100xARt District SQ (marked green or red in the images respectively above) comprised of 32+ parcels of prime real estate which we will use to promote the district and its artists.

Because for many of us NFT collecting was / and for some still is a side hustle or hobby we all needed a collective kick up the arse to make it happen. So a few weeks backs I set a totally arbitrary deadline for us to launch the district.

District Launch: Sunday, January 31st (7:30pm UTC/ 2:30pm EST)

With the help of several new awesome volunteers rustled up from across Twitter (incl. Lisa K, Iuri, Marcus M) we’re now, again in a very bottom up style, planning to host a series of gallery events, parties, talks and auctions throughout the district open to the wider public on January 31st.

The evolving agenda will be shared here on Medium and Twitter so FOLLOW both channels for updates.

The Future

The District SQ is currently being administered by myself for ease with a view to formally quickly devolve all decisions to a DAO to serve our collectors and their artists and help educate and grow the wider NFT space beyond just art, and awareness around evolving standards. As collectors we are united in a weird behavioral disorder of collecting all sorts of Nifties from Cyptopunks, Avastars.

We are proud to say all major NFT platforms and their founders are actively part of the community, taking feedback from members as they iterate their product offerings. We hope to collectively work with them to make the space better and to serve its key stakeholders.

My 100xARt collection vs. our 100xARt community

The 💯xArt community has become so much more important to me than having my own gallery exclusive to my taste and investment strategy. It is already clearly much much bigger than me. So I recently decided to donate the brand, galleries, buildings, land and spaces in both Crypto Voxels and Decentraland to the 💯xArt community via the SQ. It will feature my collection equally alongside other collectors and we have begun building our branded channels such as Twitter and Medium curated by the community.

I’m really happy to say several artists have also donated work to the SQ’s growing collection of art which we will showcase during launch.

Don’t stop dogfooding

What’s most exciting about the 💯xArt community, like the wider NFT community which we represent, is its insane rate of innovation. As we invite more creators into the community we expect increasing industry defining experiments to come out of our server; you only need to see what our members like Pranksy, Beeple and JOY have been doing to see the potential of the space.

The first community experiment, beyond a virtual art district and its governance, will be redefining what it means to be a community member in an Open Metaverse. The first example of that is a 100xARt Crypto Beverage with special powers for our members including granting access to the Discord server itself. There will be a finite number for members and their immediate network granting access to private spaces, exhibitions and events in the Metaverse as well as exclusive drops but also allows members to exit the community at any point by selling or giving away the beverage perhaps and to receive value for their contributions as payment from a new incoming member.

This is just the start..

Love,

JB (Jamie Burke)