Announcing the 5D token
Art remains the purest form of human expression, allowing collectors and viewers to enjoy from afar and for artists to connect with thousands or millions across the world. Yet, this vision of sharing something so deeply human in a frictionless way and fostering art creator communities still has fundamental hurdles, two of the most prominent being:
- Centralized platforms and Auction Houses collecting large fees — Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s collect 10–15% of the sale price from both the buyer and seller as commission
- Hard to access platforms requiring login, signup and the costs being far out of the range of the regular art-lover
The 5th Dimension Vision
Democratizing access to art and ushering in the new era of digitized art. The 5th dimension vision relies on the following core principles:
- Access to art should be universal and democratized
- Artists and Creator Communities should be fostered, incentivized and ultimately govern the evolution of the auction platforms themselves
- Low Fees for sales on the platform
Why another NFT platform?
Over the past year, there has been a deluge of new NFT platforms as the attention on NFTs rose to an all-time high. Platforms like OpenSea and Raribles opened the floodgates for creators to produce art and share it with the world in digitized form as NFTs. With this rise in genuine creation, it became evident that curation would be an immensely difficult problem to tackle, as the total art in circulation far-exceeds the total amount of capital from buyers that would be required to purchase all the art. In addition, as the concept of NFTs seeped into the general consciousness, people recognized the monetary opportunity and began flooding the market with pieces with little to no artistic merit (copies of other artists’ work, screenshots of publicly available content, etc.). This made it clear to us that any new NFT platform should have high standards for the artists listing on the platform. While platforms like SuperRare and NiftyGateway maintained this standard, it proposed a huge challenge for the art-lover and collector to easily access the sales.
After a deep analysis into the space, the 5D core contributors realized that no NFT Platform quite realized the vision that artists and art-lovers alike had from the start. This spurred the creation of a new platform in January 2021, with the central tenets of the project being:
- Quality — Curated Art produced by the best
- Democratizing Access — Any art-lover or collector should have a fair chance at bidding for and buying the art pieces on sale
- Physically-Backed Value — The digitization of art does not mean a disappearance of the physical importance of art and as such, a significant portion of NFTs should be backed by physical pieces that can be redeemed 1:1
- Progressive Decentralization — An art platform should be owned by and serve the art community as a whole
These core tenets naturally lead the core contributors of 5D to the notion of a platform token which helps achieve the collective vision of art communities.
The 5D Token
Accomplishing the 5D vision requires reimagining the auction-house and building a platform from the ground up. No vision, however pure, is perfect from the start and requires proper incentives for all stakeholders in order to grow organically and sustainably. We adhere to the trajectory of progressive decentralization and having closely observed and analyzed the various art platforms, both centralized and decentralized, we have come to the realization that the best way to accomplish the 5D vision is via a token that paves the path for a platform which is completely governed by a growing artist community and fosters new artistic talent.
The token will function primarily as a governance token in the beginning. As the 5D token (ERC-20 standard) is distributed to those who support artist collectives and care about the future of the platform, further initiatives will be announced that give token holders special rights that may extend to:
- Airdrops of NFTs from legendary artists that conduct sales on the platform
- Early Access to sales and limited edition pieces
- Customized and Signed Art for token holders who participate in specific lockup programs and demonstrate active governance
Total Supply: 1,000,000,000
The Stakeholders:
- Community (45%) — The 5D ethos is to put the Community First. This involves the 5D-NFT buyers and holders, the artists who create the NFTs and those who support the platform via their actions. This large chunk of the token supply will be used to involve the 5D community in the governance of the platform and incentivize it meaningfully.
- Artist Fund (10%) — In the event that the 5D token accrues some value in the secondary market, this fund will be used to incubate (via an incubation program to be announced) and promote promising artists.
- Ecosystem Fund/Treasury (10%) — This is a flexible fund that can be directed to any platform-enhancing purpose via governance.
- Future Fundraise (10%) — Building and growing the platform requires developer support, marketing, funding for manufacturing of the physical art pieces and various expenses that might come up along the way and reserving allocation for strategic investors is a long-term decision. If this proportion of the tokens is not used within 1 year, it will likely become part of the Ecosystem Fund/Treasury.
- Core Contributors (25%) — The core contributors of the platform include developers, designers, artists and backers who have poured in significant amounts of capital and time to accomplish the creation of the platform. The core contributors will be aligned with the long term success of the platform if incentivized appropriately. This allocation is critical for bringing on board strong developers, advisors and various members who will guarantee that the platform is able to attract and support the most talented artists from across the world.
Future Plans and Beyond
With the upcoming Stash drop this week, the Community will also be able to receive its first share of the Community Token allocation via a 2-month staking program that gives 2% of the total network supply for those staking any of the NFT pieces from the first 3 sales (Jahan Lo, SSUR, Stash).
All details for the staking program and the weights for pieces will be released in a follow-up piece.
Beyond the next drop from Stash and the staking program, there are several exciting plans for 5D in the next few months, including:
- Unannounced drops by leading global artists
- Artist Incubator Program
- Partnerships with Art Collectives and DAOs
Stay Tuned! Above and Beyond. Make sure to join us on Twitter and Discord for the latest updates!
