Non Fungible Oakland [0XOakland]
Marginalized communities stand to gain the most from technologies that remove financial barriers but too often are last in line to receive those benefits. The nascent NFT market has boomed in part to the scores of people world-wide who are now collecting digital art, music, and games for the first time due to the lower barrier to entry. You don’t need a bank account. You don’t need an art dealer. You don’t need a laptop. With these barriers now removed, you might be asking “how do we bring the right people to the front?”
I think the right question to ask is “how do we bring the front to the right people?”
I created Non Fungible Oakland to bring the front to the right people. Non Fungible Oakland[NFO or 0XOak] is a non-profit organization that aims to onboard Oakland, California residents and artists to the metaverse by providing free digital goods, education, and community.
Experience
The first thing people need to get onboarded to the metaverse is positive experiences with NFTs. This means everyone’s first experience has to be simple, free, and useful. Unfortunately, NFTs are anything but.
NFO’s primary objective is to create environments where people can have positive experiences with metaverse technologies and build a solid foundation for adoption of future technologies. We plan to do this by meeting people where they are and providing utility they value.
In Oakland, people are at First Friday’s- a monthly outdoor arts and culture festival where people gather, eat, and indulge in art. Local musicians, dancers, and artist of every variety show up and let the community know what they have to offer. I’ve spent hundreds of Friday nights walking up and down Telegraph Ave eating Korean, Filipino, or Mexican food and then disappearing into an art gallery right off this street. This is where NFO will meet every day Oakland residents.
To give people a reason to interact with NFTs while they are in a crowded street, NFO will be issuing POAPs commemorating each First Friday with the portrait of a prominent Oakland citizen. We aren’t just going to print out a QR code and hope people figure it out, we will be sitting with folks and helping them install MetaMask for the first time. We’ll be making sure every seed phrase gets backed up. We’ll show them how to claim a POAP and move it to mainnet if they’re interested in that sort of thing.
POAPs are a great entry to the NFT space because they are free to distribute and accept, have utility as proof of attendance of a particular First Friday, and do not require any prior experience with the metaverse to collect. To add to their desirability and utility as a collectible, these POAPs will be commissioned from well-known artists from the Bay Area or established NFT artists. The first series is entitled Oakland Legends and will feature portraits of people who devoted themselves to this community (ie. Huey Newton, John Madden, Kamala Harris).
Education
Providing Oakland with free digital assets is a good start, but will not accomplish much on its own. To make sure everyone is getting the most of those assets, they can learn about all things metaverse on the NFO website. The website will mostly function as a knowledge base for those that are new to NFTs, or those that are on a crowded street trying to get a free NFT. Here, they will be able to get recommendations from a familiar face as to which wallets are safe, what exchanges should they trust, and other concerns a Day 1 metaverse user may want to know.
All of the educational experiences here will be tailored to show people how to access and use NFTs once they are ready to do so. This way, the site will function as an open on ramp any project can use to give people basic information that gets them started with using any NFT. When onboarding people in person, having tools to aid folks who are able to operate independently allows for those who need more support to get individual attention.
Community
The metaverse represents the first online communities that can be owned by the members of that community. Likewise, NFO aims to foster a community that is empowered by blockchain technology and gives people a great starting point to meet like-minded individuals. Just like we are giving people access to digital wallets to manage their assets, we want to give them the tools they need to connect with people who can help them dive deeper into the metaverse.
Twitter and Discord are the tools of choice for the metaverse right now. NFO will maintain a strong presence on these platforms to shepherd people from their real life communities to where the fun really happens. As people gain exposure to more metaverse projects, they can discuss them with the familiar voices on the NFO discord as they do their own research.
The NFO discord will make space for artists and collectors of all experience levels. Seasoned NFT veterans can join this server to help people who are new to NFTs. Like the website resources, the discord will be geared to providing real-time support for those who are attempting to collect their first NFTs. Users that choose to stay will be part of a community dedicated to uplifting Bay Area artists and learning about the latest metaverse projects benefiting their community.
The Future of NFO
Non Fungible Oakland will launch on 3/4 at the First Friday event in Oakland where we will give out our genesis POAP. Our Twitter and Discord will also launch on 3/4 to support people as they dip their first toes into the metaverse.
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