For the past year and a half, I have been interviewing talented and promising NFT artists, and during this time, I must say, I have learned to understand well all their wishes for NFT marketplaces and the problems that keep them from working with their NFT collections! In addition to my interviews, a recent Twitter Space that hosted an Official Instagram account on Twitter prompted me to write this article!
There were a lot of exciting things on Twitter Space itself. Even there was information that Instagram will be developing and implementing its NFT marketplace built into Instagram! But the main thing that personally hooked me is the fact that they did research among NFT artists and identified the reasons for the most important artist worries when they begin to dive into the NFT world! From this, their main wishes for NFT marketplaces were revealed namely:
1. Easy and simple minting/onboarding experience for own community.
2. Closer connection with artist supporters.
3. They want to get away from technical jargon and features and just enjoy the benefits.
Also, from my interviews, I can highlight a few more points that pretty excite artists as well:
4. Possibility of pre-sale.
5. Auctions.
6. Easier deposit of fiat money to the site and easier withdrawal of them from there.
And now I propose to discuss each of these points in more detail!
- Easy and simple minting/onboarding experience for own community
The first thing to discuss is the minting of own collection! Of course, every artist wants to be able to use a simple marketplace UI, so they can mint their collection very quickly and clearly! This is not surprising because artists are not programmers! They don’t like the complexity of the technical part.
As for the easy onboarding of artist fans on the NFT marketplace, everything is logical here too! Suppose an artist already has a community and longtime fans of his/her art. Of course, an artist wants to choose a platform for own admirers where it will be easy for a collector to create their own crypto wallet, replenish it and buy artwork! This path shouldn’t cause difficulties and questions! Therefore, a good marketplace should be able to perform this function quickly, clearly, safely and without any difficulties for the ordinary person! Clear video and text tutorials are a must too!
2. Closer connection with own fans
This is an extremely important point! For example, let’s say you are an artist who has released a successful collection of 3,000 NFTs, and you want to keep in touch with the holders! In most of these cases, artists are forced to reinvent the wheel and figure out in which social network to communicate with their collectors, how to gather them all in one place and not forget anyone, how to remind new collectors to go to this very chat constantly… etc.
Undoubtedly, suppose Twitter or Instagram make their NFT marketplace. In that case, they will have a huge potential to simplify this point for artists since their entire audience will already be gathered in this social network! On the other hand, however, NFT marketplaces, such as Singular, can, for example, announce a partnership with the PolkaVerse (Subsocial) crypto social network, and automatically redirect the person who bought the NFT on Singular to the specific SPACE or CHAT on PolkaVerse. And here it will be easy immediately to implement the NFT ownership verification to obtain a pass to a private chat for artwork holders of a particular artist!
3. Artists want to get away from technical jargon and just enjoy the benefits
There is nothing to add here! I repeat once again — artists only want to think about how to create their work rather than about how to understand the technical aspects of interaction with the NFT marketplace! The task of the NFT marketplace is to enable artists to draw their work and interact with their community simply, and the marketplace programmers will do the rest!
4. Possibility of pre-sale
This is a pretty much-needed feature that many artists or NFT project founders love. Let’s say you have a lot of activity before minting your collection. People write articles and reviews on the collection, you give them whitelists for activity, and you want to sell the collection in two stages. At the first stage (pre-sale), you provide the opportunity to buy your work cheaper and earlier, to those who have whitelists, and then you spend the “public-mint” stage and allow everyone to buy. It’s convenient and practical!
5. Auctions
Of course, the ability to sell your work through auctions is a massive plus for the artist! Especially when it comes to 1/1 art, a unique work of art and not a generative collection. The artist opens new horizons with the help of the auction! Auction is a popular way to sell art, including digital art like NFT!
6. Easier deposit of fiat money to the site and easier withdrawal of them from there
What could be nicer than the ability to manage your money the way you want? Many artists are not only fans of the world of crypto-finance but also need fiat money. Therefore, the NFT marketplace is obliged to provide an opportunity for the artist to conveniently transfer fiat money to the marketplace to pay for the minting of the collection. Also, it must allow the artist to withdraw the proceeds and exchange them for fiat easily. And the easier this process will be, the more convenient the marketplace will implement this action!
In the end, as we can see, the wish list from the artists turned out to be not so overpriced and quite doable! The main task of the NFT marketplace remains unchanged. It is to give artists the opportunity to create freely and at the same time not burden them with technical difficulties during the collection process or at the moment of communication with fans of their work. And most importantly, more often add new and additional features that would satisfy all the artists and collectors urges in the world of NFT!
Since I am the Lead Ambassador of RMRK and their NFT marketplace Singular, I can assure you this marketplace will very soon have all these features and greatly simplify the artist’s work! The first version of Singular was easy to use and allowed many artists to declare themselves and sell their collections successfully. Also, important conclusions were drawn about what is needed to be improved. In the near future, many cool features will appear in the new version of Singular! Including all the ones I listed in this article!
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