Tezos Art Vending Machine Project
I started collecting NFTs almost two years ago now in earnest. This amount of time in such a new and emerging field makes one basically a “veteran”. Having been engaged with cryptocurrency and investing since 2012, new and exciting modes of value and ways to use the blockchain that capture the investor imagination have always piqued my interest. If you can make something fun, interesting and easy what better way to bring people into the ecosystem? Think a far improved cycle in the market from what happened with memecoins in 2019 but this market cycle since late 2020 with NFTs and artist.
BENEFITS TO TEZOS AND THE ART CENTRIC ECONOMY
At face value ETHEREUM NFTs are considered the top tier and with good reason- the ecosystem is by far the largest in terms of market cap (barring BTC) and makes many of the functions associated with the “minting and utility” function of them possible. However fees associated with “minting” or adding your art the blockchain are anywhere from $20–$100 dollars every time. This sets a high bar to entry for artist especially from developing countries and regions across the world (for example Venezuela the average monthly salary is roughly $25 USD). Layer 2 solutions have proven extremely robust in this regard and Tezos has practically zero downtime making it a reliable and cheap alternative for artist to share their work (average fees on Tez are between .01 and .25 cents per transaction).
Temple Wallet https://templewallet.com/download shared a very similiar UI experience to METAMASK for my ETH centric readers so there is already familiar mechanisms at play with minting or buying art on TEZOS chain and mobile wallet support purports to be coming soon. This wasn’t always the case but in the last 6–12 months the programming side and user experience has dramatically increased with the launch of marketplaces such as OBJKT https://objkt.com/ VERSUM https://versum.xyz/ TEIA https://teia.art/ as well as generative marketplaces like FXHASH https://www.fxhash.xyz/ and even a really fun 8-bit marketplace called 8BIDOU https://8x8.teztok.com/.
I come from an art history background having attended school to be a curator. For this reason I recognize the strong culture that has been built within TEZ. When people think about ways artist are sharing and connecting the world via the blockchain these mechanisms are in no way more apparent in any art or blockchain based stratum than within. For this reason I created the concept for the Tezos Art Vending Machine, the art is affordable and endlessly fascinating and I strongly believe by creating a gamified distribution model that has easy onboarding and function we will see a strong influx of new appreciators and collectors to the chain. The exposure benefits should be vast to anyone that wants to help advance the ecosystem.
The Tezos Foundation as well has started to strongly acknowledge the presence and value this cultural subset brings to their chain. Just recently they announced a million pound grant to curator, artist and collector Misan Harriman just as one example how how swiftly the ecosystem is getting noticed from within and outside the foundation (https://twitter.com/misanharriman). You can read more about this exciting news here https://tezos.foundation/launch-digital-art-gallery/.
HOW DOES IT WORK? THE BASICS
Artist (or collectors) will donate pieces to the vending machine, this can be any piece they’ve minted or purchased on other platforms such as TEIA and OBJKT which they then will use the VEN platform UI to send pieces to the machine contract. In this way they can set their secondary royalties accordingly and make them widely available to a new audience base that normally wouldn’t know where to look for or collect their work. The art will then be distributed to collectors randomly for 2 TEZ or 3 pieces for 5. Half of all these proceed will then be used to offer TEZOS based initiatives such as marketing drives and free mints to onboard new artist onto TEZ. The VEN contract is such that in the future we can upgrade the UI to accommodate a free mint function to VEN contract right within the page, this will be a potential further iteration as we grow and advance concept.
There’s a few key reasons the free art model works- its self sustaining in terms of hosting and associated fees and it will be unattractive to bots and malicious actors who might try to take advantage of a pay to load per-piece contract structure. Any piece can be sent the the vending machine- not just ones you’ve created as well. I could easily imagine artist sending their unsold editions for a new lease on life versus burning for example or utilizing the structure for giveaways or raffles using the randomized distribution model of the Vending Machine.
I strongly believe access to art shouldn’t have financial barriers to entry- the blockchain’s core ethos is about equal and equitable solutions for individuals to conduct value and exchange across borders and on their own terms. This is a mission I will dedicate myself to in earnest, as a top collectors on ETH as well as building one of the largest TEZ art collections in the last 2 months my love for this space is self apparent. I bring years of small business ownership skills and project management within web3 since an occupational change due to COVID. Let’s decentralize and share the story of art across the world together.
Donations for giveaways leading up to launch accepted now! ( Any art not used for giveaways during this period will be migrated to the vending machine for random distribution)
•Donation Wallet Address: vendingnfts.tez or tz1LwtYtbchiga4rYFy6P3BFaKn44ptEjdjm
The VENDING MACHINE team is:
•Flexasaurusrex: (Project Manager and Concept)
https://twitter.com/RexFlexasaurus
•Mightymoss: (Art Direction/Design)
https://twitter.com/mightymoss
•Landlinesart: (Contract/Backend Dev)
https://twitter.com/landlinesart1
- Wrilben: (Front End Dev/ UX/UI Design)
Project Twitter: https://twitter.com/tezvendmachine
