Women Rise 6 months recap and our future.
By Maliha Abidi
Hello Women Rise family,
It’s been 6 months full of excitement since we started this incredible journey together. Majority of you have now experienced how fast this space moves (i.e. at the speed of light!) So it may feel like we’ve been around for decades but it’s true, it has really only been 6 months.
In such a fast paced environment, it is easy for some of us to lose sight of the perspective and the progress made! And let’s face it, not everyone has time to monitor tens of projects on twitter and discord constantly. For this reason I wanted to take a moment to step back to recap and relive some of the achievements we have accomplished together. Also, share thoughts on what to expect from Women Rise moving forward.
From July, we will be issuing a summary report periodically (at least quarterly) to share key highlights and progress against initiatives.
In this article, I have covered the following sections:
1- Why we started Women Rise (2 minutes read)
2- What we have achieved so far (12 minutes read)
3- What you should expect to see in the future (4 minutes read)
If you’re active on our twitter and IG and have been following our twitter feed regularly then you can probably skip to section 3. Otherwise proceed! For my data loving friends out there, I would highly recommend checking out the ‘let’s talk data’ section towards the end of Section 2 as you might enjoy interesting facts!
Section 1 — Why we launched Women Rise
- Women Rise started off as an extension of the work I have been doing as an artist (using art as a tool for storytelling and social justice) but now in Web 3.
- Using the resources of Web 3 to spread awareness about women’s rights and to advance girls’ education.
- Celebrating and representing women scientists, artists, coders, activists, and more on the blockchain through art, storytelling and community building.
- To build a female led project and a community of like minded individuals who want to see women RISE because historically, business and tech has been dominated by white men, english language speakers, and even in Web 3, 81% of the participants are male.
- To claim our space, in a field where, again, historically people like myself have not been able to see ourselves. Because representation genuinely does matter.
Section 2 — What we achieved so far
November 2021:
Launch of Women Rise:
We launched on the 26th of November 2021, at the beginning of 16 days of activism which is a global campaign to eliminate violence against women. This was done intentionally. You see, at the launch of any project, there is a lot of attention and we wanted to redirect the attention Women Rise was getting to an important cause and a campaign that impacts millions of lives throughout the year.
For the same reason of leading with intention, we incorporated Sustainable development goals aka SDG17 within Women Rise artwork, values and learning. Most prominently you can see the SDG17 in the activist background trail where we celebrate women activists and the campaigns that require our attention.
Rarible home page take over:
We have been featured on Rarible’s homepage numerous times and we are grateful for their ongoing support. Holly Wood from Rarible believed in our vision, the community and the project since even before we launched and we are eternally grateful to her.
Today, such features may seem normal to the Women Rise community but in those early days, a feature on an amazing marketplace like Rarible really motivated us and allowed us to celebrate the beginning of our journey in a grand fashion.
December 2021:
December 2021 can be described as a month of sustainable growth where we had a slow but organic growth. This was personally one of the most enjoyable phases of the project for me.
Women Rise representation at Art Basel Miami:
We represented Women Rise at one of the biggest art shows in the world, Art Basel and several other events taking place during these days:
-We had an artist residency during Art Basel where we had a dedicated spot for Women Rise holders to come and meet the team, and for the traditional art lovers and non-holders to learn more about the project and get involved.
- Women Rise was on exhibition at Decentral Miami as part of Rarible’s screens.
- We spoke at NFT IRL Samsung Next’s panel about the values of Women Rise and our mission.
- Women Rise was invited to a Women in Tech event and we got to represent Women Rise to some of the most brilliant and trailblazing women in business and tech.
- Coinfund and Rarible threw a brunch during Art Basel at Soho House in Miami to celebrate Women Rise launch.
Roadmap 1.0 10%:
We airdropped over 30 NFTs to our early supporters in line with our roadmap 1.0.
Continued to welcome new community members and holders:
As some of you may remember, Women Rise took its sweet time to sell out and this was not during a bear market. This was during a time when you were seeing projects sell out left and right in a matter of days, if not hours. There were calls to burn the unminted NFTs at 30% sold milestone! For real! This did not demotivate us. It actually motivated us to double down and spread the word more loudly! I remember our team meetings where we all agreed whether we have 1 community member or 1 million, our commitment to the project will stay the same, a 100%! We kept on delivering on what we had promised, we kept on working on partnerships, we kept on showing up every day, motivated more than the day before because Women Rise, since day 1, has been more than just an NFT project to us and our community is our family, not just “holders.”
We also welcomed some well-known figures to the Women Rise family during this time such as Randi Zuckerberg, Gary Vee, Hello Sunshine (Reese Witherspoon’s company), and many more.
Interviews, Media coverage, News features:
Over the past several months, Women Rise has been featured in global news platforms. Some platforms are mentioned below.
At 25%, we made our donation to Malala Fund in line with the roadmap.
January 2022:
January was a big month. Throughout December, we kept pushing forward and same for the first half of January and on the 13th of JANUARY 2022, it happened, we SOLD OUT! Shoutout to everyone who was already a part of the community on 17th January 2022. You hold a special place in our hearts.
It was an incredibly overwhelming day because we welcomed so many new community members and our family got big all of a sudden.
This project was started by 3 Pakistanis. Aski, Sodi and myself. All three of us had never experienced anything like it before. We are normal people coming from lower middle class families and all of a sudden, we were managing this massive project with art, storytelling, tech at the centre of it all. It took us a little while to process this.
We reached 5400 unique holders and were trending on Opensea:
On our big day we reached 5400 unique holders and were trending on Opensea. It was incredible to see such a ratio. A 10k collection to have such a high number of unique holders at such an early stage of the project. We believe one of the reasons behind this was the fact that we were a slow mint which allowed many people to join the community after properly researching it and also because many of the people who initially minted the project had never minted an NFT before. Women Rise was their first NFT so they were not collecting it like how a crypto/NFT native would collect a token but they were collecting it how they’d collect a piece of traditional art. You don’t buy a bunch of art all at once, you carefully look to see if you feel connected and then collect one or two. And we loved that!
Community growth across social media platforms:
We remember the day when we reached 9 followers and 3 of them were Women Rise team members. We were grateful for the growing community and just like the beginning, even today, with thousands of Women Rise family members from around the globe, we are grateful.
Shoutout to these 9 initial community members on twitter!
At the time of this report being published, we have gone from 9 community members on twitter to 55,600. On Instagram, we have 15,000. On TikTok we have 1100 and on discord we have 17,000. Making a total of 88,700 members across our social media channels and approximately 5,700 Women Rise NFT holders.
Book giveaway. Fulfilling another promise from our Roadmap 1.0:
We are all about using art as a tool for storytelling and celebrating stories through it. Which is why, one of our goals was to give away 100 signed copies of my 2nd book, RISE: Extraordinary Women of Color who Changed the World. We love to over deliver. It is in our DNA at Women Rise so even with this goal, instead of 100, we gave away 130 books, and each giveaway winner also received a signed art print of their Women Rise NFT. We sent packages to Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Ghana, Hong Kong, Austria, Germany, India, U.S, U.K, and so many other places. This was just another reminder of how widespread the Women Rise community is.
How I Rise stories:
Viewing Women Rise NFT through the lens of our community. This was a heart-warming activity where we got to see the community connect with their NFTs on a different level as they create stories for their Women Rise NFT. 3 winners were selected, and you can find their stories here.
Each winner received a Women Rise NFT airdrop.
My BFF event:
I was invited to be one of the speakers for the My BFF launch event where thousands of people tuned in. The audience included Web 3 natives and newcomers who got introduced to Women Rise through this event. I am grateful to say that I am also one of the 90 founding BFFs alongside women like Brit Morin, Jaime Schmidt, Tyra Banks, Mila Kunis, and many others and I continue to represent Women Rise within the BFF network.
February 2022:
January was clearly eventful! From being sold out to seeing a rapidly growing community to making progress on our roadmap. But February was just as exciting as we continued to move forward on delivering on some of the initiatives that are at the heart of Women Rise objectives.
The Pad project:
When Women Rise launched, we pledged to contribute a percentage of the mint to several organisations that we trust and love. All organisations we selected have made remarkable contributions to women’s rights and girls’ education. The pad project was one of them. Alongside contributing to the organisations, we invited their team to twitter spaces to amplify their story and to share how the Women Rise community can get involved beyond the donation. Period poverty is one of the many obstacles many around the world face and this is one of the direct contributors in increasing the gap in education.
Malala Fund, SOL Afghanistan and The Girl Effect are the other 3 organisations that Women Rise have made contributions to.
Adidas exhibition in London:
Women Rise was invited to be a part of the Adidas x Creative Debuts exhibition at the Adidas London flagship store. This was a great honour for us, and we got to see the traditional art community, the NFT community and the Adidas community come together for an exciting event.
Soho house LA:
Women Rise was represented at Soho House LA for a panel in front of a new audience.
Ledger x Women Rise:
Ledger has been a great supporter of Women Rise. This amazing partnership started with Ledger telling Women Rise story on their platforms through twitter threads, Instagram posts and twitter spaces. More to come on this as we continue to build our partnership.
March 2022:
March was a month when we started to see the impacts of a bear market kick in but at Women Rise, we continued to work hard and with loads of enthusiasm.
Women Rise x Coinbase NFT:
We began the month by announcing our partnership with Coinbase NFT. We are one of their launch partners but beyond that, Coinbase has been extremely supportive of Women Rise. At various events, Coinbase has exhibited Women Rise NFTs. Most recent example of that could be seen at Vee Con 2022 in May when Coinbase displayed Women Rise all around their Creator’s Lounge and they will be displaying Women Rise at NFT NYC 2022 as well. Make sure to see it if you’re there!
Coinbase has also spotlighted WR through their social media on twitter and Instagram and have invited the WR team on twitter spaces to share our story with their hundreds of thousands of community members.
Women Rise x Snapchat:
Working alongside the Snapchat team, we created a special filter to celebrate the Women Rise community on international women’s day. Throughout the month of March, the filter received over 100,000 views. WR and non-WR community explored the filter that displayed various WR assets in a playful way, allowing people to have a unique experience of WR NFT assets as a Snapchat filter. We are grateful to our friends at SC for this opportunity.
Women Rise x Malala Yousafzai:
One of our key focuses here at Women Rise is to use art as a tool for advocacy to shine a light on girls’ education. We were so honoured to welcome Malala, the biggest advocate for girls’ education in the world, to the Women Rise stage. This was one of the most unreal moments. Malala shared her thoughts on the current state of girls’ education, Afghan girls education and how we need to reimagine education. Full conversation can be found here.
Around the same time, an amazing in person event was taking place in London. An evening with Vee Kativhu and Malala Yousafzai. We arranged a giveaway of 20 tickets to Women Rise holders for this event.
Women Rise at SXSW 2022:
This was the first SXSW festival that the Women Rise team had ever attended. “The annual March event features sessions, music and comedy showcases, film screenings, exhibitions, professional development, and a variety of networking opportunities.” NFTs had a huge presence at SXSW and we ensured that Women Rise was appropriately represented.
We were invited to speak and represent Women Rise at 5 panels alongside some of the most talented creators. The panel events included the following: First, Pussyverse x Unicorn Dao panel where Women Rise was also on exhibition. The second was, Female Quotient equality lounge. The third was a panel at Grit Daily, the fourth was at the Twitter house and finally, SXSW event Rolling Stone x Meta.
Allow-list collaboration with World of Women:
We partnered with World of Women to give away 25 allow list spots to our community for their new WOW Galaxy collection.
Top Dog Beach Club Arctic Vault:
Our friends at TBDC made history by depositing the first NFTs into the Arctic vault. We are grateful that alongside their amazing NFTs and several other projects, they invited Women Rise to be a part of it. “We’re etching NFTs (including the art and provenance information) onto special purpose-built silver-halide film that is designed to last for over 1,000 years. The films are then stored in a decommissioned coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, known as the Arctic World Archive.” — TBDC
April 2022:
Adobe feature:
I have had a long standing relationship with Adobe where I have worked with the company on various collaborations in the traditional art space. For April, they had me featured for their Women Creates Wednesday’s feature. The feature included an introduction to Women Rise and I also created an original illustration that celebrated the Women Rise activism through art.
Women Rise x Voice HQ Artist Residency:
Women Rise is extremely proud to have partnered with Voice HQ for this incredible residency. The residency was set to support female creators from underrepresented and marginalised communities. Together, Voice and Women Rise hope to bridge the gender gap in NFTs and bring forth a much-needed change. Up to 15 artists were selected, given grants to progress their development as an NFT artist and will be featured on Voice HQ platform.
Women Rise x Chicago Bulls:
Chicago Bulls invited Women Rise to reimagine their iconic Bulls logo in the WR style. This will then be sold as an NFT, amplified on Chicago Bulls channels and Coinbase platforms. In addition to the brand exposure for Women Rise and the community, 4 tickets to a Chicago Bulls game will be given away to 4 lucky Women Rise NFT holders. Holders will also get a pregame stadium tour!
May 2022:
Vee Con 2022:
One of the best NFT conferences Women Rise team have attended. Loved seeing the smiling, beautiful faces of the Women Rise community, seeing Women Rise NFTs on display around the venue and at the Coinbase creator lounge (one of the favourite spots at the conference). We got to learn from amazing speakers while also representing Women Rise on a panel amongst brilliant speakers. So grateful to Gary Vee for being a WR collector and support and a huge thanks to his team at Vayner who poured their heart and soul in making Vee Con the success that it was.
During Vee Con weekend, we also co-hosted The Trailblazer event alongside Women and Weapons, World of Women and Boss Beauties. 4 incredible female led projects and their communities came together for an unforgettable evening of celebration. We also had a Women Rise community dinner where we got to meet some of you.
Launch of 1/1 collection celebrating black women:
We launched our 5-piece 1/1 collection that celebrates Black influential women such as Dr. Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, Wangari Maathai, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis. 100% of the proceeds (primary and secondary) from this collection will be going to 5 organisations that are supporting and contributing to Black women owned businesses, Black artists, and non-profit orgs working to support Black communities in education, healthcare, and mental health.
Organisations include Janet’s List, The Cowrie Culture, Girls on Fire Leaders, CAMFED and IPPF Africa. This is also the beginning of our “Rising Women Club” that we mentioned in our roadmap 1.0. As we move forward, more initiatives will be introduced within this club.
Instagram x Maliha:
I was selected as one of the creators for Instagram’s Alpha co-hort for their digital collectibles feature. The Alpha Cohort (a group of select creators curated by Instagram) will be supporting Instagram in testing this new cool feature and help them shape this new functionality through providing feedback on the use of this feature and make recommendations for additional features on the platform!
I will be posting about Women Rise as part of this program and marketing from Instagram will promote this feature leading to Women Rise NFTs showcased, reaching new audiences.
Women Rise on display at K11 Muea in Hong Kong:
Grateful to see Women Rise is global! We have seen WR on display in London, Paris, LA, Minneapolis and New York but it was especially cool to see WR on display at K11 Musea in Hong Kong as it is one of the leading spaces in art and WR was amongst some of the biggest projects at this exhibition.
Let’s talk Data
Numbers are a universal language! Love em or hate em, they’re a very helpful tool to monitor performance, guage community and make informed decisions.
Below we have listed down some key numerical metrics!
Holders: 5,647 unique holders.
Holding distribution: 69% of the total unique holders hold 1 WR NFT, whereas 24% hold between 2–3 WR NFT and 6% hold between 4–6 WR NFTs (source: NFTGO.io). We see this as a strong mix.
NFT holding period: 84% of the WR holders have held onto their Women Rise NFT for over 3 months whereas 12% have held on for a period between 1 to 3 months. (source: NFTGO.io). Furthermore, at the time of writing this report, there were fewer than 600 WR listed for sales on Opensea. This has dropped below the 800 listed 2–3 weeks ago. This demonstrates a strong and improving position given the market conditions. We see this as an indicator of the community’s love for the WR art and your confidence in WR vision.
Holding by whales: 20 whales hold 375 WR NFTs combined (source: NFTGO.io) (NFTGO.io defines whales as addresses with $1,000,000+ NFT holding value of all collections and holding at least one NFT of the said collection, i.e. Women Rise in our case).
Holding by Blue Chip Holders: 900 blue chip holders hold 2,301 WR NFTs combined.(NFTGO.io defines ‘blue chip holders’ as wallets that hold at least one NFT from a Blue Chip collection such as Veefriends, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, World of Women and others).
Section 3 — What to expect in the future
Women Rise has entered a new phase. The last 6 months were all about setting the foundation for WR. The next phase is about continuing to build on this strong foundation so we can bring our vision to reality, and continue to contribute to girls’ education as a community through initiatives that have art, storytelling and tech at the centre of it all.
Over the past 2 months, the team and I have had dozens of productive conversations with incredible leaders, activists, creators, brands, organisations, web 3 companies , influencers and celebrities to work together and I see a bright future for Women Rise.
Expect:
1- More community IRLs events. Next event will be in London super soon. More details to follow.
Women Rise will also continue to participate at conferences as this is an effective way of showcasing the brand, leading to purposeful partnerships and exposure. It is also a wonderful way for us to meet the community in person. Next conference of this sort is NFT NYC and in the coming days, we will share our exact plans for it!
See you soon in London and New York.
2- An expansion of our team. Some passionate and lovely people have joined our growing team, we can’t wait to introduce you to them.
3- Extension of Women Rise brand and Women Rise impact beyond the NFTs space.
4- More value to holders through partnerships with household brands and established organisations. These collaborations can vary in nature and each will bring its own value to the brand and the community.
5- New mediums to advance Women Rise brand and vision including an all new website and a new…. (wait for it! We don’t want to ruin the fun)
6- News on education initiative. As you are aware, enabling education through the metaverse is our ultimate ambition, especially to contribute to and to advance girls’ education. We have made good progress on that front and continue to speak with leaders and potential partners. Expect our first official news soon. Words cannot describe how excited we are for this as this is a huge undertaking.
7- Women Rise partnering with production houses. We see a lot of interest from Hollywood in this space and have been having conversations around creative production and expanding the Women Rise story.
Also expect:
8- Patches of dry period. We’re not in the launch phase anymore when we had announcements on a daily basis. As this space matures and projects move to build, the communities should expect periods of reduced activity. Space is needed to build and some initiatives just take longer than others.
9- Women Rise to operate more like a business and less like a project. This also means we will not be using the word Roadmap anymore. Afterall, it is just another word to describe what to expect in the future and just like Roadmap 1.0 and how we as a family achieved way more than what was on it, we will spare you the trouble of looking at Roadmap 2.0 and instead announce our initiatives and provide periodic (monthly or quarterly) update on these using various channels including discord, twitter, Instagram, starting with here on Medium.
We all know how opportunities come along the way as well so there is more to expect down the line such as collaborations, media, and other opportunities that Women Rise may come across.
Final thoughts:
I’m incredibly proud of what Women Rise has achieved in its first 6 months. It is beyond anything I had imagined when we started this. Web 3.0 is projected to grow exponentially over the next 5–10 years and art and community will be at the centre of this new world. With everything that Women Rise has achieved in the first 6 months, the support we have received from this incredible community and the partnerships we have forged, it is now in a unique position to further establish itself within this space.
Finally, thank you for your tremendous support throughout the slow mint, and the bear market and all the ups and downs. Thank you for your trust in our abilities, your commitment to the Women Rise vision and at times your patience! Please know that we see you and we appreciate your love and support. We’re just getting started!