The Most Important Step Forward is Every Step of The Way
Exactly two years ago I had the first idea of turning social media posts into NFTs and scribbled the first deck. It was all very superficial; a tool that would help you take a piece of content and turn it into something you could sell.
It’s incredible to look back and see how things have progressed. From a crypto degen idea we have moved into one of the most exciting tech industries — the creator economy.
The Three Chapters
Clout.art was initially a platform to turn your clout into art, to get your Instagram posts and turn them into an NFT. The idea was to provide content creators a monetisation channel that they haven’t had yet. And Instagram seemed like the best bet, as (almost) everyone has an IG account and some content there.
The second pivot was focusing more on the educational aspect of NFTs for influencers. We realised that, despite hearing about NFTs, too many influencers were still reluctant to jump in and try to create one. So we tried to educate them on this, created a load of educational materials, simplified the onboarding process and ran a special webinar.
But more than anything else, we learned that it was always the community that made the difference. The community, not the audience! Having a community that really resonates with your content is worth more than a thousand vanity metrics. In 2008 Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine proposed the “1,000 True Fans Theory” stating that all an artist needs is 1,000 true fans to maintain a fruitful, if unspectacular, career. For web3, just replace artists with creators, and true fans with community members.
So it’s not really a creator economy, it’s a community economy. And the new clout.art adheres to that, involving its own collection and an economic model that help creators build their communities with the help of patrons.
In short, we were once a tool. Now we are a cause that uses “a tool.”
Transitioning to Hedera
The decision to move to Hedera is just one of the steps we had to take, to make this a success. But three reasons stand out.
First off, the infrastructure. Hedera has the cheapest transactions, running faster than the majority of the top performing blockchains, thanks to their gossip protocol consensus algorithm. Most importantly — it’s built to scale!
Second is the opportunity. Hedera’s NFT space is still relatively early. Imagine taking an early bet with the Ethereum NFT ecosystem in 2020, or Solana’s NFT ecosystem in 2021. The first breakthrough projects are always a winning ticket. And we believe Hedera has all that it takes to be the next big NFT ecosystem.
And last but not least — the amazing #HBARbarians community. It took me exactly three days to remember how it feels building things for people who really care and align with your vision. Thank you for that!
Stay tuned as we continue to unveil all the great things coming to clout.art! This, for example.
