Fueling the Creator Economy: NEAR Talks Blockchain Apps at Collision ‘21
The following article is an exclusive guest post written by DJ Pangburn about NEAR’s Sessions at the Collision 2021 Event. While the event featured high-profile members of Canadian civil society, government, and finance, the NEAR Team — in collaboration with Fabric Ventures — unpacked the massive potential of the emerging Creator Economy. DJ Pangburn, who has previously written for Vice News and Fast Company, recaps the event and the key takeaways below:
At this year’s virtual edition of Collision, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world, NEAR Protocol had the pleasure of hosting two events. The NEAR content explored building a blockchain-based Creator Economy with a diverse audience of creators, builders, entrepreneurs, and developers. The opportunities before creators right now are expansive, especially on NEAR — a fast, flexible, inexpensive, and easy-to-use option for technical and non-technical creators alike looking to develop apps and build communities
In the first event, NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Richard Muirhead, co-founder and managing partner of Fabric Ventures, hosted a roundtable called “The Creator Economy: Powered by Blockchain.” Polosukhin and Muirhead engaged with panelists on blockchain app creation and answered questions from builders from a variety of industries still trying to find angles of approach to the NFT space. They shared the vision for NEAR’s leadership in the growing Creator Economy, describing how NFTs and other innovations, like social tokens, DAOs, and Open Finance/DeFi, can be enabled and fast-tracked on the blockchain.
In the Collision live workshop session, Matt Lockyer, Developer Relations Director at NEAR, held a live Masterclass titled “How to Easily Build on the Blockchain.” As he does on the YouTube series “NEAR Live App Review,” Lockyer gave the live audience a crash course in building super-usable apps on NEAR Protocol. Matt demonstrated a flow where a user can even start using a NEAR dapp without needing to hold any crypto.
NEAR also offered attendees a perk: funded NEAR Wallets to onboard audience members to the ecosystem. Choosing a name lets attendees familiarize themselves with NEAR and how the wallet works, as well as try some of the live apps on NEAR today.
Below is a more in-depth recap of some of the topics that came up during “The Creative Economy: Powered by Blockchain” panel. Here are some of our favorites, followed by a brief recap of Matt Lockyer’s masterclass.
NFT creativity beyond digital art
In Richard Muirhead’s opening remarks, he mentioned that the creator economy (or passion economy) powered by blockchain will enable creatives to “find their tribe.” On platforms like Discord, Instagram, and Twitch, digital artists have found novel ways to find or build online communities. But what about the artistic or creative modes that lie outside of the digital NFT artworks minted during the first wave of mainstream NFT adoption?
Polosukhin believes that artists will use the new media made possible by blockchain technology to create and share new experiences — ones that we can’t yet fathom. Muirhead envisioned the fine art world responding with hybrid artworks: ones that would exist both in the real world and in the Metaverse. In this scenario, an artwork would have a physical location that could be visited, but also a metaverse experience that could be experienced virtually.
Panelist Neal Billow’s platform is helping museums mint NFTs. As large and physically formidable arts institutions, museums are well placed to explore the territory between the tangible art object and the more ethereal NFT. One can also well imagine an NFT artwork in the Metaverse, and a physical location that features an art installation, dance performance, or even shared cinematic experience. Such a multimedia artwork could even require interaction in both real and virtual worlds to get the full experience.
On the other hand, panelist Darrell Frater shared his struggle to find a use case for NFTs for The Club, his platform for DJs. Muirhead jumped in, suggesting that Frater consider using NFTs to license for access to specific experiences, or to track an audience’s engagement throughout an event. Polosukhin noted that NFT resales could help ensure that residuals for music played by DJs makes its way back to artists.
Bringing closed door innovations into the public domain
More often than not, research that could feature input from the public is held behind closed doors. Grants, in particular, are a mechanism for keeping research goals and outcomes from stakeholders. And currently, there is no way to keep track or make a record of experiments, or how to bring them into the public domain.
Andrea Luchici, who works in AI and Machine Learning, believes NFTs could be a possible solution. Polosukhin, who called the above arrangements “motes of research,” floated the idea that blockchain developers could create incentive structures that would be an alternative to grants and their lack of public accountability.
Giving freelancers creative credit
In advertising, many freelance creatives toil in obscurity. Panelist Aaron Santiago spoke of his desire to change this by using NFTs to definitively and publicly attach freelancer names to advertising campaigns.
As he sees it, companies like Nike or Beats could mint and issue NFTs to freelancers. It would be proof of work (no pun intended), but it might also eventually be a slice of ad revenue — that is, if the ad leads to a spike in product sales.
Both Polosukhin and Muirhead thought Santiago’s idea was inspired. Polosukhin saw it as a “portfolio builder,” while his co-host thought of it as a reimagining of the worker resume.
Benefitting and protecting Indigenous creativity
Indigenous creatives, not just in the United States but across the world, face unique challenges. One part of the equation is elevating their creative works into larger cultural conversations. Yet another is protecting their creative output from cultural appropriation.
During the panel, Frances Schagen spoke of her work with indigenous women in Canada. She was curious about how indigenous musical recordings could be minted while protecting their creators from possible cultural appropriation or even IP theft.
As a possible solution, Polosukhin suggested that indigenous songs — or any songs, for that matter — could be split into many NFTs, or a single restricted NFT. If someone wanted to sample from a song that had been minted, for instance, Polosukhin said legal docs could be attached to the musical NFT, allowing for covers or remixes.
Schagen also said that indigenous women have seen their art stolen by big companies, and wondered if NFTs could protect a piece of art or design, ensuring a work inspired by indigenous art is culturally appropriate.
Polosukhin said that in protecting art and design, metadata could establish legal ownership. Panelist Neal Billow, with his experience building blockchain-based provenance platforms for museums, said an app could help indigenous women with digital asset management, so that advertisers could look up a piece of art and design to make sure any usage is square with the creator.
How to easily build on the Blockchain
The panel set the table for NEAR’s masterclass on easily building applications on the blockchain. Designed for people coming from a Web 2.0 background, Lockyer aimed to demystify app building on the blockchain, giving them a starter kit for designing usable, novel apps on NEAR. While high level, as Lockyer said in his masterclass, it was also a fun interactive experience, where audience members were able to use NEAR Protocol and the wallet via a test network.
After introducing NEAR Protocol to the audience as a fast, flexible, and inexpensive ecosystem, Lockyer detailed its connection to Ethereum through the trustless, decentralized “Rainbow Bridge.” This bridge allows users to dispense with trusting any third parties when crossing over to Ethereum with their assets.
Lockyer also mentioned some platforms building with NEAR Protocol, like Collab.Land, a user-friendly, tokenized, community-management system; and Mintbase.io, a decentralized application factory designed to empower creators in launching their own stores for digital items. He also highlighted Flux — created by Peter Mitchell and Jasper De Gooijer — a scalable, open data protocol for smart contracts.
A full recap is beyond the bounds of this article, so we encourage you to view a recording of Matt’s session, which he kindly posted on YouTube (see above). And if you have any questions about building on NEAR, be sure to get in touch with the community on Discord or Twitter.
