Introducing NFTs on Rally and Why We’re Focusing on Utility Over Scarcity

Starting today, Rally is launching its NFT platform for all Rally creators. Rally has always been focused on building the capabilities for creators to launch and grow their crypto economies. We started with social tokens but have always imagined a world where a creator’s crypto economy included both fungible tokens and NFTs. Until now, Rally social token economies were missing a core component: NFTs.

The crypto world at large views social tokens and NFTs as independent and distinct components of a creator’s migration into crypto. Similar to how traditional economies function by coupling cash (a fungible means of exchange) and items for purchase (non-fungible goods), a crypto economy flourishes when there are fungible social tokens and non-fungible tokens. Fans want reasons to buy, use and hold social tokens and our creators have pioneered countless ways to power experiences with those tokens. But they also want tangible goods and services — as well as experiences — that they can own in exchange for those social tokens. NFTs and social tokens paired together tie the creator’s crypto economy into a cohesive whole.

Rally’s Approach to NFTs

Many early adopters have hyped the NFT phenomenon in a very narrow way: large, infrequent transactions meant to drive maximum profit and divorced from engagement with a broader fan base. While these massive financial outcomes have been splashy and generated a ton of buzz in the industry, the focus is almost always on price and scarcity while giving less thought to utility, access or engagement. We believe that this does creators and their fans a disservice — the current transactional focus diminishes the exciting ways in which creators can engage with their fans for the long term.

At Rally, we’re building NFT capabilities that allow creators to focus on utility and collectability versus scarcity. We believe that the true economic value of NFTs will come from creators and their fans using NFTs to drive connections, particularly if creators allow more of their fan-base to participate. By enabling these utility-based NFT use cases, we open up a world for creators to experiment in their engagements with their fans and focus on offerings that delight their broader fan base rather than a small set of deep-pocketed speculators.

Rally enables a new and exciting platform for creators to launch NFTs:

• Rally doesn’t charge any fees: Feeless exchange of NFTs will allow more revenue to be captured by the creator, who will take home more of the value of their NFTs immediately upon sale, while also earning more over time through feeless, on-going royalties and by increasing demand for their social tokens.
• NFTs will be composable and programmable: As with Rally’s social tokens, creators will have the ability to utilize NFTs in their engagements with fans via simple API integrations and webhooks. The developer ecosystem will have the ability to build NFTs into their existing products and to create new use cases based on NFT ownership.
• Creators can mint NFTs in an eco-conscious manner: Rally utilizes a sidechain that doesn’t burn energy like other platforms that require Proof of Work calculations for every NFT. This allows creators to mint NFTs without the environmental concerns that they and their fans care about.
• Enabling more use-cases beyond collectible art: With Rally’s capabilities, creators can expand the use-cases of NFTs to include tickets, access, and recognition alongside the existing use-cases of art and collectibles

Today’s launch adds auctions to our existing fixed price distribution methods. Auctions enable creators to set a minimum price at which they would sell the NFT but otherwise lets fans determine the final value of the NFT. This helps to ensure that creators have a new and fair path to monetization without needing a degree in pricing strategy. To learn more, check out this post on how creators can get started with NFTs on Rally.

Rally’s product team will be leaning hard into NFTs over the next several months and we cannot wait to unlock creator/artist’s creativity with our upcoming innovations. Creators new to NFTs can learn more with our extensive FAQ and can get started with their own NFTs by filling out our Request Form.

Our goal is for NFTs to become the digital goods of choice for our creators, while their pages on Rally.io will serve as the digital storefront of their coin economy. Over the coming months, Rally will consistently release distribution, minting and programming capabilities that will support Rally creators and artists in creating an infinite variety of new possibilities. More to come soon… but this is an important first step as we bridge the social token and NFT ecosystems.