Breaking the Cycle of Dying NFT Communities: The Future of NFTs
Let's start with a story…
Imagine you’re running a business selling delicious bagels. You order enough bagels each month to meet demand and sell them at an affordable price. As demand increases, so does your revenue. But what if you were only allowed to order bagels once? What if that one-time purchase was the only revenue you could generate?
Sure, you’d make some initial profit, but what about your loyal customers? They want to know about future developments and rewards for their loyalty. You can’t make more bagels, so you decide to open a cake restaurant with the same one-time purchase condition. Your loyal bagel buyers get to purchase a cake at a discount, but this new venture requires a $50K investment for the creation of cakes + marketing.
Suddenly, you’re managing two businesses, hosting events, and paying a team, all while trying to keep up with the demands of your customers. But as you pour money into each new venture, the value of your currency drops, leaving you with dwindling profits. You’re burning through capital too fast so you close shop and everyone calls your businesses a scam and you, a scammer.
Now, imagine if bagels and cakes were NFTs and your loyal customers were holders. That is the current state of NFT communities.
How can we do better?
At Mintplex, we understand the value of sustainable revenue and the importance of building long-lasting communities. That’s why we’ve been hard at work developing no-code tools specifically designed for onchain communities and NFTs. With our tools, we’ve helped creators earn over $10M in revenue and launch over 4K communities.
Unfortunately, as the hype around crypto has died down, we’ve seen previously thriving NFT communities dry up and shut down. The reason for their demise is simple: one-time income is not sustainable.
Each new collection launched has diminishing returns, and secondary collections earn 65% less than their genesis project, according to our statistics.
We believe that creators can still build successful communities and brands onchain, which is why we’ve taken the concept of NFTs and improved them with proven business practices. With our new NFT subscription technology, we’re helping communities unlock recurring revenue and build sustainable businesses for the long term.
Introducing NFT Community Subscriptions.
At Mintplex, we’re excited to launch our latest innovation — ERC-721S, or more colloquially, NFT Subscriptions.
Don’t subscriptions already exist??
While it’s true that Unlock Protocol has built subscriptions onchain, they are designed as a drop-in replacement for SaaS and not specifically for community building.
What makes Mintplex’s NFT Subscriptions unique is that they’re purpose-built for NFT communities first and subscriptions second.
How does it work?
It’s simple! Everything you love about OpenEditions and traditional generative collections is still the same. The only difference is that when someone mints an NFT, they pay for their initial buy-in, not for life (although that’s still an option for creators).
You can deploy a 10K subscription collection on Ethereum for $30 gas and build something truly sustainable. Mintplex also supports Polygon, Polygon zkEVM, Optimisim, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Binance, and even Coinbase’s BASE testnet.
We provide you with all the tools you need to deploy and manage these collections launched with Mintplex right out of the box — including a subscriber management page, embed buttons for subscribing/renewing as well as a totally custom-branding minting website.
In addition to the benefits mentioned earlier, Mintplex’s NFT Subscription technology also offers a range of other features to help build sustainable communities:
- The community treasury earns a percentage of each subscription payment in addition to traditional royalties, providing a recurring revenue stream to support ongoing community initiatives.
- As the admin of the collection, you have the ability to extend any subscription for just a small gas fee (currently $0.50 on ETH), ensuring that loyal community members can continue to participate without interruption.
- You can also allow lifetime minting alongside subscription minting, with its own unique supply and price. This gives creators the flexibility to offer both one-time and recurring revenue streams for their communities.
- Payments for minting and extending subscriptions can be made with popular ERC-20 tokens like USDC and WETH, as well as your own social token if you have one. This makes it easy for members to participate and support the community in a way that works for them.
Now, what happens when I mint out?
Well first, congratulations! The unique feature set of Mintplex’s NFT Subscriptions not only keeps your community growing and active but also ensures that you never run out of NFTs to sell.
As NFTs naturally expire, our recycling feature ensures that they become re-mintable, enabling new collectors to join your community even after the initial minting phase is over.
Moreover, delinquent holders who fail to renew their subscription on expiry will no longer own their NFTs automatically, and token-gating solutions like collab.land will no longer recognize them as the owner.
This allows new collectors to “reclaim” these expired NFTs and become part of your community, increasing the demand and value of your NFTs.
What about traders trying to sweep?
By taking a firm stance against flippers and traders, Mintplex is making a clear statement that our focus is on building sustainable communities and long-term value for creators and communities. This approach can help to weed out those who are solely interested in quick profits and attract those who are genuinely invested in the success of the community.
Additionally, our custom-branded marketplace solution that you can deploy in a single click from Mintplex, displays the time remaining on the asset listing page and can provide greater transparency, and will prevent new buyers from accidentally purchasing an NFT that is about to expire. This can help to build trust within the community and ensure that users feel confident when engaging with your community.
Overall, by prioritizing the needs of creators and communities, and by taking a firm stance against traders and flippers, Mintplex is positioning itself as a platform that is committed to building sustainable, long-term value for all.
How can I get started?
This is live now! You can get started and deploy on testnet today and start building the community of the future. The video below will give you an idea of what the future of NFTs looks like.
