NFT Nights (3): The “NFT NIGHTS” Experiment
When I deal with several layers of complexity at the theoretical level, I always find it useful to start building stuff early on.
It gives me something to look at, and lets me visualize the concept.
In the case of NFTs there’s another obstacle to a pure theoretical approach: everything in crypto and DeFi moves very fast, and by the time we write down a plan, it’s old.
I think now it’s a very good time to create a real life experiment: real availabilities, real money, real bookings, real blockchain transactions.
The tech is there. It’s really basic, hard to understand for most, but it works, and it’s already allowing tens of millions of dollars in transactions in other markets (mostly art, collectible and digital land).
IT’S ALL PART OF THE PLAN
1. Properties selection: we choose 3 properties to put on the NFT market
We will put some of their availabilities on the market.
Being selected for this experiment(s) has the secondary advantage of getting potentially a lot of visibility, as they will be the first NFT Nights in history.
📨 APPLY HERE >>
2. Agreement
We will create the NFT, pay the gas fees and put it on the market.
If it sells, we’ll hold the money and send it to you in crypto.
If it doesn’t sell, no damage done, you kept the calendars open anyway.
The agreement:
- The DAO gets a 1% commission on each sale.
- You agree to honor the booking.
📨 APPLY HERE >>
3. Word of Mouth
We will contact every DeFi, NFT, blockchain and Travel press outlet, share the news on the social networks and so on.
It’s an interesting experiment, and it will be talked about a lot.
We will do this as an industry, and I am pretty sure we’ll create a lot of noise.
What you’ll need to learn
In the experiment we reduce the technical complexity to the maximum.
You only need to have a wallet, and you can learn this here, or we can teach you personally.
All the “crypto stuff” will happen between buyers (who are crypto savvy) and us.
You will be able to see in real time every single offer, sale and transfer.
THE BLOCKCHAIN DILEMMA
The most used blockchain for NFTs is Ethereum which has a basic problem: it’s very expensive to operate.
Here’s a few of these costs.
- The minting (creation) of the NFT can cost between $50 and $100 on average.
- The transfer can cost between $30 and $50 on average.
Since we are not selling items worth millions of dollars, it’s probably best to avoid it.
Luckily there are alternatives, like the xDAI network or Matic, and we are exploring them as we speak.
Maybe for the first NFTs, which also may have a strong historical value, we can bear the gas costs and launch them on the Ethereum marketplaces.
We are evaluating this right now.
THE MARKETPLACES
OpenSea is an NFT marketplace which got a $23M investment led by Andreessen Horowitz a few days ago.
They’ve been around since 2018 (the Stone Age in crypto terms): their platform is the most advanced, it has a lot of traffic and visibility, and it’s the marketplace of choice for most users.
In their values they write something important, which I think it’s worth quoting here, as it teaches us what the blockchain is about:
Build an ocean, not an aquarium
We’re strong believers in open protocols. While digital assets have existed since the dawn of the internet, we strongly believe that what’s unique about blockchain-based assets is their ability to exist across multiple interwoven ecosystems. OpenSea prides itself in its open-ness: our platform is open to anyone building user-owned digital assets, and we build on well-adopted open standards, such as ERC721 and ERC1155.
So, we are taking them as our benchmark when researching the alternatives.
OpenSea mostly runs on Ethereum and as a result it’s often outrageously expensive due to the gas fees.
It also runs partially on Matic, a cheaper blockchain, and certain things, like minting, can be performed there.
This seems a good time to introduce a concept: one thing about NFTs is that we want them to last forever, or at least as long as possible.
For this reason you need the most established blockchain, and this is Ethereum.
In the future there will be native NFT Travel marketplaces, and we want to be the first to build one.
