CreatorVerse
CreatorVerse is a new platform that combines the power of blockchain with the explosive growth of the creator economy to reimagine how creators and fans interact. We combine market-proven business models with the latest technology in a user experience that anyone can use.
The Problem: Creator Value Isn’t Going To Creators
The Creator economy is broken. Content has moved far beyond the early days when a home movie shot on a cell phone could generate millions of hits on Youtube. Today’s content creators invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in order to create and publish content relevant to today’s audience, and are often forced to employ an entire team in order to stay relevant. That some are able to be successful despite these costs is a testament to how large the audience has grown, with ad spend and hours viewed on Youtube surpassing TV as of 2017 in a trend that continues today.
CreatorVerse YouTube Video
Despite the explosive growth in the space, platforms continue to use a revenue structure nearly two decades old that rewards creators according to outdated metrics rather than real impact, leading to a whole class of creators devoted to scamming platforms by gaming these metrics rather than creating impactful work.
True creators must treat content as a loss leader as they resort to other means of making a living. Creator ‘merch drop’ clothing lines or Patreon accounts, while essentially the 21st century version of “passing the hat” for donations, prove that audiences are willing to fund creators that generate impact even if the means to do so are discouraging and unappealing. Network effects between creators, a powerful and largely untapped source of revenue, are actively discouraged as platforms position creators in a zero-sum competition for eyeballs and actively discourage meaningful incentives to promote a fellow creator’s content.
TLDR; the creator economy has exploded, technology has evolved, and it’s time to reinvent the incentive structure for creators, fans, and platforms. We see enormous potential in moving away from the current extractive model, encouraging network effects, and returning the value generated by the creator economy to those who participate in it. Creators will be free to generate greater impact, fans will be able to enjoy the value of their support, and platforms will monetize a larger, more robust marketplace.
The Opportunity: Build The CreatorVerse
CreatorVerse combines the latest innovations in real-time NFT’s, Web API’s, and the creator economy to return the value generated by creators where it belongs: to the creators themselves. We offer a no-code, intuitive platform that gives creators the power to leverage these innovations in sophisticated ways without technical knowledge, allowing them to focus their efforts on creating impact instead of managing complicated infrastructure.
We’ve been there at the start of a number of successful creators’ careers and intimately understand the barriers they faced on the journey to creating a successful brand. By allowing fans and creators to participate in building a creator’s brand together, we leverage network effects to give creators a space to thrive and fans unique, high quality experiences unavailable to them through current platforms.
Creators mint a single Master NFT that becomes their proxy on the platform, then fractionalize that NFT into tokens that are purchasable by fans. Rather than a static jpeg or unchanging file, this Master NFT is constantly evolving, and creators are able to decide in real-time how to reward their fans based on how many or which specific fractionalized tokens are held in a fan’s on-platform wallet. These rewards can be as simple as the swag, art, and appearances currently monetized for one-time donations, or exclusive, intimate experiences that are far more rare, as well as new types of rewards enabled by blockchain and distributed ledger technology that have yet to emerge.
Similar to how Clubhouse re-invented the “party line” for the age of smartphones, we are re-inventing the “fan club” for the age of digital currency. We will apply the latest technology to a concept already proven by the marketplace to maximize growth and adoption.
With CreatorVerse, NFTs become more than a jpeg with a chain of title, they open a portal into the universe of the creator that issues them.
Our mantra is “If anyone can use it, everyone can participate.” CreatorVerse will provide the rails for popular creators to maximize their brand’s value, as well as create a path for those just starting out to break through the barriers of entry that stop many talented creators before they start.
We are poised to capture a large segment of the current market, and at first foresee working with platforms like Youtube and TikTok in ways that strengthen their position while we establish our own until we ultimately surpass them the same way they surpassed television.
Background
Financial Regulation and NFT’s
It is no secret that platforms leveraging blockchain face uncertainty from US regulators in their ability to create, sell, and distribute crypto-assets. In 2017, an ICO craze drew the attention of SEC regulators, who shut down the Munchee ICO in 2017.
While this was a blow to Munchee, the case provided regulatory clarity to the rest of the space, and now many ICO’s are executed as private placements to accredited investors, only being sold to the public on the secondary market through regulated exchanges.
In 2021, NFT’s have gripped the public’s attention in a craze that echoes the ICO craze of 2017. While art auctions from established digital artists like Beeple have grabbed headlines, many other lesser known digital artists have experienced life-changing sales on platforms such as Rarible, OpenSea, and NiftyGateway. For the first time in history, digital goods can have a publicly provable chain of title, opening the possibility for new kinds of artwork, collectibles, and even insurance contracts.
The current hype leaves little doubt that regulators are watching the space develop and stand ready to intervene as boundaries are explored by different projects in the space. There is currently bipartisan support in Congress to get ahead of the space by passing legislation that gives market participants a clear view of what is in bounds and what is not.
A key difference, however, is that since 2017 a robust class of professionals specialized in the legal, tax, and securities implications of interacting with crypto assets have emerged to keep companies from running afoul of regulators. The “Wild West” days are over, and though there are doubtless going to be future cases of regulatory intervention, no one will be able to claim that they didn’t know better.
CreatorVerse will initially be modeled on existing platforms like NBA TopShots, which are fully compliant with US regulators, while retaining the option to add capabilities to enhance profitability should those capabilities prove compliant in the eyes of regulators. While we won’t be the first to test the boundaries, we will be well-positioned to fast-follow and capitalize on regulatory changes in this fast-moving space.
Broader Market context
The internet is a constantly evolving place. Advancements in technology, shifting generational trends, and changes in consumer behavior impact how we do what we do on the web. Recently, the global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift towards digitization of our daily lives, and a growing number of online marketplaces specializing in everything from sneakers to used cars has fueled a trend toward the “financialization-of-everything.” Even as we near the end of the pandemic, it is unlikely that these trends will reverse.
Key technological advancements making The CreatorVerse possible include the advent of 5G cellular technology and increased data throughput to personal devices, advancements in web rendering technologies powered by WebGL, and the rapid adoption of decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens using blockchain technology.
5G, Fast Data, and Rich Digital Worlds
Much has been written about the coming “5G revolution,” from promises of a mobile revolution to conspiracy theories linking it to the pandemic, and after years of talk many are still waiting to see what the fuss is about. “5G” stands for “5th generation” (not the same “5G” that stands for “5GHz” on a wifi router) and is the industry name for the next evolution of cellular technology. In order to implement 5G, new networks must be physically built from the ground up, with new, more densely packed towers sending high frequency signals through the air, and new, 5G capable devices must be purchased by consumers. The reward? Peak data speeds jumping from 4G’s 1GB/second to 20GB/second.
On July 20, 2020, Fraunhofer, the German organization responsible for creating the MP4, announced h266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC), which will cut the data needed to send a video file through the internet in half. This new codec will also support 360 degree video of up to 16k, up from the 8k of h265 and within striking distance of the 21.6k needed to achieve the human perceptual limit in a VR headset.
Web Graphic Language (Web GL) is a free-to-use API that is used to create 3D graphics in Web browsers. Created by the Khronos group in 2009, Web GL has come into its own in recent years due to the release of powerful graphics processors in mobile and desktop devices, increases in data throughput, and easy integration with HTML5, JavaScript, and Web Assembly Language. Projects like three.js have built libraries to further leverage WebGL in the creation of media rich virtual worlds accessible via most web browsers, making it much easier to render beautiful 3D on the web.
The confluence of these innovations are enabling experiences never previously thought possible. Three dimensional, fully immersive worlds can soon be rendered in a high degree of detail across every class of device, enriching the experience of interacting online and further blurring the line between physical and digital experience.
Decentralized Finance
Decentralized finance or “de-fi” exploded in the summer of 2020. Projects such as Compound, UniSwap, SushiSwap, Curv, Maker, and Aave collectively represent approximately 30 billion dollars total value locked in liquidity pools. This has caused a surge in the price of Ethereum as the cryptocurrency unlocked a long promised feature of smart contracts: the ability to create a trustless financial system. Innovations include decentralized market makers, lenders, and blockchain “oracles” that allow blockchain transactions to reference data off-chain. The space continues to develop at a rapid pace, with ways to determine credit-worthiness and create complex derivatives already in testing and coming to the market later this year.
Non-Fungible Tokens
The other major innovation to be embraced by blockchain developers is the non-fungible token. Non-fungible tokens are different from cryptocurrencies in that no two are exactly the same. While both fungible and non-fungible tokens are secured by public blockchains, fungible tokens are interchangeable with each other. A single ERC-20 token is as good as any other ERC-20 token of the same type. Non-fungible tokens, conversely, are unique even among other non-fungible tokens of the same type, and have smart contracts that can be written to allow them to confer ownership of unique digital or physical assets.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been in the public since 2017, when the first set of 10,000 crypto punks were claimed for free on a first-come-first-serve basis by anyone with an Ethereum wallet. NFTs first exploded later that year when the team from Dapper Labs launched Crypto-Kitties, a game featuring collectible cartoon cats that practically halted transactions on the Ethereum Mainnet due to the high volume of transactions it created. This exposed a key vulnerability in Ethereum’s ability to scale, and triggered a rush to figure out how to “shard” ethereum transactions using second layer solutions to increase throughput and lower transaction costs.
During the intervening years between then and now, often referred to as “crypto-winter”, projects such as OpenSea, Rarible, and Superrare developed platforms for artists and collectors to “mint,” buy, and sell digital artwork using NFTs. To a large extent, these projects were blockchain’s answer to similar off-chain projects such as Sedition. Dapper Labs, the team behind CryptoKitties, recently launched their own protocol, called Flow, that solves the problems they encountered during the Kitties launch and is currently powering “NBA Top Shots,” their collaboration with the NBA to create digital collectibles.
While NFT technology has been around since 2017, artists and collectors have recently caused the space to surge. Crypto Punks that were selling for $200 in the summer of 2020 are now fetching upwards of $50,000 from collectors eager to own a piece of history. NBA Top Shots, available in packs that cost between $10 and $1,000, have been sold for mid-to-high five figures, with the most recent reported sale of Lebron’s tribute dunk to the late Kobe Bryant nearing $80,000. That same collectible is now for sale at $200,000.
Until now, digital artists have had few ways to profit from the sale of their work. Because digital files are too easily copied, with no way to easily prove authenticity or ownership, the work of digital artists has been largely unappealing to the fine art world. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann gained popularity in the digital art community by creating and publishing a new work on his Instagram account every day for 13 and a half years, for free, to promote himself as a digital artist-for-hire. Better known as Beeple, Winklemann recently collected the first 5,000 of his “everydays” into an NFT that sold for over $69 million through an auction run by Christie’s. When asked what the sale means, his response was “I think it means digital art is here to stay.” These high dollar value sales have triggered an “NFT gold rush” as artists and musicians use NFT technology to secure their digital work in a way that has never before been possible peer-to-peer.
The Future: Real-Time Master NFTs
While NFTs have made headlines as a way to secure works of digital art, their use cases go well beyond the art world. Future use cases will see NFTs used as an online proxy to secure everything from physical property to personal data. Yearn Finance, a major player in the DeFi space, has launched their yInsure smart contract insurance as an NFT on Rarible. This allows users to purchase smart contract insurance without providing liquidity and opens up a secondary market that users can leverage without being exposing themselves to the underlying protocol.
One of the most powerful features of NFTs is that they have the ability to update in real time. Rather than pointing to a static file hosted on the web, the NFT can be minted to terminate in an API endpoint, allowing it to link to real-world or on-chain data streams via an oracle. This allows the NFT’s owner to experience shifts in those data streams as they happen through the NFT.
In the art world, this capability can be used to create artwork that constantly changes. Platforms like Async Art allow state changes within individual NFT artworks based on data from multiple sources. These state changes can be driven by the weather, time of day, duration since creation, activity in stock markets and crypto markets, and even data purposely sent by fans of the artwork.
Another powerful feature of NFTs is composability. A composable structure is one that is modular, where relationships between components are variable and can be constructed in different ways. A single NFT can be made up of different tokens, such as ERC-721s, ERC-998s, and ERC-1155s, each with unique capabilities. The ERC-721 standard powered CryptoKitties, and was the first NFT smart contract standard, defining the minimum interface for a smart contract to be a unique NFT.
The ERC-998 standard was developed a short time later, and adds a composable layer to NFTs. Think of ERC-998 as a “container” or “Master NFT” that can be used to hold and transfer anything that is added to it. If you wanted to organize your CryptoKitty (ERC-721), its favorite scratching post (ERC-721), and your stash of “cat food” (ERC-20, a fungible token), into a single transferable unit, ERC-998 allows you to do just that. If you transfer the ERC-998 “Master NFT” to another wallet, all of the tokens inside will come with it.
The ERC-1155 token is a highly composable NFT that can contain both fungible and non-fungible tokens, similar to an ERC-998, and is the most recent standard added to the Ethereum blockchain. Developed by Enjin, what distinguishes the ERC-1155 from ERC-998 is the use of a single address to store multiple items. While ERC-998 can store multiple items, each is still its own token on the blockchain and, when the Master NFT is transferred, each of those tokens is treated as its own separate transaction. Conversely, ERC-1155 is a “smart” container, and when an ERC-1155 Master NFT is sent to another wallet address, all of the items contained move in a single transaction on the blockchain. It can even mint new tokens inside the contract if instructed. For this reason, it is considered “semi-fungible,” leading its developers to call it “The Final Token Standard” on Ethereum.
The CreatorVerse will leverage the full capabilities of the ERC-1155 smart contract to mint “Master NFTs” with real-time programmable state changes and the ability to mint fungible and non-fungible tokens within each contract. Creators will be able to offer viewing experiences, live streams, shows, images, 3D assets, even fully intractable worlds. Through the innovation of the ERC-1155 standard we will grant creators a fully composable universe within their NFT, giving supporters new ways to engage with the creators they love.
Product Description
CreatorVerse Platform
CreatorVerse is a platform that allows Creators to engage supporters using RealTime NFT technology and provides a new form revenue for Creators. In addition, the CreatorVerse platform serves as a way for supporters to interact with their favorite Creators and support them financially.
CreatorVerse relies on NFTs to provide a powerful supporter-engagement experience for fans of Creators, but it is relatively crypto free experience for both supporters and creators. Most NFT platforms rely on Cryptocurrency to facilitate transaction within the system, but CreatorVerse (like NBA Top Shot, $2B valuation) has an entirely crypto free experience, meaning fans fund their accounts with debit or ACH and at no point use Cryptocurrency like Ethereum for example to facilitate transaction. Similarly, when fans purchase NFTs of creators, those NFTs are held in custodial wallets by CreatorVerse (like CoinBase, and NBA Top Shot).
However, CreatorVerse plans to offer a “cryptomode”, a crypto experience for more savvy users where they can use cryptocurrency to fund their account and can offload their NFTs into their own wallets, outside the CreatorVerse platform. We feel it’s important to please supporters as well as the cryptocurrency community in offering multiple ways to interact with the CreatorVerse platform — one being with crypto and one without.
The CreatorVerse platform allows fans to buy and sell creators’ NFTs on the CreatorVerse Exchange. These NFTs go up and down in value theoretically, based on the success and ‘hype’ behind the creator. On the CreatorVerse exchange dashboard, fans can see metrics about the NFTs available to purchase on the market. These metrics include: price history, creator metrics (like subscribers, likes, etc.) and additional information which would assist the supporter
Creator Experience
Creators are drawn to the platform because they are able to engage with their fans in a way that allows them to offer unique experiences and get revenue through fraction pre-sales and transaction fees when supporters trade their fractions (erc-1155s).
Father John Misty is a well-known musician in the folk-rock scene. FJM hears that CreatorVerse offers a unique way to offer experiences to fans all while monetizing their platform. Fortuitously, the CreatorVerse team is aware of FJM’s success and has reached out to schedule a call. On the call, FJM learns that through CreatorVerse, he can issue memberships to his realtime NFT to his fans and that CreatorVerse handles the whole process. FJM just has to establish, promote and fulfill his experiences, then watch his bank account grow!
FJM likes the concept so he signs up. After taking care of the legal work, FJM is assigned an account manager, who helps him through the onboarding process and talking points on how to discuss his Verse with his supporters. FJM’s account manager states that, based on his metrics, FJM can offer 150,000 fractions at $4 per fraction on a presale and that they will likely sell out, given his following. FJM’s account manager also discusses FJM’s fraction chest as well the vesting schedule.
FJM promotes the presale of his Verse to his following on Twitter, Instagram, and his website. The presale goes live in a week and will last 30 days. FJM encourages fans to take advantage of the low presale prices and the perks that come with sustained membership. The perks are as follows:
1 Fraction allows membership (for as long as they hold it), which includes access to Father John Misty’s RealTime NFT
100 Fractions gets members an exclusive FJM NFT commemorating the release of said record dropped into their wallet (as long as fractions are held in user wallet at the time of record release, which is TBD at the time of the announcement)
500 Fractions (held for 2 months) gets members a signed copy of FJM’s latest release, and a commemorative NFT showing ownership
10,000 Fractions (held for 3 months) gets members a one-time backstage pass at a show
50,000 Fractions (held for 4 months) gets members an exclusive performance at the venue of their choice (sound-check and roadies included)
FJM continues to market his presale. Fans really like the opportunity to get backstage passes, so it goes well. All 150,000 fractions are sold out in 3 minutes. Now the presale is over, the fractions hit the CreatorVerse marketplace and FJM gets revenue every time a fraction is traded. FJM’s account manager also recommends holding 150,000 fractions in FJMs “vault” which get unlocked on certain demand milestones.
Now that FJM’s fractions are on CreatorVerse’s market, FJM continues to promote his Verse and demand goes up. FJM’s fractions are now trading at $8 per fraction. FJM is starting to see that some fans have enough fractions to reach the backstage pass milestone. The fans only need to hold for the period allotted (3 months in this case) in order to cash in. As some supporters get close to the milestone, the CreatorVerse AM team connects them with FJM’s team in order to begin facilitation of the experience.
In the meantime, FJM sees he can drum up demand by putting interesting concepts into his Real Time NFT, a file that is exclusive only to those who own at least one fraction of his Master NFT. FJM uses the opportunity to release a clip of his new song which has not been released. Twitter talks about how a clip of his new song is in his real time NFT, and FJM notices demand for fractions increases.
Fast forward one month, one fan reaches the backstage pass milestone requirements and FJM meets the supporter and his girlfriend backstage. The backstage pass NFT is burned and FJM truly enjoys the experience meeting his fans.
