0/ The single most important question in NFT land is

How do you enable the long tail of creators - think 25M+ around the world - to generate say $50-100k / year in income, so they can self sustain

A thread
1/ Today, I would argue we don't really have PMF for creator monetization

Sure, Beeple and 3LAU and Pak have sold stuff for millions per piece

And stuff on SuperRare clears for 6 figures regularly

But this is by definition not long tail
2/ It's awesome to see OpenSea trading mega volumes of Punks and Axies

But again, this is not monetization for long tail creators
3/ When a new business model emerges - in this case selling an NFT and/or a social token - it usually also changes the core product as well
4/ What this theory would imply is that selling art JPGs is not enough. It's a fine form of monetization for people who are already well known, but unlikely to work for someone with 50K IG followers
5/ As I think through more nuanced questions of creator monetization, the thing I keep coming back to is...

Scarcity per unit of time
6/ Sure all NFTs are in some sense 1/1 (even if they're part of a set)

But I think there is an upper bound on how many sets and/or 1/1 a given creator can sell per unit of time
7/ Scarcity can exist across many dimensions, but I think time is probably under discussed

Some examples to consider
8/ There are millions of moments on NBA top shot. I think they're just from one season

In 3 more years, there are going to be 10M+ moments

Players play 82 games / year before play offs

That's a lot of blocks/dunks/fast breaks/3s per year
9/ Now, if it's a dunk in game 7 of the finals with 3 seconds left, that's pretty scarce. The *max* frequency in which that can occur is once per year (and in practice much lower than that since few finals make it to game 7)
10/ Sports cards work reasonably well in this framework, since the cards are done per player, per year (I think)

Pretty scarce per unit of time, compared to a player who has 250 awesome moments over the course of a season
11/ Let's consider another example

TikTokers who make videos everyday

Every
Single
Day

Sometimes multiple
12/ There is a *massive* design space for creator monetization here, and fan engagement. I think this is going to be the most fascinating arena for experimentation over the next 24 months
13/ For example, a creator could auction off an NFT. whoever has the NFT gets to be in a video in an instrumental way with the creator

Turn that video into an NFT, and repeat

Create a nice chain of NFTs
14/ It's pretty easy to see this being done for some thematic purpose with say 5 videos

But can the creator really do 100+ of these per year? (ignore logistics)

Will the audience feel "i like this guy but he just creates so many?"
15/ I think these questions are solve-able

But it's going to take a fair bit of iteration

And the interplay between social tokens and NFTs will be just awesome. It really opens up the design space significantly
16/ We have made a few investments along the ideas in this thread, some of which are public, and some of which are not yet public

One question I've recently asked those founders is

Can you go full stack with your own creators?
17/ The most important variable to optimize for is iterations

It's impossible to know the answers to these questions

You just have to run a lot of experiments, with a lot of creators, and normalize learnings across things like vertical, medium, etc
18/ Many creators are going to be unable or unwilling to engage in a hyper-tight feedback loop as you try to explore the design space for creator monetization

So why not bring a few in house?
19/ It feels pretty weird at first, and in some instances may not be possible (eg how can Audius get a DJ to do this)

But, I think if teams who are building for creator monetization can do this, it's a massive strategic advantage
20/ Last thing I'll say is

NFTs are *really* confusing

They are a super general purpose technology, being applied to all kinds of different problems:

creator monetization
fan engagement
online avatars
gaming and play to earn

And many more
21/ As you think about investing, it's important to be very clear which problems you're trying to solve, and not think in terms of NFTs as a general concept (there's a reason why no one talks about FTs)
22/ Anyways, rant over.

As always, feedback welcome!

{fin}

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More from @KyleSamani

13 Sep
0/ One simple mental model for the Internet is that the the Internet made information flow bidirectional

Whereas previously it was uni-directional
1/ Pre-internet, the mechanisms for one-to-many communication were

Stand in a public square, hooked up to a microphone, and get everyone to show up

Record a CD

National TV

Be in a movie

Write a book / magazine article

Newspaper editorial / ads

etc
2/ One of the amazing things about the Internet is that information flows in both directions

The first examples of this were email and lightweight HTML pages

But this didn't really pick up until the iPhone, because the thing that people really wanted to share was pictures
Read 9 tweets
10 Sep
0/ Rayban Stories

What, who, how, when, where, why

A thread

(Before getting into crypto, I started a company that built software for Google Glass (GG)in healthcare... I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a while!)

Only tangentially relevant to crypto
1/ What are FB’s long term goals?

Pretty obvious actually: build the metaverse

They have been investing in VR (Oculus) and AR for many years, with powering the Metaverse being the overarching goal
2/ FB stated that this will be the first of a series of products

The primary purpose of this launch is to get real world feedback

How do people use it?
What do they like / not like?
How do social norms evolve when someone wears camera glasses?

Etc
Read 25 tweets
5 Sep
0/ Some airplane thoughts on Loot
1/ I don’t think Loot has anything to do with any Metaverse things

Why?

Because Metaverse requires synchronous 3D space
2/ Loot may well have a place in a metaverse

But we are *very far* away from that. Networking + high fidelity rendering in real time for 1000+ people is a long way out
Read 13 tweets
2 Sep
0/ We’ve been thinking about stablecoins for a long time. We even tried to design one in late 2017 but ultimately canned it

We recently led a round in UXD, which we believe is the right decentralized stablecoin construction

multicoin.capital/2021/09/02/sol…
1/ the construction is understood: it’s just the basis trade

This is *by far* the most battle tested stablecoin construction because of the volume + OI on perps over the last few years

It’s very hard to see how it implodes because it’s 100% collateralized
2/ UXD lives on solana and will interface with the major derivatives venues like Mango and Drift and others

And stablecoin swapping pools like Saber
Read 5 tweets
26 Aug
0/ Lots of talk recently about generative art

This is an interesting area, and I’m a fan

But it doesn’t really feel crypto native to me… it’s still just selling JPGs

But I think there is something to be done with algorithms and art ownership

A brief thread
1/ In “physical NFT” markets - sports cards, art, signed jerseys, etc - one of the most important properties is the condition of the object itself

Generally, better condition = higher price (a few exceptions to this)
2/ In the physical world, things naturally degrade. Oxygen, the sun, transportation, etc

But digital native NFTs obviously do not
Read 10 tweets
25 Aug
0/ Sushi and super apps. A 🧵

Sushi just turned 1. I think Sushi is little bit lost, and doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up

Multicoin owns some SUSHI
1/ Super apps used to be a mostly an Eastern phenomenon. The canonical example is WeChat

Fintech in the US has traditionally been siloed

Bank at Wells Fargo
Buy stocks on Robinhood
CC from Chase
Crypto from Coinbase

Etc
2/ Over the last 10 years, as all of the big fintech unicorns - Revolut, Robinhood, Chime, SoFi, etc - have started to reach saturation points for the markets they started serving

They all started naturally expanding into other financial services
Read 25 tweets

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