*Ding*
*Ding*
*Ding*
*Ding*
200+ unread Instagram dm's and rising.
Only one thing came to mind: “Oh fuck. Am I in trouble?”.
This is the story I first heard at my sister-in-law’s wedding.
To paint the scene, my friend Greg, a Zach Galifianakis kind of guy, calls me over. You never know if he’s trying to be funny or if he’s serious. Most of the time he straddles both personas. He’s the kind of guy you want to have at any social event. The kind of guy that will make you laugh until you spray beer out of your nose. The kind of guy that surprises you at every turn with edge-of-the-seat type of stories that at first, seems fucking unreal.
“You work with NFTs right?” he asked as he chuckled. “Pull a chair up.”
An introverted sigh escaped. In all of the places, web3 seemed to have found me again, and at a wedding no less. As much as I love this world, I wanted a day to unplug and reset. My sister-in-law’s wedding was the last place I wanted to talk about this. I knew once I got pulled in my mind would start buzzing with possibilities and the future would pull me in and swallow the present of all things that were supposed to be matrimony.
“My friend got her NFT ripped off by a famous Korean Rapper. Now she’s famous in K-Hip hop for it.”
I put down my glass and sat next to him.
“Tell me everything.”
On November 4th, Corinna Marin realized that the Rapper Yumdda stole her copyrighted artwork, “To The Moon”, and sold it as his own merchandise. The only way she knew what was actively happening on the other side of the world was because of: 1) the collective power of community; and 2) the ethos of web3 - transparency in the creator economy. While web3 still holds a loose definition, one thing remains obvious - whatever it is, wherever it is, community-centric thinking is at its core.
According to the messages Marin received from K-hip hop fans, Rapper Yumdda made $360,000 USD in merch sales profits from Marin’s NFT - all without her permission.
This wasn’t the first time. In fact, according to messages from Korean lawyers, it was his third offense (which could potentially result in jail time). She very quickly started to learn the seriousness of the case as lawyers and fans flooded her dm’s.
A law had recently passed in South Korea during December of 2020 aiming to create a zero-tolerance standard for IP Rights, which includes copyright infringement. Not only was the artwork titled ”To the Moon” promoted on merch and album sales, but it was also the name of his new song.
It’s important to note that all the information of this story was relayed to Marin from the community via Instagram dm’s. As fans quickly began to return the merch for a refund and post to their own stories, Yumdda took to his personal Instagram and quickly apologized for not realizing the art was another’s.
Marin tagged him in her story which was then reposted by Yumdda himself, gaining more momentum. "I would've gladly collaborated with you".
What fascinated me most was not the overnight virality, but the push for accountability steered solely by the community.
After months of silence and eighty-nine cents to her name, Marin’s foundation.app account blew up. A flat-out bidding war had ignited.
A transactional back and forth ode began to play out amongst web3 enthusiasts. The first bid was placed by @gharliera1, a fellow Cyberpunk NFT artist with over 14k Twitter followers. A subsequent bid was placed by @nftaper, another NFT collector who created an alias name of @yumddadao on foundation.app.
The beauty of blockchain is that all of these transactions are public data, so you can scope it out yourself by going to the link.
Thousands of eyes watched the bidding war with awe and amusement. The final bid, made voluntarily by Yumdda himself, was sold for an aggressive 13.42 ETH ($63,719.90 USD) and was followed up by a genuine apology.
Without the community intervening, Marin’s art would have been buried deep under the guise of someone else’s name - a huge infraction and contradiction to the ownable ethos of the creator economy.
Female artists account for just 16% of NFT Sales, a woeful statistic that is being tackled by phenomenal and talented women across the creative space.
With Crypto Bro culture still a major issue dominating the space, the community can tend to be slanted in a certain direction. The space is flooded with masculinity and boy-club mannerism, which can often tack on to the gated-ness of technical jargon and tokenization making it more intimidating and unwelcoming to the people who want to get in.
Part of the solution, in my opinion, is not to create some mass campaign that calls upon diversity but rather a micro campaign that starts in your own network. Sharing stories and information with the people in your life and inviting them early on in the process.
igmi < wagmi.
(I’m gonna make it < We’re all gonna make it)
In this new world of cryptographic tokens, the transparency behind NFTs and web3 enabled a small artist from Arizona to have true digital ownership of her creations. There was no room for exploitation from a well-known, influential musician. Ownership and the shared ecosystem of provenance introduce a new form of defensibility and protection for independent artists. In the creator economy model, everyday people
*like you*
*like me*
*like us*
have full control of asset distribution, giving them power in digital-based consumption.
Marin’s latest NFT collection “Little Pills” is a dedication to mental health, a series of pill-shaped humanoid characters in a variety of whimsical forms. Marin tweeted that recontextualizing the image of a pill might subvert the stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment - “making the subject of mental healthcare as approachable as cake or cotton candy.”
Marin ends the story by telling me about the inspiring and supportive dm’s received, highlighting the symbiotic nature of the community.
Do not give up until the situation surrenders in our favor.
How do I make sure I get mine? < how do I make sure we get ours?
When you win, I win.
Unknowingly, Marin’s story inspired me to create. Funny enough, after weeks of first meeting Marin, we've become best digital friends as technology and post-pandemic culture has bridged our friendship.
This is the true power of community in web3.
You can support the artist by heading to OpenSea and taking your next pill or following her on Twitter for her next drop.
Timelapse of the "To The Moon" is available for minting!
Elon Musk once reacted to the original artwork by saying "memes are very powerful."
Highlighted in 100+ articles to date and 100% hand-drawn by mintmake.
Cheers Frens. WAGMI.