I've never been a fan of NFTs, unable to see the value in expensive 10k pfp collections that gatekeep genuine art enthusiasts in favor of forming exclusive communities.That's why, as the years have passed, I've consciously kept my distance from the NFT part of the crypto industry.
Eventually, I realized it was high time for me to explore the apps supposed to drive mass adoption to the sphere. So, following advice, I went mobile, downloading all the shiny apps like Phantom, Rainbow, Coinbase, and Uniswap Wallet. Almost instantly, I returned to my roots, becoming a shitcoiner once again, but this time, a memecoiner. While exploring various memecoin betas, I came across the search tab in the Rainbow wallet and discovered an incredibly simple process for minting my first non-fungible token in a very long time. Notably, this was the first time I minted a token for its aesthetic value rather than flipping JPEGs for a quick buck (which more often resulted in a loss). I was so intrigued that I lurked around, eager to grasp the underlying techstack, and for the first time, I interacted with Zora.
To my surprise, it just clicked for me from the very first moment. The concept of bringing creative content onchain, powered by a scalable and seamless experience with the clear principles of "abundance over scarcity," along with innovative pricing models all securely backed by Ethereum, gave me the rejuvenated crypto enthusiasm I had been desperately seeking. After that initial love at first sight moment, I decided to dive deep into the Zora rabbit hole, similar to how I explore DeFi and Infra in my day job at RedStone, providing a comprehensive write on all things zora.
Alright NFT-boy, give me your best shot!
Yeah, putting it more broadly, Zora is aiming to make content creation free, extremely easy, and valuable. Essentially, you can tokenize any type of content that the internet has seen to date—and the future types, limited only by one's imagination. If it resonates enough for someone on the web to collect it, you earn some ETH or any other token of your choosing. There's no need for a wallet or prior crypto knowledge, just the artist's ability to connect with fans globally. Think of Zora as an Instagram, but with distinctly different pricing models that allow creators to avoid relying on ads or any off-platform schemes. If someone appreciates your work, there's a natural urge to mark it with your unique digital signature. Why? Well, I'm not particularly skilled at behavior analysis, but I can vouch for it myself and point to the digital footprints of millions of users.
Zora essentially empowers artists by providing unprecedented access to a new, unified global distribution network, while establishing clear provenance through the permissionless blockchain that settles directly on what I frankly believe to be the most secure settlement and data availability layer in the world: Ethereum. The cool part? Creators don't need to understand any of that; they can simply focus on their relationship with the recipient.
Founding story
Zora, founded by Jacob Horne—who was previously part of the so-called Coinbase mafia—has been working since 2020 to revolutionize the content industry using blockchain technology. You can learn more about the founder's journey, the multiple fundamental product iterations that have led to the current state of the art, and more. Don't worry, I'll share some of Jacob's insights at the end too. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said you could upload any type of content to Zora. You can listen to the entire episode directly on zora.co.
Farcaster 🤝
Alright, when discussing Zora, it's essential to mention Farcaster—an on-chain social media platform. Both entities have been closely aligned, seemingly outsourcing specialized tasks to each other. This piece focuses on Zora, but for a great introduction to Farcaster, I recommend checking out the well-written 'Farcaster 101' by the one and only /replyguy, Bitfloorsghost.
I'll add just a few words about Farcaster’s Frames — a new feature that offers much more customizability and creativity than your average social media app (yes, I'm looking at you, Instagram). Think of Frames as portals to mini-apps within the Farcaster client, allowing you to add any additional functionality directly on top of a Zora mint right in the Warpcast app.
Are we here to onboard the mainstream, or what?
Let's kick off our stats breakdown with this onchain JPEG that showcases how much Zora’s creators earned last month.
Zora has seen hectic growth since the beginning of the year, with transactions across all Layer 2 networks reaching new all-time highs each month. The platform's interoperability-first design, which seems to have effectively resolved the bridging dilemma through a seamless pay-from-whatever-Layer-2-you-want UX, is undoubtedly contributing to its adoption uptrend.
Additionally, over the past month, the Zora network has begun to catch up to the hottest general-purpose Layer 2, which is quite impressive, especially since L2 summer is in full swing with memecoin activity.
I'll just sum it up by saying that Zora is growing at a rapid pace. If you'd like to dive deeper into Zora's onchain data, I suggest starting with resources from @zorateam.
What does the future hold?
There’s a lot to be excited about. First things first, the mobile app.
I feel like this could be an absolute game changer for the app’s distribution funnels. As mentioned above, Farcaster is great, but it’s not exactly user-friendly for newcomers yet. Now, imagine creating a Zora-specific app targeted at users who know nothing about crypto and frankly don’t care to. They're just interested in a Pinterest-like experience with an intriguing economic scheme around it. To reinforce this point, fiat payments have just been added to the dApp!
Now, let's look at the opposite end of the spectrum: the strike at out-of-app, embedded minting experience. Zora aims to concentrate on seamless integrations with dApps to provide a smooth collecting experience within third-party apps. The most straightforward example here is Farcaster, but there are also native integrations like Mirror and Paragraph, and I'm pretty sure more are on the way.
We're beginning to see that the OG crypto companies are starting to actively advertise and promote their image via Zora, which represents an exciting growth vertical for the platform!
There’s more to be excited about with Zora, such as minting with any ERC-20 token or enjoy.tech, but this is getting a bit lengthy, so we’ll cut it here.
Onchain creators economy
Anyway, if I were to summarize all of my rumble, I'd simply say there's something uniquely satisfying about owning a piece of art that you truly enjoy, right in your wallet. Zora is the first dApp that really made me realize this. Moreover, Zora seems poised to tackle some major issues in the creative industry—creators struggle not only with distribution and monetization of their actual work (rather than through ads), but they also frequently lack clarity on the payments they receive, especially in the music industry. This is precisely the kind of issue that crypto was originally supposed to help solve.
I'll go back to focusing on infrastructure and DeFi, but I’m gonna keep minting the hell out of the pieces that I truly enjoy and want to have in my very own digital gallery 🫡
Disclaimer: I am not associated with the Zora team in any way. NFA, and all the other legal gibberish.