Crowdmuse whitepaper v1.0 synopsis

This is a distilled version of the Crowdmuse whitepaper. To see the full version, click here. For collectors of crowdmuse genesis artifact, visit Collect page to download your version of the whitepaper and other content in the product bundle.

Abstract

Crowdmuse is a protocol for creators to collaborate on multiplayer products with brands, makers, and communities while maintaining ownership over their creative assets.

We are building onchain coordination rails that lower the barrier for creators to build digi-physical products across fashion, consumer goods, print, media, and other multiplayer products.

Crowdmuse Whitepaper v1 is intended to provide an initial glimpse into the world we collectively envision and how we think it could work.

A world where creators come together to co-create unique cultural artifacts and collectibles.

A future in which the way we create, consume, and interact with products will be reimagined by onchain tooling that brings transparency, ownership, and collective incentive design to creators, makers, and collectors.

Problems

Despite the growth of the creator economy, being a creator is hard work.

When creating any form of art, creators have to use their talents to create a product, transform it into something their fans would consume, and then manage distribution in hopes of sufficiently monetizing that product—just to sustain themselves until the next creation.

While NFTs may provide better revenue capture tools than traditional web2 creator platforms, they do not provide creators with adequate scaling solutions for the real world. Creators struggle to find sufficient financing to cover upfront costs for end-to-end manufacturing of the product they wish to sell. Although crowdfunding is an option, it is difficult to raise money as an individual creator without a reputation, which takes time to build.

Without a reputable brand behind them, creators have limited access to the resources they need to launch and distribute a product. With a reputable brand, creators often give away ownership of their Intellectual Property and have no choice as to how it is used.

In this section, we will tackle the existing problems in fashion design and manufacturing alongside challenges concerning creator Intellectual Property and monetization.

Lack of resources, access to supply, and upfront costs

Fashion, like many other consumer goods verticals, has been going through a digital transformation as adoption from a digitally native audience of creators and consumers soars. This is impacting not only the design and production processes but the entire supply chain and those involved within it.

• Difficulty in accessing reliable suppliers and resources has hindered designers and brands from fully exploring their product potential, leading to the protectionism of supply networks and challenges in supplier management.

• The industry is beginning to shift towards a more sustainable and positive working capital model, moving away from traditional stock-based systems to presell, preorder, made-to-order, and minimum-order-quantity manufacturing.

• This allows designers and brands to receive upfront payments from orders, reducing the need for upfront investment in stock inventory and enabling a more efficient production process.

Supply chain transparency, gated footprint data, and fragmented digital assets

The challenge of implementing sustainable business models that are economically viable has grappled consumer markets, particularly fashion for a decade or more. Existing solutions are yet to scale sufficiently to meet customer needs across the demand curve.

• Customers are increasingly conscious of their purchases, but reliable supply chains require collaborative networks of suppliers and producers to achieve scalable sustainable production.

• Web2 software solutions have attempted to bring visibility to a product's provenance and footprint, but they lack standardized and complete data sets, making it difficult to verify sustainability claims and achieve clear transparency and visibility in the supply chain.

• Progress is further hindered by the vertical integration of fast fashion companies, fragmented data sources, and lack of shared incentives.

IP appropriation and constrained monetization models

Creators often struggle to protect their Intellectual Property (IP) from appropriation by larger brands and cannot sufficiently monetize their creations without centralized distribution channels.

• In traditional fashion, creators have limited control over their creative assets and receive only a small portion of the value generated by their creations, while large brands often exploit creator IP without additional compensation.

• The emergence of NFTs has opened up new opportunities for creators to utilize decentralized distribution channels, monetize their work directly, and capture revenue across the demand curve.

• However, building audiences and scaling solutions remain challenges for many creators.

Solutions

Crowdmuse seeks to lower the barrier for creators to unlock personalized experiences for their communities—essentially moving creator mode from single to multiplayer.

Art is collaborative by nature, particularly fashion and music. For decades, creators have been open-sourcing parts of their works to allow others to remix and reuse.

Recently, demand has been emerging among creators for increased accessibility and ownership of techniques, playbooks, and other Intellectual Property. These creators have been joining forces to share collective upside and costs as “headless” brands co-create products that reflect their shared values.

We propose experiments with collective incentive mechanisms across memberships, ownership, and loyalty through the use of preorder drops, multi-sided marketplaces, and creator licensing models.

Headless brands can help creators co-create more value together than they ever could alone.

Co-creation, creator networks, and preorder drops

Co-creation refers to the process in which a brand or multiple creators co-design a product with input from their fans.

• Crowdmuse utilizes the blockchain as a distributed order book of skills to streamline co-created and co-owned products, allowing creators to earn revenue based on their contributions and enabling artifacts to be authenticated to their profiles.

• Creator artifacts and skills can be plugged into multiple product creation flows, meaning that a 3D designer can plug their digital assets into another creator network to create an entirely new product.

• Limited edition product drops on the Crowdmuse marketplace help mitigate upfront stock costs and meet desired order numbers before production and delivery.

Multi-sided marketplace (supply and demand)

In order for the multiplayer creator economy to thrive, a multi-sided platform is needed to enable the various market participants to easily transact with each other.

• The blockchain can bring greater efficiency and liquidity to the creator economy, not only allowing for better matching of creators and brands with suppliers but also resulting in increased growth and fairer revenue sharing among contributors.

• The Crowdmuse Marketplace facilitates the licensing of creators' Intellectual Property, enabling the co-creation of digi-physical products, revenue sharing among contributors, and movement towards a circular economy where creative IP and supply can be remixed and repurposed.

• Using our multi-sided marketplace, suppliers, and producers can bring their made-to-order capacity onchain with verifiable footprint standards like energy credits and water consumption.

Creator ownership and licensing models

With onchain creativity, creators can mark the originality of their creations on the public ledger and can receive perpetual royalties as brands and other creators remix their creations.

• NFTs and onchain legal primitives provide creators with tools to protect their intellectual property, monetize their work, and build direct relationships with fans.

• The Crowdmuse Protocol enables creators to collaborate on product drops by contributing their creative assets while retaining ownership through decentralized identities.

• Creator contributions are linked to products, with proportional revenue splits and licensing royalties for their contributions and remixes of their assets.

Onchain networked goods use cases

Once network effects begin to grow through collective incentive mechanisms, marketplaces, and licensing models, creators will be able to scale their products more easily by collaborating with a network of value-aligned creators, brands, and makers.

Digi-physical fashion

Fashion design and production methods are especially suitable for onchain adoption. The industry is undergoing technological advancements with increasing interest from fashion designers and manufacturers to open source or license pattern libraries and manufacturing techniques.

Blockchain technology presents a new opportunity for bringing patterns and manufacturing certifications onchain. By giving verifiable ownership to assets onchain and a mechanism to monetize creator and manufacturer assets, each player across the value chain is incentivized to allow their IP to be used for product design and production to receive immediate and future revenue streams. This in turn scales the creative process and attracts more contributors.

User profiles

• Brands and online communities - To co-create with others on the network for brand access and resources.

• Fashion designers and pattern makers  - To submit pattern files and tech packs for a physical garment creation for a physical sample and production.

• 3D designers - To help boost visualization of a digital and physical product. Fashion designers and pattern makers can also hold 3d design talents.

• Digital print designers -To work with pattern makers to ensure prints are captured correctly on the item and formatted correctly for physical production.

• Manufacturers - To submit certifications to prove sustainable manufacturing best practices.

• Multimedia creator - To create animations, AR, or digital interpretations of physical items for their buyers.

We are working with partners who are building storefronts and creator marketplaces on top of the Crowdmuse Protocol, including a web3 storefront with MetaFactory.

Platform Features 

Crowdmuse empowers creators to own their creative IP and scale their talents through multiplayer co-creation.

Creators can bring their digital assets onchain as artifacts with built-in licensing contracts tied to their profiles, enabling collaboration on multiplayer products between creators, brands, and communities.

As the blockchain provides a distributed order books for digital assets, the Crowdmuse platform enables a multi-sided marketplace for skills and services between creators and brands:

• Creators are able to co-create multiplayer products with a network of brands and communities to monetize their creativity while retaining IP rights;

• Brands and communities are able to tap into a composable library of designs and products to cater to the dynamic needs of their members;

• Collectors are able to support their favorite artists directly and gain access to exclusive member experiences through tokenized community networks

Multiplayer Product NFTs

With Multiplayer NFTs, brands and creators can launch no-code, digi-physical products with built in revenue splits, creator attribution, and redemption features.

Each multiplayer collectible is a dynamic NFT built on the Polygon Blockchain using a modified ERC-721 contract. 

Three roles can interact with the smart contract of a Multiplayer NFT:

• The Product Owner is typically a brand representative or lead creator who deploys the Multiplayer NFT contract and chooses the creators to collaborate with.

• Creators can be artists, designers, makers, or animators who bring their creative IP on chain through their Creator Profile. Creators can contribute or license their creative assets as artifacts through the Product Contract deployed by the Product Owner.

• Collectors are the buyers of the Multiplayer NFT and gain access to token gated perks within the Product Bundle. Collectors are also curators, showcasing their favorite Creators and earning rewards for early support and distribution.

Product NFTs are collaboration agreements between brands and creators with built-in creator splits, artifact licensing, and redemption. Features include:

• Creator splits are programmed revenue sharing agreements that enable creators to receive a % of primary NFT sales as well as a royalty % of secondary sales. 

• Product bundles include the perks granted to collectors of the NFT, including physical collectible redemption, digital assets like 3D assets, animations and metaverse models, and token-gated experiences.

Product artifacts are the creative assets brought onchain by creators as part of the product creation process. Creators can license their creative assets by adding an artifact to the product NFT contract. These artifacts will also be added to the creator profile, available to be remixed or licensed in future products.

This is a distilled version of the Crowdmuse whitepaper. To see the full version, click here.