Crowdmuse Marketplace v1 was launched on July 23 with the release of the Crowdmuse Genesis Artifact to showcase our marketplace and CrowdmuseProduct Contract v1.

Since then, we have released frequent curated drops with the likes of FWB, Optimism, Base and Lens to serve as pilot drops to explore assumptions around multiplayer product creation with the Crowdmuse USDC and CC payment infra, checkout and redeem functionalities.

In this post, we will take a look at

1. Crowdmuse v1 assumptions, milestones and traction

2. Pilot drops driving further product and UI/UX development

3. Lookahead product experiments and our vision

Crowdmuse is positioned within the consumer crypto segment, an emerging market. As leaders in this category, we champion a new use case in crypto.

Naturally, this requires us to be diligent with our product hypothesis when it comes to onchain purchases, creator collaboration, and Intellectual Property (IP) attribution. We believe the right combination of these capabilities will onboard a significant influx of creators and brands.

1. Crowdmuse v1 assumptions, milestones and traction

Crowdmuse is a platform for emerging creators to collaborate with cultural brands and create custom experiences for their community of collectors.

The CrowdmuseProduct Contract architecture was built around multiplayer product creation for digital and physical consumer goods. It has three core features:

1. Creator splits and fund distribution - a modified ERC721A contract with revenue sharing % on sales and autonomous fund distribution into creator wallets

2. IP and role attribution - product contributors assign roles and submit their digital files as part of product co-creation

3. Product metadata - supply chain specifications, including contributors and tasks, product specification and inventory management stored onchain and offchain accordingly

To view the open-source contract and learn more about the CrowdmuseProduct Contract see here.

Our assumption for v1 was that multiplayer collaboration reduces some of the problems single-player creators traditionally face in consumer markets (e.g. fashion), such as:

• High upfront production costs

• Poor access to resources and distribution

• Lack of IP protection and methods to sustainably monetize talent

To test this assumption, we aim to curate 10 pilot drops with our beachhead market of early adopters in fashion design and sustainable manufacturing. The purpose of these manually curated drops is to iterate on how the Crowdmuse marketplace can streamline the production process between creators, community and buyers.

Check out our interview with Zed and Chris from Tropical Futures Institute who designed the 0xTote custom bag for FWB.

The limited edition drops curated with our creator and manufacturing network include the following:

• Community drops for FWB with DECODE, DSPTCH and Tropical Futures Institute

• Official Optimism custom merch drop in collaboration with Rapanui and CU3D

• Multimedia artist-led drop for Lens at Art Basel Miami with visual artist Reza Hasni and CRAFT

• Limited Edition Base drop for Art Basel Miami collaboration at Base House Miami with Slow Rodeo and CU3D

  You can view all drops on crowdmuse.xyz

See below for performance metrics to date

2. Pilot drops driving further product and UI/UX development

We aim to push the needle each time we deploy a new drop. Based on the type of consumer products that creators wanted to sell on the marketplace, we emulated existing e-commerce UI/UX to reduce user friction for buying a physical product onchain.

Under the hood of a familiar purchase flow, consumers begin to notice novel, crypto-native features, such as contribution-based revenue splits, encrypted creator assets as downloadable artifacts, and wallet creation to store product NFTs for redemption of physical products and access to other perks.

Products purchased on the Crowdmuse marketplace are priced in USDC to avoid crypto price volatility on physical goods. Buyers can purchase with USDC on compatible chains or pay with credit card. Currently, the CrowdmuseProduct Contract is compatible with Polygon, Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism and Base.

The supply side of the marketplace includes artists, 3D designers, pattern makers and manufacturers, and the demand side includes the community supporting the brand and/or creators. As we are bringing new use cases onchain, outside of those who are crypto native within these personas, we aim to not disrupt either audience’s onboarding experience. This means abstracting away features that will make payments and onboarding onchain simpler whilst continuing to serve and grow a crypto-native and curious audience.

See one of our product onboarding call recordings Aug 2023 with Richard Liu at DSPTCH on creating a wallet and learning how to offramp his USDC payments from sales to cover production costs as a manufacturer. And an example recording of our monthly Crowdmuse Creator Circle session Dec 2023.

2023 year-end updates to the CrowdmuseProduct contract and marketplace UI/UX based on drop learnings include

• Marketplace UI/UX update - For the Optimism drop, we shipped a new UI on the product NFT page, updated the redeem and checkout flow for a better user experience and integrated Privy wallet abstraction for non-crypto native buyers

• Native CC payment function with Stripe - This marks the first onchain commerce product to enable its own native CC payment infra utilizing Stripe for non-crypto buyers minting on Optimism and other compatible networks like Polygon, Ethereum Mainnet and Base

• Multibuy contract ERC-721A - As our use case involves customers purchasing consumer products, we have enabled purchases of multiple quantities of the same item. Hence we have upgraded our CrowdmuseProduct contract to ERC-721A, enabling multi-buy mints on digital and physical products

• Profiles v1 - As we continue to onboard creators and collectors, we have activated profiles v1 to enable creators and buyers on Crowdmuse to set up a profile with their details and social links. We are user-testing additional user features like creator libraries with creators and collectors

  See our user docs to learn more

3. Lookahead product experiments and our vision

We see a world where individual creators can tap into economies of scale through collaboration tools, composable IP, and direct access to buyer networks. By bringing creator digital assets, brand IP and manufacturing capacity onchain, collaborators can create and contribute to new, more sustainable business models.

Here are some of the areas we are excited to experiment on in 2024, to scale onchain creator commerce

Improved UX and distribution with mobile-friendly UI, cross-chain payments, and third-party marketplace integration

• Current website traffic is seeing about 60/40 users on mobile browsers rather than desktop. As a consumer product, we look to further improve mobile UI/UX

• Cross-chain payments via Decent help better serve crypto-native buyers by enabling “pay with anything” to avoid swapping and bridging across digital currencies and blockchains

• To enable the usability of the CrowdmuseProduct Contract on existing creator networks and marketplaces like Zora, we aim to increase access and distribution of Crowdmuse drops across existing networks as determined by our user needs

Improved creator monetization with creator and brand (IP) artifacts

• We continue to experiment with creator artifacts that excite collectors and creators with token-gated access to digital assets and experiences

• Product collaborators can submit their digital assets/files/IP as part of the NFT deployment using the CrowdmuseProduct contract with onchain attribution. Our contract is currently compatible with standard file formats like jpg, png, pdf, mp4, svg and obj

• Eventually, we see these artifacts becoming IP NFTs with legal wrappers that enable creators to further monetize their assets through licensing other creators or brands to create product derivatives. Brands can similarly use this feature to give their collectors exclusive perks and access

Moving towards an open permissionless marketplace with creator-led drops

• Creators and brands can deploy a product or collection on Crowdmuse via the currently closed Create flow using our no-code interface. To increase accessibility and volume of activity, the Create flow is estimated for public release later this year to support our mission towards an open permissionless marketplace. SkyStrife Playtester Shirt is an example of a creator-led drop deployed by pet3rpan

• To avoid deadstock waste, we are developing an escrow model for product and project funding, inspired by the Kickstarter all-or-nothing approach. This means creators and brands can launch a product, but only go into production if minimum order quantities (MOQs) are met. If MOQs are not met, funds will be refunded to collectors minus a fee for any upfront costs

• To ensure verifiable quality standards, we are exploring community-driven attestations to build transparent supply chains for the products we create and consume

We hope you have enjoyed reading our 2023 report. If you are interested in co-developing any of the features above or have suggestions feel free to send us a message on DMs or gm@crowdmuse.com.

If you are a digital or physical creator interested in joining the user feedback sessions and want to deploy drops or artifacts on Crowdmuse, book a call with us here.

Key references and features

Crowdmuse Merch Frames now available on Farcaster and Base Onchain Sticker frame using the Crowdmuse contract

Crowdmuse granted 32,795 OP on Optimism RetroPGF 3 project submission Jan 11, 2024

The builder’s perspective on consumer crypto - Privy x Decent article and Thread Nov 14, 2023

‘Consumer Goods: The Most Obvious Opportunity in Crypto’ Fireside Livepeer Livestream Recording at Base House Miami with Jesse Pollock @ Base, Ryan Hamilton @ Slow Rodeo and Maryam (maz) Mazraei @ Crowdmuse Dec 8, 2023

Crowdmuse // Base Partnership announcement for Base House at Art Basel Miami Dec 2023 ‘ATTENTION + POWER’ by Slow Rodeo for Base

Crowdmuse // Lens Partnership announcement for Gateway Miami at Art Basel Miami Dec 2023 ‘Wheel of Internet’ by Reza Hasni

The Digital Garment Age: Programmable Consumer Goods by Biff Buster Sept 26, 2023

Digiphysical Goods: Bringing Programmable Utility to Physical Products 1KX Report June 14, 2023

Crowdmuse Whitepaper v1 July 11, 2023 // Docs // Github // Beta Marketplace