Hello Shared World :)

We are Luda, the creators of Neo Fairies. In our prior post, we introduced ourselves. In this post, we introduce our first create-to-own project: Neo Fairies. We describe Neo Fairies as a fantasy-punk shared world designed from the ground up to be co-created, owned, and governed by a creator-led DAO. But what exactly does all that mean? GZN:

Why: Vision

First things first: if you haven’t watched the 1-minute backstory for Neo Fairies, do that now. To really understand Neo Fairies you need to feel it, not just read about it.

The long-term vision is to become a generational entertainment property spanning gaming, film, fashion, etc. where the creative building blocks – the Neo Fairies shared world, characters, and stories – are composable and collectively owned by the creators and community. We share this ambition with many inspiring and pioneering projects (e.g. Nouns, Loot, BAYC, Azuki) which have hit escape velocity.

The short-term execution so far is a humble Discord that we started as a creator team to attract a community of our earliest, truest believers while the page was mostly blank. This too is something we share in common with many projects in this space.

But that is where the similarities end. Neo Fairies is starkly different in how we get from Discord to our long-term vision. We are not selling or dropping NFT collections as a way to manufacture momentum, which we believe is the wrong model for the future of entertainment. We are also not waiting until we have a finished product to launch, when it’s too late for the community to impact the project’s trajectory.

So then, what are we doing?

How: Approach

In short: we’re launching a DAO as well as an immersive web app for the community to build the Neo Fairies shared world together.

World-Building

In the world-building phase for Neo Fairies, we’re inviting the community to contribute to the shared world, characters, and stories alongside us with easy-to-use tools that don’t require artistic skills or creative expertise. All this is surfaced through an immersive, mobile-first web app for the Neo Fairies shared world.

You can also think about world-building as a creation phase that lays the foundation for a consumption phase where new products (e.g. interactive stories, games, etc.) get built on top of the Neo Fairies shared world for more passive consumer audiences. We’ll go deeper into the consumption phase, product possibilities, etc. in future posts.

Create-To-Own DAO

The Neo Fairies DAO is the backbone of the world-building phase. It provides the core structure and mechanics for the community to participate in ownership and governance of the overall Neo Fairies IP rights via contributions to the shared world.

The Neo Fairies DAO is a new kind of entertainment DAO we call a create-to-own DAO or an IP (Intellectual Property) DAO. It differs from a typical DAO in a few critical ways:

• Shared purpose: maximizing creative franchise value over financial returns
• Shared asset: intangible (IP rights) over tangible (token pools)
• Shared action: creative development over treasury management

We’ll go deeper into the Neo Fairies DAO and create-to-own DAOs more broadly in a future post, but next let’s get to the heart of the project itself.

What: Project

As a create-to-own entertainment project, Neo Fairies aspires to put people at the center socially, creatively, and economically.

Socially

Neo Fairies is a fantasy about a new generation of punk fairies that are done hiding from humanity and returning to our shared world. The story is purposefully crafted for a global community to feel connected to and represented by an endlessly diverse cast of characters through their overcoming of adversity and fearless self-expression. The lore is grounded in real-life fairy mythology found in cultures and societies all around the world. The environment is set in the modern day, real-world. The characters – our heroes – can reflect our best selves or worst selves, alter egos or companions, etc.

Creatively

Neo Fairies is a fictional shared world designed from the ground up to be co-created by the community, going beyond just fanart or feedback (though that’s encouraged too!). Playful, easy-to-use, web-based tools empower the community to create and contribute to an ever-expanding Neo Fairies shared world. At first the community creates locations where fairies will be sighted, then creates fairies themselves to expand the cast of heroes, and finally creates sightings and stories of fairies at different locations. No artistic skills or creative expertise required! It’s a bit like Minecraft or Roblox but for a story-based, fantasy-punk fairyverse.

Economically

Neo Fairies is a decentralized franchise that’s owned and governed by its community. When people use Neo Fairies tools to create and contribute a unique location, fairy, or story to the shared world, they can mint them as 1-of-1 NFTs on the low-cost, high-speed, environmentally-friendly Solana blockchain. Holding Neo Fairies NFTs also make them members of the Neo Fairies DAO which owns the IP rights, governs creative development, and ultimately shapes the future of the franchise.

Now, let’s contrast this playbook with the popular NFT playbook we all know and love.

A New Playbook

PFP (profile picture) NFT projects have established the dominant pattern and playbook for creative crypto projects, even non-PFP projects like games and movies. And they’ve reshaped an entire ecosystem, from marketplaces to wallets to social media platforms. But the playbook for a create-to-own project like Neo Fairies, which aspires to become an iconic collectively created and owned franchise, couldn’t be more different.

• Intrinsic not extrinsic motivation: Users are attracted by intrinsic, creative motivation rather than extrinsic, financial motivation. They invest time and attention for the joy of playing, creating, sharing, connecting even without financial gains.
• Creation not speculation: Users create their own locations, characters, and stories as NFTs rather than buying or bidding on collections that are pre-determined by the creator. They find deeper meaning and connection to NFTs beyond floor prices.
• Abundance not scarcity: There are millions of unique NFTs rather than tens of thousands. Entertainment franchises get stronger and more valuable as they grow in reach and depth, so why artificially limit the community size or its contributions?
• Inclusivity not exclusivity: Users create and mint NFTs for $1s rather than $100-$1000s, and in seconds rather than minutes or hours. NFTs are universally accessible and affordable, with the primary barrier to entry being imagination instead of special access to people, information, or wealth.
• Reward story not status: Users grow value in their NFTs as well as the franchise through collaborative, creative contributions rather than social status or flexing. The focus shifts from protecting limited downside to creating unlimited upside.

We have a long way to go for NFTs to fulfill their true promise. Neo Fairies aspires to better align building blocks like NFTs and DAOs with the values of inclusivity and empowerment for everyone rather than exclusivity and enrichment for a small group of insiders. And to clear a path to onboarding the next billion users by opening up endless possibilities for two of humankind’s defining traits: social connection and storytelling.

If any aspect of Neo Fairies excites you, follow us on Twitter and join us in Discord where we’ll soon announce how you can contribute to join the Neo Fairies DAO.