At the beginning of August we had Onchain Summer, an online event to launch the Base blockchain, which created daily NFT mints.

One of the things that struck us most during this event was the fact that the vast majority of NFT drops were at very low values, and were minted in huge volumes, thanks to the event's media.

An excellent example is the New Era, a piece created in partnership between Cozomo de' Medici and DeeKay Motion, which has been minted more than 45,000 times in its ethereum version alone.

Also thanks to this event, we got to know a bit more about Mint.fun, an aggregator for minting NFTs that works with high-volume, low-price NFTs (many of which are free), and this market really caught our attention.

Especially as we've been talking in groups and communities of Brazilian artists for some time about what the democratization of art would mean in the world of digital art and NFTs.

In the world of traditional art, democratization of art means greater access to art and culture for the general population - especially since much of the art produced in the traditional way is scarce by nature, as in the case of a painting (there is only one original); or expensive to produce, which makes it impossible to sell at low prices (as in our case, in photography, fine art printing).

But when we think of digital art and NFTs, production costs are much lower, and you can have several original editions of the same work. Scarcity is artificially created by the artist, who limits the mintage of his work to limited editions or single editions (the famous 1/1). This artificial creation stems from the artist's expectation of better remuneration for his art. To increase its value on the market.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Quite the opposite.

It's every artist's dream to be able to make a living from their art, and thus to be able to live to produce their art, exclusively. But it's also common in conversations with artists that money is important for their survival, but that if they could, they'd like to see their work go around the world, reach every corner and pass on their message to as many people as possible. That's why exhibitions are so important for every artist.

In the midst of these questions and thoughts, also in August martketplace Zora launched its Protocol Rewards. It splits Zora's Mint Fee between developers and creators in the case of free NFT drops.

That was mind blowing.

We can release a work in an open edition, free of charge, aim for mint volume, and still get paid through the marketplace fee split? A very interesting sales dynamic to test.

In August we launched 3 freemint artworks on the Base and Optimism networks. Approximately 180 editions were minted. Not to much yet.

A week ago we launched the 'Pink is the new green' artwork on the Base network, which is still open for mint.

Mint yours for free by September 16th:

And now we've launched the 'Bullseys' artwork on the Ethereum network, which will be open for free mint until October 12th.

If you like it, you can mint it below, or on its Mint.fun or Zora pages.

This is our new path in 2023. We're going to try to break into this new market, which combines the structure and market of the Ethereum network and their L2, with the dynamic and volume-focused format of art sales on the Tezos network.

We will publish a monthly article called Freemint here on Mirror, telling you about the progress of our new adventure, and curating freemint works that are on Zora. We hope that you too will embark on this journey and explore this market with us.

If you like it, follow us here and you'll be notified when new texts are published.

And don't forget to collect articles too. We'll be delighted if you collect this one, it's also free.

Also look for other authors you like here on Mirror and collect their articles.

This is the basis of the new creative economy, so help it grow.

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Reiniscouple* is the art project created by Brazilian photographers Shirley Reinis and Oliver Reinis. We have been photographers for over 20 years, and since 2020 we have been dedicated to creating photography and photo manipulations as NFT. Follow us on social media and see our latest collections on our website reiniscouple.xyz*