The day before yesterday, Moonbirds announced that the project switched to CC0, which caused a lot of discussions and controversies. Since I have done some research and thought about CC0 before, I wrote this article as a summary, welcome to comment and discuss
What is CC0
CC0 is short for Creative Commons Zero copyright agreement. By adopting this agreement, the author renounces all copyright in the creation and the creation enters the public domain, becoming the common intellectual property of mankind.
In plain English, this means that everyone can use CC0 creations, including commercial and secondary creations. As an example
- BAYC(non-CC0) opens up IP Rights only to owners, Li Ning bought BAYC #4102, so Li Ning can put this monkey on posters and T-shirts (meanwhile cannot use other monkeys unless owning them)
- As mfers are CC0 protocol, no matter you have mfers or not, you can freely use 10k mfers, including your own use (printing T-shirts to wear), commercial use (printing T-shirts to sell), secondary creation... It seems that there are more than 50 derivatives of mfers.
CC0 Project: High upside but with huge operation challenge
Based on the CC0 capability, we can get this conclusion: the upside is very high (platform business model), but the operation is also more difficult
I summarize the following 3 points in a chart.
- Goal: The goal of a regular NFT project is to build a Brand, like Nike and Disney, while the ultimate goal of a CC0 project is to become a Platform with network effects, like Amazon and Alibaba
- The difference in goals brings about the difference in project structure and business model
- Project structure: The regular NFT project is more like a brand company with a simple structure, while the CC0 project is more like a platform that serves as an infrastructure to incubate countless derivative projects, which feed into the infrastructure and form a multi-stakeholder ecosystem. And DAO Token becomes the token of this ecosystem, adding value to the development of the platform
- Business Model: we evaluate Sales Revenue for Brand, while Platform also has GMV and Ads Revenue, with 2 more drivers and greater impact capability.
- User perspective: DAO Token can lower the participation threshold of users and let them enjoy the revenue of the whole platform; but since there is no IP exclusivity, not every user will like CC0
Frankly speaking, CC0 project is also more difficult to operate, and a bad job would have a negative impact
- The project structure is more complex, with more stakeholders (compare to the organizational structure of brand companies Nike and Amazon / Alibaba), which needs the operation ability of the project owner and DAO.
- It is necessary to establish a positive flywheel of "CC0 project → derivatives → CC0 project", otherwise, the cold start of derivatives may be unsuccessful and the CC0 project will become weaker and weaker.
I guess that Moonbirds announced that the project will become CC0 and set up DAO to prepare for the evolution into Platform, to raise the upside of the project, and to come out of a way to differentiate from Yuga / BAYC.
Below we will explain a little about 3 aspects, project structure, business model, and user rights.
Project Structure
As we see, compared to the regular NFT project, the CC0 project add a DAO and Token Economy to its evolution towards a platform.
- Why DAO is needed: The ecosystem needs an operator who can help incubate derivative projects, design a mechanism for derivative projects to feed the original one, and involve all users to help spread the world. So there are 3 relevant stakeholders (original project, derivative project, and corresponding users) and a large number of people, so DAO is the best choice for this operator representative
- Why do we need Token Economy: As mentioned above, there are many stakeholders in DAO, so we need a mechanism to coordinate the distribution of benefits, and ERC20 Token is the best choice.
- The operational capability of DAO and how the Token Economy is designed is critical. Theoretically, the platform has a higher upside, but because there is no Best Practice of CC0 for DAO and Token Economy yet, this part will be the biggest challenge.
- This is what users are most worried about Moonbirds, DAO is not Ready. But from CEO KRO's perspective, CC0 may also be the best way to survive and grow in a bear market. Go big or go home, who knows?
Business Model
Let's break down the Business Model formula
As we see,
- CC0 has 2 more drivers than the regular program, GMV and Ads Revenue
- For Sales Revenue
- Based on derivative projects and token, it can bring more volume and spread power, which can drive secondary sales
- The life cycle of a single project (live periods) is limited, but a continuous stream of derivatives can extend the life of the entire ecosystem
- There is a metaphor about CC0, just like a paper citation, the more you are cited, the more influence you have, and the more valuable you are.
- For Ads Revenue: DAO can incubate and promote derivative projects, then can charge for promotional advertisement fee. And it can be paid in the form of ERC20 Token to strengthen the value of the ecosystem Token. This part is also the core profitability of the platform model.
User Rights
Let's use a table to compare the user benefits of the regular program and the CC0 program
we can find that
- Added benefits of CC0 Project
- DAO Token can lower the participation threshold for users as well as allow users to enjoy the benefits of the entire platform
- Risks added by CC0 Project
- Each user owns the IP of CC0, and the owner has no exclusive rights to this piece. This means that IP rights are diluted.
- Without IP exclusivity, it could be used by some unpopular groups and have a negative impact on the whole project. The KOL pranksy twittered that she does not want to see extremist groups using her NFT image
Other important Q&A
Q: Will the emergence of a large number of derivatives and the availability of IP Rights to everyone bring negative impact to the value of the original CC0 project itself?
A: If something is popular all over the world, the top of the ecosystem is definitely authentic ones. Take Nike Air Jordan as an example, there are so many fake products, but the authentic products can still be sold as a high price. In addition, because NFT (Non-Fungible Token) itself can be confirmed on the chain, NFT projects can naturally operate both Token and IP these two dimensions, compared to the traditional business world with only one IP dimension, you can have more flexible operation, which is also the advantage of CC0 NFT Project.
Q: What kind of projects are suitable for CC0?
A: CC0 projects need strong replication and retransmission ability, strong culture and meme types are more suitable (like mfers)
Q: Non-CC0 projects can also issue their own platform tokens, such as yuga labs
A: That's why yuga labs is at the top1 in this industry, it's really great. yuga labs' route is to do a brand matrix, then use metaverse to build a platform and raise their upside, public coins to get more new users, and build their own ecosystem finally. Every step is very accurate. So the answer to this question is, CC0 projects need to have DAO and Token by default, and other projects need to build another platform to issue Token
End
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