Solana is coming to Art Basel to celebrate the diversity of creativity in the Solana ecosystem next month from December 6th to December 10th!
To get you up to speed about the creator tooling, ecosystem, and possibilities on Solana, Pedro Miranda u/voteforpedrito, Business Development: Creator Economy at Solana Foundation, and Banana u/0xbanana_, Ecosystem Engineer at Solana Foundation, are joining us here today for an AMA! Whether you are new and want to know about creator tools in web3, want to code your own creator tools, or learn where to get started in the Solana creator ecosystem, this AMA is for you.
They are running an AMA today November 29th and will be stopping in at 10am PST for one hour to answer questions! Please post your questions below.
Solana Creator Ecosystem AMA today at 10am PST - drop your questions below now!
Learn more about the Artists in Residence at Art Basel: https://solana.com/art-basel
Learn more about possibilities for creators on Solana: https://solana.com/solutions/artists-creators
What’s the biggest need in the creator ecosystem on Solana currently?
What steps have the foundation taken or plan to take related to being able to view the source code of live contracts? Similar to how we would on Ethereum with any block explorer. Not being able to see what we sign or verify if the git code matches the code devs executed on chain is a large concern of this community. This applies to both devs and users. We are flying blind.
So far the best approach seems to be: https://github.com/Ellipsis-Labs/solana-verifiable-build
Curious if this is something Solana thought leaders and core developers are aiming to improve.
Nice to see another AMA about NFT in Solana again.
My question is simple:
There are some art out there on the internet that are not NFTs yet but kinda " open source " and their artists allow the use of them even for business.
Is using such art and minting it as NFT gives me the " copyright " of it in the blockchain domain? since i’m the first one to mint it in the blockchain ?
u/0xbanana_ touched on this in another answer. In addition to digital provenance that NFTs provide, many teams are empowering creators by allowing licenses and copyright rules to be assigned to specific assets.
One such team is Arweave, decentralized information storage system, who introduced their Universal Data License feature. Creators can program the Universal Data License in any way the want, defining their royalties, the splits, the length of the licenses, and more natively on the NFT.
IANAL -
No, minting art does not make you the owner of that art nor does it change the licensing terms you’ve agreed to.
What do you think still needs to be done in order for Solana to be the go-to chain for artists?
And also, what are some of the most important steps that have been taken to achieve this so far?
Some of the steps to be the go-to chain for artists and creators will be feature parity with web2 and ease of use.
A working artist isn’t going to want to start changing their process for an unknown and un-measureable return, a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, and they are not wrong.
To those efforts we’ve backed various projects and founders who we believe have a good shot at building something new, fresh, interesting, and useful for the growth of the ecosystem!
Personally believe we need to continue to embrace and experiment with use cases that are uniquely enabled by blockchain and Solana.
Some themes we are excited about are :
Authenticity:Authenticity of digital content is becoming increasingly hard to guarantee. Generative AI models make it trivial to remix content or more nefariously alter / co-opt it.Fundamental authenticity guarantees - if an asset is issued by a creator’s wallet, there’s an unimpeachable cryptographic authenticity. You know that is the creation of the wallet owner.Instant Settlement:
Traditional payment solutions are extractive, geo-restricted, and slow.We can encourage artists to leverage Solana for payments with low costs and near-instant settlement. I.e. Shopify Solana Pay & Foster Marketplace for physical goods.
ComposabilityIn Web2, identity and content are currently siloed to platforms. It’s hard for users, even platforms, to allow user-activity to be rewarded outside of a given application. User content on Solana (i.e. Drip or Magic Eden) facilitates partnerships between creative platforms and artists that were previously too operationally intensive. I.e. Open Solana social graphs.
CurationDiscovery in Web2 is currently powered by advertising-optimised algorithms, neglecting user wants. New models, powered by incentives, offer a more fair and trusted discovery through communities and individuals users respect. I.e. Collector.shAvenues that encourage this, public goods funding, hackathons, and community collaborations are essential to continue to make the Solana blockchain a welcoming home for Web2 & Web3 creators.
Hi everyone! I’m banana! 👋🏼 An ecosystem engineer from the Solana Foundation, where im focused on NFTs, the creator ecosystem and emerging social projects.
Creators on Solana will find a wide range of ecosystem tools and art marketplaces that can be invaluable to your creative journey.
Platforms like Exchange.art, 3.land, Foster Marketplace(.app), Mallow.art and Collector.sh provide user-friendly interfaces for minting and showcasing your art.
Additionally, if you’re new or just starting out consider engaging with the Solana art community on twitter, solarplex(.xyz), DSCVR(.one), other social media platforms, everyone is very welcoming and supportive.
AMA!
W
W
If OnlyFans used Solana for settlement.
Should creators still worry about not getting their payouts / fan payment being blocked by central authorities?From Twitter, a question about the role of self-custody and censorship resistance for creators on Solana.
Like many things, “it depends”. If transfers are peer-to-peer, then there is no concern of a centralizing authority; if payouts go into a platform managed escrow or pool, then you potentially have a bit more to be concerned about wrt blocked payments.
Want to always get your payouts? Make them peer-to-peer!
What part do you think GPT will play in relation to blockchain?
Hmmmm, another one from me…a lot of artists especially on platforms like Kickstarter, Patreon, and Instagram are extremely hostile towards NFTs citing cash grabbiness, that they are worthless, bad for the environment, etc.
Does Solana tech help address any of these concerns or is it just more of the same? What can the Solana ecosystem do to address these myths head on?
I think one of the categories of art that is big in some other chains (notably Tezos) but very very niche on Solana is long form generative art (code as art). There have been some drops on CodeCanvas and Playground but even truly mind blowing collections like Glyphscapes have not gotten the attention they deserve. IMO, long form algorithmic art is one of the most obvious art use cases for a blockchain and digital art in general, why do you think it’s lacking on Solana? What can be done to allow more visibility and opportunity for long form generative artists on Solana, to attract them to the chain?
-your homie Requiem
-
Let’s say I’m a developer on Solana interested in building creator tools or a creator product. Where would I get started? What are some cool examples already live on Solana I can check out?
-
Where do you see the future of the creator economy heading in web3? On Solana? Are there differences? If so, what makes Solana specifically valuable for creators?
If you’re a developer interested in building creator tools or product, i would start with identifying the community you’re serving, and the problem you’re solving.
Some cool creator products are
- https://solarplex.xyz/
- https://sol.dscvr.one/
- https://3.land/
- https://famousfoxes.com/ (great tools)
- https://github.com/solana-developers/compressed-nfts/
For me the future is hitting feature parity with what artists and creators are already doing in the traditional market, there isn’t a good reason for a currently successful web2 artist to take a chance on web3 if there isn’t a clear benefit in doing so.
I want to get us to the point the benefit is undeniably clear.
Things that make solana valuable for creators
- Enforced royalties on secondary sale of artwork
- Undeniable attribution
- Permissionless
Everything else is icing on the cake.
Cheers!
Great list. I would add in https://docs.SocialConnector.io as for a creator that’s more familiar with Patreon, Gumroad, OnlyFans, or from the course/membership space.
100%! Thanks for the call out u/BitterDimension76!
-
Hi everyone! My name is Pedro - I’m on the Business Development team focusing on the Creator Economy at the Solana Foundation.
I focus on increasing creator monetization, large creator onboarding, creator platform development, and other creator economy initiatives.
One initiative is Solana Foundation and the Solana art community’s presence at Art Basel Miami this year. 20+ Solana ecosystem teams will be activating around Miami Art Week, and and 3 Solana artists creating live onsite at Art Basel Miami (for the first time ever!).
Solana is the Creator Chain in Web3. With more than $4 billion in GMV, $350m in royalties have been paid out to creators, and over 14.8 million wallets have ever owned a Solana NFT. Additionally, through pNFTs, Solana artists can ensure royalties earned at the protocol level (instead of through marketplaces).
State compression, a new way to store data directly on-chain, also is enabling Solana creators to bring down the cost of creating 1 million NFTs on Solana to ~$110. Opening up new opportunities for innovative platforms such as Drip, Dialect, and Tiplink.
Banana and I are excited to be having this AMA and discussing questions with the community!
I’d love to see album art work make a come back in the digital music industry via nft’s. Any projects working on this ?
Let’s say an artist trying to get into this NFT business, what can he do to protect his art, i mean on the copyright level ?
Will the blockchain, Solana in this case, offer a tool or anything that help with this matter ?
If yes, how and where to find such a tool ?
I know this might sound dumb, but digital art can be forged too more than real ones.
IANAL
At a minimum as an artist you can mint your work as NFT’s, if nothing else this gives you a time and date of creation of a digital work. Additional steps you can take would be to generate a hash, or digital signature of the piece and include it in the NFT metadata.
As of current marketplaces only allow listing of approved/verified art in an effort to combat forgeries and scam sales. For anyone looking to buy art from an artist I would always go through somewhere like a marketplace if i had any doubts on a piece’s authenticity.
Additionally, I believe a Art Validation tool would be useful for the ecosystem and if you decide you want to build it feel free to drop me a message!