NFT God Newsletter 8/4: Moonbirds Goes CC0, Tiffany's Enters Web 3

The Daily Alpha 8/4- Happy Thursday everyone! Wrote a thread today on interesting lessons I learned from one of my favorite books "Atomic Habits". It's an incredible book about the power of improving by just 1% every day. It completely transformed my mindset. As a content creator I always like to try new things. I also love sharing value, so if this content was interesting or helpful in any way let me know. Feel free to reply to this email, I get all the replies to my inbox. Happy to get feedback from all of you and answer any questions you have. Anyway, onto the alpha-

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Today's News:

🔥 Moonbirds Takes Away Your Exclusive Rights

🔥 Tiffany's + CryptoPunks = ❤️

📝 NFT Marketing Needs to Evolve (I address the controversy from yesterday)

MOONBIRDS ANNOUNCES CC0

Kevin Rose took to Twitter today to announce Moonbirds was going full CC0. What this basically means is the likeness of all the Moonbirds are now in the public domain. Creators can take Moonbirds and use their image however they’d like. A recent famous example of CC0 being put to use on a popular IP is the upcoming Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey movie. The IP for Winnie the Pooh is actually in the public domain, so the production company behind the movie was able to take Winnie’s likeness and turn him into a serial killer.

News of the Moonbirds CC0 pivot actually led to a lot of backlash on social media as this was a switch made by Kevin Rose, and not the Moonbirds community who owns the $30,000 jpegs. Previously, Moonbirds holders held the exclusive rights to their PFP’s meaning only THEY could use the likeness, similar to how BAYC operates. Kevin Rose unilaterally decided to take those exclusive rights away and give them to the public domain. Now if I owned a Moonbird I might end up seeing that bird in content from other creators, even though I own it.

While I’ve always thought the issue of IP rights has always been a bit overblown, as an incredibly small % of people are actually creating viable content with their NFT’s, I do understand why there is so much frustration from the Moonbirds community. This was a unilateral decision that was made after holders spent thousands of dollars on their NFT’s. There was no DAO or group consulted. Rights were just stripped away. Goes to show even a decentralized technology isn’t as decentralized as you think.

TIFFANY'S ENTERS WEB 3

Tiffany’s announced this week they’d be minting an NFT with some very interesting utility. Over the next few days 250 people will be able to mint a Tiffany’s NFT then use that NFT to get a Tiffany’s pendant made of their Cryptopunk. What you’ll be left with is a custom Tiffany’s NFT and a custom Tiffany’s pendant necklace in the form of your Cryptopunk. And oh yeah, the price is 30 ETH ($45,000!).

I think this is tremendously good news all the way around. I love the idea from Tiffany’s. I’ve always believed NFT’s were a luxury collectible. Tiffany’s makes luxury items. Now people who hold $150,000 jpegs and probably have a ton of disposable income can get a pendant of the jpeg they probably have a strong emotional connection with. Easy 2 million bucks for Tiffany’s, and a cool physical collectible for people who collect luxury goods. On top of that the entire ETH space wins. A big web2 name legitimizes both NFT’s as a whole and the Ethereum blockchain. The blockchain wars will be won by adoption. If massive brands like Tiffany’s continue to adopt Ethereum, it will only attract more and more brands to the chain.

On NFT Marketing

Over the last couple days I got caught up in a controversy with Voltura (creator of Psychedelic's Anonymous) and his upcoming project “Ezu”. Yesterday multiple big name influencers in the space tweeted out your typical late 2021 NFT marketing tweet. You know the one- “Like, retweet, and tag 3 friends and you can get a WL spot!”. All of these influencers tweeted the same ad copy at the same exact time and none of them mentioned it was an advertisement. I called out Voltura for this behavior and we had a little back and forth on the issue. Whether Voltura was in the right to use this kind of marketing scheme or not, I do want to quickly address why this was a bad move for him and the space and why we need to move past this kind of marketing.

This kind of influencer marketing does nobody good including the founder. Yes they might sell out right away and make a killing, but you’ve sacrificed everything to do this. Nobody will join the community because they’re legitimately interested in you or the tech. They’re doing it because they won an engagement farming contest. Odds are they’ll quickly flip, causing the floor to drop. You’ve lost trust from your audience. People now view you as an engagement farmer and your credibility subconsciously ticks down in their minds. The influencers take a hit too. Yes they might have made a pay day on the campaign or just gained a few followers, but you sacrificed your brand and image as well. Now people subconsciously view you as an engagement farmer. Your audience will have less trust and they’ll be less valuable.

We need to move past this kind of marketing in web3. No other space leverages such low intellect marketing. When Apple launches a new iPhone they don’t send out a tweet asking everyone to tag 3 friends. They produce an hour long demonstration of their new product, highlighting all of the challenges it solves. They advertise its value exclusively. If your NFT project is so high quality why not advertise what makes it so unique? Wouldn’t that build a higher quality customer base than just engagement farming? If NFT’s are this monumental step forward in decentralized technology we need to advertise it through communicating the differentiated value, rather than bribing people to get involved. Hopefully the marketing tactics in the space only evolve from here