We’re around the corner from the launch of Blockparty 2.0 - our Artist Storefront system.
As many of you know we did ten drops thus far, then paused while we evaluated the NFT industry and rebuilt our system from the ground up.
We’ve been rather secretive about that, but let’s dig into what we’ve been up to, and why it’s so special for artists. First, the past. In order to know where we’re going, we must discuss where we’ve been.
Founded in 2017, Blockparty first offered NFTs as functional tickets to festivals and events to our users via our ticketing app. It had early success and stood out as one of the earliest tests of utility driven NFTs. The goal was simple, take blockchain tech and make it useful for people in the real world. Today, those same principles apply, but we have adopted our approach to NFT’s for all art, music and culture.
We are passionate about driving utility value to NFTs. We draw on our experience to make the choices we did in the build of our platform: custodial transaction layer to make it easy for new collectors and crypto savvy users alike, as well as the opportunity to offer excellent customer service. We value decentralization for self custody, ownership and censor resistant exchange. We value artist royalties. We saw the acceptance of NFT technology in various aspects of culture, specifically as art and collectibles, and leveraged our experience to build for these verticals, as to best serve the needs of the industry.
Late August of last year we rolled out our MVP NFT marketplace. We were lucky to conduct the first drops for some of the most amazing artists to the NFT space. Those include incredible talents like:
- 3lau
- Adventure Club
- Harif Guzman
- Madsteez
- Ryan Keeley
- Matt Szczur
- Dave Krugman
- Hipworth
- Nate Hill
- Tommy Wilson
And more.
We did ten drops in total, with nearly all products listed sold out within the 24 hours after drop. We consider it a great accomplishment to have these successful sales on our prototype platform. It was among the first platforms to be able to accept credit card payments as well as crypto. And while the late summer and fall of 2020 weren’t seeing the hype we see now in NFT’s, the industry was full of promise. We observed our prototype serve new entrants to NFT’s and crypto savvy users alike, and we learned a lot along the way about what we needed to do better to serve creators and collectors alike.
We want to express gratitude to the creators who joined us for our first drops, who allowed us to handle their amazing artwork during this exploratory phase of both our product, and the NFT industry as a whole. This period was a way for us to get out in real time, with real artists, and real products, so that we might see what the industry wanted and needed. We think we did just that. Much of the feedback we received centered around problems of the industry as a whole, and some of it centered around things platforms specifically could do better. That feedback included things like;
- The need to bridge to other blockchains
- The pains of gas costs and ensuing climate implications
- A smooth checkout process
- A way to display collected work
- Frustration with having to use five different markets to achieve artistic goals
- Lack of search and discoverability on markets
- Markets only catering to the already rich and famous
- Long lines to get into curated platforms
- Lack of support for a range of file types
To summarize, we heard you.
We spent months gathering feedback from artists. Watching. Listening. Doing these test drops. All in order to build something better for both artists and collectors.
That ‘something better’ is finally here.
So let’s talk about Blockparty 2.0 - the artist storefront model. What exactly is it that we built?
The short answer is we built a system that is designed to give artists the power. To give artists the keys to their own storefront.
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It is a platform that is most flexible for creators because creators are dynamic each type of creator in a medium has a unique point of view
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It is a blockchain agnostic system that utilizes a “hub and spoke” model, where our internal blockchain will “talk” to others. First Ethereum, soon Flow, later others.
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It is a system that allows collectors to use credit card OR crypto. And doesn’t require new users to set up Metamask if they don’t want to. This makes it maximally easy to onboard new users to #NFTs.
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It is a system with climate impact in mind, one that utilizes ‘flexible minting’ to reduce environmental impact, but still offers the rigorous sovereignty and provenance the blockchain provides.
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It is a system that facilitates zero cost internal system transactions and easy withdrawal to third party wallets.
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It is a system that offers both direct purchase and now auction functionality.
All of this functionality is anchored around our new “Storefront” system, which combines product releases with the benefit of distributed access, adding the benefit of private blockchain with public blockchain seamlessly. These Storefronts are places that you can call home as an artist. They are customizable areas on our website (or in the near future, off our website), that allow you to list art, display art, sell art, receive funds, and manage your relationship with collectors with no need for approval from a central authority once your storefront is activated.
Speaking of central authority, let’s look at what we are doing to stay decentralized. Soon we are rolling out a subscription system where anyone can use our Storefront tools without going through the initial curation process. We are also supporting the launch of NFT Protocol DEX, which allows decentralized peer-to-peer swaps of ERC721 tokens and ERC20 tokens, and soon, FLOW tokens also.
For now, artists must apply to set up a Storefront. The stages of Storefront rollout are as follows:
Stage 1: Starting tomorrow March 24th, Blockparty 2.0 will be live for viewing by the public at www.blockparty.co
Stage 2: Beginning shortly after, we will onboard the first cohort of new users to the Storefront system. This cohort was hand selected for the sake of managing early website feedback.
Stage 3: An additional cohort will be onboarded, slightly larger than the first. While these first two cohorts are being onboarded, additional drops with major artists and brands will be occurring.
Stage 4: Artists from the first two cohorts will have a chance to invite one additional person to use storefronts. This is the current plan to manage scaling. After that we won’t use invites.
Stage 5: Blockparty begins reviewing and accepting applications to open new Storefronts.
Later batches of artists will be selected via a curatorial committee made up of internal team members as well as input from the community.
In the final stage, anyone who wishes to use our tooling off site may do so, as part of our Storefront subscription model.
So What Now?
We encourage you to register an account and apply as a creator to open your own Storefront. This will ensure your name is on our list for review.
Bear with us as we scale. Applications already number in the hundreds, and we have to be mindful in the early days of managing feedback. This is why we intend to keep the first few groups of artists small, and hand selected.
This 2.0 update will also include a complete redesign, brand refresh, and even a new email service, so expect future messages you see from us to look and feel a bit different!
We feel strongly as though we have built the best in class NFT platform. The one that satisfies the needs of artists and collectors alike. We look forward to sharing this new vision with the world.
See you there.
- Team Blockparty
