Here I go again, writing news about my own publication. I hate it, but I think that what I’m doing here is newsworthy. Forgive me if I fail to be fully objective. I’ll do my best.
I am making NFT’s out of news stories, then tying the purchase of those speculative and goofy instruments to a real experience — a year’s membership in the 4thEst8 at the Advocate level. The ‘news peg’ is that I’ve migrated the NFT sales platform (like an eBay of NFT’s) from one built on the Ethereum cryptocurrency and blockchain to one built on Solana. I did this because six tech startup founders who wanted to buy an NFT couldn’t choke down the high transactional costs associated with Ethereum. Think of those costs like this: my NFT cost about $40 USD and because of the inefficiencies of Ethereum there was an additional $80-$120 cost. That’s worse than the highest ATM fee I ever paid on a Saturday night at a swanky night club!
Some background:
The 4thEst8 is experimenting with new technologies and revenue models in order to hire more reporters to cover early stage tech startups independently, and without falling into the advertising ‘click bait’ trap. To that end we are committed to tying our subscription model to NFT’s made from the news stories we publish. Buying into our mission this way entitles the owner to an Advocate subscription, digital reprint rights to the referenced article, and a beautiful trading card about an exciting tech startup.
Is anyone doing this?
I thought I was the first to sell an NFT made from a news story, but kind readers quickly corrected me. Depending on how you define ‘news’ it appears that I was the 4th or the 5th to do so back in Nov. 2021 — and at the time of that writing was the only publication to have sold two (a NYT reporter sold one on his own after selling one for his publication; close). Regardless — the 4thEst8 is the only publication I know of that is tying NFT’s to an experience — and membership.
Why do this?
Long time business friend, and blockchain expert, Paul Heirendt has more than once expressed his opinion that the whole NFT market is at best akin to the ‘pet rock’ phenomenon of the 197o’s — and at worst, a Ponzi scheme.
But even Paul concedes that the technology COULD be used in an interesting way — perhaps in video games. And it is my contention that tying NFT’s to subscriptions and real world events is fun, could potentially tap into an NFT trading market, and most importantly it builds community. This ecosystem that we are in is a fractured, siloed and poorly connected community. There are many groups within the community like ITEN, Skandalaris, TechSTL, 1 Million Cups, and Kauffman that are trying to connect people in the tech startup ecosystems across the region. Publications like the Business Journal’s INNO, Startland News and Entrepreneur Quarterly are taking a stab at it as well. And so am I. Fortunately, I don’t think this is a zero-sum game.
Solana vs. Ethereum
Everyone knows about Bitcoin. It’s the first blockchain tech to be successfully applied to cryptocurrency and achieve global adoption. I’m a motorcycle guy, so think of this as a Harley: solid, much loved, does no tricky stuff like cornering. Etherium is newer blockchain technology, and allows that tech to be tied to image files — making them a non-fungible token. Think of Etherium as the Honda CB750: not as pretty as the Harley, but it’s got great utility and can do everything you want a bike to do, but its far from efficient. Solana is a newer blockchain technology, and it’s faster and comes with more whistles and bells — but developers have not been playing with it long so most of it’s platforms are still clunky and in Beta. And it has some competitors that are all trying to nab the third place slot for crypto. It’s like some of the electric motorcycle brands: Energica and Zero. The tech is baseline cool as hell, but these things are still not quite ready for prime time.
The Ethereum based trading platform I used was Opensea.io and if not for the high ‘gas fees’ (transactional costs) it was slick, hip and cool. It was easy to set up a shop, it allowed me to use GIFs so I can make my NFT’s two-sided trading cards, and it had a feature called ‘unlock upon purchase’ that I could set up so that the buyer immediately got a key and a link to become Advocate members of the 4thEst8. The Solana based platform I’m using is Solsea.io and the gas fees are negligible, it allows GIFs, but it doesn’t have the ‘unlock upon purchase’ feature. Still, the first four platforms upon which I tried to set up shop did not allow GIF’s or were so deeply in Beta that my request to use the platform went unanswered — Solana platforms, even the one I’m on, are all clunky and weird. Kinda like using eBay back in 1998 when you had to wait for a mailed personal check to clear before shipping. Still, it works. The transactional costs are super low. And I expect functionality to improve.
~Paul Riat, publisher
4thEst8
Links:
4thEst8 legacy NFTs on OpenSea
On the 4thEst8:
1st news NFT sold (corrected to reflect it was our 1st, but likely the 5th globally)
