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Supporter.tez seed art fund, a good helper for issuing NFT by yourself

Apr 27, 2022

Supporter uses the most web3 principles to help you mint NFT in the easiest way.

Sharing my little milestone with you today.

A micro fund called Supporter.tez was established during Chinese New Year . Help creators to put their works on the Tezos chain without depositing money themselves. At that time, more than 40 people subscribed for bouquet NFT to support the whole operation. Tezos is a green energy blockchain that is widely loved by artists at home and abroad.

Now, after two months, Supporter has helped more than 50 creators, and officially hired part-time staff to help everyone enter this pure web3 creative world by means of institutional cooperation.

Abstract possess, possess abstract

At the time, I wrote an article at Matters announcing the whole thing— the Tezos Artist Seed Funding crowdfunding campaign . I am writing this article today about what happened over the past two months.

The reason is simple, creators must have digital autonomy before they can understand the nature of digital asset transactions.

I think a real creator should have his own address in the web3 world, experience the joy/anger of casting, listing, sale, community, and second-tier royalties, and then accept commissions or cooperation. What is a reasonable profit sharing.

In the past two days, I discussed the nature of artistic NFTs with Wang Ruoxuan, director of Beijing Normal University Art Museum. We agreed that the key difference between NFTs and physical artworks is not whether they have obtained digital naming rights or not, but whether collectors have a real feeling in their hearts. Owning a virtual thing is a very abstract and romantic thing.

If the artist cannot understand the feeling of “owning” the whole piece from the very beginning, it will be difficult for the artist to follow this emotion in artistic production. In this case, it is easy for the artist to bluntly transplant the old work, resulting in many dilemmas. If the price is too high and no one pays the bill, the wrong version setting, the wrong copywriting, the wrong management..., there are too many thunders on this road. The creator (user) cannot survive as long as it hits the wall once.

And the feeling of "owning" is something that can't be experienced no matter how many workshops you attend or how many textbooks you read. After multiple tests, we found that it is better to let all the creators try it out, meet Bole, earn money, make better creations, increase the incentive loop, and be more willing to explore the world of NFT.

Creation is valuable, but it still needs doorway.

Therefore, we have developed a complete set of doorways and made them available to everyone for free.

There is another very important thing, casting and listing, requires a handling fee. Before artists have made money, it is impossible to teach them to automatically learn to deposit funds and do KYC verification. Even if the Tezos blockchain is only a few cents, many artists will still be discouraged. But we found that after earning a sum of money, people are often very happy to learn how to withdraw money and exchange it for a good meal in NT dollars. I call it:

It is easy to withdraw gold, but difficult to enter gold. A thousand words can’t compare to earning a windfall.

Fundraising process

Let's talk about how the Supporter.tez address was funded:

On 2/1, I released two types of small flowers, which were supported by 40 people at the time, sold out within five hours, and raised a total of 230 tezos (more than 20,000 Taiwan dollars).

I Support Art - 1x (equivalent to NT$200)
I Support Art - 10x (equivalent to NT$2000)
I Support Art - 10x - 2 (Second round of public sale)

On 2/5, generative artist Lin Yiwen released a new work "Journey" on the AkaSwap NFT platform, a series of four calculation mountains. AkaSwap art director Wang Xinren, who is also a generative artist, bought the whole set and donated it to a public auction. All income goes to the Supporter.tez fund.

Lin Yiwen, who lives in London, heard the news and added a new work , Embroidery Mountains , which is limited to one edition, and said that as long as collectors who bid for the public auction, they can get airdrops of Embroidery Mountains works.

After a fierce bidding process, more than 500 pieces of XTZ were sold for the four works, and the Wallet water level of Supporter.tez reached more than NT$70,000. Aran and Lin Yiwen are the real supporters, and they also thank the four collectors who won the bid.

At this point, we have completed the process of receiving the token airdrop, and we have also made preliminary suggestions in the form of documents for the listed works, including volume and price setting, description writing, etc. In the past two months, the Seed Art Fund has helped many creators one after another, and last week officially exceeded 50 people. Teaching documents have also been gradually upgraded to a form that can be referenced with the times.

Fund operation upgrade

Supporter.tez's fund distribution and troubleshooting were originally assisted by volunteer volunteers in the telegram group. At first, the funds were distributed only by me, but because more and more people use it, I am a bit incapable of doing it myself. But now that I have this funding, I also later established FAB DAO (Formosa Art Bank), we upgraded the seed art fund more efficiently, and merged the non-profit Supporter.tez into the non-profit The platform FAB DAO also cooperates with OCAC Open-Contemporary Art Workstation , and hires part-time staff to be the little gardeners of the creative ecosystem.

OCAC is an old folk art space in Taiwan. It has been in business for more than 20 years. It is located in Dadaocheng, Taipei. The station manager Luo Shidong is a curator and a big collector of Tezos artworks. We asked Sophie to organize the Supporter teaching documents and distribute funds together. During this process, I am also very grateful to my partners for continuing to answer all kinds of novice questions on their own!

At the same time, Taiwan's Science and Technology Society, together with Peking University, Southern University of Arts, and AkaSwap, held the " First Ruoshui Art Award " for art submissions, attracting many arts students and artists to put their works on the shelves. FAB DAO is honored to be a cooperating role, we will integrate Ruo Shui Award with Supporter.tez, so that more friends can use this fund.

The best thing here is that after many creators make money, they donate more money back to make the fund even bigger. They are real supporters.

lazy man with faucet

Share two terms, Faucet and Lazy Minting.

"Faucet" means to receive coins, and when you turn the switch, money will fall out. Usually, engineers are asked to collect test tokens and test new products on the test network. We pride ourselves on being a little "art faucet", Supporter.tez allows creators to receive real cryptocurrency and experience the new world of web3 without the hassle of depositing money.

Then there is "Lazy Minting". Many NFT platforms focus on listing NFTs without spending money, but in fact, these NFTs do not really exist in the blockchain world. Therefore, it is really impossible to say that this token is an NFT. Since you want to experience web3, why not participate in the most authentic casting process from the very beginning? So Supporter.tez provides gas fee, provides teaching documents, and even provides customer service... and there is always support from the volunteer group. We are using a very cumbersome mode to create Lazy Minting that is not lazy at all.

Why plant the commons?

As public funds aka art faucets send out money every day, one might ask, why do this thankless work? is it necessary? Giving free money to creators who are not relatives or not is an ineffective behavior at first glance.

But from my point of view, it's an inevitable process of growing the ecosystem, and it's important to me personally.

The earliest I wanted to do a seed art fund. The purest motivation was to collect works of creators who have not yet issued NFTs, but I liked. After two months of actual operation, I found that the fund has produced some good benefits.

1. Liquidity

Most creators who use seed funds will not convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currency immediately after selling their works to make money, but “reinvest” the funds in the art market.

For each artist, we only invest 2 tez (about two hundred Taiwan dollars), so that they can apply for a domain, apply for certification, mint and put their works on the shelves. But this 2 tez allows artists to earn several times the initial capital, and then converts from artist status to "collector", and then consumes more NFT artworks. The funds we invested in the commons had a multiplier effect, as if the consumption volume and the five-fold volume were invested in the Taiwanese consumer market.

I think the investment of seed funds has public service influence and can be regarded as a good sROI (Social Return On Investment).

2. Information Asymmetry Dividends

Volunteer groups and participants in this group (Seed Art Fund uses telegram to interact with novice artists) can see the information and works of new artists (commonly known as Alpha Leak?) for the first time. Because artists must provide their own addresses and works, they will only get the initial currency after completing the preliminary review. After dozens of experiences, I think...the initial capital is too cheap.

We volunteers can collect the works of our favorite novice artists almost immediately, but don’t forget, although these artists are brand new people in web3, they have been working in the physical world for many years. The first time, there is a box office guarantee. To be honest, I can rely on Information Assymetry for arbitrage, and I do have a lot of favorite works in my collection. The prices of these works have already surpassed the original prices.

3. Echelon Teaching System

The love of dripping water is rewarded by the spring. The kindness that Taiwanese have received in the past must be in the hearts of Taiwanese people. From the return of donations that are several times larger than the original amount received, you can know how much everyone loves this seed fund. And after these creators who have been helped become veterans, they almost immediately turned into teachers, answering the questions of newcomers and juniors on the spot.

This actually solves the problem of our lack of manpower immediately. The old bird will be tired from answering the questions repeatedly, but the rookie will be able to answer the correct questions, feel a sense of accomplishment and verify that he has finally graduated and eventually become a veteran. The back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves, and the back waves never tire of trouble, because the back waves come one after another.

This is a kind of echelon teaching, which is very efficient on the whole, and we have completed a kind of "new training system" unconsciously.

Summary: Fund Portal

Having said so much, let's experience it for yourself. Creation is valuable, but it still needs doorway. It is easy to withdraw gold, but difficult to enter gold. A thousand words can’t compare to earning a windfall.

New friends, welcome to join 🎉
The Supporter.tez Seed Art Fund is ready for you!