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Perhaps the biggest lie any of us were told, was also one of the largest selling points for artists to sell their work as NFTS. In the mass onboarding in early 2021, Smart Contracts were pitched as the solution. Artists were told that if they minted their work, they would receive secondary sales royalties immediately, for life. While this is a possibility, it is NOT guaranteed by the state of smart contracts today. Now, I do not think this was a malicious rumor, but rather stems from a lack of understanding of the underlying technology that we are all using, and I believe that we all must know the TRUTH of where things are at to make decisions that will best reach our goals.


Currently, secondary sales royalties are not paid out by the smart contracts. Secondary sales take place on various platforms, or with platform aggregators like Gem and Genie. When you make an NFT collection, (check out The ABC's of NFT's for a checklist), you will set up a profile on each market place, and set your secondary sales percent. Because these marketplaces are facilitating the sales, (via an additional smart contract) they are the ones who are responsible for distributing payouts. So, lets say you minted your NFT on Superrare, and did not set up your secondary sales on other platforms, but that is where the secondary sale took place. You would not get your secondary sales commission, as the contract had no idea there was one due.


"BUT WHY CANT THE OG CONTRACT JUST HAVE SECONDARY SALES PROGRAMMED IN?"


It can, but smart contracts are only so smart. Because sales are taking place with an additional sales contract, it may not matter. NOW, our good friends at Manifold did develop a royalty registry, an on chain directory of Royalties. In partnership with Opensea, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, Rarible, and Zora Manifold developed a protocol: EIP 2981. EIP 2981 does allow creators to add their secondary sales percent on chain, however, this does not fully solve the problem. Not all marketplaces in existence adhere to or recognize this standard.


"SO IF THIS STANDARD BECOMES THE "LAW" ARE ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS SOLVED?"


Unfortunately, no. There are many ways that a sale could take place that would not satisfy the conditions in a smart contract to send a secondary sales percentage. For example, many people make "OTC" (over the counter) trades. While I must warn you this is risky, and to only do with a person you trust, to avoid platform fees, or someone else buying a piece that is of high demand, many people will directly trade ETH for tokens. Because the NFT is transferred without a sale attached, royalties may not be paid out. Of course, the transfer would show up on chain, and it is possible that you could track down the collector, however this is far from the autonomous instantaneous contract so many of us were led to believe existed.



"BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE EVERYONE IS WORKING TOWARDS SOLUTIONS... SO IT SHOULD BE GOOD EVENTUALLY RIGHT?"


Not all incentives are aligned in the favor of artists / creators. Sudoswap launched a decentralized marketplace in July where sellers could choose the Royalty percent they wanted to pay. In efforts to compete with this, X2Y2 announced they would mirror the option. However, x2y2 was met with a ton of pushback. This particular event has its own post, but it is safe to say that there will always be people building in this space for a multitude of reasons, and not all will honor artists royalties. The blockchain is set up to be permissionless, and as always I want artists to make decisions based in reality to protect the future of their careers.


Additional reading on other revenue structures inherently supported by the blockchain:

https://0xfoobar.substack.com/p/on-royalties (and highly reccomend following 0xfoobar on twitter)



It happened, and we survived.


But nothing feels different. Eth is not at 10K. I thought the merge was going to save us?!?!?!




The merge has been on Ethereum's roadmap, and the goal was to bring ETH from a Proof of Work Model, to a Proof of Stake Model, with zero interruptions to the network.


WHAT DID THE MERGE DO?


  • Increase Sustainability by lowering energy consumption by 99.5%

  • Increase Network Security

  • Set the Stage for increased scalability


Although the Term Eth 2 is no longer used, this is still my favorite visual to describe what took place during the merge



During the merge the existing execution layer of Ethereum (what was known as ETH Mainnet), merged with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain.


The beacon chain has been around since December 2020, running parallel to ETH, reaching consensus on its own by validating account validators and their balances. (IE, this was highly tested & proven).


Now, instead of miners validating each block( Proof of Work ), the (Proof-of-Steak) mechanics used by the beacon chain are responsible for processing the validity of all transactions and proposing blocks for ETH!


What Did the Merge Not Do?

  • Require any user action

  • Pause ETH activity

  • Lower Gas Fees

  • Create noticeably faster txns

  • Allow for Staking Withdrawals

  • Get rid of onchain history

  • Effect ETH balance

This is extremely exciting, besides having a great rebuttle for all your crypto-hating friends who's only argument was "its sooooo bad for the environment" (which is a whole other conversation), successfully shipping the merge is a huge feat.


This will go down in history for Open- Source Development, and hopefully, fuel even more innovation.


So what is next?


The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, & The Splurge (which according to a tweet from Vitalik, will be happening simultaneously)





Updated: Dec 28, 2022

How to Setup Your Account & Deploy your First Contract On Manifold XYZ + HOW TO LIST AUCTIONS ON GALLERY, THE MARKETPLACE THAT TAKES 0% FEES!


What you need:

  • Your Token Symbol

  • Your Contract Name

  • Your ASCII ART

  • What Kind of Contract you want to deploy

  • Test Eth on Goerli

If you are still confused on any of the items above, follow along for the Testnet part of the tutorial. The process is the same for ERC1155's and ERC721's.


ASCII art is just a way of customizing your contract even further. You will need to copy and paste your art from a browser site


If you have never used Testnet before, make sure you are set up first, here is a quick video to walk you through the process.


** THIS WAS FOR RINKEBY (but is still a good overview of test ETH. POST MERGE YOU WILL BE USING GOERLI***


GOERLI TUTORIAL






Now It is time to set up your account for the first time and deploy your Manifold ERC-721 Contract. I recommend this video if you are super new. (I will have an ERC-1155 Video soon, that will have less commentary!



You will be able to use this contract for individual pieces of art for your entire career in NFTS.

So next you will need to deploy a token on your ERC721 Contract (this can also be used if you have done all of this the first time but want to go back and mint an additional NFT on the same contract) ...


in simpler terms - how to upload your art and MINT your NFT....


This Video also shows you how to list your NFT on Foundation, however, you can list it on any platform of your choice.




Manifold has many other amazing tools, my personal favorite is the option is the ability to make a free claim page! To do so, you will need:


  • A previously deployed Contract

  • Art

  • The rules you want to set (options explained in the video, this may include needing a snapshot/csv)

  • a 16 x 9 image

Some things to note about claim pages

  • you can't edit your rules once you make your claim page live.

  • Also an extra token is minted to your wallet

  • In hindsight I should have put my own address with the full claim amount as well, (as I did my claim page for a specified group of people but did not warn them, and a few had compromised wallets that they no longer had access too, so that I could claim + airdrop!)



MANIFOLD GALLERY


THIS IS GAME CHANGING, and will be updated post spaces where the manifold team is joining us. BUT NOW YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN AUCTION LISTING with 0% MARKETPLACE FEES, unless someone uses a referral link, which then they will get 6.9%!!!


In this video I allude to some things that are not possible to change ATM, but @richerd will be joining us & has made it clear that there is alot more customization possible!!!


*his thread is here**




AIRDROPS ON MANIFOLD full post here




LMK anything else you need, the manifold documentation is super straight forward!!!



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