The Sealed Manifesto

ahem, friends! ✨ Allow me to introduce myself ✨

Introduction

My name is robek and I was driven to this amazing space many many years ago because of the promise of digital assets moving like ones in the real world. What excited me most was the idea that digital art could finally be treated like traditional artwork and that artists from anywhere in the world, no matter their government or financial institutions, could have the opportunity to make a living from and share their art with the world. In 2017, I started my work in the realm of NFTs with my friend Moon (who taught me everything I know about digital collectibles) and was fortunate enough to be one of the first NFT artists in history through a project called Curio Cards. I am so grateful you have volunteered your time to join us here to help with the direction on this marketplace. I owe you all an explanation of what we're doing and why we're building this!

Lend an ear and please read these walls of text that follow. Hopefully you'll walk away inspired to dig in right away or inspired enough to ask wtf are you talking about!

I was working on a manifesto mirror blog for at least a month. Was hoping it'd be done by now but I've already written 2000 words on an introduction that's not even a part of the actual manifesto so I think I'll try to be a little more straightforward here. But I'll use the second paragraph of that raggedy draft to paint the scene:

"I was lucky enough to spend my childhood exploring the early internet. Back then, web discoverability was similar to an archaeological dig. There’s a lot of stuff to find, but not a lot of easy ways to find it. It was also a time where nearly everyone online was a content creator. You see, there was no content. There were no algorithmic feeds sharing content directly into your eyeholes. There were search engines but they were rudimentary and yielded less than relevant results. And easy web hosting was limited to a small handful of providers and allotted a small amount of space (Geocities famously provided 15mb) to their users.
So discoverability was made through the friends you made and through their friends. And things like webrings were frequent. Friends with similar content. In fact it was completely common to have a links section on every site you visited full of friends and other sites you liked (or hoped would notice you).
And everyone was required to be creative. Because it was a creative renaissance, separated from the corporate media and commercialism that saturated the rest of the western world. And it was decentralized, there were no gatekeepers outside of the ISPs and it was inspiring. And then it was over."

The Amazing Accident

I didn't ever mean to get "into nfts". I was lucky to have found @Moon who shared the vision of digital collectibles with me and that introduced me to Curio Cards. The concept of digital ownership lit my fire to the promise of blockchain but after I assumed no one got it, I veered into the crypto part professionally for 6 years. Forgot all about the NFTs until I was pulled back in 2021.

I didn't know there was a personality associated with collecting - I just figured that the money I accidentally made by making early nfts and buying them should be paid forward to the people risking everything to hop in and I bought some art I liked. Fast forward to now, I've met so many incredible people that have inspired me and so even in the worst of the shit I'm still here, never leaving until the IRS throws me into debtors prison. Most of you here I've met either through collecting your work or fighting with you over trying to collect someone else's work. What I love about this group and honestly, the people who stuck around even in these horrible times of volume and sales, is that the tech and participation was about more than just getting rich like things felt back in the shitcoin only days. It seems to become a sort of lifestyle or like dream that we're trying to reach out an seize before it vanishes.

The people creating and building are the same people buying and selling the artwork. There's no way the amount of creatives still participating could survive only off of the support of a few whales buying art for influence.

It's all of us now putting our money into each other. That's pretty tremendous, in my opinion.

The state of the space

Sykz had this meme about the 'NFT donut scheme'. Back in the crypto-only days there was a lot of enthusiasm about the promise of the tech even inside the gold rush speculative gambling. But I think the non-technical creatives entering the space in 2021 in droves actually pushed that into an achievable reality. As they're a part of every renaissance, really.

Here we are, those of us left are here because we've found something special and we want to hold onto it.

But yeah, folks are burning out. volume of sales has basically settled to one or two central locations. the era of the pfp is over (we can argue about this) as it was - and without a shitcoin boom any additional slush money has basically dried up. nothing new is really going into things outside of cyclical pump and dumps on random hyped collectible collections. fine art sales have been surprisingly steady considering the lack of volume and excess capital and this is across several niches but we need new blood to see the promise of things. I'm not sure where collectibles end up over the next several years. I've always assumed most things will level out to realistic prices and achieve parity with real life overlaps. So I'd expect a collection of 10k generative collectibles to end up like a collectible card set with average prices somewhere in the $20 range. The same with editions = prints to a similar pricing based on quantity. Art though is different. The reasons people buy art are different. There's not really utility in owning a piece of artwork. There can be and we've created a fair share of gimmicks to try to encourage art sales through gimmicks but it shouldn't BE the reason art connects with someone.

I think the art market survives and will always create a more equitable opportunity for anyone anywhere in the world to grow to visibility - there's no other way to treat digital artwork like real world counterparts. It's completely unique. Maybe the other uses survive too. They're not really what sealed is about right now though.

The current 1/1 art markets are very centralized. In fact foundation has basically captured all of the sales volume across mainnet art sales. other marketplaces have their champions and die-hards but it's hard to argue with the actual data. the way things are progressing the other big legacy players are going to die if there's not something that swings markets around hard. leaving basically foundation, opensea, and blur (for now) for nfts across the board. there have been awesome creator first decentralized tools that people have built over the past winter cycle. manifold is one of them. a super tool that has forced the rest of the marketplaces to adapt to adopt it. it is very good and has helped educate artists about the importance of contract sovereignty. and manifold has tons of features. if your discoverability is good enough, you don't even NEED to touch a marketplace.

honestly this is the dream, in a perfect world - llama and I wouldn't be spending the time on this. More marketplaces aren't going to solve a problem that already has a solution. The decentralization of tools that are accessible and useable to people without highly technical skills is a problem that's already solved. But what we have happening is most people are forced to mint on Manifold and list on foundation if they want to sell actual 1/1's. And because foundation has added editions - the trend of edition Manifold LPs has started to die down as people are just opting to use foundation's built in editions.

And don't get me wrong. Foundation is incredibly important to this space. They were the most vision aligned with the long term possibility of this space. I obviously bled foundation blood for years - championing them, financially supporting them by being pretty strict about only buying there, pushing artists there, talking to them frequently, advising them, etc. Kayvon is not a man that is focused on making a product that will make him money. He is a very focused person with a specific dream he wants to achieve. It is one that is compatible with the future of where I see this tech going but it isn't one that actually supports the small artists. It is one that supports the curators and the middlemen, more so. And we need those tools and services. But we do not currently have an artist first platform. And I can't keep expending energy fighting with them over every decision they make which takes the tools of discoverability away from buyers and sellers. You find artwork on foundation now through CURATORS (WORLDS) or Social media shilling (which is basically where you find anything). There's not a space native place that allows for EQUAL OPPORTUNITY discovery of ARTWORK!

The First Sermon of Robek to the Alpha Testooors of SEALED 10:17

(You are required to play this while reading ^_^)

So, here we are now. We're fighting unprecedented odds against - regulators, traditional control systems, grifters, bad actors, political deviations, and a technology renaissance (AI) which will either render all current power structures irrelevant or make them the only thing or reality that exists.

And I am here dying inside trying to see this vision of a world where we all live as digital natives that are imbued with the spark of CREATIVITY to create and share our ideas with people everywhere in real time in our own spaces of endless imagination without any direction or control from any government or corporation or preacher. Where simply sharing these ideas opens us up to NEW IDEAS and perpetuates this cycle!

And we can't get here without the promise of this so-called "web3" being fulfilled.

I know I sound insane but I truly believe this. And you're still here. You probably believe it too. Even if it's just cope saying "I'm staying cuz I love the people".

You idiot! You love the people because you love the idea of it!

Sealed is not a marketplace we're having you test so you can help us scrapes a paltry 2% fee to pad our pockets (that 2% is going back into sustaining you and this platform).

We're having you test it because you are building this forward with us.

And we will invite other people here afterwards. To help and see what ideas they can add. We're the first marketplace to be built and influenced solely by the people who participate in the space daily.

There's not a single influencer coming in here to use their reputation to spin up a market of influence so they can just shill their friends with some hoity toity old-world curation feature system.

We'll keep the lights on because we can. We need it to be a service and public good for everyone who wakes up daily and logs onto the internet to look at art, sell art, buy art, meet creators, meet communities, volunteer their time to create, volunteer their time to teach, volunteer their time to grow. We need it to be the tool for us to discover each other.

So our focus is on artwork first.

As you see more site features roll out - you'll notice a distinct lack of text across the site. Text will show when it's important to have it but the art is the focus. We believe the creators are important as well but the trend of throwing people to a home page with a bunch of shit like words and "FAMOUS ARTIST" all over is pointless and useless.

We shouldn't have to rely on twitter to find things we love.

I don't need to scroll through web2 tier landing pages about how your art market is a market to buy art. Just show me the art!!!

then show me more art like the art i like

we also have an issue with the idea of value in this space we will support english auctions but instead of just doing the same thing we have a chance to kind of stop speculating about "true value" through llama's vision and implementation of the vickrey auction system In practice in web3, I really think it's a truly innovative thing and this kind of marketplace is exactly the right time to launch it. i'm working on a few fun videos that will explain how our auction mechanics are different so I won't get too much into it here - those should be ready soon. But combine the true-value nature of vickrey auctions to our vision on discoverability and I think what you'll end up with is something akin to tiktok where you can basically bid as you explore. the bid acts as the heart in a way.

our homepage will have no traditional feature setup we have a few different methods for discoverability that will be on the homepage A focus on the live auctions at the top. Then a featured roulette.

A featured section where everyone has the chance to be featured and it is not curated by us. Chronological feeds, and a personalized recommender which is freaking choice and will be a game changer.

So please take some time to go through and break things and mess around. you're literally help shape the future of this stuff for us all. and like grill me. and grill us. we want to make this thing special. if we're doing it we're going to do it as great as we can!

Llama's Post-Script as Dictated 10/17/2023

Robek asked me a while back why I am wanting to build this. I think it’s relevant to his verbose manifesto and so I’m submitting it as the post script:

I think that most of the people buying 1/1 nfts are likely to be people with little time available because they spend a significant amount of time earning money, since generally 1/1 nft purchases require large disposable income, and the thing about this demographic is that they highly value their time, however the current systems in use by marketplaces value collector time very little, since they force collectors to be focused on an auction at specific points in time for an undefined length of time.

Yes, i know there's also "buy now", but the issue is that, unlike other goods, there's no simple fair market price for 1/1 nfts (other nfts have floors, coins have a market price, tomatoes have a market-established price...) so if you buy an nft without any price discovery you could easily get ripped off, and people hate that.

So if we think about the audience that wants to buy NFTs because of the art, thus ppl that are purely buying for enjoyment, and then you make them jump through hoops and have bad experiences with wasted gas, what's gonna happen is that they'll simply stop buying! Why would they go through bad experiences to buy something that they don't need?

My core thesis behind this whole thing is that UX is actually vital to the survival of the 1/1 space, its not like other markets where if people are forced to jump through hoops they'll still do so because they need the item, like when you deal with the government, instead if the UX is bad the whole market just vanishes! That's what happened to me, I simply stopped buying 1/1s because I had bad experiences with the auction system where I kept wasting time and money.

Now, do I think the current marketplaces will implement new systems that improve on this? Well, I published my ideas (trustless vickrey auctions with hidden bids and gasless contract creation for artists) on github and twitter almost 2 years ago now, they both got significant rts and views, and both of them have had teams implement quick prototypes, yet no marketplace has ever implemented these ideas. Furthermore when looking at the current crop of marketplaces there's not that much innovation at the smart contract level.

Besides, if we're building a new art system, why should we copy the systems used in trad art? Lets use this opportunity to build better stuff, let's use the huge body of research on auctions to at least try different mechanisms.

In short, i think that the current systems are a huge threat to the 1/1 market and I want to fix it. It's entirely possible that my core thesis is wrong and people just don't care about having to sit for hours bidding stuff and wasting gas, but thats the thesis. The goal is simple: build a marketplace thats better for artists and collectors.

Last updated 9 months ago