[Proposal] Inverse.space: an artist-owned nft gallery

Project title: Inverse Space:
One-liner: An artist-owned and curated NFT gallery.
Project DAO: inversespace.sputnikdao.near
Challenge area: the arts.sputnikdao.near mission: cryptoartist community growth initiatives
Repo: GitHub - InverseSpace/inversespace-near: inverse.space nft market on NEAR

Project members

  • Max Jackson (mxjxn.near)

Project summary

Inverse.space aims to be a cooperatively owned and curated gallery.

Why?

Current open NFT marketplaces do not incentivize artists to submit high quality work. A community-curated platform introduces a layer of healthy competition. A community owned platform rewards all participants, even if their artworks dont always sell. Allowing artists to curate the gallery for themselves provides a sense of ownership you dont get on other markets.
This unique mechanic would incentivize artists to join NEAR and submit their artwork. The rising popularity of artworks within the gallery will be a focal point for collectors.

Becoming a member

Artists should be able to submit their artwork to inverse.space and receive a basic membership token and a few curation tokens. Those curation tokens will be used to pick your current favorites in the submission pool and are used as a voting mechanism for weighting the distribution of the gallery fees for any sales.

minting and sales via mintbase

Inverse.space should be built on top of mintbase for the initial split, royalties, and general compatibility. The initial sale will be split between the creator and a gallery fee to inverse.space. All further royalties go to the creator(s).

Membership, and voting

Submission of your first NFT earns you a basic membership token which entitles you to a number of curation credits. Those are to be used as favorites you can pick from current submissions.

Member picks should be used as a quadratic voting tool to weight the distribution of gallery fees to membership tokens.

By using quadratic voting, the gallery fee distribution cannot be single-handedly dictated by one artist with a lot of membership tokens. As a result it is more egalitarian and does not encourage manipulation via curation tokens.

The exact ratio and distribution of membership tokens per sale is not decided on yet.

Cashing out membership

Membership tokens may be redeemed for their proportional value of the current holdings of the gallery.

Distribution of Platform Fees to Membership tokens

Any fees from sales generate a proportional amount of membership tokens. Those tokens are distributed to the selling artist, to current artists in the gallery based on curation scores, and to the dev fund.

Project Tasklist

Hackathon Prototype

  • Create a vr gallery for a mintbase contract
    inverse.space/gallery
    description: Using A-Frame, mintbase.js and next.js, make a 3D gallery single-page-app.

  • Mint from InverseSpace collection
    inverse.space/mint
    Enable other wallets to mint to the inversespace collection with a predetermined gallery-fee split. Allow collaborative minting (multiple beneficiaries of initial and royalty) with the gallery fee split.

  • Membership Token + Curation credits
    inverse.space/home
    A non-transferrable membership token which entitles you to a number of curation credits (votes for what is best).

  • artist gallery view
    inverse.space/artist/____
    A second gallery page for an artist’s current submissions and curated picks.

  • curation-based distribution of sales via membership tokens
    curation should act as voting for weighting the distribution of membership tokens upon gallery sales. A base percentage (perhaps around 50%?) should always go to the selling artist regardless of their curation score. I dont yet know how this is going to be accomplished, and presume the hackathon will be an exploratory phase for ways of integrating the token and building a distribution mechanic.

9 Likes

Really like the concept and agree there is a need for artist-curated nft platforms!

2 Likes

This project is amazing :star_struck: :star_struck: :star_struck:

Love how the membership tokens are non-fungible and non-transferable!

I think having a different supply of curation tokens may create potential for misunderstanding. Why not use one type of tokens for both membership and voting? Might be what you meant by the idea of curation credits: off-chain points / votes managed in a separate database.

Are you planning to build a custom quadratic voting solution? That sounds very cool ~ you might be interested in this project:

Will artists get more curation tokens / credits for each submitted piece that is approved? Or just for pieces that sell? Unless you have a strong identity solution, the gallery shouldn’t give tokens to everyone who submits artwork. Maybe there can be a voting policy designed to allow Sputnik DAO council members to vote a specific number of times per week? They could vote on art four times in order to double the score of that piece. Nine times to triple the score.

I’m really curious to explore how this approach might be useful in the context of Berry Cards:

Recently, the game design was updated ~ now the first vote on a newly discovered card grants ownership to the voter. Maybe this can be adjusted to serve your purpose?

Let’s imagine… Inverse Gallery DAO members get rewarded in fees and / or “governance tokens” if a piece they voted for is eventually sold. That could empower curators who discover and promote high-quality artwork. However, it could incentivize gallery coordinators / contributors to compromise integrity and cater to what their audience might buy. Ultimately, I’d suggest giving additional voting power to users who identify successful artwork before it reaches a curation score threshold (regardless of sales data).

As for distributing fees based on curation score, I believe that’s a wonderful idea! Maybe consider giving an equal share to everyone above a certain score?

Overall, thank you so much for sharing your ideas! Of course, feel free to completely ignore my feedback ~ looking forward to your presentation :dizzy:

1 Like

Love the concepts!

Just dropping by to say that you might find this of inspiration while exploring curation:

1 Like