Collectibles on Paragraph
Mint your posts & content as writing NFTs.
We're excited to announce the launch of collectible content on Paragraph!
Collectible Posts
Starting today, writers can mint their posts as NFTs, turning their writing into limited edition content with verifiable proof of ownership. This opens up an additional revenue stream for writers, unlocks new methods of creative expression, engagement & distribution, and establishes provenance & authenticity for written works.
Collectible posts can also be used alongside our existing token-gating features: build a community around your work by gating your future newsletters, making your best content accessible only to your collectors.
One example of community building is Greg Younger. He's been steadily building up an email audience with his Paragraph newsletter, and he's now giving his audience ownership by turning them into collectors. His first newsletter quickly minted out, with collectors being granted access to a gated discord, entered into a giveaway, and allowlisted for future airdrops & free mints.
Collectible Highlights
Alongside collectible posts, we're also announcing collectible highlights.
As readers, we all have those moments where a specific sentence or paragraph resonates with us deeply. Now, with collectible highlights, you can immortalize those words by highlighting them & collecting them as NFTs. This feature enables you to curate a personalized collection of your favorite writing, adding a new dimension to your reading experience on Paragraph and providing direct feedback to writers (and other readers) on which parts of a post resonate most.
Think of this as a digital-first, web3-native equivalent to clipping something from a newspaper or highlighting it in a book.
In both of these features, writers can choose to use either Ethereum or Polygon for the NFTs. Writers can also change the supply and cost to adjust scarcity & value, as well as upload custom artwork to use.
The proceeds from all of your collected content can be directed to a separate wallet address (including a smart contract), allowing you to split funds with co-authors and beyond. For example, This Week in Farcaster is directing all funds to Purple DAO to further fund Farcaster development.
These features are free for writers. Paragraph takes 5% of the primary sales from readers whenever content is collected.
We're excited to see all the new ways that creators & their audience use collectible content on Paragraph.
Other Paragraph improvements
We have a few other notable improvements we're excited to announce:
Add multiple contributors as co-authors to your posts.
Paragraph AI improvements: use GPT4 to generate sentences & paragraphs based on your previous writing.
We now support EIP1271 wallets for logging in.
We now support using GA4 and GTM for analytics.
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When someone buys a collectible, does it show up on OpenSea? Is there a OpenSea page only for that collectible, or does OpenSea create a page for all collectibles from the same author? The same Newsletter? The same post? If this is minted on Base, is there a Base marketplace? Badly need an FAQ or explainer. Thanks.
Why was the native chain on your newsletter Ethereum, but on Greg Younger's, Polygon? Just curious.
Writers can choose between Ethereum or Polygon for their collectible NFTs. I chose Ethereum since I wanted the resulting NFT sharable on Farcaster.
Exciting Update. It's time to publish on Paragraph!
How can we help writers earn meaningful, reliable income? Open edition NFTs haven’t quite gotten us there, so we have to find a better solution. We wrote a couple posts on why we think coins may be a better model (part 1 below) — we'd love to hear what you think. https://paragraph.com/@reidtandy/rethinking-how-writers-get-paid
@six @androidsixteen.eth, relevant to the other threads on coins, we'd love to get your critical thoughts here as well!
Will read and follow up with thoughts here!
Just read -- not sure how it would differ from the Zora model as currently implemented? I guess my core question is around why virality matters. Viral content is closely coupled with an ads-based internet model. Rather than trying to optimize for millions of views / page opens, I feel like the goal should be to connect each author with their "1000 true fans" If each person can find 100 patrons that adore them, the mechanism underlying the monetization is less important. From the latter perspective, it could literally be as simple as a 1 USDC tip button That said, I don't want to be too prescriptive as I don't understand your business as well as you do. Perhaps it makes sense to offer a toolkit ranging from speculative tokens to vanilla subscriptions, and let your authors decide how they want to make money from their audience? Would be down to discuss further with y'all at Farcon or something, as @giu and I are thinking deeply about this as well
I’ve gone back to the basics https://warpcast.com/christin/0x3976783d
I still love reading books.
@yb wdyt
My initial thought is that a publication token feels more aligned with writers than issuing a token for each individual post. As a writer, I’d want to use the token to gate certain posts, while also rewarding my community and collaborators. Early supporters who hold the token could benefit if interest in the publication grows. Sure it might sting if some choose to sell for profit, but if the token is required for access, they may be more inclined to hold. I also see potential for interesting experiments where a publication is run as a collective - writers are the token holders, and holding a token is required to gain access to publish posts.
Excellent feedback & ideas - thanks for sharing! 🙏 Please let us know if anything else comes to mind.
Will do! Curious if you were thinking more in terms of coins per post or a coin for the publication? We have Zora as an example and most of my friends think that Zora cares more about speculation than anything else. I really don't want that bad PR for Paragraph
oooooh shit, this idea of a publication token that gates access to posts/community feels SO ALIVE to me compared to other monetization methods. as a writer it incentivizes cultivating a living, growing body of writing, and for readers it incentivizes deeper conversation and sharing around it. something about the energy/vibes of this model feels so different from a substack subscription or selling access to body of work for a one time fee. it's a shift from writing as transactional commodity to writing as campfire that people can gather round
Love to hear it & agree... Paid subscriptions are great & have opened up a large economy for creative work (Patreon, Substack, etc.), but obviously have drawbacks as well. Coins feel like they could provide some unique advantages to better connect readers & writers, and broadly expand the economy for creative work.
I've aways loved the idea of collecting articles But I have been deeply disappointed by the experience or lack therefore of Show me all the articles I have collected in any farcaster account make collecting useful and meaningful subscriptions so I get it for free Let me talk to a knowledge base that can be trained on my collected articles Stop calling it free and charging me money, just list the price in $ and let me pay with whatever currency I want/have (relay.link)
Thanks for leaving feedback! > make collecting useful and meaningful Could you say more about this?
the other points are what would be make it useful and meaningful :)
> farcaster account = any verified wallet attached to my farcaster account >so i get it for free = pay monthly forget about article cost I type to fast some times 😪
This made me think of a great old Android tablet app I had. Can’t recall the name but it allowed you to custom link articles and blogs and websites all kinds of content and map it into a nice swipeable bento grid. Click in the box to expand and read. Always thought it was my favorite UX for reading articles from across many different platforms.
Feedly or Flipboard? There were some pretty great reader apps back in the day. I used Pocket for a long time. Big fan of Readwise's reader app these days.
So hard topic to comment on - have some strong opinions about writing and creator economy in general - but for me paragraph's main proposition always was (and I believe should be for everyone) proof-of-origin. Basically future-proofing my writing for the future when everyone can write the same quality thing with AI help. (mint on publish 😉 ) That's what should be at the heart of it. Parghrp can't outperform web2 platforms in features, cross-promotions, network effects - not now, not for a long time. You have to lean into what matters to you as a team and to writers. Whether it's subscription, NFTs, or coins is pretty irrelevant. even though - publications coin is cool idea, but so is Donate $5 button. Again, I won't make more money with coins or NFTs compared similar efforts elsewhere.There are easy ways to get paid already, crypto and coins only make it more complicated. It's not that every writing is valuable, sometimes we just write for ourselves. Or we don't solve anyone's problem = 0 value
Awesome feedback, thank you! Out of curiosity, how much would you pay each month or year for Paragraph as a provider of proof-of-origin? Do we already solve your problem, or what additional features would you like to see to further solve the proof-of-origin / future-proof problem?
Good question 🤔 1/ you partly solve it with IPFS but I'd still like mint-on-publish option 2/ For me, if you'd automatically mint everything I publish onchain $20-$40/y would feel as well invested money (but from your perspective - individual mint fee might be safer option since some people publish a ton) And look, I'm not trying to say don't experiment, it's just that side-kick experiments will just exhaust your small team. You really need to focus things where - nobody will hate it, if you’ll do it right. (think Amazon - nobody ever complains about faster delivery, hence build many warehouses) Otherwise coins can have many fun use-cases, like “writer playlists/baskets” of essays which could be done with @basketdotfarm or similar tools, so I would have fun, but it would not move the needle for you
My suggestion: - 1 coin, representing all the writer's paragraph posts on that blog. - Keep the open editions for each post. - Build in mutual benefit both ways, between the two types of tokens. (If many open editions get minted, coin-holders also benefit. If coin price goes up, open-edition holders also benefit) This way people can buy what they like (open edition or coin), and each benefit from the success of both. And the artist can benefit from both open edition sales and LP positions on the coin.
Super interesting... I love the idea of a coin at the writer / publication level. Also love the idea of having some kind of tie-in w/ coins *and* NFTs (though I was thinking limited-edition NFTs for signaling & self-expression, which coins don't do as well off-the-shelf). Thank you for the idea & feedback!
Also could be cool for the launch of it, to get a bunch of writers to airdrop a % of their blog-coin to all the collectors of their writing so far.
Like this one! And would work with this theme · 👓 🔵 2. Author/creator gets immediate supply of their work, which they can use in many different ways: · Airdrops to original collectors and/or loyal follwers · Promotions to Introduce new readers to their writing · Trading with other authors/creators
Will ponder and return some thoughts soon · 👓 🔵
Thank you, any feedback is much appreciated. 🙏
Some thoughts on a potential move to coins · 👓 🔵 1. Move would be directionally consistent with overall trend 2. Author/creator gets immediate supply of their work, which they can use in many different ways: · Airdrops to original collectors and/or loyal follwers · Promotions to Introduce new readers to their writing · Trading with other authors/creators 3. Future possibility for author/creator to “boost” their coin with something similar to boost.xyz 4. Readers/collectors get lower price point and can collect a broader range of work (Seeing this happen on @zora) 5. Readers/collectors can adjust quantity based on their reaction to the work 6. Uptick in speculative interest, especially to be early 7. Viral price action, fueled by many potential catalysts, can attract more attention
I think #2 is a great idea if the writer were to launch a coin - a great way to give back to the folks that have supported them along the way (if they want to!). A lot of the other activity could be valuable too, but still think we'd love to see more durable, non-speculative motivators be the driving force behind any commerce: patronage, self-expression, community, and utility, among other less-zero-sum, sustainable motivations.
👍🏽👍🏽
there are 4 more of this historic post NFT left
https://paragraph.xyz/@blog/collectibles
@antonio Saw this cast & bought this NFT. Hope Spindl's attributing some $ of NFT Sales to Warpcast 🫡