#note I'm writing this super sleepy after a night of diving into all this so please let me know if any information is unclear or wrong

One thing some people may know about me is I used to work in eCommerce for different start ups centered around fashion, art and interior design. I left these industries to pursue my art career and crypto, and now with Shopify integrating Base wallet I feel like it's a full circle moment. So why is this so important I'm writing an article about this? Let's dive in :)

Shopify, born in 2006 in Ottawa, Canada, from the creative spark of Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake crafted it as a bespoke e-commerce canvas for their snowboarding passion and has blossomed into a worldwide powerhouse, inspiring over 1.7 million independent merchants, artisans, and creators with intuitive tools to showcase online galleries, handle payments, and weave marketing magic, hitting the public markets in 2015. In June 2025, Shopify teamed up with Coinbase and Stripe to weave USDC stablecoin payments into its fabric on the Base Layer-2 network through Shopify Payments, unlocking swift, affordable on-chain exchanges via the Base App ~ a versatile "everything app" evolving from Coinbase Wallet to blend payments, trading, and beyond in one accessible ecosystem.

Shopify is web 2 native and comes with some of that baggage like needing to kyc to set up payouts and the like but it's a huge step I think for them wanting to integrate stable coins into payments along with have apps in their ecosystem that enable tokengating of merchandise. I think this move will ripple out into the ecommerce world in general as we see more and more merchants integrating crypto payments. Not only with this is Shopify helping onboard people to crypto in a passive way with the button being present as an option normalizing crypto transactions, but it to me is the start of building a bridge that is sorely needed in the new creator economy.

The reality is many people don't trust crypto just like many people in crypto don't trust trad institutions for various reasons some legitimate and some not that I won't unpack here. However, between Base/Farcaster and all those related ecosystems and Shopify's merchant focused systems so many tools could be built out to enable creators of all types to come together and co-create in a safe and sane system.

Let me give you one example I've thought of

~ I create a work, I'm a cc0 artist. However how do I both release a work into the world that anyone can do anything with it, but also am able to derive value from it and not just be left out of the equation?

~ I mint that or coin it or however I think is best to put it on the blockchain, but in this thought experiment it being multiple editions or a coin makes it work.

~People buy the art and the coin. I see people like it a lot and so I decide to release a limited edition sweatshirt with the art. The coin or edition is linked to the art which I go find a Print on Demand Supplier that links with my coin enhanced art, and I make a listing on my Shopify with the parameters of wanting it to be a limited edition premium run and please include numbers on the tags to indicate which edition and other customizable things.

~Then whenever any of the sweatshirt sells, revenue is automatically split between me, holders of the coin/edition, and the printer/drop shippers with multiple layers of revenue and exchange happening.

~Say the sweatshirt sells out super fast. I can then decide to do another edition but of a tote bag also limited edition. This keeps the sweatshirt scarce and it's own thing, and then opens up more revenue to come to me the creator and the holders of the art from sales of merch or prints.

No one is cut out or let hanging in this situation. I get to easily design products without the hassle of managing physical inventory, PoD services get higher volume and more revenue, holders of my nft/token get more revenue, shopify and base and whoever else wants to build this connects it all in infrastructure.

As a cc0 artist this is how scarcity and abundance can coexist. People can remix my art and make merch themselves and infrastructure could be made that they can automatically cut me in on their merch sales for remixing my art.

For artist and projects that care about IP tho, this can also be built for just holders of an NFT. Like log into your Shopify and create products around your worthless jpg you own and automatically revenue goes to both you the holder and the artist so it's not really so worthless anymore.

Further down this thought experiment, me as an artist maybe I want to do a limited edition acrylic toy run. Again Shopify has so many merchants that are factories or warehouses or artisans creating great products and are willing to work with people with a vision and capital. So through Print on Demand I can work up a low/no cost proof of concept of my designs, claim the IP by putting it on the blockchain, integrate revenue streams for me and holders and artisans, and then when I have the capital and want to design more custom exclusive products I can find the right people to work with in the same system.

Right now we don't have this back end built out (yet) but as an artist I'm going to be taking considerable time to build out my Shopify store with what I can both digital and physical products since it's able to be customized. There already are apps built integrating nfts and crypto along with being able to showcase everything I do across all the internet from metaverse building, streaming, art, billboards etc etc as a centralized hub to transact with me making it an ideal place for me to build a portfolio and merchant hub.

Shopify integrating Base isn’t just a feature in my perspective it’s an invitation for artists and devs to build their world down to the infrastructure blocks, not just content and chasing fomo.

In other words ~~

welcome to the new creator economy.

zora.com/@empresstrash