pass.port is an NFT collection that entitles its owners to a membership including future pass.port drops launched by the project.

The goal of the project is to produce high-quality NFT artwork and utility and make an offering at a realistic and affordable price.

The total number of pass.port tokens available is 5,000. The price is set in accordance with the operating costs of the project and holders of the pass.port NFT will be able to mint from at least three future NFT collections through its ownership.

Primary sale proceeds will be allocated transparently with the goal of creating an incubator for new collections and web3 innovations by reinvesting the funds to build the pass.port ecosystem. Holders will be rewarded with free mints on future collections along with a governance model to vote on future milestones and initiatives.

1. The Team

2. NFTs: A market in disarray

3. Solving the imbalance - pass.port

4. Introducing pass.port – a minimalist approach to NFTs

5. Revenue distribution

6. Going forward

We are an international team of marketers, builders and artists that have spent most of their careers creating surplus value for corporations and startups. There is an established proof-of-concept for NFTs to provide utility far beyond commercial interests.

With the advent of web3, we observe a cultural shift in how value is created away from traditional corporations to the people as autonomous entities. In this litepaper, we outline our approach to how value is created and who should benefit from it.

Since the inception of the infamous Cryptopunks, the NFT space has developed at a breath-taking pace with hundreds of projects popping up left and right on a daily basis. As we’re heading into mass-adoption with market-leading consumer brands recognizing a significant cultural-shift that encapsulates art & technology, the NFT space, as any space where money is to be made, is riddled with malevolent actors trying to make a quick buck. Countless projects are over-promising and under-delivering with many cases of “rug-pulling” with projects disappearing overnight once minting has concluded (read: disappearing as soon as money has been made).

The current state of the NFT market has made some problems abundantly clear: First and foremost, it’s incredibly hard to determine the value of a project in advance. Many projects are built on artificial hype, bolstered by self-serving NFT influencers, bloated discord channels and project roadmaps that may or may not be delivered. These factors are often paired with high mint prices and thus constitute the perfect breeding ground for scams. Most market participants that are eager to buy NFTs misunderstand their role in the entire process as they perceive themselves as consumers as opposed to what they really are: Investors - a misconception that carries severe consequences which as in the case of a rug-pull can amount to the complete loss of funds.

In order to understand what role you play in the market, it’s paramount to understand who is assuming the risk. In many cases, a large portion of the risk is delegated from the project team to the buyers. Sure, the core team provides labor and pays a certain sum for project development, however it’s the buyers who do the funding all the while they won’t and in many cases can’t demand accountability. An imbalance that needs to be solved urgently.

But what is a balanced distribution of risk? Is a 50/50 split fair as in, the project team covers half the cost while the buyers cover the other half? There is no simple answer to this question, but understanding where each parties’ risks come from, will ultimately help you make better decisions. Regardless of what percentage of the (monetary) risk you assume, there is no guarantee that you will generate surplus value. It is obvious however that a cheaper mint price equals a smaller risk for the buyer. Solving the imbalance is, in fact, impossible but it’s certainly possible to reduce the risk for the buyer to a minimum through the tool of pricing.

We see a lot of projects jumping on a hive mind and setting mint prices to what the market has deemed as acceptable. But why is that the case? The mint price doesn’t dictate the ultimate success of the projects, nor does it provide any clue about the true value of the project. We consider this practice as deeply dishonest, since it’s disconnected from any other logic than making as much money as possible. As a baseline, we believe that the mint price should be tied (to some degree) to the operational costs associated with the underlying project, i.e. they should at least cover all costs for the developing team, including salaries. What is common practice for start-ups should serve as a benchmark for NFT projects. Note that there is no guaranteed revenue for any NFT project, however baseline estimates and more importantly caps can be utilized in ensuring that buyers do not pay inflated prices based on nothing other than greed.

In accordance with these principles, lowering the mint price serves as the single most effective measure to reduce a buyer’s risk. Logically, this entails cutting all unnecessary costs that do not ultimately add to the value of the issued NFT in an artistic or utilitarian sense.

With pass.port, we are launching a NFT following the principles outlined in this abstract. Acknowledging that lowering mint prices significantly reduces the associated risks for buyers / investors, we’re aiming to run the project on minimal operational costs. Having worked on several projects prior to pass.port, most of the continues operational costs stem from marketing and community management throughout various channels. Out of these, operating a dedicated discord server is the biggest contributor to resource & time consumption and while we acknowledge the need for transparent communication with the community, we deem discord servers as largely ineffective as a tool. With pass.port, we’re keen on reducing the impact of what we call “noise” to the bare essentials. There will be no discord servers, no giveaways, no whitelists (which are, in fact, quite costly) and most important of all, no “influencers”. All our communication will be done by the core team via our twitter channel, enabling us to focus on technical implementation and most importantly, significantly reduce the mint price.

Ownership of the pass.port NFT guarantees three NFT mints in the near future, with the first project going live soon after pass.port’s inception.

We firmly believe in transparency in all aspects of the projects and for full disclosure, everyone participating in this project from the operational and artistic side will be compensated in ETH. This ensures that we can denominate operational costs in ETH and derive mint prices in ETH accordingly.

The distribution of the revenue will be done according to this distribution key:

Website:

As already outlined, we will mainly rely on our twitter channel for official communications while our website will serve as the main hub for all lateral information about pass.port and will also serve as the platform for minting the NFTs. In order to keep operational costs low, the web solution will be minimal and functional.

Artist compensation:

Artists are the foundation of any successful project. We are purposely not hiring artists for short term work on a singular project for them to later move on the next thing. Thinking long term in the very dynamic NFT space might seem counterintuitive, but at the end of the day, those projects wherein the artists have been involved throughout a projects entire lifespan have proven more successful than those that have taken a “one and done” approach. Thanks to the configuration of our project, we will be able to offer artists that are serious about their journey in the NFT space an appealing package with financial independence at the core. We want our artists to focus solely on delivering artwork in line with their vision and ours and our communities’ high standards. A share in secondary sales for the artist is set to ensure long-term partnerships.

Employee salaries:

There is no such thing as a free lunch and as the team developing and running the pass.port we rely on lunches just as everyone else. Determining a fair value for a business venture that is associated with certain degrees of costs from our side (such as costs of labor and development) as well as unclear projections has certainly been a challenge. For the sake of full transparency, we’re disclosing the share of revenue that will be used for the compensation of the core team. We have calculated these figures based on the maximum revenue that can be generated through the sale of the pass.port NFTs (= 150 ETH). Based on that figure, we have allocated 20% as salaries for the core team. This model both ensures a cap to the personal compensation of any team member, as well as a continuous incentive to keep the project running well beyond the point of the initial sale of pass.port NFTs.

web3 development:

Developers charge obscene salaries for NFT collections these days, especially if the contracts bear more complexity than the run-down-the-mill allowlist/public sale contract. Luckily, we were able to onboard experienced team members that share our philosophy in regards to NFT pricing and compensation.

Treasury:

A large portion of the funds that will be raised through the sale of pass.port NFTs will be directed to our treasury. These funds will explicitly not be spent on salaries, but serve as means to develop further assets and/or promote existing ones.

So what exactly can you expect from pass.port?

pass.port is not the first NFT pass to cross your screen. We know that. Our vision for the project is not to jump on the current ‘meta’ or ‘alpha’ what a collection should look like. After the run of Azuki we saw anime collections hitting the market every day. Only 1-2 of them will survive. Trends are short lived in the NFT space and there is no way to adopt a successful project to current trends. In order to avoid such pitfalls, we are not looking to what’s hot, but are here to support the artists vision. The core value we persuade is to create with the artist and not ‘manage’ the artist on Fiverr.

This is where our skills come to play. How do we grow a brand, how do we attract people to our vision. Add our technical abilities in web 3.0 and we believe we have a good recipe for success.

All projects launched under the pass will follow the principles mentioned above. Our goal is to interlink all three collections, even if we use different artists. After all we are building an ecosystem.