The first ALANA webinar of the year wasn't just a tutorial; I want to believe it was much more of a statement of empowerment!
Joined by Onome (Irene) Emeya, founder of Announced Digital Fashion (ADF), Yemi Scott of XRology and lead tech partner at ADF, and Eric, CTO at ADF, we sat down to answer one question that rarely gets asked in creator spaces: what if your art could live on the internet, belong fully to you, be protected and be buyable by anyone. All of that without asking a platform for permission?
The ALANA Project and Announced Digital Fashion came together to bring visibility to African digital fashion within ALANAmagazine. One of the fashion editorials featured in the AIR Edition is curated exclusively by Onome and Yemi. One idea is to start making ALANAmagazine feature many more voices than the current ones
The other, much bigger idea is this: creators whose work is featured in our fashion editorials should also be able to monetize it; on their own terms, under their own contracts. No middlemen. No platform cuts. Just your art, your wallet, your price.
This is why we spent an hour walking through no code smart contracts from zero.
Smart contracts are mini programs hosted on a blockchain. When a buyer agrees to the terms you've predefined, the contract self-executes. No back-and-forth, no invoices, no waiting. NFTs are built on the same technology. Think of a smart contract as the engine, and the NFT as what the buyer receives when they interact with it.
For a deeper dive, check out our article on smart contracts here:
During the webinar, we used Unlock Protocol on the Optimism blockchain to create and deploy (upload) a no code smart contract live, which is as easy as filling out a form. It consists of the following few steps:
Log in to Unlock Protocol with a tiny amount of crypto (you need a wallet and crypto to sign a transaction, aka the upload to the blockchain).
Click "Create Lock" (which means "Create a Smart Contract").
Select your use case: Membership (most often for products and art), subscriptions, certifications, or event ticketing.
Choose your blockchain (hint: not Ethereum because it is too expensive for most use cases).
Set the title, scarcity, pricing, duration, and currency.
Add relevant metadata: your image, description, and custom properties such as edition tags, etc.
Creating a checkout URL you can embed anywhere, like in your Linktree, your website, your TikTok bio, or in the ALANAmagazine if your work gets curated.
One detail worth underscoring: only your wallet can modify or manage your contract. Not Unlock Protocol. Not ALANA. Not anyone else. That level of ownership is rare on the internet right now. And even greater news: deploying a smart contract costs cents, not hundreds of dollars. That barrier is gone!
What made this webinar memorable wasn't just the tutorial — it was the conversation that followed. Onome (Irene) put it beautifully:
This isn't just about selling art. It's about reclaiming heritage.
ADF's 2026 theme is Reclaim, Digitize, Preserve. The idea is to bring back extinct silhouettes and fabrics in a digital format. Putting that work onchain means no one can take the ownership away. That felt like exactly the right reason to be doing all of this.
ADF's digital fashion submission for ALANAmagazine is open. Creators can submit work for the ALANA AIR Edition x ADF fashion editorial, put it onchain with a smart contract (we can help if you get stuck), and sell it directly from the magazine via embedded QR codes:
Announce Digital Fashion (ADF) is excited to invite our community of creators to participate in the ALANA Magazine AIR Edition Editorial Competition - a global opportunity to showcase African digital fashion on an international Web3 and editorial stage. This is your chance to translate creativity into visibility, portfolio growth, and industry recognition.
If you need help or there's something web3-adjacent you want us to cover in a future session, drop it in the ALANA Telegram.
Have a great week, ALANA adventurers!
Stella Achenbach
Find The ALANA Project on:
The first ALANA webinar of the year wasn't just a tutorial; I want to believe it was much more of a statement of empowerment!
Joined by Onome (Irene) Emeya, founder of Announced Digital Fashion (ADF), Yemi Scott of XRology and lead tech partner at ADF, and Eric, CTO at ADF, we sat down to answer one question that rarely gets asked in creator spaces: what if your art could live on the internet, belong fully to you, be protected and be buyable by anyone. All of that without asking a platform for permission?
The ALANA Project and Announced Digital Fashion came together to bring visibility to African digital fashion within ALANAmagazine. One of the fashion editorials featured in the AIR Edition is curated exclusively by Onome and Yemi. One idea is to start making ALANAmagazine feature many more voices than the current ones
The other, much bigger idea is this: creators whose work is featured in our fashion editorials should also be able to monetize it; on their own terms, under their own contracts. No middlemen. No platform cuts. Just your art, your wallet, your price.
This is why we spent an hour walking through no code smart contracts from zero.
Smart contracts are mini programs hosted on a blockchain. When a buyer agrees to the terms you've predefined, the contract self-executes. No back-and-forth, no invoices, no waiting. NFTs are built on the same technology. Think of a smart contract as the engine, and the NFT as what the buyer receives when they interact with it.
For a deeper dive, check out our article on smart contracts here:
During the webinar, we used Unlock Protocol on the Optimism blockchain to create and deploy (upload) a no code smart contract live, which is as easy as filling out a form. It consists of the following few steps:
Log in to Unlock Protocol with a tiny amount of crypto (you need a wallet and crypto to sign a transaction, aka the upload to the blockchain).
Click "Create Lock" (which means "Create a Smart Contract").
Select your use case: Membership (most often for products and art), subscriptions, certifications, or event ticketing.
Choose your blockchain (hint: not Ethereum because it is too expensive for most use cases).
Set the title, scarcity, pricing, duration, and currency.
Add relevant metadata: your image, description, and custom properties such as edition tags, etc.
Creating a checkout URL you can embed anywhere, like in your Linktree, your website, your TikTok bio, or in the ALANAmagazine if your work gets curated.
One detail worth underscoring: only your wallet can modify or manage your contract. Not Unlock Protocol. Not ALANA. Not anyone else. That level of ownership is rare on the internet right now. And even greater news: deploying a smart contract costs cents, not hundreds of dollars. That barrier is gone!
What made this webinar memorable wasn't just the tutorial — it was the conversation that followed. Onome (Irene) put it beautifully:
This isn't just about selling art. It's about reclaiming heritage.
ADF's 2026 theme is Reclaim, Digitize, Preserve. The idea is to bring back extinct silhouettes and fabrics in a digital format. Putting that work onchain means no one can take the ownership away. That felt like exactly the right reason to be doing all of this.
ADF's digital fashion submission for ALANAmagazine is open. Creators can submit work for the ALANA AIR Edition x ADF fashion editorial, put it onchain with a smart contract (we can help if you get stuck), and sell it directly from the magazine via embedded QR codes:
Announce Digital Fashion (ADF) is excited to invite our community of creators to participate in the ALANA Magazine AIR Edition Editorial Competition - a global opportunity to showcase African digital fashion on an international Web3 and editorial stage. This is your chance to translate creativity into visibility, portfolio growth, and industry recognition.
If you need help or there's something web3-adjacent you want us to cover in a future session, drop it in the ALANA Telegram.
Have a great week, ALANA adventurers!
Stella Achenbach
Find The ALANA Project on:
In-depth articles on emerging tech vocabulary and bi-weekly newsflash that will make Web3 feel like a breeze.
In-depth articles on emerging tech vocabulary and bi-weekly newsflash that will make Web3 feel like a breeze.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Subscribe to ALANA's ⚡NewsFlash⚡
Subscribe to ALANA's ⚡NewsFlash⚡
>200 subscribers
>200 subscribers
1 comment
Webinar Recap | No Code Smart Contracts