Our core thesis at TITLES is simple. As our lives become increasingly online, the things we do generate new forms of source material for storytelling and creativity. With that comes an opportunity to build new products that tap into that source material and unlock its potential. Last year, we shared our thesis detailing how Ethereum and the emergent cryptomedia space represented this shift and opportunity. Today, we’d like to clarify that vision and share how we’re building a product to unlock creative production at TITLES.

At its essence, TITLES is a platform to create, remix, and publish cryptomedia. TITLES provides tooling that encompasses the entire creative loop, from beginning to end. Any creative project starts with sourcing concepts, followed by leveraging those concepts in the creative process, and then publishing the work to the world where the process begins yet again. At TITLES, we are building products that help people follow this creative journey while subtly using Ethereum to unlock new capabilities and value.

We started building tools for creative composition, and soon realized how hard it can be to find both inspiration and compelling assets to create with. To foster creative production of cryptomedia, we would need to build a way to tap into the collective consciousness of Ethereum and explore its depths — a layer that gives people the tools to source raw materials and inspiration for their own creative process.

We took a step back and asked ourselves how “relevancy” is determined on Ethereum. We realized that Ethereum operates on a new kind of value system, where people show what they care about through the transactions they make. Similar to ‘likes’ on traditional social platforms, minting or collecting represents interest in content while burning expresses the opposite. Moreover, the amount of capital connected to a transaction reveals the extent to which that sentiment is felt.

So we built SOURCE. The best mobile-first product for discovering dope cryptomedia through wallet activity (e.g. mints, buys, sells, etc). A beautifully designed experience for finding the most compelling assets moving throughout the network regardless of the interface they are derived from. A product that kickstarts the creative process by treating Ethereum as a content API with built-in social relevancy. You can get early access to the upcoming launch of SOURCE by minting “OS” below…

“Cultures have their own language, objects, and knowledge; their own stories, aesthetics, practices, people, and places that all make sense together in a coherent way. They have behaviors they condone and reward, and behaviors they deem unworthy. And each has its own moral sensibility” — Toby Shorin

Look at Ethereum’s catalog of assets, participating population, and ideals + behaviors it values as an example. It’s obvious that a new kind of emergent culture and language is being formed and logged daily. Just like we see vastly different creative output on TikTok than on Instagram Reels, Ethereum has its own emergent creative class with a unique worldview and cultural output.

Dune Analytics is a prime example of a product that leverages this differentiation. Dune’s tooling lets people easily reach into this unique cultural database, aggregate insights, and present learnings in a visual and digestible manner. The output? Compelling stories you just can't get anywhere else. By granting access to Ethereum’s data through beautiful visual tooling, Dune unlocks new stories and a surface area that we can connect ourselves to.

Just like Dune empowers storytelling through transactional data, TITLES does the same but through onchain media. We pair SOURCE with powerful creative tools that treat assets as composable materials for storytelling. CREATE is the remix layer for cryptomedia. It allows anyone to extend the meaning of cryptomedia through narrative content, memes, and art — all while retaining attribution.

Over the next few months we’ll begin to rollout these tools, and have already begun to work with many of the well known collections, communities, and creatives in the space. If you’re interested being a part of shaping our creative suite please reach out to Soren, here.

Just as Ethereum is an effective means of sourcing creativity, it is also a uniquely powerful place to publish it. Similar to how Facebook’s wall API aggregated much of the media from publishers and apps in the early 2000s, today there are interfaces for virtually every consumer behavior (e.g. discovery, curation, and trading) that ingest media published on Ethereum. However because Ethereum is a publicly owned network, it comes with fundamental advantages for creatives…

• First, the distribution of cryptomedia is published on a shared database, meaning that access cannot be shut off by any centralized authority.

• Second, the interfaces used for distribution can “talk back” through public onchain data generated by their users.

• Lastly, because media are owned and attributed financial assets, media created within one application can generate monetary value in another.

At TITLES, we’re using these advantages to unlock distribution for creatives and value for the assets they include in creations. Not only do we distribute creations to Ethereum where they can be minted, bought, or sold, we also record the attribution of the assets used as materials at the data level. Like DJing unlocks a new presentation layer for music, TITLES provides this for onchain visual assets, ensuring that proper credit goes where it’s due. This attribution layer allows creatives too curate through creation, tell a new story with existing media, and create new monetary value for existing assets.

If you’re interested in working on new forms of publishing contracts that push forward the concepts of composable media, please reach out — we’re hiring.

We’re building a new engine to power onchain creativity and culture. Our ambition with TITLES is to make creating NFTs into a simple, fun, and collaborative experience. One where participating in the evolution of onchain culture happens bottom-up rather than top-down. Get involved today by by minting “OS” by TITLES. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out on Twitter, here.

↳ “TITLES OS” → SOURCE → CREATE  → PUBLISH → ???

Much love,

— TITLES