Throughout a three-month campaign, we explored themes around the adoption of 3D design, genAI, and digital tools to help creators design concepts of physical products to sell and showcase ideas without overproducing stock.

These themes led us to experiment with a creator contest to explore our assumptions and use onchain tools for voting and social commerce to leverage community engagement and support the distribution of digital product concepts.

Context

The architecture of web3 social apps like Hey, Orb and Zora are a massive step forward for creator ownership and monetization of their content, and these new frontiers have cultivated a wealth of creative communities. We saw their complex fractal geometry as we looked into these social webs.

To give direction to our explorations, IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency partnered with Crowdmuse, a social commerce for creators and brands to collaborate and earn from their products.

We began with an initial concept asking creators to express a perspective on the creative process of creation, monetization, ownership, and access.

We quickly realized that a simple design contest would underutilize the new opportunities of creating onchain. The potential of these architectures, and their native communities, created an opportunity for a contest where individuals could collaborate, vote, and directly shape the future of a design or concept.

The barrier between creator and community is falling, allowing creatives to better build and execute alongside their fans and supporters. As activation becomes easier, these communities are fast becoming core facets of distribution.

Crowdmuse encourages creators and brands to take advantage of this buy-in by selling their products on a preorder basis on its marketplace. This avoids creating dead stock as products have to hit minimums before production begins. Any order that doesn't hit the target minimum triggers refunds back to the buyers. This “pull” production model subverts inventory challenges, avoids waste, and allows for specialized production for smaller, invested, communities.

This work is made possible by the, sometimes radical, transparency of working onchain. With a public ledger, your actions and social interactions are tied to you. This also allows Crowdmuse to experiment with connected goods. These IRL/URL artifacts act as portals between the real and digital worlds and reflect a broader trend of thoughtful approaches to cyberphysical design.

Launching the Contest

To broaden our exploration, we asked creators to submit a concept for a drop or a brand and were eager to see how they approached balancing authenticity, audience, and cultural belonging with relevance to trends and evolving taste.

We launched our contest with a call to action accompanied by the Contest Handbook detailing the mechanics, timeline, rules of the contest, and information on the $2,000 cash prize. We promoted the contest on Hey, Orb, and X accounts, and on the private Crowdmuse Community Telegram channel.

Contestants were asked to mint a digital version of their submission on Crowdmuse for showcasing purposes alongside a Figma with concept references and storytelling.

We screened each submission for any inappropriate or offensive content, though we did not need to exercise any intervention.

Feedback During the Submission Period

While much of the early reception was positive, the submission period was our first opportunity for feedback.

Some creators expressed frustration as, after activating their communities to mint their proposals on Crowdmuse with the assumption that this would increase their chances of winning, they learned we would only launch the community voting mechanism later. In retrospect, we should have made the instructions clearer that the number of collections of a digital mint would not affect the final vote.

This frustration increased over the fact that while the mints themselves were free, the action of minting required spending money, not for the competition, but for gas and credit card fees. Some incorrectly assumed that this money went to the contest organizers.

While we understood these frustrations, whenever a miscommunication arose in our contest, we addressed it by standing by the rules as written in our Contest Handbook, to maintain fairness and objectivity for those who had read and understood the rules. This issue caused some creators to remove themselves from the contest, but at the end of the submission window, we moved forward with 12 fully vetted and approved submissions.

Community Voting on JokeRace

Instead of selecting the contest winner with a panel of judges, we worked with JokeRace to organize a community vote. JokeRace is an open-source and onchain community voting platform where users create and run community voting contests with the benefits of earning rewards and engaging with their community.

Terms for voting:

• Voters included anyone who had interacted with Crowdmuse on socials, was a member of the Community Telegram channel, or worked with Crowdmuse previously

• To avoid bot votes we used a pay-to-vote system

• To make voting accessible, each vote cost as little as possible, 0.0001 eth, or roughly 31 cents in USD at the time of the vote’s launch

• We chose not to use a free vote as it would require curating an “allow-list” before the contest of wallets permitted to vote

• The earrings from the pay-to-vote would be distributed to the top three winners via JokeRace

• The proposal with the most votes at the end of the contest would win

• There would be no additional voting rules–intentionally

• In addition, we used stack.so for the contest leaderboard

• Only one winner will be awarded the $2k cash prize and be taken to the next phase of the contest

Competition Questions and Assumptions

By promoting our contest to the Crowdmuse community, we assumed that our voting group would consist of design-minded individuals literate, to some degree, in the mechanics of web3. We assumed that some contestants would activate their communities to vote, and that the success of these activations would rely on the quality of the idea. In choosing this community we believed the best idea would rise to the top.

We chose to focus our energy on designing the contest, rather than pre-litigating any additional rules for casting votes. We believed that self-policing within the community and social norms would curate a “fair” contest. While we expected that some unpredictability could come, we also understood that the transparency of onchain voting would allow us to see where, and when, voters diverged from these assumed norms.

Our questions included:

• How would participants activate their communities for votes?

• How would vote distribution span wallets?

• How would the contest affect the growth or fracture of the community?

• How would vote transparency affect how users voted?

• Without any control valves, where would community voting take us?

Running the Contest

Voting opened at 10 am PST // 5 pm UTC on October 21, 2024, and closedat 10 am PST // 5 pm UTC on October 24. To maintain neutrality the contest's organizers did not vote.

The contest generated 3,440 votes from 53 unique wallets. As per the Contest Handbook, we selected the winner based on the highest number of total votes.

“SLING” from xael.eth (Sean Thielen-Esparza) won the contest with 1,722 votes. “No bulky headset, just sip this blue liquid” Gilbert took second with 1,250 votes. “Save Our Venues” from acutek.eth came in third with 235 votes.

SLING from Sean will receive the $2,000 reward and prepare a merch drop based on the SLING concept as the first 'artifact' to promote the concept and court customers. Pre-order sales of the merch must hit 25 units to move to production with our dedicated manufacturer Everywhere Apparel and NFC chip partner Arx.

LEARNINGS AND FEEDBACK

Contest Mechanics in Action

Votes ticked in fairly consistently throughout the voting period, before a notable, and transparently verifiable, uptick in the seconds before the contest’s conclusion. This included votes from creators’ communities native to Web3 Social and activated by the contest to join Web3 Social.

With 31 seconds left in the contest, eventual winner Sean paid 0.0515 ETH to cast 515 votes for themselves, accounting for nearly ⅙ of total votes, pushing them into first place by 472 votes. These votes are reflected on the JokeRace dashboard and onchain.

Sean was not the only creator to vote for themselves, as second place winner Gilbert cast 24 votes for themselves, and fourth place winner, jordanisgreen.eth, cast 25 votes for themselves.

All of these votes were valid and fit within the scope of the Contest Handbook, which did not limit vote totals, or limit voting opportunities beyond our general contest voting period.

Reflections from Winner

After the contest, we interviewed Sean as part of our Creator Editions ORBIT series hosted by Crowdmuse Content and Comms Lead Tyler Scharf. You can see the full interview here

Additionally, we asked Sean a few questions in the days after the contest’s conclusion. We have included excerpts from that interview below.

Can you provide feedback on your experience of the community pay-to-vote contest?

I felt that the pay-to-vote dynamic created an auction-like dynamic, especially with last-minute strategic voting. For example, I withheld my own vote until the end to maximize its impact, creating pressure that was strategically sound but might have been discouraging to other participants.

Contest configuration options like limiting last-minute voting, preventing participants from voting for themselves, or extending the contest if last-minute votes disrupt the rankings are all ways that I could see the JokeRace contest structure improving.

How did this system affect the distribution of community votes?

I think that community voting can serve as a productive distribution mechanism, but many of my supporters faced significant friction navigating the process of creating a wallet and acquiring crypto, adding unnecessary friction. I spent time onboarding supporters one-on-one, often sending them free crypto to ensure they could participate, but this was extremely time-intensive and required spending my own money.

What are your thoughts on demand-driven production?

The demand-driven production thesis is immensely compelling. Many of my supporters expressed excitement at the concept and expressed intent to purchase the future product, but intentions don’t always translate into actions.

Purchasing a T-shirt not only signals interest but also delivers immediate value to supporters while identifying high-intent future customers. I’m excited to see if this proves effective for the SLING concept!

Reacting to Controversy

Our hands-off voting system inadvertently created a prisoner’s dilemma, where group benefit and individual gain were at odds. While we can acknowledge some temptation to adjust outcomes to reflect the broader voice of the community in competition, doing so would betray and invalidate our exploration, and jeopardize our reputation.

As with our approach to mints not counting as votes earlier in the competition, it would be unfair to adjust the rules in retrospect and disadvantage those who read and acted by the Contest Handbook. It is possible to iterate and improve rules, contests, and executions, but reputations and trust are not so readily managed.

Some contestant, voter, and observer feedback included displeasure with the number and timing of Sean’s 515 votes, but not for the act of voting for oneself. As we know, other participants also voted for themselves. This reflects a perceived “grey area” around community acceptance.

Without absolutes, communities must actively determine what falls within the bounds of “good faith,” either expressly, or through repeated community action. While this can be done proactively, the transparency of onchain voting also gives communities the ability to retroactively illustrate norms. By giving, or withholding, ongoing community support communities can determine the acceptable line between self-interest and community benefit.

Measure what you want to make

Our competition netted a wide and weird set of proposals. All used digital showcasing tools to bring their concepts to life. While some participants focused on solving real-world problems, others created physical artifacts for digital activations.

As some feedback pointed out, though, our voting system’s design opened itself to the mechanics of more traditional economic models.

• If a system can be gamed, is it capable of measuring anything other than an individual's ability to game it?

• What happens to quality if the metrics of these economic models become the standards we measure, and benchmark designs for?

• What responsibility do creators and communities have to engineer these systems away from more traditional systems?

How might we change the voting system?

If we wanted to change the execution of our contest, we could change the rules of the community vote in several ways including:

• One vote per wallet

• Time blocks between votes

• Prohibit self-voting in totality

• Make each vote increasingly expensive

• Free voting (necessitating an allow-list)

Ideally, these would help communities reach effective vote administration and serve as stronger scaffolding to establish social norms.

It is not clear, though, if these would solve all voting issues. The door remains open for not yet foreseen, and more complicated, means of gaining an advantage. This could create an arms race of looking for and protecting against, advantages that could bog down the execution of such contests.

We could also abandon community votes in favor of judging panels, but this would be a rejection of community voting, instead of improvement, which would move many of these same issues upstream to the process of selecting judges.

While we understand there was some difficulty in onboarding new voters, our exploration was of web3 social, and we did not want to turn away from these frictions by enabling web2 voting systems.

How might we change our communities?

As communities establish norms and build stronger connections, these disagreements and frustrations may simply be growing pains. Given enough contests, communities may develop their norms and adopt rules to arrive at a shared understanding.

If however, we were looking to design communities to avoid these frustrations moving forward, we could adopt a few strategies.

• Increase voter pools to dilute the influence and power of the individual.

• Shrink voter pools to increase the weight of personal reputation

• Establish trust as a desired outcome of the vote alongside choosing a winner

If we are going to build strong communities, we must create a sense of what it means to belong in this community, and proactively propagate an ethos of acceptable, or unacceptable behavior.

In some communities that could mean celebrating the individual best able to gain an advantage, while in others it could mean rewarding cooperation over self-interest. In either scenario, our social systems must strengthen the relationship between creator and supporter, and protect against the erosion of trust.

The first SLING drop

Contest winner Sean will move forward to make his brand vision a reality for SLING. As part of the contest, the winner gets access to the Crowdmuse curation team and partners Everywhere Apparel and Arx, to create a premium merch item on pre-order to help support Sean in showcasing the overall concept and get his first 25 customers. The product is available for pre-order on Crowdmuse.

This drop includes a long sleeve t-shirt and will give access to buy the SLING product at a discounted price when it is released.

Contest Phase II: Do community votes translate to sales?

This first drop marks the start of the second phase of our contest in which we explore how community activation translates to sales and financial support. Our creators successfully activated their communities, including onboarding supporters to web3 platforms and navigating pay-to-vote to get votes. The question now is: whether community votes translate to sales.

For our exploration, this is not a theoretical question. Sean will need to reach the 25 presale minimum to go into production with this first piece of merch and move forward with the creation of SLING with the contest cash prize of $2,000.

Conclusion

Web3 social offers expansive frontiers for creativity, collaboration, design, and execution. The ability to own your work, build your community, and activate support for your projects transparently opens the doors for new financialization models and streamlined support.

As we establish new norms for social trust and action, we must design systems and marketplaces that promote creativity, activate communities, grant meaningful ownership, and balance the voice of the individual with the will of the crowd.

Doing so will not only continue to push the frontiers of creative possibilities but build communities that are both fair and resilient.

Dial Hard by tea strazicic (flufflord), Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dial Hard is a character-driven brand that blends digital and physical formats, featuring designs with a loose, ADHD-friendly, boundary-free, punk-inspired aesthetic. The brand draws its name from Philip K. Dick’s Novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, reflecting a rebellious, futurist vision. Dial Hard thrives on mysterious origins, curiously sourced items and mythological lore. The brand is currently focusing on collaborating with musicians to create items that have both a strong narrative and visual appeal.

Save Our Venues by Duncan Falconer, Scotland

Save Our Venues is raising awareness, and building solutions, for the growing challenges faced by grassroots music venues in the UK. As independent venues close, the future of live music and community connection is at risk. And when artists don’t have places to play, build careers, and earn, the music ecosystem, including promoters, managers, and fans, suffers. The brand will work to generate income to invest in supporting these struggling venues and keeping the live music scene alive.

Netmorf by Gilbert, Berlin, Germany

Netmorf was revived for the 2021 NFT project Dotcom Seance by artist Simon Denny. Since April 2023, it has been publishing PNG in the EYE, an episodic fanfiction that blends Netmorf's fictional world with real-world tech and culture stories. The brand's goal is to develop a 'superfiction'—a visual identity, backstory, corporate personalities, and communication strategies, until the fiction becomes so detailed it crosses into reality.

Netmorf challenges traditional creation models by shifting from a "create -> produce -> distribute" paradigm to a "distribute -> create -> produce" approach. This new model builds a lore-driven community of readers and collectors, focusing on storytelling and engagement rather than data-driven product creation.

VOID by CU3D, Bangkok, Thailand

VOID embraces collective ownership and production as the fairest and most inclusive economic path forward. They aim to create a unified expression of both art and technology, wrought from those communities themselves. The brand will be owned and distributed collectively through NFTs, memes, culture, tokenomics, and spiritual or subcultural elements.

VOID simplifies creation, distribution, and integration with a strong, cult-like community driven by a multidimensional, post-brand ethos. Collective participation is key, and authenticity in art, finance, and culture is empowered.

Virtual Hug by Jordan Brooklyn, New York City, USA

Virtual Hug is designed to embody the intangible value of "soft skills" and serve as a physical representation of a virtual hug. The product invites wearers to nurture themselves through deep breaths, moments of stillness, or time spent on their passions. The design cradles the throat and heart providing comfort and a sense of openness, kindness, and generosity.

Virtual Hug highlights the importance of self-love as a foundation for emotional maturity and empathy toward others. By focusing on self-care, wearers are reminded to fill their own cup before sharing love with others. Additionally, those who wear the Virtual Hug will have the opportunity to connect in a shared virtual space, reinforcing the collective power of self-care and kindness.

GODANI by Ndukwe anita, Nigeria

Godani is streetwear inspired by love and ancient stories. The brand’s designs feature frequent uses of the eye and hand, symbols of both protection and mystery. The reality warping illustrations imbue a sense of magic and meaning to these designs. Godani explores what it means to be an individual, and what it means to be a member of a collective.

blankspace jpg by blankspace, USA

blankspace jpg merges nostalgic tech elements with real-life internet culture, creating a mashup of digital and physical goods. The artwork encourages viewers to reflect on their experiences with both the digital and the physical worlds, and how these experiences intertwine in the present. By incorporating skeuomorphisms and nostalgic tech forms, the project bridges the gap between past and present, inviting us to consider how technology has influenced our lives, memories, and interactions with the world around us.

SLING by Sean Thielen-Esparza, New York City, USA

"SLING" is a utility vest designed to enhance the functionality of Humane’s AI Pin by addressing two key issues: inconsistent field of view and the Pin’s aesthetic integration with outfits. While the AI Pin offers advanced features like being able to "see" the world in front of the wearer and taking wide-aperture photos, its lack of consistent positioning leads to unreliable results, foci, and images. This inconsistency continues to aesthetic, where the pin frequently looks like an afterthought rather than a central part of an outfit.

SLING solves these problems by securing Humane’s AI Pin in a fixed position over any garment, ensuring a consistent field of view for photos and integrating the Pin seamlessly into the wearer’s outfit. This combination of form and function elevates both the practical and visual appeal of the AI Pin, making it both reliable (function) and fashionable (form).

TWIN DEMONS by demonego, Turkey

A design that is an extension of the artist’s recent works created with AI, focusing on demons and monsters, draws inspiration from new possibilities of frightening beings in a reality shaped by artificial intelligence. The artist finds their inspiration in nightmares, new realities, and horror films. These interconnected concepts reflect a new bond and similarities emerging between surreal beings and humans.

Alt.er by been, Mexico

Alt.er is a creative exploration of how artistic expression constantly evolves through new concepts, art, and design trends. Inspired by the words "alterations" and "interferences," Alt.er delves into the idea of how interference waves affect our thoughts and affect creative outcomes. It plays with the realities, this one and the next, integrating dreamlike companions—like cats—into these surreal realms. Alt.er invites participants to explore the possibilities of both our current and future realities through the lens of artistic interference and transformation.

Formline Faces by Aldivo Rodrigues, São Pulo, Brasil

Formline Faces blends contemporary art, individuality, and craftsmanship with hand-painted pieces that emphasize the contrast between straight lines and curved shapes to create abstract faces. The brand embodies a commitment to diversity and authenticity amplifying the unique power of hand-crafted designs, magnified by digital communities.

HFAF by Phoebe Heess, Nuremburg, Germany

HFAF (High Fashion Anti-Fascist) stands as a bold resistance movement recognizing that the current financial systems are not built to last. As in the 1930s, the ultra-wealthy may seek to preserve their power through familiar structures. HFAF urges resistance at the earliest stages of this shift, advocating for a new system that challenges the status quo and promotes justice. The brand embraces fashion as an anti-fascist platform, calling on individuals to resist authoritarianism through both style and substance.

Contest resources

https://www.jokerace.io/contest/optimism/0x079a413af162d0807f4b160f396160c61e5da84f

Cyberphysical Contest Leaderboard

Join Crowdmuse and IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency contest to redefine what it means to design and build brands in the digital age. This contest chall...

https://www.stack.so

https://mirror.xyz/crowdmuse.eth/N1XGo5i0og3ysdpJMUX_Pnpb59Lhzc7fxQh7j6XJ8dE

Cyberphysical Brands Creator Contest Handbook | Notion

Contest overview

https://crowdmuse.notion.site

Follow for updates @crowdmuse

At their most basic, the benefits are easy to understand. Add a programmable NFC chip (or similar technology) to your favorite hat to use it to open your apartment door. Put one in your travel coffee mug to unlock your car. Add one to your reusable shopping bag and pay for your groceries with it.

They are physical tools for digital interactions. On the surface, this doesn’t seem life changing. But, when we go beyond these transactional experiences of making new keys and credit cards, when we consider the weird ways physical objects can foster more mindful and purpose-driven interactions with technology, then we can imagine a world where our digital tools enhance our reality, rather than distracting us from it.

We could design our digital interfaces for our intentions, helping us dive deeper into those experiences we value: staying focused at work, present in social settings, and engaged in a hobby.

A connected bookmark could track how many pages you read, for how long you read, record audio notes, define unfamiliar words, and upload those stats and findings to your digital profile, without a screen interface. We get the benefits of technology while being in control of how much the digital world permeates our reality.

Those small moments, the moments of transition or boredom, they add up, they zap our dopamine, they demolish our focus and intention. And while connected goods can help us set intentions, they can also help us set boundaries.Our phones and computers are like gaping holes between the IRL and URL. Our ideas and attention blusters between them both, never quite settling in either. Connected goods have the opportunity to act as gates between these two worlds. They can give us access but, more importantly, we can close them behind us. We can shut one world off from another so that no creature, or idle thought, wanders out.

Our devices give us every tool to succeed, and every distraction to knock us off our paths. Process and habit can help one stay focused, but the right connected goods could amplify these virtues. Paradoxically, having more technology, in the form of connected goods, could improve our sometimes warped relationship with tech.Connected goods could give us bigger levers to pull when looking to set boundaries. A connected set of reading glasses could automatically shut off notifications and limit access to more distracting apps as soon as you put them on.

Our access to social media, games, even specific contacts (bosses and exes) could be bound to having a connected good on hand. At work? The necessary good to unlock all your distractions is at home. Out drinking with your friends? Thank goodness the connected good that gives you access to your ex’s number is sitting in that box in the back of your closet with her letters.

Connected goods could change the power dynamic between our best selves, our worst selves, and the internet.

Defining our relationship with technology is rarely a solitary endeavor, though. As the conversation lulls in a group setting, one person will break, and check their phone. Like “the wave” making its way around a stadium, each member of the group reaches into their own pocket as the conversation halts completely and each individual surrenders to the distraction of the digital world.

Connected goods could redefine the IRL social-digital experience. As a group of friends gathers on the weekend, each bringing a connected good, their access to their own digital devices could  change. When a quorum is reached, each member of the group loses access to apps that would make them less present, dating apps, social media, etc. while maintaining access to those for transportation, messaging, and taking photos. If the group shares a financial stake, of any size, that quorum could also give them access to a shared wallet to pay for the night.

These social benefits could go beyond the people you know, though, allowing you to connect with strangers who share common interests, without sacrificing security and privacy. A connected notebook or pair of running shorts could allow you to build a social web at run clubs, reading groups, museums, and parks, without having to share direct contact information. More broadly, they could be used to build community. Bands or artists could use connected concert Ts as tickets, to offer discounts, exclusive content like unreleased songs, or proof that you have in fact been a fan of the band from way before they were popular.

Connected goods can allow us to be more intentional with our digital experiences, more present in our daily life, and more expansive with our explorations of both. Our IRL and URL experiences should broaden our perspectives, not narrow our focus. Connected goods offer the opportunity, and tools, to look at the world around us, rather than the black box in our hands.

Brands are struggling to balance maintaining their authenticity with following trends as they pursue curation, taste, and a sense of cultural belonging. Many are tempted to ignore fads to focus on creating something that speaks to a particular identity or subculture, but avoiding trends or traditional collection-based production cycles can be a risky endeavor in the high-cost online retail environment. In such a competitive and demanding industry, how can designers and brands create products that speak to their audience, while not simply surviving, but thriving?

We have seen experiments emerge that could, if successful, in theory, mitigate or drastically reduce upfront costs and dead stock waste including demand-driven production, new forms of e-commerce visual merchandising, and connected products. Creating these more direct commerce links could not just reduce waste, but build stronger connections between the brand, designer, and customer. This can happen through -

• Push vs pull systems in manufacturing: Oftentimes brands design and produce pieces without a guarantee of sales - this current “push model” often requires between $2,000 and $20,000 or more to cover upfront production costs. This comes without any guarantee that the stock will be sold. A “pull model” aligns production with customer demand. Producers only order material and begin production after an order is made and minimums hit i.e. pre-order, presale, or made-to-order methods. These methods subvert inventory challenges, reduce dead stock, and better serve the limited demand for a specific product.

• 3D renders and generative AI models for visual merchandising: Visual merchandising is one of the most important factors in setting up an online shop. Showcasing products is essential when we consider that 30% of online purchases result in returns, a persistent and expensive challenge (source). Often, though, showcasing relies on having samples ready for a dedicated photoshoot that can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 up to $20k, or more. With these challenges, using 3D digital renders or virtual try-on models of a product for presale could soon become far more common, like how 3D renders are used for showcasing on these drop examples here and here. Cutting-edge generative AI models and studios that generate digital product showcasing like Flux, Daisy and CALA provide more flexibility, could reduce upfront costs and coordination, and allow designers and brands to sell a product concept to their customers immediately.

• Customer/community opt-in during the design phase: With co-creation, customers actively contribute to a product’s outcome. We have seen this from traditional brands like Nike and Lego that have co-created designs with customers. Some platforms such as Offscript are experimenting with community-led voting (through “likes”) to determine final product designs and concepts. Designers can upload designs or use Offscript’s in-app generative AI studio to draft a submission. Once a submitted design passes a threshold of community likes or preorders, production into a physical piece can commence. According to their website, their community contests are seeing between 5k to 10k submissions per month on average.

• Chipped connect product experiences: Chips using NFC and RFID technology are commonly used to verify product authentication for counterfeit prevention, provenance, and tracking for retail, supply chain management, marketing, and access campaigns. “Connected products” are consumer goods with chips used to house product metadata useful for things like Digital Product Passports, and helping track production sustainability. More and more, though, these chips in consumer products are being used as a marketing tool to connect customers to a brand through interactive advertising, loyalty programs, event marketing, and data transfer.

At Crowdmuse, we’ve worked with our network of fashion designers, 3D designers, and culture brands to experiment across the above areas. Now, as part of a contest in collaboration IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency we want to experiment with you. Just submit your product design or brand concept. Here is how it works -

Contest overview

(1) Submit your design concepts

Whether you have a concept for a brand, or your existing brand has a concept for a new drop, submit the designs, concept and story on a one-page Figma file. Leave the scraps and references in the file too - we love the scraps! :)

To qualify each submission needs a Figma file prepared and promo image(s) minted on Crowdmuse via the Create page - see example here. To get a head start you can submit your design concept proposal here. Check out the Contest Handbook for more information.

You have 10 days to submit, from 30th Sept to 9th Oct 2024.

(2) Community vote on Jokerace and points on Stack Leaderboard

Qualified profiles can enter their submission mint link and Figma concept proposal onto the Jokerace contest page. The contest page will be made available to contestants via the Notion contest handbook 3 days before the submission window closes. The Crowdmuse community will vote on the submissions.

Top-voted concepts will have a higher likelihood of bringing their designs to life, with only one contestant titled the winner of the contest and a cash prize of $2,000.

Participants, including submitters and voters, will also earn points that will be tracked on a Stack leaderboard.

Crowdmuse community vote window will be over 3 days until a winner is announced.

(3) Preorder product on Crowdmuse using digital visual merchandising

The winning creator will be asked to use their digital skills to visualize the winning concept and design to be showcased on a t-shirt (or a blank of relatively similar product spec). This will be sold via preorder on Crowdmuse marketplace, where it will need to hit a minimum threshold to kickstart production.

For example, see how 3D designer CU3D digitally showcased a physical product for an Optimism limited edition drop.

All proceeds from sales will go to the creator/brand with our baseline fixed marketplace fee of 2.5%. We ask that you add contest collaborators to the ‘Creator Splits for visibility.

(4) Work with Crowdmuse curation team and partners for physical production and fulfilment

We have allocated our manufacturing and chip partners; Everywhere Apparel and Arx to support the creator in getting the final product produced, printed, and chipped. Everywhere Apparel, based in Los Angeles, is one of Crowdmuse’s premium sustainable manufacturing and print suppliers providing high-quality products to streetwear and luxury brands. Arx NFC-powered chips are the best in the market for connected product solutions trusted by brands.

(5) Online distribution campaign

The winning contestant drop and profile will be promoted via Crowdmuse and partner marketing channels to highlight the creator with a chance to be interviewed as part of our ORBIT Creator Editions series.

Look out for a Notion Contest Handbook that will be shared on @Crowdmuse X account with a breakdown of the contest rules and support user docs.

Contest theme

In our last announcement post ‘Crowdmuse teams up with IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency to play onchain’ published Aug 20th. We shared a rough overview of the contest and a theme mapped out below -

We invited creators to explore how creation/monetization and access/ownership interact. Are they forces in opposition? Different quadrants on the same map? Isolated pillars? Are they static, rapidly and constantly changing, or perhaps influences united through some other means? Considering these interactions, developments, and power dynamics, we welcome people to consider their impacts on the creative economy, individual agents, and collaborative and iterative design.

Since then, we have refined the contest scope to encourage creators to submit designs for a conceptual brand, a design from an existing brand they own, or a concept of a brand or alternate reality they want to see in the world utilizing digital tools and merch to tell the story.

With today’s novel tools that help accelerate the design and concept phases, we thought this contest offered an exciting challenge to give the winning creator a full brand experience: from design through production and distribution with access to our community, network of apparel manufacturers, and chip suppliers.

Along the way, this will allow us to explore themes in these emerging and developing markets, including how cyberphysical goods move us from perception to experience, how onchain mechanics give our ideas strong foundations from which to expand upward and outward, how we archive and explore our diverging creative choices, and the world we create between our digital and physical spaces. Follow the Crowdmuse Curation profile as we mint digital artifacts throughout the contest.

Contest archive and resources

https://www.jokerace.io/contest/optimism/0x079a413af162d0807f4b160f396160c61e5da84f

Cyberphysical Contest Leaderboard

Join Crowdmuse and IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency contest to redefine what it means to design and build brands in the digital age. This contest chall...

https://www.stack.so

https://mirror.xyz/crowdmuse.eth/HT6qSPCF4lBzWrj8fKMnXoN7MFKC4tIH_Cn83kCA5EA

https://mirror.xyz/crowdmuse.eth/5itPl-MSwoqliBeNj2VnlOFQqSE8V2zaB0igWeJTB9g

Collect | Cyberphysical Conceptual Brands

How visual merchandising is turning on its head with digital tools and meme generators for community engagement and product showcasing

https://www.crowdmuse.xyz

Cyberphysical Brands Creator Contest Handbook | Notion

Contest overview

https://crowdmuse.notion.site

Follow for updates

@crowdmuse (X and Lens) crowdmuse.xyz

@IDEOVC (X) @design (Lens)  ideocolab.com/residency

Crowdmuse Curation Profile to check updates on contest mints

Contest Handbook for more information on contest requirements and timelines

Collect contest artifacts on Crowdmuse

Collect | Cyberphysical Conceptual Brands

How visual merchandising is turning on its head with digital tools and meme generators for community engagement and product showcasing

https://www.crowdmuse.xyz

Collect | BRATevo

The BRAT, its changing

https://www.crowdmuse.xyz

But calling what Crowdmuse is doing supply chain work is like looking at a sphere and calling it a circle.

A supply chain onchain is a web.

Crowdmuse is giving their supply chains the network effect. When you give creators the same benefits, the web grows.

So what? Well, that’s the difference between taking on web2 marketplaces and getting squashed by them.

The founders created the web3 platform and marketplace Crowdmuse to architect the future they wanted.

Working with people is gooey, but collaboration shouldn’t feel like your worst group project. Add money, and it usually just gets worse.

Crowdmuse’s onchain verification process is the glass pitcher that keeps all the human goo of the Kool-Aid man together.

“If five creators are working together to design a sweatshirt, every one of them has a wallet and an NFT that verifies the work they did on the project,” says Maz. “That's just a smart contract mechanism that web2 can't do.”

This also puts the project itself onchain (For the nerds: they modified an ERC721A smart contract to tie physical products to the chain).

But with the NFT, they don’t just get credit for their work, they get a chunk of the final project itself.

“We're asking partners: are you all value aligned? What is the slice of the pie everyone would be comfortable with?” says Maz, “Does design get 20% and brand get 10%? There's no hiding facts.”

Haters will say that's just a contract. But these “Revenue Splits” keep the collaborative process fair, transparent, automatic, and onchain.

And with that, you can add a new creative dimension: Circle -> Sphere ->  ___

You create Schrodinger's tote bag. It exists both as it is, and as it could be, with infinite iterations.

As an onchain asset, the physical good can be used, manipulated, and iterated by future creatives.

If your bag is Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” another creator could turn it into Ye’s “Champion.”

“If my pattern for a product gets licensed onchain if a bag is remixed and remade into another product, then the original creator will continue to earn through royalties,” says Maz.

Physical artifacts become like music. Products become a medium.

These “Product Derivatives” are all tied to the original product through that NFT, complete with the existing onchain verified revenue splits.

Creators will continue to earn on their work, even as it influences the work of others.

It's a creative web that gives new creators smoother paths to production. Anyone who wants can still build their own house, but they don’t have to start by drawing the blueprints.

When it is time to produce, that creative web crosses the IRL/URL threshold into the supply web, like two vines meeting from either side of a trellis.

Adding NFC chips to the IRL products ensures that connection and transparency exist everywhere in the physical world as well.

Coming from the worlds of fashion and renewable energy supply chains, Crowdmuse’s founders have a network of trusted suppliers around the world to address regional demand.

“A brand that is in Asia, but wants to sell to Portugal? Do they have to relocate? Or can they license the supply within Portugal,” says Maz.

Just like you can license pieces of another creator's idea, you can license production where you need it. Why hop in a cold plunge when you can just ice your knee?

This allows creators to focus on their work while the platform prioritizes high-quality, ethical, and more environmentally friendly manufacturing that creates value for local communities and markets where the goods will be sold.

Crowdmuse isn’t producing widgets, they’re adding physical anchors between creative and supply webs.

“Creating a supply web could move us away from the Amazon-type models. Their supply chains are not the most friendly, and they very much dominate markets" says Maz.

They proved their concept in a series of drops with handpicked partners, the likes of Base, Optimism, Zora, Lens, FWB and more.

But now the webbed garden is open.

Architect your new dimension Create on Crowdmuse. Follow on @Crowdmuse.

This article is part of the Crowdmuse and IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency series. See below for an archive of related resources -

https://mirror.xyz/crowdmuse.eth/HT6qSPCF4lBzWrj8fKMnXoN7MFKC4tIH_Cn83kCA5EA

Do we build and grow in the creative economy, or does it commoditize our humanity?

Each of us tries to create in an unbound landscape made claustrophobic by the realities of life, survival, and preparation for an unknowable future. At each step, we must decide what is opportunity, and what leverages the chance of greatness for the certainty of conclusion. What is inspiration, and what is creative oppression.

Together, Crowdmuse, IDEO CoLab Ventures’ Creative Residency, and Lens Protocol are launching a contest inviting creatives such as artists, designers, writers and musicians alike to chart their creations across the image above which includes themes prominent in this new era of the web such as Creation, Ownership, Access and Monetization.

When it comes to creativity we question whether these forces are in opposition like oil and water, chunks floating amongst one great vinaigrette, isolated pillars of the creative compromise, or something completely different all together?

Contest overview

Creatives can submit a piece of work that reflects their understanding of the creative economy, their place in it, and the forces that act on them. Maybe one quadrant reigns supreme, the truth lies somewhere along the x-y axis, or to exist at all is to be a singular point moving across this creative topography.

The two-week submission window opens this quarter, look out for announcements on Crowdmuse and IDEO CoLab Ventures social channels. For a chance to participate in the contest, creators must mint their work as a digital artifact on the Crowdmuse marketplace. This competition is open to the Crowdmuse and the wider community. After the submission window closes, the Crowdmuse community will choose the winning design through a community vote hosted on JokeRace, an onchain community contest platform.

The winning design will be made into a limited-edition physical product enabling access to Crowdmuse’s sustainable manufacturing and NFC chip partners with accompanying exclusive digital assets as part of the product bundle sold on the Crowdmuse marketplace (see here for an example in the product includes section). The Crowdmuse marketplace enables creators to benefit from revenue splits on product sales allowing the winning creator to earn from the production with their collaborators. Alongside onchain attribution to showcase product provenance and visibility in the product’s supply chain and co-creation.

Crowdmuse and partners of the contest will develop a social campaign to showcase the winner across partner distribution channels for further exposure.

Open call for creatives is now open, please submit your interest to participate in the contest via this form. We will share a more in-depth contest scope and voting framework in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Point of contact
Representing, IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency @JamesJWLynch will run content coverage throughout the contest window and campaign. Representing Crowdmuse @mmazco will co-lead the contest coordination and platform support. To speak to the organizers, please email your questions to gm@crowdmuse.com

About the collaborators
Crowdmuse is a permissionless marketplace that transforms supply chains and creative production. Their network of creators and producers leverages web3 onchain architecture to showcase their work, produce in the real world, and earn.

IDEO CoLab Ventures invests in big ideas and good humans. They partner with visionary founders at the earliest stages to help them create products and protocols that people love. Their Creative Residency gives resources, community, and support to creatives exploring emerging digital spaces.

JokeRace is an open-source and onchain community voting platform where users are able to create and run community voting contests that provide the benefits of onchain mechanics including monetization, reputation, and community insight.

Lens Protocol is a decentralized and interoperable social platform. Users on Lens’ various decentralized social apps can navigate between apps while maintaining their profiles, content, and networks.

Follow @crowdmuse for updates

In celebration of BaseCamp, Crowdmuse is proud to introduce a curated Summer collection in collaboration with Base. The collection is a selection of limited edition custom pieces, all sourced, designed and produced locally in Los Angeles, CA, made exclusively for BaseCamp guests.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xBC1dDAC3F5187052D8A6f8454317C9434F63D854/1

We designed a collection of unique pieces that align with our commitment to supporting local makers and bringing commerce onchain. Designed and produced in collaboration with local businesses in Los Angeles, this collection commemorates the gathering of the Base community in Idyllwild, CA, offering collectors an opportunity to purchase and support local talent and craftsmanship.

The collection features vintage denim jackets sourced from THE DIG with custom sun embroidery and a Base blue patch assembled and stitched by The Embroidery Shop. Limited edition Summer tee manufactured and printed by Everywhere Apparel and custom Summer shoppers designed to make you feel elevated and fresh for the summer season.

Crowdmuse is proud to be one of the recognized projects building on the Base Network and one of the teams attending BaseCamp 001 Summit alongside 350 leading projects and builders in the Base ecosystem.

The collection will be available only to BaseCamp guests for a limited time only on the Crowdmuse Marketplace. Payment can be made USDC and Credit Card payments via the Base Network. Orders are on pickup basis only at Idyllwild, CA FWB FEST location. Collectors will receive further details via official Base email comms and upon purchase of items.

For updates follow Crowdmuse and Base on X.

About the collaborators on Summer 24 Collection for Base

Base is a decentralized Ethereum L2 bringing the world onchain to create a global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. Check out the Base profile on Crowdmuse and set your profile up here.

Crowdmuse brings commerce onchain working with creators and brands creating custom experiences for their collectors. Crowdmuse supports a network of creators across fashion, design, art and music.

Everywhere Apparel Founded in 2019 located in Downtown Los Angeles, Everywhere Apparel is a materials science company, its recycled products and novel closed-loop ecosystem point the way toward a more sustainable future for all.

THE DIG second hand vintage store based in Venice, CA sources and hand selects some of the highest quality vintage denim jackets, tees and catalogue.

The Embroidery Shop situated in Downtown Los Angeles close to the Fashion District is a prominent maker in the local textile community. Experts in embroidery, screen printing and fashion design.

https://opensea.io/assets/0x92Ff559dc0f2ae8Dc1240EB37F010ea0714a6911/1

In this post, we will touch on -

1. Crowdmuse beta marketplace review and lookahead

2. Key features of Create flow for merchants and product demos

3. Crowdmuse Create summary, community support and coverage

Since the launch of our beta marketplace in Summer 2023, the Crowdmuse marketplace has acted as a sandbox to experiment and collaborate with verified and vetted creators, brands and manufacturers in our network to sell their collaborative products onchain.

The Create flow has only been accessible to early bird users over the months to help us test and iterate the UI/UX and functionality of the CrowdmuseProduct Contract with a no-code interface to sell digital and physical consumer products in just minutes, equipping our users with seamless USDC and Credit Card payments, e-commerce checkout and customer order management.

With automatic revenue splits for collaborators, creative asset attribution and simplified payment options, creating and selling products onchain has never been easier.

Crowdmuse beta marketplace review and lookahead

In our end-of-year product 2023 review post, we covered the fundamentals of the Crowdmuse infrastructure for developing and utilizing our no-code smart contract tools to create and sell consumer products onchain.

To date, the CrowdmuseProduct Contract has had over 10k in transaction volume of mints for both digital and physical products, with over $60k in GMV on priced products including earnings for individual creators comprising of $16k+ and $15k+ in earnings for manufacturers. Our contract has been utilized to sell products directly on the Crowdmuse marketplace, merch frames on Farcaster for cross-platform distribution and third-party marketplaces on compatible web3 platforms including Bonfire and Zora.

Our focus in beta has been on improving the user experience for both buyers and sellers, continuing product experiments to increase distribution for limited edition drops and streamlining the process of matchmaking supply with demand. With the opening of Create we look to meet certain scalability challenges when it comes to supporting access to create digital and physical products with Crowdmuse.

Key features of Create flow for merchants and product demos

We recommend reviewing the ‘How to create a product’ user guide and FAQs before creating and selling a product on Crowdmuse. As a Product Owner, you can sign in and click Create to deploy a CrowdmuseProduct Contract associated with the wallet used to deploy which gives you certain benefits including some of the key features listed below.

Instant onchain product creation - Effortlessly mint digital and physical products and showcase them in the Crowdmuse Marketplace or embed contract addresses for mints on third-party platforms.

Automated revenue sharing - Product collaborators receive their share of the earnings by clicking ‘Distribute Funds’ on their product page. Revenue splits from product sales can automatically get distributed without the need for third-party intermediaries, enabling a simplified and transparent revenue distribution process.

Flexible payment options and express checkout - Seamless transactions with an express e-commerce checkout for USDC and Credit Card payment options using our native Stripe API integration, to make the purchasing and selling process accessible for all. See user flow for payments and express checkout here.

Delivery location options - To make fulfilment easier for our merchants, we allow Product Owners to select the countries they can deliver to if they are unable to deliver physical products internationally. See FAQs for more details on delivery and fulfilment advice and services.

Customer order management and inventory - Similar to most e-commerce platforms, access to first-party data on buyers including order details and delivery is fundamental for the successful fulfillment of orders. Product Owners can simply click ‘Download buyer details’ to access a CSV of orders for customer order management.

Network Support - Compatible with major networks including Base, Optimism, Zora Network, Ethereum Mainnet and Polygon, enhancing interoperability and reach.

Product Create demos Check out this user demo on how Tally used the Crowdmuse Create flow to mint a physical product to be sold to their community in minutes. Here is the product they minted on Crowdmuse.

For digital product mints on Crowdmuse, see the full demo here.

Summary

Crowdmuse believes that the future of commerce lies in the seamless integration of digital and physical experiences, making the business of creation intuitive so creators can focus on creating unique products and experiences for their collectors.

By leveraging onchain technology, Create flow not only bridges the gap between the digital and physical worlds but also offers creators and brands new ways to engage with their audiences and new revenue streams.

After months in beta, where we partnered with leading creators, brands, and networks, Create flow is now live and ready for use. Join us as we continue to innovate and support creators in the evolving landscape of digital and physical goods.

Sign in and set up your profile on Crowdmuse and start selling using the Create page. See here for access to all Docs and resources for merchants and buyers.

Crowdmuse Create community support and coverage

Since the release of open Create, we have received great support from the community! We would like to thank all our early supporters and the wider community for your continuous support and feedback.

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

168

12:00 PM • Jul 16, 2024

https://forage.xyz/p/01J306W36NQMZWVKCFPMTDZAGG

Maester (beta)

@Maester_xyz

from zero to onchain;

create a minimum viable product and leverage platforms like @zora, @hypersubxyz, @Drakulaapp, @crowdmuse, @slice__so, and @getpercss for success.

𝑨𝒎𝒂𝒛𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒍𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒚 @nanaonchain

paragraph.xyz/@nanamuorahgma…

7

4:10 PM • Jul 22, 2024

žâķ

@zak_krevitt

! @crowdmuse is now open to the public !

Create digital + physicals onchain on @zora @Optimism and @base

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

48

12:21 PM • Jul 16, 2024

David Tso (dave.base.eth)

@davidtsocy

With @crowdmuse, any creator in the world can unlock their creativity through:

- Selling onchain + physical products via $USDC on @base or Credit Card
- Collaborating with other creators, attributing them, and sharing revenue
- Owning their design assets and IP and getting

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

21

11:55 AM • Jul 18, 2024

Greg Bresnitz

@GregBresnitz

Juuuuuuuuusssssstttt so damn proud. Amazing work & congrats frens.

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

19

5:26 PM • Jul 16, 2024

Ok, Jose

@JoseRMejia

One time for the @crowdmuse squadra for this major milestone. A win for culture-first commerce that just so happens to be onchain.

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

18

5:03 PM • Jul 16, 2024

Peter Schroeder

@peterschroederr

It’s things like this that get me excited for the future of onchain commerce.

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes.

// Seamless USDC payments and ecommerce checkout.

// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more.

Congrats, @crowdmuse

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

19

2:16 PM • Jul 16, 2024

weseeclearly

@wscfyi

So proud of this team and their continuous streak of culture heavy hitters

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

7

1:21 PM • Jul 16, 2024

ALTRA SHARP🪡

@altrasharp

So great to see when something (and those building it) you really believe in made progress in moving the industry in a sustainable and inclusive direction

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

7

1:41 PM • Jul 16, 2024

Optimism

@Optimism

Crowdmuse beta is live - phydigital merch with creator split!

Crowdmuse

@crowdmuse

Crowdmuse is now open!

// Create digital + physical products onchain in minutes
// Collaborators earn from splits on product sales automagically
// Seamless USDC + Credit Card payments and ecommerce checkout
// Support for @base @Optimism @zora + more

More on what open

8

10:01 AM • Jul 20, 2024

musicben 🎧

@musicben_eth

26 things you might have missed in music x crypto this week

$2m in artist funding and rising legacy music sales.

• @soundxyz_ + @zora will distribute over $1m from Optimism grant to artists and creators.
• @bellosights launches a a $1m accelerator to help artists

89

8:24 AM • Jul 19, 2024

Creating cheap merch for conferences is a common method of IRL distribution. Still, this temporary marketing tactic is becoming increasingly disliked by a generation that demands unique and high-quality experiences.

Manufacturing cheap swag severely impacts the environment due to resource-intensive production methods—most of these items end up in landfills as they cannot be recycled.

"Greater than 3 in 4 millennial-aged consumers are likely to keep a promotional product if it is eco-friendly." (source)

For this collection, we are proud to collaborate with Polygon Labs to combine three pieces from sustainable and vintage brands that use second-hand sourced items, and handmade, and recycled methods to produce these unique pieces.

During the curation process with Polygon Labs, it became clear that there was a need to create a circular apparel collection aligned with our shared values for sustainability, both onchain and in our daily lives. From the things we wear to the impact blockchain can have on public goods and the environment, we wanted to reflect these values.

We utilized designers and brands in our network to curate an elevated, sustainably made collection that spoke to our commitment to better quality consumer products, enhancing the merch experience for the Polygon audience. In true collaborative fashion, we worked with Polygon Labs to select custom pieces from our shared network of partners and designers.

The drops will be available on the Crowdmuse (beta) marketplace on the Polygon Network for a limited time only, check the product description for pick-up and delivery options.

About the collaborators

Polygon Labs - Software development company building and developing a network of aggregated blockchains via the AggLayer, secured by Ethereum. As public infrastructure, the AggLayer will bring together user bases and liquidity for any connected chain, and leverage Ethereum as a settlement layer.  Polygon Labs has also contributed to the core development of several widely adopted scaling protocols and tools for launching blockchains, including Polygon PoS, Polygon zkEVM, and Polygon Miden, which is in development as well as Polygon CDK.

MNTGE - Pioneering vintage clothing brand that seamlessly integrates blockchain technology into their garments. MNTGE offers a category-defining experience where the rich heritage of vintage apparel meets the authenticity of blockchain.

Clinton Hughes of Oddinary Studios - An apparel design and manufacturing studio based in Downtown Los Angeles. Founded in Seattle in 2012 By Clinton Hughes, the Oddinary brand specializes in workwear-inspired-streetwear with a focus on quality craftsmanship. We are currently located in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles's fashion district. Every garment is locally manufactured with responsibly sourced materials.

Everywhere Apparel - Founded in 2019, Everywhere Apparel is a materials science company led by Stanford educated engineers. Our recycled products and novel closed loop ecosystem point the way toward a more sustainable future for all. Everywhere garments save millions of gallons of water, divert waste from the landfill, reduce carbon emissions, and produce no microplastic pollution. We are committed to creating materials systems and solutions that improve sustainability efforts on a global level, and have helped brands track towards science-based targets and climate neutrality goals.

Crowdmuse is a protocol and marketplace for creators and brands to collaborate and create custom experiences for their community of collectors. Crowdmuse supports a network of creators across fashion design and music to give tools to showcase their work with IP attribution and revenue splits on sales made and shared amongst all product collaborators.

Pieter, also known as Collective Unconscious 3D, shared with us some amazing stories about his process of self-discovery as a creator and how it led him to crypto for Episode 5 of ORBIT: Creator Editions.

We have had the pleasure of collaborating with Pieter for several Crowdmuse drops, including ‘Stay Optimistic’ Onchain Summit Sweatshirt, ‘ATTENTION + POWER’ Crew Neck by Slow Rodeo, and the Ethevacuations Watermelon Pin (بطيخ). He was also the first artist to release a Creator License on the Crowdmuse Marketplace with his 3D NPC Model.

In this interview we dive into…

🟥Pieter's OG digital nomad story working remotely through art while exploring various cultures and communities, mainly in Asia.
🟥His introduction to the NFT space through connections made on Clubhouse and collaboration with @wscfyi to an irl meeting
🟥The evolution of Pieter's art influenced by personal growth, existential questioning, and a shift towards grounding his identity.
🟥Exploration of self as part of community through online interactions and the implications for blockchain and trust building.
🟥His experience with co-creation with the remixing of his NPC Model Creator's Licence, originally used for Optimism's Onchain Summer Sweatshirt.
🟥Reflections on the future of creative art along the lines of personal development, individual identity over brand identity, and the power of decentralization to empower individual creators.

Some of the best parts include Pieter’s vision of how branding will evolve into a personal development experience to reflect individual identity:

“I hope it moves towards a more personal development space like a personal identity a more personal experience and less branded experience where the individual is more important and the interactions between individuals becomes important and I feel that's where it's moving as well away from centralization of of big companies and I hope this opens up a space for individuals to easily establish themselves as themselves”

…his views on how the concept of community becomes for fluid with the help of Crowdmuse

“I think this whole new community for example with Crowdmuse is a very fluid in that sense how to manage identities and people without ever even meeting each other and somehow it works like there's a how to build trust how you how can you trust somebody online and it's not easy because I I get clients fake clients who try to to hack me or all the time it's like a common thing so I think this blockchain and identity and again the solidification of your values kind of is within the blockchain within the job you do and that's why I like Crowdmuse it kind of solidifies who you are more and it gives you an identity automatically.”

…and his own personal evolution as a creator

“In the beginning I think I was very focused on contextualizing some kind of theory about this for example or like how to others would translate into art I was always tackling like very deep concepts but now I'm more like back to basics and back to what is identity and how can we translate identity and I was actually the project I was talking about with Wes as well about how we can make identity and profile pictures more customizable in adaptation with your values your boundaries and your emotions”

Join us on our journey as we unlock more insights from creators.

As a protocol and marketplace we take great care meeting the needs of creators and brands producing physical collectibles for their fans. We see this partnership as an excellent opportunity to enable digital creators to earn additional streams of revenue through the ability to sell physical versions of their creations via our smart contract infra and seamless e-commerce checkout user experience.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xE6B8666553a130a1dCA2C99926a72517840f5FD6/1

Creators should have tools that enable them to stick to what they love best while monetizing their talent across multiple revenue streams. Our tech aims to reduce the busywork from design to production, earning from creator talent IP through onchain attribution and revenue streaming in perpetuity.

This is a step towards interoperability across platforms that enable creators to seamlessly take their talent, creative assets, and product sales across multiple networks and distribution channels to earn from their creativity, uninterrupted.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xE6B8666553a130a1dCA2C99926a72517840f5FD6/2

Joining us in the vision of accelerating the next gen of creators, Zora was similarly born out of the passion for disrupting the way we consume physical products and how we interact with brands in a more crypto-native approach.

Where we saw the likes of Saint Fame and MetaFactory as early adopters of a new type of commerce, today Crowdmuse is proving out the demand for commerce onchain, showcasing that creators and brands are looking for a new way to interact directly while maintaining self-sovereignty and ownership over their data and funds.

Artist Callout  -  We received a great deal of interest from multidisciplinary creators excited to turn their digitals into physicals across art, media, fashion, and more. Submit your interest today via the Crowdmuse + Zora Physicals Request Form.

Thank you to the Zora team for the support and sharing our vision bringing digi-physical networked goods onchain including but not limited to; Zak Head of Partnership, Isaac Product, Iain Protocol Lead, and Jay Marketing Manager.

FAQ

How can I use Crowdmuse today if I am a Zora creator?

Creators who want to drop their physical products can submit their proposal via the request form. Our curation team will allowlist you to use the CrowdmuseProduct Contract to sell your physical products with USDC, Credit Card or Zora ETH on the Zora Network. With the Crowdmuse Express Checkout physical products can be redeemed and customer order inventory is made available for all sellers to download to fulfill orders.

I have an idea for what I want to do but don’t know where to start?

That’s ok! Our team can assist you in finding the right physical piece to demonstrate your work by giving our expert opinion on what would work best and access to our network of manufacturers across apparel, accessories, print, books and 3D printing objects. Book a demo and a chat with us here.

How do I calculate the number of items to sell and at what price point?

We recommend selling products on a low volume (less than 100 in some cases) or custom 1of1s to give a sense of exclusivity to your product drops and to ensure you can meet your order minimums. Usually, the physical products sold on the Crowdmuse Marketplace such as apparel, accessories, and print tend to range between $50 to $300 priced in USDC (see example product drop we did for Optimism). The price is dependent on your cost of goods (i.e. supply) which can vary on the product being produced which is then given a mark-up to reflect final retail price.

Does Crowdmuse provide physical delivery and fulfillment?

Dropshipping of orders can be requested at a higher percentage fee cost per drop. Some of our apparel suppliers can enable customer fulfillment and our fulfillment partner in Brooklyn, NYC can fulfill certain volumes to the US market. We recommend selling locally or in a market where most of your audience is located. This helps reduce cost when limiting interaction order delivery options.

Public Records, known for “unifying communities through sound”, first opened its doors in April 2018 and has since been a prominent fixture in Brooklyn's vibrant nightlife scene with its unique interior design and high-quality sound system.

In celebration of the event, Crowdmuse is proud to announce a curated drop with Harmony-NY and Refraction. This piece highlights a custom-made tour style drop designed and printed in NYC—an ode to the influence our local spaces, makers, and creative talent have on everyday life and how we interact with fashion and music in our societies.

In a recent interview with Edmond Lau for ESOTERIC, founders Kenzo Nakamura and Tim Nolan describe Harmony-NY “as a New York-based streetwear label run by a ‘global creative collective’.”

We believe the future of brand building and fashion supply chains will become more and more decentralized and web-like than vertically integrated around a central brand. Harmony-NY is an example of how creative directors and designers from the legacy brand space are building a decentralized luxury streetwear label and letting the community decide on how it should be run.

We are excited to curate this drop with Refraction, speaking to both collaborators values and mission in shifting how creative ownership functions, and to foster a more equitable industry. Refraction is becoming a pioneer of culture adoption across internet and IRL creative and technology communities. To date, it has held over 25 events worldwide and has brought 500K USD back to artists through creative grants, fellowships, onchain exhibition sales, and artists fees.

The drop will be available on the Crowdmuse (beta) marketplace on the Base Network for a limited time only and available for US-based collectors, who can select local delivery or pick-up at Public Records during the event.

About the collaborators

Refraction is an artist-owned community leading the next wave of digital art, music and culture — online, onchain, and IRL. The organization champions digital arts and culture, through curated experiences of art, performance, and new and evolving technology, sharing global creativity and empowering diverse artists with new tools for sustainability and creativity.

Harmony-NY is an NYC-based streetwear label collaborating with artists and communities in the web3 space from around the world on the mission to build one of the first decentralized fashion houses.

Crowdmuse is a protocol and marketplace for independent creators and brands to collaborate and create custom experiences for their community of collectors. Crowdmuse supports a network of creators across fashion design and music to give tools to showcase their work with IP attribution and revenue splits on sales made shared amongst all product collaborators.

Some highlights and reflections from our busy week…

CU3D 3D NPC Model Creator License

We dropped this standard creator license to demonstrate an example of creator IP onchain for personal use. It originally appeared as part of the Crowdmuse and Optimism ‘Stay Optimistic’ Onchain Summit Sweatshirt drop. It was modeled in C4D and textured with Octane by CU3D.

Commercial use requires attribution of the original creator as well as a 20% revenue share of sales from all future derivative works. Purchase of this artifact gives access to the creator license and all working files including basemesh, texture, and the rig.

We presented this as an example of a licence creators can use to adapt or remix in their own work while revenue is automagically shared with the original creator.

"Everything is Plastic" by Liqhtworks

We curated this NFT collection for “In the Mean Time”, a private dinner co-hosted with Liqhtworks to bring together builders and investors converging on onchain AI agents & composable creator IP infra.

“This series channels the essence of time and adaptability and was inspired by the atemporal depths of subliminal spaces. It invites you to contemplate and remix the hyperspa to your desire, a testament to the fluidity of creation and perception in the age of AI.”

By incorporating remixed elements of prior works released on Crowdmuse, including CU3D’s NPC Model above, we demonstrated how a percentage of revenue is seamlessly distributed back to the original creator when the creator license of their IP is used to create a new drop.

Onchain Base Sticker IRL Pickup

We dropped an Onchain Sticker as a Frame on Farcaster for Base when we shipped Crowdmuse Merch Frames in less than 24 hours last month. Collectors were able to pick up the physical sticker by redeeming via the Crowdmuse Marketplace and showing their mint transaction.

This is one of the several drops we’ve tested out with Farcaster’s new Frames feature for in-app mints. Others include “I’m So Early” Digital and Physical follow and recast to mint frames.

“Headless Brands + IP NFTs with Remix Rights” Presentations

Maz got to present Crowdmuse’s thesis and traction twice last week, once at Home Base and again at the Coral Stage during the ETHDenver conference.

Maz told the story of our learnings from enabling consumer product drops and digital IP rights onchain, describing how Crowdmuse is developing innovative no-code smart contract tools for creators and brands to collaborate on products and license their IP onchain. See here for the full presentation.

Watch the livestream from ETHDenver here and at Home Base (coming soon).

ETHDenver Presentations We Enjoyed Watching -

Full-Spectrum Rule Enforcement: The 10x Unlock From DAOs Presented by Spencer Graham from Hats Protocol

Programmable IP: Ushering in the Onchain Renaissance Presented by Jason Zhao from Story Protocol

Digital Self-Sovereignty in the Age of AI Presented by @ilblackdragon from @NEARProtocol

The Token That Traded Itself: Why Onchain AI Is a Public Good Player0x from Liqhtworks

In his characteristic rapid fire manner of storytelling, he brings us through his first experiences with web3, how he supports creators with Optimism, the collaboration with Crowdmuse on the exclusive Stay Optimistic drop for Onchain Summit at Devconnect in Istanbul, and more.

In this interview we explore:

🟥The past year's growth in collaboration among Web3 artists and collectors.
🟥Emmanuel's journey into Web3, sparked by curiosity and a desire to address gaps in UX and messaging within the space.
🟥Scaling Ethereum and broadening onchain creativity at OP by supporting a diverse range of contributors in the ecosystem.
🟥The concept of RetroPGF as a reward mechanism for positive contributions to the Optimism ecosystem, especially for projects that are impactful.
🟥The collaboration with Crowdmuse for the Onchain Summit, highlighting the smooth creative process and the success of the OP custom merch drop.
🟥"We ❤️ the Art" contest, an initiative to support emerging artists and musicians with significant rewards and to showcase diverse onchain creativity.
🟥The future of the onchain ecosystem as a phase of onboarding and education, focusing on creating quality experiences to attract a wide range of participants.
🟥The importance of fostering a diverse, creative, and collaboratively growing blockchain ecosystem.

A few of the top highlights from this conversation include Emmanuel’s vision on supporting artists to bring more meaningful onchain activity…

“We wanted to do something that brings a lot of creators to the forefront, especially a lot of emerging creative talent, and the best way to kind of stir that up was to do We Love the Art.

The idea of it came around like, okay, how can we support new upcoming emerging artists? How can we focus a really cool incentive mechanism to allow that to  flourish. It's mostly different people working with creators through different avenues, deployments on OP mainnet, Base, Zora, and ultimately, to bring that creativity to the contest itself. You need stuff happening on chain to help attract developers to build more stuff within the particular ecosystem, and that helps bring more people on chain and increases that flywheel.

One of the coolest things is people who've never interacted with sound before ever said, Hey, I didn't know sound was so easy to use and so cheap.

These tools are out there and just like bringing it together, put it in front of creators and let's see what they create.

And the way we look at the contest is like, this is the first version of it, there's gonna be some iterations for the next one, and how can we continue the momentum, help onboard more people into this space and help bring onchain creativity with different partners that we're working with as well. So that's definitely how we want to approach it going forward with We Love the Art.”

…his down-to-earth review on working with Crowdmuse:

“Working with the Crowdmuse team was such a massive stress reliever. From start to finish the co-collaboration was really awesome. it's quite a seamless end-user journey, so even though you never minted an NFT before, the experience is not too dissimilar for when you experience something from an e-commerce perspective, but then also more importantly, just to think about the entire end process of it, logistics and how did they get this to the right people, that just takes a lot of mental energy which is instead of it being focused on more the logistic side it's focused more on the creative side. It’s gonna move very quickly in terms of here's the first couple of iterations we're working with, what the sweatshirt would look like. The team were really really helpful in terms of not just hand holding but obviously going on this crazy journey together.

We did a really cool awesome drop I have to say for Onchain Summit. Yeah, I swear about that sweatshirt, the quality is amazing, it definitely embodies the sustainability ethos that Crowdmuse does as well. It ticks all the boxes in terms of like you know the values that we have hold as well we trying to build for sustainability, Retro PGF and a contest I’m gonna to talk about in a minute but I also like you know we do things in a way that's unique and stands out there as well so it was just a perfect match.”

…and his views on what is really needed to bring web3 to the masses:

“I definitely think for the next couple of years we are in the onboarding and educational phase. It's a case of having quality experiences and products that give people the reason to be onboarded into space.

If we start to marry a lot of the technology with a lot of native things that people are accustomed to, that's ultimately going to help onboard a massive ton of people. There's a lot of ground to be covered, a lot of infrastructure things that need to be covered and I think that's an area which I definitely think the space will possibly fall into. On the creative side we’re having to think of who is curious about the space that is open to collaborate.

I think if we start to collaborate with people who are curious but also want things done in a way that resonates with their brand and their community. I think those are sort of people’s leverage for different partnerships and the educational aspects are like I mentioned like you know okay, what the heck is an NFT? What the heck is a wallet? Those sort of educational pieces.

If you collaborate with people who are in a web 2.5 kind of like curious about the web3 experience, I think that's ultimately to help with the educational aspects of it all. By tackling those two pieces you're going to have an explosion of far more amazing experiences, far amazing apps coming online, and then you can layer on the piece, okay how do you bring the governance angle through something like Retro PGF into the real world. That's that's the next big hairy thing that's down the road. Onchain creativity is definitely here to stay. It's just a case of how many people want to play in that particular sandbox as well.”

Join us on our journey as we unlock more insights from creators.

Our conversation is rich with insights, ranging from the evolution of fashion brands to the composability of creativity onchain to incentivizing collective contribution in communities.

Wes’ interview is definitely one of the most comprehensive we’ve done in terms of breadth and awareness of the evolution of the fashion industry.

In this interview we explore:

🟥Headless brands and Wes's journey from a full-time artist to a Web3 enthusiast via MetaFactory
🟥Intellectual Property dynamics in fashion, emphasizing on a collective bank of ideas and contrasting brand attitudes towards IP sharing
🟥Democratization and web3-driven innovation in fashion, including MetaFactory's transparent, community-driven model
🟥Challenges in decentralized coordination within DAOs, the idea of negative incentives for unproductive contributions, and accountability
🟥The role of hands-on creativity and AI in fashion's future
🟥The concept of licensing and how important grassroots exploration is in the industry

Some of our favorite takes include Wes’ unconventional view on how the path to success in fashion lies not in going to expensive schools but getting your hands dirty and learning how to use the machines…

“I really don't believe in fashion schools or art schools right now.

I see a kind of Grassroots Revolution that may never touch you know the higher echelon

it's been so so healthy for me to kind of connect my body to my creativity again.

I think that you have to touch all different things to inform a novel process. if you're just launching another fashion brand that doesn't have any web3 strategy that's all about designing a beautiful collection.

I see so much beautiful clothing that will never gain traction because they've lost touch with bringing more and more in.

I do think that this world suffers from narrow focus and I think too broad of a focus is also suffering. I think that this kind of education by curiosity is like super important and I hope that

more people just come in and actually touch a sewing machine because that's where you can start to bring in new things you know. That's when you can actually make a creative decision about something novel that's going to be eye catching.

If you never touch a machine you're always just going to be limited by what you know as the capability of that machine. For most people is literally an SVG file you know all of this takes time it takes attention it takes curiosity so I see a kind of grassroots revolution that may never touch you know the higher echelon.

It's giving me a lot of satisfaction to break down the walls of like “oh I'm not trained in a fashion school so I can't do this”. No I think today is actually the perfect time to not go through the normal schooling system because you may realize very quickly that you're shooting yourself in the foot if you think that today's the day spend $100,000 on a fashion show and do pants and jackets and whatever like on the one hand because I like to watch I'm sitting on the sidelines on the other hand I'm deep in it with my studio like…

I have everything going on here with machines, cutting boards, working on this blazer, learning a shit ton about how to actually use this stuff.

It's been so so healthy for me to kind of connect my body to my creativity again and not just think innovatively but actually try and innovate through Body Mind connection.”

…and how as archives become licenseable, entirely new monetization models will emerge for big brands along with fresh opportunities for pioneers to get a leg up in the industry:

“One thing that I don't know how far off we are but in terms of again the place where traditional brands stand so let's take like the house that's been around for a century like Louis Vuitton or maybe something more designy like Balenciaga..

Their archives are not in the public domain. People who don't have access to their physical archives do not know everything that happened there so think that in a world where so much of so many portfolios that are on websites and such have just been like taken and put into these these generative models, those design houses may actually have a real leg if they can leverage their own history and archives to kind of create models that are licensable and if those models can be tuned well enough that they generate content that Balenciaga is happy with then I think there's a whole another economic structure around Fashion of Licensing whether it's a design house or whether it's a creative direction like your taste profile becomes something that you can license out and I think that that's definitely in the cards for the future.

There's a part of me that is like you know always want there to be a chance for the underling or the new upshoot to be able to come into the market and fashion is notoriously one of the most dominated by the top 10 heavy players it's pretty bad it's like the fashion conglomerates basically own the fashion industry and so it's only it's really only if they want you up there that you'll join and I think like how does the person without any archives without like any of the kind of leverage points that these other brands have? How can they play in this new space?

For myself I never want to forget that a lot of it will come down to people exploring outside of their narrow focus.”

Join us on our journey as we unlock more insights from creators.

The blockchain enables creator provenance by bringing visibility to everything we create digitally and physically. This unlocks several opportunities for the evolution of the multiplayer economy:

• Transparency into who creates, uses, or remixes a creative asset, with full visibility into provenance

• Attribution of ownership for programmable revenue sharing that is provable, conditional and enforceable

• Acceleration of creativity through increased access to remixing and collaborating on top of creator assets

Imagine if creators had undeniable proof of ownership attributed to each one of their works so that if a piece were to be unfairly appropriated by a large brand, the creator could automatically receive a portion of royalties according to the degree of similarity between the copy and the original.

We have the lightning speed and openness of the internet, yet ownership and monetization layers are lightyears behind. Most intellectual property licensing systems are slow, manual and opaque. Just look at how the music industry fights over a single beat for copyright attribution—this could all be solved with the right tools and incentives.

Existing IP frameworks are restrictive and opaque with an extensive approval process that is cost-prohibitive for emerging creators. Furthermore, the non-exclusive nature of IP discourages creativity, forcing creators to be overprotective and defensive of their IP lest they lose their edge.

There should be no reason why creators can’t just plug into each others’ creativity for inspiration, produce new works, and share revenue automagically through verifiable ownership of their IP.

Increased visibility and traceability of IP

The blockchain gives a new layer of permanence to the internet like the printing press gave a method of distribution of information. When a creator places their work on the blockchain, that asset cannot be altered or deleted and is fully traceable throughout its entire history. This tamper-proof, time-stamped record of IP is not just valuable for full accountability into transactions but also for other creators to source inspiration from.

The traditional IP approval process is costly and time-consuming, often out of reach for most creators, forcing them to develop vital aspects of their IP in secret (such as patternmaking techniques in fashion) to retain their competitive edge and guard against IP appropriation. While IP is not yet legally recognized on the blockchain as it does not “confer legal or copyright ownership of the digital or physical items associated with the NFT” unless explicitly granted, the blockchain itself is a valuable tool for bringing visibility to ownership, especially in digital fashion.

Early primitives are emerging that will help pave the way for monetization of IP via the blockchain. Disney’s patent for transferring ownership of physical objects and digital counterparts using NFTs provides insight into the verification of ownership of assets. The EU has provisionally approved a digital passport for products, which, although initially aimed at traceability in sustainability data, we believe could also be used to house IP records in the future.

Attribution of ownership for revenue sharing

Appropriation of IP can be greatly reduced by utilizing the blockchain for tracking of attribution and usage. By recording proof of ownership on a neutral public ledger, licensing agreements are more readily enforceable. Once a creator’s work is published, any use of that work can be traced back to the owner. In the patent application below, Disney demonstrates the distribution of funds to users along the value chain, including previous owners of an NFT.

Smart contracts can be leveraged to automatically execute certain legal events, simplifying the licensing and enforcement process to provide streamlined opportunities for revenue sharing in which creators can collaborate seamlessly with other creators, brands, or producers. If a brand uses a creator’s asset to produce a product, a percentage of revenue from every sale of that product can be redirected back to the creator. Collectors would be able to see all contributors in the product value chain and how much they were compensated.

Acceleration of creativity through increased access

The open nature of creativity and the restrictiveness of copyright law are inherently at odds with each other. Such protective laws are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history while the process of open creation has spanned across centuries, but it is arguably a necessary step forward for the monetization of talent.

Increased efficiency in revenue sharing will enable creativity to scale by encouraging artists to remix and reuse content freely without fear of legal repercussions. Creators can start to see they are “all tapping into a shared collective bank of ideas,” as Wes, artist and former contributor at MetaFactory, describes the creative act in a recent interview with Crowdmuse;

“I know how much of what I do is influenced by things that came before, that all of us are standing on the shoulders of giants. And those giants are our collective history as humans that have moved all over the globe, but also you can trace things very specifically to cultures, geographies, time periods.”

The most interesting part, Wes explains, is being able to track the influence and see where creative expression adds value in society.

With increased visibility into the origin of an asset’s influence, artists will be able to remix much quicker, leveraging trends to gain exposure and traction much like memes. Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have already employed this concept with remixing of videos, but with attribution of ownership, an additional layer of monetization and revenue sharing exists for creators.

Rickard Lindqvist, Founder of aindustri and atacac has brought co-creation to fashion with his Open-source Production Patterns project (OSPP). This aims to freely distribute pattern-making knowledge and theory to fashion creators to better scale creativity.

IP NFTs in Fashion and beyond

Similar to music co-creation, a fashion designer can upload their intellectual property to the blockchain and earn revenue whenever that design is used in a product. A brand can release an NFT matched with the physical product as a unique limited edition drop, and whenever a collector purchases that NFT, revenues are automatically split between the designer, brand and supplier. Furthermore, any other creators can leverage this design to create work of their own and attribute royalties to the original designer.

An example of this is Hugh Clarke’s open pattern library, from which his Swiss M70 Field Jacket and Pants pattern utilized for the MF70 Surveillance Suit and has been remixed by a number of creators, such as Kutur // dita.var and TheRender. And his US Physical Training Reflective Windbreaker CLO 3D Pattern pattern used by 3DCG designer Clthen.

The concept of IP as composable lego blocks has been explored in web2 using upfront pricing models across art, gaming and fashion with Artstation, Behance and Clo-connect. Onchain revenue models unlock access to IP for independent creators, with early experimentation in selected verticals, such as Arpeggi’s Kits and Royal’s Sonic for music.

Crowdmuse presented this concept alongside Rickard Lindqvist and Wes Chmielinski at PI Apparel Milan in April 2023. For the entire presentation click here (check speaker notes for more information on the slides) and thread.

In a world where digital assets can be used in the physical, augmented, and virtual worlds, creators can focus on creating unique products and experiences for their fans. Their creative IP can then be monetized through new products via co-creation and IP licensing. This model was implemented by Crowdmuse in the licensing of Reza Hasni’s “Wheel of Internet” in Liqhtworks’ “For the Time Being (2024)”, a short film about an AI token that learns to trade itself. The film was made in Unreal Engine and references multiple IP’s from the author’s NFT collection.

While some established creators and brands may prefer to retain exclusive rights over their IP, many creators are already licensing their IP as a way to grow their audience, distribution, and impact.

As creators strive to produce cultural products that contribute to the network of creative IP for future generations to build on, the composability and monetization capabilities of the blockchain will accelerate their creativity and impact.

Since then, we have released frequent curated drops with the likes of FWB, Optimism, Base and Lens to serve as pilot drops to explore assumptions around multiplayer product creation with the Crowdmuse USDC and CC payment infra, checkout and redeem functionalities.

In this post, we will take a look at

1. Crowdmuse v1 assumptions, milestones and traction

2. Pilot drops driving further product and UI/UX development

3. Lookahead product experiments and our vision

Crowdmuse is positioned within the consumer crypto segment, an emerging market. As leaders in this category, we champion a new use case in crypto.

Naturally, this requires us to be diligent with our product hypothesis when it comes to onchain purchases, creator collaboration, and Intellectual Property (IP) attribution. We believe the right combination of these capabilities will onboard a significant influx of creators and brands.

1. Crowdmuse v1 assumptions, milestones and traction

Crowdmuse is a platform for emerging creators to collaborate with cultural brands and create custom experiences for their community of collectors.

The CrowdmuseProduct Contract architecture was built around multiplayer product creation for digital and physical consumer goods. It has three core features:

1. Creator splits and fund distribution - a modified ERC721A contract with revenue sharing % on sales and autonomous fund distribution into creator wallets

2. IP and role attribution - product contributors assign roles and submit their digital files as part of product co-creation

3. Product metadata - supply chain specifications, including contributors and tasks, product specification and inventory management stored onchain and offchain accordingly

To view the open-source contract and learn more about the CrowdmuseProduct Contract see here.

Our assumption for v1 was that multiplayer collaboration reduces some of the problems single-player creators traditionally face in consumer markets (e.g. fashion), such as:

• High upfront production costs

• Poor access to resources and distribution

• Lack of IP protection and methods to sustainably monetize talent

To test this assumption, we aim to curate 10 pilot drops with our beachhead market of early adopters in fashion design and sustainable manufacturing. The purpose of these manually curated drops is to iterate on how the Crowdmuse marketplace can streamline the production process between creators, community and buyers.

Check out our interview with Zed and Chris from Tropical Futures Institute who designed the 0xTote custom bag for FWB.

The limited edition drops curated with our creator and manufacturing network include the following:

• Community drops for FWB with DECODE, DSPTCH and Tropical Futures Institute

• Official Optimism custom merch drop in collaboration with Rapanui and CU3D

• Multimedia artist-led drop for Lens at Art Basel Miami with visual artist Reza Hasni and CRAFT

• Limited Edition Base drop for Art Basel Miami collaboration at Base House Miami with Slow Rodeo and CU3D

  You can view all drops on crowdmuse.xyz

See below for performance metrics to date

2. Pilot drops driving further product and UI/UX development

We aim to push the needle each time we deploy a new drop. Based on the type of consumer products that creators wanted to sell on the marketplace, we emulated existing e-commerce UI/UX to reduce user friction for buying a physical product onchain.

Under the hood of a familiar purchase flow, consumers begin to notice novel, crypto-native features, such as contribution-based revenue splits, encrypted creator assets as downloadable artifacts, and wallet creation to store product NFTs for redemption of physical products and access to other perks.

Products purchased on the Crowdmuse marketplace are priced in USDC to avoid crypto price volatility on physical goods. Buyers can purchase with USDC on compatible chains or pay with credit card. Currently, the CrowdmuseProduct Contract is compatible with Polygon, Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism and Base.

The supply side of the marketplace includes artists, 3D designers, pattern makers and manufacturers, and the demand side includes the community supporting the brand and/or creators. As we are bringing new use cases onchain, outside of those who are crypto native within these personas, we aim to not disrupt either audience’s onboarding experience. This means abstracting away features that will make payments and onboarding onchain simpler whilst continuing to serve and grow a crypto-native and curious audience.

See one of our product onboarding call recordings Aug 2023 with Richard Liu at DSPTCH on creating a wallet and learning how to offramp his USDC payments from sales to cover production costs as a manufacturer. And an example recording of our monthly Crowdmuse Creator Circle session Dec 2023.

2023 year-end updates to the CrowdmuseProduct contract and marketplace UI/UX based on drop learnings include

• Marketplace UI/UX update - For the Optimism drop, we shipped a new UI on the product NFT page, updated the redeem and checkout flow for a better user experience and integrated Privy wallet abstraction for non-crypto native buyers

• Native CC payment function with Stripe - This marks the first onchain commerce product to enable its own native CC payment infra utilizing Stripe for non-crypto buyers minting on Optimism and other compatible networks like Polygon, Ethereum Mainnet and Base

• Multibuy contract ERC-721A - As our use case involves customers purchasing consumer products, we have enabled purchases of multiple quantities of the same item. Hence we have upgraded our CrowdmuseProduct contract to ERC-721A, enabling multi-buy mints on digital and physical products

• Profiles v1 - As we continue to onboard creators and collectors, we have activated profiles v1 to enable creators and buyers on Crowdmuse to set up a profile with their details and social links. We are user-testing additional user features like creator libraries with creators and collectors

  See our user docs to learn more

3. Lookahead product experiments and our vision

We see a world where individual creators can tap into economies of scale through collaboration tools, composable IP, and direct access to buyer networks. By bringing creator digital assets, brand IP and manufacturing capacity onchain, collaborators can create and contribute to new, more sustainable business models.

Here are some of the areas we are excited to experiment on in 2024, to scale onchain creator commerce

Improved UX and distribution with mobile-friendly UI, cross-chain payments, and third-party marketplace integration

• Current website traffic is seeing about 60/40 users on mobile browsers rather than desktop. As a consumer product, we look to further improve mobile UI/UX

• Cross-chain payments via Decent help better serve crypto-native buyers by enabling “pay with anything” to avoid swapping and bridging across digital currencies and blockchains

• To enable the usability of the CrowdmuseProduct Contract on existing creator networks and marketplaces like Zora, we aim to increase access and distribution of Crowdmuse drops across existing networks as determined by our user needs

Improved creator monetization with creator and brand (IP) artifacts

• We continue to experiment with creator artifacts that excite collectors and creators with token-gated access to digital assets and experiences

• Product collaborators can submit their digital assets/files/IP as part of the NFT deployment using the CrowdmuseProduct contract with onchain attribution. Our contract is currently compatible with standard file formats like jpg, png, pdf, mp4, svg and obj

• Eventually, we see these artifacts becoming IP NFTs with legal wrappers that enable creators to further monetize their assets through licensing other creators or brands to create product derivatives. Brands can similarly use this feature to give their collectors exclusive perks and access

Moving towards an open permissionless marketplace with creator-led drops

• Creators and brands can deploy a product or collection on Crowdmuse via the currently closed Create flow using our no-code interface. To increase accessibility and volume of activity, the Create flow is estimated for public release later this year to support our mission towards an open permissionless marketplace. SkyStrife Playtester Shirt is an example of a creator-led drop deployed by pet3rpan

• To avoid deadstock waste, we are developing an escrow model for product and project funding, inspired by the Kickstarter all-or-nothing approach. This means creators and brands can launch a product, but only go into production if minimum order quantities (MOQs) are met. If MOQs are not met, funds will be refunded to collectors minus a fee for any upfront costs

• To ensure verifiable quality standards, we are exploring community-driven attestations to build transparent supply chains for the products we create and consume

We hope you have enjoyed reading our 2023 report. If you are interested in co-developing any of the features above or have suggestions feel free to send us a message on DMs or gm@crowdmuse.com.

If you are a digital or physical creator interested in joining the user feedback sessions and want to deploy drops or artifacts on Crowdmuse, book a call with us here.

Key references and features

Crowdmuse Merch Frames now available on Farcaster and Base Onchain Sticker frame using the Crowdmuse contract

Crowdmuse granted 32,795 OP on Optimism RetroPGF 3 project submission Jan 11, 2024

The builder’s perspective on consumer crypto - Privy x Decent article and Thread Nov 14, 2023

‘Consumer Goods: The Most Obvious Opportunity in Crypto’ Fireside Livepeer Livestream Recording at Base House Miami with Jesse Pollock @ Base, Ryan Hamilton @ Slow Rodeo and Maryam (maz) Mazraei @ Crowdmuse Dec 8, 2023

Crowdmuse // Base Partnership announcement for Base House at Art Basel Miami Dec 2023 ‘ATTENTION + POWER’ by Slow Rodeo for Base

Crowdmuse // Lens Partnership announcement for Gateway Miami at Art Basel Miami Dec 2023 ‘Wheel of Internet’ by Reza Hasni

The Digital Garment Age: Programmable Consumer Goods by Biff Buster Sept 26, 2023

Digiphysical Goods: Bringing Programmable Utility to Physical Products 1KX Report June 14, 2023

Crowdmuse Whitepaper v1 July 11, 2023 // Docs // Github // Beta Marketplace

“Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power" is a quote by Stewart Brand, the co-founder and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, highlighting the dichotomy and interplay between rapid, attention-grabbing developments and the underlying, slower-moving forces within which they take root.

Crowdmuse is proud to announce a curated drop with Slow Rodeo and Base. This piece highlights Base’s fast-moving pace of innovation alongside the decade-plus Coinbase has spent to build this foundation.

Base is helping bring onchain and real-world art to Art Basel in Miami Beach with Base Hunt and Base House from Dec 8-10 2023. This immersive experience will bridge the physical and digital worlds, featuring an Onchain Gallery with hundreds of digital art collections exclusive to Base.

As part of Base House, Crowdmuse and Slow Rodeo will join a fireside with Jesse Pollak to speak on ‘Consumer Goods: The Most Obvious Opportunity in Crypto,’  highlighting how crypto is defining new segments within the consumer market. The fireside chat will be live-streamed at 4 pm EST on the 8th Dec and the limited-edition drop by Slow Rodeo for Base will be revealed IRL to demonstrate a case study on onchain revenue sharing mechanisms, supply chain transparency, and creator IP attribution powered by Crowdmuse.

The drop will be available on the Crowdmuse Marketplace for attendees of Base House to mint IRL and open to the public after the event.

About the collaborators

Slow Rodeo is a new type of consumer brand company, experimenting at the intersection of culture, community, and commerce. Their mission is to transform the landscape of brand-consumer interactions, shifting from traditional direct-to-consumer models to a more collaborative, built-with-community approach. Brands will shift from one-way relationships to more mutually beneficial ones—and instead of simply extracting culture, brands are part of fostering and growing culture themselves. This approach heralds a new era of mutual collaboration and cultural enrichment, where consumers are no longer mere end-users but rather active contributors and advocates.

Base is a decentralized Ethereum L2 working to bring the next million builders and billion users onchain.

Crowdmuse is a protocol and marketplace for independent creators and brands to collaborate and create custom experiences for their community of collectors. Crowdmuse supports a network of creators across fashion, design, art and music to give tools to showcase their work with IP attribution and revenue splits on sales made and shared amongst all product collaborators.

Wheel of Internet is a tongue-in-cheek rework from the Buddhist drawing of the Wheel of Life. Familiar social media iconography is integrated with visual references that allude to the evolution of the web in one single artwork. The new world of how we experience and perceive our values online collides with how we reflect on our existing online environments.

Crowdmuse is proud to announce its first art curated drop with artist Reza Hasni and Lens. This piece unites Lens’ innovative web3 social layer with Crowdmuse's commitment to empowering emerging creators and CRAFT’s decentralized creative studio for unique digital experiences.

As we navigate our individual journeys online, identity and how we manage our social interactions have become more paramount than ever. With the emergence of new social primitives like Lens, creators have full ownership over their data, identity and experiences with their fans. We have curated this drop with CRAFT, a creator DAO, to give a platform for emerging and independent artists to reach a new audience and bring visibility to their creation onchain with attribution and fair revenue splits.

Creators and collectors will be able to mint a digital collectible of the animated artwork and redeem a physical art print on the Crowdmuse marketplace. Reza Hasni’s custom artwork piece for Lens will be showcased at Gateway Miami, presented by nft now and FACTBLOCK during Art Basel Miami from the 6th to the 8th Dec 23. Attendees can view his work IRL and scan to learn more about the collaboration.

A second digital edition will be minted on the Lens app via hey.xyz using the CrowdmuseProduct contract to unlock distribution through new audiences and monetization for Reza Hasni as the artist. A cross-platform onchain experiment to bring new creators and use cases to the Lens ecosystem. Stay tuned for further announcements regarding exclusive mints on Lens.

About the collaborators

Reza Hasni (b. 1982, Singapore) is a visual artist deconstructing the oddities and dualities of our world, expressed as transcendent parallel realities. His illustration and moving image practice often feed into collaborations with architecture, installations, mixed reality experiences, music and fashion around Europe and Asia. Read as a contemporary reflection of our world and its unseen energies, his work is a built space for journeying, instead of an end of itself.

Lens is founded on web3 technologies that preserves user ownership over their digital identity, activities and relationship. With an open technology stack, anyone can create social front-ends or integrate Lens social capabilities into existing web3 applications. Launched in May 2022, Lens is in beta. To date, over 100 custom applications have been built on Lens, showcasing the flexibility of the protocol. Lens was developed by Avara, developers of the Aave Protocol, one of the most widely used decentralized finance markets in the world.

CRAFT is a decentralized creative studio with a community consisting of creators in art, fashion and film space. It has launched projects like the web3 female filmmaker DAO  xxxbag.art, 1of1 pieces by James Joyce and metaverse ready gaming assets by Lucii.

Crowdmuse is a protocol and marketplace for independent creators and brands to collaborate to create custom experiences for their community of collectors. Crowdmuse supports a network of creators across fashion, design, art and music to give tools to showcase their work with IP attribution and revenue splits on sales made shared amongst all product collaborators.

Zed is an anon designer and patternmaker who breathed life into the 0xTote. Endearingly named the “can-do” bag, it was created with the attitude of “whatever comes your way, you do your best to do it.”

The 0xTote is a tailor made drop for the FWB community, a product of co-creation between Zed, Tropical Futures Institute, dsptch and FWB. Join us on this interview as we delve into the story behind it.

In this interview…

🟥 The origins of Tropical Futures Institute and Chris’ early inspiration for design coming from his mother being a jewelry designer
🟥 Zed’s inspiration for the 0xTote coming from her morning commute and the freedom of being able to design something personal and having it prototyped as intended
🟥 How pre-ordering a digital object before manufacturing the physical item it is connected to can open up new possibilities
🟥 The issue with fair distribution of profits in the design industry and how Crowdmuse is solving that
🟥 The unassuming yet deep “can-do” attitude of the 0xTote
🟥 Fashion evolving into a more conscious and localized experience where consumers are empowered to collect items that they resonate with

Some highlights from the interview include Zed describing what the bag means to her…

*“I can think of a Chinese phrase. I'm originally from China. It's called “néng gàn”, which literally translates into can do… I guess it takes on the meaning of an attitude where whatever comes your way, you do your best to do it. I was rereading the Joy Luck Club this summer. There's an immigrant family in there who are described as “néng gàn” where whatever comes their way, they make the best of it. *

*Obviously, this was something I designed reflecting on my morning commute where I'm just trying to get from point A to point B without any obstacles and without having to waste time. Everything about this tote is designed for convenience and to help during this commute to carry all of the things and to make things easier. Also, the material is designed to be long lasting.”*

Chris shares his vision for the future of fashion…

“I hope there's more discovery of independent designers, creators, artists. If you're in the middle, it's extremely hard. It's either like you're super mass or ultra luxury, or you're micro niche, and you have your own narrative within your own community. And I just hope that the scales tip towards people.

Sure, you'll buy or whatever your Uniqlo base, but then you're going to also buy something from a designer that you actually know or is a friend of a friend, or it's an artisan that's made something locally. I think that's sort of the hope, where it's sort of like a reverse globalization in the sense that the supply chain is either conscious or it's localized or it's just more considered, where it's not some global system that stands.

Although obviously making this bag, we still deploy certain systems, but it's not like tapping into the system of design that produces something for a big brand store. There's much more, I think, local forces, for example, the bag is sewn in LA, it was released at FWBfest. So yeah, if there's anything I would like to say, it's probably just, like, hoping that more people tilt towards supporting what's in your first or second degree for independent creators.”

and Zed illuminates how refreshing this approach to co-creation was compared to working in a traditional company.

“For me, I've always worked as a part of a company, designing for a company to have something, a design that's so personal and so created by me. Because when I'm working as a part of a company, there are a lot of voices that go into a design. The creative directors, the merchandisers, the people who are in charge of commercial product, it always has to hit a certain price.

And then for this tote bag, the original design that I had come up with is pretty much the one that we ended up prototyping and offering. So that part where something I prototyped basically made it to market almost as is. And also the support from Crowdmuse, also from dsptch, to actually realize it was very exciting.”

Join us on our journey as we unlock more insights from creators.

The 0xTote is available to collect exclusively on Crowdmuse.