Traditionally, artists have to sell their full rights to large institutions to access liquidity. However, NFTs allow artists to sell pieces of the rights to individuals while still retaining a share of the royalties. This provides a win-win situation for both the artist and the fans as the fans can be a part of the revenue generated from the song, while the artist can retain a significant portion of the royalties.

The use case of NFTs in the music industry is just the tip of the iceberg. NFT collections themselves can sell pieces of their royalties to access liquidity. For instance, if a company like Yuga Labs needed liquidity, they could issue NFTs that represent a portion of the creator royalties earned from the sales of their Bored Ape Collection. This opens up new possibilities for companies to access liquidity without having to sell equity in their business to venture capitalists.

In conclusion, Rihanna's recent NFT collection has opened up new possibilities in the digital economy. The ability to access liquidity without having to sell the full rights to a song or album has the potential to revolutionize the music industry and beyond. We can expect to see more artists and companies adopt NFTs in the future as NFT-based economies continue to evolve and mature.

Positions is an NFT primitive that bifurcates the relationship between a platform and the position being taken within the platform. Traditionally, positions within a trade are stored in a centralized location with an opaque backend (think TradFi and CEXs), blocking the possibility of metamarkets to appear. This creates undesired inefficiencies in the market, such as making it almost impossible to exit a position at an insolvency event. As distributed ledger technology enables more composability across financial use cases, it’s possible to apply first-order principles to some of the core bedrocks of traditional finance.

Metamarkets are a phenomenon where once an asset class is interoperable and composable, the fundamental structure of the environment changes.  Users no longer just trade an item - they can also acquire, post and trade active positions in time.

For example, with Wasabi Protocol, the ERC721 token standard is leveraged to mint a PUT or CALL option on an existing ERC721 non-fungible token.  Breaking this down further, you can see the following:

• ERC721’s are a wrapper to store any asset, meaning many different financial instruments can be created from this simple mechanism. All existing ERC standards are able to live inside, and whatever use case built on said standard can be represented on-chain.

• Purchasing a CALL or PUT on an option mints an ERC721 on the ledger, a sub-entity tied to the original asset.  These assets are permissionless and stored in a user’s wallet - they are not in the ownership of a centralized entity.

• Liquidity itself can be transferred using the same mechanism. Liquidity Providers can create their own pools that create submarkets with liquidity represented as transferable ERC721s.

In the past, these components were tied down within a centralized framework controlled by a single party.  Participants in this system needed to route through a framework that disincentivized ownership, but also mobility.

What happens when someone can trade active positions they have on various markets? What new use cases does this enable? What dynamics materialize?

Leveraging Positions, anyone can create the foundation for a meta market.

We’re excited to formally introduce ourselves to the world and share that we’ve raised $1M from some of the most brilliant angels and funds to build DKODA Labs. We're creating and scaling an ecosystem to support the many NFT-based economies that'll arise in the coming years.

We believe in a more equitable and efficient NFT market. In this vision, creators around the globe create and contribute to these liquid NFT markets, supported by fans and investors from all economic backgrounds. In addition to art, NFTs will form the bedrock of countless verticals as this foundational technology commands wider adoption. An ecosystem of tooling will be necessary to support the many different builders, service providers, and users who want to participate in this new world. 

While the latest wave of NFT activity was exciting and rewarding for many, we are still in desperate need of the core building blocks for any market to grow and mature. We're active participants in the market and deeply connected to the dynamics of this space. At DKODA, we're contributing our expertise to making ERC721-based markets more durable, sustainable, and approachable. 

Our Lab has a broad vision, with a core focus on critical solutions that can scale and grow with the participation of other builders. Our first project, DKODA, is a sophisticated NFT pricing oracle giving anyone a powerful infrastructural tool for analysis and building solutions around NFT markets.

Our most recent endeavor, and most ambitious, is Wasabi.  Wasabi is a decentralized NFT options protocol to issue and trade NFTs as non-fungible tokens. Collectors issue options to make stable, low-risk income by collecting premiums, while market participants capitalize on the market's volatility by exercising or trading options. Through this primitive in NFT financialization, Wasabi is bringing liquidity and accessibility to artists, collectors, and speculators worldwide.

Like much of our work, Wasabi is a core primitive that others can leverage to create a wide range of applications and use cases around permissionless derivatives, insurance, and NFT-based financial services. This is an entirely different enterprise from DKODA, which we hope will grow into a fully decentralized community governed on-chain with the help of a non-profit foundation. 

You’ve probably seen us lurking in discord, but if you haven’t, feel free to stop by our Wasabi Discord or reach out to us on Twitter.