Buoyed by art, music, and even spam, we are seeing unprecedented amounts of content being created and transacted on blockchains. On Ethereum alone, NFTs represent over 40% of the burn rate in the past 30 days.

If 2021 was the year of expanding the creative layer of web3, 2022 will be the year of curation.

Teams building in this space will explore and challenge the ways we experience, discover, and transact web3 goods.

Before diving in and exploring the projects leading the charge in this evolving landscape, let’s take a look at the general heuristics and themes emerging in this nascent space:

• Spatial projects are pushing the boundaries of experience

• Large marketplaces are giving way to curated marketplaces

• Story and feed-based tools are improving discovery

The Web3 Curation Landscape

The graphic below can be experienced in a live, interactive format on Figma. I plan on doing my best to keep the list updated, so if you feel like there are some egregious omissions, or if you’re a builder working on something interesting in this space, please let me know.

Otherwise, please note this list is not meant to be mutually exclusive nor comprehensive. Instead, it should be used as directional guidance to grasp the heuristics defining this emerging space.

Discovery

Teams building in the “Discovery” sector of the curation space seek to enable the process of finding and learning about creators and their works. Some of these teams enable discovery through storytelling, while others are adapting web2’s social feeds to web3 profiles. DAOs also fall within this category, as they increasingly a tempt to serve as collective tastemakers who appraise and showcase the cultural value of web3 goods to the broader community.

Storytelling

• Mirror

• JPG

• Gallery

Social Feed

• Showtime

• Context

Wallet Trackers

• Rainbow

• Zerion

• Zapper

Tastemakers

• Flamingo

• PleasrDAO

• Seed Club

• mClub

• HERSTORY

• MUSE0

• BeetsDAO

• Fingerprints

• RAW

• Phlote

• Black NFT Art

Commerce

The commercial marketplaces has become saturated, with several incumbent marketplaces (both open and gated) who have captured the bulk of market share. That being said, we are increasingly seeing teams who are building native marketplaces that only deal in specific IP. More interestingly, we are also seeing the emergence and rise of purveyors who sell specific goods from specific creators through curated marketplaces. These purveyors are akin to local artisanal shops that sell high-quality, specialty goods.

Open Marketplaces

• OpenSea

• LooksRare

• Zora

• Rarible

Gated Marketplaces

• Foundation

• SuperRare

• KnownOrigin

• Nifty Gateway

• Async Art

• nanakusa

Native Marketplaces

• LarvaLabs

• Axie Infinity

• NBA Top Shot

• Not LarvaLabs

Curated Marketplaces

• Artiva

• Catalog

• Sound.xyz

• FWB.Gallery

Experience

Teams building in the “Experience” sector of the landscape are defining how we experience web3 goods. The notion of experiencing web3 content is expanding across a variety of different modalities, including spatial vs tactile, 2D vs 3D, and virtual vs physical. Within the virtual spatial projects, some offer pre-built templates that are generally plug-and-play, while others provide users with an open world and higher degrees of customization. In contrast to these virtual projects, several projects are focused on creating physical spaces that offer more tactile experiences. These IRL galleries typically rely on physical displays to showcase NFTs, although some are also experimenting with holographic displays and experiential installations.

Open-World Spaces

• Cryptovoxels

• Decentraland

• The Sandbox

• Nifty Island

Custom Spaces

• Monaverse

• Arium

• Spatial

Pre-Built Spaces

• Cyber

• Rare Rooms

• hyaliko

Physical Spaces

• Unit (London)

• imnotArt (Chicago)

• ABV Gallery (Atlanta)

• Superchief Gallery (New York, Los Angeles)

• Bright Moments (Los Angeles, New York, Berlin)

• Crypto Portal Art (Prague)

• IHAM (Paris)

Physical Displays

• Infinite Objects

• Tokenframe

• Lago Frame

• Meural by Netgear

Thanks

If you found this helpful, please consider taking a moment to RT me on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/JO7eth/status/1490718101268094978?s=20&t=K1pjE7SU6CAvJxq06IpqOA

If you’d like to go above and beyond, feel free to drop some ETH in the tip jar below. 💜

split://0x65956eb1e1489e8Ca8Fe5e3fE4397E69B99089E8

Technology alone is not enough—it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.

Steve Jobs

It is not hyperbole to say that art and science form the bedrock of culture. The two are essential to the progress and growth of the human experience in the same way the head and the heart are the thrust of our vitality and curiosity. If we believe that NFTs have staying power beyond its spotlight in the greater cultural zeitgeist and represent a fundamental shift in the value creation and ownership model, we must ardently support projects that use interdisciplinary approaches to solve problems.

Akosua Viktoria (or “Ava” as she’s known by some friends), is one such artist who marries the arts and sciences for the advancement of mind and soul. A photographer with a scientist’s curiosity, Viktoria represents a growing segment of artists whose craft blurs the lines between creative processes and scientific methods. While it remains true that when it comes to art, the utility is the art itself, Ava demonstrates that art can be wielded both as a tool for creation and discovery.

Who are you?

My name is Akosua (pronounced 'A-koss-ya), you can also call me by my initials: Ava. I'm a self-employed visual artist and photographer based in Switzerland, but I was born in Germany and am half Ghanaian.

What’s your NFT origin story?

My NFT journey began in March, a few months after I started investing in crypto. In May, I entered the African NFT Community, navigating my new virtual home on Clubhouse and Twitter, building friendships, and selling nothing for the first three months. Still, I didn't mind too much about the sales part. First, I experimented, studied the space, and discovered what I liked and didn't enjoy while drafting how I wanted my current and pretty significant NFT project Behold The Ocean to manifest on the blockchain.

What’s the story you’re trying to tell through your work?

If I could answer that question straightforwardly, I doubt I'd be an artist. I do many different things. I studied Fine Arts, focusing on performative photography from 2009-2015, and regularly exhibited my work since 2012 with a traditional path of applying for grants, prizes, stipends, etc. Over the years after graduating, I developed a documentary practice next to my conceptual work. Behold The Ocean lives at the intersection of science communication, art, and documentary photography. It explores the vulnerability of the human aspect in scientific research and the complex relationship between us and our environment.

Can you go a bit deeper into what you mean by the vulnerability of the human aspect in scientific research? What do you mean by that?

When we look at science communication, it seems as though knowledge production is a flawless abstract process. In Behold The Ocean, we get insight into the fragility of a scientific career in economically disadvantaged regions and the doubts, challenges, and struggles of being a scientist. I make it a point in the book I'm currently working on to emphasize what a scientist would usually never be able to publish in the context of their research.

Where do you draw inspiration for your work?

My curiosity taps into anything from the somatic dimension of photography or the lyrical revelation of nature's liberated colors of the night through analog darkroom processes, up to oceanographic research, the cocoa farming industry in Ghana, or African racehorse jockeys. My work grows organically from what concerns me or where I'm going. Sometimes, it's just a randomly found article on the internet that leads to extensive research and ultimately to a considerable body of work – like Behold The Ocean. Inspiration is abundant; I can discover poetry in everything.

It’s clear your curiosity and intersectionality are critical to your creative pursuits. Can you expand on what role those play in your process?

It's something so natural that it takes some effort to be distant enough to further explain it. So let me get some help here, namely Alexander Baumgarten. He was a German philosopher who defined Aesthetics as a means of knowledge production; we understand through perception. There's a piece I created back in 2015 when I was working on révélée. It's a performative photograph called 'Listening II – Self Portrait in The Middle of a Dark Field – 60 minutes', a long-time exposure self-portrait on color film. It was windy at warm that night. I used my phone as a timer and recorded the wind. While I was listening to the recording while still sitting in the field in the middle of the exposure, I heard the steady breeze in real-time in my other ear. Something clicked at that moment for me. The immediate understanding of an experience, long before the compromising constructs of words are formed, is Aesthetics. And I believe my curiosity comes from that kind of pure, intimate place, which is why I often drift away when using words.

Any specifics you can share about the project? Where can people stay updated on it?

Yes, absolutely! There will be several drops on different platforms starting mid-November. The project page should give enough information to become excited about it: www.beholdtheocean.com – and for interested collectors, there's a low-noise project Discord server where I'll be hosting experimental social auctions and sharing relevant project information. The lead scientist Maximiliano Vergara from Patagonia and the curator/director Danaé Panchaud from Switzerland will also be present there. Access can be requested by DMing me on Twitter, I want to avoid building a spammy server at all costs.

What do you hope people take away as supporters of Behold The Ocean?

It's going to be a historic chance for collectors and blockchain visionaries to be empowered to be part of a disruptive case study. This is not a mere illustration of a fictional roadmap, this is putting art to work by leveraging its communicative, aesthetic potential in a decentralized economic community-driven structure that ultimately enables significant action. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that? And it's grassroots/bottom-up with approachable protagonists. I really hope for people to see the value in that.

We are witnessing the dawn of the DAOs.

For the uninitiated, DAOs are web3’s new primitive for organizing talent and capital. DAOs unleash the power of distributed groups of people by tapping into a simple hypothesis: when people are organized under a shared purpose and motivated by ownership incentives, 1+1=11.

In the NFT space, we’ve seen numerous DAOs sprout up to apply this philosophy. DAOs like Pleasr, Fingerprints, and Flamingo aggregate and deploy capital to acquire culturally significant art. While the rapid accrual of high-value NFTs enabled many DAOs to bootstrap brand recognition and cultural relevance, it’s historically limited their impact primarily to that of value capture as opposed to value creation.

For DAOs to elevate their impact from value capture to value creation, they must evolve their role beyond collectors. While there are many directions DAOs could take, one remains most bespoke to the tenets of DAOs and promising as a sustainable model that benefits all stakeholders (the DAO, artists, and the community at large): curation.

Curare

In today's culture, curation invokes images of arranging or organizing. However, the origin story of curation and its etymology links back to the Latin root word “curare," which means “to take care of.” History's earliest curators, the Roman curatores were civil servants chartered with overseeing massive public works projects. These original curators oversaw some of history's greatest innovations (such as roads, aqueducts, and sewers, to name a few). Juxtaposing the present-day definition of curation to the role of the Roman curatore, it's clear the definition has strayed quite far away from its original notions.

Wielding the power of their networks, resources, and capital, DAOs have an opportunity to reclaim and re-align the role of curators in our culture. They are positioned to reclaim the role back from gatekeeping institutions, algorithms, and re-align the ideals of curation back to a directly contributing part of the creative process.

The Curare Framework

The Curare Framework is a simple framework that enables DAOs to work alongside artists to cultivate value—for the artist, the DAO, and the larger community. It is an idea I’ve incubated and pressure-tested as a founding member of BeetsDAO. I share it with the hopes that it will serve some utility for any DAO looking to evolve their involvement in the space. It serves as a guiding light as opposed to a prescriptive operating manual. It is meant to be tailored to the varying operating processes, governance models, and overall !vibes of a specific DAO.

Prerequisites

To implement the framework effectively, there are some key elements the DAO should consider having in place:

• Curatorial Statement: What is the story you’re looking to tell through your collection?

• Collaboration Network: What people, skills, and resources are at your disposal?

• Showcase Ecosystem: Where do you plan on telling your story?

• Seed Funding: What is the initial funding amount?

Celebration, Commission, Collaboration

The guiding principle behind the Curare Framework is to build a relationship between DAO and artist—one that is both creator-centric and mutually beneficial. The framework achieves this by enabling DAOs to engage with artists in 3 phases that culminate in a collaborative partnership: celebration, commission, and collaboration. The framework can be applied to a single artist or multiple artists concurrently (i.e. progressing a batch of artists at the same time) or asynchronously (i.e. progressing each artist at their own pace).

Phase 1: Celebration

Artists are the initializers of value. They are alchemists who create something from nothing, conjuring a 1 from a 0. As such, the celebration phase entails the DAO adding a work from an artist that aligns with their curatorial narrative to their collection. By doing so, the DAO initiates a relationship with the artist that begins with a celebration of the artist’s story.

• Purpose: invest in the artist’s story

• Desired outcome: DAO adds a work from the artist's catalog to their collection

• Artist benefit: financial gain while selling to a thoughtful collector

• DAO benefit: bolster collection and curation thesis

• Revenue Split: 100% artist

Phase 2: Commission

Whereas the initial phase focuses on celebrating the artist’s story, the commission phase emphasizes building an immutable bond between the DAO and artist. By commissioning a work, the story remains the artist’s to tell while allowing the DAO to become a character within it.

• Purpose: become a character in the artist’s story

• Action: collector commissions custom work for DAO’s collection

• Artist benefit: Expand catalog at minimal risk

• Collector benefit: make creative mark

• Revenue split: 100% artist

Phase 3: Collaboration

For DAOs (and collectors writ large), there remains no higher honor than to be invited into the artist’s creative process as a co-author. This is why the collaboration phase of the framework is perhaps the most difficult yet rewarding—both creatively and financially. This phase isn’t meant to signal finality in the relationship between collector and artist but rather the beginning of a new story, told together.

• Purpose: co-author a story with the artist

• Desired outcome: DAO supports artist on an ambitious new work with revenue split

• Artist benefit: Push creative boundaries, aided by more resources

• DAO benefit: contribute creation (not just capital) to the ecosystem

• Revenue split: 69% artist, 31% DAO

Need Help?

If you are a member of a DAO that has a desire to build more curatorial programming into your community and want help operationalizing this framework, feel free to slide into my DMs on Twitter.

split://0x65956eb1e1489e8Ca8Fe5e3fE4397E69B99089E8

https://twitter.com/JO7eth/status/1393399817724911617?s=20

One of my favorite people in this space is a friend who goes by the pseudonym yungwknd. I first met him about 3 months ago (which in crypto-time means we've known each other forever), and at the time I knew him only as a coder who worked behind the scenes, building smart contracts for renowned artists in the space like JAKE as a part of the Manifold team. However, it was't until I stumbled upon his delightfully simple, on-chain, and generative collection Carbon RainDrops that I realized he is every bit an artist as he is a coder.

https://twitter.com/JO7eth/status/1415489395780685826?s=20

After having had the pleasure of speaking with him about his new project MORE or LESS (which drops September 1) I can confidently say that yungwknd is a part of a new vanguard of crypto-native artists, one whose primary canvas is the blockchain and whose brushstrokes are code.

Who are you, and what's your origin story?

I am yungwknd, which as you can guess is a pseudonym. The name comes from a time in my life where I only had classes and work Monday-Wednesday and so my weekend would start earlier than most. Giving birth to the name yungwknd, which is pronounced like "young weekend."

I heard about NFTs in the earlier part of the year, January/February just like many others. The first NFT I bought is titled "Strong" and I found it while browsing OpenSea and just really liked the art and the Maya Angelou poem that came with it. After that, I really dove right in. I minted some BGAN Punks, some ENS names, and some Art Blocks pieces.

Anyway, now I'm here! I'm a software engineer by trade, and I really enjoy expressing my creativity through code and art.

Tell us a bit about your new project, MORE or LESS.

From a very high level - MORE or LESS is a social experiment that allows the minter to choose their mint price of either 0.01 ETH or 0.1 ETH. There are 999 total mints available and each person can only mint once. Once sold out, whichever category has the most mints, or "votes", I will donate the amount of ETH in that category and keep the amount of ETH in the other.

To really dive into it, MORE or LESS combines a few different motifs in the NFT community.

From a purely visual-art perspective, it falls into the category of abstract generative art. When you mint, or purchase, a piece from the project, you are buying a single output of a script that generates an SVG string and is stored on-chain.

Another big theme in the NFT space is donating to non-profits and this project is no different. For many projects, the creators decide to donate x% or y amount of ETH. What makes the donation unique here is the decision for how much to donate is out of my hands. For MORE or LESS, I'll be asking the community to decide. I'll expand on that a bit later.

The final motif that this project plays on is the idea of provenance. As you most likely know, transactions on the ETH blockchain are stored immutably forever so we can look back and see who minted what and when they did so. However, that's about as deep as we usually go. For MORE or LESS, I consider the minting experience an important event that I want to highlight. That is why each token comes with metadata that indicates who minted the token, what their "vote" was, and other information about the state of the experiment at that time.

What drove you to create MORE or LESS?

I first had the idea when chatting with a couple of friends. I presented the question to them - "would you rather give me $10 or donate $100" and I got two opposite answers. This got me thinking about what the answer might be en masse. Where would the line be drawn? Would it be at 10/100 or 10/50 or even 10/200?

It seemed like a question that would be perfect for the NFT community, where it could actually be played out instead of just theoretical questions. Just to test the waters, I brought the poll to Twitter:

https://twitter.com/yungwknd/status/1420241545534447621

And the results really shocked me! I was quite surprised that people would rather give me money than donate, even at a factor of 10-to-1. So, that's when I started writing up the code for the project.

Can you explain the minting mechanics and pricing model behind this project? There seem to be some interesting behavioral ideas at play...

The minting mechanics are certainly unique, in that I haven't seen them in any other projects yet. Each person gets the choice to mint at either 0.01 ETH or 0.1 ETH, with no difference in the output of the art. Additionally, there is only one mint allowed per person, sort of like they are choosing to vote to donate more or less. Whichever category gets the most votes, the ETH for that gets donated and I keep the ETH in the less category.

I wanted to find the sweet spot that answers the question I posed to my friends. Early on, I even modeled out the potential results:

In this graph, I color in green what I consider a "community win". What this means is that the total amount donated is more than the total amount that I get to keep. The red of course is the opposite, a "community loss". So what's going on here? Well, the vertical and horizontal blue lines represent a given "vote" winning, having reached 500/999 of the mints. You can imagine that each mint moves us either up or right by one. In the model, if the more category wins, no matter what it's a community win. We'll be donating at minimum 50 ETH (500 x 0.1 ETH), while I get to keep at maximum 4.99 ETH (499 x 0.01 ETH). However, it's a different situation on the less side of things. If nearly the entire NFT community decides to mint at the less price, then we could have a community win. For example, if there are 950 less votes and 49 more votes, then we'll donate 9.50 ETH and I'll keep 4.9 ETH. Somewhere in the middle though, like 700 less votes and 299 more votes means that we'll donate 7.00 ETH and I'll keep 29.9 ETH.

So the math of this project really excited me and I can't wait to see how the community responds!

What inspired the aesthetic of MORE or LESS?

At first, I actually thought about the art simply being that graph above, in which a dot indicated where your vote fell on the chart. I'm glad that I very quickly abandoned this idea. I knew I wanted the art to be entirely on-chain, so that led me to try out some SVG tutorials. As you can see, there are really just a few simple shapes involved. There are circles, rectangles, triangles, and Bézier curves (lines). I continued just randomly placing them, randomly choosing their colors, etc, until I started getting outputs that I really liked.

One of my favorite traditional artists is Joan Miró. If you look up some of his early Lithographes, a lot of them are very abstract, with just random shapes and lines on the canvas. A quote of his that I think really resonates with me in relation to this project and other generative art projects is this:

When I stand in front of a canvas, I never know what I'm going to do - and nobody is more surprised than I at what comes out.

I think it really captures the magical experience of minting a piece of art and getting a surprise result that comes out.

The first words on your project site reads "Provenance is everything." Can you expand on that?

The word "provenance" is thrown around a lot in art and NFTs. A quick online search shows one definition as "a record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality." I think that we as a community do a fine job of tracking the record of ownership for NFTs and this lets us easily answer questions like "is this painting really from that artist?". However, I feel we often miss out on some of the context along the way. With MORE or LESS, I highlight the minting event itself in the metadata. Though this data is accessible for other projects with tools like Etherscan, we rarely see it brought to the forefront of the piece. For each mint, the metadata will show who minted it, whether they paid more or less, and the state of the votes at the time they minted. I'm bringing the provenance, or the story, to the foreground of the piece so that no matter where it goes, the original minter and their decision is up front and center.

How does it feel to be creating your own work versus helping other artists bring their vision to life through your work with Manifold?

It's nerve-wracking! I typically prefer to work behind the scenes to enable other artists to have great success. Putting myself out there like this is difficult and vulnerable. However, it brings me so much joy to see the all the different outputs of the algorithm I wrote along with everything else like the metadata and tech behind it. I want to bring more to the table than just the art or just the code, and I think that this "social experiment" is the best way for me to express my creativity with both code and art. I really hope that people participate and enjoy the experience!

What's next for you after this?

What's next? Well, I plan to take a bit of a break. I started ideating on this in late July and have been working on the project for a bit over a month now and I don't have any concrete plans for a new project immediately after this. However, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes (from myself) which is "if you have a million ideas, one of them is bound to be a one in a million idea".

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, friend. Congratulations on MORE or LESS! Take care.

For those who want to stay tuned to what yungwknd has in store, be sure to follow him on Twitter.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/25220

The retro vibe, handheld camera work, and perfect loop in this piece drew me in. Pretty soon, I found myself watching the video repeatedly, focusing on a different element each time. It wasn't until those multiple viewings that I began appreciating the piece as a commentary on the internet and our culture’s obsession with growth, wealth, and acceptance. My first bidding war and 2.75 eth later, I was now the proud owner of this wonderful piece. And as many times as I’ve watched the loop since then, I still discover new details to appreciate.

It takes a special kind of artist to create the type of remarkable art that Emonee LaRussa creates. You don’t get to work with artists like Kanye West otherwise. However, having spoken to her and observing her moves in this space, what's more remarkable is the type of person she is. You see, some artists create art, while others go beyond to create artists.

Emonee is the quintessential example of the latter, more impactful type of artist. This is exemplified by her dedication to helping expand the table of this space to drive greater diversity, representation, and fidelity to culture. She is using her success as a platform to drive generational impact. As a person I respect and admire deeply in this space, t was an absolute pleasure conducting this interview with her.

Who are you?

My name is Emonee LaRussa, I am a 2x Emmy Award Winning motion graphics artist and director. I predominantly create music visuals for artists like Meg Thee Stallion, HER, Kanye West, Lil Nas X and more!

What’s your NFT origin story?

I discovered NFT’s at the beginning of 2021 when I truly had so many different set plans for the year. NFT’s hit my life so hard in a very great way! I’m super grateful for what NFT’s have provided for me and my look on my future of art.

https://twitter.com/Em0n33y/status/1387540940563251202

What’s been the most important thing you've learned since entering the space?

The most important thing is to genuinely have love and patience for yourself. Putting your digital art in the world for others to value can be hard on your heart but having that compassion for yourself allows you to appreciate every moment in the space.

What’s the story you’re trying to tell through your work?

I’ve always wanted people to feel happy, I want people to feel such a strong emotion of joy when they see my art like “DAMN that was so awesome” because that’s how I feel when I see art.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/8137

Where do you draw inspiration for your work?

I constantly get inspiration from so many illustrators and motion designers I see on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit! Seriously, I always try to break down how did they do that! I’m always trying to learn new techniques.

You recently launched Jumpstart Designers, a non-profit aimed at providing design resources to kids in underserved communities. What drove you to do that?

I always wanted to make music videos since I was a kid and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I really dove into working in After Effects in my film class. I begged my mom for my own laptop. We went to the store and at checkout, her card was declined. Months went by and my mom was able to surprise me with a simple 300 dollar laptop. (I have a photo in my high school’s newspaper for most likely to win an artist award. ) This laptop started my career. Which got me thinking, how many kids never got that laptop. It’s not fair. There’s so much talent out there that deserves to be recognized.

https://twitter.com/Em0n33y/status/1420410337745018883?s=20

If you could collaborate with any artist in the space who would it be?

Geez, there so so many artists I would love to collaborate with I don’t even know where to start! DeeKay, FEWOCiOUS, Shantell Martin just to name a few!

Who's one artist you're a fan of that you feel is currently being slept on by the community?

Shay the Surrealist I feel like is an absolute gold mine! Her work is amazing!!

What's next for you?

Something that is 3 months in the making! I have collaborated with 5 amazing artists to create 6 super cool NFTs that 100% of our sales are going into the non-profit. These pieces are by far the best things I’ve ever worked on!

Thanks for your time, Emonee. Take care!

To stay updated on what Emonee has in store, be sure to follow her on Twitter. \n You can also view her work on Foundation.

My sincere thanks to Dan Conway, who not only graciously allowed me to pen my genesis post as a contributor on his publication but also gifted the remaining $WRITE I needed. His kind gift is a testament to the community-centric spirit I love about the web3 community. I promise to do my best to make you proud and pay it forward, Dan.

https://danconway.mirror.xyz/XLTzNKs8jSvxOH0pSJNbf9b4k6J45ejp9y-R_etAuO0

My intention is to use Curare to enable and inspire artists and creators within the web3 community, and I couldn’t be more excited to do so on a native web3 platform.

With that being said, I’ll sign-off with a re-share of the original intentions I stated in the first issue of Curare:

If you follow me on Twitter, chances are you’ve noticed that I’ve been properly red-pilled and have dived head-first into the NFT space. I’ve found that Twitter has been a great place to incubate ideas by engaging with artists, collectors, and technologists in the space. Yet, despite my penchant for the occasional tweet thread, I’ve found Twitter to be suboptimal for sharing long-form content.

That’s why I’ve created Curare—a newsletter where I can pull on those threads a bit more intentionally and share more fully-formed thoughts about NFTs and art in general. The idea is to use this space as a vehicle to curate my observations, insights, and ideas with greater care and discernment.

I chose the name Curare as a reference to the Latin root word meaning “to take care,” from which the word curate derives its meaning. In today’s culture, curation is applied more broadly to connote the idea of selective filtering, especially with regard to content. But in actuality, curation traces its roots back to the Roman curatores, state officials who were chartered with the remit of building out the infrastructure of the Roman Empire, including ancient innovations such as the Roman roads and aqueduct system.

The point here is that curation has always been about driving new creation, not filtering existing creation for consumption. It is this original, ancient charter of curation that motivates me to collect art. Indeed, when I purchase a piece from an artist, my intention isn’t simply to consume and admire the art. Rather, I look to foster a relationship with the artist in a way that enables me to play an orthogonal role in the artist’s creative process. Stated simply: I take care of artists.

My intention with Curare is to share stories, insights, and ideas that will support the NFT community in forging a new value model—one that places the artist at the center. It is also my intention to do this in an inclusive and equitable manner, taking care to shed light on underexposed spaces and amplifying unheard voices.