Read the Press Release.

About Mask

Founded in 2017, Mask aims to build an easy-to-use bridge from Web 2.0 to the Web 3.0-era decentralized apps. In 2019, the Mask browser extension gave Twitter users access to secure, decentralized social messaging, payment networks, file storage, rich token and NFT metadata and trading, and other Web3 tools.

Today, Mask is a contributor and investor across decentralized social networks including being one of the earliest community members of the Bluesky protocol founded by Jack Dorsey and the maintainer of the most active instances of Mastodon (Pawoo). With funding of US$100 million, Mask strategically invests in decentralized social networks like Lens and Web3 social tooling like RSS3’s Unified Metadata Schemas for social feeds.

Finally, the Mask global team is building for everyone in the Web3 ecosystem including the Mask extension for desktop, Firefly mobile app, developer tooling like NextID, and now protocols like RARA.

Learn more at mask.io.

Future of RARA

With the support of MASK, RARA will continue building for the future of open, permissionless curation of NFTs.

Firefly & Upcoming Integrations. A number of Web3 social apps and protocols are in the process of integrating RARA.

First up, RARA is being integrated into Mask’s newest mobile app, Firefly. Firefly is a social app that seeks to create a diversified social stream by bringing together both Web2 & Web3 platforms. Users can view content from Twitter, Lens, Farcaster, Mirror, and Snapshot, all on the Firefly app. With the integration of RARA, people will be able to comment and engage with NFTs in the feed just like a twitter or instagram post.

Outside of the Mask ecosystem, RSS3 and a number of other web3 protocols and app integrations will be announced soon!

APIs & Developer Tools. The team will use the Firefly integration to build out developer APIs to provide users a Web2-like experience with signature delegation to a dispatcher and paying gas for users, features recently added to the protocol in the v2.0 release.

Additional APIs for generating RA! like tokens (soulbound proof of curations and digital memories for people), and querying RARA for comments and engagement on NFTs in RARA’s social curation graph will be made public, as well.

App & Future Features. RARA’s app for building community exhibits and registering NFTs as RARA reactions will continue to be the testing ground for new protocol features and ideas on how RARA and the MASK ecosystem can power a better Internet with Web3.

That’s it, friends. Thanks for all of your support so far. It’s early. RARA and Mask are going to do big things together. It’s time to get loud, real loud RA. RA!

Follow RARA at @rara_social on Twitter and Instagram.

Join our community on Discord at RARA.house.

Follow @realMaskNetwork on Twitter.

Here are some of the highlights from the event:

Curator of the Year

ZacKenney.eth won 2022 Curator of the Year. As the head of RARA Curator’s in Residence, the community was very excited to see Zac win the Curator of the Year. You can follow Zac at twitter.com/ZacKenney and view his curations on RARA at app.rara.social/profile/zackenney.eth.

For winning Curator of the Year, Zac received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/15

Reaction of the Year

Heart created and registered by Dainu.eth. As the creator of tons of the popular Metaverse Girl reaction pack and tons of other amazing reactions in RARA, Dainu’s reactions are always favorites of the community.

You can see and use this Heart reaction available in RARA’s protocol at app.rara.social or any other app supporting RARA.

https://opensea.io/assets/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/12435556154492144103839966881304567088533133951662145823128019815672236212225

For winning Reaction of the Year, Dainu received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/14

2022 NFTs of the Year

2022 NFT of the Year

Post by Memester.lens, Curated by lwsnbaker.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/0x88544c2f0c4835de1435c664dfbf4f5c44c681c5/1

For winning the NFT of the Year, Memester received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/3

AI NFT of the Year

Pieces by Claire Silver, Curated by ZacKenney.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0/36134

For winning the AI NFT of the Year, Claire received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/4

Art NFT of the Year

identity creation matrix by Kate the Cursed, Curated by f0xapocalypse.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xc90552531557b5e559e2c148cd0b5a41fda9d2c3/1

For winning the Art NFT of the Year, Kate the Cursed received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/5

Education NFT of the Year

Ed3 Educator #2 by Ed3 Educators, Curated by Dagan.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x906ed82a6d46e82854e0296c1674d2be40ca6dd3/2

For winning the Education NFT of the Year, Ed3 Educators received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/6

Generative NFT of the Year

Chaos #688 - FROLiC by CHAOS, Curated by BlockchainBrett.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x8427e46826a520b1264b55f31fcb5ddfdc31e349/458

For winning the Generative NFT of the Year, members of Chaos received an edition of this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/10

Meme NFT of the Year

Post by Memester.lens, Curated by lwsnbaker.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/0x88544c2f0c4835de1435c664dfbf4f5c44c681c5/1

For winning Meme NFT of the Year, Memester received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/8

Metaverse NFT of the Year

MCDONALD'S APPLICATION: ROBNESS V2 by Robness, Curated by james.lexdao.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xabb3738f04dc2ec20f4ae4462c3d069d02ae045b/6357003

For winning Metaverse NFT of the Year, Robness received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/7

Motion Arts NFT of the Year

identity creation matrix by Kate the Cursed, Curated by f0xapocalypse.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xc90552531557b5e559e2c148cd0b5a41fda9d2c3/1

For winning the Motion Arts NFT of the Year, Kate the Cursed received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/9

Music NFT of the Year

Glass House #822 by DanielAllan.eth, Curated by BlockchainBrett.eth

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x719c6d392fc659f4fe9b0576cbc46e18939687a7/822

For winning Music NFT of the Year, Daniel received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/11

PFP NFT of the Year

Post by Memester.lens, Curated by Mirran.lens

https://opensea.io/assets/0x77faa70e465ea9785a837bca818d199b2e178c2d/1

For winning Meme NFT of the Year, Memester received this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/12

Photography NFT of the Year

Post by Grams.lens, Curated by Mirran.lens

https://opensea.io/assets/0x78696b77049f41c0cda095729afeb9be526a47ef/1

For winning Photography NFT of of the Year, Grams won this RA! Award 🏆.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3c5e5cd6de4fb16099f5b1eadb6a7004932247/13

That’s it, fans + curators. Congrats to all of the creators. We hope to see everyone next year at the 2023 RA! Awards.

View all of The RA! Award nominees and winners here.

https://app.rara.social/raawards/2022

View all of The RA! Award 🏆 NFTs on OpenSea.

As the second annual RA! Awards, this is the first time voting will be completely on-chain with the Polygon network.

Nominate an NFT with the newest feature for our Social Curation Protocol - free RA! Like Tokens - a curator’s digital memory. That’s right. Curating with RARA is now free. Just pay gas!

Welcome curators to The RA! Awards.

Start a Curation to nominate your favorite NFTs of the year at app.rara.social.

https://app.rara.social/

The RA! Awards

The RA! Awards is an Internet-first awards ceremony for the best NFTs of the year according to the fans, not price. In 2021, we held the first ever RA! Awards in the NFT RA!CE, the precursor app to our social curation protocol.

The goal of the RA! Awards is to create an NFT award ceremony that is open to anyone with a wallet and access to the Internet. As a counterbalance to the high costs of NFT ownership and attending IRL events, the RA! Awards show the power of the crowd through open, permissionless, and free curation of NFTs.

Award Exhibit Tags

Starting today, anyone can nominate for the awards by curating an NFT with RARA’s decentralized tag feature for these “best of” exhibits:

• AI

• Art

• Generative

• Meme

• Metaverse

• Music

• PFP

• Photography

The NFT curated by the most curator wallets wins. Curations will be filtered by NFTs minted in 2022. The winners of each category will compete for NFT of the Year. See “Voting for The RA! Awards” below for more details.

Additional RA! Awards will be given to the:

• NFT of the Year.

• Reaction of the Year.

• Curator of the Year.

Schedule

Today. Nominations and early voting go live January 16-22nd. Final week of voting January 23, 2023. Award ceremony in an NFT metaverse (TBA)

The RA! Award NFT

Each winner will receive a trophy NFT pictured in this commemorative edition poster.

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x0e3C5E5Cd6de4FB16099f5b1eadB6a7004932247/1

This year’s trophy is modeled on the RARA’s founder’s metaverse avatar found in the 2021 RA! Awards poster. The 2021 poster referenced a metaverse three layers deep with a nod to MTV’s Moonman, as well. This year we add a fourth dimension - the blockchain - recognizing curation for the awards is now on-chain.

How RARA Works

Curate to Nominate. Starting today anyone can nominate an NFT at app.rara.social for free. Just pay gas. RA! Award curating the NFT with the award exhibit tag.

1. Connect. Connect your wallet on the Polygon network, then sign the message.

2. Verify. If you do not hold a RARA NFT, verify your Twitter account to gain access.

3. Start Curation. Paste an NFT URL or Contract Address and Token ID for any Ethereum or Polygon NFT.

4. Add Award Exhibit Tag. Add the tag for the award exhibit of your choice. For example, AI nominations should include the ai exhibit tag. Note: RA! Award Exhibits will be filtered by tag AND the NFTs mint date (2022 NFTs only). Any repeat nominations go towards voting.

5. Comment & React. Add a comment telling everyone about your nomination, and finally select a reaction.

6. Minting RA! Like Tokens. For each curated NFT, curators will mint a free RA! Like Token - our newest protocol feature. RA! Like Tokens are digital keepsakes generated by each of your curations (kind of like a POAP or other Soulbound tokens). Each RA! Like Token includes the curated NFT, your reaction, comment, and tag.

The earlier you curate an NFT, the lower your TokenID (proof of taste) you will receive - Holders of low TokenID for RA! Like Token may be eligible to claim more $RARA tokens when released. The more RA! Like Tokens you collect, the more $RARA tokens you may claim. Token claim details subject to change when announced - coming 🔜 ;)

Voting for the RA! Awards

What makes the best NFTs according to fans, not price? For The RA! Awards, we believe it’s the NFT with the most curators (aka: most fans).

Most Curators. The NFT with the most curators means the NFT with the most unique, verified user wallets who react, comment, or tag an NFT. Verified wallets includes wallets holding a RARA NFT or who verified their twitter account on app.rara.social. Users may vote for more than one NFT for each award tag.

Reaction of the Year. The reaction used by the most curators.

Curator of the Year. The Curator whose curated NFTs received the reactions (including comments and tags) by other curators.

That’s it, curators. Nominate your favorite NFTs of 2022 today through January 23, 2023 at app.rara.social.

https://app.rara.social/

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social. Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social. Join our community on Discord at RARA.house. View tutorials and community calls on YouTube.

Friday at Noon ET. General Admissions x Weekly Community Call (Twitter Space)

P.S. Curation tokens & royalties are paused in app. To ensure the RA! Awards are truly open to anyone with access to the Internet and a wallet, we are pausing incentivized curation. This means minting of Curation Tokens and additional Royalties for curation and reactions are paused in the app. We are redesigning curation incentives and how royalties work in the Spring of 2023. Users holding Curation Tokens or claimable Royalties, should redeem and withdraw by January 31, 2023.

Register your NFTs as a reaction to serve as the canvas for curator comments and join us all month as we curate iconic NFTs at app.rara.social.

Creating Icons

The term “icon” (n.) means (i) an image; a representation, (ii) a representation of something sacred generally relating to sanctification of a Christian personage, or (iii) an important and enduring symbol.

While Latin eventually adopted the word icon, the term “eikon” meant "likeness, image, portrait; image in a mirror; a semblance, phantom image;" in philosophy, "an image in the mind." Emphasis added to the last two meanings which I think goes towards the root of the issue - icons attempt to give shared meaning between minds that think differently.

Where a picture is worth 1000 words, icons represent one idea of the mind.

Naturally, the earliest and most well known icons are drawings and statues of gods and kings - representing both a person, an idea, or maybe an ideal way of living.  Like super translators, great icons are understandable by people with different spoken languages and different education levels.

Digital Icons

Behind the screens and on the command line, computers run on a vibrant community of growing and evolving languages - coding languages from Python and C++ to Typescript and Solidity. In the 1980’s, Apple famously pulled the computer industry forward beyond code and command lines for technical users to more approachable interfaces for everyone. Graphic User Interfaces or “GUI’s” translated and transformed computers from fancy calculators to an artistic universe full of icons.

Susan Kare is arguably the most well known icon artist of the digital age and one of the earliest pixel artists. Coloring pixels on a screen, Kare made computers relatable to the masses with icons that mirrored our IRL lives. Designing fonts and icons for the first mass-market computers, Kare set the stage for many digital icons to come.

Paper with a folded corner for document files and file folders to store them. Cursors that look like pointing hands. Happy Mac for the loading screen. Deleted files by dropping them in a metal trash can. Cairo emoji font created in 1984. And, pixel paint buckets to create your own digital icons too.

Kare spawned an industry of product and visual designers who are paid handsomely to create designs and icons for our digital age.

Then, came NFTs. No longer one of many software startup employees, designers are now their own bosses - creating and selling their own digital icons. Almost 40 years later, Kare turned her artistry and computer icons into NFTs.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430/323655

Icons Curating Icons

There are many ways to describe RARA’s social curation protocol - Web3 emojis for NFTs, Decentralized reactions, comments, and tags for NFTs, a curated media graph, and so on.

At its core, RARA is a generalized icon proliferation and mapping protocol. Reactions - which are icons - are burned on NFTs - especially iconic NFTs. Icons curating Icons.

Prior to launching, RARA primarily referred to reactions as Web3 emojis.

However, in practice, reactions span from emojis to GIFs to memes.

Diversity in reactions is possible because RARA reactions are by their nature decentralized icons. Reactions are not created by one corporation like emojis on iPhones vs emojis on Androids. Reactions are created by anyone who takes the time to register their NFT with RARA’s protocol. Reaction creators are owners and creator-owners that simply wish to proliferate their icons.

November Icons

Reactober put to rest (🪦) 200+ new NFTs registered as reaction and curated NFT exhibits. Now it’s time to turn towards Icons.

Welcome friends to November, a month full of icons.

Let’s Curate! Icon Exhibits

Today’s Icon Exhibit is the first of a number of icon themed exhibits planned for this month. Here’s a look at November’s Exhibits.

• Monday’s “Rally Cries” As a follow up to Monday GM then GN Exhibits, the Rally Cries Exhibit is what brings us all to our feet. It’s a bear market but Crypto Twitter and Discord are humming. NFTs in the Rally Cries Exhibit will send the community to the moon.

• Tuesday’s “Artists Stories” Artists are the icons that drive the NFT space forward. Like ethos-driven founders, artists continue to create throughout all market conditions. NFTs curated in “Artist Stories” are created by artists, our NFT icons.

• Wednesday’s “What’s Hot?” NFTs in the “whatshot” Exhibit are trending at the time of curation. Over time, this exhibit will create a pulse of the NFT art and movement.

• Thursday’s Let’s Curate! Twitter Spaces. Join us every Thursday with a new guest curator leading an exhibit of their choice.

• Friday’s “Portrait of a Curator” features self-portraits and other NFTs that capture the essence of the curator. By curating an NFT for this exhibit, each curator will be gifted an ENS name of their choice (5 or more characters, new ENS names only, 1 year, limit per curator, terms subject to change)

• Weekends “Icons” Icons are the guides to our computer-powered lives. From the cursor icon and file folders to thumbs up and hamburger menus, computer iconography spawned an entirely new functional language for user interfaces. NFTs curated in the Icons Exhibit are perfect NFTs for the collector to register as a reaction.

Thanksgiving Week

• Monday-Thursday “Friendsgiving” NFTs curated into the Friendsgiving Exhibit capture all of the Web3 artists, curators, and anon’s that RARA curators want to invite to their NFT Thanksgiving.

• “Black Friday” SALE! SALE! SALE! Black Friday NFT sales can be found in flash crashes, bear markets, or just really amazing artists.

• “Cyborg Monday” Cyborgs are taking over! Run!

Call for Icon Reactions

RARA’s app for curating art exhibits with friends encourages using reactions based on how an NFT makes you feel. However, new apps integrating RARA’s social curation protocol may have more utilitarian reaction needs either by necessity (NFT utilities) or design desire (minimalism). Functional reactions like any computer icon will help them build these experiences.

Reactions for Comments

To kickstart NFT registrations of functional icons, we’re calling for reactions to pair with comments added to NFT. For users who want to quickly comment on an NFT without selecting a reaction, reactions tagged with “comment” will be used.

Recommendations for Comment Reactions

1. Artwork. Think talk bubbles, think bubbles, street signs, art placards, or other art that can serve as default reaction for users who want to quickly comment on an NFT, or (ii) a canvas for curator comments.

2. Colors. Grayscale, Black (000000), or white (FFFFFF)

3. Background. None

4. Reaction Name. Your choice

5. Reaction Tag. Tag your reaction with comment

6. File Type. SVG or PNG

7. Size. 1:1 Ratio, min 600px

That’s it friends. Let’s be iconic.

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social. Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social. Join our community on Discord at RARA.house. View tutorials and community calls on YouTube.

Weekly Events

• Thursdays at 9PM ET - Let’s Curate! (Twitter Space)

• Fridays at Noon ET - General Admissions x Community Call (Discord)

RARA is on a mission to create an open social curation protocol for NFTs. A few months ago we opened up the protocol for builders of all shapes and sizes to use. Two weeks ago, RARA’s app expanded its private beta to include new friends looking to join the curation conversation with reactions.

https://rara.mirror.xyz/JId6Jfb3nq9VQM8qAv8RDFTYopaPBdjmm3e4icQKMQ8

Starting today, NFTs added to RARA’s Registry will be immediately available for use curating NFTs - no community voting required.

Welcome friends to 💀 Reactober 👻.

💀 Reactober 👻

Reactober is a call for registrations of all things Halloween. We want all the 💀 skulls, 👽 aliens, 🧟‍♀️ zombies, and gory NFTs you got.

All registrations this month have a chance to win 666 $MATIC too! Follow the instructions in these tweets to enter.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1578034439531077632?s=20&t=Wgzx3vk0zhT6N6mRp2ZUUA

Waitlisted Reactions

If your NFT was waitlisted during the Genesis Reaction Registry, it will be auto-added to the app unless otherwise flagged for content/IP issues.

October Let’s Curate! Exhibits

Say GN to Monday’s “GM” exhibits because this month we’ll be changing up some of our recurring community exhibits. Here’s the rundown:

• Monday’s “GN” - GM/GN are the Yin and Yang of crypto. For every good morning, there is a good night. NFTs with the “gn” tag best represent this goodbye ritual.

• Tuesday’s “Ghost Stories” - Nothing gets the imagination running like scary stories. These artist’s NFTs will haunt your dreams and your feed. Muahahaha!

• Wednesday’s “What’s Hot?” - NFTs in the “whatshot” Exhibit are trending at the time of curation. Over time, this exhibit will create a pulse of the NFT art and movement.

• Thursday’s “Let’s Curate” + Twitter Space - A different spooky theme each week!

• Friday’s “Freaky Fridays” - Not all art is pretty, and not all NFTs are GMs. Let’s dig into the dark corners of the metaverse for the artists who embrace the macabre.

• Weekend’s “Reactober” - With the RARA’s Registry reopening, we’ll be curating all the NFTs the community wants registered as Halloween themed reactions.

Thursday Let’s Curate! Exhibits + Twitter Spaces

• Today!, October 6th - 💀 Reactober 👻 - Curating all the NFTs RARA’s community wants collectors and creators to register as reactions for Reactober.

• October 13th - Frankenstein Collages - With a leg from here, an arm from there, and a head from who knows where, Dr. Frankenstein brought life to a creature greater than the sum of its parts. Which artists have up-cycled images to create collages with a whole new meaning and perspective?

• October 20th - Sci-Fi - Sci-fi has captured the minds of children and adults for decades. With roots in scientific storytelling, it makes sense that NFTs as a technology are becoming the vehicle of choice for new age Sci-Fi. Explore this exciting, futuristic space with guest curator Patternbase.

• October 27th - Zombies vs. Aliens - Two of the most prized traits amongst CryptoPunks and subsequent PFP collections, zombies and aliens can now be found all over the NFT space. This exhibit attempts to settle the war once and for all - Zombies or Aliens?

On Monday, October 31st, we’re closing the month out in style with the “Halloween Costume Party” exhibit - Halloween, like any great PFP, is about self-expression – So dress up and Curate your NFT costume!

That’s it friends. Register your NFTs as reactions at app.rara.social/add. Join the curation conversation every day on RARA.

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social.

Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social.

Join our community on Discord at RARA.house.

View tutotiarials or community calls on YouTube.

Weekly Events

• Thursdays at 9PM ET - Let’s Curate! (Twitter Space)

• Fridays at Noon ET - General Admissions x Community Call (Discord)

🫂 Friends of RARA

Starting today, anyone can become a 🫂 Friend of RARA to access on-chain reactions and comments for curated NFTs.

Simply connect your wallet to app.rara.social, add your Twitter handle, and tweet the signed message to become a 🫂 Friend.

https://app.rara.social/

RARA Memberships

Membership to RARA’s app are now broken down into holders of NFTs (Curators and Fans), and non-NFT holders (Friends of RARA).

MEMBER ACCESS

Curators → Start Curation with a React, Comment, and Tag

• Holders of Genesis NFTs (Genesis GM, Genesis 🤌 Curator, and Genesis 📣 Fan)

• Holders of Summer of RA! 🍦 Curators NFTs

Fans + Friends → React, Comment, and (NEW!) Tag

• Holders of Summer of RA! 🕶 Fans NFTs

• (NEW) Friends of RARA

Curators have the distinct privilege of adding NFTs to RARA’s protocol via Start Curation. As RARA taste leaders, Curators control RARA’s front page, exhibits, and the curation conversations. Curators have the most upside potential in terms of curation tokens, as the value of the tokens increase when others react and comment on the curated NFT. Read more about Who Earns with RARA.

Fans and Friends can join any curation with React, Comment, and Tags. Reactions are NFT-backed emojis powering RARA’s social curation protocol.

When sending a reaction, an optional comment (“LFG!” or “First!”) can be added like a reply tweet. Finally, starting now, Fans and Friends can add Tags to any curated NFT to place the NFT in our community exhibits.

Let’s Curate!

Speaking of exhibits, the daily “Let’s Curate” prompts in Discord are now featured in the app!

"Let's Curate" is a simple, yet powerful call-to-action for RARA's community of curators. Everyday we curate NFTs together into one exhibit - previously impossible without an open, permissionless curation protocol.

The metagame of curation is brought to life by surfacing all NFTs tagged to an exhibit. Fans rally around a single curated NFT with reactions and comments while exhibits bring all the curations together.

As more NFTs are added to RARA’s social curations protocol, trends start to appear and rich exhibits are born. As an example, curators have added NFTs to the gm exhibit every Monday for almost six weeks now. Let's Curate! exhibit prompts do the hard work of encouraging deeper exploration of both new and old NFTs that best represent the communal ritual of Gm.

What’s Next?

You may have noticed the Summer vibes are gone from the app as we build up the permanent brand of RARA. Beyond branding, we are focusing all of our energy on improving the core of RARA’s protocol - reactions and curation tokens.

We are making the reaction selector easier to use, not just for our app but for other builders too by ensuring that reactions look cool af at all times, and by improving search for reaction functionality. Finally, we are thinking deeply about how we can improve accessibility of reactions and curation tokens as it’s not always about the money. But more on that next time.

That’s it, friends. We’re excited to expand the friend group. Invite your friends and maybe even you frenemies (if they’ve got good taste) to join the curation conversation on chain at app.rara.social.

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social.

Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social.

Join our community on Discord at RARA.house.

View tutotiarials or community calls on YouTube.

Weekly Events

• Thursdays at 9PM ET - Let’s Curate! (Twitter Space)

• Fridays at Noon ET - General Admissions x Community Call (Discord)

https://app.rara.social/

Over 100 NFTs curated later, we discovered something pretty special. Here’s a recap.

🌞 Summer of RA! is an exclusive alpha for our most loyal community members - holders of 🌞 Summer of RA! NFTs and other RARA NFTs. Read more here.

Membership to RARA’s app focuses on three token-gated group permissions (1) Curators who can Start Curation, (2) Fans who React and Comment on any curation, and (3) Spectators who are everyone else who are waiting to gain access.

“THANKS I OWN IT NOW” on-chain comment by f0xapocalypse.eth to “Right-click and Save As Guy” curation at the Genesis Curation Party.

Genesis Curation Party

On Saturday, July 23rd 2022, jamming to the music by MAIWORLD, the RARA community, led by guest curators BlockchainBrett and Buddha0x and Curators in Residence ZacKenny and RobynMarieHill, took control of our front page and curated the first NFTs into the protocol.

Want to get into the vibes? Press play here.

First up, RARA’s founder, lwsnbaker, curated “RARABOT #1”.

As the first NFT registered in the Genesis Reaction Registry, it was only appropriate to curate RARABOT “#1” first. Inspired by the PFP created for Harrison Lau’s, RARA Web3 engineer, first day of work, RARABOT “#1” embodies the spirit of RARA. “LFG!” fans cheering on their favorite NFTs.

https://app.rara.social/nft/137/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/13477934942365134845532687062228082192258615338355725056261642040781742014465

Next, we gave featured curators 3 prompts to jumpstart the curation party: first “Genesis Curation”, second “Life on the Internet”, and for the finale, all 🍦 Curator NFT holders were invited to curate their “First NFT Love”. Here’s how they turned out.

Genesis Curations

Realbuddha.eth curated “EthBoy”, a collab between Alotta Money and Trevor Jones, with the curator comment, “was the first blockbuster sale in 2020 which kicked off the bull run for NFTs and crypto art.”

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8/807

“Right-click and Save As Guy” curated by blockchainbrett.eth represents the us vs them feeling NFT enthusiast have. In the curator’s words,

“[‘Right-click and Save As Guy’] is the foundational meme and values that power the NFT space. Everyone can see your NFT but only you own it. Represents the powerful future of content being free to view but valuable to own. Created by the legend, XCOPY.”

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d/1154

Zackenny.eth took their genesis curation in a different direction, “Miss Al Simpson's genesis NFT [‘NYC NEON’] originally sold for $41. She was the first person I ever heard talk about NFTs on NFP with DKliene.”

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d/3919

RARA’s second Curator in Residence, Robyn Marie Hill (f0xapocalypse.eth) doubled-down on Zac’s theme with her “Identity Creation Matrix” curation.

Finally, lwsnbaker.eth welcomed everyone to the event curating the 🌞 Summer of RA! Genesis Curation Party.

Life on the Internet

As MAiWORLD began playing his collab with CONNiE DiGiTAL’s, “Digital CD.v1” (press play!), we began curating NFTs that best represented “Life on the Internet”.

Blockchainbrett.eth flexed his NFT taste with AI Generated Nude Portrait #1, the first AI generated NFTs on SuperRare. Then, he proceeded to tell us the story of the “Lost Robbies”.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d/1

Zackenny.eth curated “Replicator” commenting,

“This piece encapsulates life on the internet, copy, remix, save, corrupt. Mad Dog Jone's Replicator is an innovative commentary on the world of digital goods, and actually requires it to be an NFT to perform its replicating function.”

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xae1fb0cce66904b9fa2b60bef2b8057ce2441538/1

“Ben’s World #2” took us into the NFT metaverse, Voxels, the home of NFT culture. Curated by realbuddha.eth, the late Allotta Money became the first artists to have two NFTs curated into RARA’s protocol.

F0xapocalypse.eth curated “SATOSHICARD - Spells of Genesis - 1/200 - 2015” stating, “It has been called the beginning of the metaverse - the key to this is its interoperability”.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x82c7a8f707110f5fbb16184a5933e9f78a34c6ab/3089931

First NFT Love

Last but not least - we invited all 🍦Curator NFT holders to curate with us their “First NFT Love”.

To welcome them to the curation party, lwsnbaker.eth curated “🍦 Curator” commenting “holders of this NFT have member permissions to START CURATION. Curators have the highest upside potential in terms of curation tokens, they also happen to be RARA taste leaders.”

https://app.rara.social/nft/137/0x5377b7c147074c881c42cf6e7762947cc9130bb3/1

Then, curators went wild.

NFTs post Genesis Curation Party

Beyond the Genesis Curation Party, RARA 🍦 Curators featured “blue chip” NFTs and rising stars. Looking at them now, they are surprisingly thematic and definitely enhancing discovery for fans.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x0e3fb30965eaec2f590c7caea280a30bde6f9e03/70

Blue Chips. Highly recognizable and deeply influential “blue chip” NFTs are few and far between as many NFTs do not stand the test of time. Seeing “EthBoy”, “Fidenza #1”, and “SATOSHICARD - Spells of Genesis - 1/200 - 2015” among the first blue chip NFTs in RARA is a statement by curators and fans alike: these NFTs are important and their curation tokens (received when you react to an NFT) will only become more valuable.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/78000001

”Doge”, one of the most prolific Internet memes, lives outside of crypto, on its own blockchain, and, as of 2021, as an NFT. It’s likely this curation will continue to pay for years to come.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xabefbc9fd2f806065b4f3c237d4b59d9a97bcac7/3366

Gm NFTs. Like all great communities, RARA’s community loves a good tradition. Monday through Friday we all come together to curate NFTs around a common prompt during our Let’s Curate {NFT type} event. Monday’s is the only recurring prompt, Let’s Curate “Gm” – for NFTs that best represent good morning.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x36f4d96fe0d4eb33cdc2dc6c0bca15b9cdd0d648/887

Trash Art. Like new age graffiti, Trash Art is one of the strongest, only-in-crypto, art movements. Traditionally anti-establishment, anti-trademark, and otherwise freely available to the public to use (CC0), Trash Art or #trashart began with artwork featuring trash cans, a 64 GALLON TOTER™️ trash can to be precise.

But, #trashart and the movement has moved beyond literal trash cans to the idea that anything can be art, even a “MCDONALD'S APPLICATION” BY ROBNESS.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xabb3738f04dc2ec20f4ae4462c3d069d02ae045b/6357092

Pepe NFTs. Pepe art has long been prolific in and outside of the crypto community. Though briefly co-opted for political purposes, Pepe art - like #trashart - is art for the people, Internet people. From “PEPE JORDAN” to hiding Pepe in “GM” pieces, Pepe art is infinitely re-mixable and many times acts like a mirror.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xa2c19182bd4468ccf84b88ffd8d3ab120246421b/5

“The Rizzle” at the WIP. On August 4th, RARA showed off the protocol at the WIP. Hosted by @niftytime and @nftland (“Rizzle”), the WIP is the go-to-place to show off newly projects that are “work-in-progress”. As an early adopter of social protocols and metaverses, it was only appropriate to curate Rizzle’s infamous frog PFP.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xef11a9bcd83c7a7d0cc7a37878964bb5300da6d5/18

RARA NFTs. A number of RARA NFTs have been curated into RARA including, the “🌞 Summer of RA! Genesis Curation Party”, “🍦 Curator”, “Genesis GM” from the NFT RA!CE, and our “Loud Paper”.

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0xdf5b5ee15cc96ba7d0cb6bd9b2c0fc4417ab6445/4939

Decentralized NFTs. Finally, in response to the U.S. sanctions on Tornado Cash, a privacy preserving protocol, RARA spent one week curating NFTs that best represented “Censorship Resistance”, “Cryptocurrencies & the Network State”, and “Freedom of Speech”.

F0xapocalypse.eth curation of “Stay Free (Edward Snowden, 2021)” capped off the week best, “Blessed Be The Whistle Blowers!”

https://app.rara.social/nft/1/0x3b3ee1931dc30c1957379fac9aba94d1c48a5405/24437

That’s it fens. We reached 100 curated NFTs. Next stop 1000. Join us. Come curate with frens 🫂 at app.rara.social.

Upcoming Curation Events

Let’s Curate (Every Thursday at 9pm Eastern Time) - Weekly Twitter Space featuring live curations by 🍦 Curator NFT holders and other guest curators. Follow lwsnbaker for notifications.

General Admissions (Every Friday at Noon Eastern Time) - Weekly community call in RARA.house (Discord). From app updates to recaps of this week’s curations, the call is a great spot to dive deeper into the state of RARA.

Genesis Curation Launch Party. Saturday, July 23rd at 11:30AM ET

Location. RARA’s discord (RARA.house).

RSVP for text message reminder here.

Member Passes. Keep reading to learn about the launch and how to get your Curator or Fan pass to gain access.

🌞 Summer of RA!

WHAT. Launch for RARA’s Social Curation Protocol. During the Summer of RA!, holders of Summer of RA! NFTs and other RARA NFTs and tokens will have early access to curate and react to NFTs in the protocol - an early mover advantage to curation token upside and proof that your NFT taste is legit.

WHEN. Launching Saturday, July 23rd, at 11:30AM Eastern Time (3:30pm GMT)

WHERE. The Genesis Curation Party in RARA’s discord (RARA.house)

• 11:30AM ET - NFT Giveaways + Music by MAiWORLD

• Noon ET - Genesis curations with guest curators (BlockchainBrett, Buddha0x, and RARA’s Curators in Residence). After the guest curators, all NFT holders with Curator access will be given the opportunity to curate their “First NFT Love”.

• After Party - Music by MAiWORLD

Join the party to be first to react and comment on-chain to the curated NFTs.

Early Access for Friends

During the launch, exclusive early access to curating the most popular NFTs will be limited to friends of RARA - holders of RARA NFTs and tokens. The goal? Curate with friends.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1541886674757623809?s=20&t=9ynGnmpMEBi37M3PYD1wiA

Access to the launch is broken down between two groups:

• Curators with Start Curation permissions (in addition to Fan permissions)

• Fans with React and Comment permissions

🍦 Curator Passes

Start Curation is the most exclusive permission in the app with the most alpha potential, as well. As the only accounts able to start a curation, Curators have the highest upside potential in terms of curation tokens, they also happen to be RARA taste leaders.

RARA’s protocol is powered by reactions, the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme. For as little as 1 $USDC (cost of a reaction), anyone can add a reaction to an NFT and get curation tokens in return. Curators are the first accounts to react and get curation tokens for NFTs. As more reactions and comments are added, the value of all of the NFT’s curation tokens increases.

The following NFTs will grant access as Curators to Start Curation:

• 🍦 Curator NFTs (link). These special edition Summer of RA! NFT passes were airdropped to the holders noted below.

• Genesis NFTs. Holders of the Genesis GM, Genesis Curator, or Genesis Fan NFTs from the NFT RA!CE.

• Curator POAP Holders. NFT RA!CE accounts who earned Curator POAPs.

Additionally, we are releasing 3 Summer of RA! 🌞 Genesis Curation Party NFTs that give the holders the right to curate one of the genesis NFT curations at our launch party, Saturday, July 23rd.

edition://0x64318DE2380Dbae37437b012a1c1CD4Cb45F65a5?editionId=0

🕶 Fan Passes

React and Comment power social curation. As on-chain commentary, reactions and optional comments drive the conversation around the most popular NFTs. What NFTs are funny? What new pixel art NFTs are worth paying attention to? Which NFTs are driving the culture forward?

The following holders will have access as a Fan to React and Comment:

• 🕶 Fan NFTs (link). These special edition Summer of RA! NFT passes were airdropped to all remaining RARA NFT holders.

• All other RARA NFT Holders. All other holders of NFTs from the RARA Social x Archives.

• $RA! Token Holders. Holders of $RA! tokens from the NFT RA!CE.

Creators + Collectors

RARA’s community will grow as reactions are used and NFTs are curated, too! How? NFT creators and collectors earn money from reactions and curations.

• Reactions. Creators and collectors of NFTs registered as reactions in the Genesis Reaction Registry will gain access to React and Curate.

• Curated NFTs. Creators and collectors of NFTs curated into the protocol will also gain access to React and Curate.

To learn more about Who Earns with RARA, read this post.

https://rara.mirror.xyz/ekL5iqkF8GsiIdTpkMQ_npgLozRY7Pgl_61W-KHK6UM

That’s it, fam. Get your sunscreen. The 🌞 Summer of RA! is about to begin.

#curatewithfriends #curatewithfrens

RSVP for text reminders to the Summer of RA! 🌞 Genesis Curation Party.

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social.

Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social.

Join our community on discord at RARA.house.

P.S. You need $USDC on Polygon to purchase reactions and $MATIC for transaction fees.

• ETH to MATIC. Bridge and swap ETH for MATIC in one transaction with Hashflow.

  https://app.hashflow.com/

• Get $USDC on Polygon. Swap MATIC or other tokens for $USDC on Uniswap. Switch your wallet to Polygon (Link).

In short, NFT creators, collectors, and fans can all make money with RARA.

• Reactions. Creators and Collectors of NFTs registered as reactions earn $USDC.

• Curated NFTs. Creators and Collectors of NFTs curated with reactions earn Curation Tokens (redeemable in $USDC).

• Fans and Curators. Fans and Curators earn Curation Tokens (priced in $USDC)

Creators and collectors earn royalties when their NFTs are used as a reaction or receive reactions. It’s kind of like if you earned a little bit of money for making emojis or received emojis on your Instagram posts.

Fans earn curation tokens in exchange for curating and reacting to NFTs. As more reactions are added to an NFT, the value of early fan curator tokens increases. It’s kind of like earning money for liking a tweet before it goes viral. It costs a little money to do it but you make money by curating cool NFTs early. More importantly, you can finally prove you’ve got good taste in NFTs.

The Curation Pie

Before we dive into how each person can earn with RARA, let’s start with how the money is split between creators, collectors, and fans.

RARA’s social curation protocol is powered by reactions, the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme. For as little as 1 $USDC (cost of a reaction), anyone can add a reaction to an NFT they like and get curation tokens in return. Here’s how the 1 $USDC is split* up between royalties and curation incentives.

The first ~4.5% rewards the owner and creator of the NFT registered as a reaction while the remaining funds are reserved for curation incentives. When a reaction is burned on an NFT, the next ~5% rewards the owner and creator of the curated NFT. Then ~89.5% are used to purchase Curation Tokens - the incentive mechanism for curators and fans. Finally, the protocol has an optional referral fee of 1% (0.5% for reaction purchases and 0.5% for reactions spent on curations) for app builders.

RARA Social Inc. plans to charge these referral fees to support the continued development of its app. We expect other NFT app builders will integrate the protocol and do the same.

*The exact amounts of royalties and curation incentives vary slightly for technical reasons relating to fractions in solidity as are noted below in the "Flow of Funds" section.

“Curation Tokens” are the token representation of the popularity of an NFT. Priced on a bonding curve, curation tokens are ERC-1155 tokens created to incentivize fans to react to and curate the best NFTs early.

“Reactions” are non-transferrable ERC-1155 tokens generated by registered NFT’s media that are consumed by reacting to and curating third-party NFTs. Similar to a Web3 like, emoji, or meme, reactions create a permanent reputation system for NFT.

Curation Incentives

As the largest portion of the pie, curation incentives are what drive RARA. Fans are rewarded curation tokens in exchange for spending $USDC to curate NFTs with reactions. As more reactions are added to the same NFT by others, the value of curation tokens increases.

For example, for every 10,000 $USDC spent on reactions, there is ~$8950 available for minting curation tokens. The amount of curation tokens minted will vary for each curated NFT according to that specific NFT’s bonding curve and whether or not it is an early or late stage curation.

We’ll dive more into the dynamics of the bonding curve in another post, but this tweet thread will provide you with the basics for how curating cool NFTs early can be very rewarding for NFT fans.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1539640840553136128?s=20&t=uQz5SnDQGHkr25M3G1CsgA

Royalties

RARA’s protocol rewards the most popular NFTs for engagement. As reactions and comments are added on NFTs, the creators and collectors of NFTs earn in two ways: (1) reaction royalties and (2) curation royalties.

Reaction Royalties

NFTs registered with the protocol as reactions earn royalties in $USDC every time a reaction is used** to curate NFTs. Reaction royalties are split between the owner of the NFT and creator according to on-chain royalty splits.

RARA’s protocol sets creator royalties according to any on-chain royalties supported by the RoyaltyRegistry. If the RoyaltyRegistry does not support the royalty implementation or the royalties are not set on-chain by the creator, the NFT owner may set the royalty split for reactions.

For example, for every 10,000 $USDC spent with “CryptoStella #112: Celebrity Ape” reactions to curate NFTs, there is 450 $USDC to split between the owner (currently Collin.eth) and creator (@stellabelle). With on-chain royalties set at 10%, the owner will earn 405 $USDC and the creator will earn 45 $USDC in reaction royalties with the remaining funds going towards Curation Royalties and Curation Incentives.

**Reaction royalties are technically earned when a reaction is purchased rather than when the reaction is used. However, the purchase and spend of a reaction is expected to generally be a single step as there is no incentive to hold a reaction as reactions cannot be resold or transferred.

Curation Royalties

NFTs receiving reactions earn royalties in curation tokens which may be redeemed for $USDC. Every time a reaction is added to their NFT, curation tokens are minted to both the fan using the reaction and the owner and creator NFT receiving the reaction. The NFT owner and creator share the royalties according to on-chain royalty splits or as set by the owner. To unlock the curation royalties for themselves and the creator, NFT owners must first register the NFT with the protocol.

For example, if 10,000 $USDC was spent on “CryptoStella #112: Celebrity Ape” reactions curating “Right-click and Save As guy” NFT, approximately 500 $USDC would be used to mint “Right-click and Save As guy Curation Tokens” to the NFT owner (CozomoMedici). As on-chain royalties are currently set at 0% on-chain by XCOPY, the owner would keep all of the curation tokens. The owner can hold the curation tokens in anticipation that the value will increase as more reactions are received or redeem the tokens at any time for $USDC.

Referral Fees

Curators with developer chops and buidlers of NFT platforms and metaverse can earn referral fees for helping sell (saleReferrerBasisPoints) or spend (spendReferrerBasisPoints) reactions to curate NFTs. Referral fees are paid in $USDC and are approximately 0.5% and 0.55% respectively.

For example, for every 10,000 $USDC in reaction sales an app creator would earn ~450 $USDC and another 500 $USDC when the reactions are spent curating NFTs. Flow of Funds For the developers here, check out how the $USDC funds flow down to makers, takers, and fans (curators) in our recently open-sourced protocol GitHub repo here. Do a technical dive into the protocol in our post for devs, too.

https://rara.mirror.xyz/GKuzfq1sv77nbjmfL_mRm2cVX3c_2UIWsDiklGccjiY

That’s it. That’s how creators, collectors, and fans can earn with RARA’s social curation protocol. Genesis Curation Party is next Saturday, July 23rd at noon Eastern Time. More details to follow.

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social.

Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social.

Join our community on discord at RARA.house.

But, we all know that free lunch is not so free. We pay for social memory storage with our time while being spoon-fed whatever the algorithm wants [cough: ads]. Need to show off your Instagram memories on Twitter or better yet maybe make money with them? Good luck with that.

Thankfully Web3 and all its cool tools are shaking up the digital memory space. Best-in-class NFTs store creators’ work online while also introducing the idea of portable assets that anyone can buy or sell.

But, what about all the conversations around the NFTs? Besides the price, do we know what the NFTs fans think about a given NFT? Today, NFT conversations (and their digital memories) are - you guessed it - stored primarily on Twitter.

So how can we create digital memories not subject to Web2 social systems?

“What is needed is an open curation protocol for NFTs with transparent incentives for third parties to add social context to NFTs…In this Loud Paper, we propose a solution to centralized curation through a social curation protocol with transparent incentives and expression-based investments backed by NFTs we call ‘reactions’.” ~ Loud Paper for RARA’s Social Curation Protocol

Translation: Reactions are social memories for NFTs.

Memories from NFT NYC

Speaking of memories, RARA’s team + community paired up with Skybravo + the crew at Voxels to create a space for fellow memory makers at NFT NYC. Streamed into Voxels (formerly Cryptovoxels), the events reached far beyond the 300+ who stepped foot in the Lower East Side venue.

As an open NFT metaverse platform, Voxels excels at digital memories. Anyone can create memories when experiencing Voxel’s 3-dimensions and you had to be there moments - something severely missing on social media platforms. Only so many people can fit comfortably into Connie’s DiGiTAL STUDIO of memories (NFTs) in the Music District where each event creates memories (IYKYK).

Ben Nolan and the Voxel’s crew make for pretty good memory creators, too.

https://twitter.com/cryptovoxels/status/1540156662258216960?s=20&t=8CiskvfLY3i8DMmk1lgQcQ

https://twitter.com/Lo_Rezzed/status/1541839771789627394

For attendees, RARA made beaded necklaces and trinkets with all the memes (“LFG”, “WAGMI”, “GM”, and more).

All giveaways were documented with the king of nostalgia - polaroids.

By Thursday afternoon, RARA’s team was riding the Coney Island Cyclone. It was a hot day but the local beer, Atlantic breeze, and 🎢 roller coasters of all shapes and sizes ensured we stayed cool.

All things told, NFT NYC was a success for RARA’s team. We met our newest team member (Gm Ishii!) for the first time, had our first IRL party, planned the next steps for the Launch Plan (we’ve got a launch date!), and created a lot of on and off-chain memories, too.

Reactions = Social Memories, On-Chain

This leads us back to RARA - we are officially launching our social curation protocol in a private beta on Saturday, July 23rd, at noon ET (RSVP here). Powered by NFT-backed reactions, we hope to create a new dimension on top of NFTs - digital memories for NFT fans, owners, and artists.

https://twitter.com/lwsnbaker/status/1545090321792606209?s=20&t=5n1uJPDfqYWYYlGvYdnfhA

For as little as 1 $USDC (cost of a reaction), anyone can react to and, if desired, add a comment when curating an NFT - providing time-stamped, social context on-chain forever.

Bonus*: make money when others react + comment after you. Reactions, curation, and social memories FTW.*

Follow us on Twitter @rara_social for updates.

Sign up for electronic mail updates at RARA.social.

Join our community on discord at RARA.house.

Finally, register your NFTs as reactions in the Genesis Reaction Registry by July 14th at register.rara.social. Be the first to make money when your reactions are used to curate NFTs starting July 23rd, 2022.

The Social Curation Protocol is officially open-sourced. In an effort to expand the definition of curators beyond the few to any and all, we are publishing our first article for developers, builders, and savvy curators alike. From curated music playlists to curation bots feeding galleries in the metaverse, let’s rethink how the Internet’s most valuable assets are curated and presented to the world. We hope this resource starts the conversation.

What is RARA?

RARA is a social curation protocol, empowering the crowd to help find, promote, and add social context to the best NFTs. With the current state of NFTs, finding and organizing content is a hard problem to solve. RARA is set to change that by introducing curation incentives.

To learn more about the protocol, objectives, and the rollout, check out:

• Loud Paper

• Launch Plan

• Genesis Reaction Registry

• Documentation

• Protocol Github Repo

The deployment addresses of all contracts mentioned in this document can be found at the end of this article and in the deployment artifacts in the Github repo in the subfolder for the desired network.

Developer Use Cases

This document is geared towards developers interacting with the protocol. Check the Documentation link above for the latest details about any interface or parameter changes.

Ethereum (“L1”)  and Polygon (“L2”)

The RARA protocol lives on the Polygon L2 network. Most interactions with the protocol will be done on this layer. However since many popular and valuable NFTs are minted on Ethereum L1, the protocol maintains a bridge from L1 to L2.

Owners

The L1 - L2 bridge is used only to register an L1 NFT into the protocol. Owners register their NFTs to earn rewards by selling Reaction tokens or by claiming curation rewards for NFTs receiving Reactions. The act of registration simply provides proof of ownership of that NFT and allows the protocol to save details about the current owner and other metadata. Registering an NFT does not require you to give up custody of the NFT or provide any allowances for the protocol to move your NFT. NFT owners are simply allowing the protocol to verify that your wallet owns the specified NFT.

When you register your NFT on L1, the ownership verification occurs on L1 and then sends a message through the bridge from L1 to L2 – the details about that NFT will be stored in L2.

If you are registering on L1, you need to call the registerNFT function on the RootRegistrar contract. If you are registering on L2, you need to call the registerNFT function on the MakerRegistrar contract.

    function registerNft(
        address nftContractAddress,
        uint256 nftId,
        address creatorAddress,
        uint256 creatorSaleBasisPoints,
        uint256 optionBits,
        string calldata ipfsMetadataHash
    )

To register, pass your NFT Address and ID. The contract will verify that the calling address owns the NFT before registering it into the protocol. You can optionally pass in royalty information for the Creator Address and percentages (see “NFT Creators” below for more details) formatted as basis points. The optionBits parameter is reserved for future usage and should be set to “0” for now.  In the future, this parameter may be used to allow registrants the ability to specify how a transform can be applied against the underlying artwork. Lastly, the optional ipfsMetadataHash parameter accepts an IPFS CID.  This address should point to a JSON asset that contains metadata,including things like Reaction media, tags, descriptions, and comments. Other than the NFT address and ID, all other values can be left as “0” if you do not wish to use them.

Finally, NFTs that live on Ethereum L1 can also be the target of Reactions spends, as you will see below that the functions to perform this action contain the Chain ID, the target NFT Address, and ID.

NFT Creator Earning Royalties

Creators of NFTs can earn royalties from the protocol in two ways:  (1) selling Reactions, or (2) receiving Reactions.

To earn royalties from Reaction sales, the NFT owner (“Maker”) must register the NFT with the protocol (as detailed above) as Reactions, non-transferrable ERC-1155 tokens generated by the underlying NFT’s media. Curators buy and mint Reactions from the protocol for a cost of 1 $USDC. Reactions are then spent to react, provide context, and vote on other NFTs. Think of a Reaction as a sticker/emoji/like button for other NFTs. This “spend” action attaches the spent Reaction to the target Taker NFT. Makers earn a portion of each Reaction purchased.

To earn royalties from receiving Reactions, a Reaction must be “spent” on an NFT created or owned by you. The owner of the NFT receiving Reactions (“Taker”) and its Creator share in the Taker rewards when their NFT is the receiver of a Reaction spend.

As the Creator of an NFT, you may have set creator royalties on-chain. The protocol will honor these royalties automatically each time your NFT earns royalties from Reaction sales or Reaction spends.

Under the hood, RARA uses the Royalty Registry to query a creator percentage cut. The Royalty Registry supports:

• EIP2981 compatible NFTs

• Minted NFTs with creator rewards defined on

  • SuperRare

  • Rarible

  • Manifold

  • Zora (limited functionality)

If you minted an NFT not supported by the Royalty Registry, you can still earn rewards by creating a royalty override contract and registering it on the Royalty Registry.

For NFTs that do not have on-chain royalties, the registering owner can optionally add the parameters to enable you to collect rewards. Simply set a Creator Address and a Creator Sale Basis Points during registration to set it up. If royalty details are found on-chain, these will override any royalty information that the registrant manually set.

Once you have defined the creator royalties, you will earn rewards in two scenarios. First, when a Reaction backed by an NFT you created is sold, a cut of the purchase price is allocated to your address in the form of an ERC20 Payment Token(currently $USDC). You will accumulate rewards until you decide to withdraw them. Second, if a user curates an NFT that you created by sending Reactions, you receive Curation Tokens for the NFT. You will accumulate these Curation Tokens until you sell them back to the bonding curve, withdrawing the value of those Curation tokens in ERC20 Payment Tokens.

See the details below for developer interactions for withdrawing Payment Token Rewards and Selling Curator Tokens.

NFT Makers Registering Reactions

If you currently own an NFT, you can register it as a “Maker” to be used as a Reaction. NFTs can be transformed into one or multiple Reactions (all based on the same underlying NFT) using the optionBits parameter. Each time someone purchases a Reaction, you will get a cut of the purchase price with the remaining funds going towards curation incentives.

To submit an NFT to be purchased as a Reaction, register it with the protocol. As mentioned above, depending on where your NFT resides, you will need to call the registerNFT function on the RootRegistrar contract (if your NFT was minted on L1). If your NFT is on L2, call the registerNFT function on the MakerRegistrar contract.

    function registerNft(
        address nftContractAddress,
        uint256 nftId,
        address creatorAddress,
        uint256 creatorSaleBasisPoints,
        uint256 optionBits,
        string calldata ipfsMetadataHash
    )

Curators Spending Reactions for Curation Tokens

Addresses that buy and spend Reactions in the protocol are known as  “Curators”. Curating is similar to “liking” an image or adding a comment to a social media post. Reactions themselves may have associated context such as a “thumbs up”, “thumbs down”, or other memes like “GM”, “WAGMI”, or similar. Additionally a Reaction spend can include metadata, such as comments or tags.

Curators are motivated to use Reactions (1) to provide social context to receiving NFTs and (2) to earn rewards by identifying viral NFTs early. Every time you spend a Reaction on an NFT, the portion of each Reaction’s purchase price reserved for curation incentives is used to buy Curation Tokens associated with that NFT.

Each curated NFT has a bonding curve associated with it. For launch, we chose a sigmoid curve. The sigmoid curve is used to represent the adoption curve of technology by three groups: early adopters, majority users, and finally laggards.

Early spenders of Reactions on a curated NFTs receive Curation Tokens for a cheap price. As more Reactions are spent by others, the Curation Token price increases - slowly at first, then aggressively, and finally slowing back down.

As a holder of Curation Tokens, you can sell the tokens back to the bonding curve whenever you choose in exchange for Payment Tokens ($USDC). This gamifies the virality of curated NFTs. Curation Token holders are incentivized to hold the tokens until they think the peak virality is achieved. As Curation Tokens are sold back to the bonding curve, new curators can react to earn from on-going virality of important NFTs.

To buy Reactions, you need to call the buyReaction function on the ReactionVault contract.

    function buyReaction(
        uint256 transformId,
        uint256 quantity,
        address destinationWallet,
        address referrer,
        uint256 optionBits
    )

When an NFT is registered in the protocol, it is assigned a Transform ID. This ID is derived from the hash of a constant prefix, the Source ID of the NFT, and the Option Bits specified by the user registering.

        // Generate reaction ID
        uint256 transformId = uint256(
            keccak256(abi.encode(MAKER_META_PREFIX, sourceId, optionBits))
        )

The Prefix is defined as the string “MAKER”.

The Source ID is defined as a hash of the Chain ID where the NFT lives, the NFT contract address, and the NFT ID.

    function _deriveSourceId(
        uint256 chainId,
        address nftContractAddress,
        uint256 nftId
    ) internal pure returns (uint256) {
        return
            uint256(keccak256(abi.encode(chainId, nftContractAddress, nftId)));
    }

The other parameters included in the buyReaction function call are the quantity (how many Reactions to purchase), the destinationWallet (where the Reactions should be sent), the referrer (optional address where to send referral fees for builders like you), and optionsBits (a reserved parameter for future usage to allow the purchaser to specify additional parameters which should just be 0 for now).

Once the Reaction purchase is complete, the Payment Tokens for the amount of Reactions purchased is moved into the ReactionVault from your wallet (you must approve the amount first) and ERC1155 Reaction NFTs with the associated Reaction ID will be minted to your wallet. Reactions are non-transferable and can only be spent at this point.

To generate the Reaction ID, first a valid ParameterVersion must be generated. This is a unique hash of the Payment Token, the Reaction Price, and the amount of the Reaction price that went towards the Curator Liability. This is tracked because Reactions purchased with a different price, token, or Curator Liability should be unique from each other.

    function deriveParameterVersion(IParameterManager parameterManager)
        public
        returns (uint256)
    {
        // Build the parameter version from the price details
        return
            uint256(
                keccak256(
                    abi.encode(
                        parameterManager.paymentToken(),
                        parameterManager.reactionPrice(),
                   parameterManager.saleCuratorLiabilityBasisPoints()
                    )
                )
            );
    }

Once the Parameter Version is determined, a Reaction Prefix (“REACTION”), the Transform ID of the NFT, and user specified option bits are all hashed to generate the Reaction ID.

    function deriveReactionId(
        uint256 transformId,
        uint256 optionBits,
        uint256 parameterVersion
    ) public pure returns (uint256) {
        // Build and return the reaction ID
        return
            uint256(
                keccak256(
                    abi.encode(
                        REACTION_META_PREFIX,
                        parameterVersion,
                        transformId,
                        optionBits
                    )
                )
            );
    }

Reactions generated from the same NFTs with the same parameters will have the same Reaction IDs, so purchasing additional amounts of these Reactions will increase your balance for the same Reaction in your wallet.

Once you have purchased Reactions, you can then use them to Curate. The act of Curating is “Spending” a Reaction on a target Taker NFT. To Curate an NFT, call the spendReaction function of the ReactionVault contract.

    function spendReaction(
        uint256 takerNftChainId,
        address takerNftAddress,
        uint256 takerNftId,
        uint256 reactionId,
        uint256 reactionQuantity,
        address referrer,
        address curatorVaultOverride,
        string memory ipfsMetadataHash
    )

To spend the Reaction, you will need to specify details about the target NFT (the “Taker” NFT). This includes the Chain ID where the Taker NFT lives, the Taker NFT contract address, and the Taker NFT ID.

You will also need to specify the reactionId and the quantity to spend.

Finally, other parameters include (1) an optional referrer address (address to send referral fees for spend rewards); (2) an optional Curator Vault Override (to override the default sigmoid bonding curve for future alternative incentive mechanisms. Leave as address 0x0 for the default); and (3) an optional IPFS hash (a JSON file with tags or comments with additional context. Leave as empty if not used).

When the Reactions are spent, the ERC1155 tokens are burned from your address, and Curation Tokens from the Curator Vault will be minted to your address. The earlier you are in the Taker NFT’s bonding curve, the lower the price of Curation Tokens will be.

As others spend Reactions against the same curated NFT, the Curation Tokens will increase in value and you can sell them back to capture the curation rewards. To sell your Curation Tokens, you need to call the sellCuratorTokens function on the SigmoidCuratorVault contract.

    function sellCuratorTokens(
        uint256 nftChainId,
        address nftAddress,
        uint256 nftId,
        IERC20Upgradeable paymentToken,
        uint256 tokensToBurn,
        address refundToAddress
    )

The parameters for this function are the details for the Taker NFT receiving Reactions spends. This includes the Taker NFT Chain ID, the Taker NFT contract address, and the Taker NFT ID. Additionally you must include the Payment Token associated with the Reactions that were originally spent, the amount of Curation Tokens to burn, and the address where you would like the funds generated from the sale of your Curation Tokens to end up.

NFT Takers

If you own an NFT that has been curated, you are allocated Curation Tokens as the Taker NFT. Each time a curator spends Reactions against your NFT, a percentage of the funds is used to buy Curation Tokens and assign them to your NFT. To claim and sell these Curation Tokens, you must first register your NFT into the protocol as the owner (See Owners Registering NFTs above).

After registering your NFT, you can call withdrawTakerRewards function on the ReactionVault contract.

    function withdrawTakerRewards(
        uint256 takerNftChainId,
        address takerNftAddress,
        uint256 takerNftId,
        IERC20Upgradeable paymentToken,
        address curatorVault,
        uint256 curatorTokenId,
        uint256 tokensToBurn,
        address refundToAddress
    )

To withdraw the rewards from your accumulated Curation Tokens, you will need to provide the Taker NFT details. This includes the Chain ID where the NFT lives, the NFT contract address, and the NFT ID. Additionally, you need to provide the Payment Tokens address associated with the Reactions spent against the NFT, the address for the Curator Vault, the Curator Vault Token ID for your NFT, and the amount of tokens to withdraw and the address where the rewards should be sent. This function will return the amount of Payment Tokens that were sent back to your refund address.

The curatorTokenId is a hash of the NFT details and the Payment Token address. This ensures a unique Curator Vault Token ID and bonding curve is used for each NFT and Payment Token.

    function _getTokenId(
        uint256 nftChainId,
        address nftAddress,
        uint256 nftId,
        IERC20Upgradeable paymentToken
    ) internal pure returns (uint256) {
        return
            uint256(
                keccak256(
                    abi.encode(nftChainId, nftAddress, nftId, paymentToken)
                )
            );
    }

When you withdraw the Taker Rewards, the tokens are sold into the bonding curve for Payment Tokens. These Payment Tokens are then split between the Creator Rewards (set during registration) with the remaining amount sent to the Refund Address. The Creator Rewards are stored in the ReactionVault contract for the Creator Address to withdraw at a later date.

Referrers

If you are building an application that interacts with the RARA protocol, you can earn referral fees by facilitating both the Buying and Spending of Reactions. Each time you build a transaction to facilitate one of these interactions for your users, you can earn payment tokens from the transaction. To collect a referrer fee, insert your address into the “referrer” parameter in the transaction and a percentage of the value being exchanged will be stored in the ReactionVault contract for you to withdraw at the time.

Reward Withdrawal

As a Creator, Maker, or Referrer, you are allocated rewards in the form of Payment Tokens each time users interact with your NFT (by buying or spending Reactions). Rewards are ERC20 compatible tokens that accumulate against your address. You can query the amount of rewards you have accumulated by reading the ownerToRewardsMapping and passing in the Payment Token address and your Address. The automatically generated public getter function will be available to query for this mapping in the ReactionVault contract.

    mapping(IERC20Upgradeable => mapping(address => uint256))
        public ownerToRewardsMapping;

To withdraw your rewards, call the withdrawErc20Rewards function on the ReactionVault contract by passing the associated Payment Token address. This function will return the amount of Payment Tokens that were sent to your account.

    function withdrawErc20Rewards(IERC20Upgradeable token)
        external
        nonReentrant
        returns (uint256)
    {

Reading Protocol Configuration

To view details about the protocol configuration, you can query the public variables stored in the ParameterManager contract. This will provide you details about contract addresses, current Payment Tokens being used, the percentages of fee splits, the price of a single Reaction, and any approved Curator Vaults (in addition to the default one used). More details will be provided about percentages and flow of funds in a later post.

That’s it. That’s the protocol. Open-sourced, permissionless curation by all - even you, anon.

Contracts

RootRegistrar - 0x2665Aa3846EC61e6D28A0d9F76b70047719F3664

MakerRegistrar 0x47CD3266FA94E40613B37a88D98196325Cd28412

ReactionVault - 0xE5BA5c73378BC8Da94738CB04490680ae3eab88C

SigmoidCuratorVault - 0x7D278Aa2d95ABa7C969c9F316be6f0cFE0D18A50

ParameterManager 0xF60de25472b10e5886270b13dDec51D8BaDcd764

Related Contracts

USDC Contract (Polygon) - 0x2791Bca1f2de4661ED88A30C99A7a9449Aa84174

Next Steps

1. Review the docs.

2. Contribute to the Github Repo.

3. Build a bot on Discord or Twitter for the Protocol

4. Ask questions in the #developers channel of our discord at RARA.house.

5. Subscribe to our email list on RARA.social.

Gm creators + collectors, today’s a new day for NFT royalties.

Announcing the Genesis Reaction Registry, where artists and collectors register their NFTs to sell reaction, the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme. Add your NFT to the Genesis Reaction Registry by June 30th, 2022 July 14, 2022 to sell reaction tokens to fans curating NFTs at launch.

Register at register.rara.social ↗.

“Reactions” are non-transferrable ERC-1155 tokens generated by an NFT’s media that are consumed by reacting to and curating third-party NFTs. Similar to a Web3 like, emoji, or meme, reactions create a permanent reputation system for NFT.

What is the Genesis Reaction Registry?

May 25th - July 14th, 2022 at Midnight - 12 AM EDT (5 AM UTC)

The Genesis Reaction Registry is the first launch phase for our Social Curation Protocol for NFTs when artists and collectors register their NFTs in anticipation of selling reactions.

Register your best NFTs to gain early access to sell reactions when curation launches in July.

What NFTs to register

PFPs and Memes. PFPs that express an emotion like an emoji (😂) or meme NFTs are perfect to turn into reactions.

CC0 and NFTs with Commercial Rights*. To sell reaction tokens, NFT collectors need a copyright to sell copies or derivative work. CC0 NFTs registered in the public domain (e.g., Nouns) or NFTs that grant holders commercial rights (e.g., Bored Ape Yacht Club) are eligible to register as reactions. Search for CC0 NFTs at CC0.dev or learn more about other NFTs copyrights in our open-sourced NFT Rights Registry.

*This is not legal advice. You should review the rights granted to your NFTs and, if necessary, consult your attorney or the artists before registering an NFT.

How artists and collectors earn money

Registering an NFT as a reaction is a new way to tap your intellectual property to generate additional social and financial capital through on-chain royalties.

1. Increase the popularity of the underlying NFT. With every NFT-backed reaction sold, the value of your NFT increases.

2. Make money selling reactions, not the underlying NFT. Fans can buy an unlimited amount of reactions for 1 $USDC each to burn on and curate other NFTs. NFT artists and owners share the ~5% “Maker Reward” of reaction sales based on on-chain royalties.

For example, a single NFT may receive ~100,000 USDC in reactions before the value of the curation token (as set by the NFTs bonding curve) levels out. If a fan spends 10,000 USDC on your reaction to and curate an NFT, the Maker Reward is ~500 USDC. Multiply this by the millions of NFTs that can be curated with popular reactions and you have yourself a tidy little cash-flow machine.

How to register

Go to register.rara.social ↗.

1st, Add your NFT. Add a URL or the Contract Address and Token ID and connect your wallet to the same network as the NFT (Ethereum or Polygon).

2nd, Setup your Reaction

• Reaction Name. Give your reaction a name like “Mr. Jenkins” for BAYC #1798.

• Tag (Optional). Add search tags like bayc or 🦧 so users can find reactions to fit their use case.

• Reaction Border (Optional). Check this box to remove the white border and shadow effect

• Custom Artwork (Optional). Check this box to request custom artwork for your NFT (e.g., you want to add a “GM” talk bubble to a PFP).

• Email (Optional). - Stay up-to-date on the status of your reaction and RARA.

3rd, Set Royalties. If creator resale royalties are not set on-chain, add the creator’s address and set their royalty split – this allows creators to share in a percentage of the “Maker Reward” generated by the sale of each reaction.

4th, Sign Transaction. Confirm ownership via a signed transaction.

How reactions are approved

Any NFT may be registered with the protocol and sold as reactions. However, only reactions approved by the community will be available for sale in RARA’s app. NFTs may be approved a reaction for launch in the following ways:

1. Genesis NFT Holders. Holders of RARA’s Genesis GM, Genesis Curator, or Genesis Fan NFTs can register 3 NFTs for auto-approval.

2. Reactions of the Week. As reactions are registered, we’ll add them to our Discord server as emojis for community voting. The top 10 most used reactions will be approved for launch.

3. Fan Favorite. Weekly poll for top 3 favorite reactions.

4. Curated 888 Reaction Packs. Starting today, 8 Curators in Residence will be able to curate 8 artists who may submit 8 or more NFTs to the reaction registry for auto-approval. The first three curators are lwsnbaker (RARA’s founder) and two of RARA’s top curators from the NFT RA!CE, Zak Kenny and Robyn Marie Hill (f0xapocalypse.ETH). More reaction curators are to be announced.

Join our Discord server to vote for your favorite reactions.

That’s a wrap. LFRAAA!!! Register your NFTs today at register.rara.social ↗.

Resources

Got questions? Read the FAQ.

Want to know what’s coming next? Read the Launch Plan.

Want to learn more about curation incentives and how the protocol works? Read the Loud Paper and Transforming NFTs into Reactions.

Stay up to date by signing up for email updates at RARA.social and following @rara_social on Twitter. Join the conversation in our community on Discord at RARA.house.

Updated (May 23, 2022) - This post has been updated to clarify launch dates and add a link to the CC0.dev and the NFT Rights Registry.

It’s almost go time, friends. Six weeks ago we published the Loud Paper describing RARA’s Social Curation Protocol for NFTs. Today, that protocol was deployed to mainnet. Here’s how we’ll bring the protocol to you in our upcoming app for curating NFTs.

In short, The Summer of RA! is coming.

• Step 1, Protocol Deployment // We’re live!

• Step 2, Genesis Reaction Registry // May 25th-July 14th, 2022

• Step 3, The Summer of RA! // July 2022

• Step 4, Public Launch // August 2022

• Step 5, Developer Tooling & New Curation Experiences // Winter 2022

A Quick Recap

Before we dive into the launch plan, here’s a quick recap of the protocol.

The goal. Give a voice to a world of curators with NFT-backed Reactions tokens, the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme. Some might even call RARA graffiti - a permanent portable, permissionless reputation system for NFTs as set by the fans.

The objectives.

• Reward discovery and curation of NFTs;

• Enable personal expression through NFT-backed reactions; and

• Create public, composable curation data.

The result. A social economy is born.

NFT Fans & Curators. RARA’s Social Curation Protocol allows NFT fans and curators to go long the popularity and virality of NFTs. Fans purchase NFT-backed Reactions and burn them in exchange for Curation Tokens of other NFTs - a permanent Reaction that sticks to the NFT forever. As more reactions are added, the value of the Curation Tokens increases and can be sold for more than the cost of the Reactions spent. Curated NFTs never leave the protocol, allowing for the value of Curator Tokens to fluctuate, giving more potential for NFT fans to make money through open, social curation.

NFT Creators & Collectors. NFT owners and creators* make money either by selling Reactions after registering their NFT as Reactions, and as a royalty when their NFT receives Reactions and is curated.

*Creator earnings are subject to resale royalties set by the creator and supported by the Royalty Registry or, if not set, as detailed by the current NFT owner.

Now to how the launch will work.

Step 1, Protocol Deployment

Today somewhere in the northern hemisphere of a pale blue dot in the Milky Way Galaxy, a group of dreamers, builders, and shadowy super-coders deployed RARA’s protocol to mainnet. The protocol lives on Polygon while a messaging contract lives on Ethereum to support L1 NFTs. We’ll provide more documentation for our open-sourced protocol soon. Here’s a summary of key contracts.

1. Reaction Registry Contract. NFT owners register their NFTs to sell as “Reactions”, non-transferable, consumable tokens based on the underlying NFT’s media. Reactions are registered with the Reaction Registry Contract on Polygon or via a messaging contract on Ethereum. Reaction tokens are purchased with 1 $USDC and minted on Polygon by users of reactions (“Curators”).

2. Curation Vault Contract. Curators burn Reactions in exchange for curation tokens minted on Polygon, to react to and curate an NFT. Ethereum or Polygon NFTs may be curated into the Curation Vault Contract directly on Polygon.

Step 2, The Genesis Reaction Registry

OPENING. May 25th at 12:00 PM EDT (5:00 PM UTC)

CLOSING. July 14th at (Midnight) 12:00 AM EDT (5:00 AM UTC)

LOCATION. RARA.social

During the Genesis Reaction Registry period, NFT artists and collectors may register their NFTs in anticipation of selling* reactions in Step 3. Any NFT registered for the Genesis Reaction Registry during this period is eligible for inclusion at launch (an ‘early mover’s advantage’ to register and sell Reactions). The community will vote to approve reactions to be included in the initial launch. Voting will occur off-chain in RARA’s discord, found at RARA.house.

*NFTs registered with the protocol to sell reactions should grant NFT collectors commercial rights to sell copies or derivative works (e.g., BAYC Terms) or be registered with CC0 as “no rights reserved” and in the public domain. You can search for CC0 NFTs on CC0.dev. For non-CC0 projects, we’ve open-sourced The NFT Rights Registry to catalog NFTs by their copyright, trademark, and other rights. View the NFT Rights Registry.

More details about how to register NFTs and community voting will be released the day of the Genesis Reaction Registry launch.

Step 3, The Summer of RA!

LAUNCHING. July 2022

Curating NFTs with reactions will go live in the app during the Summer of RA! During this period, exclusive early access to curating the most popular NFTs will be limited to the following people:

Genesis NFT Holders. Holders of the Genesis GM, Genesis Curator, or Genesis Fan NFT from the NFT RA!CE will have full access to the app in the app including:

• Start Curation. the exclusive right to start a curation of an NFT;

• Exhibiting. Curating NFTs into exhibits; and

• React & Comment. Buy and burn reactions on curated NFTs in exchange for curation tokens and on-chain comments.

Curator POAP Holders. Anyone who earned a Curator POAPs during the NFT RA!CE will have full access to the app including Start Curation, Exhibiting, and React & Comment.

$RA! Token Holders. Holders of $RA! tokens may React & Comment on curated NFTs and Exhibits.

All other RARA NFTs & POAP Holders. All other holders of RARA minted NFTs or RARA POAPs may React & Comment on curated NFTs and Exhibits.

Creators & Collectors of Curated NFTs & Registered as Reaction. As NFTs are approved by the community as Reactions or the NFT is curated into the protocol, the owners and creators of those NFTs will gain access to RARA to claim the “Maker’s Cut” and “Taker’s Cut”. Maker’s Cut is approximately 5% of reaction sales and “Taker’s Cut” is approximately 5% of each Curation Token minted (See the Loud Paper for more details on fund flows). Additionally, NFT owners and creators will be able to React & Comment on curated NFTs and Exhibits.

Step 4, Public Launch

LAUNCHING. August 2022

After the Summer of RA!, the app will begin opening to the public. First, the public will gain access to React & Comment on curated NFTs and Exhibits. Access to Start Curation and Exhibiting will be earned based on the person’s on-chain reputation as a leader or follower in $TASTE in NFTs (More on this next time).

Step 5, Developer Tooling & New Curation Experiences

LAUNCHING. Winter 2022

As reactions proliferate and the most valuable NFTs are curated into the protocol, the need for new curation experiences and integrating RARA’s protocol into other NFT platforms grows. Later this year, RARA will start working on developer tooling and ways for other builders to create unique curation experiences.

For example, what would reactions look or sound like for a music NFT player? Or, how would you like to engage with cool NFTs in metaverses like Cryptovoxels? We can assure it won’t just be another like button. Where we are going is much farther beyond.

That’s it, friends. LFGooooo! Mark your calendars for May 25th. RA. RA!

Sign-up for email updates at RARA.social.

Join our community to continue the Launch Plan conversation at RARA.house.

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram for launch and community announcements.

Are you an Artist? Get into the Pre-Game minting NFTs to register as reactions and join the action in the #reactions channel in our discord.

Recently, we published the Loud Paper to introduce RARA’s Social Curation Protocol for NFTs. A core primitive of the protocol is transforming NFTs into 1x use reaction tokens, the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme.

Today we will dive deeper into reactions as follows:

1. What are NFT transformations and reactions;

2. How to make money with reactions; and

3. What NFTs to register as reactions.

What are NFT transformations and reactions?

“Reactions” are non-transferrable, consumable tokens generated by an NFT’s media that are used to react to and curate third-party NFTs.

“Transformation” (updated May 18th, 2022) is the process of turning an NFT into a reaction. NFT owners transform NFTs into 1x use ERC-1155 tokens based on the work of the NFT. Transformation can be as simple as a copy, fun remix, or even cutting out the key focal points of an NFT.

To transform NFTs into reactions, NFT owners (1) name their reaction, (2) add tags for searchability (e.g., LOL, 😉, or BAYC), (3) confirm the look of the transformed reaction, (4) set creator royalties (if not predefined), and (5) prove ownership of their NFT in the  registration process. The transformed media is used to mint reaction tokens which are non-transferrable and only useable for curation.

Transformations enable NFT owners to pick out the best part of an NFT and make it look like a cool reaction for other NFTs.

Genesis Transformations (updated May 18th, 2022). For the Genesis Reaction Registry, NFT owners may create exact copies of an NFT, add a simple border and shadow (similar to adding a white matte around a picture before framing), or request a custom transformation like these.

Future transformation effects will be released to support more media types (e.g., GIF, MP4, WAV) and different contexts such as socially liking and curating NFTs. For example, the Genesis Transformation effect is good for curating NFTs in social feeds analogous to Instagram, but a different transformation may be better for curating NFTs in a 3D environment like Cryptovoxel’s metaverse.

How to Make Money with Reactions

Transforming NFTs into reactions is native monetization of media.

If you own a Picasso, you don’t want to sell the Picasso, you want to sell museum tickets and posters. Similarly, long term holders of NFTs do not want to sell their NFTs. Hodlers want to sell experiences with their NFTs. Reactions are fan experiences with NFTs custom built for the social experience of liking and curating NFTs together as a community.

Earning Yield. Making money with reactions is simple. Register NFTs to sell reactions. Earn the “Maker’s Cut” of 4.5% of every reaction sold. The Maker’s Cut is set by the protocol and all or a portion may be shared with the NFT creator. The remainder of the reaction sales proceeds are reserved for curation incentives which will be discussed in a future post.

Increasing Valuations. The underlying value of an NFT will increase as the NFT sells reactions. NFTs with a history of earning cash-flow will become more valuable than comparable NFTs without cash-flow. Currently NFTs are valued based on their goodwill “meme” value. When RARA’s protocol is released, NFT value will be meme value + discounted cash-flow value adjusted for growth expectations.

The result? NFT valuations will be easier to define, making NFTs even more valuable across Web3 including DeFi.

Which NFTs to Register as Reactions?

RARA’s protocol will launch with a Genesis Reaction Registry for NFTs. RARA’s community will help select which reactions will be whitelisted for launch.

Wondering which NFTs in your wallet to register with the Genesis Reaction Registry? Any NFT(*) can be registered but not all reactions are created equal.

Great reactions, like great emojis and memes, express something.

• Emojis. Express emotion (👍, 🥰, 😂)

• Memes. Express shared community meaning (GM, WAGMI, Diamond Hands)

PFP Collections. NFTs designed for profile photos are excellent candidates for NFTs to register as reactions. Why?

• Web3 Emojis. PFPs will be the Web3 equivalent of emoji faces. Imagine owning the PFP equivalent of the wink 😜 emoji or something loved by NFT fans like zombie 🧟*.*

• Singular focus. PFPs have solid backgrounds with a singular focus which makes for great memeability and easy transformations.

• Community signals. PFP collections, like discord server emojis + stickers, give communities tools to signal to each other. For example, an NFT curated with a lot of zombie CryptoPunk’s is likely a signal from the community.

Memes. Crypto runs on memes. Since Hal Finney tweeted “Running bitcoin”, and a BitcoinTalk poster was too drunk to spell as he declared “I AM HODLING”, memes have proliferated our culture. The most valuable NFTs are memes – NFT-backed reactions will be the same.

That’s where the MemeHunt comes in. As we lead up to the protocol launch, RARA’s community is on the hunt for the best NFT memes to register with the protocol. Follow @rara_social on twitter and join the hunt.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1511736734039494658?s=20&t=LR-8V3RE273HdFMI7e6-7A

Learn more about turning your NFTs into Reactions.

1. Add your NFT to this form to learn more about the Genesis Reaction Registry.

2. Read the Loud Paper.

3. Join our discord at RARA.house.

4. Subscribe to our email list on RARA.social.

P.S. Copyright for Copies, Remixes, & Derivative Work

(Updated May 18, 2022)

Prior to registering an NFT with the protocol, NFT owners should ensure the creator granted the have the appropriate copyright to create copies, remixes, or derivative work and to sell reactions. NFTs registered as CC0 or otherwise grant NFT holders commercial rights to sell copies or derivative work rights based on the work of the NFT are perfect NFTs to register. For example, NounsDAO, CryptoToadz, Sartoshi’s mfers, and Loot are example CC0 collections while other NFTs like Bored Ape Yacht Club enable certain commercial rights. However, you should review each NFT yourself, talk to your own attorney, or just ask the creator if you are unsure of your NFT rights.

More details to follow in another post.

Introduction

Curation of media on the Internet relies on centralized curation of platform algorithms or permission of the media owner. While this system works well for platforms and those with enough money to have a platform, it ignores the broader society’s role in curation. Centralized curation algorithms define “Who are the curators?” and “What media matters?” Consumers of media are becoming wary of the hidden biases and incentives of these centralized curators and the quality of their media feeds. These biases can be avoided when all relevant data and curation algorithms are publicly available. However, this is not done in practice. In Web3, the curation data is publicly available but curation relies on Web2 algorithms or permission of the NFT owner. In the case of existing curation protocols, NFT ownership or permission is often required. As a result, curation incentives are premised on direct NFT sales and sales commissions by third-parties. These solutions prohibit the curation of NFTs not for sale, curation of NFTs without the owner’s permission, and otherwise curation by objective third parties.

What is needed is an open curation protocol for NFTs with transparent incentives for third parties to add social context to NFTs. Permissionless and composable curation replaces centralized curation. Anyone who cares enough can invest a small amount in a curation. Coupled with expression-based investments, communities will form around curation where social context is paramount.

In this Loud Paper, we propose a solution to centralized curation through a social curation protocol with transparent incentives and expression-based investments backed by NFTs we call “reactions”.

The Social Curation Protocol

RARA is a social curation protocol open to anyone wishing to curate NFTs with others. The objectives of the protocol are:

• Reward discovery and curation of NFTs;

• Enable personal expression through NFT-backed reactions; and

• Create public, composable curation data.

Curation is the act of adding context and, in the case of RARA, social context. Protocol users add social context to NFTs by burning NFT-based reactions on NFTs. The media of the curated NFT and the media of each Reaction create a media graph of society’s most loved NFTs.

Social curation enables anyone to become a curator and contribute to a network of curations. The curation is incentivized by the feedback loop of communities forming around things they like. Rather than paying for promotion, NFT owners and creators get paid for promotion and engagement as they share in the curation rewards (on-chain cash flow) generated by curator activity on their NFTs.

RARA’s protocol couples incentives and a socially curated media graph to create a clear providence of curation through appreciation. NFTs engaged as Reactions or curated by the protocol directly benefit across social and financial value systems. By making curation open to all fans of NFTs, the NFT conversation can move beyond price to impact on society.

How it works

1. NFT owners (“Makers”) register NFTs to sell as “Reactions”, non-transferable, consumable tokens generated from the registered NFT’s media to users of Reactions (“Curators”).

2. Curators buy and burn Reactions on other NFTs they like in exchange for Curation Tokens of the curated NFT. The types of Reactions an NFT receives add social context to the curated NFT, other NFTs receiving the same Reaction, and the NFT underlying the Reactions. For each Curation Token minted to a Curator, the owner of the NFT curated (“Taker”) receives Curation Tokens, as well.

3. As more Reactions are burned, the value of a Curation Token’s claim on bonding curve assets increases. Curators that react early to popular NFTs may be eligible to claim more funds from the bonding curve than they spent on purchasing the Reactions burned - netting a profit for their early curation.

For example, Alice registers her “GM” NFT with the protocol to sell GM Reaction tokens. When Bob buys some GM Reactions, Alice receives a portion of the sale while the remainder is retained by the protocol for curation incentives.

Bob burns GM Reactions on Carol’s “Dope Song” NFT. Carol and Bob receive $RAdopesong Curation Tokens purchased from the bonding curve as an incentive to curate art.

Then, Eve burns “FOMO” Reactions on Carol’s “Dope Song” NFT in return for $RAdopesong Curation Tokens which locks up more funds in the bonding curve for “Dope Song” NFT. The value of Bob’s $RAdopesong tokens are now worth more than the purchase price. Bob can withdraw profits by selling his $RAdopesong Curation Tokens back to the bonding curve, or Bob can continue to hold onto his Curation Tokens in hopes that more Curators will react. Stated differently, Bob is incentivized to hold Curation Tokens as long as he expects “Dope Song” curation continues to trend, or better yet, become the next big thing - attracting more Curators to react. As popularity wanes, Bob’s incentives shift towards realizing the gains on his early purchase.

Register NFT to Create Reactions

Reactions

Reactions turn NFTs into the Web3 equivalent of a like, emoji, or meme. Curators use NFTs as Reactions to add social context to other NFTs. Reactions are consumed by burning the Reaction on an NFT - creating a permanent, portable reputation system for NFTs. As crypto consumables, the NFT owner and Reaction buyer agree to temporary terms of use for Reaction tokens defined by the number of transactions, block time, and smart contracts interactions. For protocol launch, Reactions will be consumed in one transaction per curation.

Reaction Transformations. Prior to the protocol release, RARA will reveal more information about how NFT media is transformed into Reactions.

Registration

Makers create Reactions by registering their NFT’s with the protocol to offer Reactions for sale. Any token conforming to the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards* are supported for registration without the need for wrapping, permissions, or allowances.

*Additional non-conforming tokens such as Cryptopunks will be supported at launch.

Using Reactions to Curate NFTs

Curators buy and burn Reactions for expression-based investing in curated NFTs.

Buying Reactions

Minting Reactions. ERC-1155 Reaction tokens are minted when funds are sent to the Reaction Vault. For protocol launch, the price per Reaction token is set at 1 $USDC/each.

Reaction Rewards. A portion of the Reaction sale is made immediately available for withdrawal by the Maker. At registration, Maker may optionally agree to share a portion of the Maker’s cut pursuant to any prior agreements with Creator. Third-parties who refer buyers of Reactions may also earn a referral cut set by the protocol.

Curating NFTs

Burn Reactions & Social Curation. Curators burn Reactions to curate NFTs. The curation is social in nature as multiple parties can curate the same NFT with different Reactions that add social context. For example, a Reaction can signify an NFT is funny or really loved by a specific community such as CryptoPunk Reaction users.

*Exhibits & Comments (Optional).* When burning a Reaction, Curators may tag a curated NFT into an exhibit or add a comment. Exhibits are the metagame of curation where the best Curators to show off their taste in NFTs with comments providing time-stamped, context on-chain. For example, a comment that “This piece is blowing my mind” weeks or years before others discover its impact can serve as a proof point for rising Curators.

Reaction Rewards for Curated NFTs. The owner of the curated NFT (“Taker”) receives a portion of every Curation Token minted when Curators React to their NFT. When Takers sell their Curation Tokens, they may optionally share a portion of the sale proceeds with the Creator if set at Registration. Third-parties who refer Reactions to Curator Vaults may also earn a referral cut set by the protocol.

Curation Incentives

Curation Token Vault. In exchange for burning Reactions, the Curator receives Curation Tokens equal to the value of the remaining sales proceeds of such Reaction tokens in the Reactions Vault.

Curation Token Pricing. Curation Tokens are ERC-1155 tokens priced by each curated NFT’s Curator Vault’s bonding curve. When Curation Tokens are purchased from the bonding curve, payment tokens ($USDC) are transferred from the Reaction Vault to a curation specific bonding curve (Curator Vault). As Reactions are burned and Curation Tokens are minted, the Curation Token price increases for future buyers (Curators) or sellers. The bonding curve acts as an automated market maker becoming the ultimate buyer or seller of Curation Tokens to the market of Curators.

Sigmoid Bonding Curve. For the protocol launch, a Sigmoid bonding curve will be used. The Sigmoid curve represents the adoption curve of many technologies and how content on the Internet traditionally goes viral - slow at first, a rapid rise, and slow growth onward.

Selling Curation Tokens. Reactors can sell their Curation Tokens and claim a portion of the funds in the Curator Vault. The amount of payment token ($USDC) returned is determined by the number of outstanding Curation Tokens, calculated using the bonding curve.

For the protocol launch, the price of Curation Tokens on the Sigmoid bonding curve is set to level out after 100,000 in $USDC is locked into a curated NFT’s bonding curve. Subsequent burned Reactions serve solely to add social context with proceeds contributing to Maker, Taker, and Referrer Rewards rather than Curators profit.

However, in practice there are many opportunities to enter a bonding curve due to moments of doubt and uncertainty in adoption. The resulting price chart of a Curation Token will not be a smooth line upward and to the right and more of a price chart similar to Uniswap’s Unisocks ($SOCKS).

The decision on whether to hold or sell Curation Tokens depends on one’s ability to predict the actions of current holders of Curation Tokens and future Curators reacting If you believe that a piece of content will attract more Reactions, then it is more profitable for you to hold. If you believe that a piece of NFT has peaked and will not attract more investment, then it is more profitable to sell your Curation Tokens. In aggregate, the decisions of individual Curators create a credible signal about the consensus of the community.

Withdrawing Rewards

The protocol Rewards are funds available for withdrawal resulting from buying reactions and curation activity. The following users may have protocol earnings available:

• Maker - owner of NFT registered as a Reaction

• Maker Creator - the creator of a Maker’s NFT

• Taker Creator -  the creator of a Taker’s NFT

• Sale Referrer - application building a transaction for buying of Reaction

• Spend Referrer - application building a transaction for burning a Reaction and curating NFTs

Protocol Governance

As of publication, Governance of RARA’s protocol will include contract upgrades and modifying parameters and cuts.

Governance Roadmap

Phase 1 (Protocol Launch):  Multi-signature wallet

Phase 2:  Deploy $RARA governance token

Phase 3:  Governance through $RARA DAO

Network Deployments & Upgrades

Network Support. The protocol will be deployed to Polygon at launch with an additional bridge contract on Ethereum to register and curate NFTs on L1. Additional networks will be supported on a case-by-case basis.

Protocol Upgrades. The protocol may be upgraded to address bugs or security concerns. Additional protocol upgrades may be approved upon request of the RARA community.

Glossary

”Curator” means a user who burns Reactions to invest in Curation Tokens.

“Curator Vault” means the contract that manages minting and burning of Curation Tokens and the funds associated with the related bonding curve.

”Maker” means the owner of an NFT registered to sell Reactions.

“Reaction” means non-transferrable, consumable tokens generated by Maker NFT’s media that are used to react and curate third-party NFTs.

“Referrer” means any application building a transaction for buying or burning a Reaction who wishes to receive sales commission.

“Reaction Vault” means the contract verifying ownership of NFTs registered for reactions, minting and burning Reactions, and managing Reaction Rewards.

“Registration” means the process of Maker or Taker proving ownership for Maker or Taker Rewards.

“Rewards” means the funds set aside for NFT creators, owners, and other ecosystem participants to be rewarded from fan curation activity.

Stay up to date with RARA’s protocol and app release by signing up for email updates at RARA.social and following @rara_social on Twitter.

Want to continue the conversation about social curation? Join our community on Discord at RARA.house.

In this chapter, we asked the community whether the price of NFTs or ownership of NFT are required for curation? Fifty-two NFT RA!CE’s and three months into the story and RARA’s curator and fans answered simply: No.

Curation tells stories about NFTs and the artists that created them. Curation is about caring for an NFT by giving it context.

What worked and what needs work.

The NFT RA!CE is really good at discovery. Skeptics thought that only CryptoPunks and other popular NFTs would win. But, popular NFTs did not win.

Artists pushing the boundaries won.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1491880589338849281?s=20&t=enW-S9-c9s-A98L8CQGA

NFTs with impactful stories won.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1499501607884632069?s=20&t=_MUsdzjLuaAwhgXnz7TSdQ

Curation was happening. Curators gave us context. And, fans rewarded them. View the winner’s here and visit the NFT RA!CE gallery in Cryptovoxels at vox.st/rara.

Regardless of winning, curations lead to new fans and followers for artists. And, it definitely led to NFT sales too.

The NFT RA!CE was really good at discovery because of the like-to-earn mechanics being tested by the RARA’s team for our upcoming protocol release. However, the incentives overwhelmed the start of the RA!CE. Fans who invested $RA! tokens in curations later in the RA!CE really didn’t have much of a chance. In short, it was a 5 minute sprint rather a ~4 hour marathon.

On a practical note, we learned how important it is to make sure the NFTs always look beautiful - a harder task than it seems when trying to support different NFT platforms and media types.

Finally, we saw our community talking about curating ALL THE TIME, 24/7/365. It’s time to open up curation of NFTs.

Open curation and the next chapter.

Earlier this week, RARA’a founder, Lawson Baker, published an article about the Web3 Curation Landscape.

Highlighting the amazing collectors and curators, the galleries and curation tools that support them, the goal was to highlight the rise of the Web3 curation protocols that will finally pay for curation.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be opening up what we’ve been working on behind the scenes in the first two month of 2022 - a dope 🤌 new app and a decentralized curation protocol.

In short, it’s time to open up curation to all.

Thank you.

The human to human love we feel every week with our community of fans and curators is real. From our wildly active Japanese community to the intimate conversations we’ve had with curators, it’s been special and we thank you for it.

You care enough to tell us what you love and what is not working. It's our responsibility to imbue those values into the protocol and the next chapter for NFTs.

LET'S. FUCKING. GO. RA. RA!

Subscribing to email updates at RARA.social.

Follow us on twitter @rara_social.

Join RARA’s community on discord at RARA.house.

Learn more about the Web3 curation landscape below.

https://mirror.xyz/lwsnbaker.eth/ftt7ojZG2q9txxCz1IRDEoSQGQ2CyY53gCJtsJ6uyA4

P.S. The app will stay live for fans and curators to see all of their curations prior to app reboot. All $RA! tokens will remain with wallets.

The NFT RA!CE is going global. Starting at midnight tonight (12:00 AM on 02.02.2022), we’ll host two RA!CE exhibits at Midnight and Noon EST each RA!CE day.

The goal? Make RA!CE exhibits more accessible to our Japanese, Chinese, and community across the world.

New NFT RA!CE times. 12am-4am EST / 2-6pm JST - Wednesday-Friday.

Want to Enter the RA!CE? Go to app.rara.social.

Want to learn why we made the change and what’s next? Keep reading.

Two months ago, we announced the NFT RA!CE to start the conversation on decentralizing curation of NFTs through a like-to-earn protocol.

https://rara.mirror.xyz/5WNrK3VvIO4Lw4F1iBYuLbx7op3O9L_EQ2EFVpebSnI

With 20+ RACEs down, it’s clear that enthusiast from all over the world are invested in curating NFTs, according to fans, not price.

Global Signs

It started with Genesis Curator NFT sales. We launched NFT RA!CE selling Genesis NFTs for a variety of community roles, the most important being Genesis Curators.

edition://0x678547dF63b7DBc7Cdf49e4752d41512811c943F?editionId=1

We gave the holders of the 30 Genesis Curator NFTs control over our front page and what NFTs every user in our app will see. A few days into the RA!CE the final Genesis Curator NFTs were purchased by a number of 🇯🇵 Japanese collectors.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1468590387967279104?s=20&t=Vt0E7tKwhUP5i0-X2Q9CMw

Honestly, this caught us by surprise given the NFT RA!CE ran 2-6AM Japan Standard Time. Then, their NFT curations started winning and sometimes winning big.

https://twitter.com/rara_social/status/1471224304335532041?s=20&t=Vt0E7tKwhUP5i0-X2Q9CMw

It was not long before we had a budding community in the # 🇯🇵-Japan and #🇨🇳-China channels in RARA’s server.

Problems are Opportunities.

But, there were problems. The start time of the NFT RA!CE puts a focus our like-to-earn curation protocol mechanics. Specifically, the incentives to invest $RA! tokens to curate an NFT later in the RA!CE dwindles as time passes.

The result? The RA!CE times disadvantaged people waking up early in Asia to invest in the end of the RA!CE. They were losing money.

While a number of community members suggested extending RA!CE times to have one global NFT RA!CE, it did not address the primary incentives problem - one side of the world would always be disadvantaged.

The solution was to lean into our plan to enable curating of NFTs 24/7/365 by decentralizing our protocol.

Step 1? Add NFT RA!CEs that fits directly in Asia waking hours.

New Times. Two RA!CEs each Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at 12:00-4:00 AM EST / 2:00-6:00 PM JST and Noon - 12:00-4:00 AM EST / 2:00-6:00 AM JST

Step 2? Release a “Discovery” for investing in curating NFTs at any time (Coming March 2022).

Step 3? Decentralize our protocol (Coming April 2022).

Seeding a Community

Referring Curators. To seed our Asian community with more curators, we gave active community members a special edition “Global NFT RA!CE” POAP and asked them to refer their friend with the best taste in NFTs.

Special Thanks

To celebrate going global, we are dropping 1000 $RA! tokens on everyone who curated in January and 100 $RA on everyone else who played the NFT RA!CE in January.

A special thanks to the following people were instrumental in making these changes:

1. shingen_crypto

2. robek_world

3. WakiyamaP

4. piprycto

5. etsuranpazz

6. GT_symbol

7. Architecterrrr

8. PigThePersona

9. Yang

P.S. // Collecting Genesis Fan NFTs

As of writing, there are still Genesis Fan NFTs that come with a number of published benefits and a bunch more undisclosed ;) benefits coming soon. Collect one now.

edition://0xDF0552f9349656Ea786970A30dCe224Fb4b2C52e?editionId=1

Nominees for The 2021 NFT of the Year for the RA! Awards

Last week’s RA! Awards gave us Best PFP NFT, Best Metaverse NFT and the Best NFT that Tells a Story. And, we’ll be honest, the winners really do tell a story -- the price of Cryptopunks and other NFTs don’t matter to fans. Just art. Just the creator. Just the story.

The 1st Place winner of each of The RA! Award are nominated for The 2021 NFT of the Year. And, the nominees are…

Best NFT That Tells a Story in 2021

This year was full of stories. From the birth of the PFP movement, resurgence of CryptoPunks, and Beeple’s “First 5000 Days”, each NFT brought us a new chapter in Internet history. The Best NFT That Tells a Story encapsulated many of those chapters.

Winners 1st // "Internet Renaissance" by @ourZORA 2nd // "Hardship of Life" by @aslanmehmet 3rd // "Twilight" by @HanbenP

View the nominees for Best NFT That Tells a Story here.

Best Metaverse NFT of 2021

There’s no doubt that all NFTs end up in the metaverse. Some began there.

**Winners **1st // "Kiki #445" by @KikiCityNFT 2nd // "Miniature Voxel Buyongjeong" by @loie_art 3rd // "Metaani KizunaAI#00008" by @metaani2

View all of the nominees here.

Best PFP NFT of 2021

PFPs dominated 2021. Fans surprised all of us with their picks.

Winners 1st // “J48BAFORM #1565” by @GROTTO_LABS 2nd // "The-Last/Supper.nft" by @youngandsick 3rd // "FRYCOOK#1004" by @SUDOSIX

View the nominees for Best PFP NFT here.

Best NFT Collected by a DAO of 2021

DAOs, DAOs, DAOs bought all of the memes this year.

**Winners **1st // “Doge” by @kabosumama かぼすママ 2nd // “Dreaming at Dusk” by @ixshells x @torproject 3rd // “Idyllic” by @yueko_

View all of the nominees for Best NFT Collected by a DAO here.

Best Music NFT of 2021

Music NFTs are just getting started. 2022 is going to be loud!

Winners 1st // “AmbieNFT #010 - 0xe62534d3c8ffa92c” by @Drum_Operator (@ambienft) 2nd // “NETRUNNER” by @jivostudio 3rd // “DIORAMA #1/1” by @Zedd x @Sillygabe x @fvckrender

View the nominees for Best Music NFT here.

Best NFT Art of 2021

Winners 1st // “(inner)bloom” by 0010 2nd // “GIGACHAD #19/100” by Beeple 3rd // “Time Flies” by Gabe Weis

Vote for The 2021 NFT of the Year

Join NFTs fans this week voting for their favorite NFT of 2021 in RARA’s first ever 3 day NFT RA!CE from Wednesday (12.29) at 12:00 PM EST to Friday (12.31) at 4:00 PM EST.

→→→ Enter the RA!CE.

Are you the creator of one of the NFT nominees?

Connect your wallet and verify your account at app.rara.social. Then, join our discord server to claim your $RA! Tokens and receive your RA! Awards NFTs.

How to play?

• Connect your wallet or create an email wallet at app.rara.social.

• Verify your identity with a tweet.

• Earn your first 100 $RA! tokens.

• Hit the RA! Button to invest $RA! tokens invest in curating your favorite NFTs and earn when other fans invest in the same NFT after you.

When to play?

Wednesday - Friday from 12:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST (UTC -5)

Last Week’s RA! Awards

One week into The RA! Awards and we’ve seen some incredible NFTs curated. The artist pplpleasr received the most nominations of the week. The winners? All clearly fan favorites.

Best NFT Art of 2021

From 𝖕𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖞 𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖙’s “PANIC ATTACK 4: DOOMSDAY BOSS FIGHT” to “Alternate Dimension” by AimiSekiguchi せきぐちあいみ, we saw some beautiful art curated in the kickoff of the RA! Awards. View the nominees for Best NFT Art here.

1st // “(inner)bloom” by 0010

2nd // “GIGACHAD #19/100” by Beeple

3rd // “Time Flies” by Gabe Weis

Best Music NFT of 2021

Better the Spotify’s Wrapped, the Best Music NFTs of the Year created the playlist we all really wanted. View the nominees for Best Music NFT here.

1st // “AmbieNFT #010 - 0xe62534d3c8ffa92c” by Drum_Operator

2nd // “NETRUNNER” by Jivo

3rd // “DIORAMA #1/1” by Zedd x Silly Gabe x fvckrender

Best NFT Collected by a DAO of 2021

Memes, Memes, Memes…DAOs were clearly the top collectors of 2021. From “Disaster Girl” and “The Tungsten Cube” to “Apes Strong Together” and “Doge” memes filled DAOs wishlist. Snowden even made an appearance. View the nominees for Best NFT Collected by a DAO here.

1st // “Doge” by kabosumama かぼすママ

2nd // “Dreaming at Dusk” by @ixshells x @torproject

3rd // “Idyllic” by yueko_

The Doge was happy.

This Week in The RA! Awards

Join NFTs fans voting for their favorite NFTs of 2021 in the NFT RA!CE at RARA.social.

Remaining RA! Award x RA!CE Exhibits (Wednesday-Friday, December 15-31st):

Wednesday - Best PFP NFT of 2021 Thursday - Best Metaverse NFT of 2021 Friday - Best NFT That Tells a Story Next Week (29-31st) - 2021 NFT of the Year

How to play?

• Connect your wallet or create an email wallet at app.rara.social.

• Verify your identity with a tweet.

• Earn your first 100 $RA! tokens.

• Hit the RA! Button to invest $RA! tokens invest in curating your favorite NFTs and earn when other fans invest in the same NFT after you.

When to play?

Wednesday - Friday from 12 PM - 4PM EDT (UTC -5)

Starting today, fans can vote for their favorite NFTs of 2021 in the NFT RA!CE. Each week on Wednesday-Friday (December 15th-31st), Genesis Curators will enter NFTs into the following RA!CE Exhibits:

• Best Art NFT

• Best Music NFT

• Best NFT Collected by a DAO

• Best PFP NFT

• Best Metaverse NFT

• Best NFT That Tells a Story.

In the final week of the year (December 29-31), the Top NFTs of the “Best of” Exhibits will compete in the first ever three day NFT RA!CE for the “2021 NFT of the Year”.

The Top 3 NFTs of each NFT RA!CE are granted access to the RA!CE Gallery, an esteemed showcase of Fan Favorite NFTs. Fans and artists earn $RA! tokens in the NFT RA!CE. Go here to find out how.

How to play? Be a fan. Earn crypto for liking NFTs. Ready? Enter the NFT RA!CE. When to play? Wednesday - Friday from 12 PM - 4PM EDT (UTC -5).
Want to learn more? Keep reading about 2021 Year in NFTs and the RA! Awards below.

2021, the Year Crypto Became Cool

MMXXI, Two Thousand and Twenty-One, the Year of 2021, what a year.

Crypto people love to talk a lot about “when crypto went mainstream.” Was it the ICO Boom of 2017 when “Everyone [was] Getting Hilariously Rich” or was it when we all became Yam 🧑‍🌾 🍠 Famers in DeFi Summer of 2021? Or, did crypto go mainstream when the conversation stopped being about the price and more something else?

For RARA, 2021 was the year crypto got Snoop D-O-Double-G. More precisely, 2021 was the year crypto became cool.

What is Cool?

From the growing list of sports athletes and celebrities changing their profile pics (“PFPs”) on Twitter to NFTs to the endless parade of music NFT drops, NFTs in 2021 dripped of cool. While technically crypto didn’t get Snoop Dogg (he’d been collecting NFTs for a hot minute as an anon), NFTs shifted society in 2021.

We went from being the outsiders of geeks and traders to purveyors of Internet artifacts and builders of dope metaverse galleries for art, music NFTs, and beyond. As Zora tweeted at the close of 2020, NFTs are an Internet Renaissance.

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Where the Internet freed all information, crypto and NFTs finally gave us some ownership back. No more agents. No more middlemen. Just money for artist and a simple connection with fans.

The power of the price of NFTs

With an Internet Renaissance, came a lot of money for artists and NFT creators.

Only six days into the year, Gmoney dropped 140 ETH (approximately $170,000 at the time) on CryptoPunk after noticing discord users changing the profile pics as a “flex” to be “part of some exclusive club.”

By February, all of the Internet’s memes were being minted. Nyan Cat sold for 300 ETH in a bidding war mixed full of meme numbers. Internet culture can now be priced.

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Then, NFTs went wild in March. Trading volume went hyperbolic and mega NFT sales hit all of the headlines. Beeple’s $69 million sale at Christie’s of “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was likely the hallmark moment for your friends and family to remember.

“I made a picture from start to finish every single day from May 1st, 2007 - January 7th, 2021. This is every motherfucking one of those pictures,” beeple.

Defi got into the NFT game when Uniswap dropped an NFT in advance of the launch of V3 of their decentralized exchange. Created by pplpleasr, a self-described “high quality meme generator”, the NFT was titled “x*y=k”, a reference to Uniswap’s pricing curve. The result? Capturing all of the NFT and DeFi’s attention.

“Anyone want to create a quick DAO to bid on this???,” tweet from @lay2000lbs led to PleasrDAO creation and eventual winning bid of 310 ETH.

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One NFT collected after another, NFT DAOs moved the conversation beyond an individual’s hobby to a movement of a communities collecting together. “Apes Together Strong” NFT is this meme fully realized. ConstitutionDAO ($PEOPLE) took to this to the extreme in a failed attempt at buying a copy of the U.S. Constitution after raising $45 million from thousands of people.

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By April, Bored Ape Yacht Club took what the CryptoPunks started with 10,000 generative NFTs for communities and thew gas on the fire with a simple twist, a grant of commercial rights. From t-shirts and party swag to Jenkins the Valet’s Writer’s Room and $NOVEL, NFTs moved beyond a single purchase to a shared experience, shared creation.

Then, summer came. Every NFT was a 10k drop and every conversation was about the “floor price”. Bitcoin Miami was overrun by NFTs on Ethereum, and crypto was about the money and simultaneously cool…which leads us back to RARA and The RA! Awards.

The RA! Awards

A few weeks ago, RARA announced the NFT RA!CE, a daily like-to-earn competition to discover the best NFTs according to fans, not price.

Only 6 RA!CE down, we’ve seen over 5000 wallets connect to earn crypto liking NFTs. Curious as to why? It likely comes down to accessibility and simplicity.

New-to-crypto and NFT users will like an NFT before they’ll every buy an NFT. You don’t need huge bags of ETH to play. You don’t even need ETH for gas. You just need to have an opinion.

Think an NFT is cool and it is trending? Invest $RA! to help curate the best NFTs according to fans, not price.

Submitting an NFT for the RA! Awards

To enter an NFT into the RA!CE for the RA! Awards, you must be a Genesis Curator. This role is currently reserved for Genesis Curator NFT owners.

In 2022, any player of the NFT RA!CE will be able earn the right to curate if they are in the Top 10 TASTE Leaderboard (RARA’s reputation system for tastemakers).

With over 18 million NFTs on OpenSea alone, Genesis Curators have their work cut out for them. While we may miss a few for logistical reasons (curation is hard) or technical reason (we currently only support NFTs on OpenSea, Foundation, or Zora), it’s important to ask the question. What NFTs do fans like?

Here are the RA! Awards’ RA!CE Exhibits up for fan recognition: Wednesday (December 15th) - Best NFT Art of 2021 Thursday (16th) - Best Music NFT of 2021 Friday (17th) - Best NFT Collected by a DAO in 2021 Wednesday (22nd) - Best PFP NFT of 2021 Thursday (23rd) - Best Metaverse NFT of 2021 Friday (24th) - Best NFT That Tells a Story Wednesday-Friday (29th-31st) - 2021 NFT of the Year

Winners of the RA! Awards

The creators of the Top 3 NFTs of every RA!CE earn a share of the RA!CE Reward (500, 300, and 200 $RA! to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place). Additionally, the Top 3 NFTs are granted access to the RA!CE Gallery in the app and our coming metaverse galleries. Read more here.

On top of the normal RA!CE Reward, the creators of the Top 3 NFTs in the RA! Awards will earn a bonus $RA! for this special award ceremony equal to 50%, 30%, and 20% of the RA!CE Pot to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd respectively.

First place of each RA! Award will earn a commemorative NFT for the RA! Rewards x 2021 NFTs of the Year.

Finally, creators of the NFTs winning a RA! Award will get the simple title of Fan Favorite.

That’s it. Go play. Be a fan. Like NFTs. Earn Crypto. Enter the NFT RA!CE.