Last week, in my essay called “Composability Is the Great Value Proposition of Web3”, I delved deeper into one way to bring real-world value to our NFT projects through what I call decentralized storytelling, where writing of fiction — whether a novel, a short story, a film or TV show script, or a graphic novel — is not done in isolation but rather done with the fans and community.

Today, I want to explore a little deeper into my project — THE JOE SPUTNIK CHRONICLES — and explain how I see this coming together.

CAVEAT: this is not the only way to do it, nor the only project that creators should try out these theories. The Sputnik project is merely my way of testing these ideas. Anyone is welcome to join the project and contribute. Or simply track the project and then apply the lessons learned to their own project. If that’s you, please reach out. Let’s build great stories together.

A Bit of History

In 2010, I worked for a large corporation and was editor of a magazine produced quarterly for the employees, vendors, and customers of the company. The company operated in over 150 countries around the world and it was my job to travel to the various locations and write a feature article for each issue about that location.

On this particular trip, I visited Dubai, UAE and then on to Cairo, Egypt. As I sat in the lobby of my Cairo hotel in probably week three of the trip, I was mentally worn out.

After all, I had just completed 19 in-person interviews in a single day. A record I hope I never break!

It was a rare day off and I was trying to refocus my mind away from work, work, work.

Instead, I began thinking about some of my fiction projects.

Although I made my living as a corporate newsletter and magazine writer/editor, my real passion in writing is fiction. I spoken before about the power of story.

As I sat there mulling things, a character introduced himself.

“My name is Joe Sputnik,” he said inside my mind.

Over the next couple of years, I filled up two composition notebooks with story ideas, notes, character sketches, etc. And I wrote a draft of a hardboiled PI novel that I called The Butterfly Collector.

I only published the novel on my website; never to Amazon and I never submitted it to any publishers for their consideration.

Life got in the way.

Flash forward a dozen years and more than a few other fiction projects:

• The 64 Testaments of Krill — a dark fantasy horror novella series, self published on Amazon (under the pen name M. Boris)

• The Geriatric Squad — a superhero spoof movie script

• Zombies from Outer Space — a zombie/alien invasion TV series

• The Briny Deep — a creature feature horror film script

• Kilroy Was Here — a WW2 spy fiction novel (series eventually)

I also built, ran, and eventually sunsetted a small publishing business that republished old, classic, and out-of-print murder mystery stories … amazing shorts, novellas, and novels dating back to the 1890s, up to about 1945.

But after the Krill series of novellas languished on Amazon, I realized I had tackled the project wrong.

I’d written and published seven novellas, then looked up to find my market. And that I’d missed the mark.

Great stories. I’m proud of them and am confident they can find an audience. Just maybe not on Amazon.

What I missed there was building community, and community involvement around that story. And doing so FIRST. Then writing the stories.

In the 1970s, author Harlan Ellison wrote his novels while sitting in a storefront window. He’d bang out a page on his manual typewriter, then paste it onto the window so that passers-by could read it.

Eventually, a crowd would assemble and he could judge his writing at the moment of creation by their reactions.

Charles Dickens did much the same. He wrote most of his now required reading books, like The Pickwick Papers in serial form, then hawked them to his readers on the street corner.

Each week, he’d get feedback on favorite or hated characters and plot directions. With that, he could adjust his story to suit the tastes and likes of his readers.

Both of these writers, and many others, wrote with the immediate input of their readers and fans. They wrote within their community, building community (fans) around their work and using the immediate feedback to make better stories. Stories that the fans were hungry for and would buy, then read and get value from.

This is what I plan to do with my Joe Sputnik saga.

The Project Outline

I mentioned, above, the original novel that I wrote and completed in 2012.

As I began to learn about web3 and NFTs, especially for fiction, that story reasserted itself in my memory.

“My story,” Joe told me, “is the perfect setting to explore these wild concepts of decentralization, a blockchain run world, and the promises and problems it may bring.”

The story was originally set in 2041. For no other reason than the fact that the classic pulp-style hardboiled PI novel was set in 1941 (or so). I’ve shifted the setting slightly for the V2 of the novel to 2047 (25 years from 2022). ’Cause, why not?!

So the idea was hatched to rewrite the novel from scratch and integrate themes and concepts of blockchain, defi, etc. The skeleton of the plot would not change — who was getting murdered by what psychopath and why my hero, Joe, was pulled against his will into the mystery.

The rewritten novel, The Butterfly Collector v2, will be released in early September as a limited edition NFT.

I am riffing off of the successful PUNKS Comic NFT project that ran at the tail end of 2021. You can read their Roadmap and details on their website: https://punkscomic.com/.

But to summarize, they took the popular PUNKS NFT collection and built characters around individual NFTs. Then the team wrote a comic book with those characters.

Cuy Sheffield, in his article “Fantasy Hollywood” — Crypto and Community-Owned Characters said that this is one way to create what he terms “a character DAO” where the NFT exists and a story is built upon that NFT collection.

Buyers could opt in for either the PDF edition or a print edition. By keeping or burning either copy, they would gain extra benefits, like access to certain vaults with other valuable NFTs contained within.

I don’t have access to these valuable vaults but the concept I’m developing is similar … provide a limited number of ebook (either PDF or more likely ePub and/or Kindle format) novels, plus (or instead of) a high quality, maybe leather bound, gold embossed print edition.

Buy and hodl the ebook, get XYZ.

Buy and hodl the print book, get ABC.

What those bonuses are, I do not know yet. One of the things I am hoping for is that my new community will help me develop. But a few ideas:

• access to special collections of NFTs … the classic jpegs of various characters

• ability to spin off new stories and new characters

• ability to create new editions (comics, graphic novels, films) of various stories

The overall idea is to develop a decentralized system for storytelling, using the Joe Sputnik metaverse as the playing field. A fictional metaverse to try stuff and break things.

This is what Sheffield describes in his article (link above) as “a specific character that already comes with a backstory and identity that inspires the creation of NFTs, but then enables a community of collectors to participate in its evolution.”

By buying and hodl’ing the various NFTs and/or the soon-to-be-available $SPUTNIK token, you get access to the soon-to-be-build DAO and the stories within.

To share and trade.

To build and explore.

Whatever.

And the stories themselves remain free (a public good) for anyone who wants to read them.

The Project Roadmap

I know the term “roadmap” has a bit of a bad connotation at the moment. But this is just a breakdown of what I’m planning. It is subject to change based on reader/fan/supporter input.

This is a broad overview. With some specific dates.

On 20 June, I will be opening up a crowdfunding project to raise capital for this project. It will enable me to work on this full time and will enable me to produce the content on the schedule I will outline. It will also enable me to bring on collaborators who can financially benefit from their work as well.

Benefits to crowdfund supporters:

• access to watch me write live in my (virtual) storefront window; probably on a Discord channel for lack of a better option (got a better idea? Let me know! Maybe a real store window in the metaverse!)

• access (in lieu of the above, or in addition) to my “daily pages” … after 25+ years as a professional writer, I write fast and can produce 5,000 words a day (especially if I’m doing this full time) … this includes the rewrites for v2 of The Butterfly Collector as I don't he page one rewrite!

• ability to provide input and story direction as the storyline is developed (both the short stories and the novel

• early access (I think this is technically possible) to the short story NFT sales so you don’t risk missing out

I don’t care if you contribute 0.10 ETH of 10 ETH. It may dictate the power of your vote (I’m still learning tokenomics) but everyone is invited to hop aboard and help support the project.

Then, on 4 July, the first short story … Like A Moth To A Flame … will be released as a 1/10 edition NFT. It, and all short stories, will remain free for anyone to read.

In fact, to get a taste of my writing style and the story, you can go ahead and read this short story at the link above.

Anyone who hodl’s a short story NFT will get:

• early access to future stories

• opportunity to contribute directly to the stories

• governance on character decisions, etc.

Additionally, I will create a very limited print run of the full volume of short stories. I expect to create eight to ten short stories in this series (something akin to a modern TV series with eight to ten episodes in a season).

So, anyone who buys and hodl’s all ten stories will get a print volume containing all of the stories. Each copy will have its own unique cover artwork and will be numbered, then signed by me as the author.

This is one of the crucial aspects of the crowdfunding effort … bringing into the community, as a collaborator, an artist who can create custom artwork for these covers, among other artwork.

As a long time freelancer myself, I know the struggles of low paying gigs and I DO NOT want to pay a pittance to someone on Fiverr, then profit myself. This is about community and therefore the crowdfund must provide revenue to adequately and ethically compensate an artist.

Since short story #1 will only ever have a maximum of ten NFT editions available, there will be a maximum of ten of these print volumes available.

I will be releasing a new short story each Monday, starting on July 4 and running through either August 22 or September 5. The end date depends on how many short stories end up in this series; and that is based on feedback from you, my reader and fan.

The week following the last short story, I will release The Butterfly Collector, v2 novel NFT.

I have a few other NFT items in mind

These include a limited print run of the first draft of my novel. Each of maybe 100 would be printed on my laser printer, bound with heavy card stock, and individually numbered and signed.

Like numbered prints of a famous painting. Genuine and rare.

I also spoke last week in my essay “Composability Is the Great Value Proposition of Web3” about how I see the standard jpeg NFT providing additional utility to hodlrs.

In summary, each character I create in my stories would have their own jpg NFT. For main characters, like Joe, it would be a 1/1.

For larger groups, like a bunch of goons who are always getting in Joe’s way (think the armies of kung fu thugs that Jackie Chan periodically fights), they would be semi-rare or even common.

In The Butterfly Collector, for example, there is a semi-secret society of women who are known as The Painted Ladies. Each has a unique butterfly tattoo (NFT collection?) as well a delicate tattoo artwork covering their bodies (story hint: the tattoos tell their individual life story and Joe discovers that they are clues to why someone is murdering these young women).

Society rules dictate that there are only a specific number of Painted Ladies at any given time … a limited edition NFT collection.

The idea, then, is that anyone can acquire one of, or perhaps a set of, these NFTs. Not a new idea.

But here is my twist.

What if you could buy a set of 1/1 NFTs and play them with your frens like collectable card games, for instance MAGIC: THE GATHERING or characters in an RPG game like Dungeons & Dragons?

Each character NFT has various hit points or values based on who that character is. Strength and skills in areas like hand-to-hand combat or diplomacy. All characteristics based on what happens in a story. And characteristics that can change based on story.

If these NFTs were available in packs of ten, none visible to the buyer beforehand, they become like the baseball card collections that you could buy in a cellophane wrapper. You might get a bunch of nobodies or you might get a valuable rookie card. The thrill is in the gamble on what NFTs you might get in the collection.

Then, you can play those against others’ collections to win and build your NFT collections.

Win other’s NFTs. Build war packs. Rule the metaverse.

I’ll be honest … I have no idea how to make this work. At least on a technical side. I need to bring in developers and people who understand how to build/create smart contracts that will manage all of this. Again, the crowdfunding budget includes this and other costs to develop this into a full blown project and DAO, while financially supporting those actively involved.

But I think it has potential to add a little fun and game play to buying and hodl’ing an NFT.

The Vision

I have been inspired by the thinking of a lot of other folks. And, maybe because creative thinking is my bread-and-butter, I am finding ways of putting their ideas together into a new form (the “composability” thing I talked about last week). What I'm calling decentalized storytelling.

My vision is to use the Joe Sputnik story as a testbed for what I’ve talked about with decentralized storytelling. What Cuy Sheffield talked about with character DAOs and open source character IPs. What so many have talked about with the web3 creator economy.

I want to build a collaborative storytelling system where others can tell independent stories within the defined universe/metaverse by minting/staking (not sure of terminology) characters … creators (or instigators, as I call them) would have, say, a 35% take in their characters or stories and 65% would go to the DAO treasury.

The idea being that as a character DAO or a community around the Sputnik metaverse, we build new and amazing stories together.

Maybe someone will come along who is a filmmaker and sees potential in either The Butterfly Collector as a film or sees another storyline to pursue. He can, through community voting, become the custodian or instigator of that project.

If he uses my novel as the basis, I would receive a royalty but, as instigator of the film, he would gain the 35% owner stake. My royalty (or whomever is custodian on the story/character) would be maybe 10% of the 65% that goes into the treasury.

And the funds to produce the film would come from the DAO treasury, as well. The producer could petition the DAO for funds to create his project.

Or a graphic novelist could adapt a story. Same process; different media.

The point is that this is not about me getting rich because I came up with the original idea. The idea is that my original idea is a platform from which multiple avenues of creation can grow.

And the community can benefit. Financially and in other ways.

Roles, then, in this vision, would include:

• INSTIGATOR → creates, defines a character or set of characters, or a story/product (novel, comic, movie, etc.); has CUSTODIAL ownership; 2 votes to everyone else’s 1; management/administrative not authority

• CUSTODIAN → anyone who is responsible for managing a character’s individual IP; may be the INSTIGATOR or be assigned the role at the behest of the INSTIGATOR

• SUB-INSTIGATOR → upon INSTIGATOR’s approval, instigates a new story based on the character

And certainly more.

However …

I am a creative person. I have an (over) active imagination and can conceive of all manner of strange things. Which is precisely what this “roadmap” is. It is an atlas of the territory and I’ve scribbled all over it with a crayon.

I am also a writer. When I am able to focus on story, without the headaches and time sucks of outside commitments, I can write 5,000 words a day. My record is over 12,000. I can a erage 7 – 9,000 in a day, 6+ days a week.

The script, The Briny Deep, that I mentioned above … from concept to finished draft in 11 days.

Most of the Testaments of Krill stories were written in less than a week and average about 27,000 words.

The story creation and publication I can do. That is like breathing air to me. It is simultaneously the hardest and most wonderful work I can do.

Its the technical aspects that I struggle with. I know Javascript and React. Enough, anyway, to know I’ll never be a developer. Enough to build a basic website and really get in over my head.

That is one reason I need help. Why I need you.

Maybe you are a developer and can build out the NFT card game I spoke about above.

Maybe you’re an expert at creating and managing DAOs.

Maybe you're that graphic novelist/artist looking for a project.

Maybe you're a filmmaker or TV show producer.

I cannot build this project without help. Without input. Without skills that I do not have.

I am looking to build community around this idea. Community that grows together as we create amazing stories.

Next Monday, 20 June, I will be opening up a crowdfunding effort to raise the capital I need to begin this journey. The funds required to build what may be the first character DAO.

“There is a market for a decentralized version of a “fantasy Hollywood,” too — it just hasn’t been met yet,” said Sheffield in his article.

I aim to make this project the first and make it stand as a shining example of what can be done with storytelling if creatives of all kinds come together to build something together.

I hope you will join me.

Next Monday, I will go deeper into my ideas on decentralized storytelling and how this character DAO process could work. I am meeting with several folks this week to learn more and see how their systems stack up as platforms to use. I will report on what I learn and what I decide to do, initially. I will continue to seek feedback as the project grows.

Right now, with these essays pontificating on my theories, and the short stories, I am taking advantage of the excellent platform Mirror.xyz.

The crowdfund will also be hosted on Mirror.xyz.

Until then, follow me on Twitter … @jspi_nft or check out the project on the main website www.jspi.xyz (yes, I built it myself using Remix.run … see why I need your help!!?? 😁😜). Or email me directly at rich@joesputnipi.com with questions, comments, or to tell me where I’ve missed the boat.

The Pulpeteer (pronounced pulp·ateer; taken from an essay by pulp writer Lester Dent who created the Doc Savage character and series) is a full time author and the warped mind behind the metaverse fiction NFT project — THE JOE SPUTNIK CHRONICLES, a metaverse hardboiled detective fiction series — where he is exploring the concepts and practical application of decentralized storytelling and open source character IP as a means to tell better stories.

Follow the saga of Joe Sputnik, PI in 2047 New York City as he battles hidden forces that threaten to dominate what has become a fully decentralized world → www.jspi.xyz

Or follow his thoughts on decentalized storytelling and open source character IPs on Twitter → @jspi_nft

Composability, which Wikipedia defines as “a system design principle that deals with the inter-relationships of systems.”

Detailed. Comprehensive. But not so clear or helpful. For my purposes, anyway. Let’s break that down a bit more.

Further digging through the Googles gives us the following definition, with respect to crypto:

“Within crypto, composability is the ability of decentralized applications (dApps) and DAOs to effectively clone and integrate one another (syntactic composability), and for software components such as tokens and messages to be interoperable between them (morphological composability). — Aragon’s Blog

(Note: I highly recommend reading the entire article if you want a deep dive into crypto composability concepts).

The Aragon blog starts the article with an even simpler, more applicable definition: “Composability is the general ability of components of a system to be recombined into larger structures and for the output of one to be the input of another.” — (same link as above)

Composability is the ability to build on what someone else has already created.

The Aragon blog post and the YouTube clip are both talking about the power and potential of dApps. However, if we take a step back from the DeFi-focused POV of both of these references, we see that composability has applications far beyond this initial concept.

It applies, in our case, to the concepts of decentralized storytelling and open source character IPs.

In fact, the Aragon blog expands on the core idea precisely dealing with story further down in that post.

Beyond finance, characters or chattels from Web3 games like Axie Infinity or Guild of Guardians are instances of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) - unique digital property, standardized in ERC721. Because they are actually owned by users, they can be transferred freely between different games, sold on secondary markets, or even used as collateral for loans. — (same link as above)

And that is the key point for me. I’m not a game maker; I’m a fiction author. But, again, the core idea is transferable to fiction … web3 fiction.

To paraphrase, individual stories (a short story or a novel, for example) or the characters from any piece of Web3 fiction can be instances of NFTs. Each a unique digital property.

In the case of the short stories, it is a matter of sponsoring the story and the act of creation, i.e., financially supporting the creator, allowing her to focus on what she does best — create the stories. Sponsors also enable the story to remain free and accessible to anyone who wants to read and enjoy the story. No gates; no emails required; no payments required. A sort of public good, if you will.

This method of providing the story to readers free, while remaining supported by selector sponsors is tried-and-true in literature, and by a few forward-thinking academic publishers. It is the freemium model at work.

Paulo Coelho is one of the most widely read authors in the world today, author of such books as THE ALCHEMIST, THE FIFTH MOUNTAIN and others.

In 1999, he sold 1,000 books in Russia so he decided to publish THE ALCHEMIST on his website for free. He sold 10,000 the first year and 100,000 copies the next. That is not how many people read his free book; it is how many spent money to buy it … presumably because they were exposed to it via the free website copy.

“I’m convinced,” he said at the Davos World Economic Forum, “it was putting up for free on the internet that made the difference.”

In the case of characters, they can become the basis for an entirely new, fully decentralized, potentially 100% open source character IPs that allow creation of a DAO around the character itself.

What Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) defines in his article “Fantasy Hollywood” — Crypto and Community-Owned Characters”.

Today, crypto technologies like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) enable a new model of character development and ownership that could not only unbundle creative media, but also lower the barrier to entry for online communities to bring new characters into the world. It could also lead to characters that are more fully representative of the communities that support them.

It is a fascinating article, one that sparked all manner of wild ideas as I read it. And one I highly recommend.

The essential message is that traditionally, character IPs have been closely held by the mega-corporations that owned them.

Fans, going back easily to the original Star Wars or even further to the 1960s Star Trek, have fallen in love with characters and created their own “fan-zines” around them. Go so far as to create their own novels and other stories using the well-loved characters.

These corporations found themselves fighting the very fans they had created for control of the characters. Valuable property, for sure. And someone worth protecting.

Wait, which is the most valuable property? The character, or the fan?

In 2007, a new show, Mad Men, launched that, according to the book THE ART OF IMMERSION by Frank Rose, shows a glimmer of understanding by IP owners as to the value of the fan fiction and fan involvement.

The show centers around the 1960s alpha male dominated world of Madison Avenue advertising agencies. It featured and explored all the issues around gender roles and more.

What is interesting, according to Rose’s book, is that a fan of the show created a Twitter account in the name of one of the housewives and began tweeting in character. Other character-based accounts soon followed.

At first, the producers were appalled at this breach of their IP and sent cease-and-desist letters to the account holder and demanded Twitter kill off the (already very popular) accounts.

But someone within the production company was smart enough to recognize the value of what these fans were doing.

The speech must have gone something like this, “Look, these people are so in love with our characters and the story world we’ve created that they want to take on a greater role in the story.”

A greater role in the story. No longer (perhaps never) were readers of novels, or viewers of TV shows and movies satisfied with merely consuming the story.

They wanted to be a part of it.

Rose also provides examples from the 2008 film THE DARK KNIGHT, featuring actor Heath Ledger as the Joker. The pre-launch advertising campaign for the movie included an elaborate, IRL scavenger hunt that culminated in players buying a cake from some obscure bakery at a given day and time. Then discovering a ringing phone inside the cake that gave them access to more clues. And eventually, enabling them to become part of the Joker’s gang of thugs.

Story and characters stepping beyond the page or the screen.

This is what I was referring to in last week’s essay … IRL utility. It begins, I believe, with creators like me opening the doors to our creations. It means giving up certain control of our characters, not unlike, I suppose, seeing your kids go off to college or start their own lives. Lives outside of our control.

But that opens so many doors to amazing stories. And for those of you who are storytellers (whether writers, poets, filmmakers, game makers), this idea of letting your idea go into the world and letting others take it and remold it in their (possibly warped) imaginations into new forms we do not control is not new.

Screenwriter and screenwriting teacher William Martell recently posted a quote from Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer and author of RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE.

A terrifying prospect for any creator to let go of the reins. But one that I am finding to be particularly liberating. Especially in light of the possibilities of tapping into the hive mind to create more and better stories.

And use the characters, themselves, in new and untested ways. Even, or especially, for those who are not novelists or screenwriters but love the idea of exploring the worlds of a favorite character beyond the original concepts of the creator.

For example, imagine a story world, maybe Star Wars. Or better yet (because I’m free to yammer on about it since I created it), the world of Joe Sputnik, PI.

Characters include Joe, himself. He’s the main character; what writers like to call the PROTAGONIST.

And a protagonist needs an ANTAGONIST … someone to fight against. I won’t tell you who that is. You have to read my stories to find out! ;-) The first short story is available by going to www.jspi.xyz and clicking the link to read LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME.

This being a hardboiled detective story, there must be victims of whatever crime is the focus of the individual story; for example, the young, elaborately tattooed women who are being murdered by the antagonist in my Sputnik novel THE BUTTERFLY COLLECTOR (originally drafted in about 2012 and now getting a page one rewrite to integrate concepts of web3, blockchain, crypto, decentralization, etc., into the main plot … details soon about this NFT project!).

And, naturally, there are loads of other characters with more or less importance to this story.

Now, imagine a collection of the good old jpg-type NFTs. Say the traditional 10,000 … some fairly common like the group of semi-secret police who protect the uber-wealthy of 2047 New York City.

Or semi-rare, like the limited number of Painted Ladies (those with the elaborate tattoos that mark them as members of a special society).

Or 1/1, like Joe and other main characters.

Fairly standard.

But what if each NFT, whether representing a 1/100 or a 1/1, each had hit points (like characters we created when playing D&D or other role playing games). Values assigned to them based on various factors:

• role in an individual story

• specific skills or abilities

• reactions to events of a story … say Joe gets his ass kicked by some goon, his strength could go down

• what else can you imagine?

If you own a given character NFT, you reap the value of that character’s position in the overall Sputnik metaverse (imagine if you had the Han Solo character NFT? How would that change your world?).

But you also have the ability to commission or create your own stories or editions around that character NFT. Perhaps with some level of community vote.

You own a minor character. She has low value and is a 1/100. But you create a story, or build a game/graphic novel/you-name-it around her and it becomes popular … the value of your character NFT goes up.

I’ll date myself here but what I’m talking about is what happened to what was supposed to be a minor character for a single season in the 1982 sitcom CHEERS.

Dr. Frasier Crane (played by actor Kelsey Grammer), however, was so popular that the producers kept him on after he first appeared in CHEERS: “Rebound (Part 1)”, season 3, episode 1.

And, after CHEERS ended its epic run, spun off the character into its own show, FRASIER, which is arguably as successful, if not more so, than the show that originated the character.

Plus, why not use the NFTs you hodl to battle other NFT hodlrs and their collections. Something akin to MAGIC: THE GATHERING or other collector card games.

If the character NFTs were available in sets of 10, but none revealed before initial sale (like baseball cards used to be sold with a stick of gum in cellophane wrappers hiding which cards were included), you have the added thrill of hoping you get the Sputnik rookie card but you may also end up with a bunch of minor characters.

Minor characters that you can still build into major characters. Characters you can combine with others, either from your own collection or by compositing them with other sets of character NFTs owned by other collectors. A practical application of composability.

Play games with them. Build new stories with them. The opportunities are endless.

And this is how I see the broad concept of composability applying to NFT fiction. A single story universe; or to use crypto parlance, a single story metaverse. A core story around which new players can spin off variations … either completely new stories and new characters. Or turn my short stories into a graphic novel. Or TV series. Or the revised novel into a feature film.

The fundamental point is that we are at a crossroads in the development of the ideas of what constitutes an NFT and the value/utility of that NFT. We can continue to focus on the status that ownership gives us, or we can find new and better ways to build utility into our NFT projects.

We have the opportunity to transform what NFTs are all about; not just for ourselves as creators or the fine folks who spend money to buy them in hopes they’ll be the next unicorn moon.

By creating projects with IRL utility, we can transform what NFTs mean. We can show the doubters and the haters that this is not a pyramid scheme. It is not a get-rich-quick, pump and dump ponzi con game.

We can transform the very conception of what NFTs and everything built in this third generation of the web.

We can shift it from something “the cool kids” do to something that has real-world and truly understandable value (you spent how much on a jpg that I can download for free?).

I have had the privilege of meeting and connecting with a number of projects recently that are taking different approaches to this IRL utility … using it to clean the garbage from the oceans, support local farmers and merchants, support local artists.

That is what I am creating with my Joe Sputnik, PI NFT-based fiction project. I may not be saving the whales directly or putting food on the tables of some far off village.

But I believe that story has power to transform lives.

Rudyard Kipling, who wrote such great literary works as THE JUNGLE BOOK, said, “If history were told in the form of story, no one would ever forget it.”

I believe the same is true of our future. We can define the future we want and bring it into reality through the stories we tell.

Don’t believe me? Look at Star Trek and the number of technological innovations that were dreamed up out of pure imagination that we now all take for granted.

If I can dare to remotely compare my story to that, it is what I aim to do. Tell the story of one possible future.

One of a fully decentralized world where the theories and ideas of minds like those at Aragon or Cuy Sheffield or so many others you can find on NFT Twitter come to IRL fruition.

One that holds many promises for true democracy, true equality, true opportunity for all. But one that also holds great potential for darkness. For crime. We are already seeing scams abound. What other crimes have we not yet imagined?

I believe that story — especially decentralized stories, built upon the myriad of ideas from thousands of individual imaginations — can help us understand what we are building and help us avoid many, if not all, of the potential traps.

Next week, I will go deeper into the Joe Sputnik project and detail what I am writing, how I see it developing.

It is, in summary, an experiment to see how the theories of decentralized storytelling and open source character IP can come together and create better story.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, criticisms, or kudos on this essay (or last week’s on the ideas of IRL utility), reach out to me on Twitter (@jspi_nft) or email me at rich@joesputnikpi.com.

Or read last week's essay.

Let’s build something cool together. It begins with the story of what we’re building.

STORY is the new utility.

The Pulpeteer (pronounced pulp·ateer; taken from an essay by pulp writer Lester Dent who created the Doc Savage character and series) is a full time author and the warped mind behind the metaverse fiction NFT project — THE JOE SPUTNIK CHRONICLES, a metaverse hardboiled detective fiction series — where he is exploring the concepts and practical application of decentralized storytelling and open source character IP as a means to tell better stories.

Follow the saga of Joe Sputnik, PI in 2047 New York City as he battles hidden forces that threaten to dominate what has become a fully decentralized world → www.jspi.xyz

Or follow his thoughts on decentalized storytelling and open source character IPs on Twitter → @jspi_nft

“Unlike visual nfts which naturally had a surface area on which to flex ownership (Twitter & particularly the profile pic), other categories of NFTs don’t naturally have a space for showcasing ownership. Music NFTs, fashion NFTs, writing NFTs all need new consumption experiences.” (emphasis mine)

She followed up with a question, “If status is utility, then what will be the places to accrue status for those other verticals of NFTs?”

Certainly not the first Tweet that commented on what is becoming a central issue in the NFT space … one of value and utility.

Since BAYC and similar projects first gained an audience and certain notoriety, buyers have been snapping them up like so many Ferraris and McLarens, and using them as their Twitter, and other social media, profile pictures.

It is, as Li Jin said, “a surface area on which to flex ownership.” It is “status.”

Certainly nothing wrong with seeking, gaining, or showing off your status. But is that the limit to what NFTs mean? Is it the limit to the value and the utility of the concept?

I don’t think so and as I browse NFT Twitter, I find a hunger for something more. Something to satisfy that need to more than just a pretty picture. Something that has some tangible benefit, some value beyond status.

But how? How do we as creators demonstrate this, then provide it? And how do collectors trust the claims of utility and expansion of our projects as detailed in our roadmaps?

In the last several days, there have been a flurry of Tweets beleaguring the practice of new NFT projects to tout their utility and display their grand plans in their minutely detailed roadmaps.

The consensus seems to be that most claims of utility are mere attempts to grab marketing spotlight and motives are suspect, at best.

“I learned that anyone can make a ”roadmap” and the word “utility” is so used and abused I legit don’t know what it means anymore when it comes to NFTs.” — Errol Gray, @errolgreynft.

This leaves both NFT creators and NFT collectors in a bit of a quandary.

For the creator, it is a question of how do I communicate the value that I want to bring with my project and prove that my plans, my roadmap are legit? How do I prove I’m not gonna rug?

Certainly most creators don’t go into the creative process with the intent to rug. It happens, but creators want to create and share their work with the public. Money is (usually) a secondary consideration.

And as one Tweet I saw last week said (sorry, I didn’t screenshot it!), the simple fact is that many artists have never made much money from their art so when they are suddenly saddled with millions of dollars after a successful NFT launch … well, Fiji is an awfully inviting place and with all that sudden weath … !

Not good. And certainly not excusing the behavior. But sometimes reality.

So creators are stuck with how to communicate value. Communicate the legitimate utility that they’re attempting to bring to life.

For the NFT collector and/or investor, the issue is the same but from the opposite perspective … how do I know if this interesting looking NFT project is legit? If I drop 1ETH, or more, on this NFT, how do I know the creator won’t just disappear? Will the promises in her detailed roadmap made become reality?

Creators want to prove the utility of their project and prove the promise of their roadmap.

Buyers want to believe but have been either burned too many times by rugs or just poorly executed launches that will never come to full realization of the roadmap promises, no matter how well intentioned.

Both parties are blinded by the shrill light of everyone hyping their projects and the “status” hodlrs will have “if they just ape in … !”

The shilling and over hyped but under supported projects, and the focus on that status as the utility, are undermining the opportunities on both sides.

Which circles us back to the Tweet from Li Jin, “If status is utility, then what will be the places to accrue status for those other verticals of NFTs?”

An excellent question, but I don’t think that is the right question to ask. I don’t think that it will be the places to accrue the status that will be the savior here. There is simply no easy way to turn my 7,097 word short story into a profile picture or other symbol of status gained by its ownership. It doesn't have the portability of a jpg.

To evolve the NFT universe, we need to shift the thinking away from “status” and to IRL utility.

Wait! WTF does that mean … IRL utility?

What I’m referring to here is anything beyond the “look at me, I own XYZ” kind of pseudo-celebrity status … all about ME-ME-ME.

What I’m referring to is something we can take into the real world and use to make things better.

Listening to music inspires us, cools our mood. It “soothes the savage breast” to quote English playwright and poet William Congreve (1670 – 1729).

Reading stokes the fires of the imagination, providing adventure, escape, a window into new worlds.

One of the first acronyms that I learned in this space was #WAGMI — We’re All Gonna Make It.

I love that!

I love the Tweets I see on a regular basis from large Twitter accounts asking for shout outs for smaller accounts. “Let’s help them out; raise their reach.” Not something you see in brick and mortar business who see the other guy as competition.

That kind of activity is what makes the NFT space special. It is the emphasis on others, on putting the concept that “a rising tide lifts all boats” into practical application.

The polar opposite of the current ME-ME-ME status seeking approach.

IRL utility, in a nutshell, simply answers the question, “NFTs are assets so I wonder, what can I do with this asset? and that’s the utility” (emphasis mine) — crytpoquantic.eth, @CryptoQuantic

If I buy a cool jpg, what can I do with it? I can make it my PFP on Twitter and hope someone thinks that’s cool.

If I buy a music NFT, what can I do with it? I can listen to it any time I want to, and I know that I’ve contributed to the creation of that song/album.

If I buy a fiction NFT, what can I do with it? I can support an author whose writing I admire and whose story speaks to me.

IRL, I can contribute to the creation of a piece of artwork, supporting the creator.

IRL, I can give that artist the creative space to work, because creativity is hard enough without the hassles of a daily J.O.B.

IRL, I can provide services to that creator, like providing marketing or promotion or accounting or legal or even just moral support.

It boils down to one simple thing … COMMUNITY: the coming together of like minds and common goals to build up not the individual but everyone.

That, I’ve said in several Tweets and comments, is “the killer app” of the NFT space.

We gain status by becoming part of a community. That is exactly what happens when someone buys a Bored Ape or a CryptoPunk. They become a member of a very exclusive club and one whose membership alone is worth serious bank. Real privilege.

American Express … eat your heart out!

So maybe Li Jin’s question is appropriate after all. Maybe status is important, IRL.

But to answer her question, maybe it comes from the communities we as NFT creators and we as NFT collectors/buyers create together. Not from who owns what jpg. Not from who spent the most to acquire that jpg. Or who owned it before we snapped it up.

The status we gain comes from the community we build.

If we are going to see the NFT space through this current bear market and emerge from the other side stronger for it, we have to band together. We have to look beyond our own personal status and look at the greater good.

It is not about self-sacrifice nor giving up personal gain. Nor even giving up status (within or outside of any given community, or because of it).

I think this idea is summed up beautifully in the paper Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul by E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, & Vitalik Buterin.

“… individuality emerges from the intersection of social groups, just a social groups emerge as the intersection of individuals.”

They are specifically discussing concepts of identity security, privacy, as well as community membership for validation of identity. However, I think it sums up nicely how community is the ultimate IRL utility.

This still begs the question of how to communicate this without becoming just another wannabee NFT marketer screaming his head off to try and be heard over the rest of us yelling about our own projects?

How do creators demonstrate their IRL utility and build community?

How do buyers know that the promises made in a roadmap aren’t just pie-in-the-sky ideals that will never see the light of day?

How do we bridge this gap between what creators see and buyers spend money to acquire without getting lost in more hype and louder marketing claims?

There is an old adage in fiction writing: SHOW, DON’T TELL.

It means that, as a fiction writer, it is never good enough to relate a bunch of events and expect a reader to become involved in our story.

To use an example from my own short story that will soon be available as a 1/10 NFT, I open by describing my private detective protagonist’s office as he enters after a night on stakeout.

What I do not say is, “He walked into the spartan room on the third floor of the dilapidated building and found a dead man laying on the floor, his brains splattered on the far wall above the couch.”

Sure, that tells you the facts and sets up the story. But it is just facts. No emotion. No personal attachment.

What I did say was …

He was still dead.

But, somehow, that hadn’t stopped him from fucking up my day.

Or the wall of the reception area of my office cum living quarters and filling the air with an acrid iron odor. It was going to take hours of scrubbing to clean the blood and brain matter off the wall. And more than a few coats of paint to cover the red stain.

I am putting my reader immediately into the mind of my hero, letting them see and experience the sights and smells, as well as the emotional (or lack thereof) reaction to this unpleasant discovery.

As fiction writers, we must create an environment within our story that is like quicksand … our reader is sucked in and drawn down into the story environment. We must create a place where the reader becomes so invested in the story that he loses all track of time. All cognizance of pages turning.

Perhaps you’ve had that experience reading a great novel.

You reach the end of a chapter and the start of a new one that, with its formating to indicate a new chapter, jars you out of the story. You flip back and realize you have no recollection of turning pages.

But the story is familiar. You read it.

You were sucked so deeply into the story that you were no longer reading, you were experiencing.

In Writing Twitter, I often see Tweets with a line or two from someone’s book. Some turn of phrase that, to the author, is pure gold. Something they imagine emblazoned on a t-shirt.

But out of context, without the emotion and story, it is meaningless. Pointless purple prose.

Great if you’re Shakespeare and individual words matter; not great if you’re an average writer just trying to tell a story.

SHOW, DON’T TELL simply means that instead of telling me the sun is hot, show the character tugging at his necktie, rolling up his sleeves, wiping his brow.

The same concept applies to writing about our NFT projects. It applies to how we communicate the utility we’re building into our project and how we explain our roadmap.

Good marketing copywriting is also about communicating the value (aka, utility) of whatever we’re selling. The old adage here is “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”

In other words, BENEFITS not FEATURES.

Nobody cares about what governance rights they’ll gain; they care about the ability to contribute to a project and help guide it with their skills and knowledge.

Nobody cares about being in a community; they care about this community and how being a member helps them accomplish their goals, both personal and community goals.

Nobody cares about getting whitelisted for the next moon; they care about being on the inside track and not missing out on a great investment opportunity.

The problem is that the NFT community as a whole is still focused on “status” rather than developing and communicating real value to those with the money to invest in our projects and help us grow our communities.

We see everything through the jaundiced colors of the latest jpg NFT phenomenon. And that blinds us to other possibilities.

What Li Jin asked in her Tweet is relevant.

But, I believe, until we see beyond NFT ownership as a status symbol and only as a status symbol, the entire space will be stuck.

Bear market or bull. It won’t matter.

But there is opportunity here. If we can recognize that the definition of art goes beyond a pretty picture but includes music, poetry, fiction, film and animation, graphic novels/comics, even dance or other forms of movement like martial art katas, we can realize far more than even the strange imagination of a pulp fiction writer can conjure.

If we can refocus off of the pretty pictures, off of the status and ME-ME-ME, and instead look at how we build communities, how we work together to promote each other and help each other build projects, we can begin to see that the IRL utility of NFTs is not the ownership but the contribution.

That is the opportunity here.

Especially now during this (apparent) bear market when prices are down. As so many Tweets have said, now is the time to build.

Let’s build something new. Something fantastic. Let’s build it together.

In my next essay (which I’ll publish here on Monday, 6 June 2022), I’m going to focus on one way that we can build something new and do it together.

(Hint: it has to do with this short YouTube clip from the Bankless Podcast and a concept called composability, although I’m taking a slightly different tack on applying it specifically to decentralized storytelling.)

Read the rest of the essays in this series by visiting my main page and checking them out. Like a typical blog, start at the bottom:

https://mirror.xyz/0x839846a00f25f01DcB7446A50C92AfB5B24E1b03

The Pulpeteer (pronounced pulp·ateer; taken from an essay by pulp writer Lester Dent who created the Doc Savage character and series) is a full time author and the warped mind behind the metaverse fiction NFT project — THE JOE SPUTNIK CHRONICLES, a metaverse hardboiled detective fiction series — where he is exploring the concepts and practical application of decentralized storytelling and open source character IP as a means to tell better stories.

Follow the saga of Joe Sputnik, PI in 2047 New York City as he battles hidden forces that threaten to dominate what has become a fully decentralized world → www.jspi.xyz

Or follow his thoughts on decentalized storytelling and open source character IPs on Twitter → @jspi_nft