social finance — ongoing industry cover

The definition of social finance is instruments, protocols and ways to help communities, creators, and other influencers to convert their social value to a financial one . in particular related to crypto instruments that their value is determined by the person’s success or community size.

In this post, I want to cover the different ways for a community or an influencer to use crypto in order to turn their social value to a financial value .

Until now we only see attempts of inventing financial layers (nfts and social tokens on top of exiting social layers (Twitter etc..) but soon enough we will see more attempts of platforms that create social platforms that have financial layers combined into them.

So, what’s in this space :

Social tokens:

a general definition to issue an erc 20 token that give the holder of social benefits, can represent tangible assets behind it or just social perks :

Notable platforms for issuers :

1. Rally — a primary and secondary platform for streamers
2. Roll — an issuance platform

Examples of assets :

1. $JAMM (access to newsletter and a community) is currently being used to access Brian Flynn’s newsletter called “Jamm Session” (it’s really good, I suggest you subscribe). To access the newsletter you need 1,000 $JAMM tokens.
2. $karma , uniwhales.io dao — access to an investor community .

Culture tokens (drops of digital items ):

Primary platforms for minting and auctioninng :

• Foundation — “Culture” exchange, meaning a platform for buying and selling all types of limited-edition goods at prices that match demand.
• Zora — “Everything” exchange, meaning a place where creators can launch products and, through cryptoeconomic systems, capture all of the value they create.

Collectables :

Platforms :

• CryptoPunks — The first NFTs issued on Ethereum. They are a set of 10,000 pixelated collectibles.
• flow&NBA Top Shot — NBA officially licensed NFT collectibles. Note that these NFTs are on the Flow blockchain, not the Ethereum blockchain.
• flow&CryptoKitties — The first NFT project to go viral and is credited with getting people excited about NFTs’ potential. They are cute cats with different traits and rarity that can be bred to create more cats.
• nft42& Avastars — Fully on-chain generative avatars. The Avastars team is working on many exciting updates, so perhaps I will soon need to move them from the “Collectibles” category to the “Games” category.
• SoRare — Fantasy football game where users can buy, trade, and play with official digital player cards.
• Hushmasks

Virtual art :

Platforms :

1. SuperRare — One of the oldest and most dominant NFT art marketplaces. Artists must apply to start selling on SuperRare and there is a long waitlist.
2. Nifty Gateway — Launched earlier this year, Nifty Gateway is an NFT art platform that has become an extremely important player in the NFT scene. It is wholly owned by Gemini, the crypto exchange started by the Winklevoss brothers.
3. Rarible — The first NFT art marketplace to implement a token that incentives trading. This is a big brain move, which I believe many will follow.
4. Async Art — Allows artists to create multiple NFTs from one piece of art. Interestingly, these NFTs can then change their “state.” For example, an art piece can change from a sunny island scene to a stormy island if someone changes the state from sunny > stormy.
5. MakersPlace — Successful art platform where artists can tokenize and trade their work.
6. KnownOrigin — Platform where artists can mint and trade crypto art. Having launched in 2018, they are another OG in the NFT art scene.

Art collections Tokens :

• $B20 — art collection bybeeple
• $Meme — doing a collaborations with artists and giving away their art to people that stake their tokens
• $WHALE (access to a community and a art collection )- has been the most successful social token to date and it is very clear why. Launched by WhaleShark in May of 2020 What sets $WHALE apart from other social tokens is that its value is backed by a large collection of NFTs, which are held in what is called “The Vault.”

Fractionalization tools: platforms enable to fractionalize the art collection and sell pieces of it :

1. NFTfi — The first platform for NFT collateralized loans. Users can earn a yield by lending out ETH or DAI loans to users who put up their NFTs as collateral. Or Users can receive ETH or DAI loans by placing their NFTs up as collateral. NFTfi has already seen impressive growth after launching just this year and I expect big things from the platform going forward (Note: I am an investor in NFTfi, so I’m very biased!)
2. NIFTEX — The spot to fractionalize your NFT into “shards.” These shards are ERC20 tokens that can be traded in a much more liquid manner compared to NFTs.
3. Nftx($nftx) — using funds to collateralized a bundle of nfts that have the same characteristics
4. Nft20.io ($muse)- similar to nftx only with the ability to redeem one of the nfts in the bundle .
5. https://unic.ly

New-gen of content platforms that build from the ground up with economics in mind

1. Bitclout — a Twitter that enables you to invest in the profiles, every profile is a coin .
2. Audius.co- a media player that rewards the artists based on the traction they get .

Excited to see more and more projects that enable this and asset classes of “popularity” will become much more meaningful.

References :

1. Zima red intro on nft
2. Zimared on social tokens
3. Forefront