I think part of the issue is that a lot of the activity and building on XTZ are happening outside of the TF system right now. @TezTones put on a music event that caught the eye of @DGBventures but that went wholly unnoticed by the ecosystem as a whole until literally this week. (They've been working on it for over a year.) Then there's $POLE - which came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with grants. Even AB admits there is something off about the Tezos community giving so much attention to the foundation because that is not really the case in most other chains. Most startups go in with the understanding that funding can come from anywhere, but we seem to put an oversized expectations from that one source - which I don't think is healthy as a whole. For the record, I had a poor experience with the foundation too, which basically put one startup I was a part of out of business last year. But that was always just one path - I picked up the pieces, restarted the project, then moved on from there. In a way, it was a blessing because had we gotten funded (which would not have been enough anyway), they might have interfered with our progress due to conflicts of interests. (My biggest gripe about the process was that I wish they would have been quicker and clearer in its rejection - it's the ambiguity that killed us, not the rejection itself.) As someone who left the "bigger" chains in favor of $XTZ, it might be helpful to know that despite their "professional" demeanor, there are some pretty toxic things happening in the background over there too. - A lot of startups are good at fundraising but stink at execution. They raise millions, which the teams are happy with because they get paid well for a few years (it's important to consider people's motivations here), but then "deliver" some half-assed thing that disappoints everyone. ETH and L2s are full of these half-assed projects that just don't work. (And the gas fees don't help, of course.) They don't care because they got paid anyway and whether it works for the ecosystem as a whole or not, doesn't really matter to them. See ya, suckers! - NFTs are the only real visible "product" of crypto right now. How is that doing? Very poorly. When was the last time a celeb wanted to associate themselves with NFTs...or even crypto? A lot of that hyped died with FTX/SBF and has turned into a bad word in the entertainment industry right now. The bigger problem is that a lot of NFT projects *actively* pissed off a lot of people in the industry - when OpenSea pulled royalties from their business model that was already the beginning of the end. A big middle finger to all creatives and artists everywhere. 🖕 - People celebrate fundraising success since potential is always fun to talk about, but they don't see the parts where VCs, token holders, speculators, and grant foundations use the money as leverage to "pressure" the teams into making mistakes. Oh, but those money people must be so smart because they have a lot of money, right? Well, we're talking about circles of people who genuinely thought that giving money to SBF was a good idea, and couldn't see past his charade. So imagine those same people calling the shots of what down over the last few years in the industry. Is it any surprise, really? - In crypto, traffic/views/likes - those sorts of vanity metrics mean nothing because revenue/profitability is what we're looking for in this financial tool, right? Well, about that...old habits die hard and people are still in the Web2 mentality, collecting this type of data even though they have made no in-roads into advertisers, which is the whole point of it. The business model is flawed at the fundamental level and they are throwing a ton of money at things we already know isn't going to work. People get dazzled by the marketing and don't realize that the vast majority of crypto firms are hemorrhaging a lot of money right now for no good reason. So I chose #Tezos because out of all of the chains out there, it is the most "blank slate" right now, I'd say. The fact that it's obscure is actually good thing, in an industry where the sentiment runs mostly negative. And because it's decentralized, you won't have people from the top gatekeeping or interfering with your work if they're doing something they don't like. You're free to experiment things on your own, on a financial system that has stayed reasonably stable over the years, both financially and politically. Everything changes if a Web3 startup emerges that is *actually profitable*, without subsidies from VCs or external life support. Let me know when that happens because I'm always looking. Until then, it's still anyone's game.

As someone who successfully "mooned" in Web3, I'll say that going to the moon in a ship as janky as a crypto is *scary AF* rather than "fun". I went from being a broke artist with no savings hopping from job to job to someone with financial security - which changed my life forever. The passion for the space for me comes from the belief that if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, too. I'm not complaining of course, but it does come with things that most people might not expect. - My net worth was changing all the time - I think I changed my tax bracket over a dozen times in the span of a year due to the volatility at one point. With potential and expectations changing so rapidly, it's pretty easy to lose sight of what's going on. 😵‍💫 (I'm expecting something similar to happen in the near future, so I'm gritting my teeth on that one. 😬) - Kind of a cliche, but with money comes those with ill-intent. And they are everywhere. You don't realize this until it actually happens, and it puts a dent in your outlook on humanity at times. I had to beef up security and be careful of who "let in" because it made it harder for me to trust the average person out there. (Though I also did learn that most people are actually good - it's really the few bad apples that make things difficult.) - It definitely changed the dynamic I had with friends and family due to my newfound "status". It became harder to relate to what most people were doing because my situation was so unusual compared to the norm. I "grew apart" with some people I used to be close with, which was a pretty difficult thing to overcome. So this is something to keep in mind as the prices continue to go up - real growth will come with some pain, and a bit of fear because of the unknowns real change brings. Is it worth it? That's up for the person to decide - but the folks partying over 10-15% gains are basically on a rollercoaster where the excitement is simulated - you know you will end up in the same place you started. A spaceship, on the other hand, though, will actually take you somewhere. Where? Who knows. 🚀🌌

Hey #Tezos artists - so I've been thinking of ways how to get you folks paid. The Creative Commons attribution options we have on @TeiaCommunity and objkt are nice but it unfortunately legally does not touch on what artists really need to justify higher sales prices - permissions for usage and rights, based on ownership. I looked and asked around but doesn't seem to be any easy answers because of conflicting and overlapping legal laws so I think the only way this gets done is if the artist themselves gives permission explicitly themselves. Some of them include: -- Exclusive rights to use, reproduce, distribute, display, and perform the work publicly. Rights to create derivative works. Right to be credited as the author. Right to object to derogatory treatments of the work. Right to make copies of the artwork in any form. Right to distribute the original or copies of the artwork to the public. Right to show the digital artwork publicly. Right to modify the original artwork and create new works based on it. Control over digital copying and sharing. Right to use the artwork for commercial purposes. Exclusive or non-exclusive rights to use the artwork under specific conditions. Right to receive a royalty when the artwork is resold. -- Ideally marketplace platforms would automatically handle this for you on mint but for now it's largely up to the artist to be explicit about what their work can and cannot be used for. The goal is to standardize these rules in a way that makes it searchable - which is a market we know already exists. (People need art and content for their own projects all the time, and are willing to pay.) The more clarity we can bring to the legal status of NFTs, the more appealing it will be for the general public to want to buy and own them, too. Looking through the mints on chain right now, 99% of them basically have no legal status - which is understandable since nobody really told anyone that this was something necessary - especially for commercial use. But we have to start the habit somewhere - I would highly recommend artists at least have a template at hand and post a "custom license" with their mints - it will make your work look more legit as well as give you the justification to sell it for more, if necessary. (But make sure that you are comfortable with the rights you are giving away.) Think of it as an agreement or arrangement that you are having with your collectors. At some point there will be NFT-based copyright laws that we might use as guidelines but until then, we have to specify the use-cases and value of the NFT themselves, work per work. Below is an example where someone spent the time to clarify what owning their NFT "means", in an explicit way. Other examples include people who were selling samples and jingles on chain, and wrote in their license that if you bought the NFT, you also were also free to use it for whatever you want, as an owner. We need to start getting into the habit of making these arrangements more explicit if we want to take things to the next level - I'm hoping that artists will be up to the task. 🤞 teia.cafe/purchase?contractA…