Original Author: Tang Yuan
Original Author: Tang Yuan
On August 5, Kevin Rose, the founder of the NFT project Moonbirds, publicly announced on social media Twitter that he would convert the Moonbirds and Moonbirds Oddities series of NFTs to "CC0 mode" and establish MoonbirdsDAO to support any user to recreate or derive new ones based on this NFT project. products without buying or holding NFTs.
"CC" is the abbreviation of Creative Commons (Creative Commons), and "0" means no copyright. Therefore, CC0 NFT generally refers to NFT without copyright restrictions. The creator gave up all the copyrights condensed in the NFT works and contributed them to the public domain. No one needs to buy or hold the NFT, and the outside world can freely use the NFT works for commercial or non-commercial purposes and re-creation.
Moonbirds' move undoubtedly opened up space for the re-creation of its own NFT, but its sudden openness caused dissatisfaction among the NFT collectors and holders. Firstly, this idea did not seek advice from the community, and it was decided by the developer itself, which is against the community spirit of the blockchain; NFT asset empowerment.
Although users don't quite understand it, entrepreneurs and capital in the industry seem to be forming a trend of advocating open copyright of NFT, which can be seen from the recent attention to the voice of CC0 NFT in the public domain space.
On August 3, a16z, a well-known crypto venture capital institution, even published an article explaining why NFT creators are turning to the CC0 model.
As soon as the capital is called, Nouns, a pixel NFT project, has begun to attract market attention. Since its establishment in August 2021, the project has released the NFT series in a CC0 copyright-free manner, allowing any user to derive new works based on this NFT project.
Nouns is the first project to do CC0NFT from the very beginning. Although it was not famous during the NFT explosion period, when the CC0 model became the focus of attention, the market suddenly discovered that it quietly occupied a position in the NFT field, and open copyright continued for it. Dynamic, successful cases of cross-border cooperation also demonstrate the benefits of open copyright. At the beginning of this year, the classic square-frame glasses element (Nouns Glass) in the Nouns NFT series appeared in Budweiser's advertisement for the Super Bowl of the rugby match, and physical glasses were also produced offline.
Why are NFT projects trying to open copyright now?
There is a view that NFT began to turn to CC0, not only because of the sudden successful cases, but because of the current encryption market environment. The NFT market, which is mainly oriented to the C-end, is beginning to feel the cold of the bear market. The new funds entering the encryption market are decreasing, the trading volume and user participation in the NFT market are declining, the bonus period is ending, and new projects are also trapped in "reinventing the wheel." The predicament is nothing new.
If the NFT project wants to get a share of the stock market, it needs to change the operational thinking of selling NFT. One of the advantages of NFT is that it can be programmed. With such an attribute, building a car behind closed doors is far worse than letting everyone stand on the shoulders of giants to brainstorm. The open copyright model without purchase may lose NFT sales, but the new opportunities that external creativity brings to the project are invaluable.
So, compared to the well-known NFT projects such as BAYC and CryptoPunk, what is the difference between CC0 NFT? What CC0 NFTs are already on the market? How are they developing? This issue of Web3 Honeycomb will bring analysis.
"Copyright issues" limit the expansion of NFT projects
The public's copyright awareness of NFT is probably inspired by a series of stories caused by CryptoPunks.
The CryptoPunks series of punk pixel avatars created by Larva Labs has always been the leading project in the NFT market. Encryption enthusiasts snapped up this series of NFTs and set them as personal social avatars to flaunt their encryption community, which means, The holder of the CryptoPunks has ownership of the NFT.
When it was hot, few people thought about "can I recreate or commercialize CryptoPunks". Until the end of 2021, Larva Labs requested OpenSea to remove several derivative projects under the pretext of "copyright infringement". Among them, the most famous "infringement" derivative NFT project is CryptoPhunks. In terms of naming, this project has one more "h" than CryptoPunks. The visual content of the avatar is to reverse the left and right of the original pixel avatars. The project as a whole looks like a copycat of the original version.
Larva Labs' request for delisting was finally satisfied by OpenSea, but this also left a question: What does the so-called copyright of CryptoPunks include? The project has never been made clear before, and it seems that the copyright is owned and used by the issuer by default, and the holder does not have the right to commercial use.
It was another thing that really drew the attention of NFT collectors to the CryptoPunks copyright issue. In August 2021, Larva Labs signed an agency agreement with Hollywood agency UTA (United Talent Agency). This cooperation revealed that CryptoPunks has been seeking copyright cooperation opportunities with movies, TV, video games and other entertainment platforms, trying to gain revenue from the B side. Speculation is that this is why Larva Labs has been reluctant to grant similar commercial licenses to NFT holders.
This aroused the anger of CryptoPunks holders: Well, I invested in your NFT, and you have already made money from me, but you don’t seem to plan to share the return with me, which is not in line with "value return to users" The spirit of Web3.
It was also at that time that NFT followers also began to look for counterexamples of CryptoPunks in the market due to copyright issues. Another NFT head project, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), happened to be a model that explicitly stated copyright.
The developer Yuga Labs stated that the ownership and commercial use rights of BAYC NFT will be granted to the buyer when the transaction occurs.
BAYC pioneered the "NFT copyright belongs to the buyer", allowing the holder to use it as a collection, and at the same time to commercially derive the NFT held.
With this foundation, the domestic trendy brand China Li Ning will buy #4102 BAYC Boring Ape. After obtaining the NFT, the news that China Lining pop-up store invited "Boring Ape" as the manager has attracted widespread attention from the public. Not only that, the Li-Ning brand has been combined with Boring Ape elements, and products such as clothes and shoes have been produced, and related exhibitions have been held.
The combination of Boring Ape and the physical brand has given the IP of this NFT circle a new round of exposure. Expanding the popularity of NFT IP outside the circle is a win-win situation for the IP itself and NFT holders.
Boring Ape’s open copyright has left more opportunities for Yuga Labs. In March this year, the company simply acquired CryptoPunks and announced the opening of the commercial copyright of the NFT series of pixel avatars. The copyright of this NFT series has finally become clear.
However, it should be noted that the copyrights of BAYC and CryptoPunks are only open to holders who purchase them, and only support the use of purchase-based NFT itself to create and develop derivatives, but the brand names and logos of these two series cannot be used.
For example, when China Li Ning purchased BAYC #4102 NFT, it can only use the image of the boring ape of #4102. It can print the image of the boring ape with this number on T-shirts, hats, and shoes for commercial use, but it cannot change or recreate the image of the ape . In addition, China Lining can only mark the number "BAYC#4102" or "#4102" on the clothes, but cannot directly use the brand logo and name of the BAYC series.
It can be seen that the owner of BAYC NFT can only develop derivatives based on a certain boring ape image held, and the programming attributes of NFT are not open to the public, which limits more usage scenarios of BAYC, such as in the Metaverse and other NFT interaction. If such a demand breaks out in the market, it will require NFT developers to open up more rights attributes.
CC0 opens up innovation space for NFT projects
Even though Yuga Labs pioneered the opening of copyright, the previous NFT market did not seem to realize the importance of this. The supply of NFT collections for the C-end continues, and consumers are stimulated by investment to make money. The prices of some NFTs have also been pushed up with the influx of market enthusiasm. But everything came to an abrupt end in the overall downturn of the crypto asset market.
According to NFTGO data, since May, NFT trading volume has been shrinking. Recently, the total daily transaction volume of NFT is about 150 million U.S. dollars, which has shrunk sharply compared with the daily transaction volume of more than 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in January this year.
The NFT market has suddenly become a stock market. New and old NFT projects are trying their best to attract new users. Old projects with high floor prices are actively deriving new products to lower the consumption threshold of users. For example, the boring monkey BAYC released the low-threshold mutant monkey MAYC Compared with BAYC whose floor price is 78 ETH, the floor price of MAYC is only 18.8 ETH.
Despite this, the reduction in NFT market activity has become a reality, and the market needs a new stimulus to break this stagnant pool. CC0 copyright-free NFT began to enter the field of vision of users and capital.
The full name of CC0 "Creative Commons Zero" is actually not a new concept exclusive to the NFT world. CC is the English abbreviation of "Shared Intellectual Property Rights", and Zero represents the ultimate "0 copyright". Shared intellectual property was proposed by the non-profit organization Creative Commons.org (Creative Commons), which advocates the author's selective open copyright of works, which usually means that the creator voluntarily gives up all copyrights to the work and contributes it to the public domain, supporting any People's use of works for commercial purposes or re-creation has become the common intellectual property of mankind.
Every January 1st is Public Domain Day, which commemorates works that contribute copyright to the public knowledge. According to the copyright regulations and intellectual property laws of different countries, on the first day of the new year every year, works in the fields of music, books, artwork, poetry, movies, etc. will be contributed to the public domain, and the copyright of these works will be open to everyone. This means that the original creator or copyright holder renounces their exclusive rights and the work is free for everyone to use.
For NFT projects that follow CC0, the creator renounces its copyright to an NFT and decides to open it to the public domain. Anyone can freely modify or recreate the content without permission, and it can also be used for commercial purposes, and there is no need to hold or purchase NFT with open copyright.
Take Moonbirds, which just announced the adoption of the CC0 license, as an example. Even if you do not hold a Moonbirds NFT, you can still change, recreate, derive new works, or make products for sale on the Moonbirds NFT image, and the proceeds will belong to you, so Acting will not be accused of infringement.
Compared with NFT projects such as BAYC, which also express open copyright, NFT projects with CC0 licenses are different in ecological construction and business model operation.
Operation form
BAYCs are more like a "PGC brand", and professional project parties are responsible for the output, or guide users to output NFT-related content. The official leads the development of the project route and regularly reports the latest progress in order to create an NFT IP brand.
The CC0 NFT project is more like a "UGC platform", which is led by users or outputs NFT content. The NFT project party provides basic element components or concepts, and users can build their own content according to their needs. For example, users can establish a DAO organization to jointly build the project ecology, or derive a new game or object based on NFT. The CC0 NFT project gave up IP ownership, allowing every user to have the opportunity to participate in the creation of this IP. At this time, the NFT project is more like an ecological incubator.
ecological structure
BAYC-like NFT is like a brand company. The project is promoted mainly by the developer, and the users are led. It is top-down. For example, the BAYC project, which was issued by Yuga Labs, later established the DAO organization, issued Token APE, and recently launched the metaverse project Otherside based on this NFT character. These developments are all led by Yuga Labs. In addition to the attributes of consumers, users can also express suggestions and make contributions in the DAO organization, but they are not the leading party.
The CC0 NFT project is more like an infrastructure platform. As an infrastructure, it incubates countless derivative projects. It is a horizontal and continuous derivative process. An NFT element is likely to generate countless new projects. These derivative projects will feed back the original NFT. Form a multi-stakeholder ecosystem. For example, Nouns, there are hundreds of products derived from this NFT project, and multiple NFT projects have been derived from the "square-frame glasses" element alone. This project operates independently, has its own development team and new ideas, and the NFTs sold are The income obtained is also owned by oneself.
From the perspective of operation form and ecological structure, CC0-type NFT projects and ecological development are complementary. The decentralization of copyright has released many opportunities for ordinary users to participate, which is equivalent to sinking the market and reaching more actual commercial use scenarios. The spontaneous self-propagation effect of users can also quickly accumulate a large amount of attention, funds and talents, and the more people join, the more creativity will be stimulated.
Of course, not all projects are suitable for the CC0 copyright-free model. This model is more suitable for NFT projects with inconspicuous works, because such projects can leave more space for creators to expand. For example, Loot, an early popular text format NFT project, did not explicitly state that it was a CC0 copyright-free model, but because each NFT image is only composed of a few lines of text, it gave creators more imagination and creative space. Based on the modular content provided by the project, different products can be created, such as games, NFT collections, etc., which are more in line with the CC0 concept in terms of operation.
In addition, it is relatively difficult to operate a successful CC0 NFT project. The platform or ecological structure is destined to generate more stakeholders between derivative projects and native projects, which is a test for native projects and DAO organizations. Ability to coordinate resources.
What are the CC0 NFT projects?
CC0NFT Creator Nouns
Introduction
Introduction
Nouns is a CC0NFT project built on Ethereum. It was created in August 2021. Each Nouns NFT can be automatically generated based on people, things and places.
Nouns' square frame glasses element (NounGlasses) has been out of the circle. At the beginning of this year, the project cooperated with Budweiser Beer. The square-frame glasses appeared in the advertisement of the famous rugby game Super Bowl. The physical glasses arrived in the hands of users as gifts, which attracted market attention for a while.
features
In terms of distribution methods, Nouns is different from previous NFT projects that issued tens of thousands of pictures at a time. It only issues one NFT at a time. Starting from August 8, 2021, the Nouns protocol will generate and auction one NounNFT every 24 hours. By August 10 this year, the number of Nouns NFTs has reached 404, which means that the current circulation is 404, and the total circulation is unlimited .
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On August 10th, Nouns released Noun NFT with number #404
In terms of appearance, each Noun NFT is a pixel-style character with a common feature of wearing square-rimmed glasses. According to the official introduction, Nouns are randomly combined from 5 predetermined features, 2 backgrounds, 30 body structures, 137 jewelry elements, 234 head elements, and 21 eye elements. If arranged in random combinations, Nouns can generate a total of 403930380 NFTs. According to the output rate of one per day, it can be continuously produced for 110,000 years.
On August 10, the floor price of Nouns displayed on OpenSea was 94 ETH, about $169,000. Statistics show that the number of wallet addresses holding this NFT is 238.
idea
Nouns is committed to exploring CC0 copyright-free NFT, seeking to establish a viable open source IP intellectual property. The creator of the project voluntarily gave up the copyright and commercial use rights of the NFT, which means that anyone can use the name, characters, and picture elements of Nouns for re-creation. Even if you don't own Nouns NFT, you can use Nouns' brand and style to create your own movies, games, clothing, etc.
During the cross-border cooperation with Budweiser, Nouns DAO donated a Noun NFT to the "Bud Light N3XT" NFT issued by Budweiser, and the square-frame glasses element appeared in the brand advertisement. Nouns has cooperated with the Bud Light N3XT project to produce the actual glasses. Anyone who purchases the "Bud LightN3XT" NFT will get these glasses.
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Nouns partners with Bud Light to release physical glasses
Meme wind little stickman mfers
Introduction
Introduction
The project came out at the end of November last year and was founded by KOL Sartoshi on Twitter. He was based on the Youtube stickman father-son dialogue emoticon package "Are You Winning Son?" "Inspired by the mfers NFT series, the image of the NFT is composed of stick figures drawn one by one. On June 10 this year, Sartoshi announced his withdrawal from mfers and logout of Twitter, and he handed over the smart contract to the community.
features
The total amount of mfers NFT is 10021, and the initial casting price is 0.069 ETH. On August 10, the floor price of the series was 1.07 ETH, which is around $1,800.
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The initial minting price of mfers is 0.069 ETH
mfers is different from most NFT collections automatically generated by algorithm programs such as Cryptopunks. Its biggest feature is that all NFTs are hand-painted stick figures by Sartoshi himself. Most of the little stickman images of each mfers are wearing headphones, drawing Smokes, hands are busy with the computer keyboard, the overall shape makes people feel a "mourning culture", which is deeply loved by the encryption circle.
operation status
mfers adopts the CC0 copyright-free model, allowing anyone to copy, repost or re-create it. The founder Sartoshi said that this project has no roadmap and no official community. The planning, operation and development of the project are based on mfers community members self-awareness-oriented. Therefore, it is also nicknamed "three no products" by users.
Also because it is open enough, mfers allows NFT users to transform from the passive identity of content recipients to the role of builders who actively participate in the project ecology. Some people in the community are busy with brand building, some spontaneously form community communication, organize offline activities, and some pay for it out of their own pockets Carry out mfers' physical product design, and put mfers' little stickman on the billboard.
Ugly Elf Goblintown
Introduction
The Goblintown NFT series is based on Ethereum. It uses the Goblin goblin as the theme and released image NFTs, which were launched on May 21 this year. At the beginning of the launch, users only need to pay the gas fee on the chain to mint the NFT. On August 10, the floor price of Goblintown NFT was 1.5 ETH, about $2,700.
features
The total number of Goblintown NFTs issued is 9,999. The image of the goblin is not cute, it is simply ugly, so some people don't appreciate this style of painting, but some people like its weirdness.
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Goblintown weird style
Goblintown announced itself as CC0NFT when it went online, allowing anyone to commercialize or redevelop it in any form. Compared with well-known NFTs such as BAYC and Azuki with clear project plans, GoblinTown also belongs to the "three no projects" - there is no roadmap, no official community, and the practicality is up to you.
Thanks to Goblintown's CC0 license, it welcomed a wave of derivative NFTs in its early days. Goblin Girls (Goblin Grlz), Goblin Babies (BabyGoblintown), Goblin Burgers (Gtburgers) and even Goblin Piss (GoblinPiss) and other goblin NFT avatars appeared on the market together, and the floor of these derivative NFTs The price is extremely low, attracting a group of players to buy.
The "Moon Bird" group that was transformed halfway
Introduction
Moonbirds is an NFT avatar series launched by PROOF, which is also built on Ethereum. The main element of the image is a cartoon owl, with a total circulation of 10,000. On April 16 this year, Moonbirds started public casting, with an initial casting price of 2.5 ETH. On August 10, the floor price of the Moonbirds NFT series was 14.5 ETH, which is about $25,000.
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Moonbirds Oddities is a new NFT series recently launched by PROOF. The image is a cartoon kiwi bird, with pixel style as the main style. The project was officially launched in July this year, with a total issuance of 10,000 tokens, some of which were airdropped to Moonbirds holders. On August 10, the floor price of the Moonbirds Oddities NFT series was 0.78 ETH, about $1388.
Moonbirds Oddities kiwi bird figure
features
features
Proof Collective is composed of 1,000 NFT collectors, and its members include Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), a well-known encrypted artist in the NFT circle, and Gary Vaynerchuk, an investor. The club's co-founders, Kevin Rose and Justin Mezzell, are also very influential in the NFT field. The former is a partner of the blockchain investment agency True Ventures. He not only invests, but also hosts a popular podcast in the field of encrypted assets.
dispute
dispute
Moonbirds did not clarify the copyright situation in the early days of its establishment. Until August 5th, the co-founder of the project, Kevin Rose, publicly announced that the Moonbirds and MoonbirdsOddities series of NFTs will be converted into CC0-licensed projects, supporting anyone in the public world to create and derive new project.
Moonbirds, who turned halfway to CC0, caused dissatisfaction among NFT holders.
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