### Introduction

While non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are becoming the standard for digital assets, their use cases extend far beyond that. The crypto primitives that make NFTs ideal for digital goods or services make them excellent tools for brandable memberships. In this article, we explore how you and your brand can use NFTs to launch token-gated memberships, unlock crypto-enabled recurring revenue, and provide existing customers with unique web3 experiences.

### NFTs are well-suited to token-gated memberships

*NFTs are scarce.* As a brand, you determine how many NFTs you want to offer to your community. Your users purchase NFTs, or unique digital collectibles, from your brand.

*NFTs are unique.* While there are many token standards, NFTs leverage blockchain to ensure there's no chance for duplication or fraud regarding memberships.

*NFTs are transferable.* By default, NFTs can be traded freely on NFT marketplaces ([OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Magic Eden](https://magiceden.io/), [X2Y2](https://x2y2.io/)). Transferable NFTs means you could sell or trade your membership in a secondary market if you wanted to! The exception here is non-transferable NFTs, also known as account-bound tokens, or ABTs, based on the [ERC-4973](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4973) token standard.

*NFTs are dynamically priced.* Each membership token has an associated value and price determined by market forces, not some company setting arbitrary prices for its digital assets.

Membership NFTs are an excellent way for brands to give more value to their existing audience.

Membership NFTs are an excellent way for brands to give more value to their existing audience. By allowing users to create their own NFTs tied to a particular product or service, you can incentivize them to engage with your brand to unlock more rewards. This type of system not only drives engagement but also helps drive sales by reducing the friction between users and buying products/services they want.

### Token-based memberships unlock new business models

Token-based memberships enable brands to unlock crypto-based recurring revenue and monetize their community in a way that hasn't been possible before.

Web3 brands can offer value based on crypto tokens (fungible tokens or NFTs) and create new programs that allow loyalty programs to be used as currency or converted into other crypto tokens.

Many different reasons a token will be helpful within your community. Let's say you have an online community where users can create content and then earn tokens by sharing their work with others. If you launch an NFT membership, token holders could access premium services within the platform, such as private forums or live chats with team members. These types of systems don't need money at all.

### How can brands launch their token-based memberships?

Let's say you or your brand want to offer token-based memberships. Launching token-based membership starts with selecting the token standard. Acme can accomplish this using either fungible tokens (ERC20), NFTs (ERC721, ERC1155), or rental NFTs (ERC4907). We will explore these tokens below.

#### Non-fungible tokens (ERC-721, ERC-1155)

NFTs are similar to fungible tokens in that these tokens can be transferred from person to person and exchanged for goods or services. Two of the most common NFT standards include [ERC-721](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721) and [ERC-1155](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1155) However, unlike fungible tokens, NFTs have unique attributes—like a unique name or ID number—that makes them unique from one another.

If you are looking for a way to give your members different rewards based on their level of participation within your community or loyalty program, then NFTs may be a good fit for your brand.

#### Rental NFTs (ERC-4907)

Rental NFTs based on the [ERC-4907](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4907) token standard allows users to rent their digital assets for an agreed-upon amount of time.

#### Alternatives to NFT memberships

Brands can also launch their fungible tokens based on the [ERC-20](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20) token standard. These brandable tokens can be transferred from one person to another using decentralized exchanges ([Uniswap](https://uniswap.org/), [Curve Finance](https://curve.fi/), [Balancer](https://balancer.fi/)). They're great for membership programs that involve buying products or services. If you or your brand are interested in rewarding your members with something more than a digital product or service, they may want to consider another type of token.

### Conclusion

At Phoenix, we're excited to see more brands embracing token-gated memberships. NFT memberships allow brands to offer their customers exclusive access to unique benefits, experiences, or events.

If you or your brand are interested in creating unique NFT-driven membership experiences for your community, reach out to our team.


NFT Memberships for Brands

A creator makes things that other people want to read, subscribe to, or buy. That can be books, videos, podcasts, blog posts, courses, or apps. Content here refers to text and any visual or auditory media (video or audio).

A creator's job is to deliver value to customers by figuring out what they will pay for and ensuring they get it. A creator needs to create content and know-how to collaborate with other creators (artists, musicians, editors, designers, marketers) when and as needed.

If you're a creator looking to build and grow your audience, you need a content strategy. It is the art and science of the creation, curation, and management of content. Whether you are an independent creator or a member of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), you need to define your content strategy so you can establish credibility, create community, and crush the competition. In this blog post, we will explore content strategies for creators and DAOs.

## Create short-form content to validate ideas

Because it costs so much (time, capital, energy) to create great content, you need to know what the market wants before creating it. Here's how to do that.

The basic idea is to use short-form content to find out people's interests. Then, once you have predictable formats that work, you can scale up with longer-form content.

Don't know which short-form content will perform best? Create a variety of content and see which content resonates with your ideal customers.

Creating short-form content is easy and fast, and creating long-form content is rigid and slow. So start small and scale up when you have a proven hit.

Make longer-form content when many people benefit from it, not when only a few people will enjoy it enough to pay for it.

## Create long-form content to establish credibility

Long-form content is the primary way of establishing trust or credibility on the web. That might seem obvious, but I think it's important to understand why.

Your customers use Google to find information, and Google has created bots to crawl and search for content. If your website or web application has content, Google bots will find it and allow others to do the same.

Social media networks (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) are different, and they are not easily indexable by Google. In other words, Google prefers website content over social media content.

Your goal is to publish content that stands the test of time. Since long-term content takes longer to publish, creators and DAOs need to focus on higher quality content.

Long-form establishes credibility by allowing you to demonstrate the depth of your expertise on a single topic. A person who knows a lot about one thing can be pretty valuable; a person who knows many things and can communicate that knowledge is priceless.

The best way to prove expertise online is to put that expertise into long-form content. If you have written an article 1,000 words long or more, you have demonstrated that your knowledge goes deeper.

## Own your content by publishing it on your website

The best way to own your content is to publish it on your domain (yourname.com). We recognized this trend in 2017 and 2018, respectively, when [ENS Domains](https://ens.domains/) and [Unstoppable Domains](https://unstoppabledomains.com/) launched an alternative to DNS domains. Your domain gives you complete control over how content looks, what happens when people link to it, who has access to edit it, and so on.

Most social media posts are ephemeral or brief, and most social media platforms are free to monetize your content as defined in their terms of conditions. By hosting your data on your server and publishing content on your website. With your website, there's no platform de-risking.

Owning your content doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. Instead, I'm referring to that you should make your content and not let someone else control it or profit from it without you getting a share.

A content strategy helps you define how you post your content on the internet, and it's the opposite of a social media strategy. Instead of worrying about algorithms, followers, likes, shares, and other ephemera of the moment, you focus on publishing content on your website.

Most social media platforms are closed systems that capture all the value created by their users. Creators and DAOs often use these platforms for network effects, but they also become dependent on them.

I'm not saying that closed systems are inadequate or that open systems are sound; they each have their place. But if you create content -- stories, articles, music, photos, or videos -- you should be thinking about owning your website.

Owning content is essential because creators or DAOs often rely exclusively on social media platforms. If you publish content on your website, you maintain ownership and control of the user experience.

## Tokenize your content using NFTs

Tokenizing your content using non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) is an essential step in the process of maximizing project value.

Tokens have the potential to democratize the way we exchange value online. Rather than just being used as a currency, tokens can represent anything that people want. Tokens are well-suited to building community, governance, and economic incentives around communities, networks, or protocols.

Tokenization is one of the most powerful aspects of the crypto revolution. It allows us to create networks of trustless transactions between parties whose identities are not known or verified by any major party. Tokens allow us to build systems that were previously impossible or uneconomical to build.

Social media platforms incentivize content creators to create unique, original content without hyperlinking to other platforms. Incentivized content lives on the social media network. Any links to third-party platforms are demoted or downvoted by algorithms.

Most centralized platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram have a monopoly on data. Tokenizing content with NFTs creates an incentive for creators to control their intellectual property (IP). They can then sell the rights to their content directly to consumers with no intermediary taking a cut. They can also transfer IP with more ease using NFTs. In other words, NFTs give creators and DAOs more freedom and control over their creative output.

## Capture attention using NFTs

In the world of content, there is a race to capture attention. As more people find themselves with something to say, the competition for attention becomes more intense. And whether your goal is to share an idea or sell a product, the more crowded the playing field becomes, the harder it is to get noticed.

If you want your audience to discover your work, you have to understand how stories spread today. Because there are now so many stories competing for attention, the way they spread has changed. In the past, coercion captured attention: governments could rule by force, and churches could claim a divine right to your obedience. Now that we live in a voluntary society, it's more complicated. The tools for capturing attention used by governments or churches won't work anymore; technology has made them obsolete.

But there are still only a few ways to monetize attention indirectly, for example: selling advertising or doing sponsored content. The trouble with those methods is that they rely on what advertisers will pay for (mostly attention) and what sponsors will accept (branded content placement).

The attention economy is a competition for other people's awareness. Attention is the ultimate currency in a world of distractions. To capture attention, you have to do something that makes people want to pay attention to you. With NFTs, you capture attention, then trade it for money.

A content strategy for creators or DAOs is to create content scarcity: give away things in limited quantities. Technology has changed the balance in favor of the creator or the DAO. What used to be hard to claim ownership is now possible thanks to NFTs. Thanks to blockchain technology, creators or DAOs now have tools to claim digital ownership of assets.

NFTs could change this dynamic by allowing creators to monetize their content through markets directly. NFTs have the potential to monetize attention. Creators can use NFTs for access to their work (paywalls), or they could charge money for any transaction involving their work (one-time payments), or they could charge money for other kinds of transactions (subscriptions).

## The future of content monetization is token-driven

Content creation is changing. We're shifting from platform-driven content to token-driven content. Creators of DAOs are shifting from web2 content to web3 content.

The future of content creation is token-driven. The future of content creation will involve paying users directly, with an open system that anyone company or organization does not control.

A new paradigm is emerging in the content creation space that can be called token-driven content. This model allows anyone to support any content they like financially. The token-driven model has several advantages over traditional models:

Token-driven content creators don't need to worry about getting advertisers, subscribers, or sponsors. They make their work freely available for everyone to use. The creation of content is wholly independent of its distribution. It doesn't matter whether the readers pay money; if they like it, they can pay; if not, they can still use it. Also, there's no need for them to provide personal information when consuming the content - they don't even need to register anywhere.

If your project needs creative content, you can pay people to create it with tokens instead of money. The token's value depends on how much the creator's work is worth to the project; you could estimate this by looking at what other projects are paying for similar content.

This model might be better than paying people with money because it gives them a financial incentive to create better stuff. If they get paid in tokens, they also stand to make more by selling the tokens later; that makes them more willing to take risks because there is less at stake if one particular project doesn't work out.


The web is the truly open and distributed system we have. You need to worry about a few administrative things, such as getting a domain name or hosting. Still, otherwise, nobody stands between you and what you want to tell the world. From the early days of the internet, creators used this open nature to build compelling web experiences for profit and fun.

Content Strategy for Creators or DAOs

Decentralized teams and organizations can explore wealth creation and value transfer using new crypto mechanisms and primitives.

Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are digital entities that live on blockchain networks (Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, BSC, Bitcoin). They are like Reddit communities with bank accounts. DAOs often manage a treasury or pool of capital, and DAO members are responsible for allocating their treasury resources.

Growing and scaling a DAO requires capital, and DAOs require capital to pay team and community members for developing software, marketing its products, building a community, and so on. Funded DAOs increase the probability of success and decrease project risks.

So how does an aspiring DAO or startups go about bootstrapping their projects without relying on traditional venture capital? The answer lies in the tokenization of DAO's creative assets. The answer lies in the non-fungible token (NFT) drops.

How do token drops help your DAO? With NFT drops, your goal is to convince others to see value in your project so you can generate revenue from the sale of your tokens.

To make token drops work, you need two things: a sense of mission and a strategy for minting tokens. The mission helps motivate your community, and the strategy gives you the how-to to generate wealth using crypto.

In this blog post, I will explore some of the best practices for bootstrapping DAOs.

## Share your work in public

If you are working on something interesting, why aren't you telling everyone about it? DAOs should celebrate their wins and show the world what they've done.

Organizations have to fight the urge to operate in stealth mode. Some people don't think they have something interesting to share. But for DAOs, you are not just building something for yourself, and you are creating something that other people will use. And the more people who know about it, the more people can use it.

If your goal is to build a community around your work, each additional person who knows and talks about you becomes your ambassador, collaborator, and fan.

Every minute you spend on the project is a creative act that can be captured and stored on the blockchain. If you share your project updates, you are helping your DAO grow your community.

As a DAO, you can spotlight your milestones or accomplishments.

## Let token holders participate in governance

Once a DAO is formed, it needs a system of governance or decision-making.

Traditional companies operate top-down, whereby leaders delegate tasks to employees or contractors. DAOs are different, and DAO members can take on project tasks without a central leadership and vote on decisions using their tokens.

In traditional organizations, governance systems tend toward centralization. But this has costs: If one person or small group controls resources, they will also control how the organization is run. In extreme cases, they can end up owning everything. The obvious solution is to decentralize governance among all the stakeholders of an organization or community. DAOs accomplish this by encoding voting rules using smart contracts.

In a DAO, the people who own tokens can participate in voting on the organization's direction. Token holders get to vote with their crypto wallets. Software like [Snapshot](https://snapshot.org/) allows DAO token holders to vote on important issues using consensus-based decision-making mechanisms. If token holders don't like how the DAO runs, they can liquidate their tokens and take their money elsewhere. Or they can use their tokens to change things with proposals and community voting.

## Drop NFTs to bootstrap your DAO

DAOs will transform traditional VC-first fundraising models. Traditional companies often rely on venture capital to exchange equity for capital. Modern organizations rely on the exchange of tokens for capital.

At 🪶 Phoenix Team, we believe DAOs should be self-sufficient and adopt new crypto primitives to bootstrap projects. We also believe that NFT drops are an ideal way to accomplish this. These token drops are used to reward collaborators who contributed to the DAO, and here's how it could work. A DAO releases tokens to "celebrate a win." The number of tokens dropped in the community depends on the project's maturity. Typically, smaller projects issue fewer tokens, while larger projects can drop more tokens.

We are a team with one primary objective: to help you and your DAO generate money! If you are interested in bootstrapping your DAO, reach out to us.


Decentralized teams and organizations can explore wealth creation and value transfer using new crypto mechanisms and primitives. Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are digital entities that live on blockchain networks (Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, BSC, Bitcoin). They are like Reddit communities with bank accounts. DAOs often manage a treasury or pool of capital, and DAO members are responsible for allocating their treasury resources.

Bootstrapping DAOs

The beauty of the internet is anyone can create an account and sell anything. But if you're going to be a creator and want to sell something that's original, you need to understand what it is you want to sell. In this blog post, we cover three reasons why you should drop your own non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

NFTs are the next wave of creative expression. NFTs allow creators to tokenize their creative process or create a digital creative trail using blockchain technologies.

One of the main reasons NFTs are so popular is that they give us digital verification (public data on blockchain networks) when we need to know someone's ownership (crypto coins or tokens) or identity (crypto addresses).

While fungible tokens ($BTC, $ETH, $BCH) can be easily traded (or swapped) for one another, the value of non-fungible tokens cannot be easily swapped since each token is unique.

The most notable implementations of NFTs thus far have been [CryptoPunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks) (circa 2017), or [Art Blocks](https://artblocks.io/) (circa 2020), [NBA Top Shot](https://nbatopshot.com/) (circa 2020), and [Bored Ape Yacht Club](https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/) (circa 2021), and [CryptoKitties](https://www.cryptokitties.co/) (circa 2017).

Let's compare these NFT projects by sales volume. CryptoPunks has a total sales volume of 1.244B $USD, Art Blocks 743M $USD, NBA Top Shot 707M USD, Bored Ape Yacht Club 454M $USD, and CryptoKitties 44M $USD, according to [CryptoSlam!](https://cryptoslam.io/) These amounts were calculated from transactions on all marketplaces tracked and include owner-to-owner sales only (not initial sales from the product directly to the owners).

Some of the first NFT projects went on to trade millions on secondary markets, proving that all collectibles can be digitized and tokenized.

## You can have more creative ownership over your products with NFTs

NFTs are unique digital assets. You can own them, verify their authenticity, transfer them easily, and trade them securely. All of this leads to greater ownership over your assets.

The ecosystem around NFT minting is expanding. [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/) (smart contract-enabled blockchain) and its side-chains ([Polygon](https://polygon.technology/), [Arbitrum](https://offchainlabs.com/), [Optimism](https://optimism.io/), [Ronin](https://whitepaper.axieinfinity.com/technology/ronin-ethereum-sidechain)) have been the dominant networks for NFT creators. We're also seeing creators jump into non-Ethereum networks such as [Flow](https://www.onflow.org/) and [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain).

NFTs are tools in the creator economy. They provide a way to store and transfer digital assets in an efficient and provably scarce way. These tokens can represent digital assets (coins, items, collectibles) and even physical assets (cars, houses, vaults). While these NFTs are still in their early days, many see them as the next step in the evolution of digital ownership.

The era of digital ownership is currently upon us thanks to crypto tokens. It’s time for creators, and creatives to look into creating (or minting) their own NFTs to maximize ownership of their creations.

## NFTs are now within reach for even small creators

NFT creators are banking serious capital in their crypto wallets. But NFT drops are not reserved for famous artists like [@beeple](https://twitter.com/beeple), even small creators can now drop their own tokens for profit or fun. If you are a small creator and you own your own content, you can drop NFTs on any smart contract-enabled blockchain network ([Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/), [Flow](https://www.onflow.org/), [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain), [Polygon](https://polygon.technology/)).

Dropping NFTs typically requires capital up-front. The transaction fees are necessary to use the technology (sign blockchain transactions). The first generation of NFT marketplaces ([OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Zora](https://zora.co/), [Foundation](https://foundation.app/), [SuperRare](https://superrare.com/)) required creators to pay up-front. The second-generation platforms ([OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Cargo](https://cargo.build/), [Mintable](https://mintable.app/)) feature lazy minting (aka gasless minting or magic minting) which allows creators to make NFTs without any upfront gas cost, as the NFT isn’t transferred on-chain until the first purchase or transfer is made. With lazy minting enabled, creators can tokenize their creative process for free.

## Leverage marketplaces to sell your NFTs to your fans and your community

One of the fastest ways to increase the value of your digital items is to let someone else distribute them for you. This makes both centralized marketplaces and decentralized counterparts very attractive to creators. Third-party marketplaces or auction houses provide a quick and easy way to turn your NFTs into revenue without knowing how to develop and launch your own smart contracts.

There are three major reasons why you should drop your own NFTs on third-party marketplaces: You will monetize your work faster; you can build stronger ties with the existing collector community, and you will receive free marketing for your work. What's the downside of relying on existing NFT marketplaces? Marketplaces typically take 1-15% of the selling price. If you are still deciding on which NFT platform you want to use for your NFT drop, check out [🚀 Dstack](https://dstack.xyz/).

## It's easier than ever to drop NFTs that become more valuable over time

NFTs, or digital collectibles, can be designed to meet the goals of their creators. For example, do you prefer working alone? Use lazy minting to drop your own NFTs for free. Do you prefer to collaborate with other creatives, designers, musicians, videographers, photographers, or marketers? Use split payments to automatically distribute funds for all parties involved. Do you want to allow your fans to access private content? Use token-gating to share private content with token owners.

When you tokenize your work, you are essentially sharing your work with the world and potentially getting paid (if you have a large enough following or a true fanbase). If your community purchases your tokens, they recognize the market value of your tokens. They also believe that the token value may change in the future.

NFTs can be anything. This has opened up a whole world of opportunities for creators. If you find yourself thinking about creating your own NFTs but holding off, reach out to us.


The beauty of the internet is anyone can create an account and sell anything. But if you're going to be a creator and want to sell something that's original, you need to understand what it is you want to sell. In this blog post, we cover three reasons why you should drop your own non-fungible tokens or NFTs. NFTs are the next wave of creative expression. NFTs allow creators to tokenize their creative process or create a digital creative trail using blockchain technologies.

Blog

NFT Memberships for Brands

Content Strategy for Creators or DAOs

Bootstrapping DAOs

Making Money With NFTs

Three Reasons Why Creators Should Drop Their Own NFTs