Big news: after 18 months of building t2, we finally decided to launch the collect feature together with our friends at Zora! Now, creators can make their t2 posts as digital collectibles on t2, allowing anyone to collect them and connect to a bigger content network on-chain.
The journey to this launch was not straightforward. Internally, we grappled with understanding the significance of digital collectibles for user-generated content. We felt that the existing models for "collect" or "mint" in the Web3 space lacked a systematic vision ahead, and the problem space also seemed ambiguous. Is it to help creators monetize their work? Or help fans curate their content? What else can it do beyond the action itself?
So, we’re inviting all the readers of this post to hop on this thought experiment train with us to see what real problems we can solve via digital collectibles, and what opportunities we can potentially capture, all the way to the designed solution itself at t2.
The brief history of collectible posts
In December 2020, Mirror introduced its pioneering feature, "Collect," marking a significant milestone in the on-chain content landscape. This innovation enabled creators to monetize their work directly from their fans on the content level, and set the stage for the "ownership matters" movement just before the NFT summer of 2021.
Since then, "Collect" (or "Mint") has become nearly ubiquitous as a common standard in the Web3 content space, serving as a beacon for on-chain interactions that bridge creators with their audience.
However, this model also sparked a debate: "Why would anyone collect?" Critics questioned the value proposition when the interaction seemed one-sided, without further monetization and social engagement opportunities. This led to a nuanced understanding within our team, recognizing the distinct nature of ownership between Art and UGC, as one has more artistic value, while the other is a mixture of emotional and informational values combined.
Feedback from our backers, users, and investors echoed a common sentiment as well: "Let's build it, but it's better!" It wasn't until this year that we put our heads together to delve into this challenge with full curiosity and to figure it out inside out.
"Collect" is an accessible way to prove our authentic relationship with our own content in the age of AI.
The first thing we dived into was the vision of the future Digital Collectibles can contribute. With the big techs harvesting our data for decades, the AI/ML models are so well trained now that they can target us with the perfect ads, feeds of content, that locks us further in the loop of being AI’s resources. However, facing these billion-dollar businesses, not only do we not own any data we’ve created, we are also not getting paid a penny.
Many of us don't seem to mind this issue, as we are getting great services, and content creation has never been easier. Some might even believe content creation will soon be obsolete, as AI will take over the online content market, and we humans need to compete with AI content head-to-head, or find something else to do because this is a lost war already.
But, my friends, content creation is not a matter of competition; it is a fundamental human need for us to express, interact, and expand ourselves. Tools, including AI tools, are supposed to serve us in the creative process, not to replace us.
At the same time, our future cannot be merely driven by “who has the most information,” as "AI can mimic, but humans imagine". Without our input, AI would not have new data to be trained on and would meet its bottleneck. We already see AI search results are getting increasingly biased and repetitive. Therefore, it’s also crucial for AI’s development to have high-quality human-created content.
So the problem becomes obvious: How can humans and AI collaborate in the future, so we can all be happy and focus on what we do, with a purpose?
Experts and creators have provided multiple solutions from all different perspectives: legal, ethical, business. But before everything happens, ML models must first recognize and pay content creators and curators for the data they are trained on. But as a creator and curator, how do we prove our authentic ownership of the content?
Our answer is for platforms (like t2) to allow users to turn their content collections into training data sets. These are data users own and stored on-chain, so the platform only displays and facilitates the engagement layer of it, which is also on-chain. Thus, users will be directly recognized and compensated whenever AI (or any third party) intakes their data in any way. The process will be fully transparent, and all parties involved will act openly.
So, “Collect” is merely the first step for both readers and writers to build data sets we own, so that we can get paid (soon enough) when these data sets are commercially utilized or trained.
"Collect" opens a new door to monetization and creative freedom for writers and IP holders, big or small.
Monetization has always been a challenge, especially for writers. The traditional royalty business model takes a long time for writers to earn even their initial investment back, and short story submission payments, on average, start at $0.08 per word (if they do pay at all). It is almost a masochist's profession to burn real passion for peanuts.
In recent years, we've also seen platforms incorporate tipping and paid subscriptions to gated content. All attempts help. However, we still think more can be done as there is still a lack of bridge between the commercialized literary IP (the ones who have successfully published a book, for instance) and millions of passionate writers who wish to receive fair recognition for their creativity and continue doing what they love.
At t2, we believe making writers' work an IP asset early can be a fair experiment to help with monetization from early on. Before any literary IP got to where they are today, it used to be in the same position as every early career writer, and only a handful of stories get picked up by publishers from incubation to succession. So to have the IP incubation process integrated within the creation process can potentially help break hard walls between creators and fans for writers to start getting compensation.
Another opportunity it opens is co-creation. If every piece of work can be remixed for everyone to create their own reproductions as co-creators of this story, the IP line get developed with more people helping to grow and expand it, which is the hardest nutshell for all creators to crack through: creating content network effect.
This opens up a broader, unexplored landscape for content co-creation and re-creation, where blockchain technology can facilitate clear IP rights with verified derivatives to creation itself with legit value transfer. Meanwhile, all parties contributing to this content network can be traced and rewarded fairly with full transparency.
Thus, making content digital collectibles is the first step in shifting content relationships on-chain. When a collectible transforms into an IP asset with defined ownership and licensing—as envisioned by our friends at Story Protocol—we’d finally addressed our long-standing challenges of intellectual property management for content reproduction, but with elegance.
Now, envision when everyone begins connecting nodes to this content network. People can build their digital garden from the open web as a co-creation playground where the content inside can be linked, expanded, remixed, and reproduced (almost like a living organism), with direct value transfer on-chain.
"Collect" helps us build a social relationship on-chain via content.
Since the essence of collecting is to own a piece of the unique copies in our wallets, eventually, this will collapse time and space for all people who enjoy this content being surfaced together.
This might sound abstract. To illustrate the point further, let me introduce you to the weird fashion of the Chinese emperors, who loved stamping their own personal stamps on historical masterpieces.
This piece shown above by Wang Xizhi, who was from the Jin dynasty ( from 265–420 AD), had been stamped 220 times across more than 1000 years in time, by emperors showing their admiration for the writing of this masterpiece. Through these marks, we witness not just historical events but a cascade of emotions, a palpable excitement that resonates with us even today.
Among these, Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty left an indelible mark by applying 170 of his own stamps, confessing he "could not help it." His audacious act included inscribing "Shen" (神, meaning "divine" or "godlike") directly onto the middle of the art, a move that might be seen as the fervor of an ardent fan.
Stamping represents a profound desire to connect with the work and the master behind it. Each emperor sought to weave their legacy in and share the immortality of the masterpiece, bridging the gap to a man they could never meet.
While the relation between on-chain activities and the act of stamping a physical object might not be immediately clear, there exists a universal human desire that both practices aim to fulfill: the longing to be recognized, remembered, and associated with.
Similar to stamping, collecting is a way to show our appreciation to the work in a permanent way. Having on-chain data on collectibles can help open many doors for creators and fans to be further connected with proven interests beyond readership, as humans are emotional beings seeking bonds with others.
By making our work collectible, we open the door to welcome more connections with the wider community. And by collecting the article we like, we become curators of this piece of digital diamond, together with the other folks who are touched by the same piece.
The next step is to take this on-chain data and create new funnels for people to find each other and bond further. Imagine opening a new door to talk with the creator in a private group or discovering like-minded people on-chain with the most similar tastes to us. Those social signals are extremely valuable, and we are keen to see new ways for us to build new relationships in a high-signal way.
How we eventually designed it & what’s next
Make your post a digital collectible via Zora
The first thing we designed is to help writers make their posts digital collectibles. As mentioned above, this is an essential step in plugging your post into a bigger on-chain content ecosystem, starting with allowing everyone to own a copy of its data in their own data set.
What's different from other platforms' approaches is that we chose the most compatible collectible networks we trust to integrate, instead of building our own smart contracts in silo. As mentioned earlier in this post, making the content digital collectible is merely the first step of building t2 "Idea Graph" of a truly permissionless content network of IP assets and derivatives.
We chose Zora for its broad composability with other tools and networks, their creator-centric designs, and immediate interoperability in the Lens ecosystem via Open Actions. The Zora team has developed the most sophisticated yet simple solution for creators to build a real impact from their work and have composability thinking along with their evolution.
What's also different about our implementation is that users can come in from any chain and pay without switching networks. This cross-chain payment will make the UX on the consumer side much friendlier, and thanks to our amazing friends at Decent, we managed to make it smooth and easy for everyone.
What’s next:
After making the post a digital collectible that can be collected on any chain, the natural next step is for more people to see it and execute the action. What's right after the launch is for writers to amplify their posts via Lens, not only to aggregate likes and comments as we already supported, but also to trigger the "collect" call to action on other Lens clients via Open Action, Orb and Hey would be a good choice to start experiencing.
Yes, we’re already busy designing the Idea Graph itself! Our partner at Story Protocol will be helping us to power our writers further, with Intellectual property rights for t2 users to help facilitate further content remixing as IP derivatives of the initial post. A whole new world awaits!
Before we go …
If you want to read more about the feature design and get a step-by-step guide, our Head of Product, Kevin, has better pieces prepared for you:
Creating a collectible: https://app.t2.world/article/cly7dojjk10957941ymcwy44dq5e
Collect a post: https://app.t2.world/article/cm1te2fjo108098320mc9s2lpqgv
Special thanks to our amazing partners at Zora, Decent, and Lens, and our amazing team, Andrzej, Natalia, and Kevin, who brought this innovation to life. I’m genuinely proud of what we do and the world needs to see more of it!
Let us know what you think; I’m sure there’ll be more brilliant ideas in the comment session that we can borrow for our next feature idea!
Mengyao
Co-founder CEO @ t2.world
