<aside> 🌅 At Atlas, we envisage a fairer future where every individual’s contribution to the creator economy is fairly rewarded. To understand how this future will be realised, we must first travel back in time… to the inception of the internet…
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There was no commerce in the early days of the internet. Payment integration was thoughtlessly excluded from early browsers, notoriously labelled the ‘original sin of the internet’ by Marc Andreessen. Users could only create, starting with personal websites and later developing content platforms such as Reddit and MySpace. But in the absence of monetisation, there was no incentive structure to drive the creator economy forward.
In the mid-2000s, this changed. A new wave of platforms rose to prominence, including Facebook and YouTube, which enabled creators to suddenly monetise content at scale. Those who had accumulated vast swathes of followers could now earn using their influence to promote products and services. The platforms took the largest share of revenue, which incentivised building as large an audience as possible. And to build the largest audience, viral content was king. Alongside came the rise of ‘clickbait’: attention-grabbing headlines designed to draw in maximum consumers. Talented creators publishing niche content struggled to influence at scale and make any revenue, while the top 1% reaped disproportionate rewards. This problem was endemic to Creator Economy 2.0.
The mid-2010s saw numerous platforms like Skillshare and Substack swiftly enable the direct monetisation of fans. Creators could now regard themselves as brands in their own right and earn from their unique identities, skills and knowledge. In this Creator Economy 3.0, even niche creators with thousands or even hundreds of devoted fans were able to generate meaningful revenue. However, the individuals that creators solely relied upon - their fans - had no means to reap rewards for their ambassadorship.
Today, with NFTs exploding in popularity, we have entered Creator Economy 3.5. We now have the concept of digital scarcity, exclusivity and verification of ownership. Creators can verify who owns their content and deliver greater value to them over time, while fans are beginning to see some rewards for their critical role. The creator-consumer relationship is slowly becoming more economically aligned. But it is far from perfect.
A long, winding path lies ahead before the world realises a true community economy - an economy where all contributors can generate and share wealth symbiotically. In this new reality, anyone who helps creators and brands grow and succeed must be rewarded proportionally to their efforts. To achieve Creator Economy 4.0, we must leverage the true power of blockchain and the third web to distribute wealth fairly.
<aside> 🚧 Today, everyone is a brand ambassador. We wear branded clothes that help their creators gain exposure. We wear luxury watches that make a statement, compelling others to do the same. We carefully choose and wear sneakers that express our identities, inspiring others who also identify with them to purchase. Despite this constant passive promotion, our individual brand ambassadorship is completely unrewarded.
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We believe that Web3-enabled social commerce will disrupt this paradigm and unbridle a new era of contributor meritocracy. At Atlas, we’ve already demonstrated the power of Web3 to deliver significant rewards to consumers.
Our latest campaign for the ‘UNEXTINCT’ brand raised $100,000 in paired NFT and physical artwork sales to support the reintroduction of a species extinct in the wild for over 20 years. In three weeks (and amidst a market meltdown), UNEXTINCT achieved 40,000 followers, 2.4 million views on a single viral TikTok, a partnership with Nifty Gateway and 20 media publications including Forbes and NFT Now. The NFT artwork became the first ever to be projected onto one of The Wonders of the World, Christ the Redeemer in Rio. But perhaps more importantly: collectors were rewarded with token-gated participation rights in the project, from being given access to the high security breeding centre to see the species in person, to a private lunch with the conservation artist behind the artwork. Greater levels of support unlocked proportionally greater benefits.
Armed with this formula - a work in progress, of course - we now stand at the precipice of a revolution in the very fabric of our economy. Atlas will spearhead this revolution by building a future in which reward is proportional to contribution.
<aside> 💡 Building the Community Economy will take a decade. That's why Atlas is focusing on tomorrow's consumers: Gen Z. Amongst this next generation of consumers (and brand ambassadors), digital fashion and wearables is already one of the fastest growing content categories, worth $40 billion already. This is where we will begin our journey.
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Today, very few brands are able to develop content that can be consumed in the metaverse. It is considered the reserve of NFT artists and 3D animators. But as our lives become increasingly distributed across mixed realities, brands will have no choice but to apply their boundless creativity in this new environment. Meanwhile, the vast majority of consumers are already expressing and cultivating new identities in an alternative reality: 60% of the global population spends on average 145 minutes on social media daily, a figure that is growing by 5.1% annually. It is no surprise, therefore, that one of the earliest manifestations of self-expression in the metaverse is digital fashion. Soon, wearing digital fashion - whether on avatars, conference calls or social media interactions - will become commonplace.
What is digital fashion? Digital fashion encompasses any 3D digital wearable that can be worn across mixed realities. This includes both augmented reality and immersive virtual environments.
Digital fashion in the metaverse offers an unprecedented opportunity to build the Community Economy. By leveraging blockchain technology, we can build a world in which any level of brand ambassadorship is rewarded fairly and transparently.