Original title: "Permissionless Brands"
Original Author: Chu, Fancy, Protein Community
Compilation of the original text: Rhythm Research Institute-NFT Labs
Recently, the copyright issue of CryptoPunks has also been brought up again. Larva Labs did not hand over the copyright of CryptoPunks to the holder, but chose to hold it in its own hands. On the one hand, people question that CryptoPunks have gradually become people's status symbols in the metaverse, their digital avatars, so it becomes inappropriate that the copyright is still controlled by Larva Labs; on the other hand, people think that in Web3 Times should use the CC0 license.
CC0 is a type of Creative Commons license in which creators waive all rights and allow others to use their work unconditionally. Before the emergence of NFT, digital content creators often would not choose the CC0 protocol to ensure their own interests, but when NFT gradually became mainstream, more and more creators began to use this protocol because they understood that NFT can help people clearly Knowing which "digital document" is the "authentic" one, even if it is frequently disseminated or even misappropriated later, is capturing the value of the only "authentic" document, and in the digital age, the degree of dissemination and value are positively correlated.
While Larva Labs is clinging to copyright and sending out new lawyer letters to projects such as Phunks, brands such as BAYC, Nouns DAO, and The Hundreds have begun to enter the Web3 world by transforming their brands into "permission-free brands" , the adoption of the CC0 protocol has rapidly expanded the influence of brand culture and values.
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Brands are quietly changing
We see it in marketers lurking in Discord servers, we see it in Gen Z’s embrace of memecoins, we see it in beer companies launching NFTs and buying .eth domains. Brands are already thinking about Web3, and not just in the superficial forms mentioned above, but in some more meaningful ways, whether they fully understand it or not.
This idea has caught on throughout communities like Friends with Benefits, Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, and Nouns DAO, which are pushing the concept of "branding" to be more fluid and authentic, while Non-control and consistency. By their very nature, these brands are "permissionless."
Permissionless is a brand's most powerful startup tool. It has the potential to re-deconstruct the brand itself, people can create more value in any way and time without permission, combined with attention and ownership economics, so that the entire brand has a stronger brand power.
Here is some historical background for you. Modern brand communication begins with the one-to-many broadcast medium, with the authoritarian perceptual dissemination of brands through curated channels such as newspapers, television, and advertising—a psychological assault on the masses.
Then, the introduction of Web2 and user-generated content forced brands to fragment communication through social media. Without this broadcast control, brands prey on cultural movements through social listening, pyramid schemes, and in the name of communication.
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Brands, Control, and Culture: How Communities Change Brands
There has always been a delicate relationship between "branding" and controlling one's place in culture. In the early days of Web2 (1996) a boycott of Tommy Hilfiger's email campaign erupted after rumors that the designer made a racist comment on The Oprah Winfrey Show, saying "if I knew black Americans, Hispanics and Asians would buy my clothes and I wouldn't make them so well."
The rumor stemmed from the fact that people who regularly wear Tommy Hilfiger couldn't believe how a brand like Tommy Hilfiger could accept their clothes as street wear. While those rumors have since been clarified multiple times, and the designer never even appeared on the show, the rumor is still being revived on social media today—decades after the rumor was born.
The existence of this online "urban legend" illustrates two things: 1) people generally distrust the persona brands build for themselves compared to brands building their own cars behind closed doors; No final say.
"A brand has no objective existence at all: it is simply a collection of existing perceptions in the minds of consumers." - Susan Fournier, Harvard Business School
From a design point of view, a brand is a community's declaration of its own lifestyle choices. Without a community, there is no brand. This fact is evidenced by brands like Clarks (utility clothing), Adidas (sportswear), and even Brandy Melville (prepwear), which have been repurposed into mod and punk, streetwear, and more recently, the cottagecore subculture.
Fast forward to today, and brands continue to force a broadcast approach to marketing in the more fragmented digital space, often with 360º integrated marketing programs, product placement, segmented pushes and multicultural marketing. In an era where “traffic is king” and social media is overly groomed and beautified, brands feel they can solidify their place in the culture by selectively partnering with KOLs they believe will amplify their influence.
But the relationship between brands and KOLs has also become more and more delicate. A famous case is that Abercrombie & Fitch paid Jersey Shore's Mike "The Situation" a fee to stop him from wearing the brand's clothing; Sometimes, their fans can't figure out which one they should support.
As KOLs and their fans developed into a community, and some people really became content creators, this is something that happened quietly: a person who used to bring teeth whitening products started to launch his own products, signed a Licensing agreement, established his own toothpaste empire.
Brands match up with KOLs through payment. Users can only enter the community after purchasing products, which will turn KOLs into distributors. This makes brands and KOLs form an antagonistic relationship, and they have conflicts of interest.
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Web3 revolution
Web3 technologies have the potential to truly transform the notion of community ownership through concepts like decentralization and transaction transparency, challenging the broken relationship of control between brands and consumers. However, like all technology, technology itself is neutral, and the so-called morality depends on how we use it.
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Welcome to the age of license-free brands
Let's take a look at the key characteristics that are pioneering and defining this new field.
adaptability
humble
decentralized ownership
1) Adaptability = dynamic guidance
For new brands forming in the Web3 space, being license-free means being able to steer and adjust brand positioning at the speed of brand development. It’s an ability to improve yourself at any time, a network effect that challenges the traditional model of external agencies, consultants, or “inside” talent, emphasizing purpose over perfection.
we are at
we are atPHLOTEI see this in my hive thinking. People are solving user experience and logo design problems, and they announce their current progress on Discord every day. Hundreds of people in the community are using Miro, Figma, Googlesheets and other tools to work together. And we're going through a series ofseminarput it inProtein CommunityPut it into practice and maintain a healthy growth state through continuous collective improvement.
2) Humility = Community is always right
Web2 brands have long been “telling” consumers what to buy and when to buy, leveraging social listening and targeted advertising to achieve competitive product-market fit.
However, web3 brands can leverage distributed decision-making and collective leadership to create open discussions around the brand, enabling instant market fit and community fit.
The idea of delegating power to the community is a shift from "user-generated content" to "user-owned content". This is why we’ve seen DAOs explode this year, whether they’re collectively voting on the direction of brand strategy, proposing strategic partnerships, or even discussing the value of a product coming to market.
However, the ultimate trend in DAO governance is to put more and more power in the hands of the community. Because when it comes to needing to make the community market fit, the community is always right.
3) Decentralized ownership = everyone's token
Social tokens are a type of digital asset that are backed by the reputation of a community, individual or brand. We like to think of them as a tool for collaboration and coordination, creating value through individual or community interactions and reputations.
One form of social tokens are stonks (meme stocks). What people often forget is that public companies are owned by dispersed shareholders, to whom they have actual legal and social responsibilities. That said, most corporate liability is virtually non-existent in 2021, as financial titans, legislators, and powerful boards of directors have conspired for decades to disenfranchise shareholders.
But shares are just one way to achieve decentralized ownership, and this approach is already being used. When social tokens are developed for communities that have been building brands, as in the case of Clarks and Adidas, what do they offer? How can we bring power and ownership to these subcultures and communities as brands reach new heights after claiming ownership of the brand?
The reimagining of social tokens, digital currencies, and distributed ledger-based social exchange is leading a revival of the collaborative economy where Web3 brands can consolidate and distribute ownership to early adopters and Brand ambassadors who shape the brand.
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Bored Ape Yacht Club
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs, where each Bored Ape is "programmatically generated from over 170 possible traits, including expressions, headgear, clothing" and is associated with a different rarity sex related.
Although the price of Bored Apes was only 0.08ETH at the initial launch, their floor price rose to 39ETH six months later. At the time of writing, that's about $180,000.
How did you do it? The answer is adaptability, ownership and community.
For Bored Ape owners, they don't just change profile pictures because they want to signal their status to the brand; they do it because it's in their interest to promote the brand. Why? Because the NFT contract stipulates that Bored Ape owners have full commercial rights to the apes they own, holders therefore own a small portion of the entire Bored Ape ecosystem.
The recently released Bored Ape Roadmap 2.0 shows the influence and fluidity of the Bored Ape Yacht Club brand vision. It will try to lay out streetwear and mobile applications, as well as bridge brands across different cultural levels.
At the same time, because a license-free brand like BAYC grows through a community holding Bored Apes, the brand itself is open to outside cultural observations that are very personal.
In such a case, what we think of the brand is less likely to be what BAYC intended, but rather a status symbol and a consequence of late capitalism that BAYC created through its ownership. Regardless, the BAYC community now has the opportunity to respond (or not) to this feedback, and to realign (or not) its community structure.
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Friends with Benefits
Friends with Benefits (FWB) is a social DAO at the fork of cryptocurrency and culture, a space for people to come together, hang out and collaborate. While the main event is currently hosted on a Discord server, FWB is constantly exploring ways to expand, whether that's creating a city DAO, IRL event, partnership, or launching a product with instant community-market fit.
When FWB launched a year ago, the entry barrier of 75 FWB was worth about $20. Nearly ten months later (September 2021), that entry price is almost $14,000.
While this entry model has been questioned by the community due to its scalability and normative nature, using social tokens as a barrier to entry creates a powerful "exclusivity" that most cultural brands cannot match. For those who already own 75 FWBs, the difference between social capital and financial capital is a constant test of brand loyalty.
This intimacy between individuals and communities has made FWB a pioneer of the permissionless branding model. Its adaptability in the open has resulted in workshops and hackathons with hundreds of willing participants, and members' own projects are often launched within days.
It is also through these contributions that members are paid in a mix of FWB tokens and USDC (a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar), giving them more decentralization as they create value for the brand itself Ownership and "benefit sharing, risk sharing".
Another example of FWB growing its membership through its city DAO and fellowship program: creating an easier onramp for new members. The motivation to stay true to the original perspective of FWBs, as a diverse space at the intersection of cryptocurrency and culture, demonstrates adaptability andlistening humility。
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Loot's Story, AGLD and Bloot
Lootis an NFT item made up of 8,000 text files, each containing a random set of "game items" that can be used in a game that doesn't yet exist.
When the project starts, Loot can be claimed only by "paying the Gas fee (a small amount of Eth required for the transaction to be recorded on the Ethereum blockchain)".
Within a few days, Loot worth millions of dollars was frequently traded. While on the surface, this price is relatively confusing, for those who understand it, Loot is the holy grail of license-free brands; the smallest unit that allows others to build entire ecosystems.
From the beginning, community members have released visual NFTs, extensions, and mini-games to make these text files more tangible and expand Loot's ecosystem. The most important thing is that the token AGLD was airdropped to all Loot holders.
Although the initiators of the Loot project (Dom) and the creators of AGLD are not connected on the project, but AGLD (a digital cryptocurrency) once reached $5, which means that each Loot holder got about $50,000. Created value for a brand and community in just a few days, demonstrating the enormous potential of permissionless brands in Web3. For AGLD, it was the community - the Loot holders - who adopted it and made it a reality.
Then, in a wave of expansion, knockoffs of Loot began to appear. Loot for CryptoPunks, Treasure for Loot, and the infamousBloot（not for weaks）. Bloot quickly took a large market share as a Loot replacement.
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Mapping Web3 onto Web2
For established brands, moving to license-free status is a tougher journey. But don't worry, if you're reading this, you're still way ahead.
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Braintrust
Brands like Braintrust do just that. Their story started like no other talent network, building a community of talented freelancers, and a solid client roster in this age-old matching scene.
However, by introducing BTRST, a DAO token, they have created a shared value system where talents can learn more about the platform by strengthening their talent network, attending courses, recommending more customers, and even designing emoticons for DAO's Discord Symbols and GIFs for bounty or token rewards.
While brands help craft the kickoff assets for community work, the copywriting, tone, and creative direction that determine new member onboarding is almost entirely an individual decision. It's a more dynamic and open-source approach, rather than the rounds and rounds of brand feedback that brands typically create #SponsoredAds through micro-influencers.
In the future, members will be able to initiate proposals and vote on important issues, including determining the commission fee that Braintrust should bear. They're thinking up new token benefits (insurance for freelancers?) and the token is already developing some new market mechanisms - customers being able to buy BTRST as a way to prioritize their job listings and cut through the noise.
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The Hundreds
Another good example of mapping Web2 to Web3 is the case of streetwear brand The Hundreds.
Founder Bobby Kim is no stranger to thinking about blockchain technology. In past blog posts, he's written about the creative potential of minting NFTs as an alternative to pursuing art galleries and publishing houses, investing his photographic work in them. The potential of Web3 was clearly brewing in the mind of this innovator.
Then, on August 31, 2021, The Hundreds decided to go full-blown into the metaverse, offering their community the opportunity to mint 25,000 unique combinations for their iconic "Adam Bomb" logo. They devised quirky personalities that played on the imitation, scarcity, and adoption of cryptocurrencies, creating a mechanism to burn unsold NFTs at the end of the sale, marking the poetic execution of a fixed-cap supply.
Similar to the previous NFT example, by joining the "Adam Bomb Squad" (ABS), community members not only gain ownership of the The Hundreds brand, but also receive unique benefits, including exclusive merchandise and pre-sales of other NFT launches.
The white paper continues:
“We are working on technology that would allow Adam Bomb Squad NFT holders to 1) buy The Hundreds apparel themed around their bomb, and 2) earn rewards for selling the apparel to other people. We want The Hundreds to earn more, but also There is no reason not to share the profits with our community."
If there's one thing to note, it's that outside of the NFT token economy, none of the mechanisms are truly groundbreaking for streetwear or fashion brands. Exclusive merchandise, early access and the idea of turning branded moments into collectibles (for better or worse) are the trends in streetwear in the age of StockX, Yeezy drops and Grailed.
Rather, what is unique is the ability to build collective value and benefit sharing through digital NFTs, putting The Hundreds on the same starting line as its community of ABS holders. It’s a way for a private label to go public, while also fostering engagement through Discord and social media, and starting to unravel the divide between brand and community, and the two merge into one.
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Let go and make your brand permissionless
As we've seen, one of the exciting things about Web3 is that it's an ongoing social experiment, perpetually in flux. Brands that come forward now will define the brand conversation of the future, learning with their communities along the way.
We advocate "gradual decentralization," or a series of decisions that slowly devolve ownership of your brand to the community. After all, this is a big decision, and once you embark on this journey, you open the floodgates to philosophical questions about governance and voting rights, allowing holders to vote on its future.
This isn't about launching a shiny NFT collection or digging up crypto slang like "gm" or "wagmi", rather this drive to shift to Web3 will force brands to relearn and completely restructure your organization value and configuration. In short, moving to Web3 is not a marketing decision, but a philosophy in practice.
Ultimately, this means letting go of the idea that you, and only you, have the right to tell people what your brand is. This means seeing misunderstandings, criticism, and feedback not as attacks or raids on the brand you've worked so hard to build, but as gifts from someone who cares about your impact on the world and tries to help you improve.
This means a fusion between the brand and the community, where the brand is the community and the community is the brand.
To help businesses on their way to permissionless, we've rounded up some enlightening thoughts on web3 brands:
- A fashion brand launched a competition for a new concept collection for fashion designers; each submitter receives tokens (which they can hold or sell after receipt), and the winner of the competition receives additional tokens Coins and revenue share from their design and sales.
- A consumer tech brand could give an NFT with every product purchase, offering holders the opportunity to come up with new product ideas, vote on new product features, and get exclusive customer support.
- A brand with a humanitarian perspective can build a pool of funds through limited sales that community members can reinvest in specific parts of brand growth, community events, or redistribution.
- A brand with massive global reach can post recommendations on-chain and provide updates on major brand decisions, building a documented history of transparency with the community.
Each of these examples creates a long-term relationship in which your community engages with your brand and can claim ownership of existing processes – from start to finish and beyond .
So, as more and more brands enter the Web3 space, we encourage you to think about this question: what aspects of your brand operation can you give to the community? What aspects can they really own and participate in?
Borrowing branding lingo, Web3's permissionless branding is the ultimate flywheel, where the community participates, shapes the brand, and then becomes the ultimate direct "consumer" of the brand.
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