Why Mint

We keep asking wheremint and wenmint, but not everyone knows whymint.

Minting is important. It is vital to a pure internet—one that’s not dominated by platforms and ads, but rather free and open for all pursuits of creativity. Bringing things onchain reveals the economic demand for those objects and/or goods. When minting media, the exercise of minting reveals the economic demand for media across the internet that has otherwise been tucked away behind the walls of corporations.

Minting, in essence, is revealing the value of attention, which in our attention based economy is important to transparently know. So no, I don’t want you to mint for my or Zora’s sake, I’d want you to mint for yourself and for the internet’s sake. I’d want you to mint because it’s important for each and every one of us to persist, own, and monetize our media on our terms.

Why mint?

• Mint to save it for yourself
• Mint to share it with others
• Mint to monetize if you want to

Mint = Save+

The best art is made for oneself. The same is true for minting. Mint as a means to save your work for yourself. Mint to keep a record of your creativity that is not tied to any single platform. In a subtle way, minting could be viewed as scrapbooking on the internet. A place to save moments in time and inspiration. Minting is like super-saving to the internet.

Mint = Share+ and Like+

Share your work with the world. Mint and your work will instantly be shown across any onchain platform. People across the internet desire to collect and engage with great work. That is why people like, repost, and share. The mint button for the collector is like super-liking content across the internet. Super-charged with support for the creator.

Mint = Earn+

Earning is completely optional, however it’s nice to be able to capture value if given the opportunity. Making money from one's creative endeavors can be difficult, and it is a privilege to be beyond making money, or post-economic. It feels as though people often forget this, so it’s important to double down here.

The technology that underpins NFTs and minting has created an enormous amount of economic value and to borrow a phrase from my alma mater, Coinbase, ‘economic freedom’ for people around the world. In recent weeks at Zora, we’ve seen everything from mints that helped get people out of Syria and even assisted people with paying for rent.

Since launching Zora Protocol Rewards just over a month ago, creators and participants in our minting ecosystem have earned more than $1.1M in rewards from open edition mints. These participants include creators, platforms, and developers alike. In short, the economic component is optional and impactful. Minting works.

Closing thoughts

Whymint? Because it’s important to build a pure internet where we own our content and our experience. If we don’t have this direct value capture available for the creators of media across the internet, then the media will get monetized for us on the platforms we engage with. This will bring us right back to square one—with advertisers and platforms as overlords. That’s not something the internet should desire, and that’s why you should mint.

Mint this.