Zesty Community Update #1
Hi everyone! The Zesty team has been working hard to deliver a v1 over the past few months, and we’re happy to announce that we have an MVP out in the wild, getting metaverse builders paid through promotional NFT rentals.
We believe that what we’re building at Zesty is really special. We’ve got a great community of creators and makers that span multiple different ecosystems, across Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, etc. Our community also spans different platforms, including Twitch, WebXR/Oculus, and the Open Web.
What unites us today is the promise of web3 to drastically change the way the world thinks about ownership, labour, discovery and value-creation on the Web. Large tech companies are currently placing artificial ceilings on innovation with its pre-established network effects. Our goal at Zesty is to arm web3 native creators with markets, tooling and protocols that can break through these ceilings with greater transparency, openness and community. Our current focus has been in the AR/VR space, but as you will learn from reading this update, we are currently looking to expand beyond this and into more diverse markets.
Today we’d like to highlight some notable market activity, share the latest on the development around our SDK + smart contracts, and talk about our upcoming community call on October 29th at 10 AM EDT. We also have an ongoing microgrant program that offers support for builders in the Zesty community.
Market Activity
Since July 15, 2021, the ZestyMarket contract on Polygon has paid out 2,218 USDC to 21 different creators. This is real revenue for developers that is occurring on-chain, coming from 28 different renters of Zesty banners. There have also been 660 auctions created and campaigns have been approved 206 times. In true web3 fashion, all market statistics are transparent, and you can find a link to our Dune Analytics here.
The marketplace currently offers rentals of 13 different WebXR banner NFTs, and 3 different banners in Cryptovoxels (CV) that we own ourselves on 9 Bacon Arcade.
We made the decision to purchase a parcel in the Makers District from @jin last week, to learn more about the CV community and experiment with Zesty integration for CV properties.
In the month of July, we began experimenting with banner NFTs on Twitch streams that could be rented out by advertisers. This is something that we are continuing to explore, with Axie Streamers like iambananajoe and valdiz_gu. You can see their spaces here and here, respectively.
SDK
One of our main goals is to ensure that what we are designing is interoperable with as many different apps and experiences as possible. We’re proud to announce that we now have official support for five different web-based graphics frameworks, with more to come:
2D web support was also added through a web component. All of our SDKs are open-source, go check them out here. Support for integration with Unity and metaverse applications like Cryptovoxels are currently underway. We’ve also seen integration with other metaverse worlds such as VRLand, a “digital home space room for 3D creations”. You can view the rentable NFT for VRLand here.
A lot of the support for multiple different frameworks would not have been possible without our community, so we’d like to take a quick moment to acknowledge and thank a few external contributors:
Our current priority is in improving the stability and test coverage of our existing SDKs, before adding new features.
Smart Contracts
In mid-July, we deployed two smart contracts on Polygon mainnet — the ZestyNFT and ZestyMarket contracts. Like our SDK, you can find them on Github here. The timeslots for the spaces on Zesty are priced in USDC. This decision was made to simplify income declaration for developers and creators. As always, we’re open to feedback on this decision.
Both the ZestyNFT and ZestyMarket contracts underwent an audit by Certora, a leading smart contract auditing firm. Certora is the same firm that audited Sushiswap and Balancer’s contracts. You can read the results of our contract audits here.
We are currently working on augmenting our existing contracts to allow for revenue-sharing of rental income, similar to how a real-estate agent would receive a commission on a home sale, for the agent’s efforts in brokering a deal or marketing the home. We think that there’s room in the Zesty marketplace for users who assist in the rental of Zesty NFTs, and therefore should be compensated for their work. We’re very excited about this new capability, so stay on the lookout!
Community Call
Zesty will be having our first Community Call on October 29, 2021 at 10 AM EDT, in the town-hall channel in our Discord. Please RSVP to this Discord message at your convenience — we would love to see you there!
During the call, we’ll share updates around the roadmap for Zesty, solicit feedback from the community around data collection for the SDK, and briefly touch on a potential hackathon we may be planning for next year in collaboration with the WebXR Discord Community.
There’s also some Zesty swag that may or may not be given out ;)
Microgrants
The WebXR ecosystem is still nascent, and there are not many opportunities that exist today for builders to receive support in finishing their creations. This is why we, with the help of a few members of the community, have begun exploring a way for Zesty to get involved in supporting immersive web builders through a microgrant program.
To kick things off, we’ve issued two $1000 grants to two developers that you may have heard of within the community — Pipo and Sorskoot! This is funding that is provided to them with the expectation that a finished product will be released, and if suitable, monetized using the Zesty SDK. “Build-to-earn”, if you will!
You can use the #grantee-updates channel in the Zesty Discord to follow along with our grantee’s updates.
Thanks!
We’re currently living in very interesting times in our transition to a world where web3 will begin to play a very important role in monetization for games and content. Our goal at Zesty is to make sure that the future of the metaverse (whatever you define it to be), is interoperable and open at the protocol level for everyone.
If you spent the time to read all the way to the bottom of this update, thank you for your time.
Cheers,
Zesty Team
