In the first blog post on Rare Ink, Why the world needs a NFT marketplace for Tattoos, I explained why we started Rare Ink and the problems we would like to address. In this post I will expand on the long term vision for Rare Ink and the steps we are going to take to achieve it.
When we decided to build Rare Ink we wanted to create a model that brings value to the tattoo community and keeps it there. The first step was to build a platform that makes it easy for tattoo artists with a non technical background to mint redeemable NFTs of their tattoo designs and sell them in an open marketplace. The second step is to distribute ownership of the platform to the tattoo community.
To execute this transition into a platform fully owned by the community we are creating a decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO), Rare Ink DAO. Rare Ink DAO tokens (INK) will be distributed to community members, both tattoo artists and collectors and provide functions including but not limited to:
- Distributing fees generated by the platform
— On the sale of each NFT, a % is taken as a platform fee and is distributed to the DAO treasury and to INK token holders
- Voting on changes to the platform
— Technical upgrades and changes to user experience can be voted on by the community and resources from the DAO treasury can be allocated to implementing them.
- Curation of artists entering the community
— To keep the community tight, Rare Ink is a curated platform, meaning a member of the Rare Ink DAO must propose a new member to be voted in. Once the artist is accepted they have the ability to mint tattoo NFTs through the Rare Ink platform. Rare Ink DAO holds no exclusivity over its member and they are free to mint NFTs on any platform of their choosing.
Distributing INK:
The first step to distributing ownership will be the distribution of INK tokens. These represent “ownership” in the DAO and will be retroactively distributed for performing various actions on the platform such as:
- minting a tattoo NFT
- selling/buying a tattoo NFT
- redeeming a tattoo NFT
- bidding in auctions
- on boarding new artists as DAO members.
The tokens can be bought and sold freely by anyone but can only be used for voting power by members of the Rare Ink DAO.
The airdrop of INK tokens to community members in will begin in Q3 and the transition to full ownership by the community via deploying the DAO in Q4 2021/Q1 2022. Keep your eyes open for concrete announcement dates.
As the platform is a completely new concept that is being constantly improved in production we propose to incubate the platform with our team of developers (Metaxu Labs) until the community handover has completed.
Our short term development goal is to bring down the cost of minting, to make it affordable for artists, reduce the platform fee and bring a better experience for collectors. We will continue to onboard amazing artists and build out Rare Ink into a thriving ecosystem for the tattoo community.
