I think of scenius as a self-organizing form of swarm intelligence that perpetuates itself by sending tendrils out to seed and nourish further creativity. Each artist contributes something unique to the mix, and in doing so, emboldens other artists to pursue their own creative work.
I often imagine Zorbs as focal points for a collective commitment to sustainable ways of supporting creative labor on artists' terms and in positive-sum ways, as a counter to extractive systems that use chokepoints to seize control of the value artists create.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful ideas of Zorbs is that true positive-sum wealth can emerge out of a "free" "useless" meme if enough people believe in it and bring it forth from the imaginal realm.
In a digital media climate inundated with quickly buried "content," art labor that's met with sufficient collective attention, care, and real reciprocity can generate positive-sum value.
Zora Protocol Rewards gives artists who release "free" (i.e., gifted) work an option to earn from it directly, without prices or paywalls. In reciprocity-driven contexts, then, artists can choose to pay it forward by releasing creative work as 0 ETH Zora Mints without leaving their own pockets empty.
Protocol Rewards is the first reliable web3-native positive-sum counterweight to the extractive economic forces that financialize "free" art to the detriment of artists. The key to this value unlock is reciprocity: rewarding "free" creative labor that has long been undervalued.
In healthy arts networks, normative patterns of value flow follow positive-sum logic, in which "free" creative work includes obligations of reciprocity to the commons. Extractive forces prey on these norms of gift economics by capturing this "free" value and financializing it in zero-sum ways that shift risks and costs onto artists.
Zora is onto something significant — something capable of building generative network wealth that can only unfold over time, and only in expansive contexts that enable art to be both free and valuable on artists' own terms.
Protocol Rewards gives artists a new way to earn ETH rewards over time as their "free" (0 ETH) hidden gems get discovered and minted. This opens never-before-seen possibilities, especially for underrated and emerging niche artists.
Artists' time, labor, and creative gifts are frequently taken for granted or treated as an afterthought — i.e., implicitly assumed to be available "for free." Accounting for the true costs of "labors of love" would involve a reckoning with this tyranny of valuelessness.
danicaswanson
Enjoyable Profile
Writers, Web3, and Earning a Living
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Image source: UNC Commons (public domain)
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The Magic of Zorbs 4
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The Magic of Zorbs 1
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The Magic of Zorbs 2
One can never be sure where trails in the imaginal realm might lead, after all.
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The Magic of Zorbs 3
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May reciprocity lead the way.
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