Hello ICP community!
I am pleased to announce that we are reaching the end of our developer grant for the Art Edge project, and although there is still much to do, I happy to share it’s current state with you.
Art Edge is a socialFi Dapp that supports artists through education, inspiration, monetization, collaboration, and matchmaking with patrons. What I hear from many of my artist piers currently is they need help commercializing their work, finding funding, and supporting themselves financially as an artist. Based on the premise that an artist can sustain a career by attracting 1000 true fans, this Dapp challenges artists to take actions that will develop relationships with patrons.
Building Art Edge in Web3 allows the artists to create NFT’s, easily accept crypto tips, have control over their content and participate in management of the evolution of Art Edge as a community and Dapp. Building on web3 also allows me to create an entirely new paradigm for artists that exists outside the traditional gate-kept art markets controlled by corporate online websites, gallery owners, and auction houses. By creating a direct relationship between artist and patrons this project dis-intermediates traditional web2 and brick and mortar systems. Web2 apps exist to support artists in a variety of ways, but this will be the first in Web3 specifically aimed at financially supporting, inspiring, and educating artists.
Art Edge is currently being developed primarily in Motoko with a react front-end. It’s open sourced and has leveraged existing examples from the growing ICP Developer community. I chose to create a simple interface that highlights the art. Using Motoko for the back-end allowed me to easily create classes and canisters on demand to accommodate a growing user base and their content.
I’m thrilled to have the ability to host media and build fully on chain with the Internet Computer. ICP makes it possible for users to be autonomous in managing their content and privacy as a creator. As a long term artist I have a large established network of creative peers continually looking for support. I will be tapping this resource and inspiring them to reach out to their individual communities as part of the training modules that exist within Art Edge.
Traditional systems take a large transaction percentage of each sale often up to 60%. This project aims to take a minimal 5% transaction of sales for ongoing development costs and gas fees. Any excess funds will be translated into tokens and distributed back to the DAO on an annual basis. Launching SNS and decentralizing the governance is part of the longterm strategy.
Art Edge is currently in Alpha release with a small group of artists testing for usability and prioritizing feature development. A Beta release is expected by second quarter of 2024.
for more info you can check out the following links:
Current release: https://6pcc4-caaaa-aaaal-add5q-cai.icp0.io/
Repo: https://github.com/daniamorris/artedge
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaniaD
Future Plans:
Next steps for the project is fine tuning, building an in app messaging system, adding a traditional payments interface, and porting the project to a native phone app interface. I’m excited to contribute to the transition from web2 to web3 via bridging the gap for artists and collectors.