Zora - A guide

Many artists, and specially photographers are still fading Zora, so I guess it's about time to share some insights into it, including a brief minting guide.

1/n

buidler /obscura | contributor /openventures | manager. lens based artist. regen. global south.
photos & xprmnts: https://zora.co/@guill

Florianópolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil

Zora was born in 2021 as a marketplace + protocol and in June 2023 launched Zora Network, it's own Layer 2 built on the OP-Stack. It focuses on putting (n collecting) media on chain, powered by it's protocol mint fee structure (Protocol Rewards)

@jacob (co-founder) says that Zora wants to "help bring imagination on chain" on the premise that information should be free and valuable on the internet, and skew the value equation to the creator side (versus platforms side). Zora focuses on the creator.

imagin a meme, an experiment or artworks secondary to a creator's main collections that they wouldn't quite mint but would share on their socials n get many likes. Why can't that be a NFT? near 0 cost, cheap price, editioned, democratically distributed n profitable. hello Zora!

@dee (co-founder) 'Principles to Mint With'. 

A how-to, a statement,  but also a mintable text.

@dee (co-founder) 'Principles to Mint With'. 

A how-to, a statement,  but also a mintable text.

https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x2f3e85c8a66e09a7e12c3ef47edd389c2e41ba36/23

but gill, we had editions for ages. yeah, only that Zora added a smart twist to the way editions are minted and collected. A clever way of handling Free Mints. Here is where we talk about Protocol Rewards

Zora free mints are called that way cause creator actually sets the piece price to $0. The twist is in the way fees work at a protocol level. To mint a piece on Zora it costs a fixed mint fee of 0.000777 eth (~$2.5) + tx fees (negligible after blobs).

So artist deploys a free mint, but minter pays a (smol) mint fee. The Protocol Rewards consists in the way this fee splits. Paid mints also benefit from it but Zora clearly incentivizes Free mints and creators earning by spreading their work out there (democratize on chain art!).

Creator = wallet deploying
Creator Referral is a referral url u can generate on Zora's page to onboard new users and will give you a split in their future mints
Mint Referral is a link u can get on anyone's mints to share it (socials/etc) and will give a split for mints using it

First Minter is the person who first mints the artwork and pays the gas fees to bring it on chain as when creator deploys it tru Zora's page the mint page shows an art that is still off chain. This is what we used to call 'lazy minting'. Creator can choose to be the first minter (I recommend!), more on dat below

There are some caveats on fee structure that I won't go into here (like deploying/minting a Zora mint from an external platform), you can check details on that link.

There are some caveats on fee structure that I won't go into here (like deploying/minting a Zora mint from an external platform), you can check details on that link.

https://support.zora.co/en/articles/8192123-understanding-protocol-rewards-on-zora

On Sovereignity,

everytime you deploy an artwork on Zora, you put it under a 'collection'. Each collection created is in fact a new contract being deployed by Zora's gigabrain protocol engineering, with ownership transferred to creator, applies for ERC1155s and ERC721s contracts.

OK SER BUT HOW MINT?

1st fund a couple dollars on your Zora wallet. bridge from mainnet/other L2s tru official https://bridge.zora.energy/ or orbiter.finance. If you still don't have the network set on your wallet, add it with info on image below.

proceed to https://zora.co/create

Then u'll need to first create a Collection (remember the contract?). Here there's a nice caveat. Zora's platform is compatible with other OP-Stack L2s (wowow Superchain), so you can choose which network to mint. if different then Zora, redo first step on chain of choice.

(the 'lazy minting' only works on Zora & Base networks)

A fun caveat is that u can - in case of paid mint - define price of the piece using not only ETH but ERC20s from theses chains, i.e. using Base u can price the piece in $Degen, or in $Enjoy on Zora. Remember the Reward Structure changes in these cases.

Mint settings UI is pretty straight forward. u can split funds among other wallets, Define mint start for future date, set edition size and mint limit per address. Even on free mints, is a good practice to either do it as a time limited or size limited edition. Collectors like scarcity.

enjoy

On being an enjoyourrr
 
Join /enjoy, the first community + token built around Zora, get yourself some $enjoy and start tipping $enjoy on Zora mints. You just need to write 'amount $enjoy' on the comment section of the mint

u're set. get out there deploy work, mint others works, be an active participant of dis new paradigm we're witnessing with the raise of L2s

On chain art was too expensive for too long. Make it cheaper, distribute to more people and earn by spreading it far, everyone wins. @zora is a main actor incentivizing this. LFG!

Consider a follow + recast, a check on my artworks and using my invite if you still don't have a Zora account.

Consider a follow + recast, a check on my artworks and using my invite if you still don't have a Zora account.

https://zora.co/invite/0xB6079178B306d2454Bad91756143B772AD1f1944

https://zora.co/@0xc7f4bb163ad3ddac6e8d5514e1955313f9583031

Zora's low fees (even before blobs) and it's rewards model incentivizes minting works onchain that creators wouldn't otherwise consider cause costs, or believing it woudn't have a price point at par with their other on chain stuff, editions wouldn't quite make it, etc etc.