Creator communities

Open-source Web3 creator economy DEIP unveiled its own Metaverse City in June: a collaborative and decentralized virtual space made by creatives, for creatives. Founded by a team made up of members from Arhead metaverse group, Balagan creative agency and architectural studio the Atrium, DEIP puts “creators at the center of the economic model, allowing them to skip out the middlemen and receive funding or sell their work through tokenization,” according to the platform. Metaverse City will host a range of art and work in film, science, publishing, music, sport, gaming and education while offering members validated digital ownership and individual monetization.

DRIP-LAB, an ongoing community of street artists and curators bringing the form to life in the digital world, just launched a new collection to merge physical and digital graffiti art in the metaverse. “THE WALL,” part of the DRIP-LAB project, is a phygital collection of street art created in the real world and re-created as NFTs hosted on the democratized platform Another-1. DRIP-LAB’s stated mission is “to breathe new life into the graffiti art scene, both on the street; and on the blockchain by leveraging the power of Web3 technology.”

Founded by former Tinder, Bumble, and Facebook leaders, Niche is a decentralized social media platform comprised of user-owned communities, where members can create, buy, and sell their own content. An ad-free platform, Niche’s co-founders Christopher Gulczynski, CEO, and Zaven Nahapetyan, CTO, tell Wunderman Thompson Intelligence that they’re reframing their platform to cater to creatives. “It opens up a lot of opportunities that don't exist with traditional, non-decentralized social media, because—by the nature of decentralization—it makes it really easy to buy, sell, and trade content. By having everything in an accessible protocol, you get this renaissance of creativity where all these other apps are built on top of it and come up with interesting applications with it that perhaps we're not thought of before.” Nahapetyan explains.

As consumers spend more time online, they are gravitating towards communities that reflect their IRL interests. Creators are tapping into platforms in which they can collaborate, share, create and work.