Contemplating DRiP on Solana
A deep dive and exploration into the fastest growing digital collectable platform in Web3. Is this the key to onboarding 100 million to crypto?
The utility of NFTs is evolving. With the innovation of compressed NFTs on Solana, it is introducing new possibilities and use cases which will rapidly change the creator landscape.
DRiP is a perfect example of a platform revolutionizing the artist/audience relationship.
Let us explore the value proposition below and what this means for the future of creation on chain
What is the problem?
The value proposition
What are Droplets
Adoption and performance
How to get signed up and use DRiP
Becoming a creator
Future
What is the problem?
This is two-fold:
The digital world is becoming a bigger part of every-day lives. As a greater portion of time is spent online, more communities engage in online activities and collaboration through work, socializing or gaming
For creators online, it’s more important than ever to be able to reach target audiences effectively and retain provenance of their digital products and creations.
We’re stuck in a vacuum within the Web3 space. For crypto natives, it may be easy to understand the significance of blockchain tech and how NFTs can empower entrepreneurial creators with provable digital ownership, but the truth of it is, 95% of regular folks do not understand or care about this. For Web3 to succeed in the long term, we need a way to draw in the masses organically with real use cases for the true benefits of crypto and to decouple the space from its historical bad rep.
What is DRiP?
Drip.Haus is a platform that enables artists and creators to digitally distribute their work to fans and collectors every week for free.
The current creator economy consists of many creators, artists, streamers, entrepreneurs and influencers who have no choice but to forego true ownership rights and are required to share any earnings with the social platforms where they exist.
The aim for DRiP is to lower the barrier to entry for creators to enter the Web3 space and to empower them to attract and engage with their communities on a platform which has all of the benefits that come with blockchain technology.
DRiP was initially founded as part of the Solana Spaces initiative - which was a Web3 focused retail cooperative based out of NY & Miami tasked to grow the Solana community and ecosystem through retail-facing onboarding.
Solana Spaces, in its previous form, has since been sunsetted and moved to an open-sourced DAO structure and the priority shifted to DRiP due to it’s remarkable success. Read more about it here
What makes DRiP different?
2021/22 saw the meteoric rise of 1000s of NFT projects, most comprising of 10k generative PFP collections. The majority of these collections were on the Ethereum chain, and many reached eye-watering price points - driven mostly by speculation and promises of exponential utility.
Before there were Layer-2 alternatives, minting a small collection of NFTs on Ethereum mainnet could have cost $1000’s due to gas fees and platform fees. This meant that small individual creators were immediately priced out without funding.
This is where Compressed NFTs, aka cNFTs, come in to it. cNFTs are tokens that have been optimized for efficient storage and transfer on the Solana blockchain. Unlike regular NFTs, which can be quite large in size and require significant cost to mint and transfer, compressed NFTs have a novel design which reduces their file size. This allows for faster transactions, lower fees, and improved scalability, this allows creators to share digital images, videos, and music files with their audience very easily and for very little cost.
Platform performance:
Since inception in 2023, DRiP has seen exponential growth;
60 creators onboarded to the platform
60 million digital collectables minted and
600k active monthly users
Although the numbers have seemingly slowed down somewhat leading into November, the amount of returning users is still staggering.
With significant interest and volume, comes the risk of farmers, botting and intentional malicious attacks on the platform with the aim of exploiting vulnerabilities.
To mitigate this risk of abuse, DRiP has innovated their sybil and value fraud resistance with invisible CAPTCHAs and fraud syncs.
These steps to protect the platform and its creators are a key component to success in the future, with real digital provenance and ownership being the single greatest value proposition to Web2 and Web3 creators alike.
How DRiP Works:
Initially the access to DRiP was only through one-time referral codes, each code can only be redeemed once to ensure there is only one log-in per human which supports with sybil resistance, anti-farming and preventing malicious attacks on the site.
DRiP recently partnered with Phantom, so now anyone who has a wallet can create an account. If you sign up this way you will receive a free Phantom collectable.
Creating an account:
Go to drip.haus
Click on ‘Start collecting’
Connect one of the many wallets available;
Use a referral code if you have one - here’s mine: 7wbGJ4Kb
Otherwise connect with Phantom to create your account
Subscribe to your favourite creators and await your airdrops
Don’t forget to do the daily Legendary Lock-in mini-game for a chance to drop a rare or legendary piece! 👇
Collectors will quickly rack up digital collectables from their favourite artists. There is then the option to donate to creators if you like their work by clicking on their profile and choosing an amount of SOL to send them
‘Free digital gifts from your favourite creators’
One of the most present problems in the crypto space is how to incentivize participation without financial incentivization i.e. token airdrops. DRiP has achieved this is through its novel and native ‘Droplets’ mechanism.
Droplets are a form of native token which can be used solely within the DRiP platform as a way to ‘pay’ for channel subscriptions.
It’s possible to subscribe to as many channels as you like, one Droplet is spent for each digital collectable which is airdropped to your account - the more creators you’re subscribed to, the more Droplets you will spend.
There is currently a maximum of 50 Droplets any one user can retain at any one time. So if you subscribe to a lot of creators, you could in run out of Droplets at some point, so I’d recommend curating who you subscribe to regularly - as more artists are joining DRiP every couple of days or so and you don’t want to miss out to those who are new.
As long as you continue being active on the platform daily, DRiP will continue to slowly replenish your Droplets - I have 25 subscriptions, but log in every day and rarely have less than 50 available.
Becoming a creator
Alongside the benefit of a direct channel between creator and collector with the foundation of blockchain technology, becoming one of the first creators on DRiP has shown to have a huge impact on network effects relative to what would be considered the ordinary social reach
Creators have the freedom to manage their profile in any way they like and can choose to drop their artworks in any time interval, set royalty rate and curate their own rules for snapshots.
Donations, aka ‘Thanks’, are enabled after a third drop to subscribers and DRiP pays the creator for every Droplet spent subscribed to their channel, so currently the monetization streams are multiple to incentivize regular high quality art drops.
Although the current roster of artists has been intentionally selective so far, hence the steady inflow of new creators every few days, DRiP Studio will be released in January 2024 - an initiative to provide access to self-catering tools for new creators to join the platform, which will likely mean quicker and more seamless onboarding to the platform.
If you’re keen to become a official DRiP creator and get yourself on the waitlist, you can fill in the following form to apply and answer the following few questions:
https://x.com/drip_haus/status/1724639676764684693?s=20
What’s your / your project's Twitter handle?
What’s your / your project's Discord handle?
What’s your story? Tell us about yourself and how you became a creator / how your project started.
What inspires your work, and who are your artistic influences?
Where can we view your work / learn more about your project? Share links to your portfolio
Imagine you have a DRiP channel. What type of content do you plan to create?
How would your DRiP channel create value for you / your project and for your DRiP subscribers?
What’s next?
Mobile app
One of the most exciting things confirmed to be in the pipeline is the mobile app coming to iOS and Android in Q2 2024.
This will come with an embedded wallet within the App, the ability to see social feeds and manage your DRiP profile. Legendary Lock-in will also be available for your daily chance to increase your chances for more rare collectables.
How does DRiP make money?
Currently the platform is essentially subsidizing the onboarding of creators to push for growth, in a similar way that Uber got off the ground by referrals and word of mouth. DRiP will remain a free platform for subscribers indefinitely, but for long term sustainability - and likely when it is significantly larger - there will need to be a plan for how the project remains funded.
Although DRiP already technically has a native token in the Droplets - and it has been hinted that these will eventually be tradeable, the founder Vibhu has expressed in previous interviews that the priority is creating the right kind of incentive for genuine adoption. This means without the financialization of said incentive, as it can push the wrong behaviour which can be detrimental to the platform in the long term.
Because of this its doubtful that there will be a token release to support the funding of the platform, at least not in the near-term.
Bringing content creators on board who can scale the platform
One of the most significant elements to DRiP’s success so far is their focus to draw in creators from platforms like Instagram.
The idea here is that if it can eventually hit a certain adoption threshold, it’s possible their success could cause a rapid flywheel affect of acceleration with more and more creators joining the platform and in turn, bringing bigger Web2 audiences with it as game theory kicks in.
It has been hinted that the end goal is to draw in some even bigger and more influential names to DRiP. Even a couple of mega profiles could help spread the visibility of the platform and in turn cause user numbers to hit an escape velocity to mass adoption.
What can be possible?
This is speculation on my part, but in the same way X[.]com is aiming to become the ‘Everything App’, I believe DRiP is positioned to become the Everything App for creators.
There are already many different types of creative formats shared through the platform, including; painting, 3D, photography, illustration, videography, music and podcasts. As all drops are free, direct engagement with artists come in the form of the donations, arguably the single most powerful feature on DRiP - alongside the ability to identify owners and their wallets via the blockchain.
This allows creators and artists to easily distinguish the most truly passionate of their fans, and in turn providing them with the opportunity to provide even more unique and creative experiences. This is already possible through the in-app snapshots which can be enabled to reward the most generous donators to creators
Proof of Attention/Participation/Involvement x DRiP is literally a match made in heaven and the possibilities are infinite.
Summary
I have been using DRiP for a number of weeks now as part of my exploration of the Solana ecosystem, and it has just made me all the more convinced that Solana will be the blockchain for the consumer, AND the chain which will be the first to host 100 million active users.
Compressed NFTs have changed the game and opened up so many more use cases which we haven’t even begun to explore, but the concept of ‘accessible to all’ is a powerful one which will eventually evolve into incredible network effects.
DRiP is paving the way for creators and as long as it stays ahead and continues to innovate and build out the catalogue of creative channels, I’m positive it’ll succeed in the long run. The only concern, and this comes back to something Vibhu mentioned in a previous interview, is that if someone else comes along with the same idea before they’ve solidified their position, except with the promise of a token and airdrop, then that could undercut and pose a serious threat to DRiP.
I hope you enjoyed reading, please make sure to subscribe and share.
Feel free to drop any comments below :)
Much love, f.