This guide walks you through how to spin up a web3-native ecommerce website like the one we built at web3investors.xyz that will enable you to sell any type of digital good—ebooks, PDFs, movies, online courses, audiobooks, 3D metaverse assets, NSFW content, etc.—as a token-bound asset (i.e., the files are encrypted and immutably attached to an NFT).

When you’re done, your site will take crypto or credit card for payment, and your buyers won’t even need to own a wallet to purchase your token-bound asset. After purchase, your buyers will be able to unlock and consume the content directly on your site, or on any app, marketplace or platform that integrates the Darkblock Protocol.

We built web3investors.xyz—where you can purchase a list of 6,000+ names and emails of web3 investors in the form of token-bound .csv and .xlsx files—for two reasons. First, we know fundraising is hard and we wanted to help other web3 founders in their fundraising efforts. Second, after compiling the list for our own use, we realized it offered a great opportunity to showcase how our tech enables anyone to sell any type of digital content or other asset in a web3-native way.

Token-bound assets come with certain benefits, especially when compared with the centralized token-gating model.

• Portability—The encrypted files, and their encryption keys, travel with the NFT (i.e., if someone sells your token, they lose access to the attached files)
• Composability—The files are composable with any app that integrates the Darkblock Protocol. For example, a third-party app scans a user’s wallet for token-bound MP3 files attached via the Darkblock Protocol and lets the user play them on their Alexa device). It’s like Loot—remember that project?—but entire digital files are composable rather than just traits.
• Decentralized—The files are stored on Arweave, a decentralized content “blockweave,” which allows users to access the files on any app or platform that integrates the protocol, on a creator’s website via an easy iframe embed of the Darkblock Viewer, or even on OpenSea via Darkblock’s Chrome extension. Since the files aren’t tied to any one platform, they are free from centralized platform risk, unlike token-gated content, which disappears if the platform or website hosting the content and the “gate” shut down (as happened when the token-gating platform, Rally, shut down recently, and will happen in a few months when Orvylle completes its shuttering).
• Censorship-resistant—The files are censorship-resistant. They’re not owned and controlled by a platform, which can make whatever edits it wants without telling you. Once the files are encrypted and stored on Arweave, they’re immutable.
• True ownership—By introducing decentralization into how digital assets are stored and accessed, buyers of these NFTs (both via primary and secondary sales) have a sense of true ownership of the content they buy, which is untrue in the web2 model, where content platforms like Kindle and Apple Movies control the files and sell users the illusion of ownership.

Token-bound assets realize one of the fundamental promises of the web3 movement—shifting from a platform-centric model (i.e., Kindle, Audible, Apple Movies, OnlyFans, etc.) to a user-centric model where the content’s owner owns the keys and decides where they connect their wallet to unlock and access the files. 

This is the future of digital assets, the future of content, and the future of the decentralized web.

Getting started

Here is this project’s repo, which you can clone and dive into, but read through this guide to learn what other pieces you need to put it all together. Keep in mind that this project will require some technical skill. While we’d like to create a no-code solution for spinning up these sites, we’re not quite there yet. Using Thirdweb and Darkblock are fairly straightforward and definitely doable for non-devs, but Step 5 (i.e., where you need to create the Access Page) is where it gets technical. If you don’t know what “Yarn install” means, you’ll need to enlist the help of a dev to get your site past the finish line.

Overview

As you build your website, you will use the following tools and tech platforms:

• Darkblock’s Protocol & App—to encrypt, store on Arweave, and immutably attach digital content or other assets to your NFTs
• Thirdweb—to deploy the contract and mint the NFT
• Paper—to create a Purchase Page where customers can buy your token-bound digital asset with an email address (which will create a custodial wallet) and a credit card, or with crypto and their non-custodial wallet.

The website consists of three main parts:

• Sales Page—to describe your product and deliver your sales pitch
• Purchase Page—generated by Paper to sell your token-bound digital content
• Access Page—where buyers can unlock and access their newly purchased content

Step 1 — Create your Sales Page

This step is up to you. You can use any website as a sales page. This is where you describe your content or digital product and why people should buy it; this is your sales pitch. If you succeed in getting your prospective customer to click the “Buy now” button, they’ll be sent to the Purchase Page we’ll create in Step 4 where they can purchase your token-bound content.

For web3investors.xyz, we used this react landing page template designed by the talented Issaaf Kattan.

Step 2 — Create your NFT with Thirdweb

In this step you’ll deploy a contract to the blockchain of your choice (in our example, we use Polygon), determine the price of your NFT, and mint the first token from the collection.

1. Visit Thirdweb’s dashboard and connect your wallet. (Note: Make sure you pay attention to which wallet you use during this step as you will need to connect with the same wallet in step 2 when you use Darkblock to encrypt and attach assets to your NFT.)
2. Select “Browse Contracts.”
3. In our example, we’re selling editions of a single token, so we’ll need to deploy an ERC-1155 contract. Select “Edition Drop” from among the different contract options.
4. Feel free to read more about Thirdweb’s Edition Drop contract in its docs. Once you’re ready select the blue “Deploy Contract” button in the top right of the screen.
5. Fill in the contract details:
   1. Give your NFT a name
   2. Provide a description
   3. Upload an image that will be used to represent the NFT when seen in marketplaces and other web3 apps
   4. Set the wallet addresses that will receive funds from primary sales, as well as the recipient addresses for royalties collected on secondary sales
   5. Select the blockchain to which you want the contract deployed. Because this is an ERC-1155 contract, we’re operating in the Ethereum ecosystem, so you have a choice between deploying to Mainnet, a Testnet or other EVM-compatible chain (e.g., Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, etc.). In our example, we used Polygon.
6. Select “Deploy Now.”
7. Mint an NFT (“Single Upload” button in the NFT’s section of your contract)
8. Set the “Claim Conditions”
9. Finally, you will need to claim a token for yourself. This is important because you need one NFT to be on-chain so you can upgrade it with Darkblock encrypted content in the next step. Do this via the “Claim” tab next to the “Claim Conditions” tab.

Step 3 — Use Darkblock to create your token-bound content

In this step you’ll use Darkblock’s app to encrypt and attach your digital files to the NFT you created in the previous step.

1. Go to Darkblock’s app and connect with the same wallet you used in Step 1. When connecting, you’ll have the option to select your chain. Darkblock supports five chains—Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Avalanche, and Tezos. In our example, we used Polygon, but select whichever chain you opted for in Step 1.
2. You need to find the new NFT you just minted to your wallet. To do this, you can click on “My NFTs” in the main nav bar, which will take you to a gallery view of all NFTs in that wallet. If you don’t have a lot of NFTs in your wallet, this is a quick way to navigate to the NFT in question. If you used your degen wallet and have as many NFTs as I do, you can use the Search option on the main nav bar—just enter the chain, contract address, and token ID to be take directly to your NFT.
3. Once you select the NFT, the detail page will have the NFT’s image on the left, the description in the top right, and the Darkblock Viewer below that. There won’t be any content there, but you’re about to add some. If you connected with the same wallet you used to deploy the contract, then you should see an “+Add Content” button above the Viewer to the right. Click on it. (Note: Because we’re selling an ERC-1155 token, which allows you to sell editions/copies of the same token, we only need to upgrade that single token ID with the unlockable asset/assets. Everyone that then buys an edition of that NFT will get access to the assets.)
4. Select the digital file you want to attach to the NFT, give it a name, optional description, and select whether the file is downloadable or not. Darkblock supports any file type, which means you could sell anything: music tracks, videos, EPUB files, PDFs, 3D files, etc. (Note: You can also upgrade entire contracts/collections. If you go to “+Upgrade” in the main nav bar and select “Upgrade a Collection” from the dropdown menu, you can attach content to an entire collection or to specific portions of the collection by selecting specific token IDs or even traits.)
5. Click “Create” and sign with your wallet.
6. Congrats! You have now successfully used the Darkblock Protocol to bind your digital content or product to your NFT.
7. Next let’s get ready to sell these sweet NFTs!

Step 4 — Create the Purchase Page with Paper

In this step, you’ll create the page where your customers will purchase your digital content or product.

1. Go to Paper’s website and connect to the dashboard. If this is your first time using Paper, you’ll need to sign up for a developer account.
2. Go to “Contracts” in the “Checkout” section. Here we will be importing the contract we deployed with Thirdweb.
   1. Click on “Register Contract” and select “Register your contract” from the dropdown menu
   2. Fill in the information about the contract you deployed on Thirdweb.
   3. Under “Contract Type,” select “thirdweb Contract” from the dropdown.
   4. Click “Register.”
3. You now have a contract you can use to create a link to your Purchase Page. On the Contracts page, find your new contract and click on the “Create Shareable Link” button on the far right.
4. Fill out the information that will be visible on the Purchase Page. You’ll notice there’s no where to set a price—that’s because you already defined the price when you set up the “Claim Conditions” for the NFT on Thirdweb. If you need to edit or create new claim conditions, return to Thirdweb and navigate to the contract you deployed. Any changes made there will be reflected on your Purchase Page.
   1. 1. Enter the “Post-Purchase URL.” This will be the link to the “Access Page” on your website, which we’ll build in the next step, where your customers will be sent after a successful purchase to unlock and access the encrypted assets you attached in Step 2. It should use the “?successful=true” flag, so: yoururl.site/?successful=true. For example, for the Ultimate Web3 Investor List, the Post-Purchase URL is: https://access.web3investors.xyz/?successful=true
      2. Enter the “Error URL.” This will be the link to the error page on your site where a buyer will be sent if they’re unable to make a purchase. It should use the “?successful=false” flag, so: yoururl.site/?successful=false. For example, for the Ultimate Web3 Investor List, the Error RL is: https://access.web3investors.xyz/?successful=false

   

5. After you have completed these steps, the link to your Purchase Page is complete. Test it out to make sure it works.
6. Next look under the “Embedded Wallets” section on the lefthand sidebar and select “Auth Settings.”
7. Under “Allowlisted Domains,” add the URL to your Access Page (i.e., the Post-Purchase URL you entered a few steps ago) so that buyers who use a credit card and an email address to create a Paper custodial wallet can connect to your Access Page and sign to prove ownership of the NFT.
8. That’s it!

Step 5 — Create the Access Page

In this step, you’ll create the page where a buyer is automatically redirected post-purchase and will be able to unlock and access the digital files you attached to your NFT. If the purchase fails for whatever reason there is an error message and a button that takes them back to the Purchase Page to retry the purchase. If it is successful the user is prompted to connect with the wallet they made the purchase with. On this page we are using Thirdweb’s Connect Wallet Button component and because it supports Paper email wallets, even those who bought using email can just type in their email address and connect with a Magic link they get sent.

After they have connected, they can access the Darkblock unlockable content that is being delivered to them via the Darkblock Viewer in just an easy iframe embed.

(Note: If you’ve made it this far w/out problems, but don’t know what “Yarn install” means, this is where you may need some assistance.)

1. Start by cloning the Access Page repo
2. Yarn install
3. Login to the paper dashboard and get the clientId from the auth section
4. Pass the client id to the paperWallet function in the ThirdwebProvider configuration in your application (the Access Page).
5. Modify the config object
   1. Add your contract address and token id
   2. Pick a blockchain you are working on
   3. Add the URL to your paper minting site
6. Modify the MESSAGES object to reflect your needs.
7. Deploy the page to netlify or vercel for example
8. Done.

Summary

And that’s it. That is how you create a web3-native digital asset e-commerce site. Token gating is so web2. This is the only thing that makes sense if you want to sell digital assets that you and your buyers expect to be permanent. This is just the beginning of this revolution. Learn more at darkblock.io and if you have any questions join the Darkblock discord and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Good luck!

Here’s the GitHub Repo again: https://github.com/darkblockio/web3-native-ecommerce-template

Our mission at Darkblock is to enable creators to harness the power of web3 and realize a new creator economy free from platform control. This series allows us to not only highlight and share the talented work of our community, but gain a better understanding of what tools we need to benefit all of us! 

And on that note, it is our pleasure to introduce Box Rocket Studio. 

Where are you located?

Georgia, California, and Latent Space.

Website / Social:

https://boxrocket.studio/

Twitter: @boxrocketstudio

What medium/tools do you use to create your work?

We are animators – Unreal Engine, Maya primarily – but also motion capture and AI systems.

Do you operate in web2, web3, or both? Why?

Both! We work as professional animators in web2 (day job) but are also building a crypto-native animation workflow. We hope to track and manage our assets with Solana programs.

What blockchain(s) do you operate on, Why?

In our opinion, if you are going to build a decentralized animation studio, Solana is the best one to do it on. Solana is clear and straightforward, it’s designed to be a network that optimizes transactions. 

Additionally, the tooling for using the Solana network is being built under our feet. Phantom wallet has beautiful UX which makes it easy to onboard. 

-Excerpts from box studio’s blog post on choosing Solana. Read the full article here.

Tell us how you are using Darkblock.

We have been prototyping giving access to digital assets to NFT holders and experimenting with Darkblock as a solution. We are developing a project where the holder of the NFT will get access to the corresponding fully animatable character rig and other digital assets. So far we have been testing it with early adopters.  The project is called Bar Bots and the early early website is http://barbots.io. So overall, we are using Darkblock to add utility post-mint. 

What tools/features are most important to you as a creator?

We essentially want/need role gated “dropbox”-like access for network members

Anything coming up? Drops? Events? Twitter Spaces?

We are close to launching our first high-end generative line, the Barbots. We intend to come out of stealth in the new year. We are devising a slow roll out/sale strategy. Head to https://barbots.io/ to learn more. 

Thank you to Box Rocket Studio for taking the time to fill out our survey. We love seeing new faces in our community. 

You can find Box Rocket Studio’s work on their project’s page. Make sure to follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. 

Using Darkblock or know a creator who is? Access our Google form here for a chance to be featured on our socials and maybe even collaborate with the Darkblock team! 

Darkblock: Tell us who you are and what you’ve built? 

Ms.Gekko: In real life, or as we say our ‘alter egos,’ I am Mandy and I’m a CPA by trade. I’ve been in the accounting industry for about 20 years. That’s the nine to five and then the five to nine is in web3. We got started with a company called VeVe, and that was where we collected our first NFTs/digital collectibles. We moved into OpenSea, started collecting on Tezos, opened an art gallery, and here we are today—‘G3 Connects,’ connecting people in web3. 

Grebflow: I am Grebflow online, I am Jennifer in real life. My nine to five is an attorney by trade. I work for a federal judge here in Los Angeles. As for the five to nine, let me go back and tell you how Mandy and I first met.

VeVe is what brought us together. We both found VeVe around the same time. My brother and I were investing in cryptocurrency, we found the token that VeVe works with, which is called the Omi Token. He came to me and he says, ‘look at this project…they have an app, they have all this IP, and they’re gonna be working with DC and Marvel.’ So I ran into my teenager’s bedroom and shoved the app in his face and said, ‘don’t you think this is cool?’ And, because he’s a teenager, by law he’s required to shrug and kind of make a grunt. So he did. And I said, ‘let me rephrase this, don’t you think other people will think this is cool?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, they’ll buy it up.’

So we both independently did our own research…we both saw this would be hype. Mandy and I were two of some of the founding women of VeVe and we decided to create a group where, though it was inclusive of both men and women, it was specifically founded to welcome women into the NFT space. To have a safe place to land, ask questions, be comfortable and confident. We started doing livestream videos interviewing people on the VeVe team and sharing with the community.

We eventually got introduced and we became fast friends.

Tell us about the transition into the metaverse.

Ms.Gekko: When we started to look at the metaverse at the beginning of the summer, we were trying to take the Tezos artists [we had been supporting and collecting from] from regular shilling on Twitter spaces or just having a profile on Objkt to bring them into OnCyber and show them how to set up galleries. But now we’re bringing them right into the metaverse. So they’re gonna start with that immersive experience and have the ability to promote and advertise in a brand new way that we’ve never seen before and on a global scale.

G3 Connects is your company, who is your audience? What is your product?

Ms.Gekko: That’s a really good question. We dabble in pretty much anything that has to do with web3 and the metaverse. The most frequent types of people we have conversations with are artists. We bring them into the gallery…either we set it up for them or we give them the tools to go off and make it on their own. Once they get their head around, ‘Okay, here’s my gallery, what do I do now?’ That’s where we come in. You have to sit down and figure out what is going to drive you and others to spend time in the metaverse. 

The other group is the Twitter Space tech people. These are the people we talk to every day. These are the crypto and NFT people. We say, ‘don’t you want somewhere to show your NFTs off?’ Or ‘Come in and see what I’m doing?’ That’s where we’ve gotten a lot of traction. 

Grebflow: Our business connects all of the spaces we work in…the gallery, the fashion, the meeting with artists who are onboarding from the physical space…they haven’t even come into the NFT space, right? They want to know what blockchain do they mint on, how many NFTs do they mint? What’s the price point they should have? Where are we in this climate, in the bear market, where should that land? There’s a whole host of questions that we have when we meet and consult with them. And so when you try to nail us down, you’re not going to be able to. If you ask us next week, we’re gonna add something else. We’re very open. 

You’ve built almost a yellow pages of the metaverse…

Ms. Gekko: Yes, so we’ve got meta event planning, art, music, wellness, gaming, education. Plus, at the middle we have the hub, which is the calendar of events. This is basically anything that we know that’s going on in web3. We encourage people to reach out to us. So if you are on Twitter and you have something to promote, please reach out to us. We want to give back to a space that has taught us so much. We have learned that it’s trial by fire. We have paid our tuition through monetary loss, asset loss, sleep loss, all kinds of things. It gives us a very unique perspective. Coming from the accounting side and the legal side, that’s where we can also build our own contracts and financial statements. In a couple of years, look out for a legal and accounting firm in the metaverse.

What is your take on Darkblock?

Ms. Gekko: Do you know that gif on Twitter of Jonah Hill going…

Yeah.

We are avid NFT collectors. There has to be utility. The unlockable part is a must have. When Grebflow talks to artists, she has to talk very frankly about mint sizes, prices. She explains what is selling and for what amount. She doesn’t hold back. But one of the things that we can recommend is ‘add utility.’ That’s where the unlockables come in…We have so many environments that we wanna be able to rent. We also have so many incredible pieces of art that maybe you don’t want to spend a hundred dollars on, but you want to rent that piece of art to show at your party for a night. Once that is available and the masses come, we will be ready. That will be our income stream. We’re not going to wait to start when that’s possible. We’re going to be ready to turn the key and open the door. 

Tell us about the web3 space.

Grebflow: Everyone’s working together. Not everything has to be a money grab. It’s about relationships…I have access to folks who are willing to help, who can help, who want to share ideas. And it’s not about stealing and trampling over each other. There’s a different vibe in this space compared to the competitive worlds that we each come from. Especially women in those competitive worlds where we’re fighting even harder to stay on an even keel with men. We hear the whispers of women in web3. Let’s onboard more women and allow this space to be where women shine. We’re [women] known for making those connections and bringing people together. 

Any advice?

Ms. Gekko: What I always like to close out with is this: challenge yourself to figure out what your role is in web3. Don’t wait for things to happen and say, ‘oh, I could do that.’ Do it and do it now. 

Big thanks to Ms. Gekko and Grebflow for taking time out of their jam-packed days to sit down with us and chat about the metaverse. We love what you are doing for the space and are excited to be in your corner! 

Tune into Darkblock Presents every Thursday on Youtube Live and make sure to send us your questions, topics, and guest suggestions!

Darkblock: Who are you and what do you do?

I’m just a guy. I live in Washington, DC.  I’ve done a number of startups before, this is my fourth. They have mainly been in search technology, heavy stuff, analytics. My wife suggested I do a startup, but I didn’t have anything I was particularly passionate about. My cousin, Jeremy [also a founder at Darkblock], called me up in February of last year. He said ‘this NFT thing is blowing up…it’s not figured out yet. So go figure something out,’ and I said okay.

I looked at what was going on and started talking with friends…they’re like, ‘what do I get exactly when I buy an NFT?’ And I’m like, ‘you know, you own it.’  And they’re like, ‘yeah, but what do I get?’ And I was like, ‘huh … what do you get?’ Then I saw that Beeple was distributing physical displays when you bought an NFT. I questioned, ‘is that really the solution? You just send out these physical displays when you buy an NFT? What happens when you sell the NFT? Is that really what we want for our digital certificate of ownership?’

Then I had the idea of, in the case of art, maybe we could give the owner of the art access to it. That only the NFT owner could have access. I talked to Jeremy and he said ‘that’s it, let’s do it.’

Who is the target audience, whose problem are we trying to solve here? 

We talk a lot about the creator economy at Darkblock and how it’s rapidly growing. We believe there are walls in place, put up by these big platforms that control the monetization and distribution of content. I saw one statistic that there are over 2 million professional content creators out there. So people that make a living just creating content. That’s a lot, but we think that number is just a drop in the bucket. Once you can start to control how you monetize your content more finely, you can develop interesting ways to engage with the community and make money off of a very small but hardcore community, which is almost impossible with these big platforms…we think that we can expand that creator economy to ten, maybe even a hundred times what it is today, where people can make a living doing the things they love.

Why did you decide that the end user was important or needed tools?

There’s a big UX problem when it comes to web3/crypto in general. It is very hard for the average person to wrap their mind around. It’s even hard for tech people to wrap their minds around. Using wallets, trying to move money around, it’s hard, scary, and weird. The UX is lagging quite a bit with the underlying platform technology. I think we need to make it easier for people that aren’t savvy to be able to consume this content. 

That’s what everybody wants to do. They want to consume content. We’re not trying to cater to a web3 crowd. When you make content, you don’t care if you have a wallet or you have a ‘this’ or a ‘that,’ the people that want the content don’t want to go download a whole bunch of stuff.

We need to continually break down barriers to entry to own, consume, and monetize this content. That’s why we are working on enabling people to use Fiat to consume content, not just requiring a crypto wallet. We want to allow the owner or creator of a piece of content to say, ‘Here’s a piece of content, it’s 50 cents or whatever to view it.’ It could be a movie, a song, whatever it is, we want to enable them to spread it out to a non crypto-native audience. 

What is Protocol V1 all about?

To be upfront with everybody, V1 is powered by our servers today, but we are working towards full decentralization. Once we think it is secure enough, we will let anybody power this thing. But the way it stands today, we run the servers. We store the data in Arweave, which is a decentralized, file-based, blockchain system that we are big fans of. The data is encrypted, so not just anybody can go look at it. The way it works is that our network of nodes issue encryption keys. AES-256 is what we use today, which is the gold standard. That may change as we get a little more sophisticated, but today we use AES-256. You get one of these encryption keys, you encrypt a piece of content, and then you create an Arweave transaction out of this.

An Arweave transaction has two parts. It has metadata associated with it, so basically just key value pairs to tag that data, and then a payload for the data. So we place this encrypted file in Arweave and associate this metadata which has information about which key was used to encrypt the data…

(For more on the nitty gritty of V1 and V2, enter the live video here.)

When does this become commonplace? Will my kids watch Star Wars in a Darkblock? 

Star Wars, that’s gonna be a stretch. It’s gonna be a while before Disney really gets on board with this, but we’re already working with a partner that wants to be the next Netflix of indie movies.

I think we will be watching movies and darkblocks or something similar in the next three or four years, and you won’t even be thinking about it. You won’t say oh, I need to go get a darkblock or I need to get an NFT. It will simply be, ‘I want this content, I want to access it, it just happens to be underpinned by web3 technologies.’  It will be delivered to my TV, to my phone, or my desktop. I think in three or four years you’ll be able to experience that on a daily basis and you won’t even notice it. [Darkblock has already developed a TV app that allows people to decrypt and consume their NFTs’ unlockable content from their smart TVs. Download on Amazon Fire TV Stick here and Google Play here]

Anything else to add? 

I’d say if you’re building around content, even if you’re doing it in web2, come talk with us. We’d love to hear what you’re building and see how we can help. We’re on this journey and we want to take it with people that share our ideals, but also we just need to understand the problems that people are facing around their content distribution. We want to build the right tools to solve them. 

Big thanks to Chris for taking time out of his busy day to chat about his vision/baby. Learn more about Darkblock with our ALL NEW DOCUMENTATION, or join our community on discord/twitter. 

Tune into our office hours every Thursday on Youtube Live and make sure to send us your questions, topics, and guest suggestions!

Here are some highlights: 

The Genesis: How did Darkblock begin?

“Jeremy, our host here, is actually my cousin. He called me up in February of last year and he’s like this NFT thing is blowing up….I saw jpegs selling for millions of dollars and I was thinking…I feel like there’s more value that you can offer besides ownership. You can offer access to something that nobody else has access to…so that’s kind of the genesis for Darkblock. 

We immediately started working on the project. We joined a hackathon with Arweave…that’s where I met Ari (COO) and Darri (Head of Product). The company formed in the next month and we were off to the races. 

So, it was started around trying to give value around art, but we realized this protocol could be applied to all types of content, and in order for people to really take ownership and control the distribution around their content, there needed to be some sort of access control layer. That’s what Darkblock is all about, helping creators monetize and control access to content.”

-Chris Seline, CEO

Can you provide a brief intro to Darkblock?

“At Darkblock we’re focused on content. Content is the ultimate utility for the Internet. Content creation, like YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and all the websites like that equal over $100 billion in revenue every single year. That doesn’t include social platforms where creators are not being monetized yet. So it’s a huge market. If you look in the US specifically, 50-70% of kids now name the “job that they want” as a Youtuber…The vast majority of people who are young right now are interested in this type of content creation or a creator style of job. Our goal is to look at the systems that work right now and try to figure out how we can help people build those types of things in Web 3. We believe that the movement to web three will greatly benefit the future generations…giving more power to communities is what we’re really interested in.” 

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

What are some use-cases? How can consumers start adding unlockable content to their content production processes? 

“When it comes to use cases, there’s kind of what’s here now and then there’s what we think will come with the benefits of web3. So you know the stuff that will come…we believe that that will bring the masses, but the stuff that’s here now is so important as well, like digital art…If you look at how how digital artists make money…like me, as an agency owner who works in 3D a lot, we buy models on turbosquid all the time…all these amazing artists are basically allowing people to make derivatives of their work. I hear a lot from photographers that don’t want to give away their large files because they still sell art prints. They’re worried that then anyone can print their work, but they also want those huge prints to be available for sale, to be put on giant screens and capture the legacy of that print forever. So there’s a use case…put that print in a Darkblock, and access it through apps that work directly in any TV and show that art in 8k, or in the case of Lago Frame, one of our partners, you can unlock that art and have it react to all of your emotions. 

The other thing that I think is really really cool for artists that are in the space now is we allow people to upload content after the fact if you’re the Creator. This is a way of giving value to people who have collected your files. If you think about any NFT project, or any file format in general, it always changes. It always evolves. There’s always cooler and better ways to do things, so being able to actually buy upgrades to your NFT for instance, is huge. Say I bought a board ape and now I want to use that board ape in Decentraland. To do that, board ape is actually going to sell specific models for each of their NFTs that work in Decentraland. So with Darkblock, you can stack these upgrades or add-on packs.”

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

How do we keep content fresh in the metaverse?  

“As far as the metaverse goes, or how this could benefit communities, we know in real life that events and content drive people to specific locations, right? Like you go to a stadium to see a concert. That is true for digital places as well…you go to YouTube to see Mr Beast’s latest video. But what if Mr B said my next video is actually going to exist in this theater in the metaverse. It’s still free for everyone, but you know, maybe the metaverse is going to pay me that ad revenue instead of YouTube…the key is you don’t have to move your entire business to Web 3 from a current content platform. You can engage an entirely new set of fans and create an entirely new type of content in different ecosystems.”

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

Loyalty Program: Unlocking different aspects or different pieces based on someone’s tier in terms of loyalty is something interesting that we will see a lot of growth in as more brands enter the web3 space.

-Silver, Web3 Community Member

Music/Spotify: “Creators just get like pennies per stream. And you know, that’s fine if you’re Beyoncé, or a huge artist. But if you’re a small artist with just a 1000 followers, that’s not a viable business. We want to empower the long tail of creators, NFT creators, to be able to live off their work.”

-Ari, COO Darkblock

Comic Books: “Everyone in NFTs is generally an amazing artist and a storyteller. They want to give back something to the people that supported them, and so we’ve helped three different projects give comic books that they have written about their origin stories to their community or PFP holders. We have an epub reader and a PDF reader in our Viewer, which both can publish a comic book and are downloadable.  In these cases, everyone who bought their NFTS funded this amazing story and comic book, and then they gave it back to their fans.” 

3D Merch in the Metaverse! “We had a T-shirt that we gave out and made a 3D scan of and embedded a 3D model…We have a 3D model viewer right in our viewer, so you can spin the clothes around, can download it and wear it in X metaverse, bring it into decentraland, etc.

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder” 

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

Isn’t that against the visibility and all-inclusive nature of Web3?

“Darkblock [or access control] is not an issue of exclusivity…there’s a lot of really valid times when that’s applicable. Whether it’s somebody trying to sell something or make sure that they get fairly compensated for their work…or a virtual music festival where people are able to come in and expose a virtual concert to only a select group of people or their supporters…so anyway that’s that’s really why i’m so into the use cases.”

-David Cash, Cash Labs

What does the creator get out of this?

“This is ultimately about giving creators tools and control. If a creator decides to work in a model where they want content owners or owners of their NFT’s to be able to go out and monetize that content, they can set-up the rules for how that engagement actually operates. If they want to earn a specific royalty or they want to work with specific people…they can do that as well…with web 2 platforms creators typically don’t have a lot of control. They can move to another platform and lose their audience, but ultimately those business models are decided by somebody else. We don’t want to be judgmental, we want to give them [creators] tools, give them control, and they’ll use that the way they see fit. “

-Chris Seline, CEO

Do you support my project’s chain? How do I get started? 

“We work with all NFT chains…we are completely chain agnostic. Currently we work on Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, Avalanche, Solana, and are adding more soon. Some platforms are integrated with us (none of the big ones yet, but we’re trying our best!), but you can use out app and literally just log into your Ethereum wallet and it will show you a list of all your NFTs and then you can choose whichever NFT you want to upgrade. Or if it’s a collection of NFTs, and you can upload that content directly there and then you can embed a viewer into your website too if you want to drive users back to your website.”

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

How can IRL events harness the power of Darkblock? 

“At NFTNYC, this was the first test of our new UPP (unlockable party packs). It’s essentially a digital swag bag for NFT holders. So there’s a couple of things that I think are really interesting about this one. We had an amazing photographer at the Beyond the Metaverse event, and those photos have more value than just a photo on your phone, especially if there’s extra access, or if it’s them with a famous person, or even just some crazy debauchery. I love the idea of giving that stuff back to the community and giving them ownership of it. Maybe you’re using a proof of presence tool and you give that content to the community to distribute or use as they write articles or maybe there’s DJ sets or any other content that was cool that you want to keep as a memory…could absolutely use that. In the future we will allow creators to upload content as well and there will be a difference between creator uploads and collector uploads…that’s a cool way for a community to be able to share content as well…Sponsors can also give back…like a QR code for a free t-shirt, or a whitelist, you can also find people with tokens and distribute only to them, But again what we do is really easy…The event has a website, you grab your PoP (proof of presence) when you’re at the event or whatever else you want to use…then on the website you have a place where you can unlock that NFT…everything from a simple PDF to an image/movie/piece of music/3D asset…anything.”

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

How Decentralized is Darkblock? 

Decentralization for us is going to be a long journey and we’re just getting started. The technology we’re working with is pretty complex. Basically we have software that runs in a trusted enclave within a CPU. It’s called a trusted execution environment, and it enables us to have third parties run the software. They can’t inspect what’s going on inside that CPU, so we can actually handle these keys securely. Today we run the network ourselves and until we can be sure that it is fully secure, we won’t let that out the door…hopefully we will be fully decentralized at some point next year. But one step for us is basically enabling third parties to run it securely. Another [step] is ensuring that the data sources are also decentralized so that we can prove ownership in a decentralized way. One partner we’re working with on that one is Unmarshall. They are working on a decentralized way of querying NFT data…These are two very large pieces of the puzzle.

Need help using Darkblock??

“We try to be incredibly responsive on our discord, chat.darkblock.io. We’re there to answer questions and help people use the technology. If you have an idea, if you’re building and your wallet just isn’t connecting, we want to know about it. Those are the questions and the people that are going to help us make a better project.”

-Jeremy Sahlman, Co-Founder

For those of you who missed this space, you can still access the recording here! Head to darkblock.io to get started using our protocol. As stated above, we are available to help you get started and answer your questions on Discord and Twitter. Shoot your recommendations our way for who we should have on our next space!