How Storytelling Is Driving NFTs - Forbes

How Storytelling Is Driving NFTs – Forbes

BRAZIL – 2021/06/16: In this photo illustration, a NFT (Non-fungible token) logo seen displayed on a … [+] smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been much-talked-about over the past year. An NFT is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided; it is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. In addition to being thought of as an identifier, an NFT is often thought about as a contract, a digital artwork/artifact, or simply as a as a manifestation of the arrival of future technology. NFTs, while all of these things, are also something not as widely discussed: a storytelling tool. Web3 is a new medium and, like all media before it—from the printing press to the radio to moving pictures—humans will use it to tell stories. Storytelling is how we’re wired to evolve and connect with each other, and we will use every tool at our disposal to do it. What remains for us to learn, when it comes to storytelling with NFTs, is how do we do it, why do we do it and what constitutes success.

Examples of Web3 Storytelling

JumpCut Creative identifies itself as a “storytelling company” and has put up a hypothesis, with its narrative project Women of Mystery, that communities can come together and co-create stories, which, in their view, are valuable IP with a path to Hollywood. “We exist because we want to challenge the status quo in Hollywood and change decision-making process around which stories get to be told by way of films and television,” says Tonya Reznikovich, Chief of Staff and Producer at JumpCut,It’s crazy that Hollywood hasn’t tapped into fans and audiences from a co-creation and IP-development standpoint because they’re really missing out big time, not only because there are so many insanely creative people out there on, like, Reddit and Wattpad and, you know, fanfiction.net, who are willing to put in time and effort to build lore and characters and stories, but also because Hollywood is just missing out on the greatest marketing flywheel of all time; … if you have this super-engaged community of people who are creating story together, that’s gonna end up being so much more effective than a spray-and-pray marketing campaign of billboards and hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody cares.” In short, JumpCut Creative’s mission is to pave the way for community-driven projects that can help open up the insular Hollywood system to new voices and new types of projects.

Crypto Coven, while also focused on storytelling, is an experiment in decentralized world-building. Rather than having the goal of connecting with Hollywood, they’re focused on connecting with each other through story-worlds. “High witches are definitely Tumblr girls, fanfic girls—like, we believe in this kind of really incredible, and often young-women-driven community, built around the stories that really fascinated us when we were younger. And we wanted to replicate something like that and use the tech of Web3 to be able to build something like that.”

And then, to provide an example of a third approach, R3wind, like Crypto Coven, is about collaboration, but focused a bit more on commerce and infrastructure than on content or connection. “What we’re really focusing on is how do we create a collabora