![The 19 "Core Team" members of Teia - many former Hic et Nunc community members who volunteered their time to keep the community alive over the last year. As you can see, I'm on there, too. You can check the links below to verify the fact that this post is, indeed, connected to the DAO and myself as well. (jagracar tells me DO NOT CLICK THE LEAVE BUTTON UNLESS YOU REALLY MEAN IT 😂)](ipfs://QmeVjoCsMTr9UaZd4G3yhaW1HZ8YYzCoRbegkuvesFg2yh)

# Proof-of-Creativity

For your records (ideally, all of this will become automated):

[Core Team Multisig Interface](https://core-team-multisig.onrender.com/)

[Teia DAO Wiki](https://github.com/teia-community/teia-docs/wiki/Governance-on-Teia)

[Teia DAO Marketplace Vote ](https://tzkt.io/op7XhkxtmdDitC6zM37maiifPvc1RXVtdGR8MQctC3RchadBD8v/50134653)by ryangtanaka.tez

[Proof of Being an Artist/Collector](https://teia.art/ryangtanaka/) by ryangtanaka.tez

[Meta-Metadata for this Article](https://tzkt.io/opJ8Akv9Drw6APQtPfs4oGveRZkgWMeSeyexfbgUQxT4WN6CpUd/50134654) by ryangtanaka.tez (Recursive verification taking advantage of fxhash's "mutable metadata" feature.)

# A Brief History of NFTs on Tezos

After 2 years since the birth of Tezos' NFT ecosystem (\~March 2021), the community has finally achieved a status that can now be called "formal". The idea of turning Teia into an official non-profit + DAO had been around since the beginning it was formed - mainly because of what happened in the previous year before. For those unfamiliar with the history of Tezos' NFT ecosystem, the original NFT community on Tezos was called Hic et Nunc (HEN), which was a project originally founded by a Web3 startup founder that goes by the alias, "crzypatchwork".

Long story short, as the hype for NFTs soared to heights never seen before - the problems with running an NFT marketplace in a centralized way started to show its cracks - eventually leading to crzypatchwork shutting down the whole operation during the peak of the markets in late 2021/early 2022. (There's some disagreement to when these things actually "happened", given the complexity of the situation.) Needless to say, many were shocked at what had happened because up until that point, it seemed like everything was going very well, at least on the surface.

crzypatchwork originally raised money from the Tezos Foundation as an e-sports gaming platform then made a hard pivot to NFTs, by the way. Lots of places probably wouldn't have "allowed" him to make such a big leap but the foundation here did something interesting - they largely stayed out of the way to see where things would go. And the results? Magical - some would say.

And they did the same thing again when HEN collapsed - most places probably would have seen the momentum the project built up to that point and try to "bail it out", but the foundation mostly stayed out of the way until the remaining volunteers took the time to figure things out - and the Teia DAO is the result of that action - or lack thereof, in this case. Agree or disagree, it's largely this "let's see what happens" mindset that has defined the culture of Tezos in a lot of ways - a mindset of experimentation and open-ended inquiries where expecting the unexpected is the norm rather than the exception.

# What Comes Next for Teia/Tezos/NFTs

For those of us that were there since the beginning of the non-profit idea, it's been a long time coming - over a year in the works. But the DAO represents an evolution in the NFT ecosystem that is also reflective of what the market needs right now: a player with a degree of "impartiality" that will serve as the "glue" for many of the secondary markets out there. There are many startups and entrepreneurs trying to build dApps and services around NFTs (which includes our company, [M1X Labs](https://m1xlabs.com), working on getting curators paid to promote) but they often run into the issue of having to form complex partnerships among multiple parties doing multiple things in order to make it work.

If these partnerships are mutually beneficial and are stable/easy to anticipate, there is no problem. But that has kind of become a luxury in the Web3 spaces where the markets are down and every company is doing more cutting than spending right now: the reality is that during market highs, people start thinking they're going to be the next monopoly; during market lows, they start overcharging each other in a desperate attempt at survival.&#x20;

Neither are ideal, because they're both born out of the scarcity mindset - that there isn't enough to go around for everybody...only me. The mindset of abundance is what will make Web3 ecosystems work, and I do believe that Teia is on the right path to making that actually happen. Here's why (these are my personal takes, btw - 1 out of 19):

-   While controlling 19 members is certainly harder than controlling 1, we do recognize that this might still be a little too "centralized" for some people's taste. The next big step in Teia's agenda is to expand the DAO token distribution (voting power only, no monetary value) to the wider community for more resiliency.
-   For the last year, marketplace fees on Teia has been set at 0%. This was done on purpose because members of the core team did not feel comfortable accepting money from the public without a formal entity to direct the funds to. (Yes, they willingly turned away from money coming in because it was the right thing to do.) Now that the entity has been formed, the fees have been turn on again, at the market-rate of 2.5%. \[See #SwapOnTeia hashtag and below.]

![By a vote of 14/19, the decision to turn the marketplace fees on TEIA passed today (03/29/23). Are the results of these votes verifiable by the blockchain? Of course. \[https://core-team-multisig.onrender.com/proposals\]](ipfs://QmXYU6E8FEB5bGeybyvszsXmNZeo3kPhEf6wFQKL92t9mz)

-   Currently there are 0 people on payroll at Teia, both full and part-time. The first agenda for the DAO is to pay back the "loans" that the community took out of the personal funds of the various volunteers out there just to keep Teia's baseline services running. All funds from the marketplace will go into the DAO's multisig wallet, and can only be disbursed through the approval of the DAO. (A vote of 50%+ or more.)
-   Depending on how much money comes in from the marketplace fees, Teia might be able to do some internal hiring in the future - the DAO will then function like a company board to supervise the work being done. (Funds distributed for such purposes will also have to be approved by vote.)
-   The development of partnerships and API projects that leverages Teia's unique position as a non-profit DAO in the Tezos NFT ecosystem. This could potentially be a big boon to secondary markets in the NFT ecosystem because Teia can be the "level playing field" that makes the marketplace more diverse, competitive, and stable.
-   In a similar vein, Teia has the potential to become the "impartial entity" that sets standards and best practices around NFTs and digital art, verifiable by a governance vote. (Similar to how entities like ICANN and W3C were essential to setting standards in Web1 and Web2.) To name a few ideas: copyminting (offender wallets) registry, unwanted airdrops, file format standards, file compression/bandwidth/storage standards, etc.

More information about the details of the DAO operations is available on the [wiki here](https://github.com/teia-community/teia-docs/wiki/Governance-on-Teia). I do believe that Teia does have the capability of going further than a lot of people think because it has largely remained indifferent to the changes in market demand and available investment capital - people are only here because they want to, not because they have to (or think it's a way to get-rich-quick). The resilience that the Tezos NFT markets has shown during the market downturn was due to no small part due to these volunteers keeping the flame alive, and I'm hoping that the ecosystem at large hasn't taken that for granted.

Though at the end of the day, doing good business is about trust - and despite the fact that it's volunteer run, it has done its due diligence to make sure that its decision-making process is both transparent and predictable - a type of stability that the ecosystem will eventually need to evolve, anyway. From the very beginning - even down to what name the community wanted to pick - came down to a (verifiable) vote. While a lot of uncertainty hangs in the NFT markets as a whole and Teia is no exception, having one more actor in the game with a unique profile and approach couldn't be a bad thing, really.&#x20;

In fact, the future of NFTs as a whole may depend on it - Teia is already doing the things that other places only talk about, and could be a preview for things to come in the digital art spaces as a whole.

**Note:** *2.5% of purchases from this article will go to Teia's new treasury. (See below for the revenue share breakdown.) Seems fair to me.* 😹

![Teia's first proposals since its formation in March 2022, which includes the decision to use the title "Teia". Decentralized decision making has always been part of the ethos of the community. \[https://vote.teia.art/past-votes\]](ipfs://QmTd9U9wpjWTVa1mvtCcEbGvZFQhVYbcZneDvEqin3MCx4)


After a year since Teia came into being (~March of 2022, post-Hic et Nunc meltdown), it finally has gained the non-profit status that many of its volunteers worked hard to make happen. (Congrats, everyone! 🎉) What is next for the community, the Tezos ecosystem, and the NFT marketplace as a whole?

music, art,  crypto. Co-founder of M1X Labs. (Building the curation layer on Web3!)

Teia - The First Decentralized, Non-Profit NFT Marketplace

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