- Zora expands into the AI market, aiming to assist creators and artists in monetizing their content through NFTs.
- The platform, built on the Optimism blockchain, has seen significant growth, facilitating over $300 million in secondary sales.
- Co-founders Dee Goens and Jacob Horne view crypto and AI as mutually beneficial, with AI requiring on-chain information and crypto needing it for ecosystem expansion.
- Zora introduces AI-enabled minting, offering passive income streams for creators of large language models.
- NFT creators anticipate enhanced AI functionality, signaling significant innovation within the industry.
Main AI News:
Zora, the NFT-based social network platform, is venturing into the lucrative artificial intelligence market, according to Dee Goens, one of the startup’s co-founders, speaking on Chain Reaction. Unlike Sora, the text-to-video tool by OpenAI, Zora’s objective is to assist creators, brands, and artists in maximizing their content monetization through NFTs. With just under half a million monthly transacting users last month, Zora’s creators earned over $1.3 million in the last 30 days by sharing their content, Goens reported. The Zora Network, constructed atop the layer-2 blockchain Optimism, concentrates on expanding the Ethereum ecosystem. Since its inception in 2020, Zora has facilitated over $300 million in secondary sales, with users minting over 4 million NFTs and attracting approximately 1 million unique collectors, as stated on its website.
However, there’s more to be accomplished. Zora’s co-founders, Jacob Horne and Dee Goens, view crypto and AI as complementary technologies that can mutually benefit each other. “Crypto desires on-chain information to derive and add value to the system,” Goens explained. “And AI requires on-chain information to be freely accessible and utilized by the system. We’re on a collision course to put more content on-chain to effectively create value.”
In simple terms, AI necessitates access to more information to train its models and advance, while crypto demands on-chain information to expand its ecosystem. “We need systems that can facilitate bringing all these elements on-chain, and that’s our goal at Zora,” Goens emphasized. Zora endeavors to establish a platform that facilitates the integration of AI into blockchains.
Recently, Zora introduced the capability for creators to utilize AI for minting on its platform. This feature allows users to input their desired content, generate an image almost instantly, and subsequently mint it, Goens revealed. “This marks a pivotal moment, providing one of the first passive income streams for creators of large language models like Stability AI,” he noted. Model creators now have the opportunity to derive value from their models’ outputs, with payouts automatically split in half when people mint them. “We’re enthusiastic about ushering in an era where model creators, not just the creators of the output, but the model makers themselves, can also benefit from the creativity they help produce.“
Goens highlighted the substantial demand from NFT creators for increased AI functionality and tools. “This represents a significant innovation in many respects, and I believe creators are eager to explore it.” Looking ahead, he envisions blockchains verifying, authenticating, and establishing ownership not only for models, data, and information but also for the origin of media itself.
“Crypto could potentially thrive without AI in its current trajectory,” Goens speculated. However, he stressed that AI requires blockchains to reinforce its narrative regarding verification and authentication—a sentiment shared by others. “I’m eager to witness the migration of models onto blockchains and observe more open-sourcing of these models, enabling us to scrutinize and assess them for informed decisions,” he concluded. “This presents an opportunity for us to act on our beliefs.”
Conclusion:
Zora’s strategic move into AI monetization represents a convergence of two powerful technologies, underscoring the symbiotic relationship between crypto and AI. The platform’s introduction of AI-enabled minting reflects a transformative shift, offering creators new avenues for value extraction. As the NFT market continues to evolve, Zora’s initiative signals broader implications for the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, fostering innovation and reshaping digital content monetization paradigms.
