Dee Goens, co-founder of the startup, stated on Chain Reaction that Zora, an NFT-based social network platform, is continuing its expansion into the burgeoning artificial intelligence market beyond the cryptosphere.
Zora, which should not be confused with OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora, seeks to assist creators, brands, and artists in monetizing their content via NFTs. Goens stated that Zora had “just under” 500,000 monthly transacting users last month and that creators earned over $1.3 million in the previous thirty days by publishing their content. Check out this episode featuring Goens that we also uploaded to Zora.
The Zora Network is constructed atop Optimism, a layer-2 blockchain that is dedicated to expanding the Ethereum ecosystem. According to its website, since its inception in 2020, Zora has generated secondary transactions in excess of $300 million, users have minted or posted over 4 million NFTs, and the platform has approximately one million unique collectors.
Nonetheless, further effort remains. Jacob Horne, co-founder of Zora, and Goens consider artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency to be mutually beneficial and complementary technologies.
Goens stated, “Crypto wants information to be on-chain so it can be valued and contribute to the system’s value.” “AI subsequently requires data to be decentralized on the blockchain, enabling unrestricted access and utilization by the system.” Consequently, we find ourselves on a collision course where the objective is to augment the amount of content available on the blockchain with the intention of generating value.
Simply stated, AI requires access to more information to train its models and expand, whereas cryptocurrencies require information on-chain to develop their ecosystems.
“We are attempting to develop systems at Zora that can assist in bringing all of these things onto the blockchain,” Goens explained. It seeks to establish a foundation that facilitates the migration of artificial intelligence to blockchains.
Zora introduced the capability for creators to utilize AI to mint, document, or publish a transaction on the blockchain on its platform earlier this week. Goens explained that this enables users to enter their desired text, generate an image almost immediately, and mint it shortly thereafter.
Goens stated, “This is one of the first passive income streams for the developers of large language models like Stability AI; it is a zero-to-one moment.” This enables these AI developers to generate revenue from the outputs of their models when individuals mint them, and the payments are automatically divided in half. “We are extremely enthusiastic about entering a new era in which model creators will not only be the ones to produce the output but will also have the opportunity to profit from the creativity that they are contributing to.”
Goens stated that he anticipates considerable demand from NFT creators for additional AI tools and functionality. “This is, in many ways, an entirely new concept, and I believe they are eager to innovate.”
He expressed his belief that blockchains may have the potential to assist in the future in verifying, authenticating, and establishing the ownership of creations. This would extend beyond models, data, and information to include the source of the media itself.
Goens stated, “I believe crypto could continue on its current trajectory without AI.” His belief, however, that blockchains are necessary for AI to strengthen its narrative regarding authentication and verification is not unique; others share this view.
Goens stated, “I am enthusiastic about the models becoming available on-chain and advocating for increased open sourcing of these models to enable everyone to examine and assess them in a manner that enables well-informed decision-making.” “This presents an opportunity for us to demonstrate our commitment in practice.”
This narrative was motivated by an episode of the Chain Reaction podcast on TechCrunch. For additional anecdotes and advice from the entrepreneurs who are constructing the most innovative companies of the present day, subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred pod platform.
