It’s not a hot take to say that last year’s bear market changed everything.

As prices plummeted and individuals left the space, those who stuck around were faced with an important question: what value do NFTs really hold?

That answer began to come into focus at the close of 2022 as more creators realized the ways in which NFTs can be utilized to accomplish non-financial goals, leading to a growing trend of free or low-priced NFTs driven by a desire to grow community as much as possible.

Fan acquisition and retention are promising use cases for NFT releases in 2023 as we work to increase awareness and adoption from web2 to web3. Since the beginning, we’ve believed that established social networks will continue to remain the primary distribution channel for creators, but blockchain applications will become their financial rails. The most pivotal step for creators utilizing web3 is to convert as many web2 impressions to addressable wallets as possible.

At Decent, we’ve been incredibly inspired by the ways creators and developers are using our technology to build novel NFT-based applications that work to bridge this gap. Today, we are excited to release a template that easily brings these functions to the masses.

Introducing: Web2 + Web3 Social Authorization

Created to support Austin Hurwitz’ One Big Idea Season 0 listener badges, Web2 + Web3 Social Auth effectively reaches mainstream (i.e. web2) audiences and funnels them through web3 platforms. In this process, these audiences are prompted to create wallets, which are then captured as addressable via tokens or traditional forms such as email addresses.

This approach to NFT releases is exciting and essential for web3 onboarding that meets audiences where they are at via free or low-priced tokens. The goal is to create a direct bridge that should onboard the next 10 million users in web3. Fans will join, driven not by financial gain and speculation, but to be included in the “inner circle” of their favorite creators and participate in their success.

One Big Idea Season 0 Claim Case Study

Breaking down the component pieces of Web2 + 3 Social Auth

To celebrate the close of One Big Idea’s Season 0, Austin Hurwitz released a free token for early supporters of the podcast. To claim the token, potential collectors must follow Austin on Lens, verify their email address, and follow him on Twitter prior to minting. Once completed, collectors are prompted to join Austin’s Guild to gain access to the OBI Telegram group.

The goal of Web2 + Web3 Social Auth is to reach mainstream audiences, funnel those through web3 platforms to create wallets, and capture those wallets as addressable via either tokens or something like email addresses. Along the way, we hope the promise of identifying as an early supporter (and the potential perks attached) spurs engagement at each level - broadening web2 reach and bolstering web3 conversion.

How We Built It

1. Connect Wallet

   1. How: Privy as wallet provider

   2. Why: Privy is part of a new breed of wallets that creates a DID for the user on connection. This card can associate email and social handles with an address.

2. Confirm Email

   1. How: the user enters their email address and receives a code to that email to validate. Note: this email can sometimes appear in spam so be sure to check there if it does not hit your inbox.

   2. Why:  An email is typically the minimum requirement for a fan to be in a creator’s funnel. The ability to promote opportunities to wallets of high-purchasing intent is valuable.

3. Confirm Web2 Social Following

   1. How: Twitter’s API with some custom caching to mitigate ratelimits

   2. Why: Necessary step to execute web2 → 3 social bridge from where creators primarily distribute their brands

4. Confirm Web3 Social Following

   1. How: Decent’s 721A token-gated contract

   2. Why: This step bridges the gap between web2 → web3, asking collectors to verify from both their Twitter and Lens profiles which provides:

      1. On-chain validation of credentials via Lens follower NFT (or any other token)

      2. Proof of Humanity by limiting bot attacks through multi-step verification on- and off-chain

      3. Allowlist that automatically updates in real time

Launch your next project with a Decent template!

The Web2 + Web3 Social Auth template is the fourth in a series that enables creators and developers to get up and running with custom minting and deployment sites faster than anywhere else. We will be publishing this library to Decent in the coming days, but please see the list below in the meantime to start playing around today:

Start Decent

Next JS, RainbowKit, TailwindCSS & Decent SDK template to demonstrate how to use the Decent SDK and set up a custom deployment site.

Vercel demo link: Start Decent

AI NFTs

Forked from Start Decent, this repository enables users to deploy NFTs with images generated from DALLE 2 prompts. This template requires a DALLE API key.

Template in action: Decent x Dalle

Minting Page

Forked from Start Decent, this template allows users to stand up a custom minting page to provide collectors with an experience that is uniquely yours. To see just how easy it is (& the breadth of Decent HQ!), check out our YouTube tutorial.

Template in action: The J Dilla Legacy Collection

Web2 + Web3 Social Auth

Cloned from the Minting Page, this template asks users to confirm their email address and verify that they follow the creator on web2 and web3 social platforms prior to claiming a token.

Note: This repository is currently in beta. We are publishing it as an MVP with the hope that the community will close out our roadmap. We will be sure to recognize & reward contributors! If you are interested in using or contributing to this template, please DM on Twitter: @cdurbinxyz. Look forward to hearing from you!

Template in action: OBI Season 0

On the Horizon

Keep an eye out on Decent as we will begin to prominently feature template pages and use cases in the coming weeks. We’re stoked to continue watching creators and developers jointly innovating to derive increasingly compelling answers to the question of what value do NFTs really hold?