Internet is a mix of text, image and videos. Each of these formats make up the value on the web. And it was inevitable to see that content was going to be turned into the value through the collectible asset at some point in the history of the internet.
Now that we are going into the web3. A lot of asset in real life are turning into the digital asset. And those assets are stored on the blockchain in the form of the NFTs and the digital tokens. Now the most common formats are image and the digital files. However text is one of the ignored yet dominant format of the NFTs.
There are some of the platforms which are out there making the text based content into an NFT. This content can be subscribed through tokens in subscription format. You can also buy the NFT format of such assets in mint way so that it stays on the chain and viewed from wallet.
Let's talk about how platforms that are building around the web3 in writing NFTs concept.
For the sake of discussion, I am referencing the mirror.xyz platform. It allows you to post the text based content and it gets posted into the Optimism blockchain in NFT format. So let's discuss the writing NFTs that can be built around web like this which can financially support writers.
Content as a Collectible Asset
You write a good blog post. You are proud of it. And you want to sell it so that other people can read and hold and it becomes a value in itself. So you let other people who read that content hold it as a token or NFT. And you let them mint it. This is called the collectible in a digital format. And it works for digital asset.
Content as a collectible asset is a good choice for those who are book writers and the short story authors and bloggers. They write valuable tips and tricks which can be converted into the NFT. And those who are fans would find that it would be valuable for them to hold that into their wallet. And they can buy and sell that in the market to make money.
Content NFT Subscriptions
Substack has changed the way people consume content inside the email. And a lot f new platforms are copying this approach for the subscriptions and the revenue. So even the blockchain people are embeding this format for the NFT based content subscription. So say you have a blog newsletter which has NFT, you can turn that into the content NFT subscription and people pay to subscribe.
So this model is a good option for the people who wish to run the newsletter system. And they are running this as an NFT based subscription business. So they are creating the substack for the crypto. And if we take this approach this is going to be same as the real world paywall type but users get to hold valuable content as an asset.
Perma Storage of Text based Digital Asset
Making NFTs and selling your text based content on the web in a perma storage way makes the digital asset more valuable. For example, mirror lets you host your perma storage content on arweave chain. Which means even if you stop writing or the account is deleted the content which was NFT would remain in the arweave chain and also in the wallet of users.
This does not limit the NFTs on the Ethereum, but the chains like Solana and other big chains can make use of this concept and host the perma storage in the Arweave. So the mirror.xyz makes use of the optimism you may also notice maybe Hive can do the same. And this would build the perma storage of content which can be minted recurringly.
Hosting the perma storage text based content and then minting the digital asset through the NFTs can be a good path for the content creators. If you are an author, blogger, even casual content creator, you should consider platforms that allow writing NFTs.