Rising Tides
Bon Voyage
When we first started working on Glass, it was truly out of a love for video and decentralization.
Our original mission to “Free the Creators” stemmed from complaints about YouTube demonetizing videos or creators getting kicked out of the TikTok Creator Fund. Monetization on centralized video platforms is opaque and ultimately controlled by the company, not the creator. Creators that depend on this monetization have virtually no recourse when their videos are demonetized.
Our goal was to create transparent, on-chain monetization for creators that they control — harnessing the power of NFTs. Collecting these tokens creates a history of support. They increase in value as the creator, experiences, and community around them grow.
Setting Sail
We launched in September 2021 with a foundation rooted in permanently-stored, decentralized video. We developed the technology to upload videos on Arweave and play the videos such that no platform would be able to take them down. Full-length films could be stored and played back in a fully decentralized way.
On the monetization front, we started off with reserve auctions on curated, 1-of-1 video NFTs on Ethereum. Some of them did really well. Our largest sale with that model, a video from Two Feet, sold for 11.11 ETH ($55k at the time).
While it excited us at the time, we were unsatisfied with the number of collectors that could take part in auctions. We believed that to truly grow the market for not just video NFTs, but crypto as a whole, we needed models that allowed for more participation.
So we tried out limited editions… with a twist. One of the best ways to reward your early supporters is to give them early or exclusive access to future collections. You could also imagine providing that access to another creator’s community for cross-community distribution.
We called the idea Hyperlink, and allowed creators to do some cool drops. For instance, the Bored Brothers - a collaboration between Kygo and One Republic’s Ryan Tedder - let their Sound collectors claim a video on Glass hyperlinked to their Sound song “Drip”. Timbaland, a legend in hip-hop production, made his first venture into Web3 with a set of limited editions for his music video “Has A Meaning” using the same limited editions model.
The Dilemma
While our passion for experimentation had no bounds, we felt like a lack of strong foundations limited our ability to grow. We didn’t have profiles or any social features… you couldn’t even see what videos were worth on the home page.
Creators and collectors new to Web3 struggled to adopt the new technology. While limited editions were more accessible than auctions, high gas fees on Ethereum limited more people from participating. The user experience just wasn’t there yet.
On the other hand, we were interoperable with tools like PartyBid, which enabled creators like Lackhoney to accomplish some amazing feats to build community around his video. We’ve worked with LivePeer, Zora, OpenSea, Reveel, Sound, 0xSplits… all enabled by the culture of interoperability on Ethereum.
We were faced with a decision — do we stay on Ethereum and build a better foundation? Or do we forge a new path, with a cohesive platform on a fast, cheaper, more user-friendly blockchain?
Enter Solana.
The Storm
We spent a majority of 2022 working on a new version of Glass on Solana. Solana in early 2022 had a bubbling NFT community ready to blow. There was an underdog energy that we resonated with, compared to the established, high art collector vibes that Ethereum had.
It was... challenging, to say the least. We came into it with no idea how difficult it would be to build on a brand new blockchain. We accomplished some amazing technical feats, like building a low-latency Solana indexer, that allowed us to do some really cool social features for collectors. We even had a full-fledged secondary marketplace built right into the video page, so people could trade in the same place they watch the video.
The user experience on Solana was unrivaled compared to Ethereum. The speed of transactions, the lower costs, and the experience of collecting and creating were amazing. We were able to launch with profiles, comments, social features, notifications, a home feed — all the things we’ve come to expect from a video platform.
We leaned into the idea of providing the best user experience at all costs. We stopped storing our videos on Arweave, and opted to centralize a lot of our infrastructure for the sake of faster playback and higher quality. Profiles and comments were centralized as well. We were no longer interoperable with a wide range of platforms and protocols, and saw ourselves as a one-stop shop. Our rationale was that creators only cared about monetization when it came to decentralization, so the UX tradeoff was one we were willing to make.
After launching the Solana version in September 2022, we saw unprecedented growth in collectors. In a matter of a few months, we reached over 1000 unique collectors - way more participants than we had on Ethereum. In a short period of time, we launched credit-card purchases for NFTs via CrossMint, which quickly became a popular way to collect - especially for inexperienced crypto users.
Then FTX, one of the largest investors in Solana, collapsed. The Solana market price tanked, along with trust in the blockchain. Volumes on Glass were slowing down, and creators were not earning nearly as much as they did in the Ethereum days.
To throw fuel in the fire, creators that once loved Glass were shying away from posting their videos on Solana. It just didn’t make sense for them to straddle their collector base across two separate blockchains. We had stayed curated for too long.
Putting it bluntly — we were down bad. The market was down, creators didn’t love us like they used to, and we had sacrificed the ethos of decentralization we once stood for. We were lost at sea, and it was time to make a change.
Familiar Waters
We called ourselves the Glass Protocol for a reason. A protocol stands for the principles of authenticity, interoperability, and extensibility. A protocol establishes true provenance for creators. It works well with other protocols and enables anyone to build on top of it. A protocol embodies the ethos of decentralization that Web3 is built on.
The product we had built so far was not a protocol, it was a platform. We took fees on every purchase, and even fees from creators at a certain point, in an attempt to prove we had a viable business. If our platform went down, so would all the creator’s videos and the collector’s NFTs. We were no better than the other video platforms.
We’re coming back to Arweave. We believe in giving creations a home that stands the test of time, even if we die tomorrow. Our videos will be stored permanently once again and played back using the video technology our friends at LivePeer have pioneered.
We’re coming back to Ethereum. We don’t regret the journey to Solana, because it showed us what a Web3 platform needs to deliver a great user experience. We’re taking all the lessons we’ve learned to deliver a version of Glass that stays true to the love of decentralized video that started us off.
Coming back to ETH, maximizing decentralization, and removing creation fees are intense decisions. What excites us about this trajectory is that we’re creating entirely new ways for creators to engage with the world. Our work, and the videos that are created will live on forever – maybe even past our lifetimes.
We want to provide the tools for creators to build novel experiences around video. Examples could include premium content, private group chats, exclusive concerts, voting on next video, etc. We are intentionally leaving the use-cases open so the creators have freedom to build experiences to meet the needs of their specific communities. We will publish our own native tools for managing and creating experiences as well as invest heavily in third-party developers building new creator experiences.
It might be the bottom of the bear market, but one thing’s for sure: content on-chain isn’t going anywhere. There’s something powerful about open data, permanence, and creator sovereignty. When tools are built to work with one another, when creators are enabled to distribute their work in unique ways, something magical happens. We at Glass feel the urge to once again work together with the champions, pioneers, and trailblazers of Web3 to push the whole space forward — together.
After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.
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