Starly: Launch your Creations with the Social Media of NFTs!
What do NFT creators and TikTok creators have in common? They both aim to gain a considerable following and monetization from their works as they grow their fanbase of loyal supporters. Their main difference is that NFTs are considered investments with the opportunity to profit as the asset changes holders. Simply put, NFT holders can gain from their support.
This is part of the reason why Starly, the launchpad and marketplace for gamified NFTs, recently closed their pre-IDO with a whopping $6.1M in funds from various investors like Dapper Labs, LD Capital, CuCoin Labs, and other high-profile angels in the crypto community. Read on to find out what drives investors to back up this social media project!
NFTs are Hidden Gems
Taking a look at the history of NFTs, the digital asset type gained traction within the mainstream community only during the early months of 2021, with play-to-earn games boosting the term into the public eye. However, NFTs remain to be a niche market for crypto enthusiasts; and while gaming assets are at an all time high, it seems that art and music NFTs have been left behind.
The big problem with NFTs is their lack of liquidity. Although generally considered digital assets, NFTs are misunderstood by the general population, and therefore are not as wholly invested in as other asset brackets like popular cryptocurrencies. Creators often find difficulties in getting their NFTs out there, as there is a lack of spotlight on individual creations as well.
ILLIQUIDITY: NFTs are known for their illiquidity. Art NFTs lack organic demand which makes it difficult to sell these niche assets in the market, especially as marketing is a big issue in bringing NFTs out there.
Called the “art world” of crypto, NFTs have been repeatedly compared to the fine art market, where only a handful of collectors partake in the ecosystem. News about NFTs selling for millions pop up here and there, but overall, NFTs remain illiquid due to lack of market players and price discovery.
SCALABILITY ISSUES: The blockchain problem many newer projects are aiming to address surrounding issues with scalability, and NFTs are not immune to scaling problems. As more investors gather around the asset type, marketplaces can face problems with network traffic and high gas fees.
In fact, just to purchase a standard NFT on Ethereum, a user will have to shell out an average amount of $22.05 just in gas fees! These issues deter would-be investors from entering the market, furthering the issues of illiquidity.
LACK OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Social media is on the top of our list in today’s digital age. If you check the most-downloaded apps in any app store, you’ll most likely find Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok on the top of the list among the likes of Zoom and Google Suite. Our civilization today thrives on social media, and our marketing tactics have shifted online.
The lack of social media for NFTs refers to a lack of a platform that exists to cater to the NFT community; bringing creators in the spotlight to distribute their NFTs to interested investors, and building a group that grows the understanding of the financial opportunities NFTs present.
Not to be dismayed by the issue surrounding the NFT market, Starly made it a goal to rationalize the way these digital assets are traded to encourage a creator economy that brings financial independence to the creators and their fans!
Starly — The Tiktok of NFT
Starly joins the Flow-verse with a dedicated social media platform for NFTs that promises to build a community that expands NFT use cases beyond their current state. The project presents a dynamic platform where creators and investors gather to launch their creations, and shine light to their NFT collections!
In building the platform, Starly relies on the growing NFT market, which experiences an average of $3.8B transaction value per week! Starly ventures into a use-case agnostic hybrid of NFTs and social media platforms to bring forward a fresh take on a marketplace that serves retail creators as well as high-profile users.
The platform is dedicated to their mission: Sustain a creator economy for NFT cards. Starly is user-friendly, scalable, and was made to uphold massive loads of NFT transactions to keep up with the growing demand for these asset cards. The result is a platform that works like a social media site, but with the added features of NFTs!
Building a Platform for Influencers
One of the limitations of popular NFT marketplaces is the lack of access for influencers. Influencers play a huge role in almost any market, and KOL marketing has become a standard in brand partnerships and collaborations. Statistically, KOL marketing brings back strong ROI, with an average of an average return of 11x per dollar spent on the collaboration.
With this in mind, Starly sees the opportunity for creators to connect with influencers, and reach a wider audience for their NFTs using a social media-like platform similar to how we use Instagram and Tiktok. By streamlining how creators can connect with potential investors, the NFT marketplace becomes aerodynamic and poised to expand into a growth platform!
Launching NFTs to Social Media
The solution is to bridge together the technologies and profitability of NFTs with the spirited, easy-to-use interface seen in most social media platforms. Launching NFTs into social media is an impressive feat, and as Starly advances their operations, creators can finally tap into their target audiences.
Rarely are there projects with considerable pre-existing communities that completely support the creators. More often than not, these communities are also limited as the fans make up a miniscule portion of the NFT market as a whole.
The Artist Economy
There is a huge opportunity in the untapped markets of gamified NFT card economies, and Starly tends to build their platform to reach a massive community of enthusiastic players within the NFT industry.
Their entry into the crypto space solidifies the creativity and innovation behind NFTs. There is a definite market for these assets, but to connect the key players within the market is often difficult to achieve. With Starly, the platform removes the need for extensive marketing of NFT assets, giving users full access to a wide range of creations across different prominent artists!
In building their artist economy, Starly features stark advantages that launch the platform beyond what their competitors can do:
INFLUENCER-DRIVEN: Influencers are set to drive up liquidity as KOLs target specific audiences that are most likely to purchase NFTs. This is exactly what NFTs lack: the fan base aspect that we typically observe from top-performing influencers and KOLs that eventually translate views into sales.
GAMIFICATION: Starly has created a power-formula that turns NFTs into exciting and revolutionary investment pieces. Artists, creators, and potential buyers can now connect to build an economy around gamified NFT cards!
EASY TO USE: With an easy-to-buy and an easy-to-withdraw process, NFT purchasing is a straightforward operation within the Starly platform. Any user can easily purchase NFTs using either cryptocurrencies, or fiat currencies with just a swipe of a credit card.
On the other hand, users can also easily withdraw the funds they have in their wallet, so creators gain instant access to the profits made from selling their NFTs.
SOCIAL NETWORK: The social network elements of the platform make Starly as easy and dynamic to use as any other social network, but focused on NFTs and building a community around prominent creators in aims to decentralize the market.
Branding Content
What can users do in Starly? Well for one, the platform was made for NFTs, so there’s an obvious use case in the way they modernize transactions into a straightforward process. Besides sales and transactions, Starly is generally a fun and progressive platform where you can communicate with other users and create a friend base with other avid users.
Participation generally leads to rewards for most platforms, and Starly is no different. As a creator, your participation in the platform means that you can get your NFTs out there easily, and with a willing audience to accept your works. For fans, participating in the various activities around the platform earns you special rewards from Starly and celebrity creators!
CREATE NFTS: With the Starly easy-to-use NFT creation system, establishing an NFT collection is as easy as uploading a photo in any of your social media accounts! If you can use Facebook, Twitter, or Tiktok, you can use Starly.
NFT DISTRIBUTION: The platform distributes NFT cards like blind packs, where the buyer gets a surprise mix of assets each time. Specific NFT cards can be bought in the marketplace, in case a buyer is adamant at owning a certain NFT.
PRICE SETTING: Starly makes price discovery simple for NFT creators. Creators can choose from 9 different pricing options that will automatically generate projected ROI calculations. It’s an optimized way to price your NFTs considering your target audience, buying power, and preferred ROI.
FAN REWARDING: To further build the community of NFT collectors, fans are rewarded for their participation in bringing particular NFTs into the spotlight. Fans receive a unique reward from their supported creator when they use $STARLY around the platform!
CREATOR REWARDING: Fans aren’t the only ones that gain from using Starly. Creators are rewarded for building an enthusiastic and ardent fan base that continues to grow within the platform
ORGANIZE NFT COLLECTIONS: Easily organize your collection of 21 NFT cards that are classified into different levels of rarity and value.
The $STARLY Token
Starly uses its own token with the apt ticker, $STARLY. Token holders are classified into three membership tiers: Silver, Gold, and Platinum — each with its own advantages based on rank. Membership opens up the doors for token holders to benefits like early access to new drops, referral links, and exclusive content for VIP holders.
Tokenomics
Beating the Competition
SOCIAL NFT: Social NFT is the BNB-based social media platform that caters to well-known personalities that want to establish NFT collectibles of their own likeness of design. The platform aims to provide content creators and social media personalities with a space for them to monetize on their likenesses.
However, this business model is exactly what Starly aims to avoid, as the creator economy shouldn’t be limited to only celebrities and high-profile influencers, but rather various artists and influencers as a whole. In building a social media platform for digital collectibles, Starly brings visibility to otherwise invisible artists.
NIFTY’S: Nifty’s was the golden child of NFT social media platforms, as the project garnered investors like Mark Cuban and Jeff Marsilio. The platform presents a social media marketplace where creators can sell their NFTs, and build communities around their fan base.
However, with the first release being a Space Jam-themed piece by Warner Bros., one would expect high barriers of entry for the platform. Nifty’s, again, pushes for the narrative that NFTs serve only the very rich and the famous, limiting retail investors and upcoming creators from entering the market freely.
Spearheading Creator Engagement
“You cannot buy engagement, you have to build engagement.”
-Tara-Nicholle Nelson (Entrepreneur, Lightspeed Venture Partners)
What Starly goes to show is that independent creators can monetize their works when given the right tools and support to do so. Starly is pushing for a content creator economy that does not limit itself to only the top-performing creators or well-known personalities, but opens its platform for all artists to start their NFT collections.
With platforms like Starly, we can expect the NFT market to continue to grow now that the market is accessible to users of all purchasing power classes. Starly integrates social media aspects, NFT profitability, and blockchain technology in their mashup of a platform meant to grow the digital asset ecosystem as a whole, and we’re here to watch Starly soar high!
