CORE CONCEPTS
Values & principles
Creators, collectors, artists, technologists and Web3 enthusiasts are joining together to build this new creative community. Here are the values and principles that reflect what we’re trying to achieve in the space. This is a living document, so please add your voice!
Here are the values and principles that we want to support through Expressions and our $AMBR token:
- Artists and creators deserve to be compensated for their work in a variety of free and open marketplaces.
- Collectors deserve to know that the work they’re purchasing is authentic.
- Inclusion, diversity and equity matter. It’s time to bring more women and people from underrepresented communities into our space.
- We deserve a free, open space for artistic expression for people from all cultures and regions.
- Let’s work on making Web3 available to everyone with a friendlier UI and more accessible language.
- NFTs are not one-dimensional. Some might be traded, some held as long-term assets. Some may accrue financial value — but there is also value in NFTs that we treasure for their aesthetic appeal and emotional resonance.
- Let’s support projects that serve the social good and lift up local communities.
- Let’s collaborate to make the Creator Economy truly work for creators around the world by supporting multiple languages, currencies and cultural traditions.
- Let’s set our own guardrails and community standards without the need for outside parties to monitor our speech.
- Let’s tell stories and support each other — Expressions is a community space for sharing experiences, not just a marketplace for selling stuff.
Expressions: What it is
Expressions is a creativity platform, social marketplace and discovery hub where you can uncover new voices and astonishing talents from around the world. Too many artists from diverse cultures find themselves underrepresented and unseen in Web3. Our platform helps creators share their works and tell their stories in a safe, secure way, benefiting both creators and collectors.
From the start, we decided not to build a copycat NFT marketplace. So you’ll see a number of unique innovations that give users full control over the creative process of putting art, photos or media on chain. We are also building in community elements that allow users to share and to comment — so that Expressions becomes a true community site and not merely a place for buying stuff.
Expressions was started as a project of the Artists & Creatives Foundation, a Panama nonprofit. But it has evolved into a community-driven Web3 project — developed, curated, underwritten and operated by people like you. We are international by design and collaborative in spirit.
The big idea here is to bring creatives and collectors together to co-create a mobile-friendly space where creativity and commerce can flourish without Web2’s exploitative advertising models.
The foundation’s mission is to bring together artists, photographers, videographers, musicians, writers, poets and other creative souls and connect them with developers, marketers, curators and volunteers who want to build a community that supports creatives and their craft.
At Expressions, creators can sell digital collectibles and physical goods, earn revenue, and receive guaranteed royalties without putting their works at risk. Collectors can build out their virtual portfolios, show off their taste in the creative arts, and acquire digital or physical works that gain value over time — while supporting emerging talents and great charitable causes.
No gatekeepers
Some 99.99% of artists the world over have not yet joined Web3. We decided to set ourselves apart from SuperRare, Nifty Gateway and other sites by removing the barrier to entry — any artist can upload his, her or their works to our open, democratic, commerce-enabled community of creativity.
Won’t you join us?
The $AMBR token
We believe a community token plays a central role in any decentralized technology project. In this particular project, we believe creators and collectors can build value for one another starting with a community token — $AMBR — founded on the principles of authentic artistry, transaction integrity, decentralized media, and distributed ledger technologies.
The Artists & Creatives Foundation will release the $AMBR token some time in 2024 — at a time voted on by the community. For the first six months after its launch, 100% of trading fees (paid in MATIC, ETH or other crypto) will be converted into $AMBR. This means all trading fees generated in MATIC, for instance, will then be exchanged for the Amberfi native token on Expressions and other Amberfi sites. These regular repurchases of $AMBR on the open market will generate consistent buy-demand and support positive token price appreciation. (See the Tokenomics section for details.)
As of October 2023, $1.7 million in $AMBR tokens have been purchased by investors and angels, including Animoca Brands, Polygon Studios, Delta Blockchain Fund, Matrixport and Hailstone Ventures. (Due to securities regulations, US citizens are not eligible to buy $AMBR; the $AMBR token is not a security.)
Amberfi
While many token projects flounder about after launch without a clear purpose or vision, we have been clear-eyed about our purpose from the start. Amberfi’s mission is to drive value to creators and collectors by enhancing the security and usability of Web3.
Although the Amberfi team has participated in major Web3 events such as NFT NYC (where its CEO was a speaker this year), Consensus, Permissionless, DCentral, Art Basel and NFT LA (now Outer Edge LA), Amberfi has been in stealth mode, quietly developing the unsexy picks-and-shovels infrastructure of Web3. That includes creating SDKs (software development kits) for brands and creators who want to host a safe, secure, user-friendly collectibles storefront on their own website.
As the first step toward that vision, Amberfi and the Artists & Creatives Foundation are partnering to build Expressions, a new platform for NFTs 2.0. With fewer scams. More storytelling. A richer collection of works from global creatives and emerging talents in the arts, games, photography, fashion and music.
We named the $AMBR token after Amberfi because the company has a solid revenue-generation model that will sustain and benefit $AMBR over the long term. Amberfi builds white-label marketplaces for brands, for creators — for anyone who wants to sell digital collectibles directly to their fans and customers.
As of October 2023, the company already has 22 clients under contract, including a major free trade zone, a major streaming arts service, and several global artists. From the initial $AMBR token seed sale, Amberfi has already developed the following innovations for the space:
• Marketplaces that support credit card purchases, instant creation of noncustodial wallets, a sleek workspace for creators, and an intuitive UI for newcomers
• Verification of sellers to build trust among the collector community
• Exclusive anti-phishing wallet tech that reduces collector risk during phishing attempts
• Exclusive content encryption to reduce piracy and enhance privacy in confidential settings
• NFT prices pegged to USD to manage crypto volatility
• Ability to sell and ship physical goods alongside Web3 digital assets
• A best-in-class set of licenses tailored specifically for NFT holders
• Mobile-friendly gamification elements through a points and rewards system
Our solutions: Addressing market gaps
The main solutions our teams are addressing center on user security, accessibility and cultural inclusion.
Security
There are far too many scams and rug pulls and too much fraud, piracy, and copyminting going on with NFTs and the emerging digital economy. Until these issues are resolved, NFTs will never win mainstream adoption by users, creators and brands. Our partner Amberfi is in the process of deploying a number of industry firsts or best practices on the Expressions marketplace and partner sites. See the Project Roadmap section below for details.
Accessibility
Education and design both play major roles in making Web3 more accessible to regular users.
On the education front, Expressions and its partner Amberfi have put together key resource materials, including a calendar of NFT and blockchain events, a glossary of key NFT and crypto terms, a set of NFT tools and resources, an Ask the Attorney feature that answers community members’ questions about NFTs and the law, and series of interviews with artists delving into NFTs.
UX and UI in the space have been proved to be challenging and offputting to regular users, resulting in marketplaces built by insiders with their own dense terminology and with constrained user experiences that appeal to a limited cohort of crypto enthusiasts. We want to help kick-start projects with a platform that lets cohorts of creative entrepreneurs join together to form their own easy-to-use marketplaces and digital storefronts without the need to hire Web3 coders. We want to focus on community building and on using the inherent elements of the blockchain—token utility, special access passes, unlockable content—designed to sustain a project over the long term. We have also begun working with accessibility organizations to ensure that Expressions and other marketplaces provide a user experience that allows everyone to participate.
Accessibility also means making the digital economy accessible to creators. We’re concerned about the growing number of marketplaces willing to make even small creator royalties optional or to minimize them, which threatens to undermine the entire Web3 ecosystem when artists and creatives just want a fair shake to help them sustain their careers. Our approach is about helping collectors accrue long-term value rather than encouraging the quick flip.
Launching on Ethereum
We’ve decided to launch our “Origins: Genesis” project on Ethereum as a fundraiser for the Artists & Creatives Foundation — because Ethereum is now eco-friendly with its proof-of-state blockchain. Half of the proceeds from each NFT sale go to the artist, about half goes to the foundation to develop and operate Expressions, and the remainder goes to a worthy local charitable cause.
For other projects on Expressions, we are giving creators and brands the choice of Ethereum and Polygon, with other blockchains on the way.