Last week, we published an update that governance for the SuperRare DAO is now beginning to reach the "rubber-meets-road" stage, along with the minutes from the latest Governance Council meeting.

As detailed in those posts, after receiving 35 amazing submissions (!) we are now preparing to execute the first Space Race later this month. We were blown away by the extensive interest in becoming a Space Operator and the desire to participate in curation of the SuperRare Network.

A first draft of the potential Space Race governance mechanics was published in August alongside the SuperRare 2.0 announcement - which also included the launch of the SuperRare DAO and $RARE governance token.

Since then, things have evolved quite a bit: the first round of Space applications has been received and reviewed, the design and product dev cycle has reached full steam, and we've had hundreds of conversations with artists, collectors, curators, and community members about both Spaces themselves and how we can begin the work of decentralizing curation on SuperRare.

In August, we announced the SuperRare DAO and launched the $RARE curation token, a fundamental metamorphosis of the platform that set SuperRare on a course for true community stewardship.

The announcement of the DAO came alongside several other foundational platform shifts, dubbed SuperRare 2.0. In the past two months, laying the groundwork for the underlying product, engineering and organizational transformation to come has been our main focus - and we’ve begun publishing articles regarding our philosophy around decentralized governance and its rollout.

Now, we’re excited to be at the stage where the rubber is hitting the road. Yesterday we shared some updates regarding the Space Race in Discord, and we’re publishing that info here today for wider circulation.

All applications for Space Race #1 are IN! A whopping 35 amazing applications were submitted, exceeding our wildest expectations for interest in operating a Space. A follow-up email with an update on our thinking behind the race in light of the high turnout was sent to all applicants–if you were supposed to receive an email but didn’t, let us know in Discord (#space-race). We’re targeting November 15th for the start of the first race 🏁.

SuperRare Labs and Async Art are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership and integrated product offering — starting with Async Blueprints. Our decision to work closer together felt like a natural progression in the cryptoart space, with Async leveraging its strength as a creation tool and SuperRare evolving into a platform-agnostic marketplace for premium art discovery. 

Famous for drops like XCOPY’s Grifters and Coldie’s DecentralEyesMashup, Blueprints make it easy for Async artists to create their own generative art collections from a single source, with no coding experience required. 

To kickstart our partnership, Async and SuperRare will be co-releasing a Blueprints collection with cryptoart pioneer Osinachi. This collection will be minted on Async, with secondary listings available on SuperRare for the first time ever. A share of proceeds from these secondary sales will automatically route to the SuperRare DAO community treasury, just like any other sale on SuperRare.

Hey there! My name is Ashni and I’m the new Senior Community Manager at SuperRare Labs.

Anyone who has spent meaningful time in NFT communities learns that more than art, technology, or even money, this space is about relationships. It’s about the connections we make and the support we give each other. It’s about community.

This year, SuperRare began paving the way toward turning curation and stewardship of the network over to the SuperRare DAO – a bold first step toward building the world’s biggest decentralized community of empowered artists and collectors. The path ahead is uncharted and exciting, but above all else, one thing is clear: Nurturing this community’s growth will be critical to its success. It’s something I think about a lot, and it’s why I’m so excited to  join the crew here at SuperRare Labs.

Let me introduce myself: I started my hyper-online life as a Twitch streamer in 2013. I was terrible at it, but over time I was able to attract the attention of a financially supportive community and went full-time with content creation in 2015. Unfortunately, one individual contributed around 90% of my income. Even with an 80-hour work week, I wasn't able to get over 20 average viewers on Twitch. I couldn't understand why people who started streaming after me were growing so much faster. I brought these concerns up to my main supporter and he said, "A lot of people are gonna make it on Twitch, but it's never gonna be you."

Last August we announced SuperRare Spaces, an upcoming product that will allow independent curators and promoters to launch their own gallery pages on SuperRare. Fast forward a few short months (what feels like decades in NFT-time), and we’re finally in the home stretch: five incredibly exciting Spaces have been publicly elected by the SuperRare DAO, product development is in final testing, and we’re almost ready to launch the inaugural batch of Spaces and kick off applications for the second Space Race. The future of decentralized curation is nigh!

What does all this mean and why is it so important? Let’s dive in:

Spaces 101

See here for background on what Spaces are, and why they’re awesome for both artists and collectors. In short, Spaces will function as sub-galleries on SuperRare — dedicated to specific thematic communities — that can help provide superior discovery and alpha signaling for collectors while helping artists with more hands-on promotion and sales strategies. By shining a light on these specific sub-communities, Spaces will help SuperRare continue extending the reach and cultural diversity of cryptoart while accelerating the ability to do high-quality curation at rapid speed/scale.

Tripling Down on Artist Sovereignty

One of the core principles of the web3 movement is that people can now truly own their data — paving the way for us to collectively wrest control of our digital selves back from the corporate leviathans who have dominated the web2 landscape in recent decades.

For digital creators long captive to the exploitation of these monopolistic giants, this difference is especially massive. In fact, it’s nothing short of a revolution. 

On web2 platforms like Instagram, creators contribute works that become completely controlled by the platform. No more ownership once it’s been published. No recourse if you don’t support the company's direction. No portability of your intellectual property if they decide to shut down. If the company doesn’t like your post, poof — they can just delete it. If they want to tweak the algorithm and make it more expensive for you to reach your audience, they can do it anytime. And if you want to move your creations to a different platform? Nope! Not gonna make it.

Ok, so by now you're probably asking yourself - what's the point of all this governance talk? Is this really something I need to concern myself with? And if so, then how does it work?

To unpack these questions a bit further, let's take a step back and recap how we got to where we are today and why community governance is such an important concept for the digital economy in the 21st century.

The Purpose of Governance

“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” – Thucydides

NFTs have given art markets a breath of fresh air.

As we explore CryptoArt's next chapter, it’s important to understand what led us here.

We’ll start by exploring the history of art markets, their commission structures and the role galleries have historically played in their success.

From there, we hope to educate readers on where SuperRare fits into the conversation, and how this positioning sets the platform up for its next chapter.

Hey friends 👋

Are you pumped about the future of art and culture yet? Ready to get this revolution kick-started?

Now that we've shared some of our hopes and dreams for SR2.0 and you've heard the rallying cry for self-governance, we hope you're as excited about the future of SuperRare as we are. It's a BIG vision, we know, but one that's worth fighting for. And we're thrilled to have you along for the ride 🚀

Before embarking on the important business of changing the world, we thought it'd be helpful to bring things back to brass tacks and talk through what to expect as we embark on our noble journey. Like all teams coming together for the first time - we need to learn our collective strengths and weaknesses, build communication skills, and develop methods of collaboration that can leverage our different backgrounds/cultures and feelings about the world. Sounds easy, right?! 😉

A revolution in NFT art curation and the decentralization of SuperRare

Exactly 20 seconds past 11:20PM (UTC) on April 5th of 2018, the first artwork was minted on SuperRare. We know this precise time and date due to the innovation that makes SuperRare so exciting: our first transaction, like the thousands that followed it, was immutably preserved on the Ethereum blockchain.

1,229 days later, more than $90M in NFT art has been sold by over 1,400 artists on SuperRare. Hobbies became careers. Digital projects became valuable assets. The digital transformation of the art market is no longer a dream—it has arrived.

Unlike past artistic revolutions, this one affects more than the medium or style. It is a revolution of both form and function, curation and collection. The work itself is thrilling, dynamic and diverse, but we are equally excited about the opportunity unleashed by blockchain technologies: to put ownership in the hands of the artists, curators, collectors, and digital art community at large.

Recounting the early days of the NFT art market & peering ahead into the decentralized future with SuperRare co-founder & CEO, John Crain

SuperRare was born from a simple idea: what if we could build an art market that put power into the hands of artists? This blog post is a window into SuperRare’s mission to transform this idea into a global artistic movement, as we reflect on our path so far, our community at large and our vision for the future.