Goblintown Creators announces IP license agreements for the 187 holders
The Alpha:
- Truth Labs, the company behind popular NFT collections Goblintown, The Illuminati and more, has announced the closure of two NFT license agreements with holders from The 187 collection, according to information shared exclusively with nft now.
- The holders, King Kong and Ding Dingare the first two Truth Labs community members to be part of such collaborative IP licensing agreements, which announced the company it began building out in August 2022. King King will earn a portion of the royalty revenue from Goblintown sales, while Ding Ding will receive a portion of the revenue from the sale of physical goods based on their NFT characters’ IP.
- The collaborative NFT licenses will provide token holders with exclusive, separately negotiated rights that aim to circumvent the pitfalls of a CC0 license, which is sometimes seen as diluting the value of owning an NFT in the first place.
Dive deeper
The question of how to reward NFT community members and whether or not to give them control over NFT IP addresses are longstanding conundrums that every Web3 project faces – and there are many different approaches to the problem.
After keeping the IP of the NFTs under the banner for months, Proof Collective suddenly switched its Moonbirds collection to a CC0 license last August, causing an uproar among holders, some of whom believed the decision to be kind of centralized bait-and-switch. it happened long after people had originally bought the NFTs. Yuga Labs similarly gave CryptoPunks holders free rein to use NFT’s IP address as they saw fit in the same month.
CC0 licenses are essentially means of making an IP public domain, meaning that anyone can use the IP for any purpose, including commercial ones. While allowing holders to use this type of license frees holders in important ways, it also allows everyone in the world to use the same IP, which some Web3 commentators say defeats the purpose of owning a unique piece of digital art to begin with with.
“Yuga [Labs] licenses are really just like a CC0 license but don’t have a ‘cannot be evil’ part built into them, Truth Labs co-founder Alexander Taub said while speaking to nft now about the importance of handling IP rights properly. “If Yuga is acquired by Mark Zuckerberg and he wants to change the license, he can revoke it. If you make it CC0, you can’t take it back. But then anyone can do whatever they want with your NFT. So what is the value of owning NFT?
Truth Labs takes something of a middle ground here, avoiding the SEC’s ire by creating individual contracts for each holder of the NFTs in The 187 collection. While pledging holders of a 10,000 PFP fundraiser a portion of the royalties will establish these NFTs as securities subject to regulation, individually negotiated contracts do not.
The 187 license agreements
The two agreements that Truth Labs has entered into with the owners King Kong and Ding Ding are therefore unique in nature. King Kong is now an official partner of the Goblintown collection and will earn one percent of royalties from both past and future sales, meaning he is guaranteed a 40-50 ETH payout under the retroactive terms of the deal.
Ding Ding’s deal is for goods from IRL, which will include production of the hat and sunglasses for her NFT, The Waldragon. Taub described Ding Ding as an “equal partner” in merch drop revenue. Truth Labs aims to continue to develop unique licensing agreements for holders of The 187 and currently has a third agreement in the works with The 187 NFT character Fig Bonner. The company’s goal is to build the narrative arc of all the characters under The 187 banner into a serious storytelling force.
Diving into collaborative NFT licensing is almost a predictably bold move by Truth Labs, which has a reputation for being irreverent and has never shied away from controversy. In September 2022, the company launched its own NFT marketplace in the name of protecting royalties and having more control over how the NFTs in the collection are traded.
In April of this year, Truth Labs temporarily caused a stir in the Web3 community change metadata of Goblintown, The Illuminati, Grumpls and The 187 NFTs. Replacing the holders’ usual NFT image was a giant animated hand giving the middle finger with some sort of manifesto written above: “Fuck royalties. Damn support building and creative. Flipping is the heart of what makes Web3 special. Honor flippers, screw society. Long live the slow carpet.”
Truth Labs upgraded the collection’s smart contracts, claiming the move was an attempt to future-proof the collections from traders who had no interest in paying royalties (creator fees). On the other hand, some Web3 observers thought the decision was too centralized and that society should have been consulted in advance.
Leverage IP for long-term NFT growth
Many Web3 enthusiasts have increasingly pondered the value and utility of owning an NFT (even of known projects) as the market continues to falter and trading volumes continue to slip in recent months. That question remains largely unanswered by a significant group of NFT community builders. It represents one of the space’s biggest obstacles to being seen as legitimate by mainstream audiences or sustainable even by those within Web3’s walls.
Indeed, one of the more promising approaches to solving this problem has been to leverage the IP of NFT projects that have made a name for themselves. Pudgy Penguins has navigated this area particularly well, having built a successful, feel-good brand image on Instagram using the project’s artwork without mentioning NFTs. This visibility, combined with the financial success of the NFTs under the Pudgy banner in Web3, has led to the team entering into licensing deals for physical toys and even children’s books with community members, who will earn a share of sales revenue.
Truth Labs appears to be aiming for a similar trajectory. Leveraging Web3 IP can be one of the best methods to weather the seemingly endless crypto winter that the space continues to roll from.
