With heat records breaking in cities around the world, RARA launched the 🌞 Summer of RA! campaign to set records for decentralized social curation.
Over 100 NFTs curated later, we discovered something pretty special. Here’s a recap.
🌞 Summer of RA! is an exclusive alpha for our most loyal community members - holders of 🌞 Summer of RA! NFTs and other RARA NFTs. Read more here.
Membership to RARA’s app focuses on three token-gated group permissions (1) Curators who can Start Curation, (2) Fans who React and Comment on any curation, and (3) Spectators who are everyone else who are waiting to gain access.
“THANKS I OWN IT NOW” on-chain comment by f0xapocalypse.eth to “Right-click and Save As Guy” curation at the Genesis Curation Party.
Genesis Curation Party
On Saturday, July 23rd 2022, jamming to the music by MAIWORLD, the RARA community, led by guest curators BlockchainBrett and Buddha0x and Curators in Residence ZacKenny and RobynMarieHill, took control of our front page and curated the first NFTs into the protocol.
Want to get into the vibes? Press play here.
First up, RARA’s founder, lwsnbaker, curated “RARABOT #1”.
As the first NFT registered in the Genesis Reaction Registry, it was only appropriate to curate RARABOT “#1” first. Inspired by the PFP created for Harrison Lau’s, RARA Web3 engineer, first day of work, RARABOT “#1” embodies the spirit of RARA. “LFG!” fans cheering on their favorite NFTs.
Next, we gave featured curators 3 prompts to jumpstart the curation party: first “Genesis Curation”, second “Life on the Internet”, and for the finale, all 🍦 Curator NFT holders were invited to curate their “First NFT Love”. Here’s how they turned out.
Genesis Curations
Realbuddha.eth curated “EthBoy”, a collab between Alotta Money and Trevor Jones, with the curator comment, “was the first blockbuster sale in 2020 which kicked off the bull run for NFTs and crypto art.”
“Right-click and Save As Guy” curated by blockchainbrett.eth represents the us vs them feeling NFT enthusiast have. In the curator’s words,
“[‘Right-click and Save As Guy’] is the foundational meme and values that power the NFT space. Everyone can see your NFT but only you own it. Represents the powerful future of content being free to view but valuable to own. Created by the legend, XCOPY.”
Zackenny.eth took their genesis curation in a different direction, “Miss Al Simpson's genesis NFT [‘NYC NEON’] originally sold for $41. She was the first person I ever heard talk about NFTs on NFP with DKliene.”
RARA’s second Curator in Residence, Robyn Marie Hill (f0xapocalypse.eth) doubled-down on Zac’s theme with her “Identity Creation Matrix” curation.
Finally, lwsnbaker.eth welcomed everyone to the event curating the 🌞 Summer of RA! Genesis Curation Party.
Life on the Internet
As MAiWORLD began playing his collab with CONNiE DiGiTAL’s, “Digital CD.v1” (press play!), we began curating NFTs that best represented “Life on the Internet”.
Blockchainbrett.eth flexed his NFT taste with AI Generated Nude Portrait #1, the first AI generated NFTs on SuperRare. Then, he proceeded to tell us the story of the “Lost Robbies”.
Zackenny.eth curated “Replicator” commenting,
“This piece encapsulates life on the internet, copy, remix, save, corrupt. Mad Dog Jone's Replicator is an innovative commentary on the world of digital goods, and actually requires it to be an NFT to perform its replicating function.”
“Ben’s World #2” took us into the NFT metaverse, Voxels, the home of NFT culture. Curated by realbuddha.eth, the late Allotta Money became the first artists to have two NFTs curated into RARA’s protocol.
F0xapocalypse.eth curated “SATOSHICARD - Spells of Genesis - 1/200 - 2015” stating, “It has been called the beginning of the metaverse - the key to this is its interoperability”.
First NFT Love
Last but not least - we invited all 🍦Curator NFT holders to curate with us their “First NFT Love”.
To welcome them to the curation party, lwsnbaker.eth curated “🍦 Curator” commenting “holders of this NFT have member permissions to START CURATION. Curators have the highest upside potential in terms of curation tokens, they also happen to be RARA taste leaders.”
Then, curators went wild.
NFTs post Genesis Curation Party
Beyond the Genesis Curation Party, RARA 🍦 Curators featured “blue chip” NFTs and rising stars. Looking at them now, they are surprisingly thematic and definitely enhancing discovery for fans.
Blue Chips. Highly recognizable and deeply influential “blue chip” NFTs are few and far between as many NFTs do not stand the test of time. Seeing “EthBoy”, “Fidenza #1”, and “SATOSHICARD - Spells of Genesis - 1/200 - 2015” among the first blue chip NFTs in RARA is a statement by curators and fans alike: these NFTs are important and their curation tokens (received when you react to an NFT) will only become more valuable.
”Doge”, one of the most prolific Internet memes, lives outside of crypto, on its own blockchain, and, as of 2021, as an NFT. It’s likely this curation will continue to pay for years to come.
Gm NFTs. Like all great communities, RARA’s community loves a good tradition. Monday through Friday we all come together to curate NFTs around a common prompt during our Let’s Curate {NFT type} event. Monday’s is the only recurring prompt, Let’s Curate “Gm” – for NFTs that best represent good morning.
Trash Art. Like new age graffiti, Trash Art is one of the strongest, only-in-crypto, art movements. Traditionally anti-establishment, anti-trademark, and otherwise freely available to the public to use (CC0), Trash Art or #trashart began with artwork featuring trash cans, a 64 GALLON TOTER™️ trash can to be precise.
But, #trashart and the movement has moved beyond literal trash cans to the idea that anything can be art, even a “MCDONALD'S APPLICATION” BY ROBNESS.
Pepe NFTs. Pepe art has long been prolific in and outside of the crypto community. Though briefly co-opted for political purposes, Pepe art - like #trashart - is art for the people, Internet people. From “PEPE JORDAN” to hiding Pepe in “GM” pieces, Pepe art is infinitely re-mixable and many times acts like a mirror.
“The Rizzle” at the WIP. On August 4th, RARA showed off the protocol at the WIP. Hosted by @niftytime and @nftland (“Rizzle”), the WIP is the go-to-place to show off newly projects that are “work-in-progress”. As an early adopter of social protocols and metaverses, it was only appropriate to curate Rizzle’s infamous frog PFP.
RARA NFTs. A number of RARA NFTs have been curated into RARA including, the “🌞 Summer of RA! Genesis Curation Party”, “🍦 Curator”, “Genesis GM” from the NFT RA!CE, and our “Loud Paper”.
Decentralized NFTs. Finally, in response to the U.S. sanctions on Tornado Cash, a privacy preserving protocol, RARA spent one week curating NFTs that best represented “Censorship Resistance”, “Cryptocurrencies & the Network State”, and “Freedom of Speech”.
F0xapocalypse.eth curation of “Stay Free (Edward Snowden, 2021)” capped off the week best, “Blessed Be The Whistle Blowers!”
That’s it fens. We reached 100 curated NFTs. Next stop 1000. Join us. Come curate with frens 🫂 at app.rara.social.
Upcoming Curation Events
Let’s Curate (Every Thursday at 9pm Eastern Time) - Weekly Twitter Space featuring live curations by 🍦 Curator NFT holders and other guest curators. Follow lwsnbaker for notifications.
General Admissions (Every Friday at Noon Eastern Time) - Weekly community call in RARA.house (Discord). From app updates to recaps of this week’s curations, the call is a great spot to dive deeper into the state of RARA.