GM & GN,
We’ve been hard at work over the last four weeks migrating Immutable Type to Polygon from Ethereum, and I’m excited to announce we’re now live on the Polygon and accepting $MATIC tokens. I’ll get into ‘why’ and ‘what’ later in the post, but for now let’s drop our first Polygon NFT.
The Headliners #4: If it bleeds, it leads
This NFT is one is my personal favorites. I dropped it live for a mint price of .00725 $MATIC, which is essentially a fraction of a penny. There are 365 editions and the mint is open for 365 days, or until it mints out.
The concept behind this Headliner is to shine light on the practice of news and media businesses, including social media algorithms, which promote and ‘lead’ with the most fearful and grotesque headlines available. The incentive for them to do so is to play off the evolutionary tendency of the audience to pay attention to risk and threats, which captures viewer attention that the media businesses may sell to advertisers. This is why our news, media, and social media businesses serve us stories and images of car crashes and promote continuous ‘breaking headlines’ as lead stories, because there’s a zero sum competition for the finite attention of an audience. The decision to lead with stories that ‘bleed’ further incentivizes journalists and algorithms to seek these types of events, so the practice of leading with what bleeds becomes a perverse feedback loop.
The NFT image below was generated using a combination of AI generative tools and compressions sequences to render the graphic. The textual prompt we used was the title of the piece, If it bleeds, it leads, as well as the instruction to use the Surrealism art movement as the style. The image was then minted as an NFT on Polygon and dropped on Immutable Type for the community to claim. I hope you enjoy this drop.
The alpha on this one is that it’ll be one of the NFTs we use to determine status within the community.
Details of Mint
Live now. Runs 365 days.
.00725 $MATIC each
3 per wallet limit
365 Editions
Randomly assigned edition numbers
Polygon blockchain
How to use Polygon on Immutable Type
Most people hold ETH and leave their Ethereum wallets CONNECTED to the Ethereum blockchain. Immutable Type is now on Polygon, so community members will need to switch their connection to Polygon to connect their wallets, and they will need to hold the MATIC token to pay for gas and any non-free NFTs. Let’s touch on this briefly with some necessary steps. I will create a more comprehensive FAQ and tutorial in another post.
Here is the TL;DR
Download a web3 wallet if you need one. I recommend Metamask
Navigate to Immutabletype.com as normal within your browser
Connect your wallet via “connect wallet” or “wrong network” button in Immutable Type’s header navigation.
“Switch” networks to Polygon within wallet. Wallet will provide a prompt to do so.
Bridge funds to Polygon for gas and NFT claims. Link to Polygon apps here.
You will then be on Polygon with funds available to interact with Immutable Type and any other Polygon dapps.
Why Polygon Instead of Ethereum?
I’m an ETH maxi and first launched Immutable Type on Ethereum knowing that we’d use an EVM compatible L2 as the primary chain within a short time. Ethereum is, currently, a more expensive chain to deploy contracts and facilitate transactions between parties. The majority of successful projects on Ethereum have high average transaction values with large market caps for the project as a whole, which allows for higher transaction fees as a tradeoff for greater security and network stability for high-value assets. This is a good thing.
Polygon is EVM compatible and takes advantage of the benefits of the Ethereum network while providing lower transaction and contract minting fees. Whereas a smart contract may cost $50-$250 USD (or more) to deploy on Ethereum, the same smart contract minting fee on Polygon is less than $2 USD and usually a fraction of that cost. Similarly, transactions fees for purchasing and trading NFTs is a fraction of a penny for most sales.
Why does this matter? We are building a market for journalism as a collectible, and this has never been done before (as far as we know). We are competing with advertising business models which charge advertisers fees based on the audience views of an ad. These ads are sold in baskets of millions of impressions for a few dollars, and the stories we want to tell are not going to generate millions of impressions for the most part. That is by design. We want to tell the untold stories which don’t fit the economic model of ad dollars for impressions, therefore we need to generate the greatest margin dollars for the contributors and their community to be successful. The funds from collectors need to maximize the efforts of contributors to develop and tell stories, not pay for network transaction gas fees. Polygon fits that need beautifully with its low gas fees and EVM compatibility. By optimizing for the feasibility of lower ‘priced’ stories, we increase the surface area for stories which may be told profitably.
Accessibility as a Value
Choosing Polygon for its lower operating costs, such as lower transaction fees, allows us to include the greatest breadth of representation across all economic and social segments worldwide. New technology has a tendency to leave behind those without the means to pay to adopt the new technology, therefore we ‘re building to overcome that risk from our earliest days.
I had the opportunity to learn the true value of a dollar as a consultant for the micro-loan platform, Kiva.org. Whereas $1-10 USD within North America may seem like a small amount money with little potential for impact, it is a significant sum in many parts of the world. As an example, $1-10 is enough money to purchase the base ingredients for a food purveyor to fund their operations for a day. The purveyor is able to borrow the funds in the morning, conduct their business locally, and return the principle with interest at the close of business. It’s a remarkable system with profound effects for the borrowers. Having access to efficiently borrow $1-$10 from lenders is lifechanging for many people in need of micro-loans, and we aspire to have a similar impact with this project.
In this context, keeping fees as low as possible for ALL journalists worldwide will allow stories, theoretically, to be funded at the local level and represent the local voice and interests. The value of accessibility for all communities assures we are able to distribute the opportunity widely by building technology which returns the most economic value back to the communities themselves.
About Upcoming Drops
I’ve been dropping single NFTs to date to test our little machine in the wild. Since no major catastrophes have occurred, and now that our gas fees to mint are going to be manageable, I’m going to drop a full assortment of between 12-32 ‘Headliners’ NFTs during the next drop.
I have pulled 55 stories from various sources with compelling headlines which will make great graphical NFTs. I'll be narrowing these down over the next week and will drop the full slate prior to the end of February. The edition sizes will range from one/ones all the way up to a 365 edition. Most will be free to mint.
Please Share Immutable Type
We’re super early and are focused more on building the product rather than marketing its progress. We will be forever grateful for the referral and sharing activities of our earliest community members to help get the word out during this formative period.
Please Share to people who will be jazzed about Immutable Type, new journalism, and Polygon NFTs.
Thank You!
Thank you for reading. I am excited for the next few weeks, and I’m always available to schedule time one-on-one with the community.
