With web3 content having reached critical mass, the need for curation has reached critical levels.
Buoyed by art, music, and even spam, we are seeing unprecedented amounts of content being created and transacted on blockchains. On Ethereum alone, NFTs represent over 40% of the burn rate in the past 30 days.
If 2021 was the year of expanding the creative layer of web3, 2022 will be the year of curation.
Teams building in this space will explore and challenge the ways we experience, discover, and transact web3 goods.
Before diving in and exploring the projects leading the charge in this evolving landscape, let’s take a look at the general heuristics and themes emerging in this nascent space:
- Spatial projects are pushing the boundaries of experience
- Large marketplaces are giving way to curated marketplaces
- Story and feed-based tools are improving discovery
The Web3 Curation Landscape
The graphic below can be experienced in a live, interactive format on Figma. I plan on doing my best to keep the list updated, so if you feel like there are some egregious omissions, or if you’re a builder working on something interesting in this space, please let me know.
Otherwise, please note this list is not meant to be mutually exclusive nor comprehensive. Instead, it should be used as directional guidance to grasp the heuristics defining this emerging space.
Discovery
Teams building in the “Discovery” sector of the curation space seek to enable the process of finding and learning about creators and their works. Some of these teams enable discovery through storytelling, while others are adapting web2’s social feeds to web3 profiles. DAOs also fall within this category, as they increasingly a tempt to serve as collective tastemakers who appraise and showcase the cultural value of web3 goods to the broader community.
Storytelling
Social Feed
Wallet Trackers
Tastemakers
Commerce
The commercial marketplaces has become saturated, with several incumbent marketplaces (both open and gated) who have captured the bulk of market share. That being said, we are increasingly seeing teams who are building native marketplaces that only deal in specific IP. More interestingly, we are also seeing the emergence and rise of purveyors who sell specific goods from specific creators through curated marketplaces. These purveyors are akin to local artisanal shops that sell high-quality, specialty goods.
Open Marketplaces
Gated Marketplaces
Native Marketplaces
Curated Marketplaces
Experience
Teams building in the “Experience” sector of the landscape are defining how we experience web3 goods. The notion of experiencing web3 content is expanding across a variety of different modalities, including spatial vs tactile, 2D vs 3D, and virtual vs physical. Within the virtual spatial projects, some offer pre-built templates that are generally plug-and-play, while others provide users with an open world and higher degrees of customization. In contrast to these virtual projects, several projects are focused on creating physical spaces that offer more tactile experiences. These IRL galleries typically rely on physical displays to showcase NFTs, although some are also experimenting with holographic displays and experiential installations.
Open-World Spaces
Custom Spaces
Pre-Built Spaces
Physical Spaces
- Unit (London)
- imnotArt (Chicago)
- ABV Gallery (Atlanta)
- Superchief Gallery (New York, Los Angeles)
- Bright Moments (Los Angeles, New York, Berlin)
- Crypto Portal Art (Prague)
- IHAM (Paris)
Physical Displays
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