The single most defining feature of Web3.0 is the greater accessibility and opportunity for “people”. Decentralized, trustless technology now allows people to directly transact and interact with each other with lesser reliance on “gateways” which traditionally centralize value capture. The journey of Avium’s NFT begins in bridging Web3 to influence Web2.
Because of this, Web3.0 projects which truly focus on people at its core will succeed. Maximizing the value accrued to “people” goes hand in hand with maximizing the value accrual to the project and the brand.
In this article, Avium set out our mental models and vision as to how we see us building to be the most prominent Web3 brand, with people at its core.
The Web3 Advantage
The vision of the founding team is to enable the dreams and passion for people. With previous (award-winning) experience in the esports, entertainment and startup sector, Avium helped thousands of dreamers to chase their passions. They are now taking that experience and harnessing the industry-disrupting forces of Web3 to design Avium, a world where millions can build their dreams in.
They’re doing this by building the most prominent Web3.0 brand, built and designed around its community.
They believe that using “Web3 technology” is the most strategic way to do this, because of unfair advantage that it offers in terms of brand building. Households brands such as Marvel, Lakers and Manchester United (highest valued brands in their respective industries) took decades and even centuries to achieve their current brand valuation of USD 4–5+ billion.
On the other hand, Yuga Labs took less than a year to achieve a valuation of USD 4 billion, and raised one of the highest ever seed round in history in March 2022, led by prominent VCs such as a16z and blue-chip brands including Google, Adidas, Samsung etc.
Many argue that the valuation is purely driven by hype and craze. They think that the brand value achieved within such a short period of time is more than just hype. It’s a fundamental disruption enabled by Web3 technology, via a non-linear model of brand value accrual to the community of NFT holders.
In traditional businesses, value is primarily accrued linearly — users and consumers are targeted to be sold a product, which generates revenue for a business. This revenue is then split to pay employees, business expenses, cost of goods, management fees, and then finally, booked as profit (symbolizing a return of equity to shareholders).
There is largely a zero-sum game of value divided between the consumer, and the eventual shareholders. Businesses are therefore incentivized to keep targeting new users to “keep selling”, and for most businesses, the most important step is really to “close the deal”. There are multiple examples of businesses eventually favoring shareholder returns over user value once businesses reach a certain size.
This model is transformed in Web3, where value can accrue in a non-linear manner. For a Web3 brand, where brand ownership is actually shared amongst holders of its NFTs, everybody wins when the value of the brand increases, because NFT holders share a more direct accrual of value — whether financially through the increase of value in the NFT or the social status of the NFT.
A closer win-win relationship can be built between the brand and its users, which they would call “community”. The Web3 brand is incentivized to add value to its community, and likewise, the community is also incentivized to become the biggest advocates for the brand, creating a virtuous flywheel where overall value is shared within the community.
This is why they say the single most defining feature of Web3 is the greater accessibility and opportunity for “people”. Avium will share more about this in the future (with their upcoming articles), but their fundamental thesis is that NFTs represent a new form of direct ownership, enabled by smart contract technology which allows the automatic enforcement of any control mechanisms as may be required to incentivize positive actors.
Avium’s community
People is in their focus, and defining the community Avium wants to build around is important from Day 1. Building the community, the people they look for are those which which resonate with and advocate for Avium’s values.
Avium stands for the ability to overcome limitations set by our individual life circumstances, to pursue excellence no matter in which fields, be selfless and inspire people around us to greater heights. Avium is the conviction that they can all be “limitless”, and that the community benefits when they raise the tide collectively.
This is why they say, “For Avium. For All.”
They are building from the ground up, starting with their core community of “founders” (the Abstracts), who aspire to or have made their mark in their respective fields. The Abstracts represent the group of people most closely tied into and contributing to the Avium ecosystem — the thinkers, builders, entrepreneurs, creators, artists, and patrons.
The Abstracts are the “Layer 0” in Avium, their ambassadors who add immense value by participating, contributing and building early in Avium. They see this as an important growth strategy, which is to grow organically, starting first from a strong core of people. As the core’s sphere of influence grows, they can then look outwards towards building a wider community, first with the direct Avium community, and then later the larger Web3 community.
Building Avium — a high level overview
Avium’s brand growth is three broad phases:
The first wave will be on building Web3 influence, via the creation of their Avium NFT brand and gaining early adopters and advocates of Avium. This is really just the starting point of their web3 influence, as their NFTs represent a shared ownership of the Avium brand amongst their initial community of NFT holders.
The second wave will be to deepen brand engagement with their community including via collaboration with creators, where they build up their IP (intellectual property) foundation by continuing to build more content of the Avium ecosystem. They will continue to build on their content bank, working with creators in order to continue to expand distribution channels for the Avium brand.
In the third wave, they are aiming at developing new use cases for Avium NFTs including novel ways of interaction and brand experience, including exploring potential products that will benefit the Avium ecosystem. They will also be bridging Web3 influence to Web2, across multiple entry points where they have developed substantial expertise, such as esports, entertainment, media, and the creator economy etc..
Put together, they see the three waves of building as solving for community, distribution, and then product.
The above represents how they see themselves building Avium. The road towards becoming the most prominent brand in Web3 is a long journey. They are at Day 1 of Avium, and are excited to embark on this “Limitless” journey with their believers.
As one of the first steps, they are discovering who their early supporters are, the Avium OG/Abstracts. The discovery process will be outlined subsequently, highlighting the thinking process behind our search for Abstracts, and how they think about allocating Whitelists (The Validated) to our early community, who share the same passion and dreams with Avium.
All in all, the Avium team is looking forward to what they can do with the project, enabling passion, and building dreams.
For Avium, For All!
(This article was written by Avium, More information can be viewed in their medium article here)