And how to fix it…
What is a digital collectible?
The year is 2018 and we have entered the era of the blockchain. There’s no going back. Governments and big corporations have stifled forward progress of blockchain products and cryptocurrencies — and for good reason. These entities are working to protect consumers, but one side effect is that legitimate companies utilizing the blockchain or cryptocurrency are faced with a barrage of legalities and censorship. Blockchain and cryptocurrency is going to change our world — it’s just a matter of time. But to some the term blockchain has become a dirty word associated with scams and criminals. This is unfortunate and the pain is described in another post of mine talking about my experience with promoting a blockchain product on SnapChat.
Let’s take cryptocurrency out of the blockchain equation. What are we left with? A decentralized database, run by the people, that can’t be hacked. Sounds like a piece of Richard Stallman’s utopia. One of the things I’m excited about is using the blockchain to track ownership of digital art. Blockchain technology makes it possible for you to own cute Crypto Kitties and “F🔥cking Lit” Dollies. The difference between Crypto Kitties and Dollies are that the kitties are procedurally generated based on an algorithm while each Dolli is a digital painting created by an artist and uploaded to the blockchain. After the Dolli is made a token is created on the blockchain that represents that Dolli. These are our favorite kind of tokens! The NFT (non-fungible token). The blockchain is used to determine how many Dollies are available and who owns them. Compare it to when an artist makes prints of your favorite painting. Prints are printed and Dollies are minted. The difference is that each token is tied to the original digital asset and you can do a lot more with these tokens than a piece of physical art that’s printed on a canvas.
The barrier to entry problem.
So what’s the problem? Talk about blockchain or cryptocurrency to people outside of the tech world and their eyes glaze over. This technology is something that is going to change the world, but that’s not going to happen if nobody uses it. If you want to own a Crypto Kitty or any other digital collectibles you have to download a browser plugin, figure out how to buy cryptocurrency, create a wallet, transfer your crypto to your new wallet, and finally maybe buy a collectible. Besides crypto enthusiasts, developers, and maybe a few very determined people this is too much of a barrier of entry to be adopted by the mainstream. We need to abstract all blockchain/crypto stuff from our apps. That’s exactly what Dolli does. Take the word blockchain out every description of Dolli and an average user could still use the app. Not only can a user purchase crypto collectibles with a credit or debit card — they can do it from there phone using a mobile app.
Users need to be eased into blockchain technology. We can’t expect our users to download plugins, create wallets, transfer funds, etc. Users don’t want that and it seems that all the crypto collectible products I’ve seen expect them to do that. We have a UX problem here people! Abstract all blockchain functionality and let people pay with a credit card using their phone. That’s exactly what they are used to. We need to build bridges for people to access the blockchain and that’s what Dolli does.
We plan to be code complete with Dolli by October 31 🎃. We already have more than 350 users signed up and are gaining a loyal Instagram following.
If you want to claim your username head over to www.dolli.io if you’re feeling generous and want to donate to our KickStarter campaign go here and if you want some dope shirts head to the shop.
💀🔥