Open Head NFT’s Pioneer Raffle Project Bets On Community To Build Trust, Transparency

NFTs have been a significant success story in 2021. Amidst the crypto art mania, hardcore fans have high hopes for NFTs, which they claim set the stage for not just digital property ownership but even for physical assets, including real estate.

Presently, though, NFT is taking over the world of digital art. The total crypto art market cap is now well over $1 trillion, with about 2.5 million artworks sold. As the table below shows, the vast majority of crypto art trading volume is from this year, and hopes remain high ahead of 2022.

When it launches on Jan. 12, Open Head NFT will become the world’s first transparent on-chain Ethereum raffle project. The Open Head team is trying to solve significant challenges in the growing world of crypto art by championing open-mindedness, transparency and empowerment. Indeed, NFTs have empowered digital artists financially and legally because now they can get a fine reward for their work without worrying that someone can just "copy and paste" their artwork. However, by building vibrant communities around NFTs, like Open Head is doing, the collective art world and the larger world of pop culture unlock more of the potentials of this technological innovation.

Pioneering an open-minded movement

NFTs have generated a lot of interest this year, hitting several milestones in the process. In August, OpenSea recorded over 800% growth compared with the previous month, after its trading volume reached $3 billion. Three months later, OpenSea surpassed $10 billion in all-time sales. While there is so much optimism in NFT communities, the larger ecosystem does not reflect as much confidence. For some experts, the very hype surrounding NFTs is why the market should be approached with a great deal of caution.

One expert, expressing concern about the future of the crypto economy, decried NFTs as “deeds of ownership enforced by computers rather than governments.” From that perspective, it is not hard to see why governments worldwide are cracking down on NFTs, using various means from high-handed regulations to outright bans.

The Open Head NFT manifesto challenges stakeholders to be more embracing of NFTs because of the technology’s revolutionary potential. Using artworks of topless craniums, Open Head NFT promotes its idea of ‘cracking open closed minds’ and enabling "powerful visions." Thus, the Open Head NFT project is the first of its kind in the world: a fully transparent Ethereum raffle hosted on-chain. Indeed, offering a 100 ETH grand prize for an NFT raffle is the kind of magnanimous gesture provided by a platform with a powerful belief in the potential of NFTs.

Open Head NFT is run by a remote team of creative designers and developers spearheaded by Quim Roca.

Building transparency into NFT transactions

By breaking into the art world, NFT’s inherit a complicated history of racketeering that extends farther than the advent of digital technology. When Everydays: the First 5000 Days by Beeple sold for $69.3 million earlier this year and became the most expensive NFT ever, it raised even more eyebrows about the possibility of using NFTs to cover fraud and money laundering. Recently, the U.S. government declared several NFTs illegal; crypto-assets worth a total of $342.5 million fell to the sanctions issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Amidst speculations surrounding the legal complexities of NFTs, projects like Open Head NFT promote renewed transparency in the crypto-assets market. Its raffles are entirely hosted on a smart contract, which cannot be tampered with by even the Open Head development team. The raffles locked wallet, holding a percentage of each mint transaction, will also be accessible only by the smart contract. In addition, a third-party company will audit the smart contract, with the audit report released to community members. Since the entire raffle system is hosted on-chain and immutable, community members can verify any transaction on the public ledger.

NFTs are meant to serve as a means to verify the ownership of digital assets on-chain. Hence, innovations such as Open Head’s advance the core principles of transparency and trust that the blockchain was founded to represent.

Advancing inclusivity and community empowerment

The fuel driving the growth of NFTs this year is community engagement. Trust in NFTs — which remain in early stages regardless of high growth — is still very volatile. Incentivizing early-stage users into becoming product evangelists enhances the value of NFTs in a world that is unsure how to categorize this new class of assets (as commodities, securities, currencies, or others?) Ongoing community engagement boosts confidence in NFT projects.

That’s why the Open Head NFT project is designed to be community-based, with a growing list of supporters engaging with the idea on Discord and Twitter. In total, there are 10,000 Open Head NFTs available to be minted. The initial raffle will occur once they are all minted, with a 100-ETH grand prize for only one winner. However, community members will always have a chance to win prizes at monthly raffles. And the value of each prize is drawn from the project earnings. More so, the promise of weekly giveaways and other special events will keep community members on their toes.

Open Head is also on a mission to empower digital artists. Once 50% of available NFTs have been minted, Open Head will collaborate with ten artists to create unique NFT pieces auctioned on OpenSea. The Open Head NFT community will be responsible for selecting the ten artists to be involved in the project.

In conclusion, blockchain experts admit that the future of NFTs lies not in digital art but in asset ownership as a whole. So, the excitement is beyond mere hype. Ironically, there has been an NFT collection inspired by the Dutch tulip bubble that attracted sales as high as 17 ETH ($55,000). However, a community-driven innovation like Open Head NFT’s, with codified smart contracts and fully transparent transactions, shows how stakeholders can build trust into NFT communities and drive the confidence and excitement even higher.

(Pius Boachie is the CEO of Digitimatic. The views expressed are the author's own. )