Teia Newsletter #10 - 23th August 2022

Gateways, Safety and Rats

The past month was a mostly smooth ride with lots of work being done under the hood of Teia: We got updates to the minting UI ready ✨, getting ready for the next step 📑 registering of Teia as a non-profit LLC 🏝 in the Marshall Islands (for the DAO), and present a new, upcoming, weird NFT event 🐀. 🕸 But before we get to the fun business…

Table of Contents

• Scam Alert!
• Update to the Code of Conduct and Terms of Service
• Teia Marketplace Updates
• Moving From Infura To NFT.storage
• Upcoming Updates
• The Quest to DAO
• Reddit Roundup
• Call for Community Curators 📣
• Upcoming Event: #TezRats 📈🐀👀

Scam Alert!

Scammers are always present, even in a bear market. For example, a new scam attempt came to the Discord moderators’ attention, where a scammer claims to be from the Teia team and offers help in order to phish for valuable user information or even wallet access.

Please always remember that if you asked a question on our discord, no one from the team will use direct messages to get in touch with you. All user questions will be answered directly in the open channels. If you need to talk about something privately (for example to report abuse or harassment) please use this report form or the e-mail address: [email protected]

NEVER GIVE OUT PRIVATE INFORMATION TO STRANGERS. The best practice is to deactivate the DM’s in Discord. If someone you don’t know reaches out to you, always be skeptical and ask around if others have got similar messages in the channel #scam-discussion on our discord.

We are also gathering examples of known scam tactics and safety guidelines on our wiki.

A Few More General Security Tips To Keep You Safe:

• The Teia Team will NEVER DM you asking you to share your screen or to share your seed-phrase
• The Teia Team will only help with troubleshooting in the public channels of discord
• If anyone DMs you saying they represent Teia, check in and report in the Teia discord
• Be cautious of links out of the server
• Be cautious about connecting your wallet to unfamiliar sites
• Be cautious of signing suspicious transactions
• Be cautious of any files sent to you (especially filetypes like .zip, .pdf, .exe)
• Check for updates in the Newsletter, on the blog, and in the Teia Discord
• Don't rush and act rashly - scammers use social engineering and pressure to trick - fear, anger, excitement, time-limits, shame, money and opportunities.
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is - check with the community
• If you suspect a spammer or a scammer in DM’s or to report harassment, please submit a report using the form
• Collect screenshots of the suspicious text
• Collect screenshots of shared servers and copy the Discord user ID number through the offending profile using Developer Mode

Update to the Code of Conduct and Terms of Service

Teia has been managing its own restriction-list for a while now, and the Content Moderation Team has agreed on a few changes and clarifications to the Rules of the Platform:

The rules have remained mostly the same, but the documents now better reflect the current practices of the Content Moderation Team and give artists and collectors a better understanding of the context of Teia’s content moderation rules.

The only real new addition is that content that is overtly sexual or gory (Not Safe For Work, NSFW) is required to be classified as such in the updated minting form. The same goes for content that is potentially triggering photosensitive seizures. (for more info read the paragraph “new Minting UI” below). Note: This doesn’t mean that NSFW material is forbidden or not wanted on Teia, but there will be new tools and moderation systems in place to help with user and legal safety.

Other than that, there have been a few more clarifications and restructuring to the Code of Conduct (COC) and Terms and Conditions documents: The code of conduct now is mainly reflecting general guidelines and best practices while the terms and conditions document now hosts all the definite rules of the Teia community spaces and platform and goes into more detail, especially about unacceptable behaviour.

The Rules have been drafted collectively by the content moderation team and based on input by various members of the community in the discord channel #core-values-philosophy as well as the COC working document and is always open to feedback from the community, as time and space progresses, changes to these documents will be unavoidable. Feel free to leave input in the COC working document.

We also got a new category of flagging accounts on teia.art: The content moderation team can now put accounts "under review", this means that a info text will be displayed on the accounts pages, asking for the account owner to come to the discord to clarify suspicious activities or raised red flags with the content moderation team. "under review" accounts not restricted and are still able to trade and sell artworks, but will be monitored closely.

We ask all community members to read these documents carefully, as by using the Teia marketplace you agree to abide by these rules:

You can find the current Code of Conduct and Terms & Conditions on our wiki.

Teia Marketplace Updates

New Minting UI: Improving Accessibility and Safety

If you’ve been minting on Teia lately, you may have noticed a few new input fields have been added to the UI on the minting page. Let’s unpack the changes.

Screenshot of teia.art/mint UI updates include NSFW and Photo Sensitive Seizure Warning tag fields.

“NSFW” (not safe for work) and “Photo Sensitive Seizure Warning” tagging check boxes have been added. This is part of our ongoing effort to improve accessibility and safety for our diverse community of artists and collectors around the world; and help further our work by bringing Teia into compliance with international best practices and legal requirements in these areas.

NSFW material is generally allowed on Teia and un-moderated for artistic expression (with the exceptions of illegal material or material that glorifies human rights violations etc.). The pieces classified this way will, for now, appear blurred in the the Teia feeds and artist pages, but they will be fully visible on individual OBJKT pages on Teia.

Please Note: a UI update where users can deactivate the blur filter on those pieces is being planned (and potentially a dedicated NSFW feed 🔥).

But for now, to “un-blur” an artist profile page, just add “?show” at the end of the artist page url like this:

** teia.art/example_artist?show **

Users are expected to use the new tagging system going forward. There will be no penalties or account restrictions for NSFW or photosensitive OBJKTs that have already been minted (as long as it does not otherwise violate the Code of Conduct and Terms & Conditions). If you are a NSFW artist and want to help tagging your old mints as NSFW, please head to the discord channel #report-copyminters and prepare a list of objkt numbers you want to tag as NSFW and the content moderation team will add it.

Photosensitive pieces will not be blurred on the feed and artist pages, but there will be other methods used to keep users safe (for example a still image or similar). Photosensitive filtering is still in development.

Do you have feedback around these changes? Your input is appreciated.

The system is not yet fine tuned and UI updates will roll out over the coming weeks. Understandably, this change might create problems for users or have implications across marketplaces. Please feel free to give your feedback and suggest changes in the Teia Metadata update working doc.

There have already been changes made based on user feedback (for example, in the first version, the info was stored in the attributes but thanks to user @frostbitten, it moved to a different place in the metadata to keep the attributes field in the metadata for actual attributes).

Remember: This is an open project and input and suggestions are always welcome.

New Minting UI: Licensing Options

In the minting page update, there is also a new “License” options drop-down menu to help you clearly define what (if any) rights are associated with a given OBJKT, more licensing options will be added soon.

If you want to read more, you can take a look at the Copyright and License Guide on our Wiki

Screenshot of teia.art/mint UI updates include new License information drop-down input field.

Moving From Infura To NFT.storage

In addition to the metadata updates, the Dev Team has been hard at work the last few weeks with under the hood improvements. Teia has switched the IPFS gateway from Infura to NFT.storage with Teia’s own proxy server. This should improve overall stability of the minting process, but might need some tweaking over the next weeks.

Also, in the history tab of an OBJKT, you can now see burn 🔥 action. Swaps from banned accounts are not collectable through the Teia UI anymore.

Other Updates:

In general, a lot of cleaning up and smaller bug-fixes have been done over the last few weeks.

• The Teia UI should now load faster and be more stable. ⚡️🌐
• The About page has been updated with proper info about the codes and contracts used for Teia as well as the license of the code-base.

Upcoming Updates

A few nice little updates are currently in the making:

• Better visibility and linking for giveaway pieces that have been put up to be claimed on PureSpider’s dono.xtz.tools/

  • With dono, you can put pieces up as giveaways with a limit of one edition per wallet, which limits hoarding.

  • Currently only the dono contract is visible as a holder on teia when a piece is offered as a giveaway on dono. With the update, users will see the option to claim a token the same way you can see listings.

    

• The infinite-loading for the main feed has been fixed.

The Quest to DAO

Teia is moving forward with incorporating as a non-profit LLC in the Republic of Marshall Islands via MIDAO.org. The research needed for incorporation is done, and we have assembled the initial core team that will register Teia via a multi-sig setup. Once Teia is registered, Teia will switch on the marketplace fees to the common 2.5% 🥳 (the fees can be changed later via a community vote, if needed/desired). Additionally, after Teia is incorporated, it will finally be time to distribute the Teia DAO tokens (that will be used ONLY for governance — not for speculation). More info can be found on our wiki article and the working doc for the LLC/DAO registration as well as the working doc for the DAO structure. Input is — as always — highly appreciated.

Thanks to Maxcapacity, Jovi, and ryangtanaka, Teia already has collected enough Tez (as loans) to cover Teia’s MIDAO registration cost ($9.5K)! 🥳 With the necessary funds raised to begin the MIDAO application, the process can get into gear! The expected timeline to registration is estimated to be about a month’s time until Teia is officially ready for non-profit business! Once Teia’s (marketplace swapping contract) fees turn on, Teia will start paying back the loans.

Teia is ready to start registration as a non-profit LLC in the Republic of Marshall Islands via MIDAO!

Reddit Roundup

The sun never sets on the Teia Community; and across the sprawling internet landscape there are many places you can find more Teia, including Reddit: Teias official reddit community can be found at r/teia

It hasn’t had too much attention overall, and our current moderator is looking to hand-off the role to another Teia Community member. If you are interested in being a subreddit moderator, please come to the Discord or contact u/Turbulent Determinism on Reddit or on Twitter (@turbulentdeterm).

Call for Community Curators 📣

TeiaArt is Teia’s Twitter account for community curation. Every week a community member gets access to the account via TweetDeck and showcases their favorite Tezos artworks, helping to show the quality and diversity of our ecosystem. 🕸✨

APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN for the next batch of 50 curators! APPLY to curate HERE 📄

Upcoming Event: #TezRats 📈🐀👀

Rats are adorable, mischievous, and they are definitely underground, and soon, they will have their first Tezos art event: #TezRats Between 1st to 7th September you can participate in this WeirdNFTArt event by minting your piece for the event using the tag #TezRats upon mint and tweeting your work with the tag #TezRats on Twitter to boost the event! 🪤

Find all artworks minted for the event feed on TezTok: https://tezrats.teztok.com/ 📈🐀👀

Sink your indefinitely growing teeth into some rAtArt! 🎨🐭

Between 1st to 7th September Mint rAt ArT using the tag #TezRats 📈🐀👀

FIN