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Teia Newsletter #14 - January 2023

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A new Year has come and we keep on building through the bear!

The Winter is here (in some places :-) ) and Teia keeps on building: This month we are celebrating Teias first birthday, awaiting a huge UI update in February and talk about infra and how to avoid copymints. Apart from that, there is a valentines event upcoming, a new round of logo submissions for the marketplace website and a call for new (or old) community curators.

Oh look who it is, our good old friend, the Table of Contents, giving us a overview over this months topics:

Table of Contents

Thanks, Table of Contents, buddy!

Teia Anniversary

It has been one year! One year of building, discussions, voting, getting legal advice, writing contracts (on digital paper and on digital chains), marketplace collaborations, fundraisers, …. one year of the community around Teia finding itself. We had such a beautifully chaotic journey, and the best thing about it is: We are still here now!

On February 9th, it will be exactly one year since Teia was officially launched. Some of you are newer to Teia, some of you will remember the turbulent months on discord after 11/11 discontinuance of hicetnunc and the community setting up their own marketplace.

The short version is that a long debate and series of votes saw long lists of names discussed and (usually amicably) fought over until the name Teia narrowly came out on top. This was a true attempt at democratic naming, trying to involve the widest range of ideas and cultural connections. It's hard to remember how exhausting it was, but the endurance of both the name and the platform show that the process, whilst maybe not easy, was effective.

Some said the name Teia was too weird or potentially confusing (but after hicetnunc, what really can you say to that?). After one year, it now seems natural - a name that implies links between people and across the divides of distance and language.

For all these reasons we are keen to hear from you as we celebrate one year of Teia’s official name. We'll host some Twitter Spaces and other events as we get close to the Anniversary. We are also doing another round of logo submissions (more on that below)

Fireside Chats on Twitter Spaces / Discord

To celebrate, we would like to hang out and talk about fun/silly/important memories of the last year and just spend some time remembering this intense year. For this we have scheduled two English Language Twitter Spaces on February 9th at 07:30 UTC and 19:30 UTC via Teia’s official Twitter @TeiaCommunity

The first Teia Yearbook article - Looking for contributions

Additionally, we would like to collectively write a little Teia Yearbook: It will be an article/collage gathering input from the Teia Community.

Call to Action: The Teia Yearbook 2022

To celebrate the past Year of Teia, we want to prepare a little “yearbook” article for our blog. And because Teia has always taken experimental, collective approaches, why not write the celebratory article together? Got some antectodes, screenshots, stories, facts around Teia’s first year of existence? Please join the fun and add whatever comes to your mind to the article draft (click here)

If you want to add files, you can use the File submission form

Later, the PR/COMMS Team will transform whatever the collective mind has come up with into a Celebratory Blog article for our 1st birthday!

Big TezTok/Teia Upgrade on the way

Just in time for Teia’s 1st Year Launch Anniversary, there are some huge updates on their way! The big TezTok Update is ready to go live mid February! Thanks to a Tezos Foundation Grant awarded to TezTok, Teia is receiving some major upgrades.

With this update, Teia will switch from hicdex as our indexer software to TezTok. This will not only improve scalability and stability of the marketplace, but also unlock more features for Teia’s user interface. Other marketplace contracts will be easy to add and the grant also covers a lot of general UI design work. Teia will have a completely revamped look!

Here is a list of what we can expect from the update:

  • Better stability overall
  • “Advanced” (price, token info) and “Zen” (minimalist) mode for feeds, collections, and artist pages.
  • Versum swap integration for HEN/OBJKT Tokens.
  • Token histories that include burn actions and trades from other marketplaces.
  • Option for both “classic” feed view and masonry
  • Better organized feed menu.
  • Overall design fixes.
  • Static links for the different feeds.
  • Token links will show preview images on social media.

As you can see, there will be much to explore and check out. If you are interested in beta testing the UI update, head over to the discord and join #ui-testing, where you will be able to find the link to test the new UI.

For the new UI, we are currently looking for updated Logo submissions. More on that below. ui_update

Toolbuilders, don’t panic!

If you are a tool-builder that uses the teia.rocks indexer for your tool, you don’t have to switch to TezTok now: Zir0h will keep the hicdex instance running for now. Additionally the original hicdex.com instance run by marchingsquare will be kept running.

Migrating to TezTok might be worth looking into anyways because once you migrated to TezTok you can extend your tools easily to all other Tezos NFT marketplaces/Token contracts where hicdex only works for hicetnunc/teia OBJKTs. If you need help, feel free to ask in the indexer channel on Discord.

Teia is once again asking for your Logos

Over the last year, Teia’s rotating logos have become a true staple of our branding and design, as well as a symbol of our community spirit. Even with a new and upgraded user interface, we want to keep our beloved rotating logos!

In the upcoming UI update, logos will be displayed bigger and at the center top of our marketplace website. In order to upscale the logos, we will need to ask the community to do a new round of logo submission. This time, we will be asking for vector logos!

The Design Team decided we want to switch our logos from the formely used png format to the vector format svg for better scalability and versaility of the logos. Additionally, the PR team would like to compile the logos into "DIY Swag Kit"s.

Use-cases for these kits may include: Printing your own T-shirts, tote bags, temporary tattoos, stickers, posters, and display. The Swag Kit will include recommendations for responsible and eco-friendly physical goods sourcing.

You can submit your logos via this new submission form (click here) in the format “.svg”

logo

Infra: Quo vadis?

We have now completed all the paperwork to become a non-profit DAO LLC. We are just awaiting for the incorporation process to be completed. Once registration is finalized, we will then activate the marketplace fees of 2.5% on all trades done via the Teia marketplace contract.

As most of you probably know, Teia has been running on donations by the community and generous sponsors for more than a year now.

We would like to thank everyone who helped keep the engines running until this point: The countless volunteers, as well as everyone who donated to the infra fund. A special shout-out goes out to Manitcor from TezTools, who has been running the indexer during the stormy, early months of this project and has not only carried the infra on his shoulders for a long time, but also played a huge role in connecting Teia with the wider Tezos ecosystem. Another special shout-out goes out to Zir0h for picking up the task of hosting and babysitting the Indexer - hopefully, with the upcoming TezTok Update, the babysitting part will be reduced to a minimum.

Over the last months, we have moved almost all infra operations from Manitcor, who can now focus on all the countless Tezos community projects he is involved in, over to Zir0h, who is also part of the core team of our upcoming LLC.

We will use the donations to Manitcor’s Teia escrow wallet to cover outstanding bills and taxes on the donated Tez and NFTs and manitcor will transfer the rest to the Teia Multisig wallet once our registration is complete.

A word from the copymint Team

Hello, this is Teia’s Content Moderation Team. We are a friendly bunch who check on potential breaches of the Teia Code of Conduct at all times of each day, monitoring minting actions on Teia and minimizing the possible risk of fraud for collectors, protecting the Intellectual property of artists on-chain and assisting artists minting new work within the Platform Rules.

Fun fact: Thus far, 5990 Tezos wallets have been restricted on Teia (as of January 30th, 2023)

We want to share a few insights and Tips with the community.

Copyminters, are constantly trying to find new ways of deceiving collectors and circumventing the content moderation systems in place. Here are a few tactics to spot copyminting accounts and verify that artist accounts are legitimate:

  • Look carefully for misspellings of well-known profile names (i.e., “zancan.”, “zamcan” “zanncan”, …)
  • Check that artists have some social presence. If Twitter, Instagram or web references are given, check that the link is valid and gives an expected result. A very recently created account can also be a secondary warning sign. Also, note that copyminters have started to set up fake social media accounts. You can often spot fake accounts by checking what they post about. If they use Twitter, for example, for only posting links to their art in the same style and with generic hashtags without real interaction, that might be a red flag.
  • The good old reverse image search can help also, but don’t get tricked into believing that if there is no match on your reverse search, it 100% is a legit piece. Some Copyminters refined the art of scraping through the older parts of the internet and finding, for example, abandoned artist websites and pulling their pieces from there. Those often don't get picked up by the common reverse search engines.
  • Those who collect NSFW works should be especially careful as unfortunately this is a genre of art that is extremely popular with copyminters currently. It helps to remember the general rules of “safe collecting”: Check out their social profiles: Does it look like an organically grown profile? Are there posts that show that there is a legit artist behind the profile? Are the linked websites real websites from real artists? Does the account’s history look legit?
  • Ask around - feel free to bring suspicious-looking artwork to our #report-copyminter channel, and we can do a few checks. Of course, we can’t guarantee 100% that we will spot every copymint immediately, but it's always good to have more eyes looking at the material.

Heads up for Artists: common issues

Things we often pull artists up on are double-mints. That's where you mint the same work twice, either on the same account or on different marketplaces or blockchains. It can be easy, after some months, to forget you have already minted a work! We also find that artists often leave a mint behind that they made a mistake with and re-minted. In both cases, your account will be flagged with an 'under-review' sign, and if you come to discord, we can sort it out (as long as you can burn one of the double-ups). We often get asked why we go against double mints; since it is all your work. This is because it defies the logic of an NFT: Think of it like an artist issuing a limited edition of signed art prints, and after they sold them all, prints and issues more - It's not limited anymore, and the promised edition size is not true anymore.

Another common issue some artists can have is (accidental) breaches of copyright. Of course, many art forms rely on third-party material to create new art pieces: Remixes, Collages, Pastiche, Tributes, and Satire, to name a few. But this doesn't mean you can use other people's work to create your art. You should know what you are doing and be ready to defend your pieces along the lines of common copyright rules, fair use, and Teia’s Rules; and be prepared to argue for your artistic reasoning behind using other people's work.

We want to share three resources that go into detail and might help you to learn more:

We work hard to keep Teia looking good and working well - please feel free to bring suspicious accounts and work to our attention. We'll need an account address, a link to the work, etc., and details about why you think it's suspicious.

Event: #TezosIsForLovers

Celebrate love and the Tezos Community with us this Valentine’s week!

TezosIsForLovers_Teia_Event_Flyer_by_CarolynM8ri3_for_Teia_dot_Art

Roses are red, Tezos is blue... Yes, the rumors are true, Tezos’ co-founders are lovers too! (The Ethereum Source code even went on their honeymoon.)

Tezos is a special place where passion and fun are just as much a part of the culture as decentralization and on-chain governance.

Celebrate love and the Tezos Community with us this Valentine’s week! Mint your art with themes of Love, Friendship, Community using the hashtag #TezosIsForLovers.

Suggested Event Guidelines

  • Mint editions: You decide
  • Price: You decide
  • Hashtag: TezosIsForLovers (Add this to the Tags when minting, and use the # for posting on social media)
  • When: Officially: Week of Valentines Day - For the ardent: The whole month of February
  • Optional: Make your piece your own, tokenized valentines card and sent it to your closest Tezos friend(s)! (but as always: no spamming please!)

Twitter Spaces Valentines Day (Keep eyes on Twitter & Discord for times.)

For More Inspiration See Also:

Non-Romantic Things Things Tezonians Love: Art, community, Liquid Proof of Stake blockchain, decentralization, on-chain governance, low gas fees, charity fundraising, the Environment / the Earth (CleanNFTs we see you!), Manchester United, The Tezos Fountain, staking, baking, baked goods, tacos, taquitos... (if you know, you know. 😋)

@TeiaArt call for curators

It's time for another open call for the Teia Community Twitter Curation Project! Our community has so much incredible talent, and we want to see it!

Please complete this form (click here) with as many details as possible and you will be contacted in the Teia discord when your turn comes!

We use tweetdeck and add your account so you can make posts through the Teia curation account. If you haven't used Twitter's tweetdeck before, we suggest trying it out! There is a great guide on Twitter's FAQ too!

As for the curation, the selection is up to you! Be sure to follow the Community Code of Conduct when posting.

In the spirit of decentralization and community, this project is designed to empower community members as guest curators through the @teia.art twitter account. This curation is not for self promotion with the exception of introductory tweets. The intention of this project is to uplift, support and amplify lesser known Teia artists particularly creators from equity seeking groups and those from regions with less representation.

Let's see some great art!

That being said: enjoy your bear, it won't last forever. MC

Bear today, gone tomorrow. ☺️🐻 CM

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