PoA 013 — The Economy of Encouragement
I. Premise: The opposite of gatekeeping
The @solana 1/1 art scene emerged between 2021 and 2022 as a lower-threshold frontier for artists who needed speed, access, and a community willing to respond before formal validation arrived. The technical explanation is familiar. Solana was fast and cheap. True, but incomplete. Speed explains entry. It does not explain artists hanging around.
What made the scene historically specific, one of many aspects, was the culture around entry. The way you were received by a small, stubborn, overconfident community of artists who, looking back, were practicing something close to the opposite of gatekeeping. An artist could mint, post, list, fail, return, receive a reply, a retweet, a small bid, a Space invitation, a Discord message, a joke, a “gm,” a collector screenshot. A tiny public sign that the work had not vanished into the feed.
This is the economy of encouragement: a cultural mechanism through which attention, money, feedback, and proximity lowered the social cost of artistic experimentation.
@SolanaFndn had already framed the problem in July 2021 through the 5 million dollar Creator Fund launched with Audius and Metaplex. The premise was clear: the project wanted to bring creators and fans into crypto networks, with the fund focused on artists, musicians, and builders experimenting with Audius, Metaplex, and other Solana-based platforms.[1] CoinDesk also reported that the fund aimed to enlist 1,000 artists and musicians with financial and technical assistance from Solana Foundation.[2] Onboarding was a cultural task.
In practice, collectors entered early, artists bid on artists, shill threads carried unknown names into view, Twitter Spaces turned discovery into conversation, no matter how clumsy those early rooms sometimes were, and Discord made creator, buyer, builder, and moderator strangely close. That closeness required patience. Nothing was homogeneous. There were so many initiatives, platforms, rooms, drops, small experiments, half-formed promises, and community signals that I honestly felt I needed a virtual assistant just to sort through it all. God, an LLM would have been useful back then.
II. Historical Context: The silence before the explosion
Before the 1/1 scene had a coherent identity, Solana had rails: DeFi, tooling, Metaplex, early marketplaces, capital looking for movement. Metaplex gave creators direct tools for minting, storefronts, auctions, and distribution. It made publishing feel possible.[1]
Then PFPs supplied ignition. Degenerate Ape Academy is the clean example for scale. On September 11, 2021, a Degen Ape sold for 5,980 SOL, roughly 1.1 million dollars at the time, in what CoinDesk described as the largest-ever NFT sale on Solana at that point.[3] DappRadar noted in October 2021 that the top three Solana NFT marketplaces had attracted over 75,000 active wallets in one week and 34 million dollars in volume.[4] In June 2022, TechCrunch reported that Magic Eden represented almost 97% of daily Solana NFT transaction market share as of June 1, 2022.[5]
These numbers describe the weather into which 1/1 art entered. The absence of money anxiety is one of the strongest encouragements an artistic movement can receive. Nobody likes admitting this because it sounds vulgar, but it is true. When liquidity exists, experiments breathe longer. When wallets are active, attention feels less theoretical. When people are winning, or at least believe they are close to winning, they tolerate more risk, more weirdness, more unfinished energy.
III. Body: The mechanisms of the movement
Pillar 1: Microtransactions and the freedom to fail
When publishing is expensive, instinct gets pushed aside for beaten paths. You start asking whether the experiment is worth the transaction, as if every mint has to arrive already justified. On Solana, the threshold dropped. Artists could try more often, publish unstable series, test editions, return after failure, and enter public conversation without turning every mistake into financial self-harm. I personally regret that I did not experiment more. Still, I experimented enough to find a voice. Looking back, I carried fears associated with the traditional art world when I did not have to. That is exactly the kind of inherited fear Solana temporarily weakened.
Low cost encouraged repetition.
Repetition facilitated learning.
Learning produced confidence.
Confidence crystallized presence.
Presence produced a scene.
Repetition facilitated learning.
Learning produced confidence.
Confidence crystallized presence.
Presence produced a scene.
The bull market accelerated this behavioral pattern. A rising market buys time for imperfect products. It gives rough tools, awkward launches, unstable formats, and chaotic communities a longer grace period. That grace period mattered.
Pillar 2: PFPs and 1/1 art
The early PFP wave created a tribal model of belonging, as mentioned in previous logs. You bought a pet, a tamagotchi-like avatar, joined a Discord, gained a role, maybe gained status. The PFP was identitarian, financial, and social at once.
1/1 art absorbed part of that collective exuberance and redirected it toward individual artists, many of whom were already moving through those same little tribes. The social dynamic transmuted. Interest traveled from PFP clans toward what we now call the coagulated artist nucleus on Solana.
Platforms also had an identitarian and curatorial role. At times, they divided spheres of interest inside a small community. In retrospect, some of those divisions feel almost puerile. The air of continuous experiment pushed young artists from one platform scent to another, trying to understand what each had to offer, deciding where to settle, sometimes in one place, sometimes in several. Rarely everywhere. It depended on the artist’s profile. The borders existed, physically speaking, but they did not always make themselves felt.
Magic Eden concentrated liquidity and traffic.[5]
Exchange.art gave the 1/1 artist a recognizable home, later reported by CoinDesk as having onboarded 16,000 Solana-based artists and helped them earn a collective 13 million dollars in sales.[6]
Exchange.art also introduced a Royalties Protection Standard in 2022 to enforce creator royalties on secondary sales originating from its platform.[7] Formfunction, launched in February 2022 and closed in March 2023, supported one-of-one NFT creators on Solana and reported more than 4,000 creators, with 60% making at least one sale.[8]
A scene needs places where it can see itself in all its complexity. That is why monopoly harms the future. Marketplace interfaces shaped how people related to these new categories of acquisition, these digital collectibles that were also social objects. Feed, auction, profile, royalties, visibility: all of these were parameters artists and collectors had to navigate. The experience was defined by constant choice.
Perspective: Diamond Hands, collectors, and social commitment
Early collectors were rarely passive buyers. A small interaction mattered. A “gm” mattered. Public acquisition posts mattered. God knows I loved those. Replies mattered too. They made the day sail smoother. These gestures made the artist feel they had entered a shared field. In the 1/1 context, Diamond Hands described more than market conviction. It described social commitment. Collectors who stayed through volatility helped stabilize belief around practices still lacking institutional validation.
@thisistolo, one of the longest-standing and most convicted collectors, speaks about Solana’s UX and an “open, innovative mindset.”
@BigBrainGallery, through @Papa_MooMoo and others, stands as one of the earliest and most resilient art supporters through the bear market, describing the privilege of connecting artists and collectors.
I would also include @0xMQQ as an example of social commitment at the level of art patronage. Through a long-running intern chain, where each intern appoints the next like a game of tag, reaching intern number 84 to this date. Its cross-chain nature makes it even more interesting. It is a remarkable experiment in delegated patronage and conviction.
These are only a few examples. So here is another open call to arms, especially for artists: through these logs, let’s collectively raise a glass for the collectors who made an impact in your professional life, and maybe beyond it. A short account, a thread, a memory, anything traceable. Back to the log.
IV. Data Interpretation: Testimonies and historical analogy
John Lê describes blockchain as “more autonomy for independent artists.” Coming from comics and freelance work, that sentence speaks to labor, control, and distribution.
Sleepr describes Solana as a place where he found “artists, collectors, innovators, rulebreakers,” then says he felt “completely free” to express himself.[9]
Degen Poet adds the distribution angle. In the 2023 Phantom podcast, he says he started on Solana in summer 2021, produced 200 works in one month, worked mainly through Exchange.art, and was drawn to DRiP because it reached people who could not afford his work or would never have found it.[10]
Twitter and Discord gave this climate daily mechanics.
Twitter made discovery public through shill threads, quote tweets, Spaces, purchase screenshots, and raw recommendations. The algorithm of the platform later renamed X was far from perfect, but crypto had taken refuge there, so NFTs followed. SHILLzine captured the logic: small Spaces, “untapped” projects, “all it takes is a retweet,” and a direct push to give something back.[11]
Discord made community too close to stay abstract. Mints, support, whitelists, reputations, friendships, suspicions, and informal patronage formed there. It also concentrated panic: FOMO, botting, failed mints, group pressure. Discord created the conditions for private sales and direct access, though the exact scale remains hard to verify.
V. Conclusion: The legacy of the economy of encouragement
This is not a pretty story about saints online. Not by far. Solana in 2021, 2022, and beyond had scams, empty hype, FOMO, botting, outages, social pressure, exhaustion, and enough bullshit to fill stadiums. And still, people stuck around. Few, if we say it straight. But tighter.
PFPs brought money. Marketplaces made the scene legible. Twitter redistributed attention, in a debatable way, but for a while it somehow worked. Discord lowered social distance and brought a level of intimacy and safety that X never managed to provide. Collectors became formal and informal patrons. Artists entered before being fully validated. Some adapted to the market. Others had time to follow their own vision. Mutual influence existed, even when it did not appear literally in form. Often it appeared in approach, concept, marketing.
In the bear market, euphoria cooled.
Still, the incubator with a fever remained. The Solana art movement stayed alive, a kind of Impressionism of its own time. And to paraphrase my dear uncle Kei, whom I salute here: if you don’t like the game, build your own.
More recently, around the time of writing, @JTLissPhotoArt stated in @Pedromiranda s Billions podcast that 1/1 art on Solana had died, that it had to die, so it could be rebuilt in a way that makes more sense for long-term sustainability.
So fuck your salons. We got @cycol_gallery.
Bibliography
[1] Solana Foundation. “Announcing the Solana Creator Fund.” July 23, 2021. Confirms the 5 million dollar Creator Fund launched with Audius and Metaplex and frames the effort around onboarding creators and fans into crypto networks.
[2] Ligon, Cheyenne. “Solana Woos Creators With $5M Fund for Artists and Musicians.” CoinDesk, July 23, 2021. Confirms the fund’s aim to enlist 1,000 artists and musicians with financial and technical support.
[3] Reynolds, Kevin. “Degenerate Ape NFT Sells for More Than $1M on Solana.” CoinDesk, September 11, 2021. Confirms the 5,980 SOL sale, approximately 1.1 million dollars, and its record status on Solana at that time.
[4] Kane, Ian. “Solana NFT Marketplaces: A Deeper Look.” DappRadar, October 26, 2021. Confirms over 75,000 active wallets and 34 million dollars in weekly volume across the three leading Solana NFT marketplaces.
[5] Melinek, Jacquelyn. “Magic Eden Raises $130M, Hitting Unicorn Status at $1.6B Valuation.” TechCrunch, June 21, 2022. Confirms Magic Eden’s 1.6 billion dollar valuation and nearly 97% daily Solana NFT transaction market share as of June 1, 2022.
[6] Thompson, Cam. “Solana-Based NFT Marketplace Exchange.art to Expand Into Ethereum.” CoinDesk, July 25, 2023. Confirms Exchange.art had onboarded 16,000 Solana-based artists and helped them generate 13 million dollars in sales.
[7] Thompson, Cam. “Solana-Based NFT Marketplace Exchange.Art Creates Royalties Protection Standard.” CoinDesk, November 2, 2022. Confirms the Royalties Protection Standard and its purpose of enforcing creator royalties on secondary sales of NFTs minted on Exchange.Art.
[8] Avan-Nomayo, Osato. “Solana-Based NFT Website Formfunction to Shut Down on March 29.” The Block, March 17, 2023. Confirms Formfunction’s shutdown, February 2022 launch, focus on one-of-one creators, and reported creator statistics.
[9] Solana Foundation. “Solana at Art Basel Miami Beach: Introducing Artists in Residence.” November 20, 2023. Contains Sleepr’s statement about finding a community of artists, collectors, innovators, and rulebreakers on Solana and feeling completely free to express himself.
[10] Friel, Brian. “Vibhu Norby and Degen Poet: DRiP.” The Zeitgeist, Phantom, 2023. Used for Degen Poet’s comments about beginning on Solana, working through Exchange.Art, producing many works, and DRiP’s distribution logic. Exact timestamp should be added before publication.
[11] “SHILL Issue 54.” SHILLzine, April 30, 2022. Used for the “all it takes is a retweet” logic, small Spaces, untapped projects, and community reciprocity language.
[12] Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Impressionism: Art and Modernity.” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Confirms the eight independent Impressionist exhibitions organized between 1874 and 1886 and their changing membership and internal tensions.
[13] Britannica Editors. “Salon des Indépendants.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Confirms the rigid official Salon context and the 1863 Salon des Refusés for artists rejected by the official Salon.