OURZ is a network of tools for creators, builders, and collaborators of all kind - to tokenize their work and receive perpetual split royalties. It’s built on top of the open source work from Zora, Mirror, and Gnosis.
— That’s the elevator pitch for it, at least. But at its core, OURZ is about taking back what’s ours.
Instead of sale fees going towards marketplaces, royalty fees go to the creators. All of them. On every sale. Forever. There’s no limit to how many Ethereum addresses can be apart of a split. The splits can include a charity, a donation address for a vital software library in your project, a mere credit for inspiration, or anything else you can think of.
Before COVID, I worked various gigs as a freelancer in photo & video production. I started this year out having never opened a code editor in my life. At some point early in the year, a photographer I work with regularly finally was getting back into the swing of shooting. We began discussing NFT’s, people we knew who had success in minting them before, and if we should give it a shot. At the end, we decided ‘not yet.’
We were waiting for a platform with three things:
1) Open access
- We couldn’t find any invites.
2) Respected artists & the display of their work
- This let us put the NFT on our own site / gallery, away from the twerking frogs
- There would be low marketplace fees
3) Split royalties
- If there’s one thing a creative freelancer hates, it’s waiting for payment.
- Let us include our team in the royalty, so no single person is responsible for handling it.
In March, I attended NFTHack – still with hardly any programming experience – and the idea of OURZ was born. I was going to find a team and build a NFT marketplace that satisfied the three points above! Woo!
I got some wonderful exposure to the open source community and was introduced to the Zora Protocol, but quickly realized that I simply did not have the coding skills needed to bring my idea marketplace fruition. Much to the dismay of my significant other, I’ve devoted most of my free time to learning and building since then. But the project is beginning to see the light of day (on Rinkeby):
- After multiple concept iterations, the design and structure of the contracts are nearly settled
(@Community: want splits to interact with your project/dApp/etc? Reach out!)
- The subgraph provides open API with detailed information about the split and its recipients
(@Community: think something else should be included in the subgraph? Reach out!)
- The front-end is in the middle of being updated to accommodate the latest iteration of the contracts (just me at the moment, updates coming ASAP!)
Much like Zora, OURZ is about Collective Creation. Community involvement is welcomed and encouraged. The Rinkeby Beta is intended to allow time for sufficient eyes on the project’s contracts and creating a standard for split metadata. Reach out here:
twitter.com/ourznetwork
https://github.com/ourz-network
discord.gg/GmmaBszDTK
There’s much more to talk about, but the website is in dire need of attention! More updates to come soon!