OnlyFans’ New Policy Might Pave the Road Towards Blockchain Technology Adoption for Adult Content

You might think that OnlyFans and blockchain technology have nothing in common, but that might not be the case any longer, at least from 1st October 2021. Recently, the platform has announced that as of the 1st of October 2021, “sexually explicit” content will be banned. The company said the decision was taken to comply with requests from its banking and payment providers, “We will be sharing more details in the coming days and we will actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines”.

The success of OnlyFans originates mostly because of hosting photos and clips from adult performers and sex workers that can charge a fee to users who want to access the content. A lot of creators are now fearful about the new policy, especially since many of them rely on the platform for their income.

This whole movement might be the start towards a shift in decentralization. Reddit posts have already started to appear, asking for a decentralized version of OnlyFans. However, another avenue might appear as well, the use of NFTs for sharing adult content. In the last months, NFTs have been created for museums, art galleries, sports teams, different pieces of art and luxury goods, games, auction houses, and it seems like the next big area to conquer is the adult content world.

What is an NFT?

Wait, but what exactly is an NFT? For those not familiar with NFTs, those are Non-Fungible Tokens or crypto tokens (digital assets) that are not interchangeable or replaceable on a one-to-one basis, thus they represent rare or unique items. Whereas with fungible (they share identical attributes), such as Bitcoin, you can exchange one Bitcoin with another Bitcoin, with non-fungible tokens this is not possible. NFTs are stored on different blockchains (Ethereum, Polkadot, Binance, Cardano, etc), which make them transparent and permanent, meaning that anyone can check the origin of an NFT, its previous owners if applicable, or who holds it for the moment. Additionally, being stored on a blockchain ensures authenticity (you can verify who created the NFT,) and immutability (any action on a blockchain cannot be undone, as a blockchain is an append-only ledger). Now that we clarified what is an NFT and where it can be used, let’s see how easy is to create one.

NFTs and Royalties

Probably the most exciting part about NFTs for creators are the royalties. Whereas for the moment digital creators have their profits swallowed by centralized platforms, NFTs change the game by allowing artists to keep ownership of their content when publicizing it on platforms and to get paid even for future sales through royalties. In contrast to other digital assets (where creators are paid only once, the first time the asset is sold), creators of NFTs are paid every time the ownership of the NFT changes. The process is completely automated, therefore creators can just sit back and earn royalties for their art, as their work is sold from person to person.

Step by Step Guide on How to Create an NFT

PREREQUISITES

1) The first step in creating an NFT is to decide on which blockchain you want your NFT to live on. For this example, we will use the Ethereum blockchain, but you can replicate the process very similarly on other blockchains.

2) You then need an account on an NFT Marketplace that supports NFTs created on your chosen blockchain (examples of those are Rarible, OpenSea, Mintable, etc). For this example, we will use OpenSea. Before choosing a marketplace, you should check the fees each platform applies for each sale (for example, OpenSea takes 2.5% on every transaction that takes place on the platform).

3) You then need an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 supported wallet (such as MetaMask or Coinbase). For this example, we will use MetaMask.

4) You then need to ensure you have enough Ether in your wallet.

STEPS

1) Go to https://opensea.io/

2) Press on the wallet sign to sign in with your wallet

3) Select the wallet that you plan to use, here we will use MetaMask.

4) Click on “Create”.

5) A pop-up will be displayed asking you to digitally sign into your account and to confirm that you agree with the terms of service of OpenSea.

6) Press on “Sign”.

7) Then got to “My Collections” and create a new collection.

8) Next you will complete the details of your collection:

Logo image (optional): here you can upload an optional 350 x 350 photo for your collection

Banner image (optional): will appear at the top of your collection page

Name: the name you choose for your collection

URL: the URL that will appear on OpenSea for your collection

Description: max of 1000 characters description for your collection

Category: here you can select what category best describes your NFTs

Percentage fee for royalties: here you can set the percentage of royalties you will receive for each future resell. The maximum you can set is 10 %.

Your payout wallet address: put here the public address of your wallet; here you will receive payments once your NFTs get sold

Blockchain: you can select the blockchain where you would like your items to be added by default

Payment tokens: you can select the tokens that can be used to buy and sell your items, you can even add your own customized ERC20 token

Display theme: select how your items are shown

Explicit & sensitive content: you can toggle this button for sensitive content

Collaborators: you can add more collaborators

After you have set these details for your collection, you can press “Submit Changes”.

9) Next click on “Add Item” to start creating your first NFT.

10) Start creating your NFT by completing its details.

Image, Video, Audio, or 3D Model: here you upload your NFT

Name: give your NFT a name

External link: you can set here a link to an external web page

Description: give your NFT a description

Collection: set the collection where your NFT will appear

Supply: set the number of NFTs that get minted. Attention, in case you want to mint more than one NFT of the same type you can add “?enable_supply=true” to the end of the URL at the top of the page and press enter to reload. After that, you should be able to edit the supply field. It’s important to know that if you do modify the supply to 50, for example, you would need to set up 50 individual sales listings (after you’ve created the NFT) with the quantity set to ‘1’. It’s not currently possible to list 50 for sale at once and let buyers choose how many they want to purchase, which is why adjusting the supply is not yet made easy during the creation process (source: https://opensea.io/blog/guides/the-beginners-guide-to-creating-selling-digital-art-nfts/).

Blockchain: here you can select on which blockchain you want your NFT to be created, currently Ethereum and Polygon are supported

Freeze metadata: allows you to permanently lock and store all of this item’s content in decentralized file storage, in order to do so, you must first create your item

After you finish completing all the details, press “Create”. A new window will be shown, confirming you have created your NFT.

At this point, you have created your NFT, but you are not done yet, as the NFT is not yet on the market. To put your NFT for sale, press “Sell”.

How to Sell Your NFT

1) After you press “Sell”, a new window will be shown, where you can set the strategy for selling your NFT.

You can set a fixed price, you can make an auction and get the highest bid, or you can choose to include your NFT as part of a bundle. You might also set here the cryptocurrencies that can be used to purchase your NFT besides ETH, such as DAI or USDC which are stablecoins, thus they don’t fluctuate as much as ETH.

If you have not sold on OpenSea before, you will pay a gas fee before you can list any items. This transaction creates a personal trading smart contract for your wallet and is only performed ONCE. Be wary that this might be expensive, because of congestion and high gas prices on the Ethereum network. After this, you will have to sign the listing, and you are DONE. Your NFT is live on OpenSea.

You can check my freshly minted NFT over here https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/52218853922630994334437702779734587871518765487052067717726016365546627399681. Take it as a prediction of the disruption that is just around the corner ;)

Conclusion

As you can see, creating and posting for sale your NFT is a very easy process. Therefore, a shift of creators towards NFTs and decentralization would probably not be surprising, especially in the yet unexplored field of adult content.