Announcement: Burn Your Truth NFTs for Future Equity Rights in Truth Arts Inc.

Operation Resurrection is a two phase initiative by Truth Arts Inc. to give Truth NFT holders the opportunity to burn their NFTs for either future equity rights in the company, or ownership in the Truth Arts IP. Phase I, the initiative to burn for future equity rights launches today with an offering on Republic. 

• If you’re here to learn how to burn your NFTs in Operation Resurrection, please find our FAQs here. 
• If you’re here to learn about the Truth Arts merger, please find our blog post here. 

Before we jump into the nuts and bolts of how Operation Resurrection works, it’s essential to explain how and why Truth Arts got here, and why this is more than a one-off campaign. Operation Resurrection is the first manifestation of our approach to Web3/NFTs going forward in the Truth ecosystem. 

As we mapped out the new company’s priorities, we wanted to make sure we were bringing our community along with us. From that insight, Operation Resurrection was born as the way for community members to become real owners, either in the company or in our IP (or both!)

For Truth, we believe two things are poised to benefit if we knock it out of the park: 

1. The first is Truth Arts Inc., the company. If our work does well, Truth Arts Inc. the company will reap benefits (revenue, company valuation, etc.)
2. The second is the IP: the characters, stories, and technology we are developing. We are solely focused on creating characters, stories, and IP that people care about and if we do this right, the IP will succeed. 

With all this in mind, we distilled it into one operating question: How can we make sure our community wins when we win? 

Enter Operation Resurrection.

Operation Resurrection has been months in the making. After many heated discussions and debates, we believe doing this is the most viable way to align creators and collectors into a win-win solution so that all boats lift with the rising tide. We are excited to take you on this ride with us.

When Operation Resurrection is completed, Truth Labs NFT holders will have three paths forward: 

1. Path 1: Burn for future equity in Truth Arts Inc. This enables you to be aligned with the Truth team and investors. You can do this now in Operation Resurrection Phase I here. 
2. Path 2: Burn for character/IP ownership. We’re working on developing a way to burn NFTs for ownership of character IP. The timing, specifics, and mechanics are still in progress.
3. Path 3: Keep the NFT. With Operation Resurrection, supply will decrease as we go from Phase I to II to beyond. While we have no control over the demand and speculative nature of NFTs, we are actively working to reduce supply.

What are the Phases of Operation Resurrection? 

The two phases of Operation Resurrection give our existing holders the opportunity to turn their NFTs into either 1) future equity rights in the Truth Arts Inc. company, or 2) ownership in Truth Arts IP. 

Phase I: Burn NFTs for Future Equity Rights 

Today we are launching the ability to burn many of your Truth ecosystem NFTs (except The 187, Illuminaries, Goblinaries, Puzzlers, Harbinger, Mentors, aksessorees and non-generative 1:1s) for future equity in Truth Arts Inc., the Delaware C-Corp. 

The window to burn will be open for 30 days. To explore the burn process, you can go to TruthArts.com today and connect your wallet to see the value of your NFTs and what amount of equity rights you could exchange them for. Before doing so, we recommend you read the FAQ to get all the details about the burn experience. You can find it here.

Phase II: Burn NFTs for Ownership of IP/Characters

The main idea behind both phases is to align interests between the community and the team. As we develop IP and characters, we want to make sure that the upside is shared with the community. 

In doing so, we also consolidate the Truth holdership into a small number of aligned holders who are also owners. 

Phase II is still very much in development in terms of timing, specifics, and mechanics. We will keep you updated in the future. 

But how did Operation Resurrection come to be? There are four things essential truths that underpin our overall thesis about the space: 

#1 Web3 Motivation: Making Money 

There isn’t exact data on this, but I’d be willing to bet that 95% of people in the Web3/NFT space are here with the single focus of making money. There is a small group that are genuinely here for the community, storytelling, and art. But I'd be willing to wager that even the people that fall into that bucket still have a desire to see the NFT appreciate in value.

This “truth” is not necessarily a bad thing. Financial freedom is important and should be something people strive for. The takeaway here is not to be naive and to understand what is likely the driving motivation of the people you’re interacting with in the Web3 space. 

#2: The Challenges of Supply / Demand 

With some 21 million+ NFTs in existence (supply) and less than 400,000 active ETH wallets (demand), one could say there is an obvious mismatch. There are simply too many NFTs, per collection, in circulation and not enough demand. This could be because CrypoPunks set a precedent with 10,000 NFTs and every collection to follow went with the same amount, without thinking about how much demand there might actually be. 

When it comes to what you can control in the two-part equation of supply and demand, you can only affect demand so much. There is the overall demand for NFTs in general, especially when NFTs are in a prolonged bear market (although we are slowly coming out of it). Then there is project-specific demand, which you can affect to some extent by trying to do everything just right, but there is no guarantee that it will work. There is no sure-fire formula and if there was, everyone would do it. 

Supply, on the other hand, you can control. Teams need to be thoughtful around the size of their collections and have a good reason as to why they chose the quantity they did. Most teams, if they could do it over, would likely have a MUCH smaller supply of NFTs. 

#3 Collector / Creator - Rising Tide Should Lift Both Boats

When someone says that people are in the same lifeboat, it means that whatever happens to one, happens to the other. So, if one wins, the other wins. If one loses, the other loses. Right now, for almost all NFT projects, the creators and collectors are in different lifeboats. The creators can win and the collectors can lose. This is not good for long-term viability of the industry.

Creators aim to “mint out” when they launch a collection and have as much volume as possible, to earn the most royalties possible. This is no secret–the revenue that comes from these projects fuels their growth. 

Collectors, on the other hand, want to get into a project as early as possible and ride it to max profit potential. 

Unless the price keeps going up and up, the collectors that remain are not going to be happy. You usually end up with a generally frustrated community. They are upset at the creators for not doing a better job of making the price go up. They are mad at themselves for not selling when they could have made the most profit. When 95% of collectors are here exclusively for the money, they get vocal when things aren't working (aka price is down) and aim their ire at the creators. 

As the industry currently stands, creators and collectors can get trapped into a cycle that leaves both parties at odds with one another. This is not a long-term solution if this space is looking to last. 

#4 Going Mainstream - Without Abandoning the Early Adopters

Right now, if you’re a NFT project going after a mainstream audience, you’re not bringing your original community with you. If the NFT project wins on a mainstream stage, be it movies, merchandise, or licensing, it doesn’t actually pass through any of this value to the NFT holders because the NFTs themselves are not tied to any revenue or profit. It is completely based on speculation that the NFT itself will be worth something. Projects can and should attempt to build mainstream franchises and brands, but creators need to rethink how they can take along their community and not leave them behind. 

Final Thought

These are the four truths we believe about NFTs and IP. These beliefs have led us at Truth Arts to figure out WHERE the value of our efforts is going and to make sure our community can participate in all of it through Operation Resurrection. We are excited to finally release it publicly, reset the table of what people think of when they think of Truth, and go all in on building the biggest franchise possible.