What if social interactions online – like bidding on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or hosting an online auction – could earn you money? How do you make expressing yourself on the internet valuable?
Those are the questions RARA.social is trying to answer.
RARA’s so-called “like-to-earn” model aims to reward active community members and participants with RARA’s native tokens in exchange for contributing to the platform, either through bidding on or curating NFT auctions. It comes as “play-to-earn” titles like Axie Infinity surge in popularity and decentralized projects experiment with ways to get people coming back for more.
For RARA’s founder, Lawson Baker, NFT auctions are a key venue for building online crypto communities.
“If you watch a hot NFT auction, you’ll see crypto influencers bidding early solely for the purpose of being seen bidding,” Baker told CoinDesk.
RARA is looking to add a decentralized curation element to the NFT space that has so far been missing from marketplace giants like OpenSea, Rarible and SuperRare.
“RA! tokens will be the initial tokens earned for being a high quality curator,” Baker told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “Do it well and you’ll earn more RA tokens to have more influence tomorrow.”
The idea is then to spin up a landing page that takes the pulse of what’s trending in the NFT market – without relying on a blue checkmark of centralized approval.
RARA’s landing page will feature an infinite scroll of current and past auctions, sorted by the number of RA!’s that were given out by fans. Baker compared the resulting product to a Rotten Tomatoes – a movie review platform that aggregates critic and audience reviews – for NFTs.
Over 40 online communities involving about 40,000 members currently have access to RARA’s auction platform, including DAOrecords, MAiworld, TokenSmart and Skybravo.
Baker told CoinDesk that RARA expects to launch a protocol later this year.
