Tokengated Commerce

When we bet on crypto “happening”, we’re betting on two things:1. Wallets change how people behave, 2. Over time, this behaviour will win.  

When you make a bet on crypto, what is it you’re betting on?

when we look back ten years from now at 2022 and ask, “What was really obvious and in front of our faces that whole time?” I think one answer will be that collaborative gating will be the mechanic that dramatically simplifies how brands collaborate and endorse each other, and that simplification will mean that community commerce is about to get a l... See more

Tokengated commerce starts with an observation: that there’s a new kind of internet user out there in the world, called people with wallets.

What are tokengated collabs? When The Hundreds does a collab with Deadfellaz, and you can unlock limited edition merch with an NFT from either of their collections, that’s a tokengated collab. When Superplastic does a collab with Gucci that’s gated to holders of a secret SUPERGUCCI NFT, that’s a tokengated collab.

How come? Because the things we own through our wallets mean something. When we show up with our wallet, we show up as us. And when we connect our wallets, and feel that magic moment where suddenly the world changes - it sees us, and opens up - that’s a pretty awesome feeling.

Collabs are the lifeblood of creative work; ask anyone in music, streetwear, or any kind of scene. But online, how do you organize a collab merch drop that’s exclusive for a superset of people: my fans plus your fans? There’s no conventional way to do this that’s both exclusive and not janky. But tokengated commerce makes this so easy. Connect your... See more

There is going to be a generation of very successful apps built on Shopify that give storefronts new kinds of powers, and today we have four amazing tokengating apps live - PERC Engage, Manifold, Shopthru, and Lit Protocol - powering tokengated commerce for merchants now, with several more behind the scenes that we’ll get to see soon enough.

Moreover, collaborative tokengating is an inherently superior format for anything that involves remixing community signifiers and endorsements: in our gated collab example, it’s not like we want to gate to a specific set of people, we want to gate to a specific set of accomplishment-holders, which is a far more flexible and remixable format.  

OK, that makes sense, but there’s a big open question for me. When I read “tokengated commerce” or “x-gated commerce,” the first thing that comes to mind is, “Why in the world would you want to gate your commerce? If you’re selling something, why not reach the widest audience you can? Why not just one-click check out?”