Gabriel (aka nebular) asked me to post this on behalf of him since he wanted to focus more on his art projects than get in too deep with the governance part of the poll. So here it is:
One thing that differentiates the marketplaces of objkt and TEIA is that the former has built their platform around the auctioneering model - whereas TEIA’s marketplace is a simpler “artist sets the price” model. They are both FA2 tokens so when the purchase is made it ends up in the buyer’s wallet just the same - but the process of getting there is very different.
The poll was to test the idea of whether or not TEIA should try to develop an auction swap contract similar to objkt, as well as a notification system that allows users to get pinged whenever something happens to their account.
Pros:
Potentially increased traffic and transactions by catering to the auction crowd.
Notifications will increase engagement on teia.art, getting people to come back to the site, regularly.
The increased engagement increases the likelihood of artists who mint on TEIA (or people who have minted using the HEN contract) being “discovered” or found in public.
Cons:
The development work of these features will require a non-trivial amount of work and auditing. (Auctioneering models require escrow contracts, which also has to be audited and tested for, also.) Complexity and the time required to maintain these services will likely increase as well.
Notifications will require centralized systems to execute and maintain, which not everyone wants. It is also a security concern since it’s often a tool that bots and scammers exploit, potentially generating a ton of spam both on the front and back.
Some people prefer the simplicity of TEIA’s swapping contract, since it tends to be more stable and less subject to market fluctuations. It also gives the power of sales and price-setting directly in the hands of the artists.
Some interesting info: Raphael Lima originally was initially against (or at least ambivalent) about the auction idea, which in a way what lead to objkt branching off and doing their own thing. The auction model is, in a way, what defined the platform to begin with. The question now is - do we want to follow in their footsteps or should TEIA stay the course on its current path?
My personal opinion is that if we have the capacity to do an auction model, we should add it (why not) but knowing that doing a notification system in a decentralized way is nearly impossible right now, we should probably avoid that side. Besides - as much as I love everyone here - I don’t want TEIA to annoy me by sending me spam 24/7.
Link to the original poll (active for about a week):
I do not support auctions (at this stage) nor notifications, but I also do not want to give the impression that I want to “keep the current system without changes”. So I voted for ‘notifications only’, the only option that had no votes so far.
I think we need more discussion about these kinds of changes. A simple vote may not capture the intentions behind the votes. Mine certainly doesn’t, so I felt compelled to explain it here.
I do believe the system needs changes, even fundamentally at the smart contract level. But these changes need to be done thoughtfully, with the support of an informed community. Auctions are not just another feature. Anyone who knows the history of HEN and objkt.bid/com will understand why.
Having said that, I am concerned about the trend of Teia paying for IPFS storage costs of HEN OBJKTs and not receiving any sale fees because they are all swapped on objkt.com. It’s not sustainable to pay for storage and receive nothing back. So we need to better understand why artists do this to begin with (mint on Teia and swap on objkt), and address it. If that means adapting to the market by implementing better marketplace features then we have’ll a solid reason to do so.
Oh, I never considered the storage cost thing - I can see why that would be problematic in the long term now.
I know for a while TEIA didn’t charge anything for minting but does the 2.5% cover storage costs, at least? I know we’re a non-profit but we need to at least set it up in a way where it breaks even. (I was under the impression that the fee was calculated in that way initially.)
Teia currently uses the HEN smart contract (HEN OBJKTs) which is free to mint. If artists swap these OBJKTs on the Teia marketplace then Teia receives 2.5% fees. However if they swap on the objkt.com marketplace then Teia receives nothing. So an artist minting on Teia and swapping on objkt.com is only adding to the Teia IPFS costs and giving nothing back to Teia. Clearly if this becomes widespread it becomes a problem in the long term.
As for collectors swapping on objkt.com, in my view this is trickier to address, as it wasn’t their choice to mint on Teia. It’s their tokens to swap wherever they want. Although we could raise awareness and ask them nicely to help Teia.
I’m a bit late to seeing there was discussion on this.
Auction systems I think are over complicated and underused generally. I don’t have numbers to back this up but I doubt Objkt gets that much out of them with the exception of gallery drops where they’re forced. I see lots of single bid at the reserve and that’s it happening there.
Offer system on the other hand I’ve felt could be extremely valuable for a long time. Collectors don’t swap on Teia. Most don’t swap at all and will just take what’s available when they need to and this is how higher value sales happen.
Even though offers are simpler than auction I also think the design space is under explored. There are subtle choices that get made in what is allowed at the contract level, how things are shown in the UI, what interactions restricted accounts are allowed to have… these all contribute to the culture surrounding them and what people feel comfortable with.
As an example consider an offer contract that takes 2.5%, but enforces a minimum increase as a percentage that closes the difference between the Teia and Objkt fees (as an auction would). We can undermine the kind of micro-optimized bot accounts that create notification spam.
On IPFS storage costs. This is an oversight in the space where operational costs are being payed for in a way that is too indirect, though also the fears and concerns around sustainability are way overblown. No one in crypto is operating at the scale where anyone should be going down because of infrastructure costs.
Cloud storage would be $250/mo(?) Backblaze (I believe Objkt uses them) is $60/mo(?)
At a certain point colocation makes sense and someone racks or rents a physical server. Transfers in and out I’m willing to bet are near zero, it doesn’t have to be fast, very cachable with most data not being accessed for months at a time. You could almost run it from home.
I’m partial to the idea of throwing things into the Irys/Arweave IPFS compatibility layer. NOT primary storage for mints (which isn’t possible anyway) but as a warm/cold backup. Keep a hot cache for the homepage and recent mints while proxying the rest to their “permanent” storage.
Can also just mint one NFT each month as a badge that says “I helped pay for the storage the month of October 2025” and there would be no trouble fundraising these amounts.
