‘JorrDaar Event’ Case Study: NFTs enabling next gen communities

Okay. Before we jump into the entire scheme of things, a couple of disclaimers. Until yesterday, I had no idea clue who is Digital Pratik. Secondly, I ended up in this event out of sheer luck. Hopefully that safeguards me from the wrath of a super loyal community created by Digital Pratik.

Moving on. For the uninitiated, Pratik is social media influencer with about 350K followers on IG, ~85K on YT and creates some kickass content on digital marketing, personal branding and self-help. Off late, he is also talking about NFTs (duh!).

So this man recently conducted India’s first IRL NFT gated event: ‘JorrDaar’. And to be honest, it was an awesome experience. How did I end up there? What did I learn? How can you join the party? That’s exactly what I plan to talk about today. Gear up!

What is JorrDaar Event?

So the name JorrDaar comes from the community pseudonym, JorrParivar. Pratik is busy building a family of web3 enthusiasts by leveraging NFTs. Something very similar to what Gary Vaynerchuk has been doing with VeeFriends but custom fit for Indian context.

This JorrDaar event was a precursor to JPCon (no prizes for guessing this abbreviation) that happens somewhere in October/November 2022.

The event was all about meeting and learning from your favourite influencers, founders from the similar niche. You could find Raj Shamani, Neha Nagar, Anshul Rustaggi, Vaibhav Sisinty and many more, as a speaker in the panel discussion and also as someone you could stop by and had a word with.

How Did I End Up in the Event?

Well, truth be told, I am no JorrParivar member. However, I invested in Lakshmi NFT by Zionverse sometime ago. Turns out that Zionverse was a diamond sponsor of the event and they conducted a lucky spin of sorts to select two people from the discord community that would win an all expense paid trip to the event.

And, I think web3 calling in my head was so strong that even the stars aligned themselves. On a fine Wednesday evening, I got a text from the Zionverse team seeking my details to book a ticket to Ahmedabad and a stay at the Club 07 hotel.

For those who are interested, here’s a beautiful photo of me, Anshul and the other winner at the event.

What About Others: The NFT Play?

Honestly, if this weren’t about NFTs, I could have very well skipped this opportunity. I am currently in a phase of my crypto journey where I understand NFTs beyond the hype and want to actively seek out for some case studies. And this was a perfect example of that.

Back in August of 2021, Digital Pratik released his NFT collection of 1,300 NFTs which contain 22 characters like Snake, Leopard etc. Pratik’s company has IP of all these characters. Think of it like the character Spiderman. Someone drew it and later had an IP attached to it. Which means no random joe can use Spiderman commercially. Same applies to Pratik’s NFT collection. Why is this important? We’ll come to that shortly.

So each of these 22 characters are split across three different categories with various unique traits. These three categories are gold, silver and bronze.

As a buyer, you get different set of perks for each of these categories. For example, you get a free entry to JPCon 2022, 2023, 2024 in all the categories. A gold NFT holder gets a free session with Pratik every month etc.

The idea here is to segregate between different types of fans. Coz let’s face it. Influence is still easy to generate as compared to an audience who would pay for your work. Details of the perks attached to these categories can be found in the image below.

Here are some quick stats pulled from OpenSea on how JorrParivar collection has been doing since launch.

I believe a total of ~600 NFTs from the collection have been sold. I am also told that some NFTs are held by Pratik himself for giveaways during the event/live streaming sessions etc.

Why NFTs?

Let us address the elephant in the room. We all feel that a lot of it sounds like web2 stuff. You could very well create a subscription based model with different slabs and people could have been onboarded accordingly.

Also, why is this NFT gated drama even a thing? You could have mailed your subscribers about the tickets and get done with.

If you are equally confused about the value addition of NFTs, here we go:

A. Privacy:

From a user’s standpoint, why should your interaction with your favourite influencer be a function of your personal data? Why should anyone (including your beloved influencer) abuse your email ID? Rather than being bombarded with spammy communication, it is better that your access and loyalty is proven by an immutable record on the Blockchain. Rather than Pratik feeding you information, you chose when to consume it.

B. Democratization of Wealth:

Social Media giants focus on filling their pockets. Because creators are essential to their cause, they are offered a cut of the revenue. However, the consumers/users have no way of monetising their attention.

Apply a similar logic to subscription based entry to JPCon. One fine day Pratik announces that Vitalik would join the event. He could instantly raise the ticket price to 5x and no one would bat an eye. Entire profit of this arrangement is bagged by Pratik.

However, now as an NFT holder, you could sell your tickets at a higher premium. Say you barely care about Vitalik, you could sell it to someone who would give up anything for this event.

Not only that. The distribution becomes way easier. Earlier you would rely on your Social Media by tweeting/posting about the ticket availability. Now you can just list it on OpenSea and the interested folks would know where to find these tickets.

NFTs simply created a way for a creator to share the value with their followers who can now monetize it with a click of a button.

C. Third Party Collaboration:

Say JorrDaar event has become a great asset for Pratik. All key brands want to join him and leverage his user base.

Web2 Version: They would sponsor the event and try to lure the physical audience. Alternatively, they may try to reach out to Pratik and ask for Email IDs of these users in return of some monetary perks. Once again, money loop has ended between Pratik and the Brand.

Web3 Version: Even without talking to Pratik, a brand could go on-chain, find out the holders of JorrParivar NFTs and airdrop their tokens to them directly to attract them to use their dApp.

Please bear in mind, all of this is happening whilst respecting your privacy. Brands still cannot spam you with their services.

Imagine conducting a hyper-targeted, low cost marketing campaign even without snooping into your customer’s data. Brands would instantly realize improved ROIs and decreased CACs.

D. Innovation:

I just mentioned that each of these NFTs are unique in some traits (not talking about gold, silver, bronze here) (Check image). Pratik has endless permutations at his disposal to drive loyalty programs based on these pre-decided traits.

This would ensure that extremely loyal fans who could decrypt certain hidden messages behind these traits are rewarded exponentially.

For example, someone told me at the event that he has purchased a JP NFT that says ‘Learn, Apply, Share’. Why? Because he believes that Pratik came up with this slogan back in 2015 when he started his Social Media journey.

If he is right, Pratik might enable additional perks for the holders of this NFT.

What I am trying to say is that possibilities are endless for innovating in absolutely newer ways to engage with the fans.

E. Managing IPs:

This collection does not transfer IP of the image to you. However, as we have seen in the case of BAYC, the entire process of transferring IPs becomes extremely easy with NFTs. Leveraging the immutability of the Blockchain, you can transfer legal rights to someone at a click of a button.

Of course this would further shape as government takes notice but even today Indian Government allows Blockchain timestamps as a digital proofs.

NFTs are a great way to cut paper work and enable that seamlessly.

For now, since Pratik has the IP for these characters, NFT holders might be rewarded with the share of profits. Imagine generating passive income from NFTs.

What Next?

I’d rather be waiting for critics to come up with some sort of alternatives to the aforementioned benefits. But hey, isn’t that how we all learn? So what are your thoughts?

Got questions? Want to take it to the next level? Reach out to me using your preferred platform from the links below

Until next time..

For our beloved “non readers”, I also do quick carousels on these topics over Instagram. Come join the fun. Hit me up here.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla.’