Art has always been at the heart of NFTs. Remember when "right-click and save" was the meme? The question then was, why pay for something you can just save? But now, with minting costs nearly zero, the real question is, why collect?

As Gen-Z probably will shift from current social media apps to onchain apps, do we need to swap the like button for a mint one? I’m not entirely convinced, but these next three apps are. They’re not just changing buttons - they’re defining a new way of social behaviour.

Let’s dive into how they approach onchain pictures and what makes each unique.

Moschicam

Moshicam is pure fun, bringing that nostalgic Polaroid vibe onchain. Whether you snap a new photo or upload an existing one, the fun begins with customizing your onchain memory. Onboarding is super easy with Coinbase Smart Wallet - sign up with a passkey and mint for free as they cover gas fees.

What makes Moshicam stand out are the borders. These frames let you add your personal touch or celebrate your favorite web3 communities. They’ve even added stickers recently, so your borders can pop even more higher ↑.

Rewards

When someone collects a photo you created, you earn a portion of the fee in ETH as a creator royalty. If someone uses or collects a photo with a custom border that you created, you also earn a royalty:

- 60% goes to the photo creator

- 20% goes to the border creator

- 20% goes to Moshicam

With the introduction of stickers, Moshicam will distribute part of their 20% cut to sticker creators. It’s rewarding to mint because you earn with every collect, and if there’s something Moshicam users love to do, it’s collecting. With almost 100k mints, only 36% of users are creating these mochis; the rest are part of the lore.

There are significantly more collects than mints, which got me thinking - maybe onchain friendships have a different vibe. Perhaps they enjoy having an onchain memory of their vacations, their dog, or even IRL meetups. Not gonna lie, it’s really fun to get into Moshicam profiles.

Rodeo

Created by the team behind Foundation, this app is all about celebrating every moment, without overthinking. Normally, minting onchain makes us consider too many factors - pricing, collections, market. Rodeo flips that. It’s not about posting your best work; it’s about sharing what you’re up to now.

Digital ownership often gets tangled up with profit. By limiting options, they want to help users understand the essence of minting a picture and the true benefits of onchain content. You own something, you share it, you earn.

Time-based posts

What sets Rodeo apart is its approach to scarcity. We all love scarcity, right? Normally, it’s about the artist or the edition size, but Rodeo introduces a new kind: time-based scarcity. Every post is only available for 24 hours. It’s a daily app, and if you want to be an early collector, you’ve got to be there. It's a way to showcase that you were there.

If you miss that time window, it’s like BeReal - you’re too late and will have to wait for the next chance. There's no secondary market yet. Rodeo isn’t about flipping content but staying in the moment. While other markets might eventually allow users to sell those rare pictures, for now, the focus is on making web3 fun without the option to flip media.

Rewards

Where does that revenue come from? In addition to earning from users minting the content you create, Rodeo allows you to earn rewards by influencing others to mint posts you own.

The total minting fee is .0001 ETH:

• 50% goes to the creator of the post (0.00005 ETH)

• 25% to the collector who influenced (0.000025 ETH)

• 25% to Rodeo (0.000025 ETH)

It might be a small reward, but at the current scale of social media, it's a significant shift in how monetization is distributed. Most content today is remixed, with reactions to others' work not being rewarded. This new social behavior will ensure that any interaction with onchain media is rewarded, marking a big change in the way content creation and engagement are valued.

Zora

Zora has been the place for artists to mint their creativity onchain. They always worked towards bringing the best experience for web3 communities, integrating culture tokens, tipping within comments, building frames, boosts, etc. Now, they focused on something new, a social app that doesn’t require users to have prior crypto knowledge. An app that combines current social media experience with onchain creativity.

Instead of a typical social app that takes ownership of your content, Zora distributes the value back to its creators and curators. Not relying on ads but on their protocol ensuring value created is compensated.

Onboarding

A few months back, minting content onchain was a headache: open an app, click mint, switch to your wallet, sign the transaction, go back to the app, wait for confirmation, and finally see your content minted. Zora changed all that. They’ve nailed both the tech and design, so you barely notice you’re onchain.

Sign up with your email, and the rest is a unique experience:

tomu on Warpcast

created a brand new account: - didn't need to connect any wallet or add funds - didn't need to pay fees to post a picture - i could get sparks with apple pay and use them in the app to collect media make onchain apps without users knowing they're onchain

Farcaster

Once you’re in the app, it feels like Instagram - see what your friends like, comment, and with a double tap you like the picture. Swap out "like" for "mint," and you’ve got Zora. It’s everything you do on Instagram, but onchain.

The onchain aspect changes everything, allowing you to earn from the content you post, mint or share. This shifts the dynamics of social media interactions by adding an economic layer that returns value to anyone who creates and distributes content.

Liquidity and sparks

They’ve recently rolled out two big updates: secondary markets and sparks.

Not to get too deep, but these tweaks solved some key issues - bringing liquidity to NFTs and making pricing easier for normies.

They have a time-window functionality, where after content reaches 200 mints, there’s a 24-hour countdown before the secondary market opens. Once the market opens, the NFT converts into tokens that are tradeable on Uniswap. By minting more than one unit, you contribute to liquidity and can potentially benefit later by selling one of your mints. This is especially useful if you missed the initial opportunity to mint it when it was posted in the app.

On the other side, Sparks, are their way of simplifying pricing, making it more intuitive than seeing 0.0001 ETH. Easy to get them with your Apple Pay and spend it minting content on the app. It’s an experiment, like casino chips, that’s catching on fast - Moshicam and Coop Records are already using it too.

Rewards

Zora implemented protocol rewards a while ago, having already more than 7.8M referrals within their protocol, allowing users to transition from scrolling on social media to curating and becoming part of the value generated.

When this behavior becomes the norm on onchain social platforms, more creators will make the switch.

With more than 1.1M users and $2.3M in referral rewards, Zora is taking a refreshing web2 approach to web3 tech, making the experience fun, accessible, and simple. The app has a clean, aesthetic design with no gas fees, allowing users to mint content as easily as they like posts on current social media. It's still in its beta version, but it already feels like a premium product.

Conclusion

We've shifted our perception of NFTs from being scarce assets created by specific artists to something we mint just for the fun of it.

Our social media interactions are starting to hold real value, and now, that value is shared among us. But it’s not just about rewards; it’s about those "I was there" moments I can share anytime, across platforms, because it’s something I truly own and is no longer locked to one app. And it's fun:

• Moshicam: custom polaroid moments

• Rodeo: time-based scarcity

• Zora: double tap mint

What I like about these apps is that they are exploring a new kind of social behavior - seeing content not just as something we share with our friends, but as an asset we own and can earn from. Unlike web2 platforms that rely on ads, these projects are opting for protocols that empower social networks and ensure value created is compensated.

We’ll probably look back and laugh at the idea of putting all these pictures onchain, but for the larger vision, this is a big step. Why would I want to mint what my friends are doing? I think the answer for now is: it's fun. Will this help change social media? Absolutely. If we’re not the ones experimenting with new ways of social media interactions and monetization, who will?

To more onchain experiences!