RECAP: Avery Akkineni Presents The Value of Community in NFTs
Avery Akkineni is the president of VaynerNFT, the NFT creative and strategy venture of Gary Vaynerchuk's VaynerX. Avery leads the company's mission to build long-term strategic NFT projects for the world's leading intellectual property owners, serving brands, celebrities, athletes, and associations to incentivize and reward brand advocacy and customer loyalty.
In her presentation at the Value of Community in NFTs event, Avery discussed building long-term strategic NFT projects and working with big brands and NFTs. Following her presentation, Avery opened the floor up to audience members participating in the chat and got candid on various topics surrounding both NFTs and the community. Here are some of the highlights from that interaction:
On minting a project and creating demand: From the start, Avery acknowledged how anyone could launch an NFT on OpenSea. However, she believes that creating the demand behind the NFTs is just as much work as the NFT itself.
When later asked about how to create demand, she said that although there's no specific formula, "the best way is to understand the community." In more detail, Avery explained three ways to build a strong community and generate demand: listening, engaging, and rewarding. For engagement, she emphasized how "engaging your community actively is ultimately what creates demand," citing the massive Discord communities and quickly selling out minting events for popular projects. When discussing rewarding, Avery said that rewards don't need to be directly valuable. Whether it be a giveaway, special access, or other perks, rewarding your community can help drive demand for your next NFT project.
On gas fees: Avery shared the same sentiment as many on gas fees: they're a challenge to the NFT industry. However, she remained optimistic about the future of gas fees with the transition to Ethereum 2.0. She suggested that users could strategize and make meaningful choices around what times they mint to avoid high gas fees.
On alternative blockchains (MATIC, FLOW, SOL): Despite FLOW being a different blockchain, Avery doesn't believe there's a right or wrong answer to which chain a project should launch on. In fact, she believes that experimentation on different blockchains is "something [she] would strongly recommend, especially if you are looking for something more environmentally friendly or with lower gas fees."
Avery stated that there's a lot of great layer-2 solutions out there to try and cited her love for the Polygon (MATIC) sidechain because it allows users to use their MetaMask wallet as they would for Ethereum (ETH) projects.
She also quickly shouted out to the SOL army, saying she's a big fan of Solana (SOL). Despite it being the "very early days" of the blockchain, Avery said she's been having fun messing around with it and is looking forward to seeing how things develop.
For more from Avery Akkinei, check out Inside's YouTube channel for the entire presentation, along with her discussions during the open Q&A.
