I would love any hot takes, hard feedback and strong opinions on Zora. I will make and airdrop an edition to anyone who shares their thoughts in a reply to this cast ☼ Give it to me straight :~)
Bigger pipeline of projects on the "create" page Most of the sales have ended and it feels a bit stale / not a place of dynamism
Main feedback is it requires too much mental overhead. If you start digging in it's cool design/manifesto/etc, but otherwise it comes across distant, cold, complex. Contrast that with Uniswap's homepage, which is super easy and intuitive. Today IMO uniswap:erc20::opensea:nfts . What's zora? Unclear to me.
it’s hard for me to understand what the mission or long-term vision is for Zora. I love the products zora makes, but it feels like they’re all somewhat unrelated to one another
Zora should issue grants for creators to build using Zora tools. I think Zora could do more to deliver agency to idealists who want a tangible way to make their concepts real. But this isn’t new feedback from me tbh I think you’re getting there, just make it more aggressive.
It does a lot of things well, LOVE the vision and philosophy, but I don’t know how to think about the ONE thing it solves best in class. Lots of different philosophies on this but I think nailing that one thing is helpful in breaking through to a larger audience
My biggest one is simply difficulty to contact switch from create. to build. etc and how it opens new tabs. I’m not extremely heavy user and have many good things to say.
I love the create tools but don't have much of a reason or incentive to use to marketplace.
Similarly to a few of the other comments, I know that Zora does many things but can’t say I know what differentiates Zora from other platforms that provide creator tools. Is Zora mainly an NFT marketplace protocol or is that selling it too short? Btw I really like your logo and Zora Zine.
Always the weakest of the three areas, with Goron and Kokori far superior.
complex to use for folks outside the usual crypto suspects
big fan of zora! would love if zora could support 1155s as well
So far I have used this as an example for creators where they will find a community to launch a new project.
Barrier to entry for ZDK feels higher than it needs to right now. If I want to make something with NFT data. Docs should get me as close to having something one click deploy / get started as possible like vercel templates.
Huge fan of the aesthetic and brand by osmosis but somehow not converted me to use it. Yet.* A clear USP/message needed to cut through the noise, be that creator tools, marketplace or otherwise. *Will in all likelihood be road testing a mint tomorrow.
my first ever platform I listed on back in Feb 21….. what happened to Zora man?
Echoing what has been said. I love the hyperstructure and ideas behind Zora, but it feels like it is trying to do too many things at once. What’s it’s main focus, if you only had to pick one thing?
Huge fan of the brand, culture, and ethos. But you need to unbundle into distinct services and find PMF for each. Being “everything” is not a strategy — even Amazon was “a book seller” while they built the infra to “be the everything store”
1. Zora is almost a bit too cool ( also maybe it's biggest strength) which makes it slightly unapproachable. 2. If it wants to be the destination for creators it needs more than tools - how can it also support the other parts of the creative grind?
Huge fan of the brand + ethos. At times can be a bit confusing what exactly Zora *is* at its core -- being all things to all people.
What’s the thing you want me as a user to do on a regular basis? (For Farcaster it’s open this app and find the feed interesting.)
On the market page, I've always wondered about the purpose of the nav bar. The nav items take me off the page instead of allowing me to interact more with the marketplace and make my search easier. If I click on the logo, should take me back to zora.co and the rest help my discovery.
1. Develop a stronger digital presence outside of Twitter. It can be a bit vague what Zora does if you aren’t tuned in to CT 24/7. 2. Make the brand language more accessible to a general audience. Love the manifesto + zine, however it can be a bit overwhelming if you were exposed to this stuff beforehand.
zora is magical but also somewhat inaccessible, would love a zora for dummies (me, i am the dummy)
I've seen lot of blatantly counterfeit mints on zora. this seems like the hardest problem to solve for. I don't have anything to offer currently but it is something I'm thinking about over the long term.
zora is cool but homepage doesn't look cool and for someone new could be confusing. i imagine this as a dynamic feed with all news, tools, interviews etc. mixed together like 032c.com or thisispaper.com p.s. more sophisticated no-code tools and integrations for creatives pls
saw one comment that mentioned zora issuing grants and i somewhat agree. i feel like zora is super cool has different products for doing so many things, but it generally lacks incentive. people should be made to want to use zora
It would be amazing if the Zora API felt more integrated into the ZDK /Creator tools
@jacob, I love the design and fluidity of Zora, and as a dev who is very familiar with this ecosystem, I really can't say I have any complaints. However, people just starting out building in the space will probably find they have lots of questions that aren't being answered on the landing page...this is a problem.
Zoras branding is too cool for me. I feel like I have to expend non trivial mental energy to understand what some of your products do or the nuance of why they are novel
I do like the tools zora has, it just seems to live in the shadow of manifold. I’d love to see zora push some tools before manifold to break this shadow. Something like; A raffle -> mint in a simple action like editions. A borrow/loan nft function. An unique online curated gallery to explore new mints.
Zora is culture, I love almost everything you do. but it's spread over many islands (zine, marketplace, create,...) that seem to exist side by side without connection
More incentives to build on the protocol. There’s more options for onchain nft protocols now but it was a no brainer to build on Zora last year when everyone else was centralized
Feel like I should be is Zora power user, but I have a hard time articulating exactly what it is or how it’s different
Should be easier for newer creators to navigate.
I launched a collection on Zora in ~5 mins. would be cool to know what are avg. expected gas fees for certain collection sizes vs. it being a surprise (not necessarily a Zora specific take).
It’s actually incredibly difficult to create and mint just 1 NFT. Like, let me upload a JPG, click mint, and have that thang in my wallet in under 2 minutes. But no, I gotta make a collection and do all this other stuff.
I honestly don’t have a “hot take,” as much as I have an insight. I’m speaking at ZORATOPIA next week and I wish you all would help more with production! The team needs more support for IRL activations.
As a collector, as opposed to a creator, where is my home on Zora? How do I find the interesting things?
I saw a comment that was suggesting this, but can’t seem to find it again. Anyways, I do think a more simplified opinionated create experience would be interesting to experiment with. Less fields to import, less clicks in general to put an idea, thought, photograph, whatever… onchain.
same ppl telling u that zora is too confusing or doesnt have a central focus, are the same ppl that would tell u that ‘zora is too one dimensional’ if u emphasized a central mission or single product. so… keep doing what ure doing 🤝
Needs more marketing of its purpose and capabilities. I suspect even many hardcore people in the space do not know much about it.
It’s not clear to me why or how I should be using Zora. I love the art though.
I’m unclear on how the web frontends (creator toolkit etc) handle ongoing storage costs. It feels too magic…I think I’m depending on you keep paying some service (piñata?) over time?
I don’t think it is approachable for casual users, even known in fact. The average creator would still go to OpenSea to monitize their work I think.
First time I’ve looked at Zora. Wish there was more explainer on the homepage
one of the success stories of crypto's vibes capitalism era, people i know who have been to zoratopia like it a lot better than fwb events if you're not a crypto scenester it's the nft protocol with the funny engineering twitter account if you don't 'get' the culture it can come off as self-important crypto excess
i think zora fumbled the bag by not being an nft aggregator platform (like eg blur) if zora was all about open platforms, why not integrate other nft marketplaces? why can't i buy opensea nft on zora? also the ui could be better imo. i do like the simplicity and neutrality of the ui although
As others mentioned, it is not clear to me what actually ZORA is supposed to be (well based on the website at first sight). In the manifesto, having a few sentences clearly explaining what it is, why is it useful and what am I supposed to do with it (as a user) would be cool.
The lack of ERC-1155 support is a huge bummer — harder to take Zora seriously at times when it comes to NFTs because y’all have ruled out an entire standard that is more modern and feature rich.
It’s not really clear to me what zora is or why I should use it over something else. The branding is great but the mobile homepage is really missing what & why
V3 protocol feels over engineered with with module approval for what feels like should be core functionality.
I love Zora’s identity as is, but it would be great to see more diversity in terms of aesthetics and more global south communities represented in it
marketplace is tough to navigate, needs more filters/sort options + would love to see a home for Zoratopia on the main zora site + update Zoratopia website for Miami activations this week
Zora could do more education. Onchain onboarding flows could introduce concepts like signing while providing airdrop incentives (nft badges, poaps, gated content) and exposing more of the Zora ecosystem to new users The Create flow needs to be more descriptive to illustrate the “why” for choosing edition / drop /
Zora tries to be too many things at the same time (marketplace, protocol, dao builder, media company? etc.). Not a bad thing per se, but can be very confusing for an “average” user. Also the marketplace misses some essential features (eg browse categories such as art, photography, music…).
Suppose it has been said in some way already. Define a recurring, daily use case for a niche audience. This is probably important and difficult for any startup.
I’m going to mint a collection today and will come back with fresh thoughts!
I've always felt a tension between the values you + Zora profess (open protocols, hyperstructures, etc.) and Zora being VC backed Mb I don't fully get your rev strategy but rn it feels like the most likely outcome is Zora builds a ton of great pub infra but fails to capture enough upside to justify a $600m valuation
I love the branding. Feels what Cargo is to Squarespace. Do struggle with the segregation between marketplace and collections — feels like two different worlds. Would be nice to be able to mint one NFT (either 721 or 1155) in a few clicks. And if 1155, to go back and mint another edition of it any time just as easy
I’ll echo that, with Zora, visiting the site doesn’t immediately tell me what the main focus is. NFTs, different platforms, SDKs, etc. all together. Branding is 🔥 tho
I really like how the platform is branded and the message you're sending, but it's not clear to me why some NFT projects are listed and others aren't. Is the goal to aggregate every NFT on Zora? If so, maybe highlight this for users as a potential benefit down the road?
ZDK feedback: - Took me over 2 months to get an API key via twitter DMs - The search api doesn't handle spaces in collections, can't find "Chain Runners", "Clone X", "Mutant Ape Yacht Club" or "1337 skulls" - Search rankings are off, Azuki is the 2nd result for query "Azuki" - CryptoPunks metadata is missing
I did use ThirdWeb and I thought it was pretty simple, No Code tool. I also used Manifold, pretty straightforward. Zora, is a little bit confusing for me. The pages are confusing the collections are confusing. And most important, I do not have reference of other developers using, as manifold, for example.
I used Nouns Builder. But since it received 100eth from Nouns, I would expect it to be open source. Also it feels like the goal is to make sure that every DAO built on Nouns builder is in fact a marketing tool for Zora. I don't know why there is a link to "Nouns Builder Documentation" on the page generated for the DAO
Shouldn't the bottom of the Nouns Builder generated page have the Nouns logo as a sponsor? It doesn't feel like Zora gives enough credit to Nouns. (Despite the fact that it used the name "Nouns"Builder)
I dislike that as a creator, the main URL, Zora.co is the tool I least want to use. There are lots of NFT marketplaces I could be using & in my experience sales are slowest on Zora. But Nouns Build and the Crestor tools are amazing and exactly what I want when I go to zora.co.
