Aug 27•5 min read
Smartists powered by Stacks - WHY?
Introduction
What is Smartists?
Smartists is a startup looking for solutions for artists in any art field who use the Internet professionally. After the experience with the web 2.0, we want to benefit from the decentralising power of blockchain technology to design an app that helps authors recover the control of their art works on the web, without having to compromise their rights (copyrights, privacy, etc.).
What is Stacks?
“Stacks blockchain is a layer 1 virtual blockchain built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. This enables the most durable and secure blockchain known so far, the Bitcoin blockchain, to be programmable.” Harini Ananhta Rajan.
Furthermore, Stacks is today an community-based ecosystem defining its governance under the umbrella of the Stacks Foundation.
Stacks (founded as Blockstack) is the blockchain we chose for the development of Smartists. In this article I am going to explain what were the criteria used for this choice.
Why Stacks?
I considered three main criteria since the beginning of my journey in search of a blockchain for my first idea of Smartists:
Mission alignment
Quality and reliability of the technology
Open and supportive community
Let’s explain every one of them.
Smartists and Stacks, serving users
The Smartists mission deep roots and main motivation is to serve artists-authors who want to self-manage on the web. The first idea of Smartists comes form the experience of an author-illustrator with many years working online and offline (myself). Moreover, in Smartists we have been working with several different kind of artists since day 1 so that we never loose our perspective while progressing.
This way we have been able to confirm that there are three fundamental rights which are especially dear to creators in their professional life: Intellectual Property, Privacy and Freedom of Speech.
I studied many blockchains before going for Stacks (Blockstack at that time), but none of them declared so clearly the goal of serving users, putting them in control of their identities, their data, and consequently their rights for a user-owned Internet.
Our mission and that of the Stacks Foundation align perfectly.
Stacks Technology for Self-managed artists
How can this technology help artists-authors? Thank to Stacks, Smartists will provide its users:
A digital identity under their control, thank to decentralised identifiers.
A storage of your own, linked to your personal identifier and accessible only with your own private key.
A private space for confidential collaboration and deals.
Smart contracts to make business with their art works certified as NFTs, addressing their clients, fans, etc. directly and securely with benefits for all.
Those who are curious from the technical points of view about how the Stacks technology works to make all this possible and secure, can read the articles by Harini Anantha Rajan in Medium (see the references at the bottom of this article).
An Open and Supportive Community
In the Stacks community you can find individuals from different origins, backgrounds and interests, everyone can bring its unique value to the different groups, but we all pursue that same simple mission of building a better user-owned Internet.
Always keeping that in mind, the Stacks Foundation supports projects especially focused in the development of the tools and infrastructure for engineers and developers to build that web 3 we all look for.
Moroever, since the first Blockstack, and today with the Stacks accelerator, Stacks is feeling straps with excellent products already live, like for example BlockSurvey and Sigle (which I regularly use with all their great advantages to my daily work) or Pravica which I intend to use this course for my communications.
In Smartists we received the essential support to get started, and also to develop the smart contract that will enable our users to attach copyrights licenses to their art works at the time of selling their NFTs. This support came in the form of a Stacks grant, but also and foremost in the form of the priceless advise and mentorship of relevant members of the community. Without their support our progresses would not have been possible, and it is only fair I share here my deep gratitude.
Conclusion
Choosing a blockchain for a project of dapp for the web 3 is a crucial decision. Here I leave my testimonial on the reasons that moved me to develop Smartists on Stacks.
Today, we keep up working on Smartists with our small team, which we hope to grow in order to bring to life our vision of a common space for communication and fair deals between artist and art-users with benefits for all.
Our journey is just starting. We are walking in small but firm steps, because we trust the Stacks technology, and we count on Bitcoin security.
Call to Action
If you have any project that can benefit from blockchain technology, or an idea of app for the web 3, consider Stacks as an option with the great potential of bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. In Harini Anantha Rajan’s words "Stacks is an open-source network of decentralized apps and smart contracts built on Bitcoin. Stacks unleashes Bitcoin’s full potential as a programmable base layer."
In case you want to know more about Smartists, and follow our progress, you might be interested in our newsletter.
Georgina García-Mauriño (Smartists co-founder)
References:
About Smartists:
Smartists Community landing page
Hacia el Internet del Valor - podcast - (in Spanish with English transcript)
About Stacks:
What is Stacks? - A Beginners Guide
Understanding ‘Clarity’ - The Smart Contract Programming Language
