Last week, Zora announced that anyone can now create for free on Zora, all on independently owned smart contracts. Content would be brought onchain through a clever lazy-minting model, where the first minter pays the gas to mint a token.

In exchange, the first minter receives a share of protocol rewards in perpetuity.

This is a massive unlock to onboarding more creators to Ethereum. Now, you don’t need ETH in your wallet to create – the first action you take on Ethereum could be an action that helps you earn ETH instead of spending it.

Race to mint First. Earn Protocol Rewards

Inspired by this development, the Forefront team launched a new experiment: MintFirst.

MintFirst is an experiment in protocol fee incentives. The website is a simple, live feed of new lazy mints waiting to be brought onchain. Collectors can now “race” to onboard creators to Ethereum, potentially earning rewards in the process.

In this world, we may see an entirely new class of collectors who are financially incentivized to collect and create from new artists. The curator class receives yet another business model.

V1 of MintFirst includes:

• A live feed of all new pre-mints.

• A curated feed of pre-mints by creators relevance.

• The ability to mint directly in-app.

• Sound notifications for new pre-mints.

Support creators. Earn money.

Welcome a new class of creators to Ethereum.