Six months ago, I wrote an open letter reflecting on the collapse of Vitruveo and the silence that followed.
If you haven't read it, or want to remind yourself of where these thoughts began, it's worth a look before continuing here. This letter builds on that one rather than repeating it.
As before: I am not bringing solutions, I am not taking sides, and I am not addressing the fund management disputes that still circulate in Discord. What follows is simply an update on what has happened since - and, once again, my own reflections on it.
Two developments since January deserve the community's attention.
First: a new organization has taken up the chain. Vertical Foundation is now behind Vitruveo's continuation. Three announcements from them stand out:
For those of us who lived through the collapse, these announcements offer a real, if cautious, degree of optimism that the ecosystem has a future. Details of Pretrend and the VIP program are being discussed in Vertical Foundation's Discord, which anyone can join.
I want to be clear about where Vertical Foundation's attention currently sits. Their focus, for now, is on reaching financial stability. They have indicated they do intend to address artists in time - but only once that stability is achieved. For Xibit's artists specifically, that means the wait continues a while longer.
Second: a new whitepaper has surfaced - SoulStakes.
This one carries Nik Kalyani's name directly, and it's worth being clear upfront: SoulStakes has no affiliation with Vertical Foundation. It is entirely Nik's own initiative, separate from the chain's new stewards. Unlike HOST, which was a piece of infrastructure, SoulStakes is a proposal aimed squarely at the problem that started all of this: how artists can build sustainable income from their work.
I want to underline something before going further: I am not endorsing SoulStakes, nor am I arguing against it. I think every artist in this community deserves to read it and form their own judgment. That is the only reason I am writing about it here: SoulStakes whitepaper.
Stripped to its core: each artist gets their own token. Patrons buy it - that purchase is the artist's income. Locking the token switches on a right the artist has defined - displaying a piece, licensing a commission, authorizing an AI "Apprentice Agent" trained on the artist's own style and permissions. Unlocking ends the right; the patron keeps the tokens.
It is, in other words, another attempt at the same question Vitruveo originally asked: how does art pay an artist more than once?
What struck me most, reading it, was not the mechanism but a line in Nik's own founder's remarks:
"In my previous attempts I funded the initial build and then looked for partners and investors. That didn't work. This time I will find investors and partners first - then build."
That is a candid admission about what went wrong before. Whether it changes the outcome this time, I have no way of knowing. Neither does he - the whitepaper itself says as much, calling the project an experiment with no guarantee of success.
I am not going to tell you what to think about Vertical Foundation's rebuild, or about SoulStakes. I have learned, over the past months, to distrust my own certainty about what will or won't work in this space.
What I can say is this: silence has, in part, given way to activity. Some of it - Vertical Foundation - is already tangible, with a Discord you can join and a protocol taking shape. Some of it - SoulStakes - is still a whitepaper, an idea Nik has opened up for others to help shape before he builds again.
Read them both if you're interested. Ask your own questions. Reach your own conclusions. That is all I am asking of anyone with this letter - not belief, not participation, just informed attention.
As I said before: the dream of sustainable income for artists did not die with Vitruveo. It remains as urgent and as worthy as it ever was. Whether it is Vertical Foundation, SoulStakes, both, or something else entirely that carries it forward, I don't yet know.
Take care of yourselves and each other.
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