“Something To Believe In” The Verifiable Genesis NFT created by Serto and Citizen Cope

In March 2021, Clarence Greenwood and Serto Co-founder Evin McMullen teamed up after she spoke on Clubhouse about the looming challenges of centralized identity and the global NFT market. Evin had explained that many, if not most, audiovisual NFT artworks do not bear a verifiable, cryptographic signature from their author at the protocol layer, but rather rely upon the centralized app selling the work to assign it authorship and provide contextual information about the work. Her concerns struck a chord, as Clarence was preparing to expand his creative practice into the world of NFTs, in conjunction with an upcoming Citizen Cope album. Clarence is an independent artist exploring the edge of culture, and so crossing paths with the Serto team at this moment presented a natural opportunity to bring greater artistic independence and long-lasting power to this work and the NFT ecosystem.

The Verifiable Genesis is a first-of-its-kind NFT experience, created by Citizen Cope in partnership with Serto and ConsenSys. It is an exploration of future authorship and interactive music experience using decentralized technology. This NFT will take one crypto-savvy superfan on a journey through New York City, web2 and web3.

The winner of this NFT will present the Verifiable Genesis in their web3 wallet, such as Metamask, and access a VIP front row experience at City Winery in New York City. This exclusive experience for four guests will grant the lucky token holder an evening to remember. New York City is quietly re-awakening in a creative renaissance, and live music is still extremely rare compared to years past, making this NFT an extra-hot ticket.

This NFT will take one crypto-savvy superfan on a journey through New York City, web2 and web3.

The winner will present their NFT for access control and rewards in real life, and that magic continues into digital space as well. Citizen Cope has mastered an exclusive remix of Something to Believe In, mixed at the Village Recording Studios in Los Angeles, CA on March 20, 2021. This track offers a glimpse into Clarence Greenwood’s artistic process. This specific remix will never be released publicly, or shared with any other audience beyond the token holder. The simplicity of this experience with the secret track demonstrates a new paradigm of interaction — experiences that can be unlocked by presenting an NFT, or spaces that can only be accessed by presenting an NFT. The understated nature of this activation is deliberately subtle. It is critical to first demonstrate the art of the possible, to meet the users where they are, and to build a journey into new experiences alongside them.

This NFT carries its own provenance and has a robust verifiable authorship, giving it lasting identity across platforms and beyond the exchange. Because Citizen Cope has claimed their decentralized identity in web3, and shared that public address, all future NFTs created using that public address will be clearly linked back to Citizen Cope’s identity — the website, the name, and even more in the future. Including this one.

Citizen Cope’s website carries its own DID (displayed according to the .Wellknown Configuration set forth by the DIF). View Citizen Cope’s Serto Search result here, and see the DID in action.

Because most of today’s NFTs rely upon their platform of issuance for identity, these NFT works can’t travel to another platform or context without losing ready access to human-readable information about their provenance. If one of these NFT issuance platforms employing centralized storage goes bankrupt and disappears, so too may the visual art and contextual data of the contained works. Fortunately, this outcome can never befall the Verifiable Genesis NFT. No matter where it goes, collectors and fans will be able to trace the work back to Citizen Cope’s identity.

Clarence Greenwood is a continuously evolving artist, whose independent voice and creative tendencies lead him to explore new planes of emergent culture. In broadening his artistic practice to include web3, Clarence wanted to do more than the average NFT drop. View Citizen Cope’s historic Verifiable Genesis NFT here.

No matter where it goes, collectors and fans will be able to trace the work back to Citizen Cope’s identity.

Together with Serto and ConsenSys, Citizen Cope is pushing the boundaries of possibility in the future of fan experiences and web3. Stay tuned for more collaborations and surprises from the Serto team here.

Special thanks to our Meshians TJ Chmielewski & Brian Chamberlain for their generous collaboration and outstanding expertise to build this activation.

Interested in collaborating with Serto? Contact us.