Moonbirds, led by Kevin Rose, is one of the premiere NFT collections available on the Ethereum network. Released nearly a year later, Moonbirds has been portrayed as the preeminent competitor to the Bored Ape Yacht Club for a variety of reasons that are linked to its community at the PROOF Collective (their parent NFT collection) and featured utilities that include nesting.

Recently though, one of those utilities - the rights to each Moonbird’s unique IP - was taken away when Kevin Rose announced that the Moonbirds would be added to the creative commons where exclusive rights to the IP no longer exist; allowing the artwork to be used by anyone on the internet.  

Holders feel misled

To many holders, this announcement came as a major surprise. There was no community vote or meeting to discuss the decision with the holders. The move to the creative commons came as a major affront to holders that had bought Moonbirds for this specific reason. 

While their tokens have not been applied as vastly to new emerging products like the BAYC tokens have, they still offered potential to holders and it was expected to last forever. However, there can still be some debate that this might benefit the holders in the long run. 

Pros & Cons of CC0

Apart from the criticisms of not asking your community, there are still some interesting merits behind the decision to place the Moonbirds art into the creative commons. 

Branding

Allowing anyone to have access to the artwork provides a greater level of exposure for Moonbirds across the internet. This level of usage means that holders and non-holders alike can create their artwork or memes without repercussion. This carries the potential for the collection to garner more recognition across the world wide web; and especially into web2 communities where many of the biggest NFT collections are less known. 

However, the ability to control that brand is gone. Some can argue that this is an essence of decentralization, it still means that holders, the community, and the team can create less of an impact with the artwork. For major, well-established brands, losing that hold over how an image is used runs the risk of seeing a community evolve in a direction that is disconnected from the project’s original culture or intention. 

Counterfeiting

Plagiarizing and screenshotting NFTs has become a common concern to many people that are hesitant to join the web3 space and for good reason - why does a piece of art have value if it can be copied endlessly? While there are a variety of answers to this question, it is still a fair point for people who don’t want to purchase a piece of art that can be copied by anyone with a smart device. 

There are a variety of arguments that can be made against this case, but what the move to creative commons does best is lean into that freedom to multiply the image. The token is safe and cannot be copied; but the image itself is now free to be used by anyone. This eliminates the criticism of screenshotting a picture and forces users to recognize the technical features of a collection’s tokens. 

Future branding in web3

It’ll be interesting to see how this decision affects the future of Moonbirds. Since the announcement (and at the time of this writing), the floor price for Moonbirds has dropped down to about 15 Eth, which is still high, but nothing close to the 30 Eth floor that they experienced for so long. 

This also comes at a time when we’re seeing new projects such as Bored and Dangerous begin to take shape from the BAYC members who are actively pushing the use of their IPs. While people like Ryder Ripps are challenging the legitimacy of what holders truly own, it’s still proving to be a sense of value to the BAYC community. Then again, if the metadata is what you truly own, then Moonbirds might be releasing nothing special to the creative commons. After all, it’s the token that’s being bought.