Announcing Zesty Market v2.0
No more waiting, no more clunky UX. Just monetization for the spatial web.
When the Oculus Quest 1 first came out and we noticed that the Oculus Browser had a front-row seat in the menu bar, it immediately reminded us of the iPhone launch. Contained within one device, Steve Jobs launched the iPod, Phone, and Internet Browser all-in-one. With the native integration of the browser, it became very clear to us that the direction that Meta was headed with its VR headset was no longer just as a gaming device, but as a spatial computing platform that they aspired would come to first replace the laptop, and in the future, our smartphones.
If there was going to be a browser for surfing the spatial web, what would then drive the growth of content in the spatial web? There needed to be economic incentives to create. To increase usage and growth of the spatial web, it needed more content, and it could not be things that were $20-$30 experiences each like in the Meta App Store today. Spatial web apps needed to be accessible and free to visit. Zesty was created as an answer to the question around how this free content would be monetized, and what could developers be using to generate revenue and build a successful business in the open metaverse.
With all this said, we’re very excited to announce v2.0 of Zesty Market, which:
Eliminates the need to wait long periods for data to be fetched from The Graph, our previous decentralized indexer for data on the Polygon blockchain. This reduces the average wait time for ad unit data from 10 seconds to a couple hundred milliseconds.
Eliminates the need for developers to create and approve auctions on-chain. We have found multiple instances of developers forgetting to set enough auctions for their ad units, or approving campaigns before they expired. All which has in the past lead to lost revenue and earnings.
Eliminates the need to purchase ads on-chain through a stablecoin on the Polygon network. This means advertisers no longer need to get funds onto an exchange, bridge them over to Polygon, and then use a web3 wallet to participate on Zesty Market. This change should make the product more palatable for businesses that do not have crypto or have familiarity with blockchain.
Moving forward, we will be automatically setting the prices of the auctions at a consistent price rather than using a Dutch auction to determine pricing. The Dutch auction method has previously caused confusion and did not result in an optimal pricing method for less sophisticated market participants such as the developers and advertisers that use Zesty Market today.
With many of these changes requires a replacement for managing payments to developers. We have opted to go with Stripe. Advertisers can now set daily and total budgets for their campaigns and fund them with their credit cards, which will be approved and run automatically to manage their spend in the most effective way possible.
Zesty Market has historically processed over $26,000 so far on the marketplace, which is $26,000 that has gone into the hands of spatial web app developers. Our hope has been that this will lead to more free content for players in the metaverse to enjoy. There are a handful of developers earning enough money on Zesty to pay themselves enough for rent. We’d like to ensure this continues to more developers and in larger amounts.
If you’d like to get started with using Zesty as an advertiser or developer, you can head over to https://app.zesty.market to make an account, and you can read our helpful documentation here.
We’re honoured to have a community of developers who have entrusted us with the task of helping turn spatial web apps into creations that can now generate meaningful revenue. We’re also grateful for the advertisers who continue to use us to grow their businesses.
We’re looking forward to hearing what you think of the new version of the marketplace, and be sure to follow us on Twitter, and also join our Discord to stay up-to-date on all things Zesty.
Until next time,
The Zesty Team