Inspiration Wallets

I’ve been trying to think of ways to incentivize more people to highlight the works, individuals, and teams that inspire them.

I think that this a) creates a fun story of provenance (kind of how Wikipedia does for scientists; see below for Darwin), but also b) serves as a new mechanism to share one’s growth (and winnings) with those who inspired you. (I also think this would set precedent for new ways of maintaining buildings, but that’s a different story!)

The closest analogy I can think of are citations; but those aren’t really bidirectional, and certainly not financially tied. (Plus citations have their own weird bubble effect, tied to differing incentives in academia.) Another analogy is the concept of patronage, and even Patreon, but it’s still not quite the same and certainly not bidirectional. It’s not really BitClout either.

So, why don’t we have something like “Inspiration Wallets”?

Individuals and teams (B) could purchase fractions of NFTs of those individuals/teams (A) who influenced them and in turn a new crop of individuals & teams (C) could purchase fractions of NFTs from the individuals/ teams (B). When the (C) exchange happens, some value, even if marginal, would not just flow to (B) but to (A) as well. Provenance ensues.

To put it in simpler terms, I could purchase a fraction of a Stewart Brand NFT, and then someone inspired by me could purchase a Liz Voeller fractional NFT, and Stewart would get some recognition, too.

Inspiration wallets would be something like a Pinterest board or list of influences on a team’s website, almost akin to cultural values. The reason someone would want to hold an “Inspiration Wallet” distills into identity and signaling values and shared interests to others. That, and wanting to show respect in a new type of patronage.

Who would be in YOUR Inspiration wallet?