It’s a process not a popularity contest


We recently re-opened our artist application window. We had over 900 submissions in the first 24 hours and filled all remaining slots only a few days later. For this application window we deliberately capped the total submissions to 1500 so our artist liaison team would not be overwhelmed. Moving forward, our ambition is to open future application windows more frequently.

Now the application window has closed, our next task is to select the new round of artists to on-board onto our platform. We will now outline this process and share how we enable the new creators on KnownOrigin.

Selecting new artists

We start by sending every applicant a ‘Thank you for applying to knownOrigin’ email, a message which outlines our high level timescales and makes everyone aware that not all applications will be successful.

Once this email has been sent we start going through the applications. All the submissions are stored in our dedicated database and will be assessed by a member of staff in chronological order.

On day one, all the applications have Pending review status. We have a step-by-step process which takes an applicant from pending review to being fully enabled as an artist (unless their application is rejected).

For each application we first check out their KnownOrigin profile and examine the following; profile image, cover image, social links and bio information.

We then check out the portfolio link provided on the application. This gives us a great understanding of the type of work, approach and style of artwork that the artist creates.

As part of our due diligence we check the social accounts associated with the profile: we explore their Instagram feed, check out the artworks and dig into the interactions on their posts.

Doing this helps us get a better understanding of the works they produce and how they talk about their work to their existing audience & fans. This is more important to us than follower counts and likes on their profiles - we do not consider these to be an accurate means of gauging success or viability when making our selections.

After our due diligence step we reach out to those artists we wish to welcome into the KnownOrigin family. This will usually be a DM on Instagram which will ask the artist to confirm that they have full access to their KnownOrigin Profile.

This also starts a dialogue with the artists and gives them a heads up that we are going to enable their creator account.

At this point we move the application to Pending verification, a procedure which automatically sends an email to update the applicant on our progress.

Once artists have provided the requested information via DM we then start to build a list of accounts to enable as new creators on KnownOrigin.

As we verify each artist we move their application over to Ready to enable status. This is the list of artists and KnownOrigin profiles that we share with the development team.

We enable new artists in batches, usually in blocks of 100. KnownOrigin does this by sending a transaction to the Ethereum blockchain in order to complete this task.

Once this transaction goes through we then send our Welcome to the KnownOrigin Family emails to the new artists. This makes the new artists aware that they are now free to upload and mint their first artwork on KnownOrigin.

All new artists will now see the ‘Upload / manage artwork’ button on their profile and they can start their cryptoart journey with KnownOrigin.

Finally, we have been improving our processes for on-boarding new artists. Our mission is to continue to make this better and explore new ways to bring our community into the process over time. Our ultimate goal is to build the most diverse, innovative and creative platform in the NFT space.