Community is everything, let's talk about Jenkins the Valet

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the strongest NFT projects out there. While they have a strong team in Yuga Labs, awesome artwork, and insane roadmaps that are always delivered, I think the strongest aspect of this is community. Community has shown to be one of the best things NFTs have given us. The entire NFT space is small, early, and friendly. Whether it's the insanely fast and informative responses you can get joining a random Discord server or meeting up with people IRL through events like NFT NYC, I think it's safe to say that the community is a large reason why we're in this space.

My favorite example of this is a project that started from a member of The Bored Ape Yacht Club called Jenkins the Valet. The project started in August and focuses on the story of Jenkins, a Bored Ape who is the valet for the very prestigious Bored Ape Yacht Club and is finally telling his story of all the crazy stories and drama that happened at the yacht club in the form on an NFT book that's being authored by a 10x NY best-selling author Neil Strauss.

That sounds pretty insane, but let's break down why I love this project so much.

Writers Room

Jenkins started an NFT project from this called Writer's Room, which has 6942 NFTs at four different tiers giving you different perks. Something that remains consistent is that each owner will receive a copy of the book and the ability to license a Mutant or Ape to be used in the story. Licensing a Mutant/Ape does not require you to own it and gives you a share of both the primary and secondary sales of the NFT book. 50% of the net profit will go into the project for future roadmaps (potential TV deals, other forms of media, sequels, etc) while the other 50% goes back to all NFT holders.

Owning the NFT gives you additional benefits as well. The different tiers of NFTs give each holder a specific number of votes along with the ability to have their ape featured in the book. Community votes will be used to drive the direction of the story.

CAA Partnership

Most people have probably heard of Jenkins after their partnership with the CAA was announced. The Creative Artists Agency, CAA, is a talent agency that works with a ton of A-list celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Cristiano Ronaldo, Beyonce, and so much more. Basically, there's a good chance your favorite actors/actress' work with this agency. What does this mean? Let's see what Jenkins has to say via their official website:

We are working with CAA across, books, film, TV, podcasts, and more. they represent Jenkins the Valet and everything our community creates in the Writer's Room. CAA helps us scale Jenkins' content and build our voice as the storytellers of the Metaverse.

In short, it seems like the CAA will be used to help connect Jenkins to partners in their Roadmap post Book 1. This could mean like a Netflix show or movie about Jenkins' experience on the Bored Ape Yacht Club. This not only gives great exposure to BAYC but also seems one of the best ways to mainstream NFTs and blockchain technology to the general masses.

Licensing

Let's break down a bit more on the licensing and why I think it is so important. First, the Bored Ape Yacht Club changed the game of NFTs when it allowed the owner complete commercial IP rights over their Ape/Mutant. Why? Because this means that Yuga Labs has always intended for you, or the community, to create and build projects with the Apes they created. Jenkins has been an incredibly meticulous project. It's been the culmination of months of works and research to hire lawyers for legal, partner with probably the best talent agency in the world, and go through an exhaustive search to find the best author for this book.

Licensing is also a way for someone to monetarily benefit from their Mutant or Ape without having to sell it. While a lot of other projects have began to offer staking or tokens, I still think traditional licensing (especially one that is truly community driven) is one of the most straightforward ways to reward members without bringing complex Web 3.0 ideas to the picture for the average owner.

Community

Let me mention the biggest reason why I'm such a fan of this project. Community. And yes, I've already mentioned that Jenkins is a community member made project, but I'm talking about what Jenkins means to our community.

First, a lot of NFT projects take inspiration from other projects. After all, Web3.0 is all about giving back to the people, creating in public, and power of the people. Remember the months of work and money I mentioned about Jenkins pouring into the legal agreements of the project? Well, Jenkins' just announced that he is planning on open sourcing their licensing agreement for other projects to use. It is truly giving back to the community and letting us, the people, have more control and exploration of projects.

Second, I've heard nothing but positive things about Jenkins from people on Twitter and Discord, and believe me, I spend probably 95% of my energy on these social channels. It's a ridiculously insane project that does carry risk, but the reward is to make history by putting NFTs in a more traditional and mainstream avenue. Even if I weren't invested in this project or BAYC, I would want nothing but to root for Jenkins.

Third, I think people are sleeping on how important it is for the community to have power over the story. Not only does this completely embodies Web3.0 and concepts such as decentralization, DAOs, etc but also brings more community involvement inside and outside of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. For instance, choosing which Apes are protagonists vs antagonists in the story could change the "rarity/aesthetics" that we currently value, while perhaps a popular Ape from the story begins to launch his own project inspired from the story or success of Jenkins. It also makes each member more invested in the storyline and increases the imagination of the story. All in all, the possibilities are endless but it's all unlocked and inspired from Jenkins.

Conclusion

Jenkins is truly a project that embodies what I see as the result of NFTs and Web 3.0 in 2021. A completely fan-driven project that has become its own unique story and place in history, forming partnerships with a talent agency that seemed light years away from working with an NFT project while giving monetary and creative benefits to the community. I truly am a fan.

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