VeeFriends is an NFT project by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck. According to the official site, this project is a way to combine Vaynerchuck’s passion for creative work and his business ventures using the blockchain and NFTs.
Like many other such projects, when you purchase a VeeFriends NFT you become part of the community of other VeeFriends owners and you get access to something called VeeCon.
One interesting aspect of this project–the creator is sensitive to the high energy consumption of NFT projects and has pledged to support renewable energy projects. That sort of mindfulness about the environmental costs of blockchain technology is not always a topic of discussion among such projects.
What Is VeeFriends?
The VeeFriends project is a collection of just over 10,000 tokens featuring artwork created by Vaynerchuck. But unlike some NFTs, VeeFriends are also utility tokens created to be used as “vouchers” for special prizes, opportunities, and access to games. There are three categories:
- Access tokens
- Gift tokens
- Admission tokens
Some of these tokens allow you to interact with Vaynerchuck himself via an online game or a virtual meeting. But all three tokens serve as tickets to VeeCon (see below).
And with those tickets, VeeFriends introduces something that, while not new at all, but as a concept in the crypto space is likely to become more popular. It’s the concept of a limited-time membership purchased with an NFT. In some projects, when you buy the NFT you get voting rights and/or community membership rights but without any time limit. But what VeeFriends seems to do here is to turn the NFT purchase into a subscription model.
When you buy any VeeFriends NFT, you get access to VeeCon for three years. But what does that get you?
About VeeCon
VeeCon is a conference offered exclusively to those who own VeeCon NFTs. VeeCon is a multi-day event with physical location and dates scheduled in multiple cities. It focuses on creativity and entrepreneurship as well as business and marketing.
Dates are announced six months in advance and each VeeFriends token is worth one ticket to the event. When you buy a VeeFriends NFT you get VeeCon access for three years. The very first VeeCon was scheduled in Minneapolis, May 19-22 in 2022, but also tentatively scheduled for the same dates in 2023 and 2024.
How To Buy VeeFriends
VeeFriends tokens are available on the Ethereum blockchain and may be acquired through a “non-custodial” wallet, “via Dutch auction and not via traditional payment methods,” according to the official site.
You can purchase VeeFriends at OpenSea.io where at press time there were some 10k VeeFriends NFTs selling at a floor price of just under 10 ETH. These numbers are always subject to change, but at the time of this writing those numbers were accurate.
When you buy VeeFriends on the secondary market (when an NFT is resold by a current owner) there is a 10% royalty paid to VeeFriends and one percent of that royalty payment is set aside for charitable contributions.
However, there is no royalty arrangement for token owners who sell them later–and VeeFriends does not sell intellectual property rights with the artwork you buy–those rights remain with VeeFriends and you don’t get derivative content rights for the NFT the way you would when buying Bored Apes or Crypto Punks.
Joe Wallace has covered real estate and financial topics, including crypto and NFTs since 1995. His work has appeared on Veteran.com, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and many print and online publications. Joe is a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force and a former reporter for Air Force Television News.
