Peace everyone. Jeff Staple here!

I’ve dedicated the last 25 years to honing my craft. One of my early goals was to allow different people to enter my world through different portals. It could be street fashion, sneaker culture, the creative agency, the podcasts, one of my classes –– hell, some of you might not know anything about me, but you just REALLY love pigeons 🐦 🤣 Whatever door you entered through, the important thing was to form a global community around not only my work, but the work of everyone I had the honor of collaborating with.

We saw our creations come alive in subculture, then in pop culture. We hustled to get seen in physical stores and print magazines. Then on blogs, drop sites, and digital marketplaces. And now we are seeing it transform in the Metaverse.

What’s the Metaverse to me? In short — it’s community — in the virtual. It’s ownership for those who participate and contribute. It’s also the ability to create without the constraints of the physical world –– no minimum order quantities, supply chains, middlemen, or any of the costs involved in starting a new thing. Now we have the freedom to change how we think about art, design, fashion, and The Culture. Anything is possible now. The only thing we have to do is DREAM it and then build it together.

How did I end up here? A few years ago, my good friend Steve at Kindred Ventures gave me an early glimpse into the Metaverse. He connected me with Jacob and Dee from Zora and I did my first physical crypto drop. In May 2021, the teams at RTFKT and Bitski shepherded me to my first NFT collection. Then Gary Vee showed me how an NFT could be more than just a digital collectible that’s traded. So for the past 6 months, I’ve been learning, exploring, and designing a long term vision with Steve and my man Benny (who helped build CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot at Dapper Labs), along with an incredible team.

Now, today is the day to bring the entire community I’ve been building along for the ride. Together, on our own platform, into our own future.

Sure, I could’ve just made another NFT. Probably would’ve been a decent investment. But why stop there when, for the first time, there are no boundaries. Could I offer cool visuals? Yes. Utility? Yes. Access? Check. How about a narrative though? A new world? Hell, how about a whole universe?!

This is what I call the STAPLEVERSE.
A place where anything that WE can dream of can become a reality. (You’ll soon see the operative word here is WE.) While anything is possible in the Metaverse, STAPLEVERSE is built on the foundation that I’ve been laying for the last quarter century in the physical world. I started my brand in the mid-90s in downtown NYC. The greatest city in the world was my muse. I got my ideas out into the world through traditional forms of art like drawing, photography, screen printing, and lithography. It is massively important to me that when I embark on this adventure, I honor that history and energy.

I want to show all artists and creatives that no matter what you create, your work can and SHOULD exist in the Metaverse. If it’s not, you’re missing out on the greatest opportunity in an artist’s life. Until now, creatives had to rely on other institutions to market and monetize their work, forfeiting equity and control. In the Metaverse, everyone has a fair share in the creative output. The artist, the collaborator, the platform, and most importantly, the ZEALOTS. My sneakers wouldn’t be going for six figures and my NFTs wouldn’t be breaking records without the community, the fans, and the ZEALOTS.

It’s not about reselling and flipping. It never has been. If it does, great. But I do this for me and the people who support me. The STAPLEVERSE is a decentralized cooperative. Which means everyone watching and reading this can take part in the process — and in the wins.

Art should never be about OR. Is it good OR bad? Worthy OR unworthy? Cool OR uncool? Valuable OR worthless? Art should always be BOTH. Everyone is invited and WE all have a place here. There’s that word again — WE.

You know, back in ‘97 I created the tagline for STAPLE that we still use today: A Positive Social Contagion. Positive: To move forward. Social: For the people / by the people. Contagion: Something that spreads. A Positive Social Contagion. Today, the Metaverse has a new saying for this but with the same exact spirit — We All Gonna Make It. WAGMI ✌🏽🦾🕊

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