What happens when you combine the ancient concept of a community market with a few DAOs and a stablecoin?

In a few short weeks, we're launching the first FWB Bazaar, an experiment in community-first commerce bringing together web3 communities to buy and sell unique physical goods—for 72 hours only.

The first edition of the Bazaar is an online holiday market stocked with IRL goods.

The Bazaar will be live online from December 12-14, and will feature an exclusive selection of items, all sourced directly from the FWB community. Throughout the three-day marketplace, surprise items will be added to our inventory, featuring exclusive products commissioned specifically for the Bazaar.

Once the Bazaar goes live, anyone will be able to purchase items from the site using PYUSD, the new PayPal stablecoin. You can add PYUSD to your wallet through Uniswap.

To be notified when the Bazaar goes live, join our allowlist. (We will also be sending out some PYUSD to a few allowlist members. 🙂)

FWB is bridging communities across digital and IRL experiences.

As a collectively-governed entity, FWB is at the forefront of producing global events, content, and experiences that push the boundaries of how communities can leverage new technologies. As with FWB FEST—our annual festival showcasing the depth of curiosity and creativity in the web3 space—the Bazaar is a platform for connecting cultural communities in the new-internet space.

While FEST serves as a dynamic stage for web3-adjacent brands to showcase their visions, the Bazaar exemplifies how the exchange of goods and experiences can cement community bonds and foster a more vibrant, interconnected web3 ecosystem. We’re excited to be working with many of the same collaborators, speakers, and artists who have played a role in shaping FEST, and whose ideas and approaches continue to shape digital industries and culture at large. While the marketplace will only last for three days, it will serve as an ongoing testament of FWB’s role as the cultural convenor of individuals, squads, and organizations who share our vision for a better internet.

“Community-first commerce” can fuel global subcultural economies.

As we see it, community-first commerce is a way to signal and solidify our social relationships by directly supporting the creators whose work gives visual form and meaning to our shared subcultures. Unlike “social commerce,” where adtech algorithms are programmed to influence social media users to spend as much money as possible, we view community-first commerce as a form of mutual exchange, where members of a community can all benefit from the opportunity to exchange unique goods within a values-aligned market—all while forming a unique subcultural economy, developing shared lore, and cementing 1:1 bonds in the process.

In the web3 space in particular, we see the opportunity to pursue experiential forms of peer-to-peer commerce that uplift global communities by enabling us to exchange unique creations that are aligned with our shared social and cultural values. Along these lines, we see the Bazaar as a showcase and celebration of the FWB community’s many talents—from designing apparel to roasting coffee to publishing zines—and as a way to foster direct exchange between our members.

Here’s a glimpse at our most highly-anticipated Bazaar vendors.

We’re bringing members of our extended community, alongside a cast of FWB FEST all-stars, to the forefront of our marketplace.

Here’s a taste of what’s in store:

• Sisterjam’s legendary custom tees
• Fabiola Larios’ friendship bracelets
• Long-awaited incense collaboration from FWB co-founder Raihan Anwar
• Dirt & Refraction will be bringing zines to the Bazaar
• The Park and Happy Friday will be serving us a custom coffee blend
• Club Chess will have exclusive mugs
• Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index (signed)
• Joshua Citarella’s Politigram & the Post-left
• USB Club’s FEST expansion pack USB.

These are just a handful of the makers, designers, writers, and entrepreneurs featured. Remember to check back daily during the marketplace for new surprises.

We’re excited to be experimenting with PYUSD <3

To make this experiment in community-first commerce a success, we needed to incorporate trusted payment rails that were also aligned with our vision.

Since 1998, PayPal has been relentlessly innovating in the digital frontier with the mission of offering its users a trusted, easy, and global payment option. In this sense, they’ve had a crypto ethos before crypto even existed. We’ve been watching as PayPal quietly released a fiat-backed stablecoin, PYUSD, with on- and off-ramps to their massive network of millions of consumers and merchants around the globe. With PYUSD, they are bringing their incredible scale, their proven legitimacy, and novel opportunities for on-chain to online exchange of value.

They recently published a post about why they are committed to this space:

“Blockchain technology is the only technology that offers a fundamentally new way of doing payments. Though it may look like a fad to many, to PayPal, blockchain looks like rationale. If there is a payment instrument that offers round-the-clock, immediate, and cost-effective transactions, it’s the practical choice. It’s not about jumping on a trend; it’s about recognizing and adopting a superior financial rail for payments.”

As a community that’s constantly tinkering at the edge of what blockchain makes possible, we share their view of the future—one where a combination of open and permissioned networks can provide billions of people with the freedom to create, exchange, and access value online and IRL.

We see what PYUSD can contribute to our evolving space and felt it would be the perfect transaction layer to experiment with for our Bazaar.

Let’s continue building a more interconnected and cultural global economy.

The FWB Bazaar bridges the time-tested model of a community market with web3 payment rails to enable our global community to exchange goods trustlessly. By bringing the Bazaar to life, we hope to show what’s possible when blockchains are used to enhance our global experience of community.

Want to stay in the loop on the FWB Bazaar? Subscribe to FWB’s newsletter and drop your info here to apply for our public allowlist.