Announcing ERPC ”Subscription NFTs” for Solana. Improving crypto payment UX with NFTs and creating a real-world secondary rights use case

ELSOUL LABO B.V. (Headquarters: Amsterdam, The Netherlands; CEO: Fumitake Kawasaki) and Validators DAO are pleased to announce a new initiative on ERPC: Subscription NFTs.

Subscription NFTs are a new approach that rethinks both the payment experience and the handling of subscription rights in crypto.

By issuing usage rights as NFTs and enabling holding, transfer or donation, and resale, Subscription NFTs reduce the procedural friction unique to crypto payments, while allowing unused rights to circulate through secondary markets. Built on Solana’s fast and low-cost infrastructure, they deliver practical benefits for both developers and users.

Every crypto transfer requires a signature, which means models that rely on automatic withdrawals do not translate directly.

Many services have worked around this with deposits or prepaid balances, but that raises implementation, operational, and legal costs, often degrading the user experience.

There is also a psychological hurdle: even if the mechanics resemble funding a credit card for an upcoming charge, manually sending crypto before a due date often feels like “I’d rather not pay now.” In addition, people are reluctant to prepay for something they might or might not use later, which becomes a barrier to ongoing use.

Subscription NFTs secure the subscription right itself as an NFT.

The perspective shifts from a design based on repeated payments to a design that “stocks” rights at hand. Rights can be exercised when needed, and if they go unused, the possibility of converting them in the market reduces the risk of prepayment and the loss from unused periods. The ability to choose when to purchase also lowers the psychological hurdle.

Making rights portable as NFTs allows unused or partially used subscriptions to circulate, with prices discovered according to demand. Issuers can keep first-sale pricing simple while the market finds fair value, ensuring rights reach the users who need them.

In conventional secondary markets, resellers tend to capture most of the upside, and value rarely flows back to brands or communities. Outright bans on resale seldom eliminate demand imbalances, while raising list prices to absorb demand can harm brand experience. As a result, arbitrage often accrues only to resellers.

With Subscription NFTs, marketplace fee distribution can be designed so that a portion of value flows back to the brand or issuer. This curbs situations where only price-pumping benefits, and it recirculates secondary value to brands and communities based on demand strength. Transparent on-chain distribution also improves demand visibility and supply planning, supporting sustainable and balanced revenue models.

This model extends beyond infrastructure rights like RPC to real-world rights such as resort memberships, event tickets, and travel entitlements. When circumstances change and a right cannot be used, it moves to someone who needs it, while the issuer receives value via fees. This enables rational secondary flows that benefit both user experience and brand design.

On the Validators DAO official Discord, BDLC NFT holder gacha events award Solana subscription products such as RPC, gRPC, and Shreds, yet some winners cannot fully use them.

Subscription NFTs are designed so that unused rights can move via secondary markets to users who need them, creating tangible benefits for both winners and acquirers. We will first create concrete examples within the community to make the model intuitive and easy to understand.

Asset values fluctuate daily. Yesterday’s 1 SOL may not equal today’s 1 SOL. Meanwhile, RPC access remains essential infrastructure for providing and using crypto applications.

Subscription NFTs offer a way to secure future RPC bandwidth as a stable resource in advance, ensuring availability when needed. Users can plan ahead for peak periods, and providers can plan supply accordingly.

ERPC operations are powered by the open source software SLV. Its ancestor, solv, was developed by Epics DAO. In recognition of this, favorable handling rates for EPCT will apply under certain conditions. SOL, USDC, and EURC can be used for NFT minting based on prevailing exchange rates.

We remain committed to a design in which open source output circulates back into user value.

Implementation is scheduled for autumn 2025. We will share more details as the release approaches. Please stay tuned.

Thank you as always.
We appreciate your continued support for ERPC and Validators DAO.

This release is not intended as investment advice. Please conduct your own research and make your own decisions.