If you haven’t heard about cryptocurrency by now, you might be living under a digital rock. A digital rock which you might be able to purchase using Ethereum on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, in fact.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson shared with me that her company, WebDevStudios, completed a project recently and were compensated in Ethereum. Naturally, we had to get the scoop!

Here’s our interview with Lisa. If you enjoy this, please share it with others.

Do you know if you are, in fact, the first agency to accept crypto payments? 


I do not actually know if we are the very first agency to accept crypto payments for client work.  I have not heard of any other agency in our spacing having a crypto wallet or making crypto a payment option, but I have to believe we are at least ONE of the first.

Did you accept crypto payment for the entire sum or split with fiat money? 
We accepted Ethereum as payment for 100% of the project.

What was the project/customer? Did they approach you with the offer or something you brought up? 


It was a custom WordPress plugin we did for an NFT project called Pigskin Apes (https://pigskinapes.com). This is a project that I am involved with, on a personal level, and ended up chatting with the devs and owner of the project about WordPress one night in their discord. 

One thing lead to another and the next thing I know, they are hiring us to create a custom plugin for their NFT project.  Because it’s NFT – making crypto the primary payment options was kind of a no-brainer.

What did you consider before taking payment via ETH? 


Ethereum, and crypto in general, is such a moving target. 

Today, 1 ETH = $4447.00 in USD, but when we sold the project and accepted the payment, 1ETH was worth $3800.00.  Obviously, this is a great bump for us in terms of value of the payment we accepted for the work that we did. 

However, it could have easily gone the other way where ETH dropped in value.  As an agency, we have to be comfortable with this risk.  It’s not unlike stock investments – you put your money in and you hope it grows.  In my involvement with crypto, and Brad’s experience, we anticipate that ETH will continue to climb, so we were comfortable with the risk of taking ETH as payment for services rendered.

If another agency/freelancer would like to get paid in Crypto/ETH — do you have any advice?


Deal in the here and now. 

As I mentioned, crypto is a moving target, daily.  Make it easier on yourself and deal with what you know to be true at the time of the agreement, or transaction.  If ETH is worth $4,000 USD today – then use that as your metric for pricing.  Don’t try to speculate on its worth tomorrow or next week.  Crypto carries with it a certain amount of risk, so come to terms with that first and then work with what you know to be true in the moment.


You’re really into NFTs lately, what is the most exciting part for you? 

Several things about NFTs are exciting to me. 

Obviously, the potential to grow my investment in a particular NFT and increase my holdings has an obvious appeal.  However, what is most exciting to me about NFTs is seeing the creators in control and eliminating the middle entity that so often cut into their earning potential.  Creators are now in charge of how they price creations, how they interact with their buyers and community and what kind of promotion and utility they can attach to their pieces of art.  Creators are the drivers, which is great to see.

NFTs are breaking down walls everywhere. It’s great to be able to connect directly with artists within their community, and with the people who interact with and collect their art.  It’s not unusual for me to spend a night in discord and end up chatting with the creator and dev team from a popular NFT project.  Or spend a few fun moments chatting with M. Shadows from the band Avenged Sevenfold about them releasing music as NFTs with utility for their fans.  Or a few fun moments interacting with Dez Bryant or Brandon McManus in the aforementioned Pigskin Apes NFT project.  I’m seeing barriers being smashed left and right in this community, and its empowering for the artist, and great fun for the fans and community.

I am also excited about the emergence of Web3 technology and how that is trending up more and more. 

That is a whole other topic for a podcast episode, maybe – not something I can expand upon for a WP Minute 🙂

As with all new and emerging tech, it can seem overwhelming and yet another thing to learn and understand

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Is there anything WordPress can do better — or do you see opportunity — around NFT/Crypto space? 


There is a great deal of opportunity, yes!  As with all new and emerging tech, it can seem overwhelming and yet another thing to learn and understand – but if you think of NFTs and smart contracts as another microservice, or another content channel that can be tapped into via APIs, it starts to form a picture and things start to come together. 

A headless environment would allow you to, for example, use WordPress to manage content on a React / Next.js based web application that is minting and managing NFTs and blockchain smart contract connections.

Think about the concept of utility that is attached to NFT projects.  

For example, if you have a particular NFT in your wallet – one utility, or feature, that could be offered is access to more NFT art drops – connecting your wallet to an application and allowing that application to scan your wallet for the presence of a particular NFT or token gives you access to… something.   That ‘something’ can be anything you can imagine – – it can get you access to an event, access to downloads, access to content. 

Think about the ways we are obtaining access to things like that now?  We are providing a name, an email address, maybe credit card information, phone numbers, etc – – we are handing out a whole lot of personal identifiable information.  With a wallet and the blockchain – we would connect our wallet and inside that wallet is a token – – a golden ticket — that gives you access without you having to give away your identity.

I’m rambling – but there are definitely plays there for WordPress development and the community.

Anything else you’d like to add?

The Packers beat the Arizona Cardinals in Thursday Night Football with a walk-off interception in Arizona’s end zone.  Go Pack!

Also, at WebDevStudios, we are happy to entertain projects in the NFT space.  Both Brad Williams and I enjoy that space and are having a lot of fun as a personal hobby, it’s also extremely interesting to look at how we can expand our service offerings and experience professionally, as well!

Note from Matt: Ugh.

That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 👇

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