Followers of Ok-Pop woman group Mamamoo will quickly be capable of purchase digital merchandise associated to the band utilizing blockchain know-ho
Followers of Ok-Pop woman group Mamamoo will quickly be capable of purchase digital merchandise associated to the band utilizing blockchain know-how.
RBW (Rainbowbridge World), a South Korean leisure firm representing Mamaoo and different widespread Ok-Pop artists corresponding to Vromance and Oneus, is leaping into the cryptocurrency world by issuing non-fungible tokens (NFT) on South Korea-based change Xeno. The tokens give Ok-Pop followers and different traders a declare of actual possession in digital merchandise associated to RBW entertainers.
Learn extra: NFT Artwork Gross sales Reached All-Time Excessive of $8.2M in December
In an unique interview with CoinDesk, the Xeno staff introduced that RBW has given the NFT change unique rights to mint and listing their NFT-based digital merchandise.
“Fanbases get digital items for his or her favourite artists that they will really personal, and artists and content material creators get new and thrilling merchandise to supply their followers,” Jae-Woong Wang, CEO of RBW Japan, informed CoinDesk in an announcement. “Digital occasion tickets, membership tokens, even digital content material rights can all be captured and housed inside NFTs. The pattern of digital commerce is rising and RBW needs to remain on prime of those tendencies whereas on the identical time open new markets when doable.”
The precise time of when the NFTs will probably be launched has but to be introduced. Xeno informed CoinDesk that the underlying digital merchandise will embrace “3D mannequin renderings” of followers’ favourite Ok-Pop idols, occasion tickets for digital concert events and membership tokens that “enable artists to have interaction their fanbases”.
RBW’s transfer comes at a time of explosive progress in buying and selling volumes for NFTs, which tripled in 2020 in comparison with 2019, in accordance with knowledge from Dune Analytics. The elevated curiosity in NFTs is partly pushed by the COVID-19 pandemic that has pressured most cancellation of in-person occasions.
In contrast to fungible cryptocurrencies corresponding to bitcoin and ether, NFTs are distinctive tokens that can’t be exchanged one to at least one. For followers of Mamamoo, that interprets into possession of a singular digital product developed across the singers.
Xeno’s NFT market launched final month after the corporate noticed a doubtlessly enormous marketplace for NFTs in East Asia, Xeno’s president, Anthony Di Franco, informed CoinDesk. The corporate at present operates primarily in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.
Learn extra: The Blockchain NFT Wars Are Right here
South Korea alone has the fourth-largest gaming market on the planet, with well-established digital items marketplaces, Di Franco stated. The East Asian nation additionally has “very excessive engagement” with all types of leisure together with the Ok-Pop trade. The Gaon Digital Chart, South Korea’s music trade normal rating recorded singles, exhibits practically 21 million weekly performs for this week’s No. 1 music alone.
RBW’s information may lead extra outstanding leisure corporations in East Asia to comply with the NFT pattern, as most dwell occasions world wide are nonetheless on pause because of the pandemic, in accordance with the executives at Xeno. In addition to these in Ok-Pop, a number of partnerships with well-established names in excessive trend and the web gaming industries are already “within the pipeline,” the change stated.
“RBW is a reasonably reasonably impactful firm, with widespread woman group Mamamoo together with a number of boy bands and a brand new woman group, Purple Kiss, below its administration,” Tamar Herman, Ok-Pop journalist at Hong Kong-based South China Morning Publish, informed CoinDesk in an e mail. “The corporate has a popularity for high-value performances and artistry.”
Whereas most NFT exchanges are primarily based on the Ethereum blockchain, Xeno is constructed on the Polkadot community due to its higher scalability, full cross-chain interoperation and integration, and Polkadot’s distinctive “parachain” characteristic that provides the staff full management of the protocol layer of the system, Di Franco informed CoinDesk.
Learn extra: Some Asian Merchants Are Utilizing Polkadot to Predict Bitcoin’s Future
“NFTs are the right medium for these habits to develop and evolve in,” Di Franco stated. “NFTs take possession of digital items out of their silos, turning a set of mutually unique walled gardens into a real market, and exponentially growing the probabilities for artistic entrepreneurship for digital artists and the enterprise alternatives for the platforms they work on.”