Dapper Labs CEO: I love Bubble Mart very much, NFT will increase the size of the collectibles market to trillions of dollars

The sudden explosion of NFT has caught countless people by surprise. People did not expect that this "small circle" that no one cares about half a year ago will now attract the encryption field and all walks of life outside the encryption field. s concern. Driven by the mainstream, countless traditional artists, musicians, and celebrities have issued their own NFTs, and encrypted artists have also won the favor of the mainstream. Beeple and Pak have even received olive branches thrown by Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

 

From the end of 2020 to now, the most eye-catching NFT project is NBA Top Shot, which is built on the Flow blockchain The game on the website has become another phenomenon-level hit game created by Dapper Labs since it became obsessed with cats. No one would have thought that an NFT card that was once unsalable for $2 could be sold for a sky-high price of up to $200,000.

 

Rhythm BlockBeats chatted with Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou (hereinafter referred to as Roham) about the development history of Flow and his understanding of NFT field of view. He said that NFT will raise the global collectibles market to a trillion-dollar level. Dapper Labs hopes to become a propeller for the development of the world and prove to the world that blockchain networks can also create large-scale profitable applications.

 

The following is the full text of the interview:

 

< h4> Rhythm BlockBeats: Since 2017, NFT has actually been silent for a few years. In the middle, Dapper Labs also tried Cheese Wizard but the effect was not satisfactory. Why has it been focusing on the NFT field? What shining points of NFT do you think have a lot of room for imagination?

 

Roham: Although there was no How many people pay attention to the NFT field, but we still bet here. If you believe that the future of applications and the Internet will be decentralized, then there needs to be a way to represent its uniqueness.

 

In the real world, money is one of the few things people really interchange A medium of item exchange that exists to help people exchange those unique items and services they love. In other words, people yearn for money, but essentially in exchange for more differentiated and unique goods and services.

 

Because of this, we came up with the idea of NFT (non-fungible token), written by our CTO Dieter Shirley The ERC-721 standard on Ethereum.

 

In our opinion, the blockchain field used to be a bit monotonous, but NFT brings different colors and creativity In addition to the "inventors" in the financial field, more content creators, artists, and experts in the cultural field can also join the blockchain field.

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: Why did the game "Mystery Chain Cat" design the image based on the kitten instead of other prototypes?

 

Roham:The reason is very simple, the cat Their memes rule the internet, and cat videos rule YouTube, so it’s easy for it to rule the blockchain. And we decided to use cats as a prototype because our team member Mack Flavelle said: "When you want to create a digital consumer product, the question you have to ask yourself is not 'Why is it a cat? Could it be a cat?」."

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: You should have heard of the company Bubble Mart, which has just been listed on the Hong Kong stock market. box toys, attracting a large number of young people. Bubble Mart will also sign an IP contract and sell it as a toy. Many people regard Bubble Mart's toys as trendy toys like BearBrick, which players buy for collection, but it seems that once Bubble Mart mentions collection, the market will naturally become niche. So looking back at the NFT field, is encrypted art collection too niche? Is this a long-term path for the sustainable development of NFT?

 

Roham: I love bubbles Matt.  

 

Collecting is something people have always liked to do, and it is not as niche as people think. In the real world, the collectibles market is worth more than $370 billion a year.  

 

There are many motivations for people to participate in collecting. Some are for short-term hype (active traders), creating a wealth effect; others are long-term investors, viewing collectibles as a safety or a differentiated asset class. Still others want to own something they like and experience the joy of pure collection.

 

In my personal opinion, the openness of blockchain technology means that NFT will push collectibles into a new era. Backed by a strong community, third-party developers can create more useful ways for NFT collectibles. Using CryptoKitties as an example, we've seen some developers create KittyRaces where players can race their kitties against other kitties. In today's NFT field, you can join an NFT community by holding a certain NFT, such as a private Discord channel or other content and activities (such as NFT.NYC, MintGate, Unlock Protocol, etc.). This means that people will have more reasons to join the ranks of favorites.

 

I believe NFT will push the entire collectibles market to more than $1 trillion.

 

Key points:

 

-Collection is something that people have always liked to do, and this matter will not change;

-Bubble Mart is a popular The pioneer of cultural products attracts the attention of young people.

-However, regardless of appeal and people's interest in it, physical collectibles have inherent limitations. There are so many things anyone can collect;

-CryptoKitty community members own thousands of Kitties, maybe more, but each of them can prove unique;< /p>

-NFT will bring collectibles to a new era, such as special access rights that can be tied to offline events, instant transactions worldwide, and easy integration across applications and platforms , Take advantage of provable ownership, authenticity, and provenance at virtually zero additional cost.

Stores, increase sales channels, is this consistent with the logic of Dapper Labs choosing to sign NBA IP? Is Dapper Labs choosing to sign with the NBA to expand its player range?

 

Roham:The reason why we target Locked in sports because we believe that video sports collectibles on the blockchain are a better option than traditional sports collectibles.

 

We chose to work with the NBA and the NBA Players Association for several reasons:

 

First and foremost, NBA fans are the perfect audience. NBA fans tend to be younger and more tech-savvy. And they're all over the world, and they love the players themselves.

 

At the same time, the NBA and the NBA Players Association have also proven to be very good partners. Not only do they have many team members who understand the area Blockchain, and as an organization, they are willing to be a deep partner with us and willing to experiment.

 

We are grateful for their hard work and open mind to bring this unique game-changing experience to the mainstream market .   

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: There are many well-known IPs in the world, such as Hello Kitty, Disney, will Dapper Labs sign such a contract? IP? What is the strategy on IP selection?

 

Roham: What IP is considering signing At that time, our top priority was whether we could bring a new experience to the fans of this IP that was much better than the products in the current centralized world. If we can't make a really convincing product (at least 10 times better than now), we won't contact this IP. In the case of the NBA, we clearly see that sports highlights collectibles on the blockchain are much better than other types of sports collectibles.

 

The reasons are as follows:

 

- Videos are better than photos. People watch sports to witness the classic moments created by great athletes. These moments are the ones we share with our friends and communities, and are shared experiences that have a profound impact on all of our lives. Being able to package it as a collectible has more impact than a photo of an athlete on a card;

 

- in the district It is safer to collect on the block chain. When you buy an NFT, you can know how much it has in total, who owns them, and whether someone is trying to monopolize the market, and your collection will never be damaged;

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- more convenient. Trading collectibles in the real world is expensive because you need to pay for authentication and shipping. This means that almost only the wealthy can trade collectibles. And on the Flow blockchain, you can trade collectibles for less than $5, which means almost anyone can participate.

 

-Social. Collecting in the real world is a very lonely experience. Most of your friends don't collect the same kind of stuff as you, and you rarely meet anyone with the same hobby. The digital collection is just the opposite. As long as you collect the NFT in NBA Top Shot, you are equivalent to joining a big family composed of tens of thousands of people. They communicate on Discord every day and pass on their enthusiasm to everyone. .  

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: Terra Virtua is also doing similar things, they have signed a large number of movie IPs, in fact, it depends on the platform If both Terra Virtua and Dapper Labs have signed the IP of Marvel movies, players may still buy Dapper Labs’ NFT, so what do you think is the performance of Dapper Labs’ brand power?

 

Roham:First of all, I want to say Yes, we are big fans of Terra Virtua and its products. We really want them to be one of the leaders in this space and push our industry forward.

 

I think two companies can build from the same IP, we see this a lot in the real world Condition. What matters is the app and the experience itself.

 

It's up to the company to use this IP to create an authentic and engaging experience that adds value to users' lives Value, allowing users to participate in the product for a long time.

 

A lot of NBA-related digital collectibles exist these days, but the NBA Top Shot is the standout today, Because we built a premium collecting experience that fans and even NBA players love. We can say this because our 4-week retention rate is above 65%, which is incredible for a digital product.  

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: Why build a public chain by yourself instead of choosing other public chains with higher performance than Ethereum on the market?

 

Roham: Before deciding to make a new Prior to the blockchain (aka Flow), our team researched and analyzed all other existing solutions at the time. What we've noticed is that most of them try to optimize scalability at all costs without doing a thoughtful analysis of how they do it because they don't understand what application developers need.

 

Most chains are removing what we consider to be the most critical components about the blockchain and allowing ETH 1.0 until It still maintains certain advantages over them, that is, real and easy composability, by adopting sharding solutions as a way to scale, but in fact this will cause disruption to the network.

 

These teams are very smart and dedicated, but they don't understand the problems developers face, which means they are on the wrong track direction.

 

Our goal of launching Flow is to build a public chain that can be the best for developers to build growing applications, and can Adapt to the rapid growth of consumer scale.

 

When you optimize for this problem, there are other considerations besides performance:

 

- you need to make it easy and safe for developers to build;

- you need reserved areas The most special place of blockchain and the place where it can bring value to users;

-You need to make it easy and safe for ordinary mass market consumers to interact with blockchain applications;

 

This is what Flow does. NBA Top Shot would not be possible without all of these ingredients.

 

Rhythm BlockBeats: What is the vision for Dapper Labs and Flow?

 

Roham:We believe that in the future, Most applications are decentralized.

 

Decentralized applications are important because for the first time people will be immersed in the digital world for a long time every day Have real ownership, freedom and voice over an item.

 

In the future, creators and developers can publish their works or codes on an open source platform instead of being Large companies (eg Facebook, Amazon, Linkedin) monopolize. We believe that eliminating these monopolies will lead to an even greater increase in the speed and variety of technological innovation.  

 

Dapper Labs wants to be a driving force in the world. We believe that we can do this by creating entertainment applications with a large user scale, such as NBA Top Shot, which can allow more people to access and recognize blockchain technology, allowing everyone to have their own encrypted wallets, and at the same time It also proves to entrepreneurs and enterprises that it is possible to build large-scale profitable applications on the blockchain.

 

By launching the Flow blockchain, Dapper Labs makes it easy and secure to build decentralized applications with a large user base possible.

 

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