Interview with Whale Founder WhaleShark: NFT still has a lot of room for development. I hope Whale will become a century-old brand

The rapid growth of NFT in 2021 is unexpected. People are marveling at the high prices sold by crypto artists, the unprecedented ability of NBA Top Shot to break circles, and more and more celebrities are selling their NFT...

NFT for today's content creators opens up a wider world, both artists, designers, writers can rely on NFT get higher income, and they also have their own community construction periods, and fans are more closely linked together, at the same time, members of the community will be closely linked, together to strive for the development of the community can be better. Some of these creators also issue tokens to encourage members to contribute to the community and bring more benefits to the token holders and community members. This is the concept of "social tokens".

In fact, this is not a new thing, and among many communities, the largest and fastest growing one is WHALE. This project, supported by a large number of high-value NFT assets, has attracted people's attention since its birth. On the one hand, the founder Whaleshark's reputation as a famous NFT collector in the industry comes from his reputation. The other is the active and loyal community members.

WHALE set sail on May 18, 2020. How has the WHALE community developed in this year's time and what are the big plans for the future? To that end, Rhythm BlockBeats had an exclusive interview with Whale's founder, WhaleShark, to talk about Whale.

Rhythm Blockbeats: When did you start collecting NFT and how did you learn about NFT?

WhaleShark:My first glimpse of NFT came in the summer of 2019, when I looked at Gods Unchained, and compared the potential for Magic to the potential of blockchain-based trading card games (TCG).

Once I got to know Gods Unchained, I was immersed in the world of NFT and sank deeper and deeper into it, eventually becoming one of the largest holders of digital art, digital real estate, and digital collectibles.

Routine Blockbeats: You combined NFT and social tokens, which was completely innovative at the time. How did you come up with the idea of combining the two?

WhaleShark:Having collected many valuable NFT collections, I hope to be able to share my collection with the NFT community and help accelerate the growth of the NFT industry.

To achieve my goal, I decided to create a social token backed by the world's most valuable NFT collection, and Whale is now the largest community of NFT collectors and creators in the world.

Rhythm BlockBeats: We all know that WHALE tokens are supported by the NFT assets in the WHALE community's Treasury as the value, but we still know little about the specific "support". Could you please introduce to us how the WHALE community links the value chain of NFT assets to the price of tokens? What else can be done in the future?

WhaleShark:Whale tokens are combined with the vault in the following ways:

1. Token holders can earn NFT rents using the items that support it, and we will introduce some new interaction methods in the future.

2. Vote to manage the Treasury, including buying and selling assets.

3. For the NFT sold successfully, we will take 50% of the profit of each sale to repurchase the WHALE from the market, so as to ensure the continuous supply of the WHALE and permanently distribute it to the community.

The third point explains how Whale Token and Whale Vol are financially closely linked. But as a functional token, the main purpose of Whale Tokens is to ensure that they are consistently distributed to the community.

Rhythmic BlockBeats: Whale is arguably the most successful social token out there, and the Whale community is firmly the leader in terms of community size, token value and influence. How did the Whale community get to this point?

WhaleShark:Indeed, we have become one of the strongest NFT communities in the industry. Currently, we have 13,000 members on Discord, and our value is supported by four main components:

The first part is the value of our asset pool. Of course, crypto art provides most of the value. Unlike games, games have a lifespan, but art is eternal. So as long as you choose the right artist or project, the value will continue to rise.

2. The second part is that our community attaches great importance to NFT. The Whale community itself and the Whaleshark personal brand have also brought in many users from Defi and NFT.

3. The third part is Whale FM. We found that the popularity of NFT was growing, and then we developed an education system called Whale FM, which can be subscribed through social media such as Twitter, Medium, YouTube, Twitch and Discord. We use the Whale brand to promote knowledge about NFT and wealth management.

What we do is not only accumulate assets, but we do all kinds of education in the process of collecting assets.

4. The fourth part is driven by NFT mining, fluid mining, and the DEFI protocol, combined with a game mechanic where the user can choose to be a "dolphin" and pledge 18 Whales per month; You can also choose to become a 'Whale,' which requires you to pledge 500 whales a month, depending on the amount of money you can pledge to participate in community events and airdrop rewards.

By participating in H2P games or Defi mining, the average monthly (not yearly, but monthly) return on investment is between 20-80%.

Uniswap's liquidity and path chart is known to be very stable. By using liquidity mining, buying or selling does not have much effect on the price and traders cannot make a short-term profit. Since September last year, our total liquidity has increased from $850,000 to $7 million, and the more whales that are locked in, the fewer whales that are trading in the market. So the problem we have to solve is how to combine fluid mining with NFT.

So we set up a $2,000 prize pool to incentivate specific artists whose NFT work can only be paid with WHALE. At the end of each month, we will give bonus to artists according to their percentage of sales. With the NFT miners, we are going one step further. For example, if an artist cast 10 pieces of art, we use the Whale Reserve to buy one of them and award it to the top 100 miners in a lucky draw. That way, creators can earn whales by creating NFTs, and miners can mine NFTs at the same time they mine social tokens.

One of the problems that many social tokens face is the influx of speculators who are not going to participate in the community building but just want to make a bunch of money with the token price going up. Does the WHALE community reject such speculators and what does it think of them?

WhaleShark:While the market for digital currency exchanges is large, people can indeed buy and sell to make money. But the big money is made by people who really invest the time and energy to learn more about the industry and work with communities to advance the ecosystem.

So, while we have plenty of NFT in our vaults, we are proud to say that we have never sold any of it. We do a lot of due diligence and evaluation before we invest in each project, and once we decide to invest, we invest for the long haul.

Rage BlockBeats: We know that there was a very sad incident a while ago when Roll was stolen and many social tokens were affected greatly, and Whale was able to stabilize the situation in a very short time and you also contributed money to help other communities. What do you see as the relationship between these communities and the Whale community, competing against each other or working together?

WhaleShark:For the Whale community, we are interested in all aspects of the innovation and progress that blockchain technology can bring to the world, including NFT, but also social tokens.

Each social token community brings different things to the table, and each community has a different value proposition, which has a positive impact on the development of the space.

We will work with many of these communities to bring more and better things to the world.

Rhythm BlockBeats: Do you think the Whale community has grown so fast this year because of the NFT boom? You have said that 99% of NFT projects are not commercially viable, and it is widely accepted that there is a huge bubble in the NFT market. If this bubble bursts one day, what will be the impact on the Whale community?

WhaleShark:There is no shortage of crypto whales. The market may ebb and flow, but it is unlikely to collapse. Because NFT is the gateway to the crypto world for creators, one day when the bubble subside, a bigger wave will theoretically flood into the creator economy -- social tokens, and Whale is social tokens.

NFT is still a viable model, and we haven't even touched the kernel of NFT and its ecosystem yet. We have seen the emergence of NFT loans, NFT insurance, NFT fragmentation, NFT mainstream applications, NFT pledge, but there is still a lot of room for NFT development, we are still at the beginning of the S-shaped curve of blockchain.

Rhythm Blockbeats: Besides the Whale community, E1337 is also a success. What is the relationship between E1337 and Whale, and how will the two communities interact in the future?

WhaleShark:I was the founder of both Whale and E1337, and most of the management team of E1337 came from the Whale team.

Whale focuses on the NFT area related to digital art, while E1337 focuses on gaming and meta-universe costume fashion.

I believe that the communities of WHALE and E1337 are very complementary and that as we continue to evolve, there will be great synergy between the two systems.

Rhythm BlockBeats: Now looking back at the Whale white paper that was released a year ago and your response to the question "Why" of PAK, how do you think the vision you said you were trying to achieve is coming along, is the Whale still on the right track, and what difficulties may be in the future?

WhaleShark:Whale's development is clearly better and faster than I thought. I am fortunate to have a great team and community, all of whom share similar values and a willingness to share.

Because we have an extremely long-term vision for WHALE's development, we will prioritize the long-term interests of our community members and the health of the project in any difficulties we encounter. I believe that the greatest opportunity, not the challenge, is to find ways to constantly innovate and keep up with all the opportunities in the market.

Rhythm Blockbeats: What does Whale have planned for the next year to tell us? Imagine what the Whale community will look like a year from now.

WhaleShark:First of all, we want you to understand that Whale is not a project that we're going to build for one, two, or even ten years. We're going to build a 100-year project that's going to last a lot longer than our lifetime.

Our lives will only become more digital and digital assets will continue to evolve, and in 100 years' time, we hope to be able to look into our vaults and see what the future of NFT looks like.

Our second long-term vision is about art. We love art, not just because of the value of art, but because we want to understand the creative process behind art, understand the people who make it, and share the art.

As you can see, Christie's has launched Beeple's NFT The First 5000 Days, Sotheby's has announced a partnership with PAK, and we are working to bridge the gap between the traditional and digital art markets. We hope that one day we can have a WHALE museum of modern art to really witness all these amazing artists and creators.

How to build a bridge between traditional art and digital art, this is our other vision. Celebrities and other influencers are paving the way for NFT's mainstream adoption. The expansion of the meta-universe, the application case for the project, the financial incentives behind the project, the land leases that create financial sustainability and generate a steady cash flow, these are all things that we want to see in the long term.

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