Lurdh Allam on ArtSmiley's NFT marketplace for physical art

0:24the world of nfts merging traditional art with decentralized platforms and the nft marketplace that art smiley is working on i would love for you to kick it off for us and the viewers with just a high level overview of art smiley and some of those nft initiatives that your team is working on right now absolutely yeah art smiley was established in 2017

0:48and operating since 2018 and we're a leading marketplace in the middle east and you know we have a lot of experience and a lot of partners around the middle east you know for the marketplace leveraging our experience now we are moving into this exciting space and of the arts you know so this has been a recent a big buzz around the corner but we want

1:12to leverage our experience and move into this space so that we can able to support a much larger community of digital artists in this our vision is to make a multi-chain decentralized nft marketplace for unique physical artwork and rare collectibles you know our vision is to bring nfts into the mainstream of art that's great and that's a it's a daring

1:38initiative but i see nfts are pretty early on in their stage and this sounds like the right time and timing is really important when you're building a startup to get into the market at the right time so i think that you have that box checked now i know that you have a lot of experience in traditional art and that's going to help your team as well but now moving into the nft space

2:01which is fairly early on there are a few nft marketplaces that are that are incoming as well can you talk about when art smiley is has now moved into the nft marketplace space what were some of the major problems that you pinpointed in nfts and what kind of solutions were you working on right now to solve those problems in nfts definitely i mean first of all you said

2:24that the timing is very important you know any business the success depends on the right time right place we always call it that so we see this early part of the boom you know a great opportunity for our smiley liberating their experience in the past what we've done and taken to this new dominar coming to the problems you know we're addressing more than

2:45one problem actually with different parts of the stakeholders in the art industry you talk about artists more than 80 percent of the artists are unknown unseen and they don't know how to market their product and gain the exposure they must deserve in their you know the due for it so we are providing up this marketplace you know we showcase their artworks and

3:06not only that we are giving them an opportunity for the secondary sales that they can gain you know their product can be you know provide yields are the benefits from the secondary market as well and we also talk about art collectors you know being myself an art collector i always want and unique authenticate art pieces you know it comes make sure it is mine

3:28and it has nobody else so with the digital world with nfp so this is make it more easier because with the blockchain we are able to authenticate the artwork and it be a single tokenized in the crypto world it can be one person on one piece of artwork this is much more you know transparency bringing in this and also for the investors in the traditional world the investors who put

3:51on money on art they're not able to earn back anything they just keep it is as like a fixed asset and it will be making you know over a period of time they're gaining the money whereas in this you know new world we are bringing in we're trying to provide a regular eels you know by because as i mentioned earlier we are connecting a traditional art wall into this nfd art

4:13hole so the guys who invested in nfps can also access to the traditional world and make art prints so this way investors can also make money you know for from the digital to physical you know making it physical and for the crypto our level there is no currently no centralized the marketplace that maps the traditional art bias into experiment you know this mixture of

4:36physical and digital artwork so these are the some of the you know problems we're addressing that through our smiley nfp definitely thanks for that lord and right now there it's still fairly early on in these nft marketplaces so far in 2021 a lot of these marketplaces have grown exponentially but compared to the size of the traditional art market they're really

4:59just you know not even one percent of what they are to become although there are a few that are doing quite well mainly in the ethereum marketplaces and you know some a-list celebrities and major artists are now starting to create art for these marketplaces can you talk about art smiley's nft marketplace and what differentiates it from some of these major up-and-coming

5:21marketplaces i know you mentioned there the tie to the traditional artwork and i think some of those major partnerships will play a role but are there other any competitive advantages and differentiators of the art smiley nft marketplace specifically definitely i mean now we have first of all the major advantage is you know from the asian region now we're

5:42the first ones coming up with the nfp marketplace whether it's in the middle east or in asia you know this is a great advantage and our experience and we're bringing into this we have a large community of artists buyers and also you know exhibition partners many people who worked all around with us in the last four years this is a great advantage what we have

6:02the important differentiator is compared to rest of the competition around the world is we are bringing physical artworks of physical plus digital so we call it as a new world we give enough physical artworks up this is something unique and we are trying to you know bridge the gap between the physical arts and the digital arts and we're bringing a lot more new

6:25community into the digital field by making it an fbi decision in their work in other words to say you know a platform that accepts both traditional arts and digital art and offering them nft based ownership this is something very unique and breakthrough in the industry and definitely it will put us ahead of our competition in a good stronger place definitely that

6:50really is an exciting merging of the worlds and with these traditional artists that are really used to the traditional art industry some of them may or may not have the more technical expertise or knowledge on blockchain industry and nfts is there barriers to entry or how are you making it easy for these traditional artists to start using art smiley without having

7:14that underlying knowledge of blockchain technology i mean again it's a very great question and we making it this onboarding process as easier as possible because again i repeat my words we are already running a traditional art marketplace a lot of the artists know the process and we understand the complications in onboarding process so we are reaching

7:36out you know communities with the community leaders you know we have set up in the last four years from each region africa india and other parts of the world we have some set of community leaders who bring these you know non-tech savvy or non-literate artists who are good and potential artists into our platform using these community leaders and not

7:56only this we are providing the right education and showcasing the training so that the people can easily you know usable the platform can be easily adoptable and easy to operate for them and not only you know all these changes we are bringing in the community leaders are playing a big role you know making this journey easier for the artists and transforming the physical artwork

8:19into digital artwork this is something that you know art smiley taking care of and you know the traditional artists they come up with their physical artworks we digitize them and we monetize into our platform so for this we are taking this pain directly from the traditional artists and art smiley able to help them in this to make that journey more easier that's

8:40great to hear lord and on top of you integrating their traditional art into the nft platform and integrating that underlying blockchain technology i know that your team also has the smiley token and cryptocurrency that is also integrated in the platform which is going to provide extra benefits for those artists and for the users of the platform overall can you

9:03please talk a little bit about the smiley token how it integrates into art smiley and what functionality it provides and what benefits it provides for the ecosystem as a whole absolutely the smiley tokens are used for ftigation you know the smileys are in other words to say it's an essential currency or a medium or to trade art in our platform whether this can be sellable seller you

9:28know sale of artworks or renting of artworks or even printing of artworks everything whatever the transaction that happens within the platform it has it has to be used by smiley tokens and all the art fields that we pay to the you know nft holders or the smiley token holders or the you know the other artists who are actually having the secondary sales

9:50everything all these transactions also happen with by using the smiley token and one other advantage for the smiley token holders is they have premium access to our artworks they can get a very discounted price up to ten percent some of them fifteen percent we are giving further our premium members and not only that we also have do conduct virtual

10:11exhibitions you know these are all can be accessible for free for these nfp you know smiley token holders so these are the sum of advantage that they are going to get and we're trying to build the system you know that can actually the transform within itself from artists to the investor to the buyer the ecosystem and the transactions goes around

10:33within that community definitely thank you for that explanation lord and i know the nft marketplace is coming out in a short while here and your team has been working on it for quite a while and as well the smiley token is also coming out right around now and you're doing an ido for the creation and distribution of the smiley token could you talk a little bit more about

10:56the ido process and the timeline surrounding that absolutely yeah our ideal process already started just few days ago and we are launching this idea with a launchpad called phenomenity and they are taking all the onboarding process and everything of the investors through their channels we are offering both private sales and public sales you know both are available and you know

11:20we're all almost taking 20 percent of the points into the market right now so all these details are available with our telegram channel our smiley nfp and also through our you know platform artsmileynfp.com so if you could reach us anybody interested to know we can able to provide more details that sounds great thank you for that laird and i will leave those links in

11:41the description box below as well and you mentioned a couple times the nft marketplace your team has been working on it's coming out in the near future could you give a snapshot into the rest of 2021 for art smiley the major milestones from the release of the token to the release of the marketplace and beyond what is your team primarily focused on

12:01for the rest of this year yeah we have for the next five quarters we have a lengthy of plan b roadmap being planned out already and we have the details of the project again this all will be available at our smiley nfp.com the main goal in the next five quarters is that from the day this quarter we are starting the project commencement and now we are validating our things

12:23and we are going into the ideo and the next stage is to launch a you know smiley nfp platform which is a minimum viable product we launch and then we go into the full-fledged launch along with the ai and ar and vr tools integrated so that a marketplace that i integrated with not only with artificial intelligence for automating the buyers and you know the artists interest but also

12:47having conduct virtual exhibitions you know throughout the world with accessibility to private investor rooms and you know viewing rooms etc so there's a bigger plan in the next five quarters you know we have a lot of work to do and to finish and showcase to the world definitely and that's great to hear that there is a bigger plan in place and to have exhibitions and to bring

13:09awareness to traditional artists to show how they can benefit from utilizing nfts and integrating their art into the you know from physical to digital i think it's going to play a huge role in the growth of art smiley's platform as well so it's great to hear about that bigger plan and looking forward beyond those five quarters and from years to come bringing

13:33mainstream and widespread adoption of the art smiley platform to become one of the go-to nft marketplaces for artists and for viewers and investors to purchase art what do you think will be some of the key factors to success to ensure that art smiley has that widespread adoption i mean again great question aston i mean i have to say that our smiley built up on the foundations of building

14:00together like with the community so we have a large community of people and our growth to data is that happen most of them organically because it's word of mouth but the two you know important pillars that helped us to the growth where we are today is the trust and the transparency we always built our network and our people everything on these foundations so we transparently deal

14:23with them and we provide that trust and we make sure you know these two things has been kept all along our growth and we believe in this and this can easily help us to grow and even if we grow much bigger you know the foundations what we laid will help us for a longer and bigger success what we are you know envisioning that's great lord thank you for that and

14:47for the viewers that are looking to learn more about the smiley ido the launch of the nft marketplace the road map and the bigger picture for art smiley and when they can start creating their art pieces putting them on there and purchasing art and trading it throughout the marketplace what's the best way for the community to get involved right now

15:06i mean the important is all the updates happens every day without telegram channel you know art smiley nft anybody who want to know more details please join our telegram channel and this is the one medium you know everything every day we are posting and informing informing all the community about the updates other than this you can also follow our

15:26social media channels which we can provide the links here and the two platforms we have artsmiley.com and artsmynfp.com where they can access also more details so we're looking forward to you know have any questions anything to be taken directly in our platforms sounds great lord i will leave all of those links in the description box below as well for the viewers

15:46all the best with the launch of the ideo ongoing and the nft marketplace i will be watching and let's follow up in the near future thank you aston knights a great wonderful discussion with you and hopefully we'll meet again you