Vladislav Ginzburg: P1: Warhol's Digital Art to NFTS & Blockparty's Creators in Web 3
Vladislav Ginzburg is the Chief Executive Officer at Blockparty.
Ginzburg leads Blockparty and the mission to build a blockchain-agnostic platform for collectible NFTs at the intersection of art, music and culture. Blockparty launched their MVP In August 2020 with a number of mainstream oriented drops, including first digital artworks by 3lau/Slime Sunday, Adventure Club, Dave Krugman and others.
Earlier, Ginzburg was Chief Business Development officer at Blockparty Tickets where he introduced blockchain as an NFT powered ticketing system to music festivals and professional sports teams, including a partnership with the Sacramento Kings of the NBA.
Before entering the Blockchain and entertainment spaces, Ginzburg managed a fine art fund where he transacted more than $150 million in blue chip artworks. Ginzburg studied at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio as well as The New School in New York.
Let’s dig into your art background first, I believe it lays the groundwork for your interest in NFT related art and event?
In the art world, Vladislav Ginzburg has managed several high-value growth funds in the fine art industry where he has executed transactions for iconic canvas works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michele Basquiat, Salvador Dali, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and hundreds of others for clients., including placing works into museum exhibitions globally
Transcript
Vladislav Ginzburg: P1: Warhol's Digital Art to NFTS & Blockparty's Creators in Web 3
Holly Shannon 00:06
Welcome to Culture Factor. I'm your producer and host Holly Shannon. Our new season looks at creators, innovators and entrepreneurs. Why? Because the creator and gig economy is emerging. Talent has gone to work for themselves. The new year starts with the 101, or the beginner guide for NFTs, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and all those Metaverse and Web3 topics we keep hearing about. We're all going back to school on Culture Factor to understand this decentralized economy. From creator coins to the tax implications of selling crypto, let's unpack these emerging technologies in really simple terms. Join me and feel free to send in your questions. Would your brand like to sponsor Culture Factor? It is your opportunity to be a part of a podcast that is ranked in the top 2% globally and heard in over 89 countries. Email holly@hollyshannon.com. Subscribe to Culture Factor and share with a friend now. Okay, let's start with our class. Let's get our next guest on.
Holly Shannon 01:06
So Vladislav Ginzburg, who goes by Vlad for me because like I'm friend now, is the Chief Executive Officer at Blockparty. Ginzburg leads Blockparty in the mission to build a blockchain agnostic platform for collectible collectible NFTs at the intersection of art, music and culture. Blockparty launched their MVP in August 2020 with a number of mainstream oriented drops, including first digital artworks by 3LAU Slime, Slime Sunday, Adventure Club, Dave Krugman and others. Earlier, Ginzburg was Chief Business Development Officer at Blockparty Tickets where he introduced blockchain as an NFT powered ticketing system to music festivals and professional sports teams, including a partnership with the Sacramento Kings of the NBA. Before entering blockchain and entertainment spaces, Ginzburg managed a fine art fund where he transacted more than $150 million in blue-chip artworks. Ginzburg studied at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, as well as the New School in New York. So originally what I planned for this podcast, my friends, but let me, I'll go there, but let me introduce. Hello, and welcome to Culture Factor Vlad.
Vladislav Ginzburg 02:27
Hello, and thank you so much for having me, Holly, it was such a pleasure to meet you in person in Austin, when we crossed paths at South by Southwest. And I was immediately like, Oh, this is somebody I could talk to you because, right, right, when we met, I immediately got a sense that, you know, you're asking the right questions and thinking about things the right way. And the opportunity to appear on your podcast and appear on the Culture Factor is what I would have missed. So thank you so much for having me.
Holly Shannon 03:00
Thank you, that was the nicest, nicest greeting I've gotten yet. So, you know, I wanted initially to dig into your background a little bit because, um, you know, we talked about NFTs as artists and creators, and you have such a strong background in art, and, and then you sort of took it into blue-chips. So can I actually make you go back a little and explain a little bit about your background in art?
Vladislav Ginzburg 03:30
Sure. And I would love to. Where do I begin? It's, it's funny, because I got into the art industry, and the art business really, in the, in about 2009 and 10, at a time where I really was intending to find a job on Wall Street. I was interested in a career in finance and you know, 2009 not really the best time to do that.
Holly Shannon 04:02
Yeah, everything crashed then.
Vladislav Ginzburg 04:04
That's right. And so coming out of undergrad at that time, that was a murky path. And yet, as much as that was a murky time in global finance, I'm looking southbound in Manhattan at Wall Street, about how to get to finance and that's problematic. But uptown in Manhattan at Sotheby's, they're setting records for most expensive paintings ever sold. So I'd love to say that I'm like, a market making genius. I'm absolutely not. I'm just like, alright, well the six train going northbound is they're setting records and the six train going southbound. People are getting laid off.
Holly Shannon 04:47
You're very observant.
Vladislav Ginzburg 04:48
So I'm gonna take the train North. And you know and I wanted to learn about the art world and I wanted to learn about you know what is going on here that a Warhol just sold for 96 million that cost just over 140 million, and I started working closely with various auction houses just kind of offering work wherever I could offer it, and learn wherre I could learn. And eventually, I started to see art, blue-chip artwork, which I would define as, in a million ways, but as a finance person, I think the trigger point for me was quarter million dollars. Now, if an artist either a piece that is a quarter that is over a quarter million dollars, or an artist, which is very many, that have pieces for sale for under a quarter million dollars, but have made over a quarter million for their highest price. And I was really trying to break down the art market into charts and data at a time where a lot of people in that industry, were telling me you can't do that. And I was saying, Well, yes, you can. Because some of these things, because this is a market. And markets have trends and markets have data, and we, and what's wrong with people enjoying the art for its beauty? But also thinking about these things as investable assets. The deeper I dug, the more that became clear to me the way that auctions work, and how things like minimum guarantees and lending impacts this world liquidity. And the more I learned about it, the more I saw a clear path there. So the traditionally speaking, there are three great reasons why art isn't considered an investable asset. Sure, it's an asset that appreciates, it can appreciate. But it's, but there's, but there are traditionally three reasons why collectors are encouraged not to think of it that way. And the first is lack of liquidity. The second is that these are assets that can be damaged, broken, you know, lost in the fire there, you know, and, and there's some, and they're sort of subjective, there's too high of a subjective value to this stuff. You know what one person says a million dollar painting, somebody else says $100,000 painting, and all the, you know, all these reasons, I felt, maybe were great reasons when they were conceived, like as recently as the 80s, and the 90s, but in, but once I was really like in that business in the early part of the 2010s, like 2011 2012, the world had changed. At that point every major auction house was offering online bidding with a live stream in the auction room. And the, with like, rules and protocols for you know, online bids and in person bids, etc. So if every auction house is offering this, and I don't have to leave New York to bid in an auction in London, Paris, Hong Kong, wherever, then I'm also looking at the calendar and between Sotheby's, Christie's Philips, all of these auction houses, bottoms, and they're all online. Well, you're never more than two weeks away from a major auction. So once the internet had its impact on that business, suddenly, art felt more liquid than housing. And nobody says that housing or real estate isn't an investable asset, because I can buy and truly a lot of the art dealers in New York for buying something during the day sale and flipping it two weeks later, you know, another auction somewhere else. Paddle8 was an online only auction house, which of artworks that popped up overnight, people taking advantage of this like, ability to bid online. So the liquidity factor for me was solved. Number two, you know, it's not that subjective with art, right? When you look at an auction catalog, they give you a low estimate, the high estimate. So the auction house actually is telling you this Picasso, this Warhol, this Herring, this whatever, is is, this is the range for it. And to me, that's all just data, high estimate low estimate where it actually lands. And now I'm sitting around charting, how are certain artworks performing versus their estimates and, you know, and things like that. At the time in 2010, notably, the Warhol Foundation, the Bosque Foundation, the Heron Foundation, they all kind of started throwing their hands up and saying we can't tell real from fake anymore, and a lot of prognosticators, so like they stopped issuing sort of in its, of authenticity. And a lot of prognosticators back then were like, well, that's the end of the art world. You know, nobody can tell you what's real, what's not real, I guess. What does it all mean? And what we observed was the opposite. Which was actually, when there isn't a central authority that manages what's real and not real, well, actually, in that case, in lieu of authenticity, provenance is key. And so now there's a new, there's a new piece of data to look at the value of painting. A Picasso with rock solid, well, Picasso doesn't count, because that's French law, and actually do have authenticity rules. But let's say a Warhol, right, a Warhol with a rock solid provenance is more valuable now than the same Warhol with a murky provenance. And you can start really charting this data and you can start really measuring the impact. And it sort of became, the big auction houses sort of became the arbiters of what is real and not real. Why would Sotheby's Why would Christie's take this painting and an offered for sale, if it wasn't legit? So it actually had this, it also had this like, impact, where auction houses vacuumed up more volume from private dealers. And because it was, it was clear that about the provenance there. And all auction data is published onto, onto databases, so art, things like art net, you can just quickly, with a database, look up all the auction results in the world, because that's all public data. And that was the third thing about why art isn't investable, which is price discovery. You know, on Wall Street, you have lots of great price discovery. In real estate, you have lots of great price discovery, you know what things cost, you compare them. Again, the internet had this huge impact, where suddenly all public, all public auction data could live in a data, database, and more works or going to auction. So the time was, the time was right to get in there and start evaluating artwork as an investable asset. And one of the great successes we had along the way was identifying inefficiencies of like, I'll use Dalí as an example. With Salvidor Dalí, there are arrows that are considered more desirable than others. For example, a Dalí beyond 1960 was considered maybe less desirable. He's older, he's interested in, he's a celebrity now, he's interested in, you know, politics and all these other things, and you know, his hands are a little bit shaky, and the work isn't as strong as like the melting clocks, the 30s. And that's commonly accepted taste, and, in the Dalí market. But the data says otherwise, the data is showing us that the desirable era, the 1930s, are getting so expensive, that the billionaires are pushing out the millionaires into early and late. And you're kind of seeing for every, you know, the more prices peak in 30s, you're seeing prices kind of sneak up in the 60s. And we're asking why is that happening? And the answer was, well, people are selling, like longtime Dalí holders are selling in the 30s. And they're making profits that they're applying towards more affordable works that are still important. And the signal for the collectors as advising was buy low, buy in the 60s, take advantage of a seller in the 60s, that's not looking at the data. And then, after a major sale, where a bunch of things, sell for many millions, the 30s, go find, go find the sellers. And anyway, that was that was the adventure back then. And that was still at the time considered, Well, you shouldn't treat art that way. It shouldn't be a promissory note. That should be about the culture. And it's funny now that NFTs are so front and center, because now that's such a commonly accepted thing, right? That's such a common, and now the big auction houses, they're all involved in NFTs. And it's all about flipping and it's all about, you know, floor price and what's the, you know, and all this stuff, so it's funny to be reliving that experience now with NFTs but have it be so commonly accepted.
Holly Shannon 04:48
Well, history repeats itself, right?
Vladislav Ginzburg 14:59
Sure.
Holly Shannon 15:00
And Web3 really is, not exactly Web3, it's, it still has roots in Web2, in a lot of ways. And what's interesting, what you said about the the millionaires, you know, buying up these other pieces, I think also it's trying to be seen as. So they see these billionaires have these really high ticket ones, and they're taking the fringe the millionaires want to be seen in the same pool as the billionaires leaving by those maybe less attractive, lower price pieces of art, just to say that they swim in the same pool.
Vladislav Ginzburg 15:42
Sure, I think there's definitely some of that in art, I think, you know, what's the real estate equivalent here? You know, you're supposed to buy a less good property in the A+ neighborhood, than the best property in, you know, in a lower tier neighborhood. Because you want you know, you want to be in that zip code, you want to be in that area. And I think we see that in art a little bit as well, for sure. And I think we see that in contemporary art especially.
Holly Shannon 16:11
That's a really good-
Vladislav Ginzburg 16:12
I would say- Thank you. I would say that with NFTs as well. There is a lot of Web2 in Web3. There's also, there's also a lot of Web1 in Web3. I think that Web, Web1 was you know, search and, and email, but at the time, and search and email are the tools of Web1 that persist today. But also Web1, you know, that was a time where, when the world was trying to figure out email, the world was trying to figure out all this stuff. And, you know, we were, it wasn't taken for granted that everybody has a smartphone, and everybody has a computer. In fact, home computer penetration was like the big metric, you know, back when that was, the internet was still a place for like, fringe creators to get up and spin up a website and do interesting things online and build communities. And I think what web two did was, you know, the age of social media, the platform was King, you want to you know, you want to you know, we've kind of centralized all this content onto places like Facebook on places like Instagram, etc. And platform was king in Web two. This might sound counterintuitive, the CEO, the platform, web three, the platform is no longer King. Right? We're back to the creators, we're back to technologists on the fringe, create, experimenting and creating things and building the communities around them. In fact, I think that web three is a great idea. I think it's a great catch all term for all the things going on around right now. But the ultimate endpoint of web three is decentralization. So it's, a counterintuitive, again, like me, the CEO, the platform, it's a bit of a counterintuitive place to be when, if web three is all about decentralization, if web three is all about disintermediating, between creator and collector, then aren't we the platforms effectively, working to disintermediate ourselves out of the equation? And so because there are a lot of platforms here, I tend to think of where we are right now as like Web 2 and 1/2. We're all talking about web three, we all want to get there. But I think we're at web two and a half at the moment.
Holly Shannon 18:52
You know, I think it's funny because I just had this conversation, I don't know if it was on my last podcast, or someone was interviewing me, but I feel that the strengths of web one are going to be pivotal in web three, and that it's going to be a really good time for us to get back to, like, for web one, for me, I think of like, businesses building and being front facing with their customers and building community and connecting and interacting and, and learning about each other. And I feel like in web two, we got away from that, you know, it's kind of like, let me just show you my shiniest moment on Instagram. And it's not real necessarily because we're not really interacting with our community. And I feel like web three, it's almost like this aha, as we come out of the pandemic, like we really need each other holy shit, that's really, you know, just showing everything on Instagram or whatever my flashiest moment, you know, it gets old, you know, and it broke down a lot of people, you know, we have a lot of mental health issues like people just, it's not reality, and you're not really talking with people and you're not interacting with them. And I feel like there's going to be, if we're smart and web three, we're actually going to go back to like, what our grandparents and our parents did, and web one really well. You know, if you look at that ground up, you know, like building the church community or building, you know, clubs and things where people like really feel like they're a part of something, and that they feel like they're really building something together, I feel like there's, we can learn a lot from each other if we sort of almost don't even look at web to so much we look at like what worked then, and not try and reinvent the wheel.
Vladislav Ginzburg 20:56
That is such a great point. That is, that is such a great point. Because like many others in web three, I have, I go home for Thanksgiving, I go home for the holidays. I check in with mom. And you know, what, I get a lot of questions like, I don't understand this web three stuff. And I'm, and I want to be like yes, you do. Yes, you do.
Holly Shannon 21:22
You are the originator. You are the originator, right? Your grassroots little club that you made, right?
Vladislav Ginzburg 21:27
That I'm like, whenever I hear somebody say, Well, my age or older, saying, Well, I don't understand Metamask wallets. And I'm like, Well, yeah, there's a learning curve, for sure. But remember, the 90s the first time you use PayPal, or the first time that you bought on eBay, and you bought a PDP from, from somebody, remember Napster, you know, remember all that stuff? Like, we're just, we're there again, and and you make a really interesting point about the web two fatigue, and the way that we present a glossy or version of ourselves. And so I heard somebody, I was at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in June of 2021. And it was the first time I heard this idea. And it really struck me as you know, as if I need to be validated any further about NFTs. But the, the idea that was shared with me by by a very intelligent gentleman, was that the lives we live on Instagram, and on Facebook, you know, we communicate our needs, you know, on Instagram, on Facebook, I'm Vladislav Ginzburg, you're Holly Shannon, people see us, our information is out there. And so the content that we put out there is a glossy version of ourselves. I venture to say that the version of me on my instagram is a carefully curated and pretty version of my life.
Holly Shannon 21:38
Yeah, we're all guilty of that.
Vladislav Ginzburg 23:01
Of course. And so, for somebody, a marketer, for example, interested in learning about me, would have a pretty, let's go back to the idea of data, right? Noisy data versus clean data. If you look at my Instagram, hoping to get data about me, you to get the basics, right? But you know, you could tell that I'm pretty family oriented, my wife, my kid, and I work in a blockchain company and all that stuff. But I would argue that it's pretty noisy data about what my interests are, and what I, you know, what my day to day is like. Contrast that with my crypto wallet with my NFT wallet that I use to buy things on Blockparty, because I'm a company man, or, you know, or OpenSea or any other platforms. Now, even though my Ethereum wallet is anonymous, it's a 0x string of numbers, nobody looking at my wallet knows that it's my wallet, nor is it or knows anything about me. Right? I bet you that person would have a much cleaner idea of my interests, the types of music, I listen to, the types of art that I like, the types of online communities that belong to, you know, the poll, you know, the poll ops, I've collected where I've been, what kind of events I go to,
Holly Shannon 24:30
That's brilliant. Yeah.
Vladislav Ginzburg 24:32
So you know, I think and so, I would ask one of your listeners, you know, the marketers of your listeners to think about that idea. Would you rather, what data would you rather use to market to me, not knowing anything about my demographics, but knowing what my online habits are, or having all of my demographics, but having a carefully curated picture of my life I want you to see. And that's, uh, I don't have the answer. There, like I say, I mean, I'm sure you have listeners that are much smarter marketers than I, that, you know, could ponder that question and opine on it.
Holly Shannon 25:15
I kind of think that the wallet address is the new digital real estate, you know?
Vladislav Ginzburg 25:23
Well, sure, there's definitely people that are buying up DNS domains to squat on them. That's that's a thing. But, um, but it matters, right? It matters because I think that login with wallet is certainly growing in popularity relative to login with email. You know, it's not mainstream yet. But the numbers are indicative of where we're going. And there's a certain, there's a certain authenticity to it, right? It's not enough in web two, sorry, in web two, you can say, I'm an expert in something. And you can print a business card, and you can post yourself at a bunch of conferences, you know, put expert in whatever in, in your bio. And you can live a life on social media that's not really real. I don't care what anybody in web three puts in their bio or their profile. If somebody comes to me and says, I'm an expert in NFTs, Let's see your wallet.
Holly Shannon 26:35
Interesting. Interesting.
Vladislav Ginzburg 26:39
What NFTs have you bought? What NFTs are you collecting? I don't, I don't need to see a million dollar Bored Ape to feel that somebody is an expert. But if you pop up in my wallet, you'll see NFTs going back to early 2018. You know, so at least when I, at least when I say that I've been in the space for a while I can, I can, I can, I can demonstrate that. But there's a certain, there's a certain truth and transparency.
Holly Shannon 27:02
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Vladislav Ginzburg 27:47
Forgive me for getting into the spirit of Passover a little bit as as a recording. But you know, another thing that I that struck me as interesting when you were speaking about web two and the web two fatigue is the other side of what you were saying. You specifically mentioned about folks in web three, reconnecting with behaviors of web one, even prior to web one, grassroots community building. And with web two, you know, it's like, everybody's coming on to Facebook. Facebook would, if it was a nation state, would be the, you know, I think would be the second most populous country in the world. I love that, generally speaking, very broadly speaking, the United States government has, is not really that afraid of crypto, right? They struggled to understand her for a while, but once they got their heads wrapped around it, and they did, they were just like, alright, well, you know, pay your taxes, don't launder money and have fun, you crazy kids. You know when Facebook announced Libra that's when their ears perked up. That was like oh wait, Facebook's got you know, Facebook accounts become Facebook wallets. Now we've got, now we've got now we've got a challenger. That's what you know, that got shut down pretty quick, if you recall. So Facebook is this kind of like, almost, and I bring up religion, and passover and all, it's kind of it's like Tower of Babel, right? It's like everybody comes to this town square that's happening all at once. And in a lot of ways, web three is rejection of that idea. Right web three is rejection of hey, everybody be on Facebook. And and now it's Hey, everybody, build your own communities around your interests. And it's, and I think it is this almost like human urge to connect with people that are like minded that, that are, that are interested in the same things, and grassroots building community. So I think that's, that's the exciting thing about web three. And then the challenge of web three then is going back to our role as a platform, is well, can we build something that is able to serve various communities for somebody to come take some, take some code and build something around themselves?
Holly Shannon 30:34
That is a challenge, I think you can probably solve for it, though. I, so you bring me to code. So, so let's dig into Blockparty a little bit, if you don't mind, I'm going to switch ever so slightly. So you're a no code platform? Is that what I understand and, you know, when I go on your platform, I feel like it's, it's a variety of things, I feel like it's a place for the artists to almost have a website or their portfolio live, it's a place that they can build on and feature their work kind of like an OpenSea or a Rarible, but they also don't need to have a developer behind them that can be like a one of one artist and just kind of starting out and not feel like they have to have a whole dev team, you know, just to actually be in this whole world. I feel as though from your ticketing background, that you're also creating, or laying the groundwork for artists to be able to create experiences for their communities in the future, that you maybe might be creating that infrastructure, like maybe you did, and then you backed off of it, like you had said earlier, and now maybe you're gonna be thinking about again. So this is kind of the vision I get when I look at Blockparty, but I would like to hear from you like, the inspiration behind it. What you think it offers artists, because, um, you know, that's just like my vision when I look at it.
Vladislav Ginzburg 32:14
You're very astute, you're picking up everything we're putting down. The ticketing days are interesting, because we, it was my intention to maintain the brand, I think we built a great brand. And I think we built a lot of great roots in the industry. I think the folks that we work with recognize us for being around early. And so we wanted to maintain continuity with the Blockparty brands. But we did sunset ticketing operations towards the end of 2019. And I began rebuilding the platform to serve creators. I think I did that for a lot of reasons. But one of the things I learned from a ticketing space is in 2018 we are putting NFTs in the hands of music fans, not crypto enthusiasts, not, you know, technologists, people trying to go see a concert. And that was a really great lesson. And, you know, you want to maintain your passion. As an entrepreneur, you want to maintain the passion for what we're building and what the value is while also learning to meet the customer where they are. And when, the best example I can provide is standing at the gate of a music festival that Block party got the ticket, and being you know, my heart being full, that 5000 fans are about to come into this venue with NFT tickets. We did it. Holly, these fans were pissed. They were pissed, because they, nobody understood what a gas fee was. And, you know, we wanted to have one ticket in one wallet, because, one token in one wallet. And music fans buy tickets in pairs and, or fours or sixes and they've come with their friends and somebody buys the four tickets and pays for them, the friends pay them back on Venmo and they like, share the tickets. And they're like, wait a minute, I bought four tickets, but I haven't, but it's one wallet one ticket, and why do I have to pay this gas fee every time I send money, send a token to somebody else. And at the gate, when we're scanning the QR codes, we're waiting for Etherium confirmations and now the line is backed up forever because that's a slow process, and venues aren't, and music festivals especially aren't known for that, like, their superior internet connectivity. And so,
Holly Shannon 35:06
Perhaps bathrooms have that long line as well.
Vladislav Ginzburg 35:09
Oh my gosh, it was, it was Miami in September of 2018. So you better believe how hot it was and humid. And so I'm like doing cartwheels. I'm like NFTs! And people are like, can I just please get to the venue? I'm gonna miss the headliner. And, and so if, I believe very strongly that NFTs are the mass adoption event of cryptocurrency and blockchain. And that's a great, beautiful thing to say, that sounds great, right? Back in the days when it was mining and Bitcoin and this was still like a bridge too far from the mainstream, NFTs are an opportunity for the musicians, the artists, the creators of culture, to leverage the blockchain to their audiences in their communities. It's a beautiful thing, it sounds really nice to say that NFTs are the mass adoption of blockchain. But then you got to do it. And then, and if you're going to do it, you've got to meet the customer where they are. And the customer does not know what a gas fee is The customer is, there's a learning curve. And you know, you lose a lot of, you lose a lot of folks when you start saying things like decentralization, stuff like that, even though it's incredibly important. So when, when we set out to rebuild block party into NFT platform creators, we said to ourselves, okay, we're going to make this no code, we're going to make this email login, we're going to enable users to pay with credit card and with crypto, and everybody gets a Blockparty account. And then once you buy something, go ahead and connect your Metamask if you have one, go ahead and connect your decentralized wallet if you have one, withdraw your, with NFT. And the idea was to make it as user friendly as humanly possible, while still maintaining important elements of web three. And I think that what a lot of our perspective there, the no code, is informed by a ticketing experience, because this is for a, this is for a mass adoption event. What we've learned since I would say, and what's really driving our ethos now, and you pointed it out very well, this is a place where an artist or creator can come and like set up their website and start running their NFT commerce is, we realized that we were actually facing a very different challenge than making this easy. What we realized was, this may sound kind of dumb, but sometimes, you know, the dumbest things are the most profound, creators are really effing creative. And for the most part, the questions we're answering aren't How do I make this easier to purchase for my fans? The questions we're answering is, here's my creative vision. How can the blockchain, How can NFTs accommodate it? So today,
Holly Shannon 35:45
Much deeper, they were going much deeper with you than you were giving them credit for.
Vladislav Ginzburg 38:38
Yeah, we're, we were thinking about how to make this easy for everyone, and we were surprised, pleasantly surprised, I can say I'm very pleasantly surprised by this. The two things that we're getting from creators are not make this easier for my customers. The two things we're getting from creators, this makes, one thing makes me happy, one thing makes me like really happy. The thing that makes me happy is creators are constantly asking us to push and innovate with them. This is my art. This is my music. This is my vision, can you accommodate? They don't want to put it into a five, sorry. Many are perfectly happy to put it onto a JPEG or to put it onto an mp4, or to put it in a, in a, in a file and put it on chain. But very many are confined by that and they want to push it further. And their desire to push further has caused us to meet them where they are and us to innovate alongside with some of these very innovative creators. So that makes me happy. We get to innovate. The thing that makes me happier: Very many artists are skipping right past make it easy to purchase and heading toward they're, they are learning and understanding blockchain very quickly and the artist that we speak to that doesn't get it, six months later is demanding their own smart contract. They're doing, they're doing the homework and the learning curve is not as steep as we anticipated, and at the end of 2019. So Blockparty is thinking about things a little bit differently. in 2022. We're not thinking about how do we make this so easy any web to user can use it, although we still, I think, carry that ethos, right? We don't want to make it so complex that people don't know how to buy stuff. But, are, the challenges we choose to face are what can we learn by CO creating with the most innovative creators out there? And then how can we take those learnings and apply that IP to a greater market of creators that maybe aren't like thinking, aren't like creative coders, aren't thinking about pushing the boundaries, but are themselves creators, and now they have more robust tools. Since we learned from the innovators now we can provide more robust tooling to to a greater sect of artists. And it's led to some innovations that I'm really proud of. Number one, our physical digital app, right? We work with a lot of painters, photographers, and we celebrate that Digitally Native artists are the pioneers of this space and the first big winners. And by the way, Holly, you asked me about my art background- I can tell you that I've been involved with a lot of high profile sales of Dalí works and, you know, Andy Warhols, and I keep using these two artists as my examples because they're very relevant in the NFT space. Both Salvidor Dalí and Andy Warhol were experimenting with digital art later on in their careers. And sure, that stuff is on display at the museum retrospective of their careers. But it's not traditionally very expensive, relative to the other works, it's fact really considered non collectible. Because how do you package it? And so suddenly you have these things, but Digitally Native artists are being celebrated. And that was the first wave. So we talked to a lot of artists that are interested in making NFTs but they're painters, their vocation is painting, their vocation is sculpture, their vocation is photography. And we are not, we are not, we're not saying that you must be suddenly a digital artist to succeed NFTs. We're saying? Why not both? Why not, why not the painter is explore the digital side? And so so we've met so many of these creators, and we ended up with a mobile app that is able to tie a physical object to a NFT in a meaningful way, right? Because I think a lot of, you see some experimentations with putting QR codes on a physical object, or putting NFC chip on a physical object, or trying to meaningfully tied together. Well, we decided to use AR and image recognition. So we worked with a partner that's a specialist in image recognition. And now when a creator wants to mint NFT, but have it be tied to, let's say, their painting, so like there's the NFT might be a digital animation of the subject of a painting, they'll go and build, set up the NFT on Blockparty site, and upload the media, upload all the metadata, and then they can click Attach physical objects, that'll kick them over to our app, which will use the camera of your phone to scan the surface of the painting. And much like when you set up your iPhone, it will scan your face for password, and it'll take that scan, and it'll break it down into code that will hash that right into, the metadata of the NFT. And so now these things are tied together. So now maybe I buy your, maybe Holly, you're the painter, I buy your NFT, and you shoot me the painting, I can now take the app and scan the painting, and I'll get a message that yes, this is in fact the same painting that is tied to the NFT. And so now in the secondary market,
Holly Shannon 44:43
There's a provenance, right?
Vladislav Ginzburg 44:45
There's a provenance where our provenance thinkers are, by the way, our head of products, our Senior Vice President at Blockparty and our Head of Product Jacqueline O'Neill, this is really her pet project before Blockparty, she an artist in her own right, a very talented painter in her own right, she was she founded something called the Blockchain Art Collective before, back in 2017. And so she was working on how to meaningfully tie physical artwork to the, to the digital space, way before Blockparty. So this app is not, you know, this app is really a bringing to life of her passion. And by the way, before she joined Blockparty, I was so struck by her art, I am a collector, so I bought, my wife and I commissioned a painting of hers. And she is a mixed media artist, right? She's a painter, she's a photographer, and she is somebody that is really taking advantage of her own creations. So she's making these digital artworks that are tag-alongs to her paintings, and they're really supposed to be one artwork together. And this is you know, like I said, this is a this innovation is us meeting the creators where they are and trying to serve their needs. And I think that's, that's why you so profoundly hit the nail on the head, with what we hope to be, right? We hope to be a place where creators can set up their website, their storefront, and allow their creativity to flow into the web three space.
Holly Shannon 46:27
This conversation is jam packed and will continue as part two, so please subscribe and share this now so we continue this class together.