When an NFT collection commemorating the handover of Hong Kong from the U.K. to China generated $260,000 in gross sales, Artifact Labs, the startup that launched the gathering, noticed the long-term potential of tokenizing historic artifacts and making them immutable and accessible to the general public.
Artifact was born out of South China Morning Submit, Hong Kong’s flagship English newspaper bought by Alibaba for $262 million again in 2015. Its first venture comprised non-fungible token versions of SCMP’s front pages from 1997, the yr of Hong Kong’s handover, with every merchandise’s rarity degree decided by the importance of a sure day’s occasions.
The NFT issuer has launched into an impartial journey since spinning out of the parent firm last year. Artifact introduced as we speak that it has raised its first outdoors funding of $3.25 million led by Hong Kong-based hedge fund supervisor Blue Pool Capital with the prolific web3 funding agency Animoca Ventures collaborating.
From a strategic viewpoint, “Animoca is clearly closely invested in web3 and believes that NFTs and possession of digital property is the long run, so we’re filling a really good a part of that round collectibles,” the corporate’s CEO Philip Pon advised TechCrunch in an interview.
SCMP stays a “giant” shareholder following the financing spherical, mentioned Pon.
Technical enhance
Artifact works with a handful of third-party companions to energy its NFT transactions. Its 1997 assortment was minted — the method of making a token on the blockchain — on Move utilizing Blocto wallets, however it’s additionally capable of mint NFTs throughout different chains together with Ethereum, Polygon and BSC.
As well as, the corporate has obtained grants from Dapper Labs, the creator of the favored NFT collection NBA Prime Shot, and Filecoin, a decentralized storage resolution.
The startup is boosting its inner technical stack as nicely. It just lately purchased the supply code of Refinable, an NFT infrastructure supplier, for an undisclosed quantity. The acquisition, in accordance with an announcement, would permit Artifact to develop a decentralized NFT market. The corporate will even spend the seed funding on including technical headcount.
Regardless of taking place {the marketplace} path, Artifact doesn’t see itself as a challenger to Opensea as its focus is extra on conventional establishments. “We’re constructing a market for museums and cultural establishments. While we admire OpenSea, we’re in all probability a bit extra area of interest,” mentioned Pon.
Within the nascent crypto business the place the basic items are nonetheless taking type, builders and initiatives are actively improving the sector. Within the space of on-chain preservation work, Artifact outlined a brand new metadata normal in a proposal to Ethereum.
“Artifact Labs is taking a management function on this area, by way of its modern integration of blockchain expertise, and their newly proposed EIP-6596, which we imagine shall be an necessary normal for museums and custodians of tradition going ahead,” mentioned James Ho, head of Animoca Ventures.
Hong Kong as house
Artifact is geographically positioned to faucet a doubtlessly giant pool of collectors. Due to its favorable tax system, Hong Kong has lengthy been the Asian hub for artwork dealing. In 2020, the town overtook London because the second-largest artwork public sale market behind New York.
It comes as no shock that Artifact plans to work with different forms of cultural establishments past its genesis of tokenizing newspapers. To date it’s struck partnerships with RMS Titanic Inc, the corporate granted the rights to salvage the wrecked ocean liner; Hong Kong’s well-liked home-grown model G.O.D.; and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, which is collectively designing a metaverse-style digital live performance with Artifact.
The corporate can be in confidential talks with a number of main museums in Hong Kong and different elements of Asia to assist create on-chain variations of their collections. Lengthy-running multinationals are additionally its goal purchasers.
So far, Artifact boasts round 17,000 members in its Discord neighborhood. It monetizes by charging venture charges from its institutional and IP companions and can discover a revenue-sharing mannequin with its purchasers in future NFT gross sales, in accordance with Pon.
The timing appears ripe for Artifact and different web3 companies in Hong Kong. Town just lately announced plans to legalize crypto retail buying and selling over licensed exchanges, offering the required infrastructure for on a regular basis shoppers to purchase and promote digital property.
The corporate has a staff of round 16 workers largely primarily based out of Hong Kong. Its geographic enlargement plan will observe the cultural facilities of the world, with main museum hubs like New York, London and Paris being the probably subsequent stops, the CEO mentioned.
