Q1

NFT Labs: Hello, Qinwen! Can you briefly introduce yourself to the friends of NFT Labs? In addition, before entering the blockchain industry, what experience did you have, and what made you enter this industry?

Qinwen: I am a long-term builder of technology and art ecology; I have co-produced the world's first encrypted art exhibition "Virtual Habitat" held in UCCA Beijing this year with BCA, and I am also an invited lecturer and producer of Christie's Hong Kong and London NFT 101 courses; An early investor in technology and art companies including SuperRare, Artory and YellowHeart; a collection of video and technology art NFT works by artists such as Candida Höfer, Damien Hirst, and Timo Helgert. This year, I was honored to be included in the Forbes China 30 Under 30 list. This time I received an invitation from Sotheby's London to participate as a collector and curator in the special NFT auction of "NATIVELY DIGITAL 1.2" to pay tribute to the promoters and builders of the NFT field.

I started to learn painting when I was 4 years old, and now I have published many publications, such as the Illustrated French series, and all the peripheral designs of Chairman Wang Shi’s Vanke Deep Submersible Racing Boat were all designed and produced by me in 16-17. Before entering the industry, I worked in venture capital in Israel after graduation, mainly investing in overseas hard-core technologies. Started to contact blockchain in 2017. And some of my friends at that time were old people in the Ethereum community. It was by this coincidence that I learned about the blockchain. Later, in 2019, I worked with Xiaojie to create Polkaworld, which is the largest Chinese community of Polkadot, and then joined the Web3 Foundation.

Q2

NFT Labs: As a "collector" or "investor", do you have any investment logic and strategies for evaluating an NFT project?

Qinwen: First, from the perspective of a creator, the secondary sale mechanism brought about by WEB 3.0 and the blockchain can really bring greater profits to creators and give creators more incentives. So I think if there is any project, it is better to liberate the creators. It is a cool and artistic tool, and it is very attractive.

Second, for NFT platforms, not all of them require strong underlying technology development, so he may focus more on his own industry. Resources in the industry and understanding of the industry are very important. It requires a strong production ability and the infectious ability of storytelling, that is, the ability to create beauty, spread beauty and lead style.

Third, encryption native is also important. For example, the community has a lot of native ideas, can these new opportunities be found in the Metaverse? Social, avatar, payment, experience, game, etc.

The above is my investment logic in evaluating NFT projects. When it comes to buying NFT artwork, I don't pay too much attention to the short-term nature of the hype. It can be seen from the two works I pushed to Sotheby's this time. As a collector, I think the most important thing about art is whether it is a good work of art.

Q3

NFT Labs: Nowadays, many NFT items that are out of the circle and have super high prices are from celebrities or artists (such as Beeple) who have already accumulated some fame. So can NFT bring dividends to long-tail artists?

Qinwen: NFT brings great opportunities to digital artists. The limited development of many digital artists actually stems from several reasons. The first one is what we call the traditional art market, which has its own circle. For example, are you in the university system, the gallery system, or the auction house system? These systems and gameplay are more inclined to artists who create in traditional media, such as oil painting or sculpture. When emerging digital artists are produced, many of them are not in the original system, because they may be considered designers or 3D animators, and then there is no good delivery and display channel for product delivery. So they often can only do some public projects such as real estate. The arrival of NFT actually solves several core problems:

First, the rights of digital artworks are confirmed. Because we all know that you can't see or touch digital things. Or if I buy something, I will give you a USB flash drive, and the buyer is also very insecure, right?

Second, it brings in a new kind of economic value, that is, the economic value of the Internet. In the case of confirmation of rights, there are some supporters such as those native to the Internet (encryption) to recognize, which is very important for the support of these artists of. Then, it brings in a share of the secondary revenue. From the perspective of history, it may be true that from the Renaissance to the present, the artist has the largest proportion of the share. Such a position means that he will have his own control. Because in cooperation with traditional galleries, it is 50% of the share. The current platform resale may be a 10% share, which means that the artist has the autonomy to create his own artwork.

Third, digitization is the trend of future development. We talk about heroes in troubled times, for example, in the Renaissance era, people like Leonardo Da Vinci emerged; for example, Rembrandt, and his painting method also represents everyone's expression technique of light in traditional oil painting techniques. Of course, in the current era of science and technology, contemporary art is to record many things that happen in the contemporary world. In fact, what happens in the contemporary world is technology. There are works such as technological media and technological themes. These contemporary artists have the opportunity to have historical memories , to write the history of art himself. So this is a great opportunity, because if you do traditional oil painting, it may be difficult for you to become the Picasso of that era. But in the field of digital art, these artists have the opportunity to become the Picasso and Da Vinci of this era.

Fourth, the so-called freedom of creation. For traditional works, it may be limited by your geographical space-time, for example, you can only be a 2D plane. But in our digital art works, you can have 3D, music, and then you can cut a few screen scenes to enter the sci-fi atmosphere, and then you can watch the generation of art works online. This is freedom in another sense. Art is not only about investment, but also about the freedom of creation and artistic expression and the opportunity to leave a name in history.

From these perspectives, NFT is a new world that provides opportunities for creative people to create their own styles and trends.

Q4

NFT Labs: To maintain the long-term advantages of NFT projects, content creation capabilities and IP operation capabilities are required. What do you think are the advantages of the Crypto-native team?

Qinwen: I think whether it is a traditional team or an encrypted native, the prerequisite for success is a mature and high-quality team that is very mature, has ambitions and goals, and the key is to have its own competitive advantage. I've had contact with teams from both worlds. Now there are many big IP teams like Marvel. If he enters this circle, he can quickly gain an advantage. Similarly, an encryption-native team like Lava Labs has led a new trend and created its own gameplay. So I think the problem itself is not that doing traditional things will definitely fail, or that it will definitely succeed. The key to both is that he must have his own style and he is very professional.

The biggest advantage of encryption native is its community. The token holder’s emotion for art comes from greed, which will form a large transaction volume. Another advantage is that he has no burden, he can do these creations without burden, because the tradition will be limited in the traditional framework, and it is difficult to obtain the transaction volume brought by the currency holders.

Q5

NFT Labs: Next, let's discuss the possibility of art finance. What is the financialization of NFT, that is, how can we reach the financialization stage of NFT?

Qinwen: Compliance is an essential stage of NFT financialization. Because there are a lot of hype and speculation in NFT, regulatory constraints are required. For example, in the past, the cultural property rights exchange (referred to as the cultural exchange) would hype a Chinese painting to hundreds of millions without supervision, but there was no one to take it, and art speculation became popular. So compliance regulation is very important. For example, there is a company in New York called Masterwork, which combines fine art’s secondary market transactions with compliance. Instead of issuing tokens, it buys some of the most popular blue-chip and well-known artists’ paintings, and then securitizes them through art Improve mobility.

Art finance actually has other application scenarios. The scene of art finance is realized under the dual combination of "NFT + DeFi (decentralized finance)", while realizing the democratization of a new generation of art collection consumption. "Art finance" simply means financial services in the art market, including art advances, mortgage financing, art funds, and public institution operations and financing. Private banks provide art mortgage financing services as a "courtesy service" to top clients. Although this business has maintained a growth momentum, it has not blown out. The key reason is that the valuation of the art market is too opaque and unpredictable, and the liquidity is low. "Crypto art" has no similar restrictions, and the transaction history on the data chain of the work is clearly visible. Compared with traditional art online (split) transactions, this method has higher liquidity. The infrastructure of decentralized finance DeFi provides NFT artworks provide financial derivative services such as mortgage lending, which provides the soil for the outbreak. There is also the third-party guarantee system in art auctions, which are all considered part of art finance.

Q6

NFT Labs: What do you think of the fragmentation of NFT, and whether it can effectively solve the liquidity problem of NFT?

Qinwen: Fluidity, I think it is put in a context. First of all, the premise is that it belongs to an asset class before discussing liquidity, and it needs to be discussed in a framework and environment with all consensus and compliance. Traditionally, there are alternative investments (that is, alternative investments), and non-standard assets such as diamonds, antique cars, and famous paintings. To judge whether it is a good asset or not, how to evaluate a good asset is very important. In the same way, for NFT assets, evaluation and valuation are crucial in solving NFT liquidity.

Q7

NFT Labs: At present, digital artworks are mostly traded at low frequency, and NFT artworks generally have the problem of lack of liquidity. What impact do you think this will have on the trading platform?

Qinwen: There are already many assumptions on this question, and everyone will always complain about the excessively high Gas Fee in NFT transactions. But the auction commission of traditional auction houses is at least 25%, and it is stepped. In addition, there are customs clearance fees and shipping fees. Gas Fee is equivalent to your customs clearance and transportation fee. Compared with it, Gas Fee is nothing to mention.

Originally, works of art are non-standard assets, so they are not high-frequency trading assets. I am an early investor of SuperRare, and I am very optimistic about SuperRare, which focuses on encrypted art transactions, focuses on cultivating mining artists and promoting their works. SuperRare is different from OpenSea, OpenSea is a platform of all categories. So if you are a trader, you should go to OpenSea. If you want to discover good artists and outstanding works, you can go to SuperRare. In Asia, it must be BCA (MetaOpus).

Q8

NFT Labs: What other areas of NFT will have investment opportunities in the future? Such as Gamefi, Metaverse, NFT trading platform, encrypted art collection, NFT+DeFi, etc. What kind of NFT do you think can stand out?

Qinwen: They are all opportunities, because the industry is still early, and these are considered hot spots in the industry. But if you really look at it in the long run of history, which fields can really be recorded in the annals of history to change the world, I think it is the Metaverse. But the word metaverse is too big, and you still have to land in many links in the middle.

In addition to economic value, whether it can bring pleasure to users is also very important. For example, can GameFi or encrypted art collections bring pleasure? The beauty of art or the pleasure that art brings him is a great thing, even if it doesn't necessarily make money. Because everything is for investment to make money, then this period of life is not free.

Q9

NFT Labs: Finally, can you share your views on the entire industry? Everyone is making predictions at the end of the year. What do you think will be the trend in 2021?

Qinwen: From an ecological point of view, Polkadot has just announced the auction, which means the arrival of a cross-chain ecology, and Polkadot will form a stronger ecology since then, which is very good for the development of the industry.

From a macro policy point of view, the epidemic has accelerated the development and promotion of the virtual world, and more talents and better applications have emerged in the encryption ecosystem. Also, the astonishing transaction price of Beeple's paintings has made more people recognize the encryption industry, so I feel very confident about the development of the industry. Of course, my confidence is in the overseas market.

In terms of digital art, NFT itself is more about liberating the creator economy, bringing all kinds of ideas, and at the same time bringing more assets outside the chain, bringing many people outside the circle into the circle, and will generate a lot of Applications will produce many new creations. In fact, NFT is not just encryption art, but also confirms the rights of digital assets in the virtual world.

Q10

NFT Labs: Can you introduce Sotheby's auction?

QinwenNFT Labs provides relevant information only and does not constitute any investment advice.

NFT Labs provides relevant information only and does not constitute any investment advice.