NFT Studio AMA: Interactive 3D NFT’s on the Internet computer
Dec 2nd, we invited Lukas Merville, the founder of NFT Studio based in Poland, to do an AMA in the ICP League community. NFT Studio allows users to Mint, Buy, Sell and Stake 3DWASM NFTs on the Internet Computer — Revolutionary. NFT Studio describe themselves as a next generation NFT platform.
Q:
To begin with, Lukas please give us an introduction of your background? What brought you into the crypto and what have you done before?
A:
Well, first of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your audience. It is an honor for me to be here today. I graduated in Art History, Philosophy of Arts and Literature. My background is very much in the Arts. After my studies, I flew to Japan to complete an internship at Shizuoka’s CCC, Center for Creative Communications, alongside the curator Pamela Jewel. I learned a lot!
Then after all this, I enrolled at Stanford’s professional school (Computer Sciences and IT) and that is when I started coding seriously. Before going to Stanford thought I was already building websites and fiddling with code :) My father bought me my first computer when I was 10, so coding has always been a part of my life. So this is my educational background in a nutshell.
My first contact with Crypto was in 2017. A very good friend of mine was the owner of a Bitcoin ATM network and everyday I used to go to his office and learn about Bitcoin and Crypto. It was great! Lots of conversations that completely changed the course of my life and my vision of our financial system. I then started using crypto, trading, and absorbing everything I could.
I lived in Japan and South Korea as a digital nomad for a few years. I probably spent 10 years outside of my home Country, Canada. In Japan and South Korea, I was part of small crypto teams and this is where I learned my trade.
Q:
Okay, can you tell us about your team? How many people are there? What is the background of your team?
A:
At first NFT Studio was a one-man operation. Most of what you see on the website, I did myself, without funding, out of pure love for the community and with the intent to push the IC to its limits. Then, as NFT Studio started getting recognized within the IC community and beyond, the amount of work to be done just exploded, and I could not handle everything on my own any longer. I absolutely had to hire.
My first hire was Mato, our current community manager. He is doing an incredible job and was very supportive during a time that was very tough for me, physically and emotionally. Homer Shillson is an advisor that came onboard roughly at the same time. Then we have Anna, our project manager and Shohag, my personal assistant. Quint and sidc0des are two devs who greatly help ramp up our ability to execute and deliver. And that’s it! We are a small team, but we have to bear in mind that our project is only five months old.
Q:
Tell us a little bit about your products, what products do you have right now? What can NFT Studio do?
A:
NFT Studio is a combination of modules. We love the modular approach. First we have a minting engine, which allows users and creators to mint 3D objects, experiences, games, movies and more. Then you have the marketplace, where users can buy and sell items. We also have creator tools (voxelizer, pixelizer, GNRTV) that allow artists to design pixel and voxel based NFTs. We have a gallery curated by our team and finally bridging and staking tools.
Q:
Can you tell us more about what 3D WASM NFT is and how you implemented 3D WASM NFT?
A:
As you know I am a Rust front-end developer and my favorite Rust library has to be Yew.rs, which allows users to build nice front-ends in Rust and to compile them in Web Assembly. The idea of 3DWASM came to me as I was playing around with WebGL and Threejs, and seeing what could be done with those libraries in the context of Yew.rs.
I asked myself: wouldn’t it be cool if I could build 3D objects like this, compile everything down to web assembly, and then mint the .wasm file as an NFT?
Next thing you know, I am making a simple 3D animation using threejs and Yew. I compile to web assembly, not really expecting this to work at all.
Then using the basic build of the minting engine I had at the time, I create an NFT out of that .wasm file. Surprisingly and unexpectedly, it worked. The idea of 3DWASM NFT’s was born on that day.
Q:
Toniq Labs has been running for some time with their NFT trading marketplace Entrepot, what is the difference between NFT Studio and Entrepot? What are the advantages? How do you go about capturing the market, or do you combine it with Entrepot to grow together?
A:
A lot of people have been comparing our upcoming marketplace with Entrepot, wondering which one is the best for users. My view is that Entrepot and NFT Studio, while they compete with each other since they are both trying to get IC Market share, ultimately complement each other.
They complement each other because what we are doing is so incredibly different. Entrepot.app offers a lot of variety and collections which you will not find on NFT Studio. And vice-versa: there are collections exclusive to NFT Studio that you will not find on Entrepot.app.
There is an issue though regarding standards. All of our work is based on the Departure Labs token standard, which is, to my knowledge, not supported by Entrepot.app. So this will create interoperability and composability issues between the two platforms.
We intend to enter into a productive dialogue with Entrepot.app in order to solve these compatibility issues. If we do this everyone wins :)
Q:
What is the difference between 3D WASM NFT? What features and benefits will it bring to NFT? How will this differ from NFT on Ethereum?
A:
We believe that 3DWASM NFT’s create a completely new paradigm. 3DWASM NFT’s allow users to mint 3D Objects, experiences, entire games on chain, and to serve entire movies from Canisters.
Things like these are just impossible to accomplish on current Blockchain networks and the Internet Computer is the only platform able to pull it off.
3DWASM NFT’s will greatly benefit Gaming studios, film studios, artists and teams who are looking for an edge in the highly competitive world of blockchain projects.
Q:
In terms of gaming and the marketplace you are going to launch this week, can you show them to us? The shooting games look similar to Star Atlas, can you describe their differences?
A:
Yes, absolutely. The game is a simple shooting game that is very reminiscent of 90’s top down arcade shooting games, which we love! The only difference here, and what sets it apart from games such as star atlas, is the fact that ships and weapons can be bought and brought into this 2D world — the experience is similar to the one provided by a game such as R Type Final 2, with its various ships that can be unlocked and customized, then used in the context of the game.
The marketplace, which we are polishing right now, allows users to buy and sell NFT’s using a very simple interface. It is built in React, with a little bit of Fomantic UI injected :) Users purchase NFTs using their Plug wallet, with ICP.
Within the marketplace, the previews are interactive and in 3D, in sharp contrast with platforms such as Rarible or Open Sea, where the previews are either static, or in the form of gif files of mp4 files.
Q:
The P2E mechanism, how do players play and earn in the shooting game?
A:
The shooting game is actually not a play to earn game. We do love play to earn game mechanics, and P2E will play a huge role moving forward in gaming. However for our first game we wanted to do something different. The shooting game unlocks through scoring thresholds various ships and weapons which can be used in the game. These weapons and ships will be found on our marketplace since players will be able to transfer them out, and do things like transfer them to their friends, so they can try them out in the game themselves.
Q:
What’s NFT Studio’s revenue, other than from games? Through NFT and revenue from marketplace transaction fees? What is your fee and marketing strategy like?
As you can see from the image below, NFT Studio currently has 5 lines of business, and gaming is only one of them. NFT Studio is currently a profitable business.
Our revenue comes from game sales and NFT sales associated with these games, but also comes from minting engine fees, marketplace fees, advisory fees, and service provision fees.
Each and every business line has its own set of customers.
In terms of pricing, we want to do the exact opposite of what is happening on Ethereum, where users are priced out of transactions. Priced out means that the cost of doing anything on Ethereum is so high, that users would rather not do anything at all! Thanks to our pricing, we want to build an inclusive platform, and we want to bring our products and services within reach of everyone :)
Our marketing strategy so far has been quite simple. Simple messaging on our social media channels. We have not initiated any large scale marketing campaigns, although we believe this is something we will have to do to promote new products and services.
Q:
Is there a token in NFT Studio’s system design, if so, what is the token’s utility?
A:
We absolutely have plans for a token. However, given the Internet Computer’s infrastructure, we will have to wait. Currently, there is no way to mint tokens and to swap them. These critical components of the ecosystem need to be built. I believe the fleek team is working on a minting and swap solution for the IC (Sonic).
Our token will grant governance powers to holders. Holders will be able to submit proposals and to vote.
Q:
A question about gaming, usually the life cycle of the games are very short, generally a few months to a year or two, on chain gamings may come across with the issue as well, how do you see this problem, how do you solve it, to keep players and community positive and have passion with the on chain games?
A:
I think the key to this is user generated content. Let players generate the items that are used in the game, vote and decide the general direction of the game.User generated content brings in an element of ownership which is critical for adoption and longevity.
In the future, we would like to create a stardew valley type of game, in which all items would be NFTs, and in which the storyline would be a creation of the community.
Q:
What’s your roadmap? Do you have any specific experience on developing on IC to show us?
A:
Our roadmap for Q4 2021 and Q1 2022 is quite simple actually! In Q4 2021, we have to deliver and push out our marketplace and our minting engine. These two elements are hugely important parts of our roadmap, since they will generate revenue for our treasury and will allow us to secure a future thanks to sustainable revenue.
In Q1 2022, we plan to launch our bridges to Ethereum, Algorand and Arweave.
In Q1 2022, but ultimately this will depend on the state of the IC infrastructure, we would like to issue a governance token, which will be airdropped to members of our community.
So these are our plans for Q4 2021 and Q1 2022.
Q:
The previous NFT Studio’s 500 NFT airdrop has gained a lot of attention in the community, will there be any future use for these early NFTs? What incentive program does NFT Studio have for early adopters?
We were very happy with the way this airdrop was conducted. As announced in our discord channel, the holders of those 500 NFT’s will be able to claim 3 more NFT’s. This NFT which was airdropped, in combination with the 3 NFT’s that can be claimed, forms a tiny 4 part collection entitled “incipit”.
Our token economic plan allocates a certain percentage of the total token supply to our early adopters. So early adopters should definitely expect to be airdropped tokens when we finally get around to issuing the token on the IC!
Q:
What kind of promotion activities will be followed?
A:
Our priorities right now are: marketplace, minting engine, publish our game, publish collections, staking, Token… perhaps in 2022 we will work on game creation tools.
The kind of things we want users to do with NFT’s: Staking, location-based staking (yield depends on your geographical situation), using NFT’s as collateral for loans in crypto or fiat, etc.
Q:
What do you think NFT Studio ha which we cannot find in Toniq/Entrepot, please?
A:
Toniq Labs/Entrepot have a lot of variety and exclusive collections and we have the same, exclusive collections which you will not see elsewhere.
Q:
What commission will be your marketplace?
A:
The marketplace will only charge a minting fee. That is the only fee users will have to pay.
Q:
Any grants from Dfinity？
A:
We received 5K from Dfinity.
Q:
Where can we find the materials presented? Is there any website to follow up?
A:
Nftstudio.biz. We will update the website with these materials today.
Q:
How many developers are in your team?
A:
We are 3 devs: myself (frontend Rust), Sidc0des (motoko and react), Quint (Motoko)
Q:
Does the creator’s NFT sales need the permission of the team to be put into the market? Do you have any bold ideas, such as more openness and freedom?
A:
At the beginning, yes, users will need permission to put NFT’s on the marketplace. Because we want to avoid a situation like rarible, where some users just mint bitcoin logos or images like this, and spam the marketplace.
Website: https://icpleague.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/TUvFXfK9Dv
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/qNiiCG5GAB9mZjc1
