1st online tokenized conference to relaunch the cultural and creative industries via blockchain technology

Originally written by Covadonga Fernandez

Due to the pandemic, a large part of the value chain of the cultural and creative industries such as the organization of live events broke. Blockchain technology is able to help to transform this industry that employs nearly 30 million people worldwide, as it is already happening in different sectors.

For that matter, the first edition of “Journalism, Communication, Cultural and Creative Industries in Blockchain Forum” took place. This was the first tokenized online conference event. It had a two-fold objective: On the one hand, addressing the way blockchain is able to help restarting the cultural and creative industries in a pandemic and post-pandemic scenario. On the other hand, to show how tokenization enabled by blockchain technology can become a promising opportunity to experience new business models and opportunities.

Cultural and Creative Industries

The #ForoPICBlockchain is the start of a new era in producing creative events, both in physical and online format. An era in which the value contributed by any creator, organizer, panelist or participant in the event is directly rewarded according to the income obtained from production. All this made in an automated and decentralised manner, as the value-flow of the entire production’s lifecycle is governed by smart contracts.

Tokenization of assets and the necessary crypto-culturalization of the middle class.

The three-hour event was organised by Observatorio Blockchain and Staxe via its webapp, it was divided into five blocks, and twenty specialists in the field participated on it. The first block: “Blockchain, journalism, algorithms and social media” counted with the participation of José María Herranz, Professor of Journalism at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Castilla La Mancha; Gorka Palazio, Professor of Journalism at the University of the Basque Country; Fernando Quirós, journalist at Cointelegraph, and Julián Rendón, director of the blockchain newspaper Post2020.

New cultural and social challenges

The second block, “How to make communication and marketing more transparent and efficient with blockchain” was chaired by Pavel Sidorenko, Professor at the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the Francisco de Vitoria University; Leandro Reta Sabio, founder of FutreCryptoMedia; Daniel Ramirez- Escudero Susaeta, chief editor of BeinCrypto in Spanish and Global assistant editor; and José Luis Casado, CEO of Adwatch.

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“New cultural challenges, social and environmental causes”, the title of the third block, counted with Monste Guardia, General Director of Alastria; Belén Suárez, Team leader Blockhub; Bernardo Magnani, co-founder of Lastbit; and Olga Broto, director of Bluered.

In order to talk about “Tokenization: reinventing the future of cultural and creative industries” Miguel Caballero, CEO of Tutellus; Edwin Mata, CEO and Co-founder of Brickken; Carol Lago, BlockchainLab Senior Manager at Grant Thornton; and Javier Callejo, Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Nacional a Distancia (UNED) chaired the session.

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Finally, Dennis Granha, Software Engineer in Gnosis; Juan Manuel Belloto, Program Ambassador MI;. Luis Martínez, co-founder of Staxe; and Carlos Gomez, CEO of Virtual Personality, chaired the last block called “The future of live events with blockchain”.

Tokenization and micro-fragmentation of the property

As recently noted by Blockchain Observatory, tokenization enables a digital representation of any valuable object in a blockchain easing in this way the micro-fragmentation of property. In the Forum held on Tuesday October 27th, the twenty panelists became stakeholders of the event, as they were the ones sharing their knowledge with the audience. The tokenization of the event was possible thanks to the technology of Staxe’s platform.

Thus, in order to remunerate the participation of the speakers, Staxe transferred 40 percent of the previously raised funds through their app to the panelists’ wallets. This was made possible via Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): the value of each NFT token generated by the outcome of the event and also by the digital authenticity property of the unique copies that were designed for this occasion by the artist collaborating with the forum: @elpanzetas. The organizers plan to allocate 10 percent of the raised funds to #AlertaRoja, a sectorial unification movement for the entertainment and events industry. The remaining 50 percent will be distributed among the people who have contributed to the production of the event (artist, design, marketing, organization, etc).

Panelists, owners of unique NFTs from the #ForumPICBlockchain

The NFTs were issued by Staxe in the ERC-721 standard and listed on Opensea, from where they were transferred to the wallets of each of the panelists. Staxe facilitated Ethereum wallets for those speakers who did already have their own wallet. This way, each speaker owned their unique #ForoPICBlockchain NFT: a collectable piece of art that can be either sold for DAI or ETH in Opensea or collected to experience or discover its future value, a decision to be made by each NFT holder.

For this production, as it was an experimental event, the resulting value for the production was defined by sponsorships for the event. However, the Staxe platform is designed to also capture an event’s value via ticket sales and other in-venue revenue, which can greatly impact the resulting payoffs to the speakers in addition to earnings from the sponsors.

Panelists, owners of unique NFTs from the #ForoPICBlockchain

The role of digital assets

On the subject of event tokenization, Luis Martinez, CEO of Staxe showcased the urge to understand the importance that digital assets will play in the evolution of cultural and creative industries. In fact, he mentioned pre-Covid-19 figures of more than 500 million people attending events every year around the world. The CEO of Staxe underlines the potential of blockchain technology in order for us to participate in live and/or online events in a whole new level: to securely and seamlessly participate in its value.