This piece was published January 14th, 2023 on The Cryptonomist.
This week’s guest on the Cardano NFT Column is a project banking on web3 creators to lead the digital renaissance and inspire the art of tomorrow: The Art Bank.
The previous guest was a project that will be launching a collection of 10k NFTs which represent crowdfunded partial ownership whiskey casks.
This initiative is a point of reference for NFTs on Cardano and every week or two we will invite someone to answer some questions and give us an update directly from within the Cardano community.
Considering that many of our readers are new to the crypto space, we will have a mix of simple and technical questions.
Summary
Let’s talk about your NFT Recycling tool. What is it? What does it mean to recycle NFTs? And why would people do it?
Our NFT recycling tool is in essence a token rewards distribution mechanism that incentivizes collectors to get rid of their unwanted NFTs, clean up their Cardano wallets and ultimately become better collectors.
On the recycling side we help collectors recoup some of their initial investment for rugged projects or those that have fallen out of favor by rewarding them with Cardano native tokens from active projects that are leading the way in our collective ecosystem.
On the distribution side it’s all about partnering with creative token projects that want to help build and sustain a thriving community, secure targeted token distribution to real collectors that value our service and incentivize the creative economy on Cardano together.
Since August 2022, we’ve managed to rack up 16000+ recycles, a bunch of it from abandoned or fly by night projects, but with countless others still holding real value as the market continues to ebb and flow. Our recycling bins are burgeoning with every kind of NFT category you can think of, and Dawg holders get to cherry pick NFTs that have been haphazardly discarded.
Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and the recycler gives our community the opportunity to take pride in what they hold, get compensated for investment mishaps and provide real utility to the collection experience.
What can you tell us about the future of The Art Bank? Where do you envision your project in the next few years?
Right now there are so many different initiatives that The Art Bank is working on for creators and collectors, both online and in the real world, and this next year is going to be positively massive. We’re incredibly excited about our Catalyst funded Cardano Center that is going to open in Cape Town in the next couple of months.
The Center is going to be a hub for creators in Africa that aims to onboard local artists into the ecosystem with training on how to launch and market their own collections on Cardano. Outside of this, we’ll be looking to use the space as a modern café to host Cardano events, trial crypto payments for real world goods and launch a digital gallery to invite the public to learn more about blockchain and digital art.
This will serve as the springboard for other art initiatives we are working on to promote Cardano to the masses by providing creators with the opportunity to recreate their digital art on physical murals in Cape Town and other parts of South Africa with the help of strategic partnerships locally.
The idea is to create an open-source business plan for the Center to roll out in multiple locations throughout Africa and the rest of the world over the next few years, collaborating with the best projects on Cardano to provide access to education and help creators generate new streams of income for their work.
Awesome. Any final words? Where can people learn more about The Art Bank?
The Art Bank is always looking to collaborate with established and up and coming creators as well as partner with creative NFT/token projects and stake pools to stimulate the creative economy on Cardano.
We also have our own stake pool (TAB) that we invite stakers to join to help further decentralize the blockchain and support creators on Cardano.
We welcome anyone that is interested in learning more to check us out on our website, follow us on Twitter and join our growing community on Discord.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views of the people interviewed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Cardano Foundation or IOG. Moreover, this content is for educational purposes, it doesn’t constitute financial advice.