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The week-long M1nted Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur – billed as Malaysia’s first NFT conference – is putting on show local projects with reals team building out vibrant tech products for web3 business applications.
Truth be told, both technocrats and skeptics should start paying attention to the creative application of this market’s wave of builders.
Political fundraising – TonyPua, DAP
Tony Pua, a Malaysian politician from opposition party DAP has turned his artwork, Langkah Sheraton, into a fractionalised NFT collection. According to him, all proceeds will go towards the political parties treasury and owners will be able to own a piece of history.
Who doesn’t love a progressively political party in tech ay? Undoubtedly, this does raise questions on how political parties are circumventing local security laws and crypto ownership. That, however, is a conversation for another time.
Token-gated ecommerce – 8sian
Led by Nicole Yang, the team at 8sian NFT had a launch worthy of a moon mission before crashing hard during the bear market as did all hyped Eth NFT projects. Yet despite this, they build in the cold and have positioned themselves a metaverse/lifestyle brand with a token-gated e-commerce site that allows users to purchase branded merchandise with crypto. The UX, quite frankly, is (politely) lackluster, requiring users to go through two websites to complete a purchase.
However their keen adeptness we noticed is in their business ability to partner with multiple international brands, including Uniqlo, and creating fomo marketing. We look forward to seeing their progress and in time, an e-commerce experience fit for web3 convenience.
D2C merchandising – Digital Threads
A new business unit from Tiger Archives, Digital Threads allows NFT businesses and collectors to turn their NFT intellectual properties into D2C merchandise. The project is possibly the best e-commerce business model we’ve found at M1inted that would drive the next wave of retail into web3 NFTs.
The model is a win-win-win element for everyone. The model disrupts no existing market and feeds the demand for additional services for an ever-growing web3 market.
On demand T-shirts today, on demand galleries tomorrow (maybe).
Independent music label – DAO Records
DAO records is a Music DAO with a platform and metaverse that lets musicians mint their own music NFTs. When it comes to product development they’ve got a really eclectic range of products going on from a metaverse music room to a Music NFT marketplace for artist originals. Something a lot of web3 music studios were touting during the bull market.
The independent music industry however does have a much bigger problem, and that is finding that sweet spot ratio of new users:new musicians In such a monopolised landscape from existing labels. It is difficult to see an end for web3 music projects beyond market cannibalism and acquisitions when it comes to mainstream adoption, but this service perhaps could serve as an answer for a niche of underserved artists who remain pure to their craft.
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