Africa and most emerging markets amidst its dynamic and iconic art expressions remain largely under-represented in the digital space and seen locked out of a burgeoning new economy. There are an estimated $3 trillion illiquid art assets worldwide, most art enthusiasts have no access to this art commodity. It is this problem of access that a new blockchain enabled ecosystem called Artist3 was launched on Sunday 16th May 2021 at Radisson Blu Hotel, Lagos.
Artist3 is a blockchain-enabled end-to-end digital ecosystem for creatives, artists, musicians, and art collectors to create and sell non-fungible token (NFT) art. Artist3 through its NFT marketplace called Mart3 will avail the digital gallery for curating, selling, and auctioning art from emerging markets, beginning with African themed digital imagery, artworks, animated assets, digital collectible, cultural cachet, gaming, short thematic videos, and holograms, original music, motion graphics, and visual effects, still pictures, selection of photography, animation.
Speaking at the event, Ferdinand ‘Ladi Adimefe CEO of Imaginarium Creative and Magic Carpet Studio and also the Co-Founder Artist3 said “There is an upside potential market for African artists and those in emerging markets capture its share of the expanding crypto art resource economy. Yes, we are launching from Africa, but we are not just for Africans, it is more from Africa to the rest of the world. The Vision of Artist3 is to become a leading international NFT all-inclusive art platform, curating the most innovative artists and dynamic creators from across the world. We do have a deliberate plan to bring every African artist and those in emerging markets to this new economy and provide that access. We intend to aggregate a series of curated pieces even beyond those not just inspired by African stories and realities”.
To further explain the Artist3 platform, a five-year roadmap intimating the timelines of the project was shared with the audience. Majikal, one of the products of Artist3 is a video on demand platform where contents are crowdsourced and owned by the community.
Other members of the team introduced the audience to the remaining aspects of the project.
Miss Funmi Sulaiman, a content executive on the team, introduced Topia as a learning hub curating courses in emerging skills, techniques and tools to unlock more opportunities in the NFT space.
Mr Toju Olukayode, COO and Co-founder of Magic Carpet introduced the audience to Incub8 as the product designed to offer opportunities for creators, film makers, game developers and content creators to crowdsource funds for creative projects and to also co-create and earn from the platform. “Through incub8, Artist3 gives art lovers or savvy investors the opportunity to fund art projects and bring them to life, from animation to video games, nothing is off limits. It’s a hub for creatives to bring any and every project to life” he said.
Chike Okonkwo, Lead Business Developer of Artist3 and former business development manager at OKEx Nigeria introduced Mart3 as the product that provides new and innovative avenues for trading NFTS, compelling digital arts and animated content.
Speaking about the reason for the initiative, Ukeme Okuku, Project Lead and Co-Founder of Artist3 said, “The whole concept of Artist3 is to change the way Artists earn money and Artist3 is trying to achieve this feat by having artists focus on creating arts and make money off royalties when their arts are been resold”.
He introduced the audience to one of the products on the roadmap called Gamic: This is an NFT games platform where game developers can publish their games and users can choose from the diverse catalog of NFT game genres to play.
Nigerian popular hip hop artist MI Abaga who is also an advisor on the project while speaking on this initiative said, “Developments such as this are welcomed and it’s an applaudable feat what the Artist3 team are doing”.
Amongst the 5 subdivisions of Artist3, Mart3 is currently live while the others would go live subsequently.
While the platform gets a huge applause from the audience for its impeccable design, CEO Wifisoft Technologies Nnamso Anthony stated, “We are really happy to be a part of this, creating the biggest NFT platform for creatives and we can’t wait for the world to have access to the full package” he said.
ABOUT ARTIST3
Artist3 is a collaborative project between Magic Carpet in conjunction with Wifisoft Technologies. The team is made up of dynamic and resilient entrepreneurs in the art and crypto space.
For more information, visit https://artist3.io/
