The collaboration between the cryptocurrency and the electronic music industries continues, this time with top 50 cryptocurrency Elrond Network and Romanian producer Alex Parker.
Parker, who recently became the first DJ to perform on top of a 100-meter tall wind turbine (he did so to raise awareness about renewable energy), will be launching his NFT debut on Elrond’s new wallet, MAIAR, in July 2015.
Parker’s NFT is based on his new song “I Want The Money (The Crypto Anthem)” in collaboration with Los Angeles-based singer HERA.
The song is inspired by the investment mania of 2021, referencing Wall Street Bets, cryptocurrency, stocks, and the Elon Musk Dogecoin episode.
We connected with Elrond Network co-founder and CEO Beniamin Mincu to discuss Elrond’s involvement.
Elrond’s Beniamin Mincu
Can you describe the cryptocurrency entrepreneurial ecosystem in Romania? How did you connect with Alex Parker?
Romania has many talented developers so it’s a very good place for startups. Elrond is the second unicorn in Romania and so it happens we’re building state-of-the-art blockchain technology.
We believe this is just the start and soon we will see many other Romanian companies take shape in the blockchain space. Alex Parker is an early fan of Elrond and Maiar. He contacted us and told us about his ideas and we thought it was cool. With the NFT context in Maiar things started to make sense for collaboration.
What challenges do you think the NFT market faces? How do you anticipate Elrond solving them?
As they are right now, on Ethereum mainly, NFTs are expensive to mint, transfer, bid on, buy, sell, etc.
So, Elrond’s lower fees will open up NFTs to a lot more than just rich artists or legacy production houses trying to artificially resonate with this phenomenon– it will really be for everyone.
And Elrond has Maiar: the mobile app that anyone can get in seconds, with just a phone number. If you’ve ever gone through the pain of getting a regular wallet, writing down words, checking them, etc – you know how unsexy and off-putting that is.
In Maiar is just like downloading an app, which you then unlock with your face id or fingerprint – your NFTs are always with you. It’s very different on other platforms, and harder.
Maiar will have this “NFTize” button.
Once it’s deployed, Alex Parker and others are going to get a kick out of NFTizing selfies with their fans and sending the result to them– better than an autograph: a selfie taken by the star, from their phone
What makes Elrond the best option to launch an NFT?
Dropping NFTs in Elrond will be as easy as hitting a button on your phone. Anyone can then just get the Maiar app and start enjoying them.
Elrond has both high speed and low-cost infrastructure, and a user-friendly mobile app. This will make NFTs a thing for an extremely large number of new people.
How does Elrond differ from Ethereum?
Elrond has been designed to be faster and cheaper than Ethereum is right now. As things look with Ethereum 2.0, Elrond already has achieved a lot of what Ethereum is looking for in its next major upgrade.
Because it was built from scratch, Elrond could be architected to meet some challenges that no other blockchain right now addresses.
For example, NFTs, SFTs (semi-fungible) or FTs (fungible tokens) are an intrinsic part of the Elrond blockchain. This means tokens are first citizen in Elrond – they are more inexpensive to mint, faster to transfer, and offer more flexibility.
For example, Elrond NFTs can have royalties attached to them, so the creator gets a cut every time their work is sold, forever.
What’s next on the roadmap for Elrond? How is the partnership with Alex Parker a step in the right direction?
Alex Parker is a super hard-working and talented artist. He’s also a pioneer and visionary, who jumped on the opportunity we presented him, and we believe he will experience a tremendous upside from our working together.
He is also one of many. We are working with a lot of artists from all kinds of different areas. No spoilers, but Maiar is about to become very creative.
What is important to note is that we see NFTs as tremendously valuable in any vertical where authenticity, uniqueness, and provenance, or history, are important.
Artists seized this opportunity first, but we believe businesses of all kinds will find a lot of use cases for this innovative type of unique digital assets that are able to create, capture and retain value in completely new ways.
Final Thoughts
The collaboration between Elrond and Alex Parker showcases one of the many use cases of blockchain technology. Parker, who has been an adamant proponent of the power of creators, makes for an excellent example of how artists can better connect with their audiences through blockchain’s many innovations.
The “I Want The Money (The Crypto Anthem)” NFT will drop on Thursday, July 15, when Maiar opens its NFT wallet.
