Okay-Pop Sensation Mamamoo to Mint Digital Collectibles on Polkadot

Followers of Okay-Pop woman group Mamamoo will quickly have the ability to purchase digital merchandise associated to the band utilizing blockchain expertise.

RBW (Rainbowbridge World), a South Korean leisure firm representing Mamaoo and different well-liked Okay-Pop artists equivalent to Vromance and Oneus, is leaping into the cryptocurrency world by issuing non-fungible tokens (NFT) on Hong Kong-based alternate Xeno. The tokens give Okay-Pop followers and different buyers a declare of actual possession in digital merchandise associated to RBW entertainers.

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In an unique interview with CoinDesk, the Xeno workforce introduced that RBW has given the NFT alternate unique rights to mint and listing their NFT-based digital merchandise.

“Fanbases get digital items for his or her favourite artists that they will really personal, and artists and content material creators get new and thrilling merchandise to supply their followers,” Jae-Woong Wang, CEO of RBW Japan, instructed CoinDesk in a press release. “Digital occasion tickets, membership tokens, even digital content material rights can all be captured and housed inside NFTs. The development of digital commerce is rising and RBW desires to remain on high of those traits whereas on the identical time open new markets when attainable.”

The precise time of when the NFTs shall be launched has but to be introduced. Xeno instructed CoinDesk that the underlying digital merchandise will embrace “3D mannequin renderings” of followers’ favourite Okay-Pop idols, occasion tickets for digital concert events and membership tokens that “permit artists to interact their fanbases”.

RBW’s transfer comes at a time of explosive progress in buying and selling volumes for NFTs, which tripled in 2020 in comparison with 2019, in accordance with knowledge from Dune Analytics. The elevated curiosity in NFTs is partly pushed by the COVID-19 pandemic that has pressured most cancellation of in-person occasions.

Not like fungible cryptocurrencies equivalent to bitcoin and ether, NFTs are distinctive tokens that can’t be exchanged one to at least one. For followers of Mamamoo, that interprets into possession of a singular digital product developed across the singers.

Xeno’s NFT market launched final month after the corporate noticed a probably big marketplace for NFTs in East Asia, Xeno’s president, Anthony Di Franco, instructed CoinDesk. The corporate at the moment operates primarily in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

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South Korea alone has the fourth-largest gaming market on this planet, with well-established digital items marketplaces, Di Franco stated. The East Asian nation additionally has “very excessive engagement” with all types of leisure together with the Okay-Pop business. The Gaon Digital Chart, South Korea’s music business customary rating recorded singles, reveals nearly 21 million weekly plays for this week’s No. 1 track alone.

RBW’s information could lead on extra distinguished leisure firms in East Asia to observe the NFT development, as most dwell occasions all over the world are nonetheless on pause because of the pandemic, in accordance with the executives at Xeno. Apart from these in Okay-Pop, a number of partnerships with well-established names in excessive trend and the net gaming industries are already “within the pipeline,” the alternate stated.

“RBW is a reasonably reasonably impactful firm, with well-liked woman group Mamamoo together with a number of boy bands and a brand new woman group, Purple Kiss, underneath its administration,” Tamar Herman, K-Pop journalist at Hong Kong-based South China Morning Publish, instructed CoinDesk in an e mail. “The corporate has a popularity for high-value performances and artistry.”

Whereas most NFT exchanges are based mostly on the Ethereum blockchain, Xeno is constructed on the Polkadot community due to its higher scalability, full cross-chain interoperation and integration, and Polkadot’s distinctive “parachain” characteristic that provides the workforce full management of the protocol layer of the system, Di Franco instructed CoinDesk.

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“NFTs are the right medium for these habits to develop and evolve in,” Di Franco stated. “NFTs take possession of digital items out of their silos, turning a set of mutually unique walled gardens into a real market, and exponentially rising the probabilities for artistic entrepreneurship for digital artists and the enterprise alternatives for the platforms they work on.”

UPDATE (Jan. 16, 2021, 12:38 UTC): Xeno is predicated in Hong Kong, not South Korea. The article has been up to date.