NFT Collectors Hub on Hedera! HashGuild and King Solomon (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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In the part 2 of the interview with Genfinity, Marcel, the co-founder and CEO of HashGuild, discussed the potential of the NFT market on Hedera and the growth it has experienced in recent months. Marcel highlighted the importance of mass adoption and enterprise focus in the success of a network, and pointed out that Hedera's focus on sustainability and avoiding reliance on FOMO (fear of missing out) has helped it weather the current bear market. Marcel also compared the trading volume on Hedera to that of Ethereum, noting that while Hedera's volume is still significantly lower, it has plenty of room for growth.

Marcel also mentioned that HashGuild has partnerships with Outlier Ventures and has received funding from the Hedera Foundation, and talked about the importance of collaboration in the NFT space. He concluded by discussing HashGuild's plans for the future, including the development of a governance model and the continuation of its focus on user experience.

Transcription

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍You talked a little bit about volume as well, and I would love to hear your thoughts around you look at the Ethereum, the Solana networks, and the NFTs and marketplaces and volumes being near all-time lows, like 95%, 90% down in this bear market. And you look at Hedera. Maybe you could tell the audience a little bit about what we've experienced on Hedera for the past five, six months--constant milestones being hit, you know, volumes and everything else.

HashGuild – Marcel – Founder & CEO
‍So I mean, I'm maybe starting off like that. We also went into a fundraising a few months ago, having onboard outlet as one of our investors, for example. And also back then, the typical pitch--how powerful can the NFT market on Hedera be? And I remember back then, in late Q1, there was a kind of analytics or report about the Hedera NFT ecosystem and its growth factor or potential. And I remember this statistic pretty clearly: in 2022, we expect a year-to-year growth rate of 2,500% of NFTs being traded. I was like, that's a significant number. And I think two major impacts play into this whole ecosystem--the verses type of thing, like Ethereum versus Solana, Solana versus Hedera, and so on and so forth. First thing, the general potential of a network in terms of mass adoption and general usage. When we talk about mass adoption, I definitely believe that the enterprise focus is a crucial part of it. But I also have to say, we don't have to expect that everybody gets onboarded to web 3 tools. It also sometimes is sufficient enough to use the technology in a web 2 solution, just having it in the background. I think we sometimes really forget about this as we're talking about the technology. Technology has to be used. We don't want to create another world. It's also fine enough to use the Hedera network or Hashgraph itself to improve web 2 dynamics. So, I think this is a crucial part, having this coverage on the sustainability of a network. I think it's also super healthy for our own ecosystem that we don't rely too much on fomo, as we've seen on other networks. I think it's healthy, for our own sake, but also for the longevity of all projects building in the ecosystem. And yeah, I think right now, also to be a market in general, with this whole FTX stuff, don't want to go too much deep into that. I think everybody talked about it. But it clearly highlights certain pitfalls on existing ecosystems, how they're connected, how healthy also their token distribution to their shareholders is, and so on and so forth. And I think it's right now a great timing for us who don't have too much relied on the typical fomo play to be one of the better offs in the long run or after the bear market. So yeah, pretty excited about the future. Also pretty excited about how the actual trading volume in total looks. I think I've seen statistics, two days ago or something like that, like 13,000 US dollars trading volume per day on Hedera, and in comparison, one million or 1.5 on Ethereum. So, there's a still a clear difference in it. But I think we have so much time, so much potential. I think right now it's a time to listen to the users, to listen to the community, and build for them, and by example.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, I love what you stated about web 2 to web 3, because there's hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested into web 2 infrastructure. And you hear a lot of projects saying that well, there's probably a middle ground, especially for mass adoption, you utilize the tool sets that have already been built out for web 2, and then inject value from web 3 where it makes sense for the user. And you talked a little bit about partnerships and collaborations, or at least early investors. I know you said Outlier Ventures. I believe also a recipient from the Foundation. Are there any other interesting partnerships, collaborations that you guys may have down the pike? And then maybe if you could pivot a little bit, because I looked into it. Looks like you guys are going to have a token launch, if I'm not mistaken. Is that going to be early next year? Can you talk a little bit about that, maybe drop us some alpha around that?

HashGuild – Marcel – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, all right. So, at first, yes, I mean, already mentioned that Outlier Ventures and the HBAR Foundation. We have them kind of bundled, also aligning with them, talking on a monthly basis to them, in terms of further partnership building. We also, for example, are in connection with two council members, and let's see how collaborations can further be built. You know, at the end of the day, if somebody wants to make use of NFT infrastructure, and we perhaps are an infrastructure provider, there might be a smart way to align or combine the interests, yields, things, and you know,

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, when you really look at it, too, is I think a lot of the times you see, okay, there's NFTs listed on a marketplace or there's a platform that has NFT functionality, but the actual use cases that can be built on top of it are kind of limited. And I think that's where we come into play. You know, we have this nft infrastructure, but we also have all the tools and services NFTs right now, but what a lot of people don't look at is like what that really is wallet connectivity and measuring data. So there's all sorts of different things you could do with measuring data across even enterprises.

HashGuild – Marcel – Founder & CEO
‍And you also have to realize that even when we're talking about NFTs, we are still in a kind of early-stage environment. Because if I'm not the technical person in our team, to be honest, but I also know that we haven't yet have the opportunity for example to make use of dynamic NFTs. Where the data from dynamic NFTs you have there a certain connectivity to a database that gets activated, deactivated, or updated throughout a certain time when certain actions have been made. But what about this database? Is it centralized or decentralized? I think there's a pitfall over there. Let's see where everything goes and I think also in terms of NFTs, it's a super broad topic. It's not just about art and collectibles. You can literally individualize everything and it's just like what we really need. What makes a payoff or makes us better off when we utilize NFTs or at least the technology behind them? And I think that's the core interest for corporations and enterprises. You know, specifically more focus on it because just hopping on the trend is not significant enough to really make an impact. But also pitch this kind of change to the advisory board and the investors. So it really needs to be a payoff in a certain way. Right? So I think there's still a lot of opportunities in there. I know that this relapse is also highly focused on improving the overall infrastructure. We're also discussing with them about typical smart contracts. We've also not seen too much of them and we really want to go into this completely decentralized way because we've seen what doesn't work out and it's decentralized, even though it's in a package of web-free. So, yeah, there's still a lot we have to build, there's still a lot we have to think about in terms of execution and right execution. And maybe talking shortly about the token, yes, it was in the plan. But coming from an economical perspective, launching a token in a bear market is not that well of an idea. Talked to a lot of investors. We set up a whole token distribution design model with them. Also discussed with the possibility of what happens if it kind of aligns to be a bear market and we agreed that it's right now time to build. But of course, also in combination with our users, launching a token doesn't mean that you value your stakeholders or bring them into this typical DAO design structure. This is what we try to establish from time to time, even without the token. And so, yeah, I think there are plenty of opportunities also without the token to incentivize new commers to the ecosystem to benefit from the infrastructure we are providing. And if it's time to recover from this whole because you know, like yeah bear market situation then I think it also makes sense again to talk about token launch. But yeah, I think there are more important parts and more important priorities to make.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍And yeah, no, I appreciate the answer, I mean totally. As far as you know in closing, where would you like to drive people to? Is it the Twitter? Is it the actual HashGuild platform? I did see that you guys actually have feedback rewards going on for is that still going on as far as you know testing?

HashGuild – Marcel – Founder & CEO
‍Absolutely, absolutely will be an ongoing campaign. And we are also doing an interview with our users, also with non-users who are in their space to figure out what we have to improve, what is the need of the users from collectors and trade aside, and handing out a little reward for handing over the information. So yeah, as I said, building really user-centric, I think that's a really important one. For reaching out, I think the easiest, smoothest way is through Twitter at HashGuild or our website itself. And we are also building up a full guide or a blog site where we literally also kind of informational onboard users to really realize how, for example, the offering works, how the launch pad works, how staking works, so really putting it into works and to some nice kind of onboarding. Yeah, research and yeah, I'm looking forward to it to launch it. We'll of course announce it on Twitter at HashGuild. And yeah, you can also check out our Discord. Everything is linked with Twitter. And yeah, I'm happy to chat. Also happy to answer further questions. As always, we're pretty responsive, also when it comes to box arrows ticketing. We have an automated ticketing system now, Discord implementing the same on our website soon. So yeah, more than happy to assist on any kind of sense.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Oh, no, that's awesome, Marcel. I really appreciate it. So we're definitely going to have this up through Genfinity in the Hedera Corner that we facilitate. I know HashPack is going to have this in their community section as well. The goal for us is, you know, just like you guys stated, you're going to educate your users. We're trying to educate the community as much as possible on all the ecosystem initiatives that are going on right now. Certainly look forward to having another discussion with you in the near future because it's going to be awesome to see where the Hash Guild platform is at even a month, two months, three months down the road. So I appreciate you taking time out today. I know how insanely busy you probably are and look forward to having another discussion in the future, Marcel. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

HashGuild – Marcel – Founder & CEO
‍Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure. See you soon.