NFTs are emotions you own
Straight Fire is a Web3 start-up bridging the real world with the metaverse, through building the first NFT Social dApp and unique NFT collections. The NFT Social dApp enables creators, collectors, and NFT enthusiasts to view and manage all their NFTs in one place, share and promote their NFT stories on social media, experience them in real life through AR, and sell NFTs on all major marketplaces. Straight Fire Chief Executive Officer Christiaan Eisberg speaks to Fibre2Fashion about NFT collections and the future of metaverse.
Metaverse is a very new term. What is its origin? What does it mean?
The metaverse is a continuously changing, decentralised, creator-driven ecosystem, without physical or spacetime limitations, where humanity and technology co-exist in a balanced, symbiotic relationship, enabling humanity to experience the real in the digital.
How old is Straight Fire? Where is it based?
We were founded in 2021 and are headquartered in the Netherlands. Within our team though, we have people from and working in China, Philippines, Vietnam, Pakistan, Singapore, Tunisia, Italy, Belgium, the US and Brasil.
Please give percentage break-up of your clients—by country/region, gender, millennials, etc.
We haven’t launched the NFT Social dApp yet, so can’t give a break-up of our clients, but our community and focus is on Asia, more specifically China, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia; the English native speaking countries—the US, Canada, UK and Australia; The Benelux, Scandinavia and Turkey; Brazil and Mexico.
We are targeting the crypto and NFT communities; although there is a large group of 20-somethings that sits at the core of this group, we see 30–40-year-olds having the largest disposable income (largest collectors). Besides that, we target the NFT creator community.
Are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) part of metaverse or vice-versa? How are they connected?
For us, NFTs are emotions you own; it’s all about the link to humanity and the human emotions that NFTs evoke.
However, NFTs are also smart contracts, that define and assign ownership and authenticity to digital assets. Since the metaverse is a digital and possibly fully virtual environment, and all ‘things’ in it are digital, NFTs are the ‘vehicle’ to make it your own.
How are NFTs created? Can anyone create an NFT, or you need some license for the same?
In principle, anyone can create an NFT. There are plenty of platforms that have automated the process of minting an NFT, with a built-in, standardised smart contract. If you want to understand the true potential of NFTs, you probably need to better understand what a smart contract stands for.
Your tag line reads: ‘NFTs are emotions you own.’ Please tell something more about it.
NFTs are emotions you own is indeed our tag line. The value of NFTs is built on 4 factors: scarcity, utility, provenance and the human emotions it evokes.
Most NFT drops, focus on the first: let’s create only unique ones. Some NFT drops have provenance: a good story, a celebrity in the founding team or influencers telling the community to buy the collection. Utility is a focus point for newer project: what can you really use the NFT for? But the real kicker that most projects fail to address is how can we trigger human emotions. For THEXII we have chosen for a cultural reference, something that sits in Asia’s DNA: The Zodiac. We feel it’s all about this.
You also have ‘creator’ and ‘community’ spaces. What are these?
For THEXII, everything we do starts and ends with the community. We have built the foundation, now we invite all designers, artists, writers, creators, and creatives to rise to the occasion and co-create THEXII-verse with us. Therefore, it’s essential to provide creators and the broader community a home in THEXII-verse. They need to feel at home.
Do all NFTs have unique names? On what basis are the names given?
They don’t have to be. The names are assigned before minting and cannot be changed after the NFT has been minted. You can come up with the name yourself.
Where do people buy and sell their NFTs? Are there any marketplaces?
People can buy newly created NFTs on platforms and on project’s websites (that have a built-in minting functionality). Secondary sales, or resales, of NFTs takes place on generic NFT marketplaces, such as Opensea, Rarible and Nifty Gateway, or on specialised NFT marketplaces such as NBA Top Shot, Theta Drop, and soon Straight Fire.
If I say NFTs are visual materials, am I correct?
Yes and No. Yes, because a lot of the NFTs that you see today are images. No, because the NFT represents so much more and in the future, we will see NFTs that can be anything digital: a file, a document, a word, a song, etc.
What all visual materials does Straight Fire provides?
Straight Fire NFT Lab helps creators to develop original NFT collections and turn them into valuable IPs or metaverse brands. Though NFTs can be anything digital, visual wise they can be an image, a video, a 3D animation, etc.
Are NFTs also available on blockchains?
The smart contract of an NFT sits on the blockchain, is freely accessible for people to review. The actual image, video, music or other file that you can see as an NFT sits somewhere on a server. In other words, the NFT that we can see or listen to is a digital file that resides on a server, while the smart contract attached to the file resides on the blockchain.
Can a group of people jointly buy and hold an NFT? What happens if someone from the group wants to sell his/her individual share in that particular NFT?
Yes, this is called a fractionalised NFT. Now it gets maybe a bit too technical, but you can use an existing NFT and create some sort of “shell” around it that is split in for example 10 equal parts. Now that original NFT can be owned by 10 different people. It’s like a time-share, where you own part of the asset, and you can also sell the part you own separately from the other owners.
Straight Fire is also into gas-free minting. What does this mean?
When minting an NFT, you must pay money for using the blockchain to perform that task. This is called a gas-fee.
Gas-free minting means that we pay for the minting of your NFTs.
What is the future of metaverse? Will people forget real world and start living in metaverse?
If we describe the metaverse based on the technology that we know today, we will probably be wrong, because we do not know what we do not know. But if we describe it based on the only common factor now and in the future, then we should focus on us humans. And we live in the real and digital world already at the same time. The metaverse really is an extension of the internet, so I think we will live in both worlds in the future too. How much time will we spend in each of them, I am not sure. Time will tell.
Straight Fire has built the world’s first NFT Social dApp. What is dApp? How is it different from the apps used on Android or iOS?
A dApp is nothing more than an app that sits on the blockchain. The “d” refers to decentralised. For our users there is no difference, they can still get the app in an iOS or Android store. It just means that the app interacts with the blockchain, where it can access the NFTs that you hold in your digital wallet once you have attached those.
You also have unique NFT collections? What do they consist of? What is the percentage of fashion and apparel items in these collections?
We have recently launched THEXII with 2 artists. THEXII is a metaverse brand created for and owned by our community. It is the original NFT collection powered by Straight Fire.
Our unique NFT collection of 12,012 hand-drawn 3D Zodiacs gives you membership and is your entry ticket into THEXII-verse. Each Zodiac is one-of-a-kind and unlocks varying levels of access and perks for its owner.
THEXII-verse consists of 12 different worlds, one for each animal of the Zodiac, the Guardians of THEXII-verse. THEXII-verse is being built gradually by our NFT Lab with our community. Our NFT holders will benefit from the partnerships that we are building with music artists, brands, entertainment formats. We are exploring gaming opportunities for THEXII, as well as introduce new NFT drops from our partners. Then we offer exclusive access to the Beta version of our NFT Social dApp, where THEXII holders can monetise their NFT in 2 ways: 1. We have a Share to Earn model, where our top sharers are rewarded for sharing their NFT Stories to social media; 2. We have a Create to Earn model, where our users can mint their NFT Stories into new NFTs and sell them on our marketplace. We also offer TEHXII holders digital perks, such as fan art, wallpapers, free filters and AR lenses. Finally, we are organising IRL meetups, and we are exploring Streetwear collaborations.
