Cloud NFT CEO Peter Bel is Happy that Hype Around NFT is Over

This article addresses the views of Peter Bel, CEO of cross-chain aggregator Cloud NFT, on the NFT market, its limitations and what was good about the hype.

1. Tell us a little about yourself

I’m the founder and CEO of Cloud NFT. I started working with crypto in 2014 when I joined the Cointelegraph team. After that, I founded a marketing consulting agency Byzantium. We specialized in ICO promotion and helped projects raise more than $150 million in total. Now, I primarily act as an advisor but focus on the Cloud NFT project as I see a huge potential in this market.

2. Tell us a little about your project and what perspective you see in the NFT sphere?

Cloud NFT is a cross-chain aggregator that will enable users to create, store, sell and buy NFTs within the same ecosystem. The basis of the entire project is our API, which allows us to carry out all on-chain operations without requiring clients to pay gas fees. Our goal is to create a convenient and user-friendly infrastructure for working with NFT, which the market now lacks. Yes, we see a lot of scattered projects, but they are often focused on the desire to catch up with the hype and not on the long-term vision.

I can bring a very illustrative example from the DeFi industry: Uniswap NFTs presented on the updated V3 protocol on Uniswap, launched on May 5th of 2021. Uniswap NFT does not contain any art but only information about the liquidity added to the pool. It gives the right to extract it by programmatically interacting with a smart contract operating a certain liquidity pool. Such an NFT is more similar to a document confirming the ownership of an asset, even if the user does not keep the asset itself. Or you can call such a use case an NFT "access key". In any case, it has little in common with the collections of digital punks or monkeys. And this is only one of the millions of examples of exactly the practical use of NFTs. 

3. In September, the number of transactions on the OpenSea platform exceeded 40 thousand, which is still a lot, but it is still far from peak values. Don't you think that the hype around NFT is already over?

Hype, maybe yes. But this does not mean that we have already left the initial stage of market development. The hype was good at one point - it attracted a lot of attention to the market and brought retail investors. Not because of the utility of this technology, not because of its prospects, and not even because of the great love for digital art. The main driver was the pursuit of money and I am very happy that this hype around NFT is over, as the market stabilizes and we can see more organic and supported growth.

4. We are seeing a growing interest in creating our own NFTs from both global stars and emerging artists. Do you think this trend will continue to grow?

I think yes. As for me, that’s just bits and pieces of hype and an opportunity for artists to “be in trend”. And the opportunity to earn more money of course. Yes, I think this trend will continue to grow. Many artists offer their token holders some perks, such as ticket discounts, backstage access, or VIP tickets to a certain number of concerts. And even here we can see the real value of NFTs since it is not possible to forge such a VIP ticket.

5. It seems like it is now a privilege of famous artists. For example, is it difficult to create your own NFT token or collection for a young artist or small brand with a super loyal audience?

If this artist is not a blockchain developer, then it isn't easy. To release NFT, a staff of blockchain developers is needed, which even fairly large businesses cannot always afford, let alone small brands. Yes, you can order freelance services or contact a specialized software company, but it's still expensive. I consider this to be one of the key problems in the market today. And it is precisely the solution to this problem that is one of the main features of Cloud NFT. We make NFT creation available to everyone. The user will neither be required to have blockchain development skills nor will they need to spend money on minting NFTs. He doesn't even need to have a cryptocurrency wallet - all operations with NFT from issuing to selling can be done within one user-friendly and intuitive interface.

6. Despite the growth of NFTs on Solana, Polygon, and other blockchains, most tokens are based on Ether, increasing users' entry threshold due to high fees. Do you consider this one of the obstacles for the market?

With the rapid growth of the DeFi market in crypto, Ethereum has been viewed as a “rich coin”. Indeed, not every user is willing to shell out $ 50 per transaction. This is a rather concerning problem for the market, therefore, in our project, interaction with NFT will be executed with zero gas fees. This will enable people with a small deposit to enter the field. I think that will attract many users because when you don’t have to spend your money on gas fees there’s a bigger chance you will try yourself in this sphere. Besides, we’ve included stimulating cashback into our tokenomics. It will compensate users’ gas fees spent on the migration of their NFTs to our ecosystem. This way, we additionally incentivize migration to our platform.

7. Based on what you said earlier, can it be argued that your project is focused on beginners? Or do you offer features for experienced users too?

In fact, our project is suitable for everyone - beginners, experienced users, businesses, developers. More advanced users will appreciate the features of the cross-chain aggregator and Cloud NFT wallet. As we have discussed earlier, NFTs are released on a variety of blockchains, and the ability to store all your NFTs in one place and directly transfer them to popular platforms will be a big advantage for experienced users.

8. NFT is now a trend among artists, musicians and "meme lords." Why do you think companies are not joining it?

I think the first big problem is the difficulty of entering the field. You need to hire a staff of developers or order expensive freelance services. To solve this issue, we have integrated business API into the Cloud NFT, which will enable you to create an NFT or your own new platforms based on Cloud NFT without any knowledge of blockchain development. The second issue is a relatively high entry threshold (both financial and technical) for buyers. Working with NFT assumes that the user has some basic skills in working with cryptocurrency or, at least, a cryptocurrency wallet. Despite the growing popularity of crypto, real mass adoption is still very far away. The third problem is the lack of verifiable ways of the interrelation of a real asset with its virtual expression.

9. Will the appearance of public companies on the NFT market boost its development or, on the contrary, "bury" the sphere?

I believe that the entry of public companies into the NFT market will give a huge impulse to the development of the industry. When public companies received the right to buy cryptocurrency, we saw a huge rise in prices, an influx of investments, and the industry's development. I should say that NFT has a lot more practical use cases than most of the "common" ERC-20 Ethereum tokens or their equivalent in other blockchain networks. And I believe that the entry of public companies, especially digital companies, into this market, is a matter of time.

10. Does NFT have prerequisites for growth in 2022?

There are also very important ones. In addition to organic growth in sync with cryptocurrencies, the metaverse will become a big trend in the development of NFTs. The most influential companies in the world started talking about creating their meta universes. And NFTs will play an integral role in them. Anything that requires at least some proof of authenticity in the digital world will use NFT. I believe the meta universes will become a very serious market driver in the near future.

11. How do you see the market in 5 years and the place of your project in it?

I think that in 5 years the benefits of NFTs will be appreciated by everyone - from young artists to entire states. Digital art will of course remain. But as I’ve said before, I see much more perspective in the practical application of NFT - licensing, copyright confirmation, as access keys, and maybe to verify identity at the state level. Our project will act as a linking element of this future, providing infrastructure connection between market actors and ensuring transparent processing.

And with all the variety of use cases for NTFs they can all be traded and cross-chain exchanged in the open market. This is where we see the future of Cloud NFT. We do not care which non-fungible tokens will be used more often than others in the future - we will provide convenient access to all of them.

You can discover more of our project on our website https://cloudnft.io/. We’ll have a pre-sale on Nov. 25th, so you can still participate and be an early user of our project.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The content was purely for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.