NFT Factory Paris has been open to the public since October 22nd, and completes its first hundred days of existence on January 30th. Its manager makes an initial assessment and future prospects for this Web3 niche.
What happened during the first 100 days of the NFT Factory’s existence?
We’ve already had to launch the venue and launching a physical venue is a problem in and of itself. It’s the second (after Peteauction Fauve Paris, editor’s note) But it is always different. It’s one thing to launch a physical place to talk about the digital. For now, we’ve focused a lot on the technical side and here again, blockchain And Web3 has broken all the traditional paradigms, so we have to reinvent the paradigms, and in particular the business model. In fact, this place opened for Web 3 It creates needs for us for which there is no tool yet. The goal, then, is to build these tools by betting that they will become useful tools of tomorrow.
NFT Factory is, among other things, a fair. However, the general public can feel intimidated, and feel intimidated, when entering an exhibition. Are you facing this difficulty?
This is one of the first lessons and one of the first surprises: we have a doubly uninitiated audience, that is, we have an audience that does not know NFT And we have an audience that would never have entered an art gallery. amazing. I think this is due to the location. We are in front of a museum but also very close to Les Halles, which attracts the general public, and moreover, our place is very curious, and does not look like a traditional art gallery at all.
We’ve done everything to make this place very welcoming and open to the public, and today we have nearly 2,000 visitors a week, of all generations. Still very nice. On Saturdays and Sundays we offer free educational workshops three times a day and we have begun to launch more advanced, paid, theoretical workshops where we look back at the history of Web3, and the practices we accompany the public in its creation wallet and NFTs.
“For the first round of our investment club, we got more than a hundred floors.”
Do you feel that creating this place filled a void?
There was clearly a lot of anticipation, not just from the artists but the entire NFT community. We are fortunate to have Benoît Coty as Artistic Director, he knows French and international artists well and it is clear that they trust him: he even commissions works, artists create specifically for our exhibitions. On the international front, there is a real curiosity. For example, FVCKRENDER (Canadian digital artist and collaborator with Dior, Rosalia, Lil Nas X, or LeBron James, editor’s note) Should come soon. One of our missions is to connect champions of NFTs, which is why we organize events regularly. We have a members only area. We launched an investment club for which we got over a hundred packages for the first session, proving that there is real excitement in Web3 projects despite the bear market.
You mentioned the need to create tools for this place. What kind of tools are we talking about?
For example, we need Code Gate (Access reserved for NFT holders, editor’s note) For physical environments, including access to this Members Area. Ditto for events: How to access an event with a code without creating an account with a third party? None of this exists yet. For the exhibition part, we create our own platform to post Smart contracts. It is ironic to create a gallery with artists of our choosing but without the possibility of minting their work with us. So we are going to develop this tool by the rules of the art, using OpenGem (a toolAudit NFT security, editor’s note) For artists to publish them through our smart contract, which will then allow us to share the revenue.
Next, I want to develop an easy and intuitive shopping platform, even in a physical exhibition. Today, you still have to go through a QR code, it can be daunting without a wallet, and there is still a lot of friction, which hinders the purchase. We want democratization, both so that the general public can collect but also so that artists can distribute more widely. Therefore, the question is to create a UX that can use NFT technology for tangible applications in a physical location.
“We are in discussions with the Pompidou Center”
When you presented your roadmap last October, you mentioned internships with companies. Is it topical?
Indeed, we work with large groups in a wide variety of fields. For now, they still need to be acculturated. So what we do in BtoC – explain the theoretical part and then put into practice – we also do in BtoB. Then, in this first semester of 2023, we are developing all the next part i.e. Reflection Workshops according to requests.
One of the visitors to the NFT factory was Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister Plenipotentiary for Digital Transformation. Does this place in your eyes contribute to Web3 legalization?
It also contributes to legitimization and demystification: the fact of having a storefront, being opposite Beaubourg, which is insignificant, is reassuring. People understand that we are far from the dark web, and they see that we seem relatively thoughtful (laughs). We have discussions with the Pompidou Center, the Granite Museum of Aix-en-Provence, and they are also very advanced on this issue. I believe that legitimacy is achieved first through education and acculturation and that is why it was so important to have a physical place.
– Graduated from Sciences Po, studied Fine Arts and Decorative Arts, Lucy Eleonor Riveron She co-founded the Fauve Paris auction house in 2014, and was responsible for the first NFT auction on French soil in 2022. In the same year, she left the presidency of Fauve Paris to take over the management of NFT Factory.