Sailing the ark with full of hope in the blue ocean.
There is no doubt that 2021 is the year of Metaverse, as well as the “ first year of an era” of NFT. The founder of Twitter sold $2.9 million for a single tweet, Uniswap sold $160,000 for a pair of socks, and a collage sold $69 million. As the domestic market is also hot, Yao Ming firstly launched his limited-edition wine NFT collection, and then there is the NFT China art trading platform exclusive cooperated with the crypto artist “salted fish in the middle and lower reaches” works “sobbing” selling to 2 million RMB, which creates the highest price of the domestic trading platform NFT works sold record. You can see the huge market potential of the NFT trading platform from everything above.
NFT (non-fungible token) is a kind of data unit on the so-called blockchain (digital ledger), each token can represent unique digital data. Due to the non-interchangeable character, non-fungible tokens can represent digital files such as paintings, sounds, films, items in games, or other forms of creative work.
The NFT market started to attract attention in the crypto field, mainly from Cryptokitties. 2017’s Cryptokitties, the first phenomenal crypto game application, took the lead in bringing NFT to the public. Each crypto cat corresponds to an NFT token on the chain with a unique ID and gene, and the genes of different cats are combined to get a new NFT token to represent the cat in the market for auction, where the most expensive cat sold at a sky-high price for hundreds of thousands of dollars. NFT is on fire because of 2017’s Cryptokitties, which pioneered the protocol ERC721, called the first NFT standard on Ethereum.
There is explosive growth in the NFT market in 2021, and according to Nonfungible data, NFT market transactions reached $754 million in Q2 2021, up 3453% year-over-year and 48% sequentially. Such a huge market turnover has certainly attracted many entrepreneurs, and Peter Lin is one of them.
This is also the year,Peter Lin founded BlueArk, wanting to take advantage of the east wind of the NFT platform to show off his fist. Nevertheless, his goal is much more than an NFT platform, he also aims at decentralized finance, gamified finance, metaverse, etc. “How vast and huge is the human imagination, how vast and boundless is the world.”, said Peter Lin. And at this moment, the world in his eyes is a vast and boundless blue sea.
Xiou: Please tell us about your own entrepreneurial experience.
Peter Lin: My uncle is Jimmy Choo, a world-renowned designer of high heel shoes, and under his influence, I went to England to study when I was 16. In the UK, I studied Western art and culture while practicing handcrafted design art with my uncle, and I was exposed to different design arts, studied new media creative design, and developed a passion for technology and new media design.
In 2008, I was selected as one of the “Top 10 Emerging Designers in the UK” by Digital Arts, a British design magazine. And then I opened a designer-manager company in the U.K. In 2012, I returned to Hong Kong and set up a fashion brand with my wife. In 2018, I set up a design studio count to ten, which also won some international design awards.
At the beginning of this year, I often talked about the development and potential of the digital world with my current entrepreneurial partners, and we all had great expectations for the future development of this market. We believe that the development of this market can change the world, so a group of our like-minded partners decided to found BlueArk.
Xiou: Can you introduce the core team members other than you?
Peter Lin: Sure. My business partner and creative director of BlueArk, Dough-Boy, is a music producer and actor. In 2014, his music won the Best Film Theme Song award at the Hong Kong Film Awards that year. He has released 3 solo albums, with over 6 million plays on Spotify, and has worked with many internationally known musicians such as Lil Yachty, Jackson Wang,, MC Jin, MC Hotdog, etc. He is quite young and talented.
In addition, we have a very professional team of consultants. For example, Daniel Ebrahimian, a technical consultant, graduated from the University of Technology Sydney, is a knowledgeable and creative software development expert with more than 10 years of experience in game software development and creation, proficient in the database, data structure, and algorithm; Mia, a crypto consultant, has rich experience in both blockchain and internet industry; Alex Chong, a financial consultant has nearly 20 years of investment and financial advisory experience in the Greater China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and US markets. Moreover, he has also been actively involved in advising private venture capital groups in initial public offerings (IPOs) and secondary financing transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and other investment-related transactions for numerous public companies and diversified industries such as IT, gaming, entertainment, retail, and real estate development.
Our team is strong, our goals are aligned, and our desire to make good companies is unchanging.
Xiou: The name BlueArk is very special, how did it come about?
Peter Lin: The Ark, originally meant a huge ship made by God to preserve the world’s species, save and pass on life. It carries the imagination, survival possibility, and hope of all human beings, leading people to a brand new era; while the Blue ocean represents the emerging market. DeFi, NFT, GameFi, and even a higher and more vast digital business space in today’s space— Metaverse.
BlueArk is a combination of these two words, which means that we want to be an imaginative company in emerging markets with unlimited possibilities for growth.
Xiou: How does BlueArk provide services to its users?
Peter Lin: BRK (BlueArk for short) will focus on the creation, storage, and trading of NFT art and music works on its original NFT trading platform, and innovate to bring the new concept of “participation is mining” to users through the absolutely low threshold of NFT works trading, which will create financial value for them instantly. Moreover, BRK will establish its own “BRK Smart Chain” to create a complete BRK ecosystem without fear of distance or near.
The BlueArk platform advocates the preservation of original creations, each piece must be unique, and therefore it does not accept plural works on the shelves. With the advanced technology of blockchain, each artwork with unique characteristics can be passed on forever. The platform attaches great importance to the user’s experience. In addition to adopting a hybrid minting system to waive the minting fee for creators’ NFT works (generally, the platform costs about $160 per minting), it also waives the transaction fee for collectors and adds a “participation is mining” rebate mechanism, which means that both creators and collectors can receive additional rebates from the platform after they reach a transaction which will maintain for at least 15 years for the purpose of giving back to users and maximize the benefits of the innovative trading model. This is how we provide our services.
Xiou: BlueArk announced its collaboration with City Entertainment Magazine some time ago, can you tell us about this collaboration?
Peter Lin: The main way of our cooperation is to release NFT made from the photos taken by the late Hong Kong diva Anita Mui during her interview with City Entertainment Magazine on the BlueArk platform, including never-before-seen top-secret photos.
In addition, BlueArk and City Entertainment Magazine have decided to donate part of the auction proceeds to the Cultural Dynamics Charity Fund. We will hold a charity movie night to invite the beneficiaries of the fund to witness the legendary life of Anita Mui back on the screen. For this auction, BlueArk is proud to present on the platform an NFT piece made from a photograph of the legendary diva Anita Mui taken during her interview with City Entertainment Magazine. The interview was photographed by Wong in 1991 and published in issue #313 (April 4-17, 1991) of City Entertainment Magazine. At that time, it was the tenth year of Anita Mui’s debut. With the title of “Ten Years of Glory for Anita Mui”, Film Fortnightly documented the legendary diva Anita Mui’s solo exhibition “Ten Years of Glory for Anita Mui” with a cover story, and made a retrospective of her career, relationship, and personal growth, recording the legend of the rise of a generation of divas.
In addition to the two photos of the interview published in the weekly magazine, the NFT collaboration also includes the cover of the 313th issue of City Entertainment Magazine, which is of great cultural value, and two rare photos which were taken during the interview that has never been exposed before. It is significant that the photos have reappeared to the public as NFT artworks after a century and a half, and they will pass on forever in the metaverse world.
Xiou: What will be the next plan of BlueArk?
Peter Lin: In the future, BRK will build an exclusive “BRK AI” system to recreate “secondary value” and give more meaning to users’ NFT works, so that NFT will not only stop at the narrow level of storage and trading. For example, in music, BRK will create a powerful artificial intelligence system to help users create new music. It can not only create single or multiple NFT music works but also provide optimization and scoring systems to make their NFT music works more competitive and professional in commercial value. In addition, we will create a new “GameFi” through the “BRK Smart Chain” and artificial intelligence system to further apply the concept of “participation is mining” to the player level.
Xiou: Please tell us about your expectations for BlueArk.
Peter Lin: I hope that BlueArk can carry the imagination and infinite possibilities to lead all human beings into all metaverses, which we will build an ideal common world together. That’s all I expect.
At the end of the interview, Peter Lin also revealed the overall plan of “BRK Smart Chain”. Starting from the BRK NFT trading platform, it will go on the process to BRK concept store, BRK music AI development, BRK smart chain + AI enhancement, BRK gaming + AI enhancement, BRK art + AI enhancement, until the ultimate formation of BRK’s own meta-universe.
Peter Lin wants to pilot the ark and travel freely with passion in that azure ocean.
