Creating Opportunities: Laurent Perello on APENFT and Season 2 of The TRON Grand Hackathon

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Foreign. Hey everyone, what's up? It's Rachel here. Thanks again for joining us for another AMA today. I'm here with Laurent Perello. He is a blockchain advisor for Tron Dao. Hey Laurent, how's it going?

Hello Rachel. Nice. Excited to be with you all guys. And I'm in Berlin for a few days for NFT Berlin and excited exciting events. I met a lot of NFT creators and project. On the building and creating.

Great, wonderful. Well Laurent, we're excited to speak with you today and I just want to remind the audience. Please send us your questions in the chat. Laurent is here to answer them and of course subscribe to our YouTube channel as well. So let's get started. Laurent, first question, tell us more about your role@ape NFT.

So to be clear, my role is an advisor to the Tron Dao, the first, the third largest blockchain by TVL as of last week. This was mostly likely due to the adoption of usdd, the newest algorithmic stablecoin backed by TRX and the Tron Dow Reserve which is made up of quite a few impressive institutional partners. That being said, just yesterday App NFT also announced a partnership with the legendary Exchange. It was the first one I used a few years ago, I mean Poloniex to launch an NFT marketplace. So to say it's simply Poloniex customer will now be able to trade Tron based NFTs quickly and easily through the Poloniex website and also the mobile app. This is still the beginning for sure of NFTs and we are totally excited to see what the Tron community will continue to add to the growing ecosystem.

Great, wonderful. That's really exciting news about Poloniex. So thanks for mentioning that Laurent. Any other developments? I know that we recently did an AMA with Ape NFT a few weeks ago. Are there any other developments that you can talk about since that AMA that we did with David?

Yeah, there is actually the Vanity Fair auction, a project that offer NFT cover with his Excellency Justin Sun 2022 NFT cover with a set of 1000 limited edition price at 999terx. And for sure there will be the Grand Hackathon Season 2 in which app NFT is particularly involved and a few strategic announcements soon that I can't mention right now. But stay updated following app nft.org and Twitter and all social media.

Awesome. Great. Now I'm sure maybe some audience members that are listening today, maybe they missed the last AMA with APE nft. So Laurent, if you're able to just kind of give an overview about Ape NFT and explain how it's unique and different from other NFT marketplaces. That would be great.

So the obvious difference between App NFT and other major marketplace it's that it operation Tron but their real goal is to attract more artists and creators and the reason why also I'm here in Berlin to engage creators artists project NFT project to build on top of Tron and to cooperate with App nft. What you have to know also is that App NFT is promoting 0% transaction fees as opposed to 2.55 or higher as seen on many competitor marketplace. The main technical differentiator between App NFT and most of the blockchain is that App NFT operates on top of Tron blockchain and as everybody know Tron is works simply as I used to say with no interruption downtime. It's efficient, trustable and costly and mostly free to transact on Tron. And also one major difference between App NFT and others marketplace is that App NFT all assets stored on App nfts are secure but bittorrent file system BTFS as opposed to opposed to IPFS interplanetary file system. Also appnft collaborates with really big brands and the first one I have announced is Vanity Fair Italy but some big names will be announced soon to Release High End NFTs. As I said, the collaboration with Vanity Fair Italy is a great start. It consists in two things in fact for unique NFT scorer is on auction from the 23rd to the 30th of May. App NFT offers token access to VIP events and one year Vanity Fair subscription for total value of over 27. There is also a collection is Excellency Justinson 2022 NFT cover really amazing work with a set of 1000 limited edition as I said price at 900 sorry 99 trx and what I can say also is that thanks to Tron's vibrant ecosystem and all the project built on top of Tron all Tronics App NFT can have many internal partners to co brand and co promote the big drop. For example, as I said the support from Poloniex users who purchase any NFT cover will receive Vanity Fair NFT cover will receive future trial funds of $25 bonus from Polanax Exchange. This is one of the biggest advantage for App NFT compared to others. And finally users can enjoy many of our benefits in addition to the ownership of NFTs.

Yeah, so Laurent, that's really interesting because I Wasn't aware of the Vanity Fair Italy NFT cover with Ape nft. So just out of curiosity, what is that? Was the COVID of the magazine made an NFT that people that the users can then go and bid on and own a piece of or how does that work exactly?

Yeah, yeah. As I said, it's a collection create by Value Arts and Vanity Fair. You have four unique one one piece NFT cover, Vanity Fair cover. Amazing, amazing work. And I invite everybody to have a look on the app NFT Marketplace. And also special cover created with Justin sun on the COVID It's really amazing art and 1000 NFT with additional bonus advantage as I said previously.

Yeah, that's awesome. And with the COVID are those only digital or was there actually a physical cover of Vanity Fair Italy that also is represented by the digital NFTs?

No, it's digital, but some can get one year subscription of the physical magazine for sure.

Wow, that's amazing. That's a great use case. I haven't really heard too many use cases where a major magazine like Vanity Fair has a partnership like that with NFT Marketplace.

Yeah, and as I said, it's really a beginning. There is a few strategic partnership engaged. I can't tell more right now, but stay tuned, you will see how App NFT will really act and improve what we can see actually on the market.

Yeah, that's really exciting audience. Just want to remind you. Please send Laurent your questions. I mean he has so much knowledge when it comes to the NFT space. It's really, it's, it's. He's really a great person to ask all, all questions NFT related. Laurent, I was wondering because you mentioned the Vanity Fair use case, can you kind of Discuss the other NFTs that we are seeing on Ape NFT Marketplace? Are they all artwork NFTs? Are some of them, you know, different or is it just artwork?

In fact, it's up to the community. It's decentralized marketplace dao. So everybody can use App NFT for music, NFT fashion, nft. I plan personally to publish my next novel as an NFT on App nft. There is no limit to creativity.

That's amazing. If you could elaborate a little bit. So you mentioned. So Ape NFT is a dao. Correct. Can you just explain, explain the concept of how that works, how an NFT marketplace is a dao.

So with NFT governance token, all holders will be able to vote and also to be involved in the evolution of App nft. For sure. It's not a one day Process. It's something that needs, need time to be built and implemented. But it's the full goal of App NFT to be really decentralized and operate as a totally decentralized, autonomous organization. The community will have a real and concrete and role. More you want to be involved, more you can contribute to build this amazing NFT marketplace.

Yeah, that's a great concept. So the coin behind the project, what is the name of the coin?

Nft.

Okay. NFT simply. Right. So Laurent, because you're a Tron Dao advisor, I want to get your thoughts just on the concept of, of having an NFT marketplace as a dao. Do you think that that type of model is a lot better, I guess than what we're seeing today? Do you think that NFT marketplaces should be community run and led and are there any challenges that may arise?

You know, I'm involved In blockchain, decentralization, web3, whatever the world we use at first because I'm, I'm an idealist and a believer. One of the most interesting points in all this innovation in this ecosystem, it's the decentralization. So for sure there is some well known NFT marketplace, but as a collectioner and NFT amateur and let's say also creator, I will launch soon my first NFT collection. I prefer to use decentralized, a really decentralized version. I'm a big believer in dao. You know, I had the chance to talk about Dao, Dao and governance last week in Paris at Paris Blockchain Week. For me it's implementing the whole concept of liquid democracy and without going in politics. I think if we can pick few concepts and few experimentation, what the daos are trying to implement, I'm totally sure we could easily solve a lot of societal or let's say citizen problem. For me, it's the way we have to take care and follow when we think about decentralization. Blockchain, crypto, defi, gamefi and whatever. Daos are the best way now, in my opinion, to launch project.

Right? Yeah. And we're seeing that DAO model applied to lots of industries, which is really interesting. I'm wondering if you can kind of discuss the tokenomics behind Ape NFT as well. It seems like that's kind of an important point to understand.

Yeah, you know, now nft, the underlying blockchain is strong for sure, but now it's a multi chain token, also available on Ethereum and Binance Smart chain. What can I say? Maybe token allocation, 30% is dedicated to artists and artist partners 90% to defy AirDrop and mining and I will give some additional details in a moment. 90% to NFT team, 2% to dedicated to initial exchange listing and you can have a look on coingecko or Coin market and you will see that the top leading exchange already support NFT and 20% it's also something we have to notice. 20% is dedicated to NFT work, purchase, creating an amazing collection with some people on the wall and so on. Well known, really well known artists. And finally 10% dedicated to partnership. Regarding the business model of NFT, as I said, it's a governance token. So NFT holder will be entitled to vote for the handling of NFT artwork in the App NFT DAO ecosystem. They will be able to decide on the future of NFT artworks, take part of App NFT activities at different level based on the amount and for sure this ecosystem is still to build. App NFT has been launched in May 2021, so it's just one year and everything is still on the way. Regarding I just want to add few details about the reward mechanism of NFT token. There is regularly defi airdrop and mining rewards. For example a monthly airdrop to holders of Tron family tokens, TRX btt, Win GST and the participants on Tron DC mining. It's something really interesting. Also something that totally distinguish App NFT from over marketplace with this kind of airdrop to really involve the Tron ecosystem and Tron family.

Yeah, yeah. And that. That is a unique feature for sure. Laurent, I'm also wondering if you could kind of discuss. I mean the tokenomics behind the project is extremely interesting but let's say there's an artist who wants to create an nft. Can you talk about the benefits specifically for an artist aside from the tokenomics? Because there are benefits there as to why they would want to use Ape nft. Are there other incentives or you know, the ease of use of the platform that you can kind of discuss.

Knowing that you will receive a monthly airdrop, it's already a great advantage. They will be also governance rewards. While you vote, you will get NFT activity rewards and dedicated program will be for sure implemented in the next few months and holding nft. Also you benefit from NFT and drop in mining.

Got it. Wonderful audience. Just a reminder, please send Laurent your questions. This is such an interesting project. Laurent. Now you also mentioned there's an upcoming hackathon. Is this the second hackathon that's being conducted?

In fact it's the season one of season two Sorry of the grand but before talking about the season two that started just 10 days ago I would like to talk a bit quickly about the season one. We have seen four winners and I would like to talk about this winner if I can quickly. In web three track we we have dcloud developing the next gen of decentralized cloud storage with an iOS and Android mobile app and using Bitterrain file system in gamefi amazing project Tron Ninja Arcad an amazing it's old school arcade game and really committed creative team. I met them several times in NFT track one of the most innovative project I have seen since a long time versa brick squad I was in Hungary Budapest to meet there and to see their project because because it's related to real estate and buying per NFT you can own a part of a flat and generate monthly income because the flat will be rent and each flat will be managed by a dedicated dao. Finally in defi track just money it's more much more than a dex It's a multi chain dex and certainly the one who support the most chain right now they support TRON, BitTorrent chain, Binance, Smart chain, Polygon, Zenichain and I'm sure they will extend this soon and since few weeks they also it's also multi chain bridge so you can easily swap token between Several chains Tron, BitTorrent chain, Binance, Smart Chain and Polygon and for all DAPP developers they offer easy way to integrate this innovation with a simple widget that you can integrate in your dapp. Regarding season two we are really impressed about how things are going because I told you it started application started on the on May 16th and we have already surpassed the submission we had for the all season one by a large Marching as us.

I think Laurent might be experiencing some oh hi Laurent, you're back. I think you froze for a minute.

Oh sorry.

It's fine. So you were talking about season two.

And how you've surpassed surpass already more than 600 submission as of yesterday in less than 1010 days. So it's it's really exciting to to. To see how all these projects are really engaged to deliver the best of web3nft gamefi defi on top of tron and bittorrent chain. What can I add? It's we we will also see that well known project I can name Human Protocol Katana Sat some long long existing project that we know since years will join this grand hackathon and the level will be really really high and for sure highly innovative this season.

Yeah, that's exciting. Are people still submitting submissions for the Hackathon Season 2?

Yeah, they can submit their project till the July 25th and you have to know that it's one million dollar total price and we have several five winners in each track category, NFT, DeFi, GameFi and Web3 and also several bonus community bonus runner bonus and so on. I invite everybody to have a look on trondao.org you will find all details and you can apply both on tron.devpost.com and on Tron Forum because there is a 2:2 price pool on each with each website from devpost.com and also on Trondao forum.

Yeah, that's exciting. And audience, if you guys have any questions about that, definitely send them our way. Now is the time because that is really really exciting news. I'm going to take some questions from the audience. Immortal San is asking what's the future that you see for Ape NFT in the coming years?

You know I don't use a crystal ball but I'm sure that we have to consider two main points in my in my vision. First is how the world thrown ecosystem is growing fast and engaging more and more projects. The combination between BitTorrent chain and Tron offer now a simple way to port your smart contract or your debt from Ethereum to BSC to TRON, BitTorrent chain and ecosystem and soon much more blockchain. That's the first thing. The more the ecosystem will grow the more it will benefit also to App nft and as I said previously, App NFT support Tron, bsc, Ethereum and I'm sure we'll support our token soon. And it's really a long term vision offering a way to really be engaged, involved and contribute and also suggest new futures or cooperation as a member of the DAO is a real long term advantage. Tron is also helping a lot to engage institutional partner to support App nft and I can tell you I have discussed this last two days with a lot of artists and creators and a lot of these people are thinking about and are working on joining the Tron and App NFT ecosystem and I'm sure the the future will be really brilliant.

Yeah, well I hope so. And it sounds like definitely there's exciting things for us to look forward to with Ape nft. But Laurent, I wanted to ask you, has it been challenging to launch an NFT marketplace given the current crypto market conditions? I mean a lot of people who have bought NFTs, you know the price of NFTS are, are not so high at the moment. You know, some people may say we're in a bear market. I mean, you know, I'm staying positive about it, but I want to get your thoughts on, on that. Like if it is challenging given the current market conditions.

Honestly, I don't know what means challenging. As I used to say, let's keep building. Beer or bear market for the people who built doesn't matter. In fact for people there since years we have, we had to face the previous bear market but it was the best moment to be focused on building on delivering high quality project including now high quality art. It's not only collection, it can be one. One art piece of art. We see music, nft, emerging videos, one governance, one fashion. There is a lot of new use case and even if the price is low, as you said, in fact we don't care. You don't launch even if it's a scam project, you don't launch NFT collection, you don't create NFT art just for the initial price. The mechanism is that you will also earn some money on the long run on the second market. So for me it's the best moment to create a project built to community, being focused on positive attitude and being really highly creative. Yeah, a lot of low level project will disappear. It's, it's also a part of the game.

Yeah, I mean you make really good points and I mean obviously you know, because you've been in the space since 2015 so you've been through, through these periods that we've seen in the crypto space. And I completely agree with everything you said. A lot of the best innovation from the blockchain space happens during these times. And I think that you make another really good point is that it's not all about price, it's about innovation as well. And just as you mentioned, with the second hackathon that we're seeing, the submissions have already surpassed the first season hackathon. And that just goes to show people are more focused right now on building versus the price of NFTs. And so your response was kind of exactly what I wanted to hear and what I think a lot of the audience needs to hear.

Yeah, and if I can add a word, it's not anymore a question of promise, you know, it's also delivering. And no, if you want to survive in such market condition, you have to prove you are trustable, you are sustainable, engaged and that you deliver whatever is the project can be NFT collection or it can be a DApp, whatever and it's the best moment to make the difference, in fact.

Yeah, I agree, Laurent, Just based on that and you know, the fact that we are now is a time to innovate. Can you kind of discuss the best use cases in your opinion for NFTs, specifically with APE NFT marketplace, What are the best use cases that you're seeing now?

Honestly, I don't think there is one best use case. I still think we haven't seen the biggest part of what the market will be. We are still experimenting and I say, when I say we, it's all people involved. It can be just buying nft, it can be creating nft. As I said, I'm also kind of artist. I create what I call degenerative art. I will launch my first collection, I'm proud about it on app nft and you know, I have published my first novel in the traditional way. The second one, I will experiment to publish it as nft. I have met few people who are combining not only piece of art but also governance. Defi as I told you, these two days in NFT Berlin was really amazing because a lot of new use case are actually built. People are really pushing the the border so far away from what we used to see actually. And I don't know, we can't predict the future, but I'm sure it will be for sure totally amazing and surprising combining Metaverse and art and music and governance and DeFi, gamefi, whatever. It will be a mix of everything in fact.

Right? Yeah. I mean, you were talking about the new use cases that you're seeing in Berlin. I recently wrote an article about gene NFTs where a genomics company is taking that data and turning it into an nft and the holders of that can actually own their data and receive incentives. Incentives when third parties want to utilize their data. So I mean, it's not just, you know, the typical use cases that we're thinking about today. I mean this is impacting every industry from art to healthcare. I don't know if you're seeing that in Berlin, but Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here it's mostly dedicated to focus on art, but as I mentioned previously, real estate, data and co ownership of a car of whatever. I think there is no limit to experiment. What could be NFTs, what is really stimulating, exciting and also inspiring in this Web3 blockchain industry, it's that someone one day appears with an idea totally crazy, but is able to deliver it. So the only limit we can face, it's the limit of our imagination for sure. A Lot of new use cases will appear on every domain. Every, absolutely every domain. Why? Because we have to experiment to be sure. It can be, it can last, it can be sustainable on a long term perspective before trying. We don't know. It's just a concept.

Right, Exactly. I just want to remind the audience send us your questions. We still have a few minutes left for the ama, so definitely send us your questions before we end. Laurent, I was also wondering, you know, because we've talked a lot about innovation and use cases and the tokenomics behind Ape nft. I think one big point in terms of mainstream adoption with NFTs is safety and security. So I wanted to ask you about what that looks like on Ape NFT marketplace. How the marketplace ensures the safety and security of NFTs.

You know, you know, it's something I'm really concerned about it and I used to say, have you seen. One hack occurred on Tron and on BitTorrent? As of now, no. We use App NFT use as I said, the Bittrun file system. It's now a trustable, well known and long run solution that proves that it's really trustable and secure and we are really focused on in the world Tron ecosystem, we are focused on the security and just give me an example of ARC and I will say yes, I'm wrong but as of now it's one of the most secure blockchain existing and all project built on the top of Tron are really focused on this and appreciate particularly our securities and so are really a focus also to deliver a product adapt totally secure.

Got it. Wonderful. Now we have a few minutes left Laurent, so I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to add any additional comments that the audience or I may have not already have asked you that you think is important to mention.

That App NFT will have a particular role in the Grand Akaton Season 2 supporting at first supporting the NFT winners with a dedicated program. And that big announcement will be made soon for strategic reason. I can't reveal today, but just follow App NFT on social media, stay up to date and stay tuned and you will see that App NFT will make a huge difference in the next few weeks and next few months in comparison with some, let's say traditional marketplace.

Great, wonderful. And if the audience wanted to get in touch with you, Laurent, how would they do that? And I know right now you're at NFT Berlin. What other conference conferences will you be at in case somebody wanted to ask you a question in person?

Yeah, I will be in Paris mid June, but for a private conference. Then I will be at the end of June in Barcelona. Then I will be in early July in Warsaw. Then I will be for three weeks. There is three, three big events during three weeks in Paris and the biggest one is the ETHCC week for the moment, that's all. And in September I will be in Valencia in Spain too. But you can find me in LinkedIn, Twitter easily. My name, first, last name and I show my face, I show my name. You can find me easily. And my pleasure to help every creator to launch their collection on app, NFT and every project we want to build on top of Tron or BitTorrent chain or to join the grand hackathon. I will be there to help.

Wonderful. Thanks so much Laurent and thank you to the audience. Thank you again for those who sent us your questions. Thanks for joining us. Just remember to please subscribe subscribe to our YouTube channel. Join us for our next AMA and Laurent, a big thank you to you. Thank you for joining us and shedding.

Thanks to you. Nice to meet you and hope we will be we will have the pleasure to meet in real life.

I hope so. Thank you Laurent. Thanks everyone. Have a great day or a good evening. Bye. Thank you. It.