We are excited to introduce the new article series, called the BSC Grant Spotlight. This series will introduce you to the top five projects from the first round of the BSC Grants.
BSC Grants is a Quadratic Funding Grant sponsored by the BSC ecosystem and held on HackerLink.io, a blockchain developer platform under DoraHacks. Developers from all over the world can submit projects to Hackerlink.io.
We’re starting with the first project that received the most community votes, the Blind Boxes.
Spotlight on Blind Boxes
Please describe Blind Boxes to our audience and tell us what’s unique about your project.
Blind Boxes is a decentralized curation platform and launchpad for NFTs. Our gamified framework addresses key frictions in the NFT market. For creators and brands, reaching mainstream audiences can be difficult. Far too often, amazing talent goes completely unnoticed on overcrowded or disparate marketplaces. For collectors, it can be nearly impossible to find exceptional works at approachable prices. Moreover, market manipulation and wash trading are prevalent on auction platforms.
Blind Boxes increases sales, circulation, hype, and exposure for their portfolio for creators and brands. For collectors, this curated mystery box distribution model removes many market inefficiencies seen in auction marketplaces. Ultimately Blind Boxes paves the way for mainstream adoption by boosting NFT creators’ sales while allowing collectors to unbox and discover rare digital assets.
BLES is the token that powers the platform. In total, only 100M BLES will ever be minted. The primary way to mine BLES is by opening Blind Boxes. Today BLES can be bought and sold on exchanges, yet these tokens will also have advanced utility and use on the platform. For example, BLES will be accepted as payment for Blind Boxes. BLES token holders also earn passive income by staking BLES. Curators will be incentivized to stake BLES to access special promotional features for their collections. We believe the ability to earn yield and unlock advanced functionality will be attractive to token holders. BLES token holders also gain the ability to vote during competitions and earn contest mining rewards. Finally, since we are a DAO, BLES holders will have voting power and play important roles in the governance of the platform.
Can you briefly introduce us to your team?
Anita Angelica Moore, the CEO, was raised in New York, where she studied engineering at Columbia University. Her early career was in the arts, healthcare, consulting, and finance. In 2015 during business school at Yale, she discovered blockchain and began investing in crypto. In 2017 she joined the founding team of Ephelants 360, a project building tech for the film and TV industry. After joining Antler, a NY-based incubator, she founded Aer Lab, a consumer-facing brand focused on sustainability.
David Shen, our CTO, is a tech veteran that has spent his career building innovative products. He brings to the table 30 years of coding experience, plus 10 years of team management. He has led teams at Viacom, Facebook, and Huffington Post. David leads our team of developers and has the unique ability to bridge from the technical to creative worlds.
Suz Lee, our CMO, is a creative strategist with marketing and operational experience in startups and venture capital. Her focus is in consumer technology, media, and ecommerce. She has brought direct-to-consumer brands to market, including Quip, Eight Sleep and Thursday Boots.
What's the most important element on your roadmap? What can we expect from you in the coming weeks and months?
User growth and mainstream traction are major priorities for the project. As of today, we have onboarded 100+ creators and brands to our roster. Our next major milestone will be 250. For us, having a balanced portfolio of IP from the art, music, gaming, and entertainment arenas is key. We are in talks with mainstream brands and innovative disruptors in these sectors. Our ability to finalize these collaborations will lead us closer to Blind Boxes’ goal to become a recognized brand in the mainstream community.
Regarding product development, the mainnet launch in mid-April is our next major milestone. We are excited to have progressed the project to this point, and we look forward to getting user feedback. Following this milestone, we will look towards the launch of the Blind Boxes Launchpad. Launchpad will allow creators to host decentralized tokenized crowdfunding campaigns. For collectors, this new feature will enable them to invest directly in creators. It also lets them earn passive income from the sales of the creator’s future work.
How do Blind Boxes work? What makes it different from existing marketplaces?
The selling mechanism is distinctive and differs considerably from auction marketplaces. Blind Boxes are sealed packages of NFTs that are distributed, one at a time, from highly curated collections. Decentralized transparent curation is at the core of our value proposition. Unlike many marketplaces, where NFTs are selected by an unknown committee, here, the curators are in the spotlight. Curators can be celebrities, subject matter experts, artists, or well-known brands.
How it works: Curators create collections and invite specific creators to add NFTs to the collection. Creators have the freedom to assign sticker prices to their individual itemsas they enter a collection. The curator has the final say over the exact composition of their collection. Before a collection is listed, each NFT is wrapped in its own mystery box. Next, our algorithm assigns the same price to each wrapped box in the collection. Finally, the collection goes live.
From a user perspective, the contents of the collection are visible. The mystery is exactly which NFT they will receive when they draw from the collection. The best-designed collections will use principles of game theory to exciting users. For example, a collection of high-quality items valued around 500 USDT that features one item valued at 5000 USDT could be very attractive for users. Anticipation, the element of surprise, and the desire to discover new NFTs will drive the appeal for users.
Our transparent commission structure empowers curators to build collections and invite new artists into the ecosystem. By allowing them to monetize their abilities to be scouts and tastemakers in this crowded NFT market, we hope to elevate this important group of stakeholders within this industry.
What do you think made you succeed in the 1st round of BSC Grants?
We attribute our success in this grant competition to the excitement of our earliest supporters. We cannot thank them enough! We believe that having a well-defined vision, a differentiated strategy, and a clear timeline gave voters confidence in our ability to execute this exciting concept.
Why did you decide to build on Binance Smart Chain? What do you hope to see next from the BSC community?
The choice to develop on Binance Smart Chain centers on efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability. Ethereum has important limitations that prevent it from being a long-term solution for this industry. High gas fees and network congestion are major hurdles standing in the way of mainstream adoption. In terms of transaction speed, BSC is a clear winner. While Ethereum approves blocks roughly every 5 minutes, BSC produces blocks roughly every 5 seconds. This enhanced response time supports our goal of maximum scalability. Since we plan to offer Defi functionality for our users, the fact that BSC supports staking and farming are important. Finally, BSC allows for inexpensive transactions that are immensely more cost-effective than Ethereum. Combined, we see these benefits of BSC as major wins for our stakeholders.
Let's say I want to start using Blind Boxes. Where do I start? Where can I find some how-to guides?
The landing page for the project is www.blindboxes.io. The most up-to-date information will always be available on our Twitter and Telegram channels. Early-bird registration for users to join Blind Boxes are available here. We are also accepting applications for curators and creators to join our talent roster. The Blind Boxes Medium page is the best place for daily updates on the strategy, roadmap, and development of the platform.
In the next BSC Grants Spotlight, we interviewed Meta Network (Matataki). The second most popular project in the community vote. Check it out here!
BSC Grants 2: The second funding round
The subsequent BSC Grants 2 funding round is in preparation and now accepts sponsorship partners. BSC ecosystem partners, individuals, and interested parties are welcome to join us and sponsor the next round.
If you're interested in sponsoring the fund, please send an email to hi@dorahacks.com with a short introduction explaining why you're interested in becoming a sponsor. Please join the Telegram group.
Keep up with the BSC Discord, Telegram-BSC Developer Community, Twitter, and Dorahacks Medium to be the first to know about the next round.
About Binance Smart Chain
Binance Smart Chain is a sovereign smart contract blockchain with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible programmability. It is designed to run in parallel with Binance Chain (BC). Binance Smart Chain retains the BC's fast execution times and low transaction fees while adding smart contracts functionality to support compatible dApps.
For more information on Binance Smart Chain, please visit https://www.binance.org/#smartChain.
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