I’m Garrett, founder at CTO of RAIR Technologies and would like to apply for the Astar dApp Staking listing. We learned so much as a graduate of the inaugural Sony/Astar Incubator cohort and would like to take the next step forward by joining the Astar dApp staking ecosystem under NFT section.
Our core value proposition in the Web3 space is the unique pairing of NFT marketplace technology with encrypted streaming DRM (digital rights management) technology.
Our project creates private label Web3 Marketplace Infrastructure. 50+ documented API endpoints to mint, manage royalties, and stream encrypted content. This is paired with a beautiful frontend experience optimized for desktop and mobile.
Full integration of all smart contract infrastructure on Astar EVM. Full support via Alchemy API, marketplace order routing engine, minting and metadata engines.
Ongoing deployments for Anime focused marketplace, eLearning marketplace, Carbon Credit focused marketplace, and Real Estate focused marketplace. Negotiating to use Astar EVM as source underlying blockchain over Eth mainnet, Polygon, etc. for reliability, cost, and beneficial ecosystem reasons.
desktop view screenshot of Sony trial marketplace with Hotel Transylvania media assets. Screenshot of platform features overview
Bring institutional grade web3 marketplace infrastructure to enterprise. This will empower the next 100m active wallets to enter the web3 ecosystem through a gameified media experience.
Team
Executive team
Ed Prado: Investment banking and Wall Street background. 200m+ successful exit for bond trading platform.
Garrett: Blockchain expert active in the ecosystem since 2013. DRM software background creating scalable applications prior to blockchain.
Dev team
Chris: GCP Certified Devops Engineer
Masha: Full Stack Project Manager
Juan: Solidity and Backend Engineer
Arsenii: Frontend Developer
Cat: Frontend Developer and Designer
Vino: QA Engineer
Suresh: QA Automation Engineer
Security
Audited smart contract code (Mythx audits) DMCA compliant streaming engine. GCP certified cloud infrastructure engineers. Security best practices - Hashicorp vault with key rotation, Cloudflare, etc.
Milestones
Sony/Astar Incubator: Successful graduate of first cohort
GCP Startup Program: 100k/yr in cloud infrastructure credits + mentorship and access to Google ecosystem
Alchemy Startup Program: Bd resources and access to premium support, co marketing and co branding initiatives
Filebase Startup Program: Bd resources and access to premium support, co marketing and co branding initiatives
AIKON wallet partnership. Shared BD pipeline and revenue sharing agreements.
PCT Patent Pending in 155 countries around DRM encryption mechanism.
It’s nice to see that you’re interested in joining the dApp Staking program.
Can you tell me more about your dApp, is it already live on Astar network, as this is a requirement to participate in the dApp Staking, the closing beta is open to everyone?
I saw on your website that you’re exposing other EVM chains (Ethereum, polygon, BSC), I’d like to know if you’re an Astar-native project and where you’re focusing in terms of development?
You mention the Astar/Sony incubation program, great work! Can you share a link to your application or information about what you’ve done as part of this program?
Last question, in your own words, what differentiates you from the other NFT marketplaces we have on Astar (Bluez, TofuNFT, Paras, etc.)?
Thanks for your application! NFT marketplaces are great, I am just wondering how do you guys are planning to attract users to your platform? I mean… we have a lot of NFT marketplaces competing in each other.
My concern is about HOWs
-how to attract user?
-how to marketing your product?
Great question! We are taking an enterprise first strategy where we are building specific marketplaces per client. This way they can retain royalties and user data inside of their own secure environment.
We feel this is where the opportunity gap exists in the marketplace. Love the aggregator pfp focused marketplaces though we are interested in dedicated marketplaces for use cases like Carbon Credits, Real Estate, streaming IP, etc. In our model clients bring their existing Web2 user bases into web3 first as a POC to build a data case internally then at scale.
This model allows us to efficiently market via b2b sales channels with a smaller team, and leaning on our advisor/investor network for warm introductions to Enterprise.
Yes we are live on Astar EVM! It is our 4th EVM integration after Eth mainnet, matic, bsc.
We are looking for a home with low cost high availability block space and Astar is the clear winner! Eth being too expensive and Polygon having reliability issues (always throwing JSON-RPC) BSC having regulatory issues.
As we are enterprise focused our goal is to partner with a preferred L1 to store onchain client data to at scale. We are also interested in the XCM down the line and leveraging Polkadot ecosystem more directly.
Our differentiator is we are not aggregating NFTs and focused on the consumer NFT sector, but are deploying private label dedicated marketplaces for enterprise where we can help them retain royalties and user data securely inside of a dedicated deployment.
Thrilled to witness the evolution of RAIR Technologies from its Sony/Astar Incubator days. The blend of NFT marketplace tech and encrypted streaming DRM in your project is captivating. Your proposed dApp staking plan seems well-divided, with emphasis on Astar user incentives and AUTH token dynamics. I’m curious, how does your DRM tech stand out in safeguarding content compared to existing solutions?
Hi Matt! We’ve really enjoyed being part of the Astar ecosystem through the incubator - That’s a great question as the DRM part was the core original concept and what we filed our patent on. Then later we built the rest of the stack - minting, royalties, marketplace in service of showcasing the core DRM.
My background prior to blockchain was in DRM tech and I realized what a better database an immutable blockchain would be to store access credentials rather than a fallible centralized database.
Of course with limited block size on an L1 like Bitcoin that’s not really possible. I think with Astar we can really start to fill up blocks with DRM access data. That’s the big picture behind our AUTH token that you send a small amount of AUTH along with your API requests to decrypt the content. This then pays for the streaming/bandwidth costs and overages can accrue into a community fund, buy back Astar tokens etc.
On the safeguard side, this approach is also we feel the next step forward from centralized DRM.
-When you unlock with a verified crypto wallet its much harder to leak as we know which wallet was behind the leak.
-Protecting user data is also paramount (don’t want any friend.tech type wallet leaks on our hands) so there is an element of safeguarding and hashing the analytics as well that we securely provide to the end customer.
Hope that helps answer! We’re working on an updated whitepaper that will flesh out these concepts on the user data side in a little more detail than the current whitepaper.
Thank you very much for your interest in the dApp staking! It’s great to have another NFT marketplace, and also like all the things you have done. I have a few questions: 1. For the features (Q2 2023), did you already finished all of them? it looks like you have done a lot, great job! 2. I am still not quite clear what you plan to use the dApp staking, especially the development part, I hope to see the milestone that you want to achieve in the next few months, what kind of new features do you plan to add? and how it would benefit Astar community? 3. Is the AUTH token listed? where is it listed? since I saw from the description that you would like to use the ASTAR to buyback the AUTH token, just curious about the token utility
The idea of the project is quite good, and it also has a digital rights management extension. I would like to ask some additional questions.
For example, the case of linking anime to NFTs, is there an official partnership in place? I understand that such works are likely to be copyrighted, especially when used in a commercial sense. This includes areas other than anime as well.
Who is the target customer? What are the strategies to get people to use this dApp?
As we can see today, the volume, transaction, and even the price of NFT trading have all decreased significantly. What methods will the team use to manage if the situation continues like this for another 2-3 years?
Great to see the progress you’ve made so far after the Sony Incubation Program, it shows some level of seriousness and commitment to build and create value for Astar ecosystem. Would users of your platform use ASTR to pay gas fees or you intend to have token? One of the factors to consider in UX is benefits, what benefits does your platform provide to potential users?
It’s good to see that you’ve made some progress since the Sony/Astar Incubation Centre days. In addition, the Astar network is a network that has the potential to develop in the NFT field, so I approach any NFT development with extra interest. I liked your planning in the Dapp staking section. What do you think will make you the leading NFT market?
Great questions! Yes we did finish the Q2 goals and now have social wallet integration and fiat integration - as well as of course full Astar intergration! We use a widget called onramper that pre fills the users 0x address when topping up their balance with crypto. Onramper aggregates different fiat onramps globally then sources the best exchange rate. Fees are a bit higher than exchanges but convenient for users. Hoping they support Astar soon - though with matic zkevm news maybe users can onboard that way
Our token is being used on testnet right now with a credit system in place to deposit withdraw. Functionality revolves around sourcing data from the cloud infrastructure by including tokens along with the API request (uploading content, extracting analytics, etc) We only have them in private wallets right now and are waiting for better market conditions to release publicly. Our plan with the dapp staking interest is to place in treasury for now then use as a mechanism to subsidize an AUTH token faucet in the future
Absolutely! Right now we’re working on private enterprise marketplaces that are being tested internally so quite a small userbases of employeees. Our plan is to release a public facing version of the marketplace once we’re out of closed beta. The onramper widget is quite interesting - a fiat aggregator that uses your IP address to determine which of the rails is available in your region and has the best rate. Onramper
Yes that’s a great use of the dapp staking funds. The Astar network is so fast and reliable with such affordable block space we’d be able to more than cover gas for users with dapp staking income. Detailed a bit more in another thread our plans for our AUTH token and using the excess dapp staking rewards to create an AUTH faucet that will help subsidize bandwidth and other cloud costs.
Navigating the rights and IP ownership (specifically Anime) is quite complex and takes time. Our current approach is to build internal PoCs (like the Hotel Transylvania demo we made for Sony) to then get corporate buy in to create an official release.
Our target customer is a b2b enterprise with existing or new IP assets we can build the vertically integrated solution for - minting, streaming, marketplace. Outside of Sony our strategy involves sourcing smaller production companies with a faster and more direct relationship to their IP ownership
It is certainly a bear market for NFTs! We feel strongly the underlying value of creating serial numbers on a blockchain that unlock dynamic content will survive the cycle and come out stronger for it. Especially focusing on APAC and seeing the innovation going on outside of the US.
