UniqArt: An artist focused NFT marketplace

[uniqart1]

Open Grant Proposal: UniqArt: An artist focused NFT marketplace

Name of Project: UniqArt

Proposal Category: app-dev

Proposer: uniqart1

Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP and dual-license under MIT and APACHE2 licenses?: "Yes"

Project Description

UniqArt is an NFT marketplace designed specifically for Artists. Our decentralized platform allows you to connect with a growing community of collectors, buyers, and sellers, not to mention, fellow creators all around the globe.

Our CEO Semwal is himself a popular Indie-artist. In his initial years, Semwal has faced a lot of problems like lack of monetization, limited avenues of revenue, etc. Semwal has worked with India’s biggest digital artist Karan Aujla and other leading artists.

UniqArt has an association with Speed Records, the top 60th channel on YouTube in the world along with artists having a cumulative reach of over 100 million.

How can these creators focus on their art and support themselves at the same time with these minuscule earnings?

To answer this question we have come up with UniqArt, an NFT marketplace designed specifically for Artists. We have created UniqArt to be the solution by allowing the most important entity in the picture to really shine and be in the spotlight — the Artist. Be it photography, music, fine art, digital art, videography, graphic design, or illustration, — if it adds more color to the world it should be kept in the spotlight and the creator must be fairly incentivized for their efforts.

The Current Problems:

• Lack of technical know-how: Indian artists are usually naive when it comes to technology hence they have an entry barrier for the NFT platform.
• Trust Issues: Indian music industry is typically operated and sometimes exploited by music labels which make artists uncomfortable to work with outsiders.
• No decentralized crowdfunding: NFTs can serve as a great tool for artists to crowdfund their future projects
• Incomprehensive Onboarding: With too many options and technicalities, artists are already too busy and occupied with too many opportunities in hand which leads to a larger drop rate whenever new technologies are introduced.

The Solution: “UniqART: The Music NFT Marketplace for Artists”

We want to create an NFT marketplace that aims to disrupt the current Indian music industry, where we aim to create a two-way interaction between fans and artists facilitated via NFTs. Fans can buy limited edition songs, Album arts, fan cards as NFTs to interact with their audience.

• Consultation: Smooth onboarding process as a specific team will assist artists with setting up their accounts, wallets, and profile.
• Crowdfunding: We will create a decentralized crowdfunding platform to enable artists to fund their future projects.
• Mass Adoption: With a sophisticated UX, we will be onboarding the industry’s leading artists who can bring masses onto our platform which will further lead to wider adoption.
• Awareness: To create a wider appeal, we will create opportunities for awareness amongst users and artists. Since we are already working in the music industry, it is easier for us to set up a positive dialogue for our work.

Value

We are aiming at bringing the masses into the NFT revolution using UniqArt. We will be adding the following value to the Filecoin ecosystem:

• Users will get to know about the Filecoin vision through the UniqArt medium.
• Artists will be educated towards the importance of decentralized storage of their digital assets

Deliverables

We will be providing the following deliverables:

• Integrating Filecoin as the storage layer for our NFT marketplace.
• Mentioning of Filecoin as our storage layer on the website and other social channels
• Release of videos announcing the partnership along with blogs about the partnership
• Organising the AMAs with the artists and community about the importance of decentralization of storage layer

Development Roadmap

Q1 2022

• NFT Marketplace Launch – Official launch of The Artist’s Marketplace https://uniqart.io | 1:1 x 100 Collection, 1:n x 100 Collection by UniqArt Originals

• UniqArt Originals – WavPunks Collection Launch

• Custom Onboarding Solution – A professionally curated step-by-step onboarding solution for Artists getting into the NFT space

• Profile Avatar NFT – Custom Profile Picture NFT’s for special creators & collectors.

• Profile Customization – Multiple Social Link embeds, video/music embeds, user control over customization of creator/collector profiles.

• Prestige System – Introducing a ranking system on the UniqArt website for users. Each rank will allow special access to NFT’s, free giveaways, tickets to virtual concerts and more. (Coming Soon)

• Video/Music/Picture NFT Support – All types of content can be minted into an NFT on the NEAR Protocol.

• Wishlist Program

• Favourite Artist Program

• Airdrop Program – Multiple NFT Airdrops to grow the community and get more people involved.

• Rarity Feature

• Educational Series Launch – Video series explaining Web3, Blockchain, NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and related topics through easy-to-understand educational videos.

• Interview Sessions with Artists – Exclusive interviews with creators on the UniqArt marketplace.

• Exclusive NFT Launch with Popular Punjabi Artist (name will be announced soon)

• Exclusive NFT Launch with Popular Travel Vlogger (collaboration with indie singer-songwriter, names will be announced soon)

Q2 2022

• Unlockables – Introducing a feature to the website that grants special users (based on rank) access to unlockable attributes and benefits attached to the NFT; like physical assets, tickets, merchandise, exclusive content.

• Influencer Program – Collaborations with multiple social media influencers.

• NFT Launch with Multiple Indie Bands – Exclusive launch of singles and albums (1x1000) of Music NFTs.

• NFT Launch with Popular Artists – Exclusive launch of physical assets like merch, tickets, posters, unseen footage, meet & greet and much more.

• Artist Meetup – Collaborative meetup for creators in the metaverse/virtual servers. Supporting artists by helping them understand the unlimited possibilities of the space and how they can continue to grow.

• Podcast Launch – Official UniqArt podcast launch covering education, artist interviews, exclusive NFT drops/giveaways, special guest speaker sessions and more.

• Crowdfunding Program – Introducing a decentralized crowdfunding program to the UniqArt website where users can set up their own customized program without any third party taking a cut.

• Uniqart Exclusive Audio NFT Album Launch – To end Q2, UniqArt’s original artists will launch an NFT album in the Metaverse.

Total Budget Requested

We are looking for a total grant of $25,000.

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

We will maintain the platform for a minimum of five years as we are pursuing this as a long-term project. We will keep on updating the platform as per our project roadmap to stay relevant to the ever-changing needs.

Team

Team Members

1. Shubham Semwal, Co-founder and CEO Shubham Semwal a.k.a. Sémwal, is a singer-songwriter from India. Engineer by qualification and artist by profession, Shubham brings the best of both worlds where he understands technology as well as is respected in the artist community. With the stage name of Semwal, he has worked with dozens of artists and has released his own musical art pieces as an independent artist. Being a crypto enthusiast, he loves to explore the ideas and products that revolve around this space.

2. Amritpal Singh (Tech Lead) - Amrit is a senior software engineer in Acubetech Solutions. He is a proficient full stack developer who has worked in Android, React Native, Java, SQL, C, HTML, JavaScript. His curiosity towards blockchain makes him the best choice for the role.

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shubhamsemwal https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrit-pal-singh-7ab470128/

Team Website

https://uniqart.io/ Test website: https://demo.uniqart.io

Relevant Experience

We have associations with artists with reach in millions which will help in bringing the artist's huge fan base and communities as users on our platform. Our tech team is well versed in delivering the projected roadmap of the project.

Team code repositories

http://github.com/uniqart-io

Additional Information

Please refer to our detailed pitch deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vj6FfAepJDqgmPvwcdl3zp54DhkeNneB/view?usp=sharing

[realChainLife]

Hi @uniqart1 thank you for this proposal. We would like to fund the work outlined here, please email devgrants@fil.org to discuss next steps.

[uniqart1]

Hi @realChainLife , we have emailed on the above email id on Thursday last week. Please ask the team to check the email from semwal@uniqart.io so that we can take this forward.

[realChainLife]

Thanks UniqArt, you should have received the email with the next steps now.