Minteed is not yet minted (the act of registering an NFT in the blockchain). But it’s coming soon, says Jodouin Mitrani, its CEO and co-founder, who wants to provide creators of all stripes with simple and secure tools to express their art and sell it on Web3.
Jodouin, you were in the spotlight at the beginning of July. With your two partners, you announced Minteed’s fundraising with great fanfare (3 million euros from Fnac). What is it about?
It’s a project in which we wanted to put creators at the center of the game. With Thierry (Jadot, editor’s note) and Eric (Loreal, editor’s note), the two other founders of Minteed, we are passionate about art, particularly photography. . Web 2.0 has been both a tremendous visibility accelerator for photographers and an open door to the theft of their creations. Web3 must make it possible to turn the value chain in favor of the artist. The photo market represents perhaps 2 to 5% of that of art, but it has a particularity: its professionals have a catalog of many more works than they can exhibit. A great photographer like Sebastião Salgado has perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 images to show, but he only sells a tenth of them. Through discussions with Fnac, our shareholder, we agreed that we could not confine ourselves to art photography. Minteed today covers all the artistic expressions and creators that exist. To support them in the blockchain and reach a new audience, Minteed provides them with a secure environment, designed around their uses.
Concretely, what are you going to offer to artists? To issue NFTs from their physical works?
The NFT is an entry point. Behind, we want to develop many other things. To associate it with an experience, for example. Minteed should be a caring and safe space for artists. They will already be able to create rarity around their works, since there is no art market without rarity, but also to express new forms of creation, such as generative art, protected in the blockchain. With a watchword, accessibility. All of our services must be easy to access. The creator must have the feeling of entering a secure environment, which allows him to reach an extremely large audience, with technological tools that are as simple as creating an Instagram account.
What uses do you anticipate?
We will find out. We live for the Web3 the equivalent of 1998 for the Web or 2008 for the mobile. The very beginnings. In the end, there are relatively few technological barriers to creativity. And when there are, they have to be twisted. The first reflex, when entering Web 3, was to create digital clones of works in Web 3. Why wouldn’t we imagine the opposite? An exclusively connected artist, like Zancan, might find it interesting that his collectors can enjoy his works in their living room. The owner of an NFT could request high-fidelity printing, itself certified. These are the kinds of freedoms offered by the blockchain.
Not just any. In your case, Tezos…
The choice was made very quickly. The technology of Tezos seemed extremely mature to us, with particular attention to creators. Its versatility, with the possibility of constantly adding features, will allow us great agility in the projects offered to artists. Finally, his protocol proof of stake consumes very little energy.
What about the audience? Physical or digital, an art gallery lives from its public.
The NFT market has seen the emergence of huge marketplaces in which early adopters were able to enjoy an incredible audience. As always, first come, best served. For the others, there is little or no audience possible. Creators, artists, museums, cultural institutions and even brands that want to interact with this universe need their own gallery. After all, they already have their community. This is why all the creators who come to Minted will be able to benefit from a generator of galleries where they can exhibit their works and show them to their public. With the freedom to list them in all marketplaces compatible with our technology, Object, rare… so as not to be cut off from this market.
If art goes from tangible to digital, can Web3 bring the public back into contact with art?
A whole generation hardly goes to museums anymore. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. She does not push the door of the galleries either. Because it’s still a very intimidating experience. Young people who will discover the world of art through NFT will probably have more ease, more audacity to go to galleries and express their opinion.
Unlike the physical art market, the world of NFTs is still poorly regulated. I imagine that you are working to reassure artists and collectors on this point…
It is up to platforms like ours to anticipate the issues that are posed by the law and that the legislator will have difficulty dealing with immediately. There is a very simple rule, especially in France, which is to say that when a collector buys a work of art in a gallery, he obtains in exchange an invoice which makes it possible to ensure the sale, but also to pay the VAT . This protects the artist and the collector. However, it turns out that there is no invoice in the world of NFTs. The blockchain being transparent, it is up to us to get the information and extract it. Even if the legislator does not ask us today to apply the VAT and invoice rule on an NFT, Minteed will allow it. We want everything to be in order vis-à-vis the collectors, the artists but also the public authorities.
Precisely, to what extent does the administration follow the Web 3 dossier?
The legal framework is being written. Between the Ministry of Culture saying “Go ahead, the NFTs and the metaverse, it’s extraordinary”, the president of the Republic who wants to make Paris the Mecca of the metaverse, and Bercy, who has his own opinion on the question, we will have to find the right balance. That said, we feel a lot of benevolence on the part of the public authorities, who favor tailor-made solutions over over-regulation. This is, in our view, the right attitude to satisfy both the desire to free up investments and creative energies, a market which nevertheless weighs more than 40 billion dollarsbut also the need to define a number of rules.