Photography NFTs are becoming more well-known and in demand, with a growing number of well-known artists selling images for large sums and well-known NFT collectors making a determined effort to gather photos.
With a specialized platform, a new platform named Sloika seeks to enable even more photographers into the Ethereum NFT arena. In addition, it announced today that it had raised $2 million in a seed round headed by 1confirmation.
Ev Tchebotarev and Arseniy Ivanov, the founder and first employee, respectively, of the online photo-sharing platform 500px, co-founded Sloika. They’re now hoping to help photographers capture value in the NFT area after building their community to tens of millions of users.
Unlike OpenSea, similar to Amazon or eBay for non-ferrous metals, Sloika is completely dedicated to photographs. Photographers aren’t competing for attention with flashy profile picture collections or animated cryptoart compositions, and images in the curated drops are given a broader canvas on the Sloika website than you’d find on a standard NFT marketplace. Sloika’s platform also offers producers complete control over important aspects such as rights and royalties.
“Photography rights are unimportant to none of the platforms.” Every new series on Sloika comes with attached photography rights,” Tchebotarev explained, “It’s the simple things. But, we want to go deep and start solving challenges for photographers, such as how do they market themselves? What does their work mean to them?”
Whether it’s a photo, drawing, video file, or something else, an NFT works as a deed of ownership to a provably scarce digital property. According to data from DappRadar, the NFT industry exploded earlier this year and will continue to grow until 2021, with a record-breaking $10.67 billion in total trading volume in Q3.
In recent months, photography has gained traction in the NFT market. Justin Aversano is likely the most well-known photographer in the NFTs thus far, with Snoop Dogg and Gary Vaynerchuk among his collectors, with one piece selling for $1.1 million at a Christie’s auction in October.
Isaac “Drift” Wright, Cath Simard, and Dave Krugman are among the other noteworthy photographers in the NFT space. At the same time, prominent collectors like punk6529 and WhaleShark have recently increased their photo NFT purchases. Aversano is also a member of RAW DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on collecting photo NFTs, and has recently created Quantum Art, a photo-centric NFT platform.
This summer, Tchebotarev and Ivanov co-founded Sloika to hasten the emergence of picture NFTs and assist photographers in monetizing their work through the technology.
1confirmation General Partner Nick Tomaino, one of Coinbase’s original employees, noted in a blog post announcing the investment that Web 2 services like Facebook and Twitter suck up much of the value when photographers publish their work online. Photographers may now benefit from direct digital sales to collectors and have more control over their work and life. In addition, he stated, thanks to the advent of Web 3 and the concept of NFTs symbolizing ownership.
Sloika will launch a ‘killer app for NFTs’
Sloika’s $2 million seed round comprises SuperRare founder & CEO John Crain, Manifold founder and CEO Eric Diep, LogDNA co-founder Christopher Nguyen, and startup accelerator South Park Commons, in addition to 1confirmation. Sloika has also established a $20,000 monthly funding program to assist aspiring female photographers in producing their first NFTs.
Tchebotarev believes that the picture NFT area has a lot of potential, but that there’s still a lot of work to be done as new photographers navigate the space, including the need for some to be “more vulnerable” and disclose their personal tales, as Aversano has already done. Sloika’s co-founder believes that as a result, a significantly wider group of collectors will emerge.
“All we have to do now is be patient and keep presenting the story of those photographers,” Tchebotarev added. “I believe that a growing number of collectors will begin to regard photography as the ultimate killer app for NFTs.”