Right so this is a really interesting project bringing music and NFTs together and this to me could be massive for new and upcoming artists to get noticed but il let Douglas explain more .
Hey Douglas !
Hey Crackers!
How's things ?
Good man, working on some code, how about yourself?
Chilling out watching tv lol do anything exciting today ?
Not much . So a little about me, I'm a multidisciplinary artist myself, and happy to talk about that. I bring it up since it's "meet the artist" ha ha, but really most excited to talk about cXc, where we've been and also what we're doing with NFTs. Happy to let it flow and talk about anything .
A little about our NFTs. As we were already a music app on Hive (music.cxc.world), NFTs were a huge opportunity and pull for us to come to WAX. We took the time to both write an OS Music NFT standard, and hope to bring more Music NFT tools to cXc.world in the future.
https://github.com/currentxchange/Music-NFT-Standard
Our collection has count-based rewards in monthly free drops, and drops when we have artists, in theory every week.
We have our project's tokenomics explained here: https://github.com/currentxchange/purple-explainer
What's the plan for the rest of day ?
I'll be heading for the San Diego Zoo in a little while! Other than that I plan to turn some compost and do some programming for cXc.world Beta I'm working on the UX for the Blu Ups in Beta. Right now I'm finding a good balance for the clicking of the button before popping up the transaction, as we don't want users to have to sign a transaction for every Up if they don't need to.
Also some creative button clicking ideas. I've considered a feature called "spirit fingers" that allows users to tap anywhere to rain down Ups and Blu Ups. Another way to spread good vibes to good music.
What's the whole idea behind the project ?
We’re a platform empower creators and change how content is curated. To do this, we built a media map web app (cXc.world) any artist can share locally-tagged music to.
The map runs on a Co-Creative Economy where participants receive free daily SOL (a cxc-controlled, non tradable token) to shine their light on content they love with a “Sol Up" that pays the creator(s) in BLUX (a tradable token) used to "Blu Up" content.
We’ve got top 64 Daily charts, based on Up count, which reward creators in our most elusive token, PURPLE.
That’s our core tech, and vision. We hope to start here with music, move to all of media, and then become a tool to help people find and share solutions for humanity’s problems like drought, clean-burning trash, community gardens, composting, and more.
So its a green company ?
I wouldn't say that we're focused on green, but we're a lean organization.
As a platform we strive to stay unopinionated. We serve as a opportunity-provider and outlet for anyone who creates, regardless of what they are creating, within reason.
I'm personally very interested in things like permaculture, so that’s where my mind goes!
Right now, we’re a music app, and sharing this consciousness-shaping content is as needed for the planet as any green practice. People are awesome and music rocks! That’s what we’re about, sharing the vibe of creating and sharing music together, IRL or virtual.
Where does NFTs come into it ?
We see NFTs as a powerful way to connect Artists and Fans. As a music app, we have almost unlimited potential in how we can incorporate music NFTs into our platform.
We want to push the cutting edge of this tech, and wrote the first open-source Music NFT standard on top of Atomic Assets. I won’t say exactly what we’re working on for the app, but I will say we’ll be using NFTs to incentivize fans to interact with artists, expanding how musicians and fans connect into a NFT medium.
We’ve also been dropping lots of music on Nefty, usually Fridays 1600 GMT. We set the artist as WAX recipient on Neftyblocks, and drop artists who have agreed to our terms, according to their wishes (price, promo drop, etc.).
Our collection cxcmusicnfts is the first to straight-up reward holders by number in the collection held. We have free monthly drops for holders, plus mythic and epic drops for high-count holders, encouraging collectors to buy more. Which NFT they buy is up to them, so they support exactly the music (and musicians) they want.
Oh cool any artists we would know ?
Yes! Claudio from Pixel Tycoons is very involved with our project, running BLUX events, connecting people, and being an amazing musician + crypto guy.
We’ve got one music video NFT “Majareta” Claudio did with a group called “El Trance Del Mimo”, and will be dropping that this Friday to collection holders as promo for a new Music NFT drop of El Trance Del Mimo for next Friday 1600 GMT.
We also launched Chronamut as our first pack with blends, a video by Muenster, music I’ve made, and two of my friends who are musicians.
Currently we’re recruiting more artists, and have a form at the bottom of drops.cxc.world where anyone can apply.
Have you chatted JRG on twitter he is a rapper NFT artist ?
Yes I have talked to him! Cool guy, and doing it big with NFTs! I remember I went to one place he filmed in a video while I was in Brazil. Would love him to drop through cXc.
We use non-exclusivity to keep the artist in control, so we find crypto people with their own collection are more likely to want to mint than an artist who hasn't used crypto. We'd like to see that expand soon.
What artists not in the crypto world ?
We’ve dropped Ayokidclassic and J-$ee Mentalz in our collection as their first step into the space.
Any artist can use our tools without being too into crypto. We hope to be a bridge for many more artists in the future, focusing on helping the emerging artists.
Ah so you are basically like an agency trying to get artist to adopt to NFTs ?
That’s not our main mission with our collection, but it has become a side mission. Our ability to empower creators is constantly evolving, and right now, we see NFTs as something worth holding the door open for artists to catch the wave.
We’re also trying to get listeners to adopt NFTs in a new way, through rewarding people for holding our NFTs monthly, so I think both of these things work together to move music more tokenized in the next 5 years.
Of course do you create NFTs yourself ?
Yes, I do. I’ve minted some of my fractal art, and also music using our Music NFT standard. My music was our guinea pig for testing our standard ha ha. I'm also the featured artist on our first 6 monthly collector's drops, so I'll be dropping new music NFTs each month.
Oh so your an artist as well ?
Yes, I do make art. I’ve done art fractals, festival clothing (for Fest Apparel), and make hip hop music (Sir Douglas Fresh, Ammon, God Sol One Love) + teach freestyle. I haven’t been as active as an artist since I started back full time on cXc, but I’ve been writing and aligning for the opportunities to come.
I put up a lot of my fractal renders here:
https://wax.simplemarket.io/authors/godsolislove
I’m considering dropping an exclusive fractal collection on EOS in the future. As for music, cxcmusicnfts is where I’ll be dropping!
It has been surprisingly hard to find people who want an NFT enough to fill out a form. Maybe we are still Early haha .
Have you heard of MVMF is the Metaverse Music Festival ?
No do you have a link ?
cXc will be there, I'll be doing a set, and Claidio is bringing several artists, and we brought on MuensterVision too!
That sounds cool . So is this your project?
cXc.world is our project, Cypherpunk is holding the event, and cXc was invited by .gems, part of EOS Nation, who is holding their own metaverse + stage in cryptovoxels. But the whole event is Music-NFT oriented. Other metaverses will be there too, I imagine with more an ETH audience.
That sounds brilliant .
Here's the link to the metaverse: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=W@615W,672S
You can poke around there, and revisit the link on the 29th
http://mvmf.live/ is main site
That looks class . Lets get back to your project how many NFT have you created for your project ?
For Music NFTs, somewhere around 30, mostly single songs, but we've also dropped 2 albums as random packs of song NFTs to encourage trading.
We're working towards tools built into cXc.world that allow someone to mint Music NFTs using our standard, so we've been playing with different ways artists and fans can connect.
Besides that, we've minted a couple hundred Everstone NFTs. Everstones are stakeable with PURPLE token. Everyday we read how much PURPLE is staked to each Everstone and send out payments in BLUX token. BLUX is our in-app currency starting in Beta that can make 1 Blu Up, part of our curation algorithm, and PURPLE is given to Top 64 musicians (daily charts). So NFTs are a crucial part of our ecosystem, even beyond Music NFTs.
Here's the links
Our NFT collection site: https://drops.cxc.world/
Our NFT Standard: https://github.com/currentxchange/Music-NFT-Standard
Tech info on Everstone NFTs: https://github.com/currentxchange/purple-explainer/blob/master/Everstones.md
What was the first one ?
Douglas Butner 🧙♂️ cXc.world, [26/10/2021 16:53]
Our first drop was an old rap song I recorded back in 2013, called Excite Nightlife.
https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/template/cxcmusicnfts/231684
How did the community react ?
Well!! We had one member that showed Excite Nightlife at an IRL art gallery, so that was pretty cool.
We also did this first NFT as a free drop to community members who had invited multiple people to the map, so they were ecstatic to get an unexpected NFT for being an active community member.
What has been your favorite to create ?
Hop Out with my friend Ayokidclassic was the most rewarding. It was tight because we got to hang out when I was home visiting my folks, which was the week after the drop. So I come back, work with him in this new way, as we started with freestyles, then songs, now NFTs. He is new to the scene, elected not to get paid in crypto, so I hooked him up with some herbals and fiat and we put the WAX back to the project.
This one was our first Music Video, so we wanted to see if it would work. Webm file was 32mb, and it plays on the thumbnail. As for the animated images in the rest of the collection, props go to Karelia Blum, cXc team member and my constantly-inspiring girlfriend. She says her favorite image to make was the last one we did as a MVMF promo drop for collection holders, the one of me floating in space meditating for When My Soul Escapes Away.
Hop Out: https://neftyblocks.com/c/cxcmusicnfts/drops/31119
When My Soul Escapes Away: https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099571082463
What's the main programs you use for creating ?
Karelia does the looped animations in Adobe Premier and After Effects, some photoshop.
When I make art, I use chaotica to make fractals, and adobe illustrator for my sacred patterns and such. Now, I'm mostly creating features with functions in Atom IDE. I use logic + FL Studio for audio.
My Fractals: https://wax.simplemarket.io/authors/godsolislove
Ah so how long would it take to create a NFT ?
Hmm, I'd say the art for her takes maybe 30min to 1-2hours depending on if it's from scratch. She likes to take her time and do a good job. As for the music, you'd have to ask the artist. We have done non-animated covers for past drops, but going forward Kare will be making animations for all of them, or animating an existing cover.
So its a team that does the creation of the NFTs ?
For cXc, yes. Our musicians, those who choose to drop through us, create the song. Karelia does the collecting and formatting the information + the cover art, usually we brainstorm together. Gman will soon be helping with the listing on Nefty (I do that now) and I wrote the standard + run our scripts that drop free NFTs to people. Claudio also brings us artists, so it's a whole-team effort.
Have you done many collabs ?
Of course, it's all collabs. In the WAX space we've dropped Music NFTs for Chronamut, MuensterVision, El Trance Del Mimo, and upcoming JRG will have a drop with us!
We've also worked with CAIT a lot, especially at the beginning. We learned from each other, and they even modeled their metadata after our standard, though they didn't use it 100% as written, just for reference.
Is there NFT artist or someone you would love to bring into NFT world ?
Maybe some VR artists. Would be cool to start seeing a NFT that is like a VR room you can go into and interact with the room and objects. You could even program it to be a different room for each mint. Like a custom NFT experience. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's already a thing.
Are you involved in uplift ?
We just shared a stage at the Metaverse Music festival, really was a flow together there.
Our (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766?t=02h26m35s) Sets (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766?t=02h26m35s) at (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766?t=02h26m35s) MVMF (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766?t=02h26m35s): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766 (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1190899766?t=02h26m35s)
I’m not personally involved in helping with what they are building, but I really dig everything they do, and if I was into Minecraft, I’m sure I’d want to be building in UpliftWorld.
BLUX is going to be listed on BluDAC in the near future, so we’ll have that collab. We’ve been making friends recently, so I hope to be more involved in the future.
I believe our projects are very aligned, and have many synchronicities that sprung up unknown to both parties, like us both using ‘Up’ and the BLU token, plus founders both built a school (I opened Aquarius.Academy + mBlu built a school in Haiti) so I truly believe we’ll continue to harmonize towards the greater good for WAX and beyond.
Congrats bro . What's the best thing about your project ?
Easily the curation system on cXc.world beta. We're the first biomimetic, abundance+scarcity modeled economy, and it's all designed to empower creators + fans. I've been designing and redesigning the system for nearly a decade, built it on Web 2 first, now we've rewritten it to work completely on WAX blockchain. I truly believe it will change the world, and inspire the economic systems that our grandkids use. There's a geotemporal aspect that's basically what many "future-thinking" speakers have been alluding to, and this is the first time these ideas have been put into practice that I know of.
Here's more info on the system: https://github.com/currentxchange/purple-explainer
Right now, it's just music on the mapp (and we just added the ability to post a Atomic Assets NFT on the mapp) but we have plans to open a suite of cXc mapps for literature, videos, photos, news, events, and more.
Here's the Christmas calendar image for your advent calendar .
Love it bro . What's the hardest lesson you learned doing the project ?
Asking for help. I was raised by a father who built his own house, collected rain water, invented physical therapy devices. He even makes his own activated charcol filters starting with just wood. So I learned watching him that it's good to do it all yourself.
I aslo learned from society that help is something you only get by paying a hourly wage. So it was a big lesson that people fulfil their Dharmic path by helping this project. Them helping is helping them, cXc, and my personal growth too. I've been asking for help more and more, and I'm grateful every time I do. Gman, Claudio, and Karelia (Team members) have been so vital to everything we are doing, and I'll be giving opportunities for new people to step up and join us moving forward.
Is this a full time job ?
For me, yes, very full time, probably 60+ hours a week on cXc-related things. Team is spending a bit less time, but always there. I went full-time December last year. Before that I was working cXc part time, and creating online courses as my main profession.
It's good to know I incorporated Current X Change LLC in 2014. I spent years perfecting the algorithm + app design, and basically scaling back the features I wanted to build into a MVP, which went live in 2018. For most of that time I've been working (I worked at a restaurant for 6 years before nomading), and teaching. When I started making enough royalties from teaching to support myself, I immediately went full time at cXc.
I do love to teach, and plan to keep doing so, though I'll be focusing on free courses for Aquarius Academy.
How do you like to unwind ?
Gotta ground. Touch the Earth. Explore a new city and ecosystem. Shut off the tech for a few hours.
I haven't drank in almost 4 years, but I love to smoke weed and freestyle rap. It's like therapy for me. I write too, but freestyling is something I'm passionate about and I love to cypher with other freestylers. I would hold events every 6 months before I was a nomad and invite all the rappers in the area to rap + network. I teach a course on freestyle rap too ha ha.
Oh wow I was going to ask to tell us something random but that's in there lol . How does your family feel about your project ?
They are really proud of me. They don't understand the tech stuff at all, but they have seen me working on this for 7+ years, so they are very happy to see that everything is coming into fruition.
My Grandma was always amazed I could make a living on the computer (teaching) and travel. So she was extra proud of me for that, as she loved to travel, but worked at a bank most of her life.
Where can we keep up to date with your project ?
All of our important project links can be found at linktr.ee/cxc.world
We're active on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CurrentXChange?t=Ztah-_WzL6DIcVKuEzqa6w&s=09
And in our community telegram: t.me/cXc_world
And our NFT drops are on https://drops.cxc.world/
But if you're new to the project, the best introduction is to point your browser to cXc.world and check out some of the amazing music from artists all over the world!
Any chance of a competition or drop for the readers ?
Great idea! I'll offer up my #1 mint of Awake With A Dedication for anyone who retweets this interview and tags @CurrentXChange in the RT and comments .WAM/addy when we reach 50 RTs. Random wheel selection.
We can do it on your twitter post if that's cool with you, to boost both projects.
NFT Prize:
https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099567827236
Love it . So before we finish up is there anything you would like to say or add to the readers ?
The World is Yours!!
Thanks for taking a dive into the cXc. If you're a musician, we'd love your best tunes on our map, and in our Music NFT collection (apply at drops.cxc.world)
Big thanks to you Crackers for holding this interview. It's been fun.
Its been a pleasure .
To enter the competition check the line below and this could be a huge project and dont forget his work out
https://twitter.com/Crackers832/status/1456722990834622473?t=pCG4adyKBa4vCJ3-OcLYQw&s=09
Jeeebus ... 17 minute read time... Good thing I'm a speed reader, lol.