Welcome to a different type of interview I love chatting to artists especial when its an artist I have previously spoke to hits me up about a new project but this isn't just a new NFT project this project is much bigger than that this project is here to help the small artists and indie artist .
Hey!
Hey I know it only early afternoon did you do anything exciting ?
Just took my son to the park. He is napping now, and I'm trying to paint the basement. Not a whole lot of excitement
Ah it has to be done and I quite enjoy painting .
It's nice when it's done .
So you recently launched your brand new project which is called ParaffinNFT what made you start this project ?
Ever since I first got into NFTs, I have been looking at different opportunities in the space with my co-founder Kevin Glowacz. Having had experience with our own project, Crypto Swatch, we realized that indie NFT projects and art on WAX get buried on secondary marketplaces among the bigger corporate projects. We wanted to build a home for artists and indies.
So basically you want to help the community that keeps WAX alive by giving them a place where the regular artists who make NFTs for fun can by found without having to search through lots of big over priced projects ?
We don't really have an opinion about the price of the other projects, but we do feel strongly that independent digital creatives deserve to have a much louder voice in this space. We are trying to build tools and a platform to amplify those voices.
Of course and when did you decide that you where going to build a marketplace?
Kevin and I had been brainstorming projects we could work on together for close to a year. Shortly after we launched crypto swatch, we realized there was a hole in the market serving indie creators and artists. We started wire framing the site and doing some of the behind the scenes work 2-3 months ago, and launched our beta version about two weeks ago .
And how did the beta go ?
It is going well so far. It has been received positively by the WAX community, and we are on boarding new artists and indie NFT projects every day. We feel we met our goal of building something that the community would actually want to use. We are focused now on adding features to make it a one stop location for all things NFT related on WAX.
So is ParaffinNFT still in beta ?
Yes, but we are in open beta. It is fully functional, and we are adding to it all the time.
What is the latest feature you have added ?
Some "under the hood" features that involve image caching to improve load time, and some other performance related stuff. We also added a "Load More" button to the market which seems like something we should have launched with, but that is part of being in beta. We can build what we think our users would want, or we can wait to hear directly from them. @konceptonwax asked us about the load more button and we added it within 24 hours. We intend to respond to our users as we expand and grow.
Soon we will be adding the ability to list NFTs for sale from Paraffin which will show up on all atomic assets markets including atomic hub and NFT hive . Auctions are on their way too .
Parafin is using dual currency's are you thinking of adding blending like NEFTY.
What do you mean dual currencies?
That you can list Hive NFT and WAX NFT .
NFTHive uses the atomic assets market contract (a shared liquidity market) they are on WAX just like Atomic Hub and Paraffin. The cool part about this contract is that anything can be purchased or listed from any of the marketplaces. It's like a giant store with many different store fronts.
Currently we only exchange in a single currency—WAX.
We don't have immediate plans to add blending capabilities from within Paraffin, that is certainly something that we could do in the future. If our users indicate that is something they want, we could definitely make it a focus.
When you first launched how many artist did you have ?
We whitelisted 10-15 artists initially, and bow we are receiving multiple whitelist submissions daily. Paraffin's market will likely look very different in just a couple of weeks in terms of what projects can be found .
How many are projects are listed at this second ?
We probably have 30 or so collections whitelisted at the moment, and a little bit of a backlog to get to once this interview is over 😂
Who was the last person you whitelisted?
@ohdopeysophy (on twitter) http://paraffin.io/market/ohdopeysophy
Have you come up with any rules or regulations for artist to stop fake artists?
We are in the process of formalizing that. Early on we had one slip through the cracks, but since we are part of the #WAXGang community, it was brought to our attention quickly and we had the project removed.
We are hoping the community can help us form these rules, but more importantly help monitor the indie NFT space.
Look that will happen but its great for the community to help ?
Agreed
With ParaffinNFT in full swing is Cryptoswatch taking a break ?
Nope! We have three Collabs lined up for the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to grow these two projects together.
Have you done much promotion of ParaffinNFT ?
Not much, but we will be launching a Dev Vlog on YouTube really soon so the community can stay up to date with our latest changes and added features . Mostly growing by word of mouth at this point.
Well that's a great thing . Have you setup a suggestion box for artists to give ideas?
We have a contact page on our site. We'd love to hear any suggestions that your readers have. That would be a great place to send them.
Brilliant will there be search or will there just a list of artist in Alphabetic order ?
Search is definitely coming.
Is there a limit on how many artist will be listed ?
Not at this time . We do want to be smart about not making the site too cluttered though. So our priority will remain highlighting projects that deserve more attention.
Of course so I am guessing you really want active artists ?
Active artists and cool creative people who are doing inspiring work .
Will there be size restrictions on NFTs or file type ?
We intend to support the atomic assets standards which are images, video, and audio currently . We've talked about adding support for fully on chain poetry, but we don't have immediate plans to bring that online
So basically you are going to a better run Atomichub lol
We are carving out a different niche than atomic hub. What they have accomplished in a year is mind blowing, and we literally couldn't exist without them, but while they're focused on international brands like Capcom and Topps, our focus is on the independent creatives out there.
Of course . So the last time I chatted to you's it was one of my first interviews as you where just launching Cryptoswatch and it was through email . A lot has happened for you guys is this still a two man operation and is this now a full time job ?
We are still just two guys with day jobs and young families.
Wow how do you find the time to fit it all in ?
We do our best to focus on only that which is most important, and we probably ship code before it's fully ready. The WAX community is great though. We feel like if we are candid about our process and who we are, we will be forgiven if we are a few pixels off here and there. We will get to it eventually, and then move onto the next feature. We've taken zero funding and bootstrapped everything. We are proud of where we've gotten so far and excited about where we are headed.
Well you are one of the leaders in Collabs with new and young projects and I think there is a lot of love for you in the wax world ?
I appreciate that. That's very kind of you to say.
Not a problem so I have a few questions i never got to ask last time you chatted . Does your family understand what you are doing in the crypto world ?
Some of my family members get it, my older brother for instance has been along for the ride since day one as a big supporter of crypto swatch. My wife has been hugely supportive in giving me the time to pursue these endeavors.
That's really good so happy to hear so tell us something random about yourself ?
I am a high school teacher .
Please say you teach about blockchain ?
Well I teach business, technology, and design, so while it is not central to any of my curricula, it has definitely come up . One of my students even created his own NFT @cyberboxed (on Twitter)
Brilliant IL look him up and check him out have you Collabed with him yet ?
I think he is enjoying his last summer before college and has tabled to project for now .
Oh that's shame .
Good learning experience for him though.
Thank you so much for your time and hope to chat again soon .
Also, I might reach out to you soon. We are going to be adding a blog (probably), and your content serves exactly the audience we are trying to reach.
If you like to read more about Paraffin here some links and I would like to say a big thanks to Mike from Cryptoswatch for chatting about the project .
https://twitter.com/paraffinNFT?s=20
If you check it out the site here is a link .
Love what you doing gg brah!