Hype around NFT is considered to be over by now, but sometimes it reaches news front pages with new shocking facts. Aleksaei Forobeinikov, CTO of Cloud NFT, spoke about the current situation on the NFT market, its problems and perspectives.
A little about yourself, about your background
I’m Alex - Blockchain Solutions Architect and R&D Engineer. Mainly focus on complex blockchain technologies. I contributed to more than 30 projects on 11 blockchains. Among the most famous - Ethereum Plasma, Celo, Breaker, DAO, Remme and worked as a CTO at Zokyo, Blaize, DeHive and YieldApp.
In Cloud NFT, you act as a CTO and co-founder. How did you come up with the idea to create this project?
NFT is one of the most controversial spheres now. On the one hand, it has immense potential and a countless number of use cases. On the other hand – it’s limited by inner factors, such as gas fees, high entry threshold, inaccessibility for businesses and others.
I saw a great potential for growth in this sphere when we founded Cloud NFT and I believe in that growth even more now.
Tell us briefly about your project.
Cloud NFT is a cross-chain aggregator that will allow users to create, store, sell and buy NFTs within the same ecosystem. The basis of the entire project is our API, which allows us to carry out all on-chain operations and, accordingly, without requiring clients to pay for gas.
Highlight three key features of Cloud NFT.
- Zero gas fees
- Ability to carry out all operations with NFT in a single interface
- a countless number of use cases.
But that’s my opinion. Someone finds NFT wallet to be the best feature, for someone that’s the ability to create and sell NFT within one platform. But for me personally the three listed above are the most important.
Initially the project will be released on BSC and ETH, and you also plan to integrate Solana and Polygon. Why are those blockchains?
ERC-20 is the NFT industry leader among blockchains. Let me remind you that this area has existed for more than one year, and during this time many NFTs have been released on Ethereum. BSC is for the convenience of users.
Many users prefer this particular network. It is developing rapidly, especially in the field of NFT.
Regarding Solana and Polygon. Well, the ERC-20 network has become quite expensive to use today. For many users, this is a critical factor. This is part of the explanation for BSC's recent success.
Solana and Polygon are showing very high growth rates. Many projects are launched on these networks. They are popular, available to users, and projects that want to attract a wide audience use them.
We are focused on the mass user and therefore choose the most convenient solutions for them.
Who should pay attention to your project foremost?
I would divide the target audience of Cloud NFT into several conditional groups. The first one is the developers. Our API provides very wide possibilities for them.
The second one is artists/creators/bloggers and anyone else who wants to release their own NFT or NFT collection. Now, this is a rather complicated process, but our solutions will make it accessible to everyone.
Business can also be classified into this category. Over time, the scope of NFTs will expand and we are already creating a ready-made solution for their use. The third is for experienced NFT users for whom we provide a user-friendly interface and access to all key NFT operations within one ecosystem.
And the fourth one is the mass user. Cloud NFT interface is designed in such a way that a person who is not familiar with cryptocurrencies at all can easily enter the NFT field without much difficulty.
It's too early to reveal details, but the user doesn't even need a cryptocurrency wallet to own an NFT.
What features does your ecosystem provide for developers?
As I’ve mentioned our API opens up the broadest opportunities for developers. With our service, anyone will be able to release NFT even without the foggiest knowledge of blockchain development.
You can create your own platform based on Cloud NFT, you can release a highly targeted customized product. The main idea is that the API will be convenient, accessible, customizable, and feature-rich.
Ok, we figured it out with the developers. Do you think the product will be useful for businesses?
Now the situation has developed in such a way that not every business can afford to issue NFT tokens. To do this, you need to have blockchain development specialists in-house or order expensive freelance services.
Even if there is an opportunity to do this, there is not always a person in the staff who knows how to work with NFT further.
And his training is also additional costs and more important risks. Therefore, even at this stage, our platform will be useful to a wide range of companies - from global corporations to small local brands.
Looking into the future, we are most likely to see the use of NFTs in the legal field, the entertainment industry, using it to combat counterfeiting, copyright infringement, to verify Payments , property rights, and even identity.
NFT has a lot of use cases and every day more and more users and companies will come to this market.
I presume from your words that your project is focused on user-friendliness. What role does the community play in your project?
I would say one of the key ones. On November 25 we will have a token sale where users will have their first opportunity to get the project's governance tokens.
The holders of CLOUD tokens will be able to participate in managing the project by submitting development proposals and voting for them.
Do you see a prospect for NFT in the public sector?
Definitely. Digitalization is a big trend among states. Many developed countries actively practice it and, in fact, use technologies that are very similar to NFT in their essence.
If we look at Estonia as one of the most successful examples of a digital state, we will see that its entire system is built around the so-called citizen profile.
And government agencies receive all the necessary information concerning this profile. Its transformation into NFT would allow optimizing many processes, significantly facilitating access to public services on the part of the citizen and securing his data and identity, which is critically important in the modern digital world.
What, in your opinion, is holding back the growth of the NFT market?
I would single out two factors - external and internal. The internal factor is caused by chaos, which was formed on the market due to the lack of a unified infrastructure that would make the use of non-fungible tokens more convenient.
External refers to regulators and users. If users are scared off technology by its complexity and sometimes negative news background regulators who have not yet fully figured out cryptocurrencies, unfortunately, simply do not yet understand all the prospects and potential of NFT.
