akaSwap: The NFT Marketplace Empowering Creators and Communities in Asia

akaSwap, an NFT marketplace based on Tezos, hosted the NFT Art Prized Moments II competition, where the winning works will be physically exhibited at AMJ 2022. Founders Aluan Wang and Jinyao Lin talk about the platform, their strong focus on Asian communities, and akaSwap’s unique features.

akaSwap is an intuitive, user-friendly, green NFT trading platform that enables users to easily create, collect, and trade NFTs. Founded by Aluan Wang and Jinyao Lin, akaSwap puts an interesting spin on NFTs, allowing collectors to enjoy the experience, and empowering all creators with market liquidity.

akaSwap is so much more than just another marketplace. With many unique features such as akaDao, Artist Clubs, gacha, bundles, and even a metaverse (akaVerse), the platform empowers the arts community to explore and connect with artists.

NFT Art Prized Moments

akaSwap is also the platform of choice for NFT Art Prized II Moments Competition, the first ever competition for NFT creators/artists in Southeast Asia. Here, artists were invited to submit works according to the theme of ‘Conti Nunace’. Over 180 artists entered this competition, which was held in collaboration with Art Moments Meta, the team behind Art Moments Jakarta 2022.

The winners of the NFT Art Prized II Moments Competition will have their work featured at a physical AMJ 2022 exhibition in Jakarta, on 4-6 November. There will also be a special exhibition by 6 transformative artists in the Tezos ecosystem across Southeast Asia - “NFTs: Inner Worlds, Immortalized”.

The rest of the entries can be viewed at akaswap.com.

The people and vision behind akaSwap

Aluan, who holds a master’s degree in New Media Arts, has been involved in new media and interactive design for the past ten years. As an artist, his work is inspired by his native land and culture, often incorporating fantasy and cyberpunk culture, as well as his trademark geometrical shapes/forms, and breakbeat music. With Aluan’s intense viewpoints and esthetics, his work often results in impactful visual banquets. Aluan is also an educator who has taught open-source software and related tools such as processing or Pure Data in art museums and galleries.

“During my years of working with generative art, I never once thought that I would enter the commercial market. So when I saw Art Blocks, it was a great inspiration for me. In February 2021, I first started to create NFTs. Initially, I minted on Foundation but soon, all of my work was released on Hic et Nunc.”

Jinyao is a man who has explored many frontiers of art, as well as earned the right to be called Dr Lin. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in music and New Media from Taipei National University of the Arts, as well as a PhD in Computer Science. A cross-discipline artist, Jinyao has achieved a lot in theater, digital art, and music. These accomplishments include winning the Hong Kong Dance Award in 2012 and the Grand Prize of the Taipei Sky Creative Competition.

“Aluan was my first friend who jumped into Web3. Initially, I was publishing my work at fxhash, a generative art platform on Tezos. But both Aluan and I felt that it was important to create a platform for everyone in Taiwan and the local area, which led to us creating akaSwap.

We believe that a local market is important in order to empower the local community. With so many possibilities in the Web3 world, smart contracts are very important. So, we need to have our platform in order to enable new and interesting ways of creating art.”

Aluan adds on that the spirit of inclusivity was also a strong motivation behind creating akaSwap:

“While NFTs are a global market where senior creators can be discovered quickly, newer creators are likely to be drowned out. Therefore, by creating an Asia-based platform, we can cultivate the local arts scene, discover young artists, and also connect with local art museums and galleries so that more critical artifacts can enter Web3 in the right way.”

But of course, starting a new venture on this scale is no easy task - especially given that NFTs are a new medium.

“Being known and loved by the world is the hardest thing to do.” - Aluan

Tapping on Aluan’s experience as a teacher, the duo held numerous workshops in Taiwan in order to educate people on the Web3 space, in the right way. Today, akaSwap has fostered a culture of very active dialogue in Taiwan. Some team members take the lead on smart contract education, while others teach newer artists and collectors on blockchain basics, such as using encrypted wallets correctly. To them, creating a decentralized environment where everyone can have fun is the right thing for them to do.

Jinyao asserts that for them, community is the most important thing to focus on. He highlights the importance of working with more artists, providing them with easy onboarding to NFT creation, and creating an inclusive experience for all participants in the Web3 environment.

Building and Strengthening the Tezos community in Taiwan

akaSwap has commanded a position at the heart of a tight-knit community of Taiwanese artists and collectors through its dedication to the local arts scene. Aluan tells us more:

“More and more artists and collectors are joining our Tezos community. There is a solid Tezos group in Taiwan, which includes akaSwap; VolDAO (an organizer of NFT collectors), a Telegram group with over 1400 people, and a Discord server with over 3700 members. We also have a strong connection with the Real World art scenes - we collaborated with Art Taipei to build a ‘Crypto Art Zone’. Our community isn’t only virtual, but it’s centripetal as well.”

The Taiwanese Tezos community has been extremely proactive, organizing their own exhibitions and talks, collaborating with government agencies to organize various workshops, and even running a Taiwanese Tezos ecosystem NFT media platform!

It is heartening to see local communities come together and work to uphold Tezos being inclusive and accessible to all.

On akaSwap’s features

Aluan talks about akaDao, akaSwap’s native token (which users are rewarded with through making transactions).

“We were inspired by Hic et Nunc, which allowed early backers to earn tokens through buying artwork.

We thought it would be interesting for users to participate in community governance through akaDAO, so we opened a feature called ‘Artist Club’ that allows fans to support artists by staking akaDAO. Staking is built on trust, and fans can be rewarded when the artist’s work sells. akaDao ties together the relationship between artists and fans.

Many artists choose to open artist clubs to give back to fans in the most direct way - the sales of artworks are distributed to club members, in a revenue share model.

Here’s something interesting - you can see the co-created works between artists and fans. There was once when fans planned a ‘Spy Operation’, and created many works to pay tribute to the artist. It’s clear that the Artist Clubs not only help artists to maintain fans, but better connect with them.

In addition, many features of the akaSwap require akaDAO to use (such as Gacha, Bundles, etc). In the future, akaDAO will be needed to vote on the development of new features of akaSwap. akaDAO is just like a ticket that helps us understand the most important needs of users.”

It is clear that the community enjoys the features that akaDao powers.

“Some artists use Gacha to sell their own club pass, and collectors can also effectively use these two functions to promote the market liquidity of their collections. We have also observed that some collectors are utilizing Gacha and Bundles for curation purposes.

The Gacha is inspired by the Japanese theme of ‘Ichiban Rewards’. Each pack of Gacha has a ‘last prize’, which is given to the purchase of the last buyer. The value of the last prize is usually the most precious. It’s an interesting process, how to design a great pack of Gacha.

As for Bundles, we refer to them as ‘Lucky Bags’ - a Bundle can have multiple artworks, and some artists will use it to sell their own series.”

On akaVerse, Aluan tells us that it is their latest feature, rolled out in September 2022.

“Artists and collectors can use akaVerse to exhibit their art works and collections. Of course, in addition to displaying their art, they can also use the akaVerse Showroom for curations. We will also provide a Showroom for Art Taipei 2022. Here, akaVerse can help galleries to better understand the Web3 ecosystem and community.”

Lastly, Aluan tells us why we should use akaSwap:

“akaSwap is more than just a NFT marketplace. Many of the features we’ve talked about are unique.

For the general public, akaSwap is an easy-to-use and friendly trading platform. For artists, we provide many unique services to help artists manage themselves and communicate with fans.

Also, we place great importance on the community’s suggestions, and look forward to working with them to create a better Tezos ecosystem.

We look forward to more collectors, artists and galleries joining in the future. We will grow together and guide each other along the way, making the NFT ecosystem more active and mature.”