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With 2 weeks to Demo Day, we highlight the problems that the three projects are trying to solve, as well as the vision of the founders behind the organizations.
Projects Covered:
With Lumos Protocol, NFT assets are taken to a next level of utility. Lumos allows you to load up NFTs with any digital asset, which in turn become child assets, which are sub-assets that are attached to a parent asset. It features cutting-edge mechanics for NFTs such as time-locked withdrawal of child assets, programmable interest on the child assets, and many more. This enables impressive use cases for blockchain projects across DeFi, Gaming, DAOs, and Creator Economy.
Gunit, founder of Lumos, is a full stack developer, with a curious mind that has taken him across FinTech, Computer Vision, and Mobile App Development.
“I love being in the blockchain space because it’s so exciting and fast-paced. I like what Web3 represents - it’s a very philosophical idea that technology has finally somewhat caught up with. I think my primary drive is a need to know things. I enjoy learning, and am always chasing knowledge!”
This thirst for knowledge is what led him into Web3:
“While I was freelancing in tech, a client once asked whether I accept payment in Bitcoin. I spent some time reading whitepapers. Tezos had the most interesting one. The more I read, the more I liked the blockchain. After joining some communities and buying my first NFT in 2021, I fell into the rabbit hole. Currently, I’m learning about ZK-proofs.”
Gunit shares more about his vision about the future:
“I think the craze around NFTs is dying down a bit (though Tezos NFT sales are through the roof), which signifies that the market for NFTs is maturing. The next generation of NFTs will be fully utility-driven. So, now is the right time for Lumos to build for the next wave of backward-compatible NFTs.”
Lumos allows NFTs to own other tokens (aka child tokens). These child tokens can be:
Lumos also is built for versatility, with time-locks built in natively. For example, you can define when a certain token can be withdrawn, creator royalties, minimum or maximum token deposits, and more.
With Lumos, it’s possible to make dApps like vesting contracts, index funds, and escrow platforms with just NFTs. It also gives artists and designers new and innovative ways to integrate NFTs into their art or game mechanics. For example, artists may use Lumos to chain their NFTs with other NFTs.
For Artists
Chained NFTs: Artists can chain NFTs together, and this chain can be sold on the open marketplaces. The revenue generated can be split between the artists.
Dynamic NFTs: Create art that changes based on the amount of tokens that is locked inside the NFTs.
Music NFTs: Artists can lock individual songs inside NFTs and customize release conditions for each song.
Charities and Content Creation
Supporters of both charities and creators can load up NFTs, programmed such that only the charity or the creator can withdraw the interest that NFTs generate.
Content can be unlocked once an NFT is loaded up with a specific amount of tokens.
Gaming
Imagine Pokémon Go with all the benefits of Web3 technology.
Geo-tagging: NFTs can be loaded up with interest-bearing tokens, geotagged to certain locations. They can be configured such that the first person to reach the NFT will be able to withdraw the generated interest, while leaving behind the principal amount to generate interest for the next player.
NFT Battling: The power of an in-game NFT item can scale based on its stored interest. In NFT battles, the winning NFT gets to withdraw a part of the tokens inside the losing NFT. This financially incentivises players to keep playing, to make their NFTs more valuable.
DeFi
NFT Index Funds: An NFT can now act as a basket which tracks a group of tokens. It can be fractionalised as well so that multiple people can share ownership of the basket of tokens.
Liquidity Mining Multipliers: Owning an NFT enables higher multiples of liquidity mining rewards for a specific Liquidity Pool.
Vesting Contracts: Lumos enables time-locking of tokens inside NFTs. This enables vesting contracts that have an added functionality of being tradable.
DAOs
New models of DAO governance can be built by using the functionality of vesting tokens inside NFTs.
Time Locking: Holding a specific number of time-locked tokens in a DAO would give you the same voting power as someone who owns a higher number of tokens but has not time-locked them. This can reduce the parity between members with deep pockets and those without.
Mailboxes: NFTs can act as mailboxes for communicating with members of the DAO.
https://twitter.com/LumosProtocol
Today, creators are heavily dependent on centralized platforms to serve their content. These platforms have the final control over the content, the monetization, the content consumer.
ThirdMedia is a decentralized-yet-private content sharing SAAS product, which offers all the benefits of Web3 technology.
ThirdMedia’s mission is to solve the problem of centralization in the creator economy space, giving control of content and monetization back to creators via a platform that is powered by blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs.
For creators, they offer:
For consumers, they offer:
To make the platform more engaging & interesting, the team is actively developing the product and brain-storming on different gamifications that could be applied.
ThirdMedia has received positive validation from some established creators and the number of creators ready to be onboarded has now crossed double digits.
Ankit Shubham and Palak Mantry are a team of engineers who completed their B. Tech in Computer Engineering from IIT Delhi and VJTI (Mumbai).
Ankit won the prestigious Tezasia Hackathon 2022, and was invited to participate in TZ APAC’s EW3I program. Subsequently, Palak joined the team and together, they’ve been working to create an impact.
Ankit and Palak have also impressively been shortlisted in the Pioneer Track of the Polygon Fellowship (a 0.7% acceptance rate). The wealth of experience accumulated during this time is a great asset in developing a project that can truly reach mainstream adoption.
“The team believes and is strongly practicing collaboration and trust. There is a shared mutual goal for taking the project to new heights. Our level of expertise and eagerness to explore the blockchain domain and to solve problems to revamp authentication and give content creators a valuable platform makes us stand out.”
Ankit is a software engineer by trade, delving full-time into solving real world problems with top-tier knowledge of Web3 solutions. He understands NFTs from both technical and business perspectives. Having been formally introduced to blockchain in 2018 at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, he has since published research papers, contributed to open-source projects, and secured multiple bounties/grants for his prototypes:
Palak is currently a Technology Analyst at Morgan Stanley. She is extremely focused on honing both her leadership and technological skills. Through her experience and expertise of freelancing, hackathons, publishing research papers, she is determined to build something of her own in the Web3 space. She also gives back to the community - as a Founder and Lead of the Google Development Student Club representing her Institute at a global community level.
When asked about the challenges they faced along the way, they shared their thought process.
“The first challenge was finding a genuine problem to solve, which would reach the masses and create an impact. The next step was to identify whether the solution lies in Web3, and how we could make the best use of Web3 tools to provide an end-to-end solution. Along the way, validating the idea was crucial - conformity psychology is tricky for all founders, because people always say yes to ideas!
Our mentor Julian Low has been a visionary for our product! His strong guidance on market research, and on fine-tuning our product, is proving to be a crucial driving force for ThirdMedia.
In the EW3I program, we hope to grow our network, showcase our product, learn from the other founders, mentors, VCs, in the incubator and thus engineer our company for success!”
https://linktr.ee/ThirdMediaCompany
Gebo is an Investment DAO, where members team up to make investments, or back startups as a group. Gebo is now introducing the Defi-as-a-Service model, which will enable traditional and blockchain-native organizations to access services that are similar to SaaS-like DeFi services securely and compliantly.
Gebo will facilitate fair automated and trust-minimized exchange of any off-chain (physical or digital) value for on-chain assets in a permissionless peer-to-peer way. It will enable the collective maintenance and exchange of NFTs alongside off-chain assets.
Gebo’s Defi-as-a-Service concept will include:
Gebo will also allow issuing Programmable Money backed by any asset, owned collectively or individually.
What are CBDCs?
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are digital tokens, similar to cryptocurrency, but issued by a central bank.
Regulators have already moved beyond discussions, with the People’s Bank of China, Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and BCDU having launched pilot programs.
Why are CBDCs important?
Stable money (like stablecoins) is essential for DeFi. Thomas Moser points out that a CBDC would entail lower risks for DeFi than a redeemable stablecoin because central bank money “does not entail counterparty risk”, and that “a central bank cannot go bankrupt, since it issues irredeemable money”
Gebo will allow issuing of digital currencies, backed by any asset which can be owned collectively or individually. Real-world assets can be tokenized, traded, and transferred directly into users’ wallets. The tokens can be thought of as trustless forward contracts for these real-world assets, powered by smart contracts.
With CBDCs in DeFi, Gebo expects hundreds of trillions worth of liquidity to be brought into DeFi, with large institutions entering the space and real world assets moving on-chain.
Gebo’s team is a group of crypto-enthusiasts that have worked together since 2015. They’ve had experience in software and business development, having worked with Java since its inception in 1995. They’ve also built financial services and apps, gambling and payment solutions, and several companies and start-ups.
“We’ve been together for years. We all have jobs, families, and real lives. But if there is a need or a mutual interest, we always come together and just work. Everyone knows what to do, no time to waste. Beautiful.”
In 2020, after being split because of the pandemic, they regrouped online to build on Tezos. The first DeFi product they’ve delivered was Opus Dei Money - a P2P lending and borrowing service on Tezos, audited by Inference AG.
They explain their mission, ‘Creating the financial goodwill between finance and the new Web’:
“It is obvious that the world is changing. We see Web3 as not just a buzzword nor an endpoint, but the beginning of unseen changes in society.
We believe that after Web3 there will also be a Web4, 5, 6, and 7, up to the level where operations of logistics, traveling, consumer behavior, or society, in general, are organized and secured by the Akasha-like network. With that in mind, what we are building now is a foundation for the future.”
Demo Day will see the project founders participate, where they will be given 3 minutes to present their pitch to some of industry’s top mentors and investors participating.
These investors will then make their assessment - of the project’s quality and potential, business strategy, and even the founders themselves. Investors will include high-profile figures from esteemed organizations like Newman Capital, Draper Startup House, Amber Group, Samadhi Ventures.
The mentors in attendance include Vikram Bharati (Draper Startup House), Laurent Dedenis (Chainstack), Cici Lu (Vennlink), Bobby Ong (CoinGecko), Mona Zoet (RegPac Revolution), TZ APAC’s own Julian Low, and many more.
