Utilizing the blockchain has fast become part of our lives. The technology platform has also redefined how artists and creators are compensated for the value of their work. It has also served as a way of promoting one’s work and protecting their rights online.
As a decentralized, distributed, and public digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers, the blockchain prevents records from being altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the consensus of the network (that is why the original use case of this technology traces back to financial transactions).
Headquartered in Singapore, TZ APAC is enabling artists and startups to transform on the blockchain by designing value-added strategies with a bottom-up approach. The entity works closely with blockchain experts and other stakeholders in the Tezos ecosystem. TZ APAC is supported by the Tezos Foundation.
Tezos is an open-source decentralized platform, blockchain, and ecosystem for assets, applications, and services. The platform is backed by a global community of participants, composed of validators, researchers, developers, and builders committed to growing the ecosystem.
“Our mission is to empower the Asian champions — artists, students, startups — through blockchain technology. We are active on the education front, being one of the main partners for the IOI (International Olympiad for Informatics) 2022, the biggest competition for computer scientists at the school level,” according to Jivan Tulsiani, Head of Marketing at TZ APAC during my exclusive interview earlier this month.
A blockchain that is designed to evolve, security-focused, upgradeable, and built to last, Tezos is taking creators to discover how blockchain technology by inspiring them to innovate around NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), the metaverse, and many more.
“We meet a lot of (startup) founders to nurture them in our incubator programs. The Philippines is one of the most exciting markets in terms of blockchain adoption and NFTs. It is a very important market for us. We work very closely to build very strong communities and people like Loopymoon, one of the brilliant examples of artistic prowess that is there in the Philippines,” added Tulsiani.
Loopymoon is a Filipino multi-disciplinary artist experimenting with trippy digital patterns and collages who wants to bring the texture, “loopiness” and feels of paint (oil, acrylic, etc.) to the digital realm. This artist also experiments with AI (Artificial Intelligence) art by using it as a base canvas with which he creates even more loopy patterns and scenes.
“I started looking into crypto back in 2017; I tried to invest, somehow and I realized it was really hard back then — I lost most of it. Coming into 2020-2021, the artist I was following sold his NFT for US$69M and it was mind-boggling. I was thinking: maybe there is something here and I started to share my art through NFTs. I was one of the first artists on the Tezos platform. I entered (the space) because it was like a vehicle for Web3 where there is ownership for the things that you create,” said Loopymoon, who is the leading Filipino artist in the Tezos ecosystem with almost 3,000 artworks under his belt.
TZ APAC said that they are very encouraged by what they are seeing with the Web3 community in the Philippines and are asking for more initiatives. As artists and community members within the region are empowering and collaborating with one another, the entity promised its utmost support on the endeavors that the local Web3 community will spearhead.