How Avalanche Is Making NFTs More Accessible to Creatives

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are unique digital assets that can support a variety of use cases, from facilitating real estate transactions to providing gamers with enhanced attributes for their playable characters. There’s no doubt that NFTs will spread into as-yet-unexplored areas of society as the enormous utility and design versatility of these assets becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. 

But it is also true that the NFT remains a powerful force to be reckoned with in the sector where it first became prominent: the art world. NFTs are highly sought-after valuables among art collectors, who treasure these assets for their scarcity, monetary value, and inherent aesthetic qualities. Many artists continue to be attracted by the potential of this relatively new type of art collectible. 

The team behind the Avalanche Foundation understands the irreplaceable role of art in modern culture and the huge potential of non-fungible tokens as vehicles for disseminating its unique qualities across the global Web3 landscape. That’s why the Avalanche Foundation has launched Avaissance. Formally commencing in March 2023, Avaissance is an initiative with the twin aims of providing digital artists with guidance and support, and positioning the Avalanche blockchain platform as the leader in the NFT field.

Avaissance consists of two primary components: the Artist-in-Residence program (AIR), and the Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI). Let’s take a closer look at each of these programs.

Artist-in-Residence (AIR)

The AIR Program is intended to provide digital artists with the guidance and financial support to pursue a personal creative project in the NFT space. The application phase (now closed) attracted artists from all over the world. In May 2023, over fifty residents were selected for the first AIR Program, to be conducted via online virtual workshops. 

The first AIR Program is intended to last for six months, during which time each artist will attend a series of one-hour digital workshops covering a variety of relevant topics, including effective marketing tactics and use of digital tools. They will also be assigned to a mentor who will offer expert counsel throughout the program. 

There are five mentors involved in the first AIR Program; these are:

Dave Krugman - Based in New York, Dave Krugman is the founder of the creative community ALLSHIPS, whose mission is to encourage the production of high-quality content and foster networking opportunities among its coalition of artists. Krugman is also a noted writer, photographer, and cryptoartist.

Emonee LaRussa - An Emmy Award-winning motion graphics artist, Emonee LaRussa has a resume that includes work on Saturday Night Live and the GRAMMY Awards. An enthusiastic proponent of NFT art, she founded the non-profit organization JumpStart Designers with the aim of providing lower-income kids with access to digital art tools.

John Lê - California-based John Lê is a visual artist known in the comic book community for his work with Image Comics and Vault Comics. In addition, he has worked for Twitch, Adobe, Blizzard Entertainment, and other top digital companies. More recently, Lê has applied his artistic skills to the creation of NFTs, and his participation in the AIR Program will enable him to deliver his illustration expertise to the new generation of digital artists.

Georgio “GEO” Constantinou - GEO is a successful entrepreneur in the music and technology sector, with a list of achievements that includes brokering the $4 million sale of the Wu-Tang Clan NFT album. He is also the co-founder of Six.xyz, Seminal Music Group, and the Web3 investment club DAO Jones, in addition to acting as an angel investor to more than twenty startups.

Ryan Wen - Wen is Chief of Staff at Stacked Studios, where he manages legal, financial, and compliance issues while helping with NFT project management. Among these projects is Valhalla, which is designed to act as both a Web3 gaming brand and a thriving online community. This project has resulted in partnerships with many of today's leading Esports teams.

At the end of the six-month AIR Program, each participant will release a collection of NFT art that will be available on the Avalanche platform.

Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI)

The Mona Lisa Initiative is the curatorial part of the Avaissance, an effort to promote and preserve the best in modern NFT art. To this end, the Avalanche Foundation is teaming up with various art-focused decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to create archives of outstanding NFT collections. Furthermore, MLI will establish an Avalanche Permanent Collection that will serve as a long-term NFT storage site for prominent examples of digital art. 

NFTs on Avalanche

Avaissance seeks to take advantage of Avalanche’s state-of-the-art smart contracts platform to create a space where NFTs can flourish. For NFT designers, the benefits of Avalanche are many, and these include:

• Low transaction fees - By keeping gas fees at a reasonable level, the Avalanche network helps NFT designers prevent transaction costs from spiraling out of control.
• Quick transaction times - With its modified proof-of-stake consensus, Avalanche has the fastest time-to-finality (TTF) in the blockchain universe: an average of 0.79 seconds. That can be a boon for NFT transactions conducted on a time-limited basis. 
• A fertile ecosystem - The Avalanche team is committed to offering NFT developers with the tools necessary to help them launch and trade their digital assets with ease. 
• Scalability - Avalanche’s Layer 2 Subnets act as self-contained blockchains, immune to traffic spikes that might occur elsewhere in the system. As a result, it’s easy to accommodate heavy transaction traffic. This enables Avalanche to maintain a smooth user experience for the trading of NFTs.
• Interchain compatibility - The Avalanche Bridge makes it a simple matter to send NFTs to and from Ethereum and other leading blockchain platforms. 

The Avaissance initiative is expected to enhance Avalanche's status as a leading NFT marketplace. To learn more about this exciting project, visit the Avaissance site.   

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