What is Digital Renaissance? Platform Digital Renaissance is in the starting blocks at the beginning of 2022 to develop a new creative industry with NFTs based on its philosophy and possibilities of blockchain technology. This allows creators and fans to generate income. The question is whether the world is ready for a digital renaissance: a revolution in the creative industry.
Renaissance means rebirth. It is seen in cultural history as the moment when humanity actually reinvents itself and everything it can do. In painting, the discovery of how perspective creates depth and new dimensions on a flat surface, for example, was the beginning of the Renaissance.
Moving to today, we are rediscovering dimensions and rediscovering ourselves in the metaverse and on the blockchain. NFTs are the new canvases and carriers of music with which the creative person reinvents himself.
Digital Renaissance proves that this will not only result in a creative heyday but can also be a financially interesting development. We are going to look at what Digital Renaissance is and what it can mean in the shaping of the creative industry, especially the music industry.
The music world on Web 2.0
Digital Renaissance aims to revolutionize, but let’s see where they want to be the game-changer.
What was the music world like before blockchain and NFTs? There had of course been a digital revolution for recording and releasing your music. Thanks to services such as Youtube and Spotify, you as a music maker did not need a record company to release and distribute your music. If your music is listened to, you will receive a fee for this. Fans can listen to your music whenever and wherever they want. Well organized right?
Well, not quite. There are huge snags on this construction, especially for artists. The amount you receive when your track is streamed on Spotify, for example, is very minimal. For example, your song has to be streamed very often to yield something. The costs of recording an album are therefore almost, or not at all, recovered as an emerging artist. The streaming services are therefore a place that you mainly use to introduce your music to an audience. To earn money on your music, you mainly have to rely on live performances.
The downsides of this construction were made all the more apparent by the pandemic, which wiped out live performance as a money-making opportunity worldwide. Artists were forced to earn mainly online income with their creativity. This turned out to be very difficult with the possibilities offered by web 2.0.
Digital Renaissance wants to use the possibilities of NFTs and blockchain technology to make it possible for musicians to turn music into income. Why blockchain and why NFTs? What makes this technology so special that it provides new profit models, especially for the creative industry?
This video explains Digital Renaissance:
What are NFTs?
This actually starts with the DNA of an NFT, because what makes non-fungible tokens so unique? Well, exactly that: its uniqueness. An NFT is a token of which only 1 like this exists.
This uniqueness is of course useful to show that this is, for example, a real work of art by the hand of an artist. Or you can use an NFT as a key or access pass.
A token is in fact a piece of encryption in which you can also record information that cannot be changed and is transparent to everyone. With this, you can also easily record copyrights of a piece of music and thus also any royalties.
If an NFT with a piece of music is sold on, you as the creator will automatically receive a part of the transaction, if of course, you have recorded this when creating the NFT. Because of their uniqueness, transparency and irreplaceability, NFTs can also be used well in the metaverse.
What is Digital Renaissance?
As a platform, Digital Renaissance aims to create an environment in which creators can directly convert their creativity into power with the help of NFTs. For this, the team behind this project wants to offer solutions in the following 4 forms of NFTs:
- ARX – Artist Royal extractions. These are smart contracts in which the rights for the royalties of music or art are fixed. Through these NFTs, the owners are entitled to a share of the proceeds when a work of art is sold or a song is streamed.
- Events – With NFTs, you can set up a ticket system for concerts and other cultural events that is transparent and secure.
- Unlock – With the Unlock option with the NFTs that can be created on Digital Renaissance, you can attach to these NFTs content that only the owner has access to and content that he or she can share publicly.
- Physical – These NFTs also allow you to easily trade physical assets. This is possible because you can, for example, add information for shipping.
The entire Digital Renaissance platform is still under development, but the following components are planned:
- NFT Boutique for makers – Here artists can set up their own boutique and create NFTs.
- NFT Marketplace – This will be the marketplace for the NFTs you can create on the Digital Renaissance platform.
- Launchpad – NFT projects can be launched from here. These can have their own token. Digital Renaissance offers support with the facilities too, for example, making a drop or sale run smoothly.
- Organization Events – Digital Renaissance wants to organize events in the digital world as well as in the real world. The NFTs are then used for ticket sales, for example.
- Agency – As an agency, you represent artists and ensure that they can sell their work by promoting their albums and arranging bookings. Here too, NFTs and smart contracts can help.
- Gallery – This will be an online gallery for NFT art, an exhibition space, and a sales place in one.
Why is Digital Renaissance important for makers and fans?
You can already see that converting creativity into financial value has become a lot easier with the help of NFTs. In addition, the rights of makers are also fixed and you can also partially sell them via the ARX NFT system.
But other matters such as ticket sales can also be arranged with NFTs. So it has advantages for artists, but what does it mean for the fans?
With an NFT of a song or a work of art, you really own a piece of an artist’s creativity. This is of course special, but also provides a financial value that can be traded. In addition, an NFT can also serve as a kind of member card of the community around an artist.
What are Digital Renaissance’s plans? – The roadmap
The white paper contains a clearly detailed roadmap. So far this is going well on schedule. The token sales will take place in the first quarter of 2022 and the $VINCI token will be listed on DEXs and CEXs.
These will primarily be PancakeSwap and SushiSwap. Furthermore, many projects are launched in beta version and work is being done on creating a community.
The first musical digital events will take place in the second quarter and various components will be rolled out and launched, such as the staking mechanism of the $VINCI tokens.
In the third quarter, the emphasis will be on expanding and strengthening the community. The year will conclude with the launch of the launchpad and the establishment of the DAO structure for governance of the platform from a community.
Below you can see further per quarter what will happen in 2022 with Digital Renaissance.
What is the team behind Digital Renaissance?
The project is supported by a team that is diverse in many respects. First of all, the team members are spread all over the world. The headquarters are in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dubai, and Dublin. The team will consist of 20 members at the beginning of 2022.
The professional background of the team members is also very diverse. In addition to developers and people from blockchain technology, there are also people who come from the music industry and art trade.
Companies and organizations where team members have worked or have collaborated include ANKR, Amsterdam Dance Event, Heineken, ID&T, and Mojo Concerts. The board and founding are in the hands of the following people:
- Brett Voorzaat – CEO – has a lot of experience in different culturally oriented setups.
- Maarten Pordon – Music Director – Founder of projects and agencies in the Netherlands.
- Nick Zoutendijk – Creative Director – Creative and commercial designer who has worked for international brands.
- Oscar van Velzen – CPO – Full Stack Software Engineer
- Luuk van Egeraat – CTO – Senior Software Engineer
- Jonas Rosbech – CMO – As a CMO, he was also co-founder of Gamerzclass, a platform for E-Sports.
The token $VINCI
Leonardo Da Vinci is of course one of the best-known examples of the Renaissance man, an inventor who brought movement. The token $VINCI actually gets this task as well.
It is the token that belongs to the Digital Renaissance ecosystem. This token will have different functions. For example, you can use this to pay for NFTs in the marketplace. Furthermore, the tokens give you access to airdrops and you can also buy access to events with this.
With the launchpads, the $VINCI token will be used to, for example, whitelist a project. Furthermore, the token will also become a governance token in the future.
It is in fact the intention that by the end of 2022 when the entire project has been rolled out, the management of the team will switch to a DAO. This is a decentralized automatic organization system in which a community of token holders further manages the project.
The tokens then give you the power to vote on proposals made by a community. Paying with these tokens gives you a discount on your purchase. The tokens are built on the Polygon network.
Tokenomics
There are a total of 5 billion tokens. Of these, 180,000,000 are sold and distributed through token sales. This is broken down as follows:
- Seed round – 41.67%
- Private – 44.44%
- Public Sale – 13.89%
Currently, the seed rounds are closed and over. These are the sales before a project has gone live. The start of the project is funded from the proceeds of so-called seed fundraises. A community seed round took place on January 8, 2022.
This one was not completely sold out. January was of course not the happiest month on the crypto exchanges with a few nice crashes. Of course, this also has repercussions on the enthusiasm of investors to get into a project. The next pre-sale took place on February 12 and sold out within 24 hours. Here the price of the tokens was 0.026 USD.
This sale round was initially supposed to have taken place at the end of January, but due to the negative market sentiment at that time, it was decided to postpone it. This also indicates that the sale of the sale at the beginning of January was probably a bit disappointing.
February will be an exciting month anyway, because Digital Renaissance’s IDO (Initial Decentral exchange Offering) with private and public sales will take place on February 18 via launchpad PolkaEx.
This launchpad mainly focuses on launches of NFT projects. Do you want to stay informed about the latest developments regarding this IDO and Digital Renaissance? then it is smart to join their Discord and Telegram group.
How will the 5 billion tokens in total be distributed in the end? Below you can find the distribution in percentages:
- 36% Sale
- 11% Business development ecosystem
- 12% Community treasure
- 5% Legal & Compliance
- 7% Liquidity & listing
- 10% Marketing
- 11% Strike
- 8% Team
Over a period of 5 years, each time a percentage of the total number of tokens is reserved for a purpose or party. It is always nice if there is clarity about the distribution of tokens over parties and time in start-up projects.
What the team assigns itself is also important here. For example, if the team gets 50% of the tokens, that’s not really a good sign. In this case, there are no crazy percentages.
Collaborations and partners
A number of collaborations have already been announced prior to the IDO launch of the platform. PolkaEx will facilitate the IDO. You also see that partners do not only come from the blockchain world, but also from the creative industry. It is not yet known exactly how the collaboration will take shape.
- COPUS – An agency for developing digital strategies
- Kahmann Gallery – This is a leading gallery for the presentation of photo art
- Birb Nest – A trading and advice community
- Intercell – Promoter and organizer of techno and electronic music events
Community
Perhaps we are all looking back on 2022 as the year in which Digital Renaissance, in particular, changed the music industry, but also the entire creative industry. At the moment, in early 2022, we are in the phase where the rocket is ready to launch. The countdown has already started.
One of the plans for the first quarter is to build a community and that is now underway. Currently, the numbers of followers and members are still modest. More than 1600 followers on Twitter, 914 members on Discord, and more than 1700 members via Telegram.
The team is now working hard to expand the community. This can therefore be a good time to step into a successful project early or at least keep a close eye on the developments surrounding this project.
Conclusion
NFTs provide for a rebirth of the creative person. Digital Renaissance provides the environment and resources for creators to convert their work into NFTs.
The project is for all makers in the creative sector but is now mainly focused on the music industry. 2022 could well be the year in which blockchain and NFTs will definitively change the music world, as happened in the art trade the year before.
A project like Digital Renaissance, therefore, seems to be launched at the right time. However, it remains to be seen whether the project will receive the attention it deserves. It certainly has enough potential to become one of the major players in the creative industry on the blockchain.
