Today we talk to Katie Chen, Co-Founder of Kairos. The company aims to reflect the world we want to live in. They are a team of designers, creatives, art lovers, and first-generation immigrants. We’ve brought in and collaborated with a diverse collection of creators, collectors, and advisors.
Kairos is a team of developers and designers that cut their teeth with companies like Airbnb, Brex, and Slack. Based in San Francisco, the company looks to take the whole NFT revolution to its next reiteration. We hope you enjoy our talk.
Katie Chen, Co-Founder of Kairos
E-Crypto News
Where do you see the NFT world in the coming 2-5 years?
Background: The past two years we’ve seen speculative trading of NFTs primarily focused on the images on those NFTs. Few have become fully formed companies (e.g. BAYC) realizing they’ve caught a cultural wave and raised funds from early-adopters. We saw holders band together and as a collective push creators to do more.
Holders saw opportunities to unify their collective influence and create products or services to maintain the value of their investment. On the other hand, we also witnessed countless stories of creators disappearing overnight along with all the proceeds of their NFT sale. That was the speculative bubble of the past 2 years.
Five years from now, we will have a better understanding of the underlying technology of NFT. We would refer to and trust the authenticity of items by the fact it is NFT-backed. We would want proofs such as tickets, investments, memberships, education or training qualifications, artworks, investment dividends etc. to be NFT-backed.
That the authenticity of these proofs can be accessed and verified by anyone via the blockchain (instead of today, where every proof is gated by disparate organizations or varying technical capabilities).
Kairos will be there to enable any organization, entrepreneur, creator, community organizer to issue NFT-backed proofs to power their operations, implement innovative and equitable business models and drastically reduce cost in user database management. Kairos will be at the forefront of understanding the latest blockchain advancements and continue to create products to help creators take advantage of them.
As a holder of NFTs, your digital wallet contains irrefutable proof of your identity, qualifications and membership. By connecting your wallet, you can gain access to what is exactly specified by your NFT.
Example 1.
If you are starting a company, you would fundraise by issuing NFT-backed proofs of contribution, status as an early supporter and terms such as exclusive access to product, participation in research and feedback, revenue-share and even rights to utilize brand assets. In this world, an entrepreneur is less alone, their supporters contribute with resources and skills knowing ultimately the success of the entrepreneur and the company will increase the value of their initial investment.
Example 2.
If you were a musician you would issue NFT-backed tickets for your concerts to:
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Never have to worry about managing the identity of your ticket holder
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Ensure you get paid when your tickets are resold or changes hands
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Leverage the NFT-backed ticket as logins or access passes. Holders of your tickets can plug in their wallet and access content, merchandise or experiences you create.
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Revenue share directly with global or local stakeholders without needing to go through complex and outdating banking system
What marketing tools and strategies do you use to market NFTs?
Kairos is an NFT solutions company. We advise creators who use Kairos on marketing strategies that align with their brand instead of driving hype in a disingenuous way. We help creators assess their existing community, comms channels and think through partnerships. We make recommendations and introductions to participate in Twitter Spaces, Discord and different DAOs.
From our perspective, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all marketing approach. We advise our creators to not just look at NFTs as an item to be traded but a relationship they’re establishing with holders. It is a container or representation for their brand or business that will grow in value if they continue to grow.
What features does Kairos offer?
Kairos offers NFT creation tools for creators to:
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Create a branded storefront using our highly customizable and branded templates
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Creation tool to easily make and publish unique NFTs or a generative collection
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Smart contract customization
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Set their terms of sale and resale of all their NFTs and collect funds via Solana or Stripe (coming soon)
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Automatically publish collection on Opensea and Magic Eden
Why did Kairos choose to operate on Solana?
Low carbon footprint — Kairos is built on the Solana blockchain. It is a carbon-neutral blockchain. To put it in perspective, a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to 8.3 days of power consumption by an average U.S. household, while a single transaction on Solana is equivalent to 0.02 minutes of power consumption of an avg. U.S. household.Fast transaction and affordable — Solana network has the ability to process 50,000 transactions per second compared to Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second. This means lower transaction fees for collectors to buy your NFT. On Solana a transaction costs $ 0.0000027 vs ~$40 on Ethereum (during peak time it could be hundreds of dollars).
For now, we are on Solana. In the future, holders and buyers are not going to care about what chain things live on. Our goal is to support multiple chains and certainly Ethereum is on the roadmap. We are waiting for the update to proof of stake where carbon footprint will reduce.
Related: GeneNFTs Advance Precision Medicine
What are Kairos NFTs used for?
This question is not quite right.
Kairos as a company creates tools to enable anyone to create NFTs and issue them to whomever they want. The NFTs is a type of proof representing a set of agreements the creator has with the buyers, it can range from copyright to use the images to a ticket to accessing event or content to a revenue share agreement.
Kairos as a company itself has not issued any NFTs but may explore that in the future.
How much power and energy does NFT creation on your platform consume?
0.02 minutes of power consumption of an avg. U.S. household per NFT (vs. Ethereum at ~8.36 days per NFT).
What are the risk factors associated with minting, owning, investing, and trading NFTs?
There aren’t any risks in minting and owning NFTs. I say these assuming people know what they are buying or they have been given a NFT and they wholly own it without having spent money to purchase it.
There are numerous risk factors associated with investing and trading NFTs:
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Not having done enough research and buying into NFTs purely based on hype and seeing the NFT purely as a flippable item. This is always a risk because it’s not certain if someone else will buy it off you or if the hype completely collapse
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Trading in particular has tax implications that most people do not understand and often are caught unprepared when tax season comes around
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As with any investment, like fluctuations in the dollar; fluctuations in crypto pricing can impact investment and its perceived value
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As with directly trading NFTs with another user, there is always the risk of bad actors that can completely drain your wallet via a malicious link or steal from you
Popular understanding of NFTs currently pigeon-holes it as a type of tradable financial asset. It’s not the full picture. As we move forward through this recession/market correction we’ll see collectors be more cautious and realize that in order to turn the NFTs they own into an investment they must participate with the creators and other holders to build the NFT project.
Most importantly, realize they are shareholders that can directly impact the success of the project. So if they want to trade their NFTs, they have to do the work to increase their value and not just rely on the image that’s on it.
Related: Infinite Fleet NFT Gaming at its Best
What type of NFTs are produced on Kairos?
Creators on Kairos can create NFTs to:
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Issue tickets for one-of-a-kind experiences including private dining, meet and greet with artists, backstage passes, conferences and events
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Fund their new idea/venture
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Gauge interest in a project and use NTFs as order commitments
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Verify proof of attendance to events, parties, and gatherings
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Co-build products and get direct feedback from their most loyal supporters through token gating
Can the Kairos NFT be copied or duplicated?
No, they can not. The images associated with the NFT are uploaded to Arweave
and the smart contract itself is unique and minted on the blockchain.
