Episode 159 - How OrionVault uses blockchain to in

Welcome to Crypto Nights, where we help you finally make sense of the trending world of crypto currencies. So get your virtual piggy bank and let's get started. Joanne, welcome to Crypto Nights. We are so excited to have you as our guest speaker. I'm so excited as well. Hi to all of the people who are listening. Thank you so much for hosting us today. I'm dialing in

from our Crypto Valley Tsook in Switzerland and it's really a pleasure to be on this show. Wonderful, Joanne. Very, very excited. Why don't we kick this off by having you tell us a little bit about your personal background? What have you done in the past? And then a little bit about the backstory behind Orion Walt and where you are today? Of course. Of course. So I'm

going to start from the beginning. So when I was a kid, it's going to be a long story. Sorry. But just want to give you a little bit more information about where the idea came from. Because I'm actually a daughter of ballet dancer and lawyer slash businessmen. So I saw my mother struggle all her life being an artist and trying to make things work. On the

other hand, I've got this huge passion for business and I'm going to do a little bit of work. So I'm going to start with the technology. So for the past 10 years, I've done a lot of work in at tech space. And at one point of time, it was actually last year. I tried to make, tried to enter the art market space. I really wanted to

start to understand the investment opportunities better. And how I can actually purchase some beautiful art pieces myself and treat it also as an investment tool. So basically when I started to do the research, I was just blown away how unfriendly this space is for people who are outsiders. And I perceive myself as an outsider. First of all, there's so many things you have to do offline.

You have to make a call. You have to go to a gallery. You have to know the right people. There's so many things that you need to penetrate and understand better before you go. You can even make the first purchase. And all of those things are not really very transparent. So for me, it was very strange situation because I spent my 10 professional years in technology.

So I thought that everything should be done over email or over website. And it's like five minutes of my time. And then I can go to the next one. This wasn't the case. But then I started to think about, okay, so how can we improve this situation? Where technology can disrupt kind of the old fashion way that this market is used to? And I thought that

blockchain might be a solution with my previous venture in the hash. We basically also entered the blockchain space in 2017 and try to understand better how we can navigate. So I think that blockchain is a very important thing for the blockchain space for influencer marketing. And giving the fact that I have some type of expertise and some quite good understanding of the blockchain, not really being,

I'm not technical person myself. But from business perspective, I think I understand it quite well. I thought that, you know, blockchain gives a lot of opportunities to not only build a transparent business model. But it's very difficult that finally you can register paintings or art pieces in one opened registry, which is essentially blockchain ledger. But it also gives you opportunities to do much more than that.

And for art space, essentially, kind of, you know, we built the Orion vault around free principles. And philosopher from, and I think that's a great way to do that. Education and also from my passion. So always trying to figure out, you know, the big picture first and then go into details. So our free principles that guide us in creating Orion vault is that, first of all,

everything goes digital. So we believe that all of the things that we value, not only, you know, art, but also assets like gold, diamond, art. And, etc. They're in the future, most probably we will not need the tangible goods to actually attribute to them value, but all of the things that are valuable will be digitalized. So the perfect example is Bitcoin, right? Like it doesn't have

any representation in physical gold or there's no physical bitcoin that securities the digital one. And the other principle that is important for us is to build sustainable model. So all the parties involved in art market space, we want to build a model that's going to work for and benefit all of them. So it's not only about making profits, but it's also about building amazing opportunities for

artists to grow and also for museums to build their donation portfolio from position where they are right now to hopefully much, much greater resources that they can get if they are basically cooperating together. And the third principle is social model. So essentially kind of building on this second principle is that we want to have something that lasts. So it's not really so it's not only about

making everyone happy, but also building a model that's going to work for many, many years for everyone. So for example, artists right now, the biggest struggle that they have is hash flow and having resources to actually build their careers. And we think that what we are doing at Orion Vault can bring them a lot of value. And this brings me to kind of the next question

what we are exactly doing at Orion Vault. Digitalizing all of the art pieces. So our ambition is to basically create a state of art, digital state of art of what has been done so far. And also give opportunity for artists, contemporary artists to work with patrons. So people who really believe in them and want to donate money to them. And also have an opportunity to sell

their art pieces. So this is kind of in the nutshell, where we came from and what we are doing. So what would be the use cases to understand for example, how do you buy a piece of art? I was so walk us through how Orion Vault helps and who does it help. So you said it helps artists and also existing pieces of art and also people

who want to invest in art. So I'm looking at the ecosystem has at least three different places. So what are the ideas? Can you take one of these as an example and walk us through what are the steps that they will, how will they interact with Orion Vault? Yeah, of course. Let me start maybe with what we call digital master pieces. And these are art pieces.

That would never be available for sale. So how we envision that is that we work with museums and also art collectors. So to digitalize some of the art pieces that would never be available for sale. So let's take the Monalisa as an example from Louvre, which is one of the most famous ones. It would never be available for sale. And also a lot of you know,

master pieces from the past, they are kept in involves of art collectors or even museums. So essentially there's no opportunity to own for example Monalisa. So what we are doing is we are doing a lot of work with the art collectors. What we are doing is using Gigapixel cameras to digitalize the famous art pieces, artworks, and then sign of a certificate that we encrypt on the

blockchain. That is the only masterpiece ever created. Signed off by the curator and also museum and offering this to global investors to basically purchase either the art pieces. Or a whole piece or a fraction of it. So you can have for example, a share in the artwork from museum perspective. What is the benefit of this particular offering is that they get a carry commission for lies.

So on any transaction that will ever be made on the art piece that we have they get 1% fee or lifetime. So forever. So this kind of builds an opportunity for museums to. To extend their donation portfolio much much too much greater extend investors on the other hand side have opportunity investors and art collectors. They have opportunity to own very precious art pieces that would never

be available for them. And they can obviously also use it as an investment opportunity. So liquidated much faster. Then you know you would do. So it's in traditional art space. Then we have what we call patronage program. And in patronage program we have on one hand side. Patrons. So usually people who want to invest in artists and artists themselves. And how we how we build this

feature is that. Patrons can donate. Some portion of money into art. Artists of their choice. And artists on the other hand side not only benefit from getting the donations but also once they sell the art piece. They also receive the carry commission throughout life. So it's very different model from what we know right now. Where usually when you sell something that's the end. You basically sold

some art piece for example for 10,000 US dollars. And then you know the history is unforeseen. And for us it's important to give opportunity to artists also to benefit from any transaction that ever will be made over the art piece that they created. For donate for Patrons on the other hand side in this model. What they get is also a profit on. On the artist that

they invested in. So when I never there's a transaction BMA on the art piece that they invested in they also get a fee. So this is kind of the ecosystem that we are trying to build to make sure that everyone can benefit. And also we want to make sure that our fees are as low as possible. The kind of the state as we have it right

now in the art space. Usually fees are from 15 to even 40%. We only charge 5% and then there's carry commission which is 1%. Yeah so I would see these digital images that you're creating. Where are the I understand the certificate will be on the blockchain. What about the giga pixel picture that you take? Where is that? Sure. So the giga pixel image is basically on

set. It's a separate entity that is stored in the cloud. So that you have also security around it. So that we try to make it hack free as much as possible. And we have two tokens that are in our ecosystem. One of which is non-fungible ERC 721. And it represents the digital masterpieces. And the other we have for payments which is 20. So each so each

of the non-fungible token will uniquely represent one image. So for the image that you're bringing in into your collection. There'll be a non-fungible token. That means each one is different. So that will be pointing. And that's why you picked ERC 721 that makes sense. So what about the other token? The utility is that a utility token? Yes. So we have it for the ICO purposes. So

that the tangible token, ERC 20, that basically will be offered during the ICO and any transactions that are being made on our platform. You have to use the token, ERC 20. And what do you do with that? So you can basically donate to artists, make all of the payments for artworks and use it essentially as a payment tool. I see. Got it. So you are. You're

able to do that. So I can actually use I can use dollars to buy your utility tokens. And with those tokens, I can buy a fractional share maybe of Mona Lisa, for example. Maybe point. Exactly. Exactly. Got it. So he said now this is a might come across as a very dumb question because I'm not into art space. While I have been to the British Museum

and several other museums in Washington DC New York. So on so forth in Chicago, I've always enjoyed art museums. But as an IEV outsider, so my question is, we are not talking about Mona Lisa, but we are talking about a picture of Mona Lisa. Do people give value to a picture of Mona Lisa as much as they would to the original. So what? What are people's

thoughts about an image of the original? Yeah. Yeah. I think from one hand side, it's interesting to see the phenomena of cryptocurrencies that you actually, which are, I think, called by SEC that it's security. That's what I heard a few days ago. But I think the phenomenon is, it's really amazing that you can actually, on one hand side with the example, as you mentioned, of digital

Mona Lisa, you can actually own a certified image of Mona Lisa. That's something that would never, ever happen before. And with the product that we are launching, essentially some of the freaks and art collectors around the world can actually have something certified by the museum and also curator. So it's not really, you know, only a picture taken by your latest iPhone, but it's actually a very

detailed precise. And I think that's what I'm talking about. Beautiful representation of the digital Mona Lisa. What we don't really want to do and there's few reasons behind it. One of which is that we believe that digital assets, they can be valuable on their own. They don't need, you know, tangible goods behind them is that we don't want to secure ties with physical paintings at the

digital versions. We believe that digital art also video, music, images, they can live on their own and the value that they have is basically the certificate, the ownership of them. Also, what is, I think, quite interesting for our clients is that they can expose the, the art pieces in their homes, at their work. Most of the artwork that is collected by investors, they put it in

the vaults. They never see it. They never hang it, you know, in their apartments. On one hand side, because they are so expensive. So it also brings a lot of risk if you, you know, put a few million dollar or even more expensive image in your apartment. But also, you know, there's some risk with keeping the art piece, you know, in not great environment. So for

example, humidity is very important, you know, amount of life that you have in the room at the moment. So most of the art that you own, you never ever see it. It's just kept in the vault. So from this perspective, we think that we can actually bring, you know, something that you own into the light of your room, of your apartment, of your work. And you

can really start to enjoy the art around you. I feel like, and I don't know if you agree, but if you have, if you surround yourself with your own, you know, something that inspires you, it doesn't have to be beautiful because beautiful means different things for each of us. But if you surround yourself with things that are inspiring, it's just changes, you know, how you think,

changes your creativity. So that's why we want to bring art into light, essentially. And also what we are offering whenever you purchase digital masterpiece, you also get a beautiful screen. And that actually are of exact dimensions of the physical art piece. So it represents exactly one to one, how it looks like in real life. And this cleans also adapt to light of the of the room

that you keep this image in so that you have, you know, a beautiful exposure of it. And you can basically put it anywhere where you want. This will be a lower resolution image of the pick up pixel. Is that what you're telling me? Yeah. So you basically, well, there are also screens, you know, very with very, very high resolution. So we want to use the ones

that are the best on the market. Obviously, gig up pixel technology is a little bit ahead of the time. And in terms of, you know, the screens that we have right now for regular customers, but we want to use the best of the best to give the best quality. And experience to clients. So if I use your tokens and buy it to a piece of Mona

Lisa, are you telling me that not only do I have a fractional ownership of a very, very high gig up pixel resolution image, but I will also get a screen image that I can maybe display on my computer or. Of course, yes. And that's what you're telling me is something maybe I can have digital photo frames and I can have them show up during the day.

And maybe even cycle through and they can be inspiring. I can I can see that and you are not hiding your art away in some apps obscure place, but you're surrounded by it and you're getting inspired by it. I get the point. Did I get the point? Yes, definitely. That's that's exactly what what we are after exactly that. So I hope you will be interested in

some of the art that you offer. No, the idea is to me. I mean, I'm a geek scientist like I said to me, I may not understand art, but I understand. I understand the design of your business and I am very fascinated by it. So, okay, so I can use your tokens to purchase. I can use your tokens to as a patron to support somebody. What

else can I use your tokens for utility tokens for? Yeah, so you basically mentioned, you know, kind of the key things. What is also interesting is that we want to. Create a social movement around our platform. So it means that when you are using, for example, I'm not sure if you are using Instagram. Yes, yes, of course. Yeah. So usually when you go through at least

for me, when I go through Instagram feed, I usually give just, you know, hearts to every single thing I see, right? Like I don't really make any conscious effort to give like to one image and then not like the other image that I see, right? It's just like random. Yeah. And what we want to do is we want to do that. What we want to do

is kind of build the social monetization offering that your, if you are giving someone a like or this heart, you basically give them also a token, our token. So we want to create this opportunity for anyone who is, you know, scrolling through artists, some of the art pieces that they see that they can also make a conscious effort to donate additional token to, to be artists

of art, or art of their choice. And so also you can use the tokens very specifically to not only say that you like something, but it represents also a value if you say that you like something. Okay. So that is a huge extension of the original idea. This is the social extension. So till now we were talking about arts, investors, patterns. But now you talk about

Instagram, images, imagery and somebody's who's a painter can post some of their images and somebody can click a like and actually contribute towards the art as a donation perhaps using your token. Is that what you're saying? Yes, that's exactly it. And it's a little bit of, well, I would put it in the bucket of patronage. So it's exactly what it's social. It's social much more than

I imagine. So you're, this is very exciting because you could, you're now expanding. You're almost like a marketplace platform. For artists globally to publish, publish their artwork and get exposure and find people that are interested in their style and have them support them very easily in a very small amounts. But then assuming that they have a large enough base of fans or followers, that might actually

add up to something pretty significant that can support their life. And you have given back story of how you have seen. You said your mom was a bandaid answer actually. And then you're going to have to go through some struggles because you've seen artists and monetization seem to be two different things and that's pretty sad. So you're also solving that issue of support for artists and

art because I was trying to, I was trying to figure that out. I could not figure that out from your website. I think you've reached that gap and that helps me quite a bit. So this is great. So can we now fast forward and can you tell us about Orion Walt and tell us about how are you planning to raise money? How much are you raising?

What is the time? Yes, of course. So we are currently at the stage where we are doing the MVP. So we are launching in the next four weeks. Basically, we want to make the proof testing as well of the platform and cooperate with the first artists. And actually some of the first artists that we want to bring into the platform. These are artists from Asia. And

quite a lot of people have been wanting to build their careers and build their careers in a very different way. So we are launching MVP and then we are planning to raise funds in fall 2018 between September and November. The precise dates will be announced. We want to basically announce it a little bit further ahead. The precise dates because we are based in Switzerland. Our company

is registered in Tuk in our beautiful Crypto Valley. And we want to also make sure that all of the regulations, all of the conversations with the Figma are done in the right way. And we also have everything ready for the future. We have basically a softcap of 8 million US dollars, a hardcap 36 million. That basically will help us to run business for two years, to

become also cash positive after two years. That's what we are anticipating. Most of the funding that we are raising will go into the future. We are going to product development and also building partnerships with artists, with universities, with museums. So these are the majority of funding will go into that. We basically are technology company. And most of our team members, we call ourselves more of a

tech geek. Geeks. So we really want to focus on building the best technology out there. With the best security as well. So this is kind of the, the findings that we need to do that. Enjoy. What aspect of the business are you modeling in your MVP? You are building out an MVP. Is that for the social extension idea? Or is it for the original artwork with

the Gigapixel image that's with fractional ownership? Which of these two are you building an MVP for both of them? Yes. So we are actually building for both of them. There will be obviously not all of the features will be available straight away after we launch. But essentially we want to give opportunity for users of the platform to already vote for which digital masterpieces they would like

to purchase first. So we will have like a list of options for them to choose from. We will have some of the new artists, contemporary artists present their artworks to potential investors and patrons. So these two features we focus the most. And then the whole patronage kind of model. The one that we talked about in terms of, you know, making the social movement around it. This

will for this we will need some more time for coding and preparing the functionality. So for the MVP we focus on digital masterpieces first. So when will the MVP, when will you deem the MVP complete? What are your success criteria? Because to me, it's an unverified assumption. Unless you have data to prove that already that Mona Lisa's digital image, higher resolution, certified single image will be

coveted. Now to me as an outsider, that's theory. And it is not yet validated. So I'm assuming that either one of two things have happened, either you have seen other situations, maybe having a high resolution, megapixel type of resolution image, which is certified is already high value. Maybe there you already, is there something like that already happening that you have proof that digital images of originals

are high value. Or are you hoping that your MVP will validate that. So you are digitalizing famous art pieces. But what is missing is that they don't have, you know, a business model around it, right? They are just doing this. Let's say for fun. Obviously it's not only for fun, but there's no business model around it. So. But it's a value to the digitized assets of

Google. Sorry. If Google is digitizing art pieces, is there a value to each of the art piece? No, that's exactly what is missing. So what we are thinking is that looking at, you know, kind of the. Success of digital collectibles, right? Like cryptocurrencies. We see that there's a huge potential in bringing digital art and digital assets to a position where they can actually have tremendous value.

And this is something that, as you mentioned, we want to prove at the stage of MVP to see in our on the platform what type of interest is there. So for example, if they have an option to register for buying a digital monoliza, will they choose it over? For example, some of the words of Picasso or Warhol, etc. So okay. My question is to me, again,

like I said outside of that is, that is it's still theoretical that cryptocurrencies work. Therefore, it is likely. Yeah, there's a likelihood. But there is validation required. My question is, is this your MVP are going to have that as a success criteria? So if you your MVP proves ABC, then you will do an ICO. Exactly. So what are the two or three things that you're trying

to prove with your MVP? What are your exit criteria or success criteria for your MVP? Yeah. So for us, success criteria is basically getting the interested investors and purchasing the digital masterpiece and all of that. Also, some of current artists that they can actually sell the art pieces that they have on the platform to first buyers. So we have also some of the numbers behind it.

What type of investment we are looking for, how many people we want to reach before we actually go into ICO's stage to show to our participants. We have potential investors in our ICO that we have already approved of concepts. I like that. And who's funding your effort until now? Who's funding what I have involved until now? Sure. We are completely self-founded. We truly believe in what

we are doing. So basically, we are completely 100% self-founded. Are you the sole founder or do you have co-founders with you? Yes. We are actually a family business. Family. Family and friends. How we call it. So my co-founder Chris, he's also my husband. So we are building this together. For some of the questions that I've heard from VCs, we are together 14 years. So it gives

a little bit of stability into this setup. And also we are super grateful and really happy that we manage together. We are a tremendous team around us. Most of them, they are our friends, colleagues that we've worked before. We know each other for quite a long time. So it's really tremendous to see that kind of the new business model that we are building, the new opportunity

that we are building. To truly change the situation, not only to give additional profits, but to give back to society, to people who grew up in the same way. We create our culture, brings some of tremendous people around us. This is huge. Depending upon how much this takes off, it could have huge implications. For example, if we go to really, I'm from India, I grow up

there. If you go to really rural areas and villages, it gets almost tribal. And there is art that is produced there, but they are not able to monetize. And this could be a potential solution for them. So we can let our imagination, and we can do a lot of things. So I'm really excited about what you're doing. And I definitely wish you the very best. I

do want you to share with people that are probably listening to it until this point. And I'm really excited about what you're doing. I'm sure there are millions of people around the globe that will be excited about this project. So I'm requesting our listeners to like this to share with a lot of other people. Now what I want you to tell them, Joana, is what do

they do next? If they're liking this, how do they get engaged with the community? With your company, Orion One? Yes. So actually what we are thinking for the future is that we want to give charity much more back to charity and also build foundation around Orion Vault platform. So for us, it's really important to also give back. And 5% of the revenues that we get each

year, we will donate to charity. And we want to bring along. As many people excited about this opportunity alone. So for us, it's really a matter of building a very new social movement around culture, around people who are creating our culture and making us humans essentially. So that's very important for us from social responsibility perspective. And also for the future, we want to give back. And

also for what we are seeing from investors perspective, because we want to broaden the platform to match wider audience, not only to people who kind of understand what art is and professionals like art collectors and family families who are doing this for centuries. We want to also open opportunities to people like, you know, like us who don't necessarily know which artists are interesting. So we also

will build indexes so that, you know, whoever wants to purchase index of 20 best performing artists, they can just do that instead of getting into, you know, all of the details behind Patronash program and how to invest in art. So this is the next step that we see for us to extend opportunities to much, much wider audience. So we want to give back to our audience

and listeners, maybe a website they can go through for further information, how to engage with your audience on telegrams, Slack, Reddit, where are you? Yes, of course, visit all of those. So we are on all of those platforms. Handles usually are Orion Vault. And you can find them on our website, Orion Vault.com. And you also can pre-register, you can register for pre-sale already. And you can

find ORI, ONVAULT.com. That's fantastic. And join, are there any other points you want to make to our audience? Baby, I missed out on some questions that I should have asked. Are there some other things you want to summarize to our audiences? I think that you actually covered everything. So I don't really have anything more to add, except for maybe a request that we are also looking

for, you know, as much feedback as possible. We really appreciate all of the difficult questions and challenges. So if you have any recommendations or feedback, please feel free to contact me. I'm Joanna Pavluk at Telegram. And I would love to get some of your ideas back. Shoot me. Awesome, Joanna. We wish you the very best. And thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. It

was a great pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Crypto Nights. Never miss an episode. Subscribe now at www.cryptoknights.io.