Naffiti to roll out HK female artistes collection in April

NFT marketplace Naffiti's collection Asia Crypto Girls is set to launch this month, featuring four Hong Kong celebrities including Rose Ma, Poyan Fung, Michelle Kwok and Renee Li. The collection is aimed at providing a platform for the female artistes to create a community with their supporters on the metaverse.

Naffiti said the collection, hosted on Ethereum blockchain, will include 2,000 unique decentralised autonomous organisations (DAO) passes that showcase the different aspects of the female artistes. Each of them will boast 500 DAO passes with three different themes photographed by fashion photographer Dicky Ma. The passes illustrate their journey to the metaverse. For example, Rose Ma will address the topic of self-love as she experienced hateful body-shaming comments before.

Michelle Kwok will share a story of her inspiring relationship with art, while Renee Li and Poyan Fung will talk about how they freed themselves from the invisible boundaries created by society and showed a never-before-seen side of them through ACG. Naffiti said there are many stereotypes in the entertainment industry. "The dreams of many talented performers, women, in particular, are often withheld due to labels that the society has placed on them," it said.

"Asia Crypto Girls is aimed at providing a platform for the ladies to show their true colours and to utilise the force of web3 to create a community in metaverse where they can connect with their supporters and shine," the company added.

Naffiti said there will be a lot of projects in the future. The collection comes in four ranks: R, SR, SS and SSS, with each of them containing different levels of benefits including access to a member's club, airdrop of future special projects and a physical Asia Crypto Girls autographed pass. There is only one SSS pass for each artist, making it the highest level of all passes. The holder of the SSS pass will receive 1ETH and take part in events with the artist.

Additionally, holders of at least three Asia Crypto Girls DAO passes of different ranks of the same artist will be granted a special role "The Collector" in Discord. They will receive benefits of the SS pass and be eligible for attending events with the artistes. Naffiti added that the first Asia Crypto Girls collection will be sold in blind boxes, priced at 0.05ETH (HK$1,264) for pre-sale and 1ETH (HK$25,292) for public mint.

To go with the launch, Naffiti is also building an Asia Crypto Girls MetaMembers' Club on The Sandbox, which is an exclusive members' club for all Asia Crypto Girls DAO pass holders in the metaverse. Social events, exclusive workshops and seminars hosted by blockchain experts will be launched.

Some Hong Kong-based artistes joined the metaverse before and some of them even made money through their projects. Edison Chen's The Heart Project was once ranked 10th by sales volume in the past 24 hours in January. According to the South China Morning Post, it also took the second spot on the marketplace by 24-hour trading volume before. In addition to Chen, boyband MIRROR's member Ian Chan launched 2,222 NFTs. The first batch was launched in November 2021. Actor Shawn Yue also sold an NFT for more than HK$33 million, according to some media reports. On his Instagram account, he used an NFT as the profile picture too.

NFT has been popular in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, NFT and blockchain game developer "HolyShxxt!!" launched a set of generative art collectibles that includes 8,888 special football players’ NFTs. Each "HolyShxxt!!" football players’ NFT was unique and was created by a combination of 15 traits, and over 480 attributes in addition to special functional features such as air jet, wings and other elements that make it more valuable.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE talked to experts before about the development of NFTs. Vincent Kan, head of digital, Wavemaker Hong Kong said that while the NFT market is emerging quickly, education is still needed. He added that NFT as a topic is gaining market attention because of its association with cryptocurrency and potential investment value. “Currently in Hong Kong, the majority of NFT products are still digital art and collectibles," said Kan. While NFT products are gaining traction, and this could be a potential new channel for brands, there are many aspects of the NFT space brands need to consider.

To Cheung, founder of UD added that marketers should also notice the fluctuating cost of cryptocurrency, which could affect the price of NFT products.

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