On November 4th, MEXC launched a live Twitter space broadcast on MEXC Twitter. It was an AMA about a very hot NFT project Candy Girl. About Candy Girl: egendary Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano’s Candy Girl artwork, a sensational collection that features 108 angels, is coming to Astar Network as a NFT collection.
To get a better know about Candy Girl, we were so happy to invite two guests from the project side and Astar network side. They are the project manager “ Masa” and Astar’s founder “Sota” (Because some time difference reason Suguru came to speak instead of Sota).
And the following is a text excerpt from this livestreame.
Antonio：
Thank you for the introduction and I am so happy you are here and join us in this space. For next, I would like to start with the first talk about the introduction of Candy Girl. I am going to ask guests some questions about this Nft project- Candy Girl, and some questions are related to Astar network. Please feel free to answer and let’s start with the first one. Before we start, here is a special reminder for our audience. This time, Candy Girl has provided 10 CANDY GIRL NFT White Lists for those who participate in our gleam tasks, ask questions and questions are selected to answer during the free Q&A section.
Q1. First of all, would you like to introduce more about Candy Girl, such as what type of NFT Candy Girl belongs to. Is this an exploration of native encryption art or is it GameFi-based or metaverse?
Masa：
CANDYGIRL is a collection of 2,222 CANDYGIRLs and is Mr. Amano’s first NFT collection. This project aims to make CANDYGIRLs as Virtual Artists with our NFT holder community. Since this collection is the first attempt to bring Mr. Amano’s CANDYGIRL to Web3, this NFT collection will be the genesis passport to that journey.
The roadmap includes various elements such as art, music, story, fashion, food, metaverse, and collaborations with famous companies, but the main focus will be on metaverse and music.
Q2. The second question is also related to Candy Girl, we would like to know what Candygirl‘s cosmology or core artistic connotation is?
Masa：
CANDYGIRL is not a commercial art for FF or animation works, but a self-expression art (fine art) of Mr. Amano. CANDYGIRL is a compilation of art created from the arts of cute girls he had been drawing as his side-work for a long time Therefore this Candygirl NFT project will be a compilation of Mr.Amano’s life-long works, which reflects his life as an artist.
Each work has decades of legendary history, which makes it very different from other NFT projects which are created for a short time span.
Q3. I think, including everyone who participated in this Space today, would like to know about Candygirl’s core team and its funding background. This is a very important consideration for an NFT enthusiast. Would you be able to tell us?
Masa：
This project is the first project born from the business alliance between ASTAR and TwinPlanet. This business alliance is aiming to build a Web3 creator economy and support the global development of Japanese IP and its entry into the Web3 market, and the reason for bringing in the legendary Mr. Amano as the first project is to create a successful example of this and create a movement in Japan.
TwinPlanet’s main business has been in real life entertainment, and this is why I think they will be able to push the realization of the roadmap unlike any other project.I joined the Astar side to manage CandyGirl’s NFT project due to my background in Web3 and past NFT experience.
Q4. How to get Candygirl? What are the rights and interests of holding Candygirl? We haven’t seen Candygirl’s official website yet. Is there any date for the official launch of the website and what kind of product roadmap will it launch?
Masa：
We are planning auction events in mid-November and an NFT collection sale at the end of November. The auction will be held in cooperation with TofuNFT and our Metaverse project partner. The NFT sale will not be a regular mint, but will be designed to be interactive so that you can get your own CandyGirl of your choice by choosing your favorite flavor at the time of minting.
The official website will be announced in the week of November 7. We are also planning to collaborate on a real event to be held in Kyoto and Mr. Amano’s IG.The roadmap will also be announced on the same day.
Q5. How did you persuade Mr Yoshitaka Amano to get involved in this project? As we all know, Mr Amano’s painting style is fantastic, what is the reason behind the creation of Candy Girl?
Masa：
What is special about Mr. Amano is that he owns all rights to his original art. For most Japanese artists, the copyrights and other rights belong to another party or company, but for most of Mr. Amano’s works, including the FF series, the rights of the original art belong to himself.
Amano-sensei’s intention was to spread Candy Girl around the world, and if the community around it would thrive, he would allow us to do so without restrictions. And he has received countless NFT proposals, but the reason he decided to go with us this time was because of the strong relationship with TwinPlanet.
Q6. As we know, most Japanese projects are conservative in terms of intellectual property rights, and generally do not open too much content to NFT holders. What core rights and interests do Candy girl NFT holders have in intellectual property and IP? Will CC0 be considered?
Masa：
TwinPlanet and Mr. Amano have discussed the possibility of allowing other uses to the maximum extent possible. Since CandyGirl already has an original art holder in real life and the art has been used in various places.
Use for purposes of derivative fan-art is allowed as long as it’s not used for commercial purposes and NSFW content.
Q7: At present, most NFT projects are Ethereum-based issuance and are also recognized by most users. But some time ago, reddit’s NFT (Solana network-based issuance) has skyrocketed, and the reason may come from the basic users of reddit. From your point of view, does the network effect of the public chain itself determine the scale of its NFT development? Why?
Suguru:
In my opinion, the network effect of the public chain is not what determines the scale of NFT development. People buy NFT because of its utility, its IP but not because it is on a certain L1 blockchain.
Q8: What kind of market and operation method does Astar currently use to push NFT, GameFi and other Dapp developers to settle in?
Suguru：
We certainly offer support for blue chip NFT projects as well as blue chip GameFis which includes from marketing to technical integration.
We also support onboarding dApps to market and position well in the Japanese market as we are definitely a star L1 blockchain in Japan as having strong ties with big enterprises and governments. Recently, we onboarded P2E game Mones for the Japanese Market.
We also offer a unique system called dApp staking where we offer rewards to dApp developers by applying a traditional staking system to dApps. This works as an incentive for developers building and deploying projects on Astar as they can cover their expenses by this dApp staking system.
Q9: I see that Astar has been cooperating with some traditional projects in Japan recently. Can you introduce them?
Suguru：
We recently closed the deal with NTT, the largest telecom in Japan, to use this partnership to solve the problem in Japan using Astar’s expertise in web3 and NTT’s network.
We also founded a joint venture with Hakuhodo, one of the largest advertising agencies to further accelerate the web3 adoption in Japan by utilizing the client base of Hakuhodo.
As a government level, Sendai city and Fukuoka city, two major cities in Japan, joined Astar Japan Lab, which was created to create the enterprise use case of Astar in Japan.
Q10: In my opinion, blockchain is not language friendly. How do Astar and Candy Girl position themselves in the market? Is it mainly Japan?
Suguru:
I personally believe blockchain overcomes language barriers especially in the case of NFT. Thinking of an example of this Candy Girl, people all over the world are attracted by the beauty of Candy Girl and certainly not just in the Japanese market. As Japanese anime are popular all over the world, bringing good IPs on NFT overcomes language barrier and this is something we, the Astar team, has strength as we have a very strong presence in the Japanese market.
Q11: Last question, Eth2.0 and Cosmos are very popular, and in the long run, more and more people are into it. Are there still opportunities for public chains such as Astar and Aptos to shine? What do both of you think?
Suguru:
I can’t talk much about Aptos, but certainly can talk about Astar. Astar has a strength in the Polkadot ecosystem as we believe in a trust interoperable future. As of now, we have interoperability though bridges but this is not secure at all as we have had many bridge hacks. Having trustless interoperability in Polkadot gives Astar strength in the long term.
We also believe in the future of WASM as this allows more web2 developers coming and building on web3. Because we already have support on our sister network, Shiden and soon support WASM on Astar. Having support for both WASM and EVM gives us uniqueness over other networks.
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