Inside What Could Be NFTs' 'Mainstream Moment' With Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou

At the end of a high-energy week in the burgeoning digital art world, “Money Reimagined” brings you the third and (for now) final edition of our NFT series.

In between recording this episode and publishing it two days later, a non-fungible token attached to a piece of digital art sold for a whopping $69.3 million. The sale, orchestrated by Christie’s, turned the digital creator known as Beeple into the third-highest paid living artist. It also represented a high point in the media attention now swirling around this new, crypto-based technology.

So, it’s appropriate we end on a note that grounds things in the reality of the technology and its potential to transform the creator economy generally, rather than being caught up in the celebrity story and media sensations. To do so, we talk with Roham Gharegozlou, the CEO and founder of Dapper Labs, the startup that in many respects is responsible for kicking off the entire NFT phenomenon.

We talk about the early days when Dapper created the ERC-721 standard on Ethereum and launched the popular CryptoKitties program. We talk about why the team made the decision to build its own blockchain, known as Flow, and to migrate the business there away from Ethereum. And we talk about where this rapidly evolving industry, with its competing platforms and wild debates over rights and opportunities, is going.

Join us for the conversation.

See also: The Business of Art and How NFTs Will Change It, With Nanne Dekking

Image credit: Benjamin Suter on Unsplash, modified by CoinDesk