There are a number of Web3 projects aiming to tether the physical world to the digital one. We’ve identified the strengths and weaknesses across different classes of “phygital” solutions to demonstrate where they succeed and where they fall short.

1. “Digital Twin” NFTs

2. “Checkout Receipt” NFTs

3. “1:1 Physically-Backed” NFTs

4. “Legal Enforcement” NFTs

1. “Digital Twin” NFTs

What if you could own a replica of your favorite pair of sneakers in the Metaverse? Digital Twin NFTs aim to solve the problem of bringing Real World Assets on-chain by creating a digital representation of the asset which can then be paired with the physical item.

One of the most popular ways to create a Digital Twin NFT involves the use of Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology. NFC chips have been around for over a decade, powering point-of-sale transactions, keycards, and smartphone interoperability.

Recently, projects like SmartSeal and Azuki’s PBT Chip have been proposed as a method of tagging physical items with NFC chips and linking them to a Digital Twin NFT of that item.

While conceptually accessible and easy to implement, NFC chips for Physical NFTs have limitations. The primary concern around NFC chip solutions is fraud. Even with tamper-proof tags, there is still room for sophisticated fraudsters to swap the NFC chip onto a counterfeit item before trading it on an NFT marketplace.

Additionally, NFC-tagged physical items might be sold in person, outside of an NFT marketplace. If the NFT is not transferred along with the physical item, there will now be two “owners” of the same item: The buyer of the physical item, and the original holder of the untransferred NFT. This creates a range of negative scenarios related to provenance, ownership, and future transactions.

While NFC chips for physical assets have their use cases, they do not solve the fundamental infrastructure problem for Physical NFTs.

2. “Checkout Receipt” NFTs

Another solution that has been explored are Checkout Receipt NFTs baked into a standard e-commerce checkout flow, much like a Shopify plugin. Checkout Receipt NFTs allow brands to sell their items as NFTs at the point of sale, with the NFTs getting sent to a user’s wallet upon checkout. An example of a project exploring this space is Venly.

Checkout Receipt NFT technology can be quickly plugged into an existing marketplace product, but it’s a bandaid solution that won’t survive without a more robust infrastructure.

Problems with this solution:

1. The brand is still responsible for maintaining the inventory of the physical item, leading to increased storage costs over time.

2. The brand must navigate complicated redemption logistics, and account for NFTs that are transferred to new wallet owners.

3. These solutions do not include the foundational tech needed for storage / loss-damage fee management.

4. Inventory management is still centralized.

5. These solutions do not offer a good way to manage the intake, creation, or customization of NFTs in a collection.

3. “1:1 Physically-Backed” NFTs

One way to ensure that there is always a 1-1 relationship between an NFT and a physical asset is to securely vault the physical asset before minting a Physically-Backed NFT. This is where 4K Protocol comes in.

With a trusted logistics infrastructure and an easy-onramp for minting existing inventories, 4K Physically-Backed NFTs are ideal for Web3 marketplaces selling specialty goods like trading cards, fashion lines, or vintage watches. Physically-Backed NFTs are interoperable across the Web3 ecosystem, and can be redeemed for the physical asset at any time.

4K Protocol is the first Physically-Backed NFT solution to offer a fully decentralized network of storage “Guardian” nodes. Users can bid on storage Guardian fee rates and select from a wide variety of trusted storage nodes in the network. Due to the incentive structure around audits, staking, and fees, Guardians offer a vetted level of protection with loss/damage rates stored on-chain for any user to see.

4K Protocol provides the tools needed for any new entity to become a storage Guardian, but we do not hold onto the items ourselves. Users can choose from a wide variety of storage solutions, become their own storage Guardian, or spread their inventory across a number of different units.

We also handle all of the technical stuff — minting, redemptions, and logistics — making onboarding a breeze for brands, marketplaces, and collectors transitioning into Web3. We manage the operational heavy lifting, freeing you up to build the things that matter.

4. “Legal Enforcement” NFTs

A final interesting model being explored is one where legal ownership rights are enforced directly on the NFT Smart Contract itself. This type of solution provides legally enforceable mechanisms to protect against theft and fraud. If an NFT is ever misrepresented, lost, or stolen, legal action can be taken against the party at fault. Mattereum is an example of a project pioneering this solution with their concept of “digital passports.”

While the idea of enforcing dispute resolution mechanics is compelling, this model is not ideal as a plug-and-play e-commerce solution. With a high-friction on-ramp, and limited tooling for managing fees and collections, this model is more suited towards Real World Assets like real estate, hotel bookings, and intellectual property rights.

In the future, this type of model could act as a composable utility extension for the minting, vaulting, and redemption logistics solution provided by 4K Protocol. And as a reminder, 4K Protocol allows anyone to mint a Physical NFT in minutes with our Self-Serve Minting feature.

Get Started with 4K Protocol

4K Protocol is the first fully decentralized, trusted solution for bringing physical assets on-chain and into Web3. With our Self-Serve Minting, on-chain fee management, and full service logistics solution, anyone can mint anything as a Physically-Backed NFT. With 4K Protocol, you know your items are safely protected by a storage Guardian of your choice. Our solution ensures there will always be a 1:1 relationship between your NFT and the physical asset it represents.

Are you a brand, collector, or online marketplace? Get started with 4K Protocol today by minting things like:Your vintage Rolex

• Your sneaker collection

• Your first edition comic books

• Your next fashion line (see: gmoney <> 9dcc)

Bringing your physical assets on-chain unlocks new opportunities for DeFi, Merchandising, and Community Engagement. Check out how we tokenized a Rolex and secured a loan against it using DeFi lending protocol Arcade.xyz.

Stay in Touch

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out the latest 4K NFT listings here.

So how can brands, existing marketplaces, or new entrants to the e-commerce space get started? And why should they invest resources into this emerging field of innovation?

4K Protocol is here to make this transition easy. We provide the fundamental infrastructure to quickly bring physical inventories on-chain, opening the door to new markets, additional revenue streams, and jaw-dropping forms of customer engagement.

Physically-Backed NFTs as a Service

Bringing physical inventories into Web3 is hard. Coding smart contracts, minting NFTs, and ensuring trust are major challenges to both newcomers and incumbents alike.

But much like how Shopify, Stripe, and Webflow reimagined the building blocks of e-commerce with specialized software packages, 4K Protocol is doing the same for Web3. We call it Physically-Backed NFTs as a Service.

Physically-Backed NFTs as a Service means that tying your inventory to the blockchain is as simple as connecting a crypto wallet and shipping your items to a storage facility in our decentralized Guardian network. Once your items are received, we’ll mint a collection of Physically-Backed NFTs representing those items.

Brands and influencers like 9dcc and gmoney trust 4K Protocol to power the backend marketplace logistics for their tokenized merchandise offerings.

What’s in a 4K NFT?

NFTs aren’t just a buzzword. They are the underlying technology allowing for digital ownership rights of assets on the Internet. Merging NFT technology with Real World Assets unlocks new forms of value creation that will fundamentally disrupt e-commerce as we know it.

4K NFTs represent a few key upgrades from traditional items bought and sold online:

Provenance: What does the lifecycle of an item look like post-sale? Provenance refers to the ability to easily track transaction history, price action, and downstream demand across secondary markets.

Interoperability: No man is an island. Now, the same is true for physical assets. 4K NFTs are interoperable across the entire Web3 ecosystem. Earn extra income by plugging your inventory into DeFi lending protocols, like we did with an IRL Rolex and Arcade.xyz.

Tokenized Merch: Selling your items as Physically-Backed NFTs creates unparalleled opportunities for customer loyalty and engagement. Owning a branded NFT of a T-shirt, for example, could act as an access pass for future merch drops, online communities, or events. Learn how Gmoney and 9dcc partnered with 4K Protocol for their ITERATION-01 fashion line.

Building with 4K Protocol

You can think of 4K Protocol as a new building block for any Web3 application that utilizes of Real World Assets. Brands, Marketplaces, and Collectors all use 4K Protocol as a way to bring physical assets on-chain to create new experiences for their customers. By handing off the technical challenges around minting, redemptions, and logistics, 4K Protocol frees you up to focus on building the things that matter.

Imagine a tokenized marketplace where users can buy vintage wine as NFTs. What if we could bring classic cars on-chain to buy and sell with more efficiency? Web3-native fashion houses could soon take on major luxury brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada.

Once you mint a collection of 4K Physically-Backed NFTs, you can easily plug them into a new or existing marketplace website with just a few lines of code. Alternatively, you can list the items across traditional NFT aggregation sites like Opensea, making it a breeze to find new audiences and customers.

It’s Time to Get Started

As the world continues waking up to the massive potential of Web3, there has never been a better opportunity to get ahead of the curve. 4K Protocol offers plug-and-play minting, redemption, and logistics services to bring your brand into Web3. If you’re ready to build the next great Web3 e-commerce marketplace, tokenize your merchandise, or bring your brand into Web3, reach out to us today at hello@4k.com.

Stay in Touch

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out the latest 4K NFT listings here.

Our new Self-Serve Minting Request workflow allows anyone to mint real world items as Physically-Backed NFTs, including things like:

• A vintage Rolex

• A Lionel Messi Jersey

• Classic Air Jordans

• First Edition Comic Books

• Rare Magic the Gathering cards

Bringing your physical assets on-chain unlocks new opportunities for DeFi, Merchandising, and Community Engagement. See how we tokenized a Rolex and secured a loan against it using DeFi lending protocol Arcade.xyz.

Self-Serve Minting Requests are currently a beta feature. More robust functionality will roll out over the coming weeks, including minting collections of multiple items, 4K NFT management features, and more.

Getting Started

Submitting your first minting request is easy, and only takes a few minutes. Just follow the on-screen prompts and we’ll walk you through the entire process.

Make sure you are using a Metamask wallet, Google Chrome, and have enough ETH and USDC to complete your minting transaction before getting started.

Click here to view a video tutorial of the minting process, or follow the instructions written below.

For additional questions, check out our FAQ.

1. Enter the 4K Vault

The 4K Vault is your home for managing Physically-Backed NFTs. You can view collections, browse items, and access key minting features.

2. Connect your Wallet

Click on the “Connect Wallet” button to connect your Metamask wallet to the 4K Vault.

3. Click the Mint Button

Once connected to the Vault, click “Mint” to begin a new Minting Request.

4. Choose a collection in which to mint your NFT

Currently, you can only mint to the “4K Community Ethereum Collection.”

New collections can be created by sending us an email at hello@4k.com. Soon, we’ll be rolling out self-serve functionality to create new collections in which you can mint multiple items at the same time.

5. Choose an image for your NFT

Pick a high-quality image that showcases your item with as much detail as possible. This will be the main image used for the NFT, so make sure it looks professional. It cannot be changed once the Minting Request is complete.

6. Enter your NFT Details

Choose a name and a description for your NFT. This information will be tied to your NFT, so make sure to be as descriptive as possible.

Make sure to select the quantity and category of your item on this page as well. If you have multiple identical items, we can mint them as semi-fungible tokens.

7. Enter your NFT Attributes

Attributes are unique identifiers on your NFT. Attributes make your NFT easily searchable and sortable across various marketplaces.

Some examples of attributes include brand, size, material, and color.

8. Choose Storage Type

This step shows a sliding scale of the available Guardians in which to store your items. Different Guardians have different storage fees and on-chain loss/damage protection coverage amounts. Choose the Guardian that best fits your needs.

9. Review Details of your Minting Request

Make sure the data you entered is accurate. You will not be able to change the NFT details once you make your Minting Request.

10. Submit Minting Request

Once you’re on the Submit Minting Request page, select the duration of storage you want for your item, review associated fees, and check 4K’s Terms & Conditions. You are now ready to submit your Minting Request.

Upon submission, you will be prompted to give 4K access to the USDC in your wallet. You will then be asked to confirm your transaction on Metamask.

11. Send in your items

After your request has been processed, you will be given instructions on how and where to send in your item. Make sure to write down the shipping address. For each item minted, please securely pack your item in one box and ship it to the address listed.

We strongly recommend adding shipping insurance to your items while in transit.

Please also include the unique reference number generated at the bottom of the page on your shipping label.

11. Preview your NFT

The final screen allows you to preview your NFT in the 4K Vault. This is how your final NFT will look once it is minted.

Next Steps

Once you’re done with the Minting Request process and have sent in your item, your NFT will be minted within a few days. The NFT will be sent to your wallet after a Guardian receives and securely stores your item.

When you have the final NFT, you can use it however you would like.

• Collateralize your NFT and unlock liquidity with Arcade.xyz

• Sell your physically-backed NFT on leading exchanges like Opensea.io

• Leverage tokenized merchandise to build an engaged community on Discord.com

• Add diversity to your DAO treasury with Physically-Backed NFTs

• Plug into Web3’s composable ecosystem in new, imaginative ways

And as always, you can redeem the 4K NFT for the physical asset at anytime.

Stay in Touch

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out the latest 4K NFT listings here!

The intersection of physical assets and decentralized finance has the potential to radically shift the way we think about things we own. DeFi protocols for lending, fractionalization, and synthetics are enabling new forms of financialization for cryptocurrency and NFTs.

4K Protocol is Web3’s Physical-to-Digital Bridge™. We transform collectibles, unique merchandise, and luxury goods into Physically-Backed NFTs, unlocking untapped value of real world assets. Using a decentralized network of “Guardian” storage providers and asset authenticators, 4K Protocol guarantees a 1-to-1 relationship between the physical asset and the digital NFT.

4K NFTs can be leveraged across DeFi applications, sold on marketplaces, or plugged into an emerging ecosystem of dApps. One of the most compelling use cases for NFTs in DeFi is as a financial instrument in the lending markets. A growing number of protocols are emerging that offer the ability to process loans against NFTs, leveraging the NFT itself as a lien on the collateral.

To demonstrate the potential of physical assets in DeFi, we used 4K Protocol to mint a top-of-the-line Rolex Cosmograph Daytona as an NFT and secured a loan from a leading DeFi lending protocol – Arcade. With a stable secondary market value and a high level of demand, the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona makes an ideal candidate for loan collateral. The status quo for this type of lending model would involve visiting a pawn shop and negotiating an in-person deal. But Physically-Backed NFTs offer a safer, streamlined method for collateralization.

4K’s Physical NFT minting process is simple:

• Fill out an intake form for the item.

• Ship the item to a Guardian storage facility.

• Receive the minted NFT in our crypto wallet.

Once minted, a 4K NFT can be leveraged across DeFi protocols, sold on NFT marketplaces, or redeemed for the real-world item at any time.

Using Arcade, we were able to secure a collateralized loan worth over $16k within a matter of minutes. Funds are deposited directly into the borrower’s crypto wallet, and the NFT is placed into an escrow account. Once the borrower pays back the full amount, the NFT is returned to the original owner. If the borrower defaults on the loan, a smart contract transfers full ownership to the lender.

With a total addressable market for collectibles valued at over $512 Billion, we are excited to help usher in a new market for Physical NFTs in DeFi and a new form of financialization for physical assets. By creating the infrastructure necessary to transform real world assets into Physical NFTs, 4K Protocol is changing how the physical world can interface with Web3 and decentralized finance.

To learn more about the tools 4K Protocol is building to bring physical assets to DeFi, follow along on our Twitter and Discord. And if you’re a developer looking to build with Physical NFTs, please get in touch at hello@4k.com.

For the past few years, DeFi’s main use cases have been traditional financial services such as lending, trading, payments, insurance, and derivatives via exchanges and other types of platforms. NFTs add a newer layer of complexity and efficiency to the DeFi world and truly mark the next wave of the web: Web3.

What is DeFi?

DeFi is a blockchain-based system of financial services and management. Decentralized finance allows people to leverage financial services like payments, borrowing, lending, saving, margin trading, and trading––all in a fast, secure, and on a P2P (peer to peer) model. THis means that DeFi essentially cuts out any needless middlemen and third parties like banks or other financial institutions.

What makes all of these services possible would be dApps (decentralized applications). If we were to think about the internet protocol, there are many layers built on top of it that make it much more functional and accessible for users. dApps do exactly this.

What are the main benefits of DeFi?

Not only do these advantages differentiate DeFi from the traditional financial world, but also capture the ethos of the crypto movement.

• No centralization: this means that no one person or entity has the power to tamper with transactions or suddenly change the terms and conditions.

• Transparency & accessibility: all information stored on the blockchain (ledger) is open for anyone and everyone to verify. And because blockchain is the underlying technology, that means anyone can make transactions 24/7/365.

• Immutability: no one can come along and change any information on the blockchain.

• Permissionless: anyone has quick access to a full range of financial services. Gone are the days of having to wait for requests and buy/sell orders to be verified.

• Interoperability: the beauty of dApps is that you can build them on multiple protocols where they can all interact with each other.

Overview of NFTs

An NFT, or non-fungible token, represents real-life items recorded on the blockchain as unique digital assets. Think of them as a unique way of storing value. The main use case for NFTs in 2021 was art. If you owned the Mona Lisa, you could have an NFT that represents your ownership of the painting. Every NFT is one of a kind and has specific and distinct characteristics.

And like DeFi, NFTs allowed artists to make a profit on their works without middlemen like galleries or auction houses (sound familiar?). Now let’s breakdown the key factors that make NFTs so unique:

• Proof of ownership: the information about the author/owner/creator is permanently stored on the token’s metadata. No matter how many times the NFT has been sold, the creator will always be recorded in the metadata.

• Uniqueness: being non-fungible means that each NFT is unique and has no duplicates. 

• Transparency: like DeFi, all NFT metadata is open to anyone to verify or authenticate. Not to mention you can see all previous owners and the price action over time.

• Store of value: now that the NFT world is evolving past just art, we are now seeing very interesting use cases for real world assets such as collectibles, real estate, and more. We’ll get into this shortly.

How can NFTs plug into DeFi?

It’s pretty clear that the advantages of DeFi and NFTs overlap, so how can they plug into each other?

If we look at centralized finance, we see a system that is controlled and regulated by governing authorities that supervise and oversee all transactions, investments, and trades. They deem what is acceptable and what isn’t. But because of this system, we face massive inefficiencies and most importantly, a walled garden only open to those that are accredited investors. Not only are there massive delays due to verification and approvals, there are also high fees. The more people or entities involved, the greater the cost and chance of fraud.

Many companies are now adopting NFTs as a store of value that serves as proof of ownership. In the same step DeFi unlocks even more value by being able to utilize tokenized assets. This is what Web3 is all about. The physical (assets) meeting the digital (DeFi).

Here are 5 ways NFTs can plug into decentralized finance (DeFi):

1. Loan collateralization

In the traditional finance world, a bank determines what can be collateralized for a loan and how much you can collateralize. Because of the peer-to-peer nature of DeFi, users won’t have to go to a bank––they can name their terms, including putting up NFTs as collateral.

NFTs can therefore make securing collateralized loans much more seamless. The borrower can present crypto and NFTs to mitigate the lender’s risk in case the loan is defaulted. From there the lender can make a more insightful decision to move forward with the loan. This year we saw the largest ever NFT-backed loan with 101 CryptoPunk put up as collateral.

What can be tricky about NFTs is that because they typically do not represent a physical asset, it can be hard to determine the value in the market.

2. Payments and proof of ownership

The music industry is a prime example of a system that is failing and continues to disincentivize artists. Like other centralized industries, the music industry has many middlemen. NFTs allow artists to have ownership rights and even royalties sent directly to them. They can now earn a direct share of their streaming revenue or collect royalties from collaborations and sampling. And because NFTs are so immutable, their earnings are verified in case they want to put up their NFTs as collateral for a loan. Taking it one step further means that NFTs also open doors to opportunities like licensing and copyright ownership. 

3. Fractional ownership

If you can’t own the whole pie, why not a part of it? Whether it’s an expensive painting, car, watch, or NFT, all of these can get pretty expensive.Now if you’re able to somehow break up the pie and fractionalize it, you have something that is way more accessible. Because an NFT is a token, you’re able to fractionalize an asset where the price can be divided between the number of buyers. This makes the high value asset that much more liquid.

In our modern world we have stocks––where we buy shares (or fractions) of companies. In the future people will buy fractions of assets: wine, cars, real estate, watches, and collectibles where they can diversify their funds, and better yet make returns on their investment.

A real world example would be taking a $50,000 Rolex and fractionalizing it. Then multiple people can own one watch and the possibilities of ownership are endless. You can treat the watch as a timeshare where owners can borrow it for special occasions, as the asset appreciates owners are compensated, use it as collateral of a loan to purchase another watch, put it into a savings account to yield interest, and so much more.

4. Brand activation and gamification

One use case that isn’t talked about a lot is brand activation and gamification. Imagine a company that is able to distribute NFTs and rewards to their shareholders or most loyal customers. What if brands are able to gamify customer loyalty programs? For more traditional companies, NFTs are a way for customers to buy into the company––whether it’s making a first purchase or receiving a unique NFT that creates a personal touch.

5. Bringing the physical to the digital

The biggest gap to solve right now is bridging the physical to the digital. It’s one thing to have artwork NFTs, but it’s another to create NFTs for physical illiquid assets like watches, real estate, jewelry, cars, collectibles, handbags, sneakers, alcohol and then bring them into DeFi. Physically-backed NFTs are going to be the next phase of the NFT wave. 

NFTs also make it much easier to buy/sell these items because of logistics, shipping, commissions, insurance, and the added fees every step of the way. Users will not only own the physical item, but also the NFT that proves their ownership. And with physically-backed NFTs, the possibilities are endless:

• Taking out a loan against your Rolex watch

• Fractionalizing your watch

• Asset verification for events

• Creating an NFT pool

• Earn yield on your otherwise illiquid assets

• And so much more!

Here at 4K we are solving this physical-digital problem. We’re building a decentralized protocol for connecting the on-chain and physical worlds. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram or chat with our team on Discord.

What are some other ways NFTs can plug into DeFi? Let us know!

Aside from obvious (but timeless) assets like real estate, cars, handbags, rare coins, stamps, jewelry, memorabilia, and precious metals, there’s now a whole new class of assets that are shaking up our world’s understanding of “store of value”.

Here are the top 5 collectible assets you wouldn’t expect to be appreciating over time––and are even beating traditional assets:

1. Watches

This first one’s a bit more mainstream: a watch from a premium, reputable brand typically doesn’t depreciate the second you walk out of the store. Whether it’s Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, or F.P.Journe, we’ve all seen celebrities wear watches that are worth the price of a house and then some. Drake owns a Richard Mille worth $750,000. Christiano Ronaldo’s Franck Muller Round is worth $1.5 million. And Jay-Z has a Patek Philippe worth at least $2.2 million.

This isn’t a surprise with high net worth individuals. A watch’s craftsmanship, the manufacturer’s emphasis in controlling supply in the long term, exclusivity, and new watch innovations are all reasons why watches are so expensive and continue to appreciate. Now the trend has accelerated even more so since the pandemic.

A prime example of a watch that has done well in the past few decades would be the Rolex Submariner. Just in the past decade, Rolex has outperformed major asset classes like gold, real estate, and stocks on average.

The top watches that appreciate over time:

• Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

• Patek Philippe Steel Nautilus

• Rolex Daytona

• Rolex Submariner

• Rolex GMT

• Omega Speedmaster

2. Sneakers

According to Forbes, sneakers like Jordans and Yeezys have reached official investment class status. Sneakers have a $60 billion global sneaker market and in the past few decades have become a coveted consumer good turned tradable commodity.

Top factors that determine a sneaker’s value:

• Brand

• Supply and demand

• Limited editions

• Condition

• Collaborations

• The unique design

• Amount of hype

What’s even more interesting is that sneakers thrive in the secondary market. Secondary sneakers have ballooned into a $2 billion/year industry, with forecasts suggesting that this number may triple to $6 billion in the next 4 years.

In fact the most expensive pair of sneakers sold at auction ($560,000) are the original 1985 Nike Air Jordan 1s, autographed by Michael Jordan himself. This momentum is not stopping either.

Examples of sneakers that have significantly appreciated:

• 2011 Nike Mag with the limited edition plutonium case: originally $179 and is now worth $9,900

• Off-White Air Jordan 1: originally launched in 2018 with a $190 price tag and are now worth $2,000-$3,000

• Jordan 3 Retro 'Oregon Ducks PE Promo': retail price was $194 and is now worth $2,000

• Yeezy 2 Red Octobers: released in 2014 for $250 and now worth around $6,000

• Limited edition Korean pair of Nike + Big Bang G-Dragon sneakers: released in 2019 for $197 and is now worth approximately $2,700

• Nike SB Dunk Low Reese Forbes Denims: only $65 in 2002 and now fetch more than $8,000 per set

3. Alcohol

Alcohol has been around since the dawn of time. What used to be prescribed as medicine or consumed to celebrate special occasions, has now even evolved into an investment opportunity in the recent decades. And what began as a niche for enthusiasts and connoisseurs, has evolved into a world of private equity, investment funds, and indices.

Alcohol is a big business with a growing market ripe for investment. As it stands the top investments include wine and whisky. You may be asking: what’s different about alcohol as an asset? First, it’s a high capital growth asset, meaning that it typically becomes more valuable the longer you wait. Alcohol like wine and whiskey are also relatively inflation-resistant because they can be kept for decades and even passed down through the generations.

Just in the last decade, the price of rare whisky has increased by 582%, while investing in top-selling wines offered an average 11% return on investment annually. Just last year a bottle of Macallan 1926 60-Year-Old (bottled in 1986) sold for $1.9 million at auction. A 73-year-old bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti set records at a sale price of $558,000.

Compared with more familiar investments such as watches, cars, and jewelry, rare bottles of alcohol have been the better choice.

4. Meteorites

As space exploration becomes more and more of a reality, interest in space has skyrocketed. Scientists and enthusiasts alike are all clamoring for meteorites––rocks from asteroids, the Moon, or even Mars. Because the vast majority of meteorites do not make it past Earth’s atmosphere, there are only about 60,000 documented specimens. Only a third of the 60,000 meteorites are available on the market, which makes collecting them a very competitive, yet lucrative sport.

Celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, Nicholas Cage, and Yo-Yo Ma are all avid collectors of meteorites. Last year a 10.5-ounce meteorite that originated from Mars sold for $94,000. A 4-pound lunar meteorite sold for $330,000 in 2012. The fourth largest slice of the moon cut from the Tisserlitine 001 lunar meteorite sold for $525,000.

How is the value of a meteorite determined?

Meteorites are typically sold by weight and dimensions. The commercial value of a meteorite is determined by a few factors: provenance, rarity of type (lunar, martian, or pallasites), condition of preservation, weight, and beauty/aesthetic appeal. A meteorite collected after a witness sees its fall drives the price even higher, especially those that strike objects such as houses, cars, roofs, or mailboxes.

5. NFTs

2021 was the year of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Not only did we see record-breaking sales, but also big brands like Nike, Louis Vuitton, and McDonalds releasing their own. NFTs are particularly well known in the context of digital art, but the utility stretches far beyond just collectible art. Now we are seeing NFTs expanding into gaming, retail, real estate, sports, and more.

What is an NFT?

NFTs are non-fungible, which means that each token is unique and cannot be replicated. The purchase of a NFT is time-stamped on the blockchain, which means there is proof of digital ownership.

NFTs can represent a digital asset or better yet, a physical one. Here at 4K we see a future where the physical meets the digital. We are all about physically-backed NFTs––where you’re able to bring real world items on-chain. Imagine you own a Rolex and the corresponding NFT that verifies your ownership. That means you can seamlessly sell or leverage your asset using NFTs. What would otherwise sit in a watch box or a safe is now an asset you can put to work.

This goes beyond just watches. It applies to just about any collectible or asset out there. The possibilities are endless.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

At 4K, we’re building a decentralized protocol for connecting the on-chain and physical worlds. While a centralized approach would be easier, we believe that only a decentralized approach is capable of making physical assets a new, trusted web3 primitive. A decentralized approach has several critical advantages:

• Exponential growth: Whereas, a centralized approach bottlenecks the rate at which assets can be brought on-chain,  a decentralized network is far better equipped to handle a large volume of diverse physical asset classes.

• A common standard: To bring a physical asset on-chain we need to answer a few basic questions - Is this token actually redeemable for the physical asset? Is this asset authentic? How much is this asset worth? These questions should be answered in a consistent way so that physical assets can be systematically interacted with across dApps.

• Aligned incentives: The core problem with bringing physical assets on-chain is that the party holding the physical asset is likely not the same party who owns the physically-backed token. With a decentralized protocol, the party holding the asset is held accountable for losing, damaging, and misrepresenting the physical asset. They are also compensated for the cost and risk of safeguarding that asset.

The heart of the 4K protocol is the physical guardian protocol, which ensures that a physically-backed token is truly backed by a physical asset.

Here’s how it works:

• Physical assets (wine, watches, real estate, etc) are securely held by guardians who guarantee that the asset’s owner’s physically-backed token can be burned in exchange for the physical asset at any time.

• Guardians are compensated for the cost and risk of holding physical assets with guardian fees. If an asset owner does not pay their guardian fee, the physically-backed token is sold in an English-style auction.

• Guardians are required to prove proof-of-assets to prove that they are actually holding the physical asset and that its condition has not degraded. In the event of a loss or damage claim, asset owners are immediately compensated through the staking pool. Guardians are required to stake and stakers earn governance rights, 4K token emissions, and a percentage of protocol fees. Payouts from the staking pool are a mechanism to provide immediate resolution for claims.

The physical-guardian protocol is what enables one to believe a physically-backed token can actually be redeemed for the original physical asset without needing to trust any single centralized entity.

The 4K protocol is chain agnostic. We will build the 4K Protocol governance and accountability system on Ethereum, though physically-backed 4K tokens will be implemented across all major layer 1s and 2s.

In addition to the physical-guardian protocol, the 4K Protocol will later include an authentication protocol and valuation protocol. We’re ultimately building a shared language for deFi and dApps to systematically interact with physical assets on-chain.

By introducing chain-agnostic shared language for interacting with physical assets, we’re going to usher in a new generation of dApps. For example, imagine:

• A deFi ecosystem where physical assets are a composable primitive (e.g. a liquidity pool for ETH / Rolexes, fractionalized real-estate, on-chain loans on wine collections).

• A physically-backed stablecoin where the central bank was held accountable for misrepresenting their reserves

• Social clubs, events, and incentive programs based on ownership of a physical asset

• Decentralized marketplaces trading assets with a tiny fraction of the fees of traditional marketplaces and on-chain provenance.

Ultimately, the web3 ecosystem is going to build dApps on top of the 4K protocol to enable use cases that we can’t imagine. If you’re interested in either building on top of the 4K Protocol or joining the 4K team, say hi at developer@4k.com.

In a statement from Hirst, “The Currency tests the boundaries of the digital and physical world and our role in both," adding that the time-based exchange period “ensures that even doing nothing is doing something.” This bold concept is a way for Hirst to challenge the establishment of the old art world and open minds to the value of NFTs. Hirst invites conversation and debate by posing the question, "is it better to keep the physical or NFT art?" You can check out this excellent interview with Hirst and Stephen Fry to learn more.

NFTs have struck the world by storm as a new frontier of “artwork” that is as captivating as it is controversial. Of course, much of this is due to the fact that NFTs inherently are more tradable than other pieces of art, with a financial layer baked in. Given NFTs are entirely digital, one can enjoy ownership in a digital wallet with less friction and additional computationally verified uniqueness (e.g., authentication and scarcity) compared to owning traditional artwork that they must insure, frame, and safely custody on the walls in their home.

With that said, there’s one distinct missing element NFTs traditionally lack: physical components. Sure, you can post your JPEG on a fancy screen, but how can you wear it? Would you even want to wear it?

The beauty of “The Currency” is how Hirst brought the real world into his own creative decision making process around how the art should be best used and displayed. He used the crypto-native NFT layer as a way to complement the manifestation of their artwork.

“The Currency” is Damien Hirst’s first NFT project. The project touts a fixed supply of NFTs available, which are currently backed by Damien’s physical artwork. Currently, a limited redemption period is open where owners of the NFTs must decide whether or not to keep their artwork in NFT digital form or redeem it for the physical copy that is currently stored in a vault in London.

Now, we’re inviting all of Hirst’s fans around the world to redeem their original NFTs, store the physical print fully-insured using 4K’s vault, and have our expert production and minting team issue a 4K NFT backed by the actual artwork. Of course, unlike the original project, we’ll never set fire to the actual print. Effectively, this will create a new, third decision for “The Currency” owners.

Holders can now consider redeeming their NFTs and storing the physical prints with 4K. 4K brings interoperability and composability to an asset that was designed to challenge the assumptions of crypto and money. We free original NFT holders from narrow redemption windows and add a very web 3 meta layer of choice so that owners can indefinitely own the physical print while still leveraging NFT benefits of digital ownership and not worrying about the physical custody.

At 4K, NFTs are simply a digital representation authenticating ownership of a unique, physical item. This enables collectors to leverage the assets they have in the real world, typically unproductive capital, and experience decentralized, digital ownership. While the space we’re building is nascent, we see a future world where an increasing amount of rare and valuable assets are brought on-chain to facilitate frictionless trading, lending, and verified ownership via blockchain provenance.

As 4K builds our proof-of-concept for a physical-digital bridge, this innovative NFT project enables us to illustrate how interoperable these worlds will become. Each unique “The Currency” print has its own legacy in the Web 3 world, and we’re thrilled to add an additional layer of digital optionality to those who love physical art as much as we do.

If you’re interested in getting your “The Currency” print back to blockchain, reach out to hello@4k.com to explore if we’re the right partner.

Special thanks to @RyanPalmieri for help with this post.

Additional Resources:

4K’s Listing:

https://4k.com/market/collectible/73

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-hirst-the-currency-1988535

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/your-money/nft-art-lebron-james-damien-hirst.html

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

• Blockchain technology is creating a more equitable and robust financial system

• The 4K Protocol enables physical assets to seamlessly interact with the blockchain and this new financial future

• This technology is transformative because it makes financial services for physical assets more democratized and accessible

• Marketplaces, “Provably-Fair Drops,” “Tokenized Merch Drops,” DeFi applications, inventory management, and ecosystem interoperability are just a few of the potential use cases for the 4K Protocol

Introduction

When I pitch 4K, I’m confronted with a choice: do I describe 4K as a marketplace or do I call 4K a physical-digital bridge?

Pitching 4K as a marketplace is similar to pitching someone on an iPhone in 2008 by selling them on the music store. The music store was a great business, but it was the iPhone that ushered in the mobile revolution. Similarly, our marketplace will be a great business, but it’s our physical-digital bridge that will revolutionize the way people engage with physical assets.

To understand the change that we are helping to usher in, I will cover the tools at our disposal, how these tools inspire 4K’s philosophy, and how 4K translates its philosophy into action.

Foundational Tools

The first tool is Bitcoin. Similar to how we have a separation between church and state, Bitcoin offers humanity a separation between money and state. It is digital gold.

Bitcoin is great at sending money from one person to another (e.g., Alice sends 5 tokens to Bob), but it is not great at doing so programmatically (e.g., Alice sends 5 tokens to Bob if the Yankees win the World Series). To solve the programmability problem, Vitalik Buterin and others built Ethereum.

With programmability came a core piece of infrastructure with a potential that is difficult to overstate. With this tool, we have the opportunity to reinvent core financial infrastructure from the ground up. Over the course of the brief period since Ethereum launched in 2015, enterprising people have used Ethereum to build composable blocks that anyone can stack together in bespoke ways, similar to how someone can build a bespoke Lego castle with composable Lego pieces.

Concepts such as liquidity pools, bonding curves, and automatic market makers can be combined to create decentralized exchanges (DEXes). Rather than relying on a centralized entity, such as Coinbase, to facilitate trades, teams such as Uniswap created DEXes. They are similar to Coinbase, except instead of interacting with a corporation, traders interact with software. Because DEXes like Uniswap are natively software, they are easier to scale and build upon because instead of needing to convince a human at the centralized exchange to open an account for you or partner with you, you can simply plug directly into the software.

Composable Tooling Ecosystem

Creating these composable pieces is not just a public service, but also an effective business strategy. Each new piece makes the ecosystem as a whole more valuable, which benefits the public commons. Those that invent the new piece also tend to create valuable businesses because they open new markets that benefit from network effects where early movers have a significant advantage (e.g., Uniswap, Compound).

The power of these tools is what makes this financial revolution increasingly inevitable. People have had a taste of a financial system that is not gated by banks and they do not want to go back. The genie is out of the bottle.

We could do everything in our power to stymie crypto’s growth to preserve the status quo as long as possible. Alternatively, we could embrace the change. We can shift our attitude away from fearing what change might bring to an attitude of doing everything in our power to ensure the change reflects our values as truly as possible.

The latter is the route that we choose to take at 4K.

The Tao of 4K

What are the biggest barriers to crypto’s growth? What can we do to support this emerging system? How can we do so in a way that is consistent with our values? These are questions we regularly ask ourselves, and it is this line of questioning that led us to build 4K.

A holy grail for the blockchain ecosystem for the past four years has been to figure out how to bring physical assets on-chain. By “on-chain,” we mean the ability to interact with the aforementioned composable tools. If a digital token exists that says someone owns something, what are the guarantees that any features built into the token will execute as ordered?

4K’s mission is to become the decentralized coordination layer for the physical world. The infrastructure we are building is designed to ensure that digital tokens representing a physical item are accurate, actionable, and enforceable. 4K acts as a Physical-Digital Bridge™, allowing anyone to create a set of digital property rights for physical goods.

The digital tokens we use for this bridge are non-fungible tokens, also known as NFTs. When most people hear “NFT,” they usually immediately think of digital art. Unlike art NFTs that are backed by nothing more than the digital image associated with it, our NFTs are backed by a physical asset. If you possess a physically-backed 4K NFT, you not only possess the photos we attach to it, but you also own the physical item that underlies it.

When we issue NFTs, whoever possesses that NFT can do whatever they want with it. They can take the NFT to a lending protocol and leverage its value to back a loan, they can use a fractionalization protocol to share ownership of the NFT, they can flex the NFT in the Metaverse as an accessory for their digital avatar, or they can sell the NFT on our 4K Marketplace (or any other NFT marketplace). Until now, all of the above use cases were only accessible to purely digital assets.

A New Blockchain Primitive

To restate our core competency even more clearly, 4K can be boiled down to the following 12 words: “Physical item in, digital token out. Digital token in, physical item out.” Our whole business is about being the best in the world at this very simple feature. We work with the world’s top high-security storage facilities, logistics providers, insurers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and operators to ensure that every time someone with a 4K token clicks that redeem button, they will receive their physical item every time.

Because this physical-digital bridge is such a simple feature, it can serve as a foundational primitive that is compatible with other crypto building blocks such as lending protocols, exchanges, and marketplaces. By bridging the physical and digital worlds, we enable more people to access financial services for their physical assets and interact with the Metaverse in a more seamless way.

Use Cases for a Physical-Digital Bridge

Now that 4K offers the blockchain ecosystem a new foundational building block, what are some of the new things that people can use this building block to create?

4K has already launched a physically-backed NFT Marketplace and a “Provably-Fair Drops” product, which you can learn more about in our launch announcement here. Our next application of the 4K Protocol is tokenized merch drops.

Tokenized Merch Drops

Our Tokenized Merch Drops product is inspired by Uniswap’s Unisocks, which pioneered a new way of getting merchandise into the hands of a community’s most devoted members. Incentive mechanisms baked into the merchandise enable members to benefit financially from the popularity of the items, making them all-the-more viral. These incentives transform a community from a group of passive consumers to a group of active partners.

Decentralized Finance

Since assets on the 4K Protocol are stored as digital tokens on the blockchain, there is an inherent level of DeFi interoperability baked into every NFT we mint. Just like cryptocurrencies can be leveraged in swap pools, AMMs, and secure lending protocols, 4K’s physically-backed NFTs can be used in a wide variety of novel financial applications.

Using NFTs as collateral for loans is one major use case. Let’s say Alice owns a collectible sneaker and needs some extra cash for an emergency. She can use 4K to mint her own token that represents ownership of that sneaker. She can then take that token to a lending protocol to get a loan based off of the value of the sneaker. Since the NFT is guaranteed to be backed by the physical asset since it is under 4K’s custody, the loan collateral is trusted and secured.

Inventory Management

Online resellers face a multitude of challenges when transacting their goods online. One of the biggest headaches for those operating online storefronts is around inventory management and shipping logistics. Every time someone buys an item from a traditional internet marketplace such as eBay, the seller must manually ship the package and properly update their inventory. This is a time consuming, labor-intensive process. The seller would be better off putting that time back into promoting their business, developing their product line, or building their brand.

Imagine you have a collection of classic baseball cards. You’d like to sell them, but the thought of printing out address labels for each card and taking them individually to the post office is exhausting. Selling the entire collection card-by-card could take weeks, and would require hours of shipping logistics.

The 4K Protocol makes it easy for sellers with large inventories to put their entire collection on-chain in one fell swoop. Sellers can ship their inventory to a 4K storage facility via standardized packaging, and 4K will mint NFTs of every item. Once the items are NFT-ed, the seller only has to worry about selling. The manual process of shipping out items on a 1-1 basis is purely handled by 4K’s shipping partners and the asset’s buyers.

You could have an entire storefront with thousands of items listed across NFT marketplaces without ever having to deal with the physical items once they’ve been stored with 4K. Pretty neat, eh?

Open Ecosystem

Similar to how Apple built the first applications for their iPhone, we at 4K built provably-fair drops, a marketplace, and tokenized merch drops. As good as Apple’s core applications are, entrepreneurs leveraged iPhones to add value to people’s lives in ways that Apple never dreamed possible, such as Uber and Snapchat. Similarly, we look forward to seeing how entrepreneurs use our physical-digital bridge to add value to people’s lives in ways that we never dreamed possible.

Wrapping Up

Bringing this back to where we started, 4K’s physical-digital bridge is our version of Apple’s iPhone. Our marketplace is an application of the physical-digital bridge in much the same way the Apple Music Store is an application on the iPhone. We built this bridge because we believe that blockchain will play an increasingly large role in our lives and we want to do everything we can to ensure that this technology is used in ways that are consistent with our values.

I hope that this post has given you a better sense for what we do at 4K and why we’re doing it. More importantly, I hope it has given you a comprehensible perspective into an intimidating subject matter and that it has piqued your curiosity enough to continue your own journey down the crypto rabbit hole.

** **

1. Casascius Coins

Deemed as one of the first, if not the VERY first NFTs in existence, Mike Caldwell introduced the physical incarnation of Bitcoin to the market in 2011.

By securely embedding a hidden private key behind a tamper-evident hologram, Caldwell gave Casascius coin holders the ability to physically hold bitcoin, along with the freedom to unlock the equivalent digital bitcoin value at their will. The face of each Cas coin reveals the first eight characters of its unique bitcoin address. This brick and mortar mentality continues to persist in today's virtual world — interacting with bitcoin in a physical state helps individuals conquer the mental blocks surrounding the idea of an intangible internet money.

According to casasciustracker, there are only 19,696 active Casascius coins left at the time of writing. On January, 2022, one Cas coin NFT sold for 350% above its peel value on 4K's marketplace.

Beyond its scarcity, Cas coins have also grown in inherent intrinsic value. These coins are now deemed as coveted collectibles in the crypto community, particularly among OG Bitcoin maximalists. It could be argued that no item emanates as much prestige, or is as indicative of being an OG crypto community member, as the Casascius Coin.

For additional information on the history of physical bitcoins, visit Elias Ahonen's website, one of the first and most respected Bitcoin historians.

2. Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days"

If you're in the crypto space and haven't heard of Beeple, well, quite frankly, you're living in a hole. Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, is a prolific and internationally acclaimed artist who has become the poster child of crypto art. With his creative genius using Cinema 4D, Beeple transcended his contemporaries by creating far-reaching digital art, music videos, short films, and VJ loops with the likes of Eminem, deadmau5, Tiësto, Katy Perry, and One Direction.

Through his art, Beeple fuses technology, pop culture, politics, and science fiction to convey evocative, satirical, and provocative messages. His most renowned piece is a mosaic of 5,000 images he started creating on May 1st, 2007, named "Everydays: The First 5000 Days". Despite his freelance work with Apple, SpaceX, and international artists, he kept up with his "Everydays" project, even through his wedding day and the birth of his two children. Having sold this NFT for $69,346,250 with major auction house Christie's, "Everydays" positioned Beeple among the top three most valuable living artists to date.

The sale of Beeple's "Everydays" with a globally recognized auction house marked a turning point for his career and the NFT space as a whole. It didn't take long until physical manifestations of Beeple's artwork took hold. This sparked a series of metaphysical projects and partnerships with major brands such as Louis Vuitton.

https://twitter.com/beeple/status/1047384029098471425?lang=en

Limited edition physical versions of Beeple's "Everydays" became available as a spring collection in 2021.

https://twitter.com/beeple/status/1386670544322449415

Coincidentally, Beeple shares his last name with the literal founder of art history and scholar of German enlightenment: Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Mr. Winckelmann was notably the first to systematize the notion of seeing art through the lens of the past, highlighting that a piece of art is a product of its time, unintentionally and unequivocally expressing elements of the culture and place it originates from.

3. Uniswap's Unisocks

The launch of Unisocks marked a period in time where IRL goods finally became integrated into DeFi, particularly in the context of signaling identity and cultural allegiance. Similar to Casascius Coins, Uniswap tested the physical-digital boundaries of the blockchain, taking it even a step further by minting and attaching 500 Unisocks to an automatic market maker (AMM) and plugging it into a liquidity pool (LP).

https://twitter.com/Uniswap/status/1126506339075641344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1126506339075641344%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmirror.xyz%2F4kprotocol.eth

In essence, rather than introducing Unisocks to the market at fixed price and allowing the secondary market to determine their value, Uniswap applied a bonding curve to enable a dynamic pricing mechanism. As a result, the token price of $SOCKS becomes a function of its supply. In other words, when a token is purchased, the following tokens' price increases proportional to the rate determined by the bonding curve.

When an IRL pair of Unisocks is exchanged for it's equivalent ERC-20 token, users receive an official "Redeemed" Unisocks NFT as an ownership claim and receipt of authenticity. Ultimately, it's safe to say that Unisocks pioneered the next level integration of financial instruments in Ethereum and DeFi with IRL assets.

4. Bored Ape Merch

If you’re not familiar with digital art or Twitter, you’d be forgiven for not knowing about the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). As a members-only group based on the ownership of its NFTs, BAYC is indisputably one of the most prestigious NFT collections in the world. Numerous public figures, such as Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Stephen Curry, and Mark Cuban couldn't resist the temptation to buy an Ape and join the BAYC community.

https://twitter.com/snoopdogg/status/1484586102182727682?lang=en

Although there are more Ape fans than affiliated NFTs available (Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club), BAYC has taken inspiration from their forefathers, CryptoPunks, to introduce limited edition drops for Ape community enthusiasts.

https://twitter.com/boredapeyc/status/1422969342619226116?lang=en

Considering BAYC provides their owners full IP rights, Bored Apes are progressively becoming an "offchain" brand, that is to say, one living outside the blockchain. Many thought leaders, including our very own Megatron, stated that NFT.NYC 2021 marked a turning point for mainstream awareness and adoption of the NFT space. The proliferation and adoption of BAYC's merchandise serves as evidence of this phenomenon.

During the conference, BAYC hosted a series of pop-ups separate from its private weeklong Ape Fest. These pop-ups sell BAYC limited-edition merch based on people's level of association with the community and its current events. White sweatshirts were only available to Ape Fest attendants, black sweatshirts were only available to Bored Ape NFT owners for $800 USD, and regular blue sweatshirts were available to anyone for $400. Each color indicates a different level of involvement with the BAYC community. Needless to say, all BAYC merch sold out.

https://twitter.com/bragtome/status/1455236471141638155?s=27

Another game-changing benchmark for the Bored Ape community was its "Into The Metaverse" collab with Adidas, gmoney, and PUNKS Comic. This partnership speaks volumes about pop culture's increasing demand for IRL merch and cultural alignment with the BAYC.

You can expect to see holders use their Apes in increasingly creative ways; as was with Jenkins, a Yacht Club valet who has been brought to life by becoming a bona fide business and signed by the Creative Artists Agency, a leading global talent agency with several A-listers, including Meryl Streep and Leonardo Di Caprio.

https://twitter.com/jenkinsthevalet/status/1441851254183845891

Many critics see the Bored Ape YC as simply JPEGs of apes with unimpressed expressions, while others perceive their expressions as a mirror of our society's desensitization to our stifled socio-political and economic status quo. What your perspective?

5. RTFKT Collabs x FEWOCiOUS, Space Drip, CryptoPunks

Acquired by Nike on December 2021, RTFKT is a creator-centered organization that leverages innovation to create next generation collectibles in the name of culture, creativity, sport and gaming. Since its inception in 2020, RTFKT uses NFTs, game engines, blockchain, and augmented reality to create unique physical-digital products and experiences.

Nonetheless, it was RTFKT's sneaker collaboration with FEWOCiOUS that set the stage for a surge in NFT partnerships holistically. The 18-year-old star artist partnered with RTFKT in early 2021 to drop "FEWO WORLD Open Edition", a set of three original collectible sneakers on Nifty Gateway. All three collectible sneaker NFT editions are redeemable for their physical counterparts, giving consumers a taste of what's coming next for the crypto community:

Benoit Pagotto followed by stating: “This collab is the most creative, fun, and groundbreaking we’ve ever had the chance to work on so far. Our thinking was: ‘let’s show what everyone imagines to be the dopest drops will be in 2024, and let’s make that today,’”.

As such, it wouldn't be long until RTFKT partnered with several artists and entities to push the boundaries of contemporary culture through daring projects such as "Space Drip" and their CryptoPunks project.

Having sold 9 CryptoPunks for nearly 17 million USD via Christie's, and achieving record-breaking sales, the LarvaLabs project became one of the most recognized digital art projects in the NFT space. Naturally, LarvaLabs joined forces with RTKFT to drop a series of 10,000 unique CryptoPunk sneakers, one designed per Punk and available only to the owner of the digital avatar. CryptoPunk owners are entitled to redeem:

• 1/1 Punk Sneaker NFT

• 1 Complementary Physical sneaker forging

• 1/1 VXL Portrait

• Metaverse Wearable voxel files

"RTFKT Punks Project is all about Punks and how a small group of people can create a huge impact." CryptoPunk & RTFKT site.

It is clear that RTFKT has played a crucial role in shaping the fashion industry IRL and in the metaverse, and will continue to be a major player in the future. Although only a very small segment of the population is currently comfortable spending thousands of USD on virtual shoes, this sentiment is slowly changing. As such, it's safe to say the above-mentioned collectibles will also have a special place in NFT history.

6. "The Currency", by Damien Hirst

A prolific British assemblagist, painter, and conceptual artist, Damien Hirst recently entered into the NFT space with his first collection — a five-year intensive project composed of 10,000 unique, hand-drawn, pieces of art called "The Currency".

Money and art are conceptually blended through "The Currency", exhibiting Hirst's creative genius by creating NFTs that must either be redeemed for their physical counterparts or preserved in their digital forms by July 27, 2022. If collectors do not exchange their NFTs for their physical counterparts during this timeframe, the physical artwork will be destroyed. Vice versa, if collectors wish to exchange their NFTs for their physical counterparts before the deadline, their NFTs will be burned.

When redeemed, each physical piece resembles a bank note and comes with Hirst's hand-painted art, an original song lyric, a watermark, and Hirst's signature. "The Currency" NFTs were on sale through HENI, an international art services company, and are now tradable on the HENI and 4K marketplace.

In essence, the project may be considered a social experiment and poses provocative questions: do we preserve the traditional art world, or do we destroy it, in favor of the digital? But perhaps more importantly, is there a world where we can have both?

7. Bitcoin Magazine - 1st Edition

Established in 2012, Bitcoin Magazine is the de facto source of expert commentary on Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and the overall crypto industry.

Bitcoin Magazine is the very first publication devoted exclusively to Bitcoin, providing cutting edge analysis, research, and thought leadership at the intersection of finance and technology. The magazine was founded by Mihai Alsie and Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, publishing their first issue in May 2012.

https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/products/bitcoin-magazine-issue-1-may-2012

After the first edition launched in May 2012, they joined Florida-based Coin Publishing LLC to produce 22 issues. However, it is the first edition that is highly coveted due to its historical significance and finite supply. Owning the first edition of Bitcoin Magazine is considered a huge flex in the crypto space and signals loyalty to the cause from its inception.

8. Mango Market Caps

In March 2021, Mango Markets was launched to provide a single venue to lend, borrow, swap, and leverage trade crypto assets on the Solana chain. As a decentralized cross-margin trading platform, traders can use up to 5x leverage with Solana's lightning-fast network speed and near-zero transaction fees. Perpetuals permit an initial leverage of up to 10x, and maintenance leverage of 20x. The platform relies on Solana's efficient high-speed framework for their markets.

Mango Market Caps Edition 0 ($MCAPS) launched on April 1st, 2021, and are Solana's take on creating a Unisocks-like product, only this time taking the form of a premium hat. There are only 500, dynamically priced, cotton mango caps in existence. At the time of redemption, owners have the option to choose between two colors: Mango or Black.

Mango caps were prominently used during Breakpoint, the first conference organized by the Solana foundation that brought together global industry leaders, builders, and innovators. Interestingly enough, the conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, a country famous for its premium mangos. Similar to Unisocks, owning a Mango Cap is an emblem of being an early adopter of blockchain and a member of the subsequent community. It's safe to say this piece of merchandise also has its place in crypto collectible history.

9. Tungsten Cubes

Bitcoin may be considered "digital gold," but tungsten is the only metal that has resonated with Crypto Twitter to date. Tungsten cubes range in size and price, with a 1 centimeter, 0.54 ounce cube priced at $29.99, and a 4-inch, 41.6 pound cube priced at $3,499.99.

It all started with a tweet from Neeraj Agarwal, CoinCenter's communication director, posting about the "Global Tungsten Shortage":

https://twitter.com/neerajka/status/1447985408567021574

Following Agarwal's tweet, Nic Carter, the co-founder of Coin Metrics, also tweeted a screen shot of the item's Amazon page, indicating that only three 4-inch tungsten cubes remained from the supplier - Midwest Tungsten Service Store.

https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1448480504014123008

After Agarwal and Carter's tweets, Midwest Tungsten Service's saw a 300% increase in sales, sold out on Amazon in less than 10 hours, and officially became a full-blown meme on Crypto Twitter.

Owners rave about their obsession with their cubes in product reviews, claiming they experience an "intensely physical sensation". It wasn't long until an initiative like the Tungsten Cube NFT project emerged and took our beloved metal into the Metaverse. The Tungsten Cube NFT project's end goal is to support crypto policy efforts by applying a 9.69% royalty to all secondary resales, donating the funds to crypto advocacy groups. For more information on the Tungsten Cube NFT project, click here.

10. 4K's Provably Fair Drops

How do you connect with your favorite luxury brands?

Whether it's Apple, Supreme, or a different icon, if you want to get the best swag right when it drops, you'll usually face massive lines, that is, if you have it in you to camp-out. If you have a job like the rest of us, you likely face marked up prices from secondary resellers. In the luxury watch industry, when new exclusive models drop, you typically can't even buy them for MSRP unless you have an established relationship with an authorized dealer.

That's why 4K's provably-fair drops represent such a game-changing innovation for both the crypto and consumer brands world. Provably-Fair Drops are the Web 3.0 equivalent of camping outside the Apple Store for the latest iPhone model. By utilizing blockchain technology, brands can ensure fair access for specific product releases. Hashing, a security aspect of blockchains, enables provable randomness. Raffle bots and rigging can be confidently screened out since it is too capital and time intensive to participate.

This is completely auditable from the community, so it ensures that there is no way anyone can "game" a drop, which encourages a dedicated audience of loyal fans to participate. Any Ethereum user (with capital in their wallet) can register with their address for the drop, which prevents bots and prioritizing insiders. Wallet addresses closest to the specific hash after the drop deadline win the giveaway, ensuring provable fairness throughout.

Provably-fair drops are a unique way to use blockchain to reward true fans, not just speculating flippers.

In September 2021, 4K "provably-fair dropped" a pair of Yeezy 350's as a physically-backed NFT. And don't worry, it wasn't just about being early to the trend. 4K is building the infrastructure to support this at scale for brands to ensure only true loyalists and communities can get in on a sweepstakes.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

To understand this innovation, we must understand the importance of bringing physical-assets on chain in the first place.

Authentication

The physical world is fundamentally uncertain, especially with trust-based transacting. Say you're buying a Rolex on the secondary market from a reseller — how are you sure the watch is authentic? How can you accurately trace provenance without bypassing the reseller who acts as a gatekeeper?

This is one of the problems solved by an NFT. By bringing a physical asset on-chain, you're creating a transparent ledger of your asset's history. You're able to track every previous owner, maintenance and repair reports, condition grades, and any supplemental evidence of authenticity. This can apply to all NFTs backed by physical-assets, including sneakers, handbags, tradings cards, and high-end collectibles.

A physically backed NFT allows you to sell your asset without it ever having to be re-authenticated or re-graded. The NFT grants full transparency for the authenticity of your physical asset.

Seamless and Cheaper

A major issue with current Web 2.0 marketplaces are the excessive fees on seller transactions.

With an NFT, you're able to accept crypto as a payment and sell your asset for a premium. NFTs allow you to seamlessly trade on a variety of Web 3.0 platforms that have significantly lower fees than traditional Web 2.0 platforms (eBay, Stock X). For instance, if you wanted to sell your NFT on our 4K marketplace (4K.com), you would only pay a 1% transaction fee.

Also, with traditional Web 2.0 marketplaces, you're at the mercy of out-dated protocols. Transactions and settlement times are slower, difficult to scale up due to logistics, and you have limited access to international markets or goods.

With an NFT, transaction and settlement times are fast, efficient, and scalable, opening the world to easier global commerce.

Unlock New Financial Benefits (DeFi)

An NFT backed by your physical asset opens the door to various financial opportunities through Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

Anyone can use physically-backed NFTs as collateral in a loan, a means of fractionalization, or even as the basis of a stablecoin.

Opening the door to the Metaverse

People will no longer need to be in physical proximity of a physical asset in order to use it. Idle physical assets will be brought into the Metaverse, become the basis for membership into social clubs, and enable other use cases we can't yet imagine.

As you can see, there are many benefits to physically-backed NFTs. 4K is dedicated to acting as the premier coordination layer between the physical and digital worlds, unlocking the newfound, limitless possibilities of physical assets on the blockchain.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Our team was give an insider’s look in to NASA’s history of technological advancements. From a tour of the original control center that oversaw the Apollo missions to the ground-breaking technology of the space shuttles, the experience was certainly inspiring for our team.

It was a truly privilege to visit NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and we look forward to following their lead to push the boundaries of innovation.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Marketplace Basics

The 4K Marketplace is the central hub for conducting transactions between buyers and sellers of items on our platform. Physical items listed on the 4K Marketplace are first converted into NFTs, or Non-Fungible-Tokens. These NFTs represent the tangible, physical items that we help you to "digitally-bridge" using the 4K Protocol. In practice, this means that once you are ready to sell an item, you'll have a quick call with a representative at 4K, ship your item to a secure vault owned by 4K, and gain ownership of an NFT representing the physical item which can then be listed on the 4K Marketplace.

Once you list your "digitally-bridged" item on the 4K Marketplace, the item will be available for purchase from buyers immediately using cryptocurrency.

Connecting your wallet

Before listing any "digitally-bridged" items on the 4K Marketplace, you'll need to make sure you have successfully connected a crypto wallet to 4K.

For now, the only supported self-custodial wallet is MetaMask.

For full instructions on connecting your wallet, follow the steps outlined in this article.

Selling your items

If you are new to the 4K Marketplace, you will need to register as a seller and work with a 4K representative to list your items. If you already own a physically-backed NFT that was purchased on the 4K Marketplace, you can skip to Step 2 to list your physically-backed NFT directly on the 4K Marketplace.

Step 1: Register to become a seller

To begin, click the "become a seller" button in the homepage header.

Our partnership page contains information around the types of items that we tend to list on our marketplace. If you have an item that qualifies, or if you think that your item would make a good addition to our inventory, reach out to us by clicking the "Contact Us" button near the middle of the page.

Fill out the intake form with your information, and one of our Business Development representatives will reach out to you within a few days. They will walk you through the process of transferring over your inventory and converting your items to physically-backed NFTs.

Step 2: Enter the 4K Marketplace

Once your physical items have been "digitally-bridged" to NFTs, they are ready to be listed on the 4K Marketplace.

Upon entering the marketplace, you will be prompted by your crypto wallet for a signature request. Ensure your wallet is connected, and approve the request.

The Marketplace page lists out all items currently in 4K's inventory.

Step 3: View the Dashboard Profile to view your available items

You can view the portfolio of items you own by clicking the dropdown menu in the top right corner of the page. Under the dropdown options, click "Profile."

The Dashboard Profile acts as a portfolio for all of your currently owned items. From this page, you are able to sell the item directly on the 4K Marketplace, or redeem the digital NFT for the physical item.

We recommend updating your profile to include your username and email as soon as possible to stay notified on the status of your items.

Step 4: List your items on the 4K Marketplace

When you are ready to list your items, click the "Sell" button on the item in your portfolio. The following module will appear in which you are able to set a price target and expiration date for your item.

Upon clicking "Sell," the 4K Marketplace will once again ask to access your wallet. Confirming this request will complete your listing. Keep in mind that there may be gas fees associated with your listing.

Once the listing is completed, the following confirmation screen will appear.

Step 5: Managing your listing

Once your item is listed on the Marketplace, it is available to purchase for Buyers. If you wish to cancel your listing, click on the item page and click "Cancel Sale."

Buyers are able to make offers that are lower than the price you initially set. Offers can be seen on this tab in the item listing. If you wish to accept an offer, you can do so on this screen.

What’s next?

To learn how to buy an item on 4K, check out this article.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Wallet Basics

In order to buy an NFT on 4K, you need a place to store it. This is called a wallet. Your crypto wallet holds your crypto assets and is uniquely yours. With your wallet, you can:

• Store your cryptocurrency

• Pay for NFTs

• Store your purchases, including any tokens purchased on 4K

It’s important to keep your wallet safe. If someone else gains access, they gain control over everything in it.

Supported wallet types

For now, the only supported self-custodial wallet is MetaMask. If you want to sell your token on a third party marketplace, we recommend using this method.

For a more advanced and more secure cold-wallet setup, we recommend using Ledger. We’ll soon post a tutorial on using a Ledger device.

Using MetaMask

What is MetaMask?

Metamask is a crypto wallet browser extension for Ethereum and ETH compatible blockchains. It allows users to store Ether and other ERC-20 tokens to be used for transacting within the Web3 decentralized internet ecosystem.

Step 1: MetaMask desktop installation

1. Head to metamask.io

2. Click 'Download'

3. Click 'Install Metamask for Chrome'. Once installed you will be able to click the puzzle piece icon in the top right of your browser (next to your profile pic).

4. Click 'Get started'. For the purposes of this guide we'll assume you don't have a wallet. Click 'Create a wallet'.

5. Create a strong password according to Metamask's guidelines.

6. After you create a password you will receive a 'Secret Recovery Phrase.' This is a critical step as your 'Secret Recovery Phrase' is how you'll be able to restore your wallet if you ever lose access to your device. We recommend writing down the 12 words on a piece of paper and storing it in a secure location. Do not ever share your secret recovery phrase with anyone. Having multiple backups stored in secure locations is recommended.

7. Confirm your secret recovery phrase by clicking the words in the correct order then click 'Confirm'

8. Click 'All done'

That’s it! Your MetaMask wallet is now ready to go.

Step 2: Connect your MetaMask

1. Go to 4K.com

2. Enter the Marketplace (make sure you are on Ethereum Mainnet)

3. Click Connect Wallet at top right of the screen

4. Follow instructions in Metamask pop-up

Congrats! You’re now connected to 4K and can start buying and selling physically-backed NFTs on the Marketplace.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Marketplace Basics

The 4K Marketplace is the central hub for conducting transactions between buyers and sellers of items on our platform. Items listed on the 4K Marketplace are NFTs, or Non-Fungible-Tokens. These NFTs represent tangible, physical items that have been "digitally-bridged" by the 4K Protocol. In practice, this means that a seller has taken a physical item, stored it in a secure vault owned by 4K, and minted a digital representation of that item as an NFT.

Once a seller lists one of these "digitally-bridged" items on our Marketplace, the item will be available for purchase using your crypto wallet.

Connecting your wallet

Before completing any transactions on the 4K Marketplace, you'll need to make sure you have successfully connected a crypto wallet to 4K.

For now, the only supported self-custodial wallet is MetaMask.

For full instructions on connecting your wallet, follow the steps outlined in this article.

Making a purchase

Step 1: Enter the 4K Marketplace

Upon entering the marketplace, you will be prompted by your crypto wallet for a signature request. Ensure your wallet is connected, and approve the request.

Once in the marketplace, explore the item inventory based on category or new arrivals.

Step 2: Buy or make offer on an item

When you see an item you are interested in, click on the thumbnail to see the full details. Each item listing contains a set of photos, attributes, pricing information, and token details.

Buy Now

If you are ready to purchase the item immediately, click the "Buy Now" button under the current price module.

Upon clicking "Buy Now", the 4K Marketplace will once again ask to access your wallet. Confirming this request will complete your purchase. Keep in mind that there may be gas fees associated with your transaction.

Once the transaction is completed, the following confirmation screen will appear.

Make Offer

An alternative to the "Buy Now" option is "Make Offer." Making an offer on an item is a way to enter a bid for an item that is lower than the Seller's originally requested price. After you make a bid, the Seller will be notified and can either accept or reject your offer.

To make an offer, begin by clicking the "Make Offer" button.

A module screen will appear with a numeric field to enter your offer price. When you are ready to submit the offer, click the "Bid" button at the bottom of the module.

Upon clicking "Bid," the 4K Marketplace will once again ask to access your wallet. Confirming this request will complete your offer bid.

Step 3: View the Dashboard Profile to view your purchased items

Once your transaction is complete, you can view the portfolio of items you own by clicking the dropdown menu in the top right corner of the page. Under the dropdown options, click "Profile."

The Dashboard Profile acts as a portfolio for all of your currently owned items. From this page, you are able to resell the item directly on the 4K Marketplace, or redeem the digital NFT for the physical item.

We recommend updating your profile to include your username and email as soon as possible to stay notified on the status of your items.

What’s Next?

To learn how to sell an item on 4K, check out this article.

To learn how to redeem an NFT for the physical item, check out this article.

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Here are some of our favorite highlights from 2021.

BITCOIN MIAMI 2021

Bitcoin Miami 2021 was a massive event in the crypto space that brought hundreds of thousands of people to Southern Florida. It was clear Crypto had staked a place in the mainstream.

Our booth saw thousands of attendees stop by to meet our co-founders Richard and Max.

With each visitor, Richard and Max were able to perfectly outline 4K's core objectives and detail the value of physically-backed NFTs. Although the crowd was a diverse mix of crypto newbies and whales, it was evident that 4K's booth was a prime destination at BTC Miami. On display were high-end, luxury goods including Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemar Piguet watches, a glowing LED Louis Vuitton handbag, and highly-coveted Jordan and Yeezy sneakers.

4K left BTC Miami feeling validated that we were on the verge of something very new and exciting in crypto.

MAINNET NYC 2021

In September 2021, 4K had the opportunity to participate in Mainnet NYC. Mainnet is a crypto conference geared towards bringing the traditional finance and the DeFi worlds together.

This gave us a unique experience and was a departure from the usual crypto native crowds found at other conferences. Nevertheless, our presence proved significant. We were able to introduce the concept of a physical-digital bridge to every casual or newly curious crypto attendee who stopped by our booth.

On Day 1 of Mainnet NYC, our co-founder and CEO Richard Li delivered a prominent keynote presentation to a packed room. He laid out the core objectives of how 4K brings value to the NFT space. The response was positive and stoked an increased interest in 4K's capabilities and roadmap.

Throughout the course of Mainnet NYC, we were able to connect with thought leaders and peers in the crypto space. It was evident that a physical-to-digital bridge acts as a new frontier and 4K is leading the charge.

By the end of Mainnet NYC, it was clear that 4K was the talk of the conference. It was exciting to see such a positive response to 4K from both the traditional financial and crypto worlds.

DCENTRAL CON MIAMI 2021

This past December, the 4K team landed in Miami for DCentral Con, a two-day event showcasing the latest tech in DeFi and NFTs.

You don't go to Miami unless you go big, and that's exactly what 4K did. With our expansive floor display and informational booth, there was no doubt 4K's presence was felt.

Our banner touted our 'physical-digital bridge' while glass cases displayed some of the hottest luxury items available. The watches, handbags, and sneakers all were great examples of physical assets that could crossover into the digital world as NFTs.

CEO and co-founder Richard Li was asked to speak on a panel about the future of real world assets venturing into the digital world. Although it was a panel of leaders in the physical to digital space, Richard was the standout with his commentary on the current state of the physical to digital NFT world.

There was no doubt we attracted a significant wave of on-lookers at DCentral. Every member of the 4K team worked to connect with convention-goers and explain the many benefits of 4K's protocol. It was a joint effort by the 4K team considering we all hailed from various disciplines: Our engineering, product, marketing, and design teams came together to promote 4K to the DCentral attendees. It was the true definition of teamwork and a great representation of the culture here at 4K.

As DCentral Con ended, there was no doubt that the 4K team made an impact in the NFT and Crypto community. We were able to deliver our core messaging and let the Crypto and NFT worlds know that 4K is a leader in the space.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2022

With a new year come renewed excitement as we continue to make a name for ourselves in the Crytpo world. Expect many more adventures and news from 4K in 2022!

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

• Crypto-native: Posts are stored on-chain using a Web3 native protocol.

• Cryptographically Secure: Posts are owned by 4K and not by a centralized intermediary.

• Supports fellow builders: Embeds our work within the larger crypto ecosystem and supports those building the future of Web3.

Greetings, crypto community!

As Web3 continues to evolve, new tools are rapidly being created to provide decentralized versions of common Internet services like content management, blog hosting, and storage provisioning. At 4K, we’re committed to supporting the crypto ecosystem by fully embracing the latest in Web3 tooling, starting by transitioning our hosted blog content over to Mirror.xyz.

With decentralization, cryptographic security, and Web3 nativity as core platform values, Mirror is quickly becoming the de facto hub for cutting-edge crypto communities to communicate, learn, and grow.

Many of the tools currently available for hosting written content online contain suspect clauses within their Terms of Service contracts (e.g., ownership agreements, data collection requirements, and digital advertising conditions) that detract from the end goal of sharing information on an open web.

Even Medium, originally touted as a solution to the logistical woes of setting up an in-house content system, has gone the way of Web2 by retaining certain publishing rights over your content.

As our online lives become richer and more personal, decentralization and ownership have moved from being “nice-to-haves” to a necessary part of preserving the integrity of our digital public discourse.

Hosting our blog on Mirror allows us to do a few cool things:

1. Our content is tied directly to an ETH wallet address, making the 4K identity portable across Web3.

2. We can bring in new contributors to add content to the main 4K feed while retaining their ownership rights and individuality.

3. Posts made on Mirror use blockchain storage protocol Arweave to provide permanent secure backup, avoiding the use of a main centralized server.

Other features we think make Mirror a good longterm bet for the future of Web3 content:

1. Mirror offers tools to help users monetize their content through the use of native tokens — WRITE — and the ability to turn posts into transferrable NFTs.

2. Users can easily create crowdfunding hubs to generate the capital needed for new projects and crypto initiatives.

Over the coming months, 4K will use Mirror to bring you the most insightful content related to Web3 marketplaces, NFTs, and the broader Web3 ecosystem. We have so many exciting things to share with you about what we’ve been working on, and we’re stoked for you to join us on the journey to build the world’s most reliable physical-digital bridge.

Cheers,

Andrew Director of Marketing 4K.com

Stay in touch.

Follow us on Twitter and Discord for the latest 4K news.

And be sure to check out our latest marketplace listings here!

Introduction (Originally Posted July 20, 2021)

Hello, world! We are 4K. We are building the world’s most incentive-aligned peer-to-peer marketplace, one that is owned by its users. Our mission is to empower people to transact with more trust, more transparency, more speed, and with a 95+% reduction in fees. Unlike incumbent marketplaces that win at the expense of their users, we win alongside our users. In this post, we’ll share our solutions to problems that have been plaguing peer-to-peer markets and announce the launch of our first product. Let’s dive in!

How 4K Improves Upon Incumbent Marketplaces

There are several critical problems in existing peer-to-peer marketplaces. These problems include high rates of fraud, long delivery times, and high fees. An even more fundamental problem is that the equity and debt holders of peer-to-peer marketplaces are accruing the vast majority of the value while the users, the people without whom these marketplaces would be worthless, receive no upside. This has been the status quo for so long that many have taken these market dynamics as a given. We have solution to more equitably distribute value and create a more resilient business. Before diving into that solution, let’s begin by brushing up on the offerings of existing marketplaces, starting with eBay, to get a better sense for the current state that we are improving upon.

eBay

When shopping on eBay, buyers have no way of knowing whether the condition of the item in the pictures is an accurate representation of the item’s current condition. Even if the item is in the same condition, the buyers have no way of knowing whether the item is a worthless knockoff or an authentic item.

Curated Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces

We are not the first to point out these issues. Several teams have recognized these issues and sought to solve them by serving as a curation and authentication layer. They whitelist certain goods for sale and whenever a buyer and seller reach a price at which they want to transact, the seller sends the items to the curated marketplace to verify that it is authentic. If verified, the marketplace then sends the item to the buyer.

While these curated marketplaces offer improvements over eBay, we believe they take two steps forward and one step back. They solve for curation and authenticity, but the price one pays, in addition to higher fees, is that the authentication layer adds significant time to the settlement process. Also, because buyers are charged immediately, buyers have charges on their credit card for potentially weeks before finding out whether the transaction will be cancelled due to inauthenticity.

We see curated peer-to-peer marketplaces as a feature set improvement and not a magnitude of improvement.

The Solution: 4K

So, if current marketplaces are leaving much to be desired, what is the solution? 4K is the solution, of course ;)

At 4K, we offer a marketplace with less fraud, significantly lower fees, and faster settlement times than any Web2.0 incumbents. We do so by pre-authenticating and storing the items offered on our marketplace before sellers find buyers so that buyers can shop with confidence knowing that what’s listed online is available, authentic, and could be at their door the very next day. Here’s how it works:

1. We whitelist various items (we’re starting with watches, sneakers, trading cards, and other investment-grade collectibles).

2. A user sends us a whitelisted item.

3. We authenticate, insure, and store the item and issue the user a digital token that is redeemable for the physical item at any time. This is similar to a coat check claim ticket. Whoever brings the ticket to the coat check gets the coat. We call this claim ticket a non-fungible token, also known as an NFT.

4. The NFT holder can do whatever they want with their NFT. They can sell it on our marketplace, they can sell it on other marketplaces, they can hold on to it and simply use us for storage, or they can use it as collateral for a loan.

5. The user can redeem their NFT for the physical good anytime by sending us the NFT and providing us a shipping address.

6. The user then receives the physical item and world peace is achieved (we promise that at least half of this line is accurate).

To overcome the even more fundamental issue of equity and debt holders accruing value at the expense of their users, we will be issuing a token in the future that will align our incentives with those of our community and enable our community to win alongside us. We will share more about our token as we get closer to the token’s launch.

Why this Solution is Awesome

For Buyers

• Shop with confidence knowing that everything on the marketplace is already authentic.

• Receive your purchase as fast as the next day.

• Pay only the ETH gas price as a fee.

• Enjoy professional customer service.

• Buy with crypto!

• Coming soon: Use your NFTs to earn yield, collateralize, borrow, lend, and interact with DeFi!

For Sellers

• Pay significantly lower fees — we charge a 1% fee, which is a 90%+ reduction compared to incumbent marketplaces.

• Spend less on shipping — you can ship to our commercial address by the pallet.

• Enjoy white-glove service — we authenticate, store, protect, and insure your own inventory for you.

• Protect yourself with instant and irreversible settlement — no fraudulent chargebacks and no disputes.

• Coming soon: Use your NFTs to earn yield, collateralize, borrow, lend, and interact with DeFi!

For Professional Traders

• Avoid the need to physically settle and re-authenticate items with every trade.

• Get get access to markets that, until now, have been prohibitively opaque.

The First Step: Provably-Fair Drops

Our mission to build the world’s ultimate peer-to-peer marketplace is ambitious and we’re doing so with new technology that may take some getting used to. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of our first product, 4K Provably-Fair Drops! We’re starting with drops for three reasons:

1. Develop familiarity with NFTs that are backed by physical goods.

2. Build trust in our ability to redeem NFTs for their physical representation.

3. Excitement for the possibility to trade collectibles faster and more cost-effectively.

What is a drop?

A “drop” is when a company offers a high-demand item to its customers, usually one that will sell out instantly. Sometimes these drops are in-person, leading people to wait in line for hours, and sometimes days, in order to be one of the few to have the opportunity to buy the item. More often, these drops occur online so people will rapidly refresh their browsers at the specified time to have the opportunity to buy the item.

Product drops today are plagued by two critical issues:

1. Participants have no way of knowing whether the people conducting the drop are rigging the system to ensure that their accomplices win.(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/us/ann-hebert-nike.html)

2. Even if the drop conductors are acting in good faith, the person who wins a drop usually isn’t that brand’s biggest fan, but rather the person with the most sophisticated army of bots that move through a checkout flow faster than any human possibly could. We know because we bought and test nearly every single bot available! ;)

We have designed our provably-fair drops product with these issues in mind.

What is a provably-fair drop?

A provably-fair drop is one in which participants need not fear rigging nor bots.

We solve the rigging problem by using provable randomness to select a winner. The source of this provable randomness is the Ethereum block hash of the first block added to the Ethereum blockchain after the end of the drop enrollment period. The wallet address that is closest to this block hash wins the drop, which makes it impossible for us to rig the drop.

To protect our drop participants from bots, we require drop participants to sign a transaction from a wallet that has enough funds to purchase the drop at the time of drawing. While this doesn’t guarantee the elimination of all bots, it makes it significantly more expensive to use bots and will dramatically reduce their impact.

To sign up for our drops or to simply learn more about them, check us out at 4K.com!

Backers

Our investors provide us with more than just capital; they also offer us invaluable guidance that makes our endeavor possible. That is why we are so grateful to be supported by the exceptional funds that participated in our first round of funding: Electric Capital, ConsenSys Mesh, IDEO CoLab, Collab + Currency, and Crosscut Ventures.

What’s Next?

We gave you plenty to chew on so we’ll leave things here, but stay tuned for the launch of our marketplace in August! To get the latest updates from us, be sure to sign up for our mailing list at 4K.com.

Links:

We’re Hiring! https://angel.co/company/4kcom/jobs

Twitter: https://twitter.com/4kprotocol

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MFzBVM8wsF

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/4kprotocol/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/4KProtocol/

Bitclout: https://bitclout.com/u/4kcom

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/4kcom/