An interview with Pravanjan Patnaik - one of the co-founders of Boolien. Interviewer: Tell me about the team behind Boolien Our passion stems from our people and our people are a blend of Content creators, Game developers, UX, Behavioral and Visual Designers, Blockchain and product developers, and many more creative minds with over 30 years of collective and 360-degree experience in various dimensions of the entertainment industry; movies, games, and content creation to name a few. When was Boolien set up? Well, in terms of technical aspects, it’s been over a year now that we've been working on intense user research and product design & execution for Boolien. But, when we look 10 years back or so, that is when we actually began envisioning an economy similar to Boolien. All thanks to the mushrooming popularity and usage of blockchain technology and NFTs, we are finally turning our imagination into reality. Can you describe the core vision of Boolien? We aim to create a decentralized economy for creative communities, where they can create and collaborate with like-minded humans and build community-owned games and content. is a cross-platform storytelling IP, you can think of the story being a string with different knots that connects with different timelines, and each knot around it would act as a different branch or an entry point for the users or viewers. I understand you have one product about to be launched – House Party – what is this? House party Say a story world, where people engage with the world by watching TV Series, they can also engage the story world by playing various Play-To-Earn Games, they can listen to the story podcasts, they can experience graphic novel and most importantly they will hold NFT’s which give them some unique benefits and rewards in the House party universe and beyond. We are launching our house party flag NFT’s, which we call the building blocks of the House party universe. Unlike NFT collections of Randomly generated characters which are in thousands, these flags will only be seven, I repeat Seven flags. Why seven, you need to hang on to that for a surprise. The flags will be available at auction on our Marketplace Vizva. These flags will be fractionalized for community members to participate in a faction-based game, they explore our first game and earn game rewards, powers and most importantly earn our exclusive game characters - Knoobs. Further, these characters will be used for various play-to-earn games. This is just the start, there are more exciting things for the faction owner who will hold the flags. In a sense, we are making NFTs that have multi-usability across all networks and games that can be connected in different games in the same narrative or the same genre. What is Vizva? Why is it different from other marketplaces? answer this. Vizva is Boolien’s first flagship product. We have derived the name from a Sanskrit word, Vishwa, meaning Universe. Vizva is a creator-centric digital world where anyone can showcase and trade their NFTs. IT could be your artworks, your crazy dance videos, rare pokemon cards, or even your grandma’s cookies. But Vizva isn't just another NFT marketplace. Being a pool of creators ourselves, we understand mere creation isn't enough. Creating and maintaining relationships within the space is equally important. Thus, Vizva is an open window, perfectly symbolizing an open to all space full of opportunities; anyone can enter and create a network full of creators and curators, fans and followers, buyers and sellers, and whatnot. We aim to empower creative minds by making it easier for them to find people with similar interests. In simple words, Vizva is the NFT version of school projects. You can join hands with fellows, perform exciting activities, create groups, work together, create beautiful masterpieces, and even get rewarded for doing so. Will you have a token? How will it work? The currency of Boolien ecosystem is Bool tokens. We are closing with our Pre-Seed rounds for investors. Bool tokens will be deflationary as token holders will be using the tokens to hold in various in-game lockups for earning APYs from the game. Here are some of the methods where Bool tokens are being used. Earn Bool by selling your artworks in the marketplace. Backing your favorite projects by locking your Bool tokens. Earn as game currency and reward mechanisms in various games. Locked as token rewards in various IPs launching through the platform. Bool tokens will be used to access certain IP Rights for brands and Investors. Have you any major artists attached to the project? Of course!! We have onboarded several artists within our network, all organically by our word of mouth. By artists we mean not just the expert minds with over 40+ years of experience in the industry but also the creative commoners looking for exposure around the world. Artists from various domains like concept artists, Artists who create art in collaboration with scientists, using visual images of Human Cells, fine artists and A.I. Artists, musicians, programmers and many more have already become a part of Boolien. Who is investing in Boolien – why? As of now, it's too early to disclose the names. But we can say we are looking for an investor who can add value to the project and understand the ethos of the project. Fortunately, we have closed and found few investors in that context and welcomed such investors who share the same synergies. Recently, Boolien has done a partnership with Polygon. Can you tell us about this and where you see it leading in the future? We are initiating the Boolien ecosystem from Polygon for various reasons, one of them being low gas fees, apart from that the layer 2 solutions help gamers focus on the game rather than wait for transaction speeds. With Polygon the network effects are insane, as most of the current metaverse network is on Ethereum. And Polygon is the L2 solution of Ethereum chain and quite frankly they are very supportive when it comes to chain integration. We have closed mini-grants and technology support along with other aspects which we would be announcing soon. Our future goal is not only to work on one chain but enable cross-chain usability of IPs, think House party launching one universe in Polygon chain and another in Solana, Cardano, Near… etc. so we become chain agnostic and enable true usability with games and IP’s. Your team has a proven track record in UX and design. Why do you believe design and creativity are so important for Boolien? It’s like asking a carpenter how important it is for him to know the variety of woods and their features. We have more than 3 decades of collective experience in User experience design from a gamified angle, where we have worked with small Indie teams to fortune 500 companies. Presently Pravanjan, Co-founder of Boolien is also a supporting UN-Habitat-backed Glocha Marketplace, named , acting as a member in designing UX-UI for them. DigitalArt4Climatechange Boolien is a medium for us to create a worldwide decentralized digital assets store similar to a stock or a commodity market. Moreover, being a pool of creators ourselves, our skills and mindsets help us to magnify the deep-rooted problems the community is facing and come up with a mass-oriented approach to resolve such issues, benefitting the whole community. You plan to offer a number of opportunities to collaborate with other creators. Can you explain how this will work? It's a great question, If you want to understand how we enable community collaboration, you need to understand a few parts of the problem and solution: Current Market Current Market: If we look through the bigger lens, there are millions of NFT’s being minted by thousands of artists in the NFT market, but are all of them able to command a high price? Not at all. This makes us ponder on the thought that it's a hype cycle that will cool down leaving only a handful of projects with actual use cases of NFTs. This is exactly how any big revolution has begun. If we compare it with the Dotcom bubble in 1999, it carries a similar aesthetic. Eventually, a community-centric mindset revolving around creators and their immense value would be thriving. Check out some of the statistics . here Investors vs Market Investors vs markets: Investors have a hard time understanding which pieces of these images or videos to invest in before going 10X returns or maybe more than that. Also, it's scary with rug pull projects that are coming on various platforms. Technology Technology: The problem is we are comparing the tech only with price, if you remove the price and look at the functions of NFT’s they tell a different story, with ERC-721, ERC-1155, and all amazing EIP-3664, we are working closely on the functions of the technology, Now NFTs not only hold unique url of an image, the properties of these NFT’s can be transferred, changed, added, dismantled which amplifies the usabilities of the product in every possible way, which couldn't imagine ever before. Art as a Tool Rather than the Price Art as a tool rather than price: Artists can focus on their art, and enable OpenWorld interactions of their creations. It opens up possibilities that are not intended by the designer, and users can interpret those ideas rather than the goals intended. Many artists like to spend time alone crafting their work and making truly unique creations, many of them also require time and feedback to keep mastering their skills. This helps artists ways to explore and express themselves. Community Be it a story script, a game, music, or just an idea they lend their ART to the Boolien DAOs. The DAO members will collectively take decision on whether the art work tells the story or enable metaverse properties- (meaning the more your art is used by the community members the more you gain rewards from the ecosystem). You can always collaborate with other artists and create unique ideas or maybe use already existing ideas and incorporate them into your works. All along it will be the community for whom you create and how you enable cross-collaboration. And investors rather than following a single piece of NFT will look at the community participation of these IPs and projects and stake where the community wants to direct the project. A true community-driven ecosystem. In a nutshell, we are enabling a space where creative communities can work with their clans and tribes and create value carrying digital assets. Further, the tribe members and followers can also invest in such assets and grow simultaneously. A Metaverse in making, created by the communities, for the communities. About Boolien: Boolien is a digitized and decentralized ecosystem to accelerate your network, backed by NFT, blockchain, and fun games that engage your customers, fans, communities, and your creative clan. It aims to be the hub for tomorrow’s immersive experiences — art, movies, series, documentaries, games, and merchandise — on the blockchain. Boolien is for dreamers, visionaries, trail-blazers, disruptors, and epic creators to benefit from this cross-skilled collaboration culture. Boolien’s success relies on you using their decentralized platform where your supporters can help you realize your dreams/IP. Become a Booliener! | | | Website Twitter Telegram LinkedIn This article is part of The hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest The Sandbox . Submit your today for your chance to win up to $2000. #gaming-metaverse story
