The metaverse is no longer a foreign concept but a possibility that many users actively seek and explore. A digital environment beyond the physical, where time flies quicker, albeit with the same intricacies of our world.
This is what Chainers is building – an ecosystem where its creators want to enable users to build, create, live, and earn.
In this interview, Matvey Diadkov, the CEO of Chainers (who is also the CEO of the popular blockchain ad network – Bitmedia), talks about how he came to be in the cryptocurrency industry, how he came up with the idea for Chainers, what is it and what can users expect in the future.
How and when did you get into the cryptocurrency industry? How did you stumble on NFTs?
It all started 12 years ago when I worked as a developer at a crypto exchange platform. I was interested in everything that had to do with crypto, whilst for most people around, the space seemed to be akin to a one-trick pony with no future. At the time, Bitcoin was hovering around $50, and only a handful of us believed in the potential behind blockchain.
I then quit my job and went all-in on developing a crypto ad platform. Marketing is my second favorite industry after blockchain, and hence it was a no-brainer to connect the two. Think Google Ads but for crypto projects. Our start wasn’t the easiest one, but through trials and tribulations, we managed to get traction and start growing. A few years later, Bitmedia, our crypto ad platform, was already serving billions of ads per month, helping new and established crypto projects find the audiences they deserve.
Between 2014 and 2018, the crypto space saw growth that no one could envision. With that, technologies built on blockchain started to spring, too, enjoying the fast-paced growth that the space is known for. The end of 10s is when non-fungible tokens (NFTs) popped up, and with Cryptopunks stealing all the headlines, I knew I had to engage. This urge wasn’t based on the valuations these new collections were acquiring, but on the fact that one of our early days’ projects called 8BitIcon was quite like what Cryptopunks was all about.
8Biticon is a pixel avatar maker that became extremely popular among those interested in 8bit-style art. At the time of peak growth, our community was high above 1 million users, and as per the request of most active members, we had no choice but to integrate NFT minting. This is when I started to investigate NFTs in greater detail and understood the real potential hiding in the curtails. It wasn’t a value-based interest, but the ecosystem that could be built and the use cases NFTs now allow us to implement.
This is how Chainers came about. I wanted to create an ecosystem that is pretty much real-world-like. It had to have its own economics, push the community to build, create, live and earn.
In your opinion, what is the best use case for NFTs?
We all know that NFTs do well when it comes to providing a level of authenticity to an asset. This is what every news outlet raves about from early morning till late evening. In my opinion, the beauty of NFTs comes in the face of being able to make digital assets interact with one another, evolve, and be part of an expansive economy, infrastructure, and world. I truly believe that the future of NFTs and their main feature is being dynamic. It is this ability that unlocks completely new opportunities and applications.
Can you tell us more about Chainers.io? What is it, and how does it work?
Chainers is an NFT-based metaverse that is designed to let the community be the real creators and real gamers. We’ve taken it all a step further and have allowed users to create their own games and vote on the games they want us to integrate. Every Chainers NFT character should be treated as a real being. They all have traits and can evolve, which in turn boosts the value of the NFT and its capabilities within the metaverse. Then, there are houses, cars, land plots, and other items that users can either build or purchase.
At the same time, we didn’t want to make it all about building. There are other metaverses for that. We want our community to play games, earn rewards from their assets and interact with others, forming new economies within the Chainers virtual world.
Why did you choose the Solana network over Ethereum or other blockchains?
There are a few good reasons why Solana is growing at such a fast pace. Its in-depth and very detailed documentation is very helpful when developers begin making their first steps in creating Solana-based apps. Secondly, it is quick as a blockchain and is powerful enough to take one heavy-duty transaction load. This is exactly what we need with Chainers, when millions of people are interacting with one another at the same time.
Do you think we are past the PFP meta, and how do Chainers add extra value for holders?
PFP is one in a million other ways how we can use NFTs, and the more use cases we find for NFTs, the better. As for Chainers and the value growth of Chainers NFTs, I consider it to be the cherry on the cake of the virtual world we’ve built. Each Chainers NFT starts its life with attributes that are assorted to it at the time of minting. The fun starts when users evolve their NFTs by either playing games, building and creating assets in the Chainers metaverse, or participating in events. With this, and quite like in the real world, Chainers NFT characters grow their worth and value.
Our main goal was to make our virtual world as life-like as possible. We go to schools, finish universities and start work. We evolve, and similar evolution has been brought into the Chainers metaverse. Only in the case of our virtual world, the time flies much quicker, and NFT souls evolve and have a chance to earn at a much faster pace too.
Can you tell us what the Chainers community can look forward to in the short term? What are your plans for the near future?
We’ve already started to whitelist members of our community for the first NFT pre-sale. Once the pre-sale is complete, we will start letting people into the metaverse. We have been conducting extensive testing of the gameplay for the past year, but this first inflow of users will help us eliminate whatever we have missed. To sum it all up, we expect to open the flood gates in Q3 of 2022, and as they say, the world will never be the same again!
What is the thing you are most excited about, Chainers?
I cannot wait to see what the creators and our community, in general, will be coming up with in the Chainers metaverse. Taking into account that they can decide on new games integration, build houses, design bikes, cars, and even furniture, I am keen to see what the metaverse will become. How will people interact with others, and what development paths they will choose for their NFT characters? These are just some of the variables that we have built in, and the future of Chainers is all down to the community.
