Social-plus marketplace for officially licensed sports NFTs. Talk NFTs, trade NFTs.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Hello and welcome back this week OIG community! We are very excited to start off today with an AMA with our guest Atharva Sabnis, the Founder of ITSMYNE! A social-plus marketplace for officially licensed sports NFTs and other social collectibles!
Welcome to the OIG main stage Atharva! Can you please introduce yourself? 🙂
Atharva: Hi @SaigonXIII! Thanks a lot for having me here.
Hi everyone, I’m Atharva Sabnis and the FOUNDER and CEO of ITSMYNE ($MYNE).
Saigon 💎 | OIG:A pleasure to have you here as well mate! So to kick it off can you tell us the origins of ITSMYNE, how did it come about? What need does it fulfil? What is the name about?
Atharva: Well, it’s quite a story, but let me attempt to summarize it for everyone’s understanding here.
People buy and trade NFTs on marketplaces like OpenSea, but engage in a ton of social chatter and interaction on social media platforms like Discord and Twitter. 💬
Thus, the simple idea behind ITSMYNE is to combine trading and talking (social chatter) into one single product. ⭐️
To make our go-to-market strategy actionable, we’ve decided to start in the niche of sports NFTs. 🏈
The name ITSMYNE was just randomly ideated and agreed upon by me and my co-founders. 😁
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Great concept! I think we can all agree that there is often something to be desired from the traditional NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible, and including a social aspect to these platforms is very intriguing.
Our community always like to hear about the team behind a project, so please let us know any significant information about yourself and the rest of your core team, including their experience and qualifications?
Atharva: Thanks for asking this! Like many early-stage organizations, our biggest strength currently is our team. Let me elaborate…
We have a founding team of 4, of whom two are technical people, and two are business people. An interesting fact about our team is that each of us has previous startup and business experience. Our CTO, Ayan (Kazakhstan), is an alumnus of the Rochester Institute of Technology (USA) and has spent the last 8 years building software for companies ranging from Fidelity Investments to Freshop.
Working closely with him is Nikhil (India), our Blockchain Head, who has been building blockchain infrastructure for the last 6 years, and has helped multiple crypto projects with their tech stack. On the business side, our Head of Partnerships, Ujwal (India), is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad (India), and previously co-founded a sports-tech startup.
Finally, I’m also an alumnus of the Rochester Institute of Technology (USA) and have previously founded two startups and helped two other founders scale their companies.
Speaking of our key contributors, our Senior iOS developer comes with 4+ years of experience with one of Kazakhstan’s largest banks, and our backend developer has 3+ years of experience in writing code for Web 2 and Web 3 products. Our CEO and CTO are part of the Antler (Singapore) SG9 program, a highly selective program for high-caliber entrepreneurs to build world-class organizations.
In addition to Antler, we’re also part of the Hype sports-tech accelerator and the LongHashX Filecoin Frontier accelerator.
Our Advisors include: Ajeet Khurana (Polygon) , Kevin Abdulrahman (Sorare), Minh Nguyen (Cakoin Capital) and Karan Vaswani (MAHADAO).
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Incredibly diverse team, and very international as well with tons of education and experience from everywhere! It is a really impressive team that you have built up over at ITSMYNE!
So to talk about the project, how would you best describe what ITSMYNE is and what it is not? Is there any similar products in the market to ITSMYNE?
Atharva: Thank you for the kind words!
ITSMYNE is a centralized platform combines the trading of and talking around NFTs into one single product. Built like a Web 2 product, you can sign up and purchase your first NFT in under one minute.
Our custodial wallet integration eliminates the need for having to use MetaMask and worrying about private keys and so forth, while our flexibility to accept payments in crypto as well as fiat makes our product easy-to-use to non-crypto-native audiences. OneOf.com, a web 2-friendly music NFT platform, is currently our closest comparable.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Perfect. That makes a lot of sense. I think the idea to utilize a Web2 credential system will make it really seamless for non-native crypto users to onboard into ITSMYNE.
Can you explain the different products you will offer to users? What are the unique features that ITSMYNE will offer that make the project stand out from others?
Atharva: Correct, our goal is to remove Web 3 onboarding friction for Web 2 users.
The NFTs listed on ITSMYNE will primarily be of three types:
Collectibles, utility NFTs (think of NFTs that can be used in metaverses), and fan tokens (think of Chiliz fan tokens).
We differentiate by having a curated collection of NFTs directly sourced from officially licensed partners, which means our users need not scroll through trash to find a gem.
We offer a custodial wallet for the storage of NFTs, which means our users can sign up and maintain an account with their email and password, and not worry about integrating and funding a crypto wallet.
Finally, they can pay using crypto and fiat money. Some pipeline features include fractional ownership and NFT launchpads, which we’ll describe in more detail once those features come closer to launch.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Very great differentiation of the various NFT classes! It touches on so many different collectibles there!
Atharva: and the best part is that we’re just getting started. We expect to add additional categories as we go along!
Saigon 💎 | OIG: What will the MYNE token be useful for?
Atharva: MYNE tokens can get users whitelisted for VIP NFTs on ITSMYNE.
MYNE can also be used for staking, participation in fractional ownership pools, pool farming, and earning token transfer tax (gas fee).
A part of the proceeds earned from sales of NFTs on ITSMYNE and our partner marketplaces (will be announced shortly) will be spent on buying MYNE back from the market and locking up the tokens.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Wow!
Atharva: On this note, some measures we’re taking to protect the price of MYNE include:
▪️ Accelerated staking program: Unlocked staking (withdraw anytime) with lower APY and locked staking (1, 3, 6-month time periods) with higher APY. In cases of withdrawals from locked staking pools, we assess fines and pay those in rewards to other stakers in the locked staking program.
▪️ Tokens are sent to the burn address at periodic intervals.
▪️ Pool farming mechanisms: Collaboration with other token projects where holders who stake those other tokens can also earn MYNE in rewards.
▪️ Token transfer tax assessed to sellers of MYNE.
▪️ Opt-in wallet tracking program wherein those who opt-in get their wallets scanned periodically at random intervals. Based on the time period and the number of tokens held, random MYNE will be air-dropped as rewards.
▪️ Fixed amount staking (separate from APY-based) wherein the first one to stake gets a return of 10,000. This gets advertised to the community. As more people start to stake, the fixed-amount yield falls. However, as more people buy MYNE to stake, the token price will rise.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Wow! Really like this idea of fixed amount staking. That’s a great way to ensure healthy price action as each user stakes their MYNE!
Atharva: Exactly, plus we’re integrating 111pg protection into MYNE liquidity pool so that Bots can’t take profits away from the community! :)
An official announcement regarding this will be out soon.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Tell us a little about ITSMYNE stars and the benefits to holders?
Atharva: Coming to ITSMYNE Stars, think of ITSMYNE Stars like the American Express credit card rewards program.
The more activity you do on ITSMYNE (social chatter and trading), the more Stars you earn. You can then redeem these Stars to avail of exclusive offers and experiences curated by our partners.
The details of this will be made available at a later date in our Telegram as well as our website.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Wow great stuff Atharva! This is clearly a very well thought out ecosystem!
We see your roadmap is extensive and goes well into 2023, can you tell us what short term things are coming up that we should be aware of and then what long term things you are working on that you think is most exciting?
Atharva: In the short term, we’ve split our go-to-market strategy into two phases: pre-product-market fit and post-product-market fit.
For the pre-product-market-fit stage, we’re launching with a closed beta to 1000 hand-picked users, who are a combination of crypto-native and non-crypto-native audiences.
We want to track their engagement frequency and retention. If both these graphs are rising or at least flat, with a >60% 3-month retention rate, we’ll know we’re on track to achieve a product-market fit. At this point, we’ll open up the platform to additional users via an invite-only referral program that leverages money, fame, dopamine, and access triggers to incentivize people to onboard their friends onto ITSMYNE.
Post this, we will open up the platform to the world, and onboard NFT and sports enthusiasts via paid customer acquisition.
In the long-term, our focus remains on making partnership deals with key IP holders to increase the available inventory of valuable NFT assets for our users 😁
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Yes as a huge sports fan I am VERY excited to see what type of unique, proprietary sports deals you guys can come up with 🙂
So Atharva at this point I’d like to switch it over to the community questions on Twitter!
Atharva: Awesome! Yes sure let’s take Twitter
Community Twitter Questions
Twitter Question 1)
Atharva: Thank God he asked this! 😁. Interestingly, ITSMYNE is a mobile-first product. Due to Apple and Android uncertainty regarding policies around NFT/crypto transactions, in the beginning, we’ll have the mobile version useful for Social engagement with the NFT publishers and within the community, whereas for transactions, users would be redirected to the web interface. But we agree, this is a mobile-first wave and we’re well positioned to leverage it.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Great stuff!
Twitter Question 2)
Atharva: We agree, partnerships are key to this. Our partnerships are of two types:
1. For the MYNE token
2. For the ITSMYNE product
For the MYNE token, we’re partnered with Hypersign to enable easy user on boarding, and with 111pg for protection of our liquidity against sniper bots.
For the ITSMYNE product, there are two partnerships — — one with a major league, and second with an entertainment-industry behemoth. We’ll announce/reveal the names of these in the coming weeks, and we expect to close several more of such high-profile deals in the future.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: OH MAN, that sneak peek just got me amped…
Atharva: Hahah, thanks! 😁 these partnerships matter because the more revenue ITSMYNE earns, the higher will be the Token price.
Twitter Question 3)
Atharva: While this a good product idea, it’s not really in our current Roadmap. However, startups are agile and if this opportunity becomes achievable and profitable, we’ll go for it. For now, think of ITSMYNE as either the eToro for NFTs, or as hybrid between NBA Top Shot and Reddit.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Gotcha makes sense! Great @atharvasabnis well this sums up our AMA series 🙂
Any final word you’d like to leave with our OIG community?
Atharva: Well, thanks a lot for having me here @SaigonXIII. I loved the questions!
We hope that the OIG Community will be a stronger HODLer of MYNE and will help us BUIDL ITSMYNE!
Your community members are also most welcome to join our Telegram group at @itsmyneofficial and stay abreast all developments.
Saigon 💎 | OIG: Absolutely mate!!! We are excited to be a part of this journey with you!
And thank you OIG for coming out to support!
ITSMYNE:
Website:https://www.itsmyne.club/
Telegram: https://t.me/itsmyne
Twitter: https://twitter.com/itsmyneclub
