NFT Steez had a chat this week with the award-winning NFT artist Victor Solomon about the metaverse, web3, basketball, and his NFT collection on December 2. The channel hosts Ray Salmond and Alyssa spoke to Victor Solomon. They discussed his journey and transition from real-life artworks to tokenizing them into non-fungible tokens and his way of cultivating the community and culture in web3 space.

The major work of Victor Solomon revolves around basketball, with basketball not just being the object in his art but a complete sport in itself. According to Victor, he sourced his inspiration from his childhood wish to play hockey but couldn’t access the requirements for it. Then he discovered basketball and thought it was a good fit for him. He says, “Basketball was such an inspirational platform for me since there’s no barrier to entry.” He further says that the openness of basketball is an “incredible parallel for everything that’s happening in web3.” Further, they discussed bridging the gap between Digital spaces and real life. He said that the “invigorating” nature of creating fantasy in real life is like a “planet inside a hollow basketball”; It requires processing different physical elements into composite and digital rendering.

He said building a community, and a collection was a second priority. His experience in the traditional art world gifted him the same structure and insights for releasing digital collectibles. He added that the NFT marketplace is contrary to showing pieces of physical installations in an art gallery. It offers participants, collectors, and buyers a broader and larger say as feedback on the work rather than a one-time experience. Soloman said he does not shy away from taking considerations of the community; rather, he embraces the decentralized aspects of unlocking and building a community in web3. He says, “what attracts me as a founder is unlocking that opportunity for everyone to be able to have a voice.“

When asked about the challenges of building a community in web3, he said that the biggest challenge lies in educating the market segments that may have had a negative image of the NFT and Crypto market. He said that the segment mostly had a bad experience with digital assets.

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