The Soho House Of Web3 Launches In Paris And Everyone’s Invited

Welcome to NFT Factory, a three-story physical space just installed in prime position, directly opposite the cultural hub that is Paris’ Pompidou Center.

The brainchild of John Karp—entrepreneur behind the annual Non Fungible Conference (NFC) and hackathon.com—and Ledger Chief of Staff Jean-Michel Pailhon, CEO is Lucie-Eleonore Riveron co-founder of French auction house Fauve-Paris who spearheaded France’s first public NFT art auction in March.

“It’s a Soho House for Web3,” quips Karp.

A collective of 128 founding members have invested in the project and include leaders in tech, finance, gaming and fashion, across companies such as Allianz Accelerator, Arianee, BNV, Exclusible, LaCollection, Ethereum France, Galeries Lafayette Group, Ledger, RTFKT Studios, The Sandbox and Sorare.

NFT Factory officially launches October 22 with a public NFT art exhibition of works owned by its founding members and curated by Benoît Couty founder of MoCA, the Museum of Crypto Art. The ground level gallery space will also host discovery workshops from setting up a wallet to minting an NFT. Experts will be on hand to answer questions in similar vein to an Apple ‘genius bar’.

The lower ground floor will be an education and training space and there will also be seminars, debates and artist residencies. First floor will house an investors’ club—a meeting and co-working space for members.

The goal is to educate the general public, connect the NFT community and build the French Web3 ecosystem through support of emerging projects and start-ups.

“The endgame is 40 million wallets,” says Karp. In France alone. “Web3 is the next industrial revolution and it’s a gamechanger. Tomorrow we will have new worldwide leaders. NFT Factory will become a launchpad for these new projects.” Soho House meets Station-F.

NFTs are blockchain based smart contracts and, as such, provide major benefits both for brands and consumers alike. For NFT Factory founding member and Arianee CEO Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel, they offer an opportunity for brands to build direct to consumer digital relationships through the distribution of tokens—infinitely preferable to models currently in play.

Arianee is a specialist in web3 solutions including the certification of digital products— creating digital passports for goods. via its open source protocol. It has partnered with Richemont, The Sandbox and brands such as Breitling, YSL Beauty and, most recently, Moncler.

“Even Ledger has been hacked. People don’t want to share their email addresses so they do guest checkout and use tools like Apple sign-on so access to first party data is harder and harder,” says Hurstel, adding that “an Instagram post organically touches only 5% of your followers if you don’t pay.”

“In six to eight years there will be a billion users with wallets. You will connect your wallet to a website instead of opening an account,” he continues. “Token drops will replace requests for email data or social media follows.”

NFTs cut out the middle man as wallets are anonymous and decentralized, allowing consumers to control their data, only sharing the information they choose to disseminate. So evidently, that consumer is much more willing to engage without the fear of data breaches.

In 2023, the NFT Factory will launch its own Web3 enabled digital space with a minting platform and NFT marketplace.

Thanks to the fortuitous location, the NFT Factory’s art exhibition alone—everything from Cryptopunk and Bored Ape Club PFPs to Albertine Meunier’s “NFT Stands for Nakamoto Female Touch” (a reference to Satoshi Nakamoto the pseudonym of Bitcoin’s purported founder) and Pascal Boyart’s “Underground Sistine Chapel”—is sure to engage the culturally curious.

“I believe that art is an easy way to introduce something more complex. It’s universal and talks to everybody,” says Karp.

Art is a gateway Art talks to everybody

Its universal everyone can have an opinion and connect

The NFT Factory’s art is curated by MoCA’s Benoît Couty

On show at the exhibition is NFT artwork…

In 2023 NFT Factory will launch a dedicated Web3 website with a mint and NFT purchase platform.

The first discovery workshop you choose to attend will be free and subsequent ones will be priced at €59. Public events will take place every Thursday such as a round table on crypto art, a crypto comedy club a debates on regulation and entrepreneurship. More in-depth training courses will also be available at €299 both for individuals and companies.

crypto.com moved to Paris

La bourse de cryptomonnaies basée à Singapour invest €150 million in France to support the establishment of its market operations, including a regional headquarters in Paris.

Neither of them have pools but at NFT Factory it might be a bit easier to attract the attention of the staff