Netflix Founder Joins NFT Photo Platform Cheeze, Inc.

Cheeze, Inc. has announced that Netflix
NFLX
co-founder Marc Randolph is joining its board of directors. The news follows a second seed round that was launched by Cheeze last month in which Randolph continued his investment from the firm’s initial seed round led by Olive Tree Capital.

“I am very excited about joining the Cheeze, Inc. board. The team Simon (Hudson, Cheeze CEO and Founder) is building is really impressive, and I am excited to see the progress they make,” Randolph said.

The platform brings photography to the blockchain through the launch of NFT photo galleries. It enables anyone to purchase a photo gallery on its platform and lease out the space to photographers who want to showcase their collections.

The aim is to change the creator economy. by giving creators complete control over their work, the narrative, and how it is monetized.

Cheeze built its platform on the FLOW blockchain, where there are no gas fees for minting. Therefore, photographers can mint NFTs on Cheeze for free.

The platform wants to change the structure of how photographers share their images with the world.

Simon Hudson, CEO and founder at Cheeze, said about the concept, “The ultimate idea is that you want to capture those moments and memories when you’re sharing photography with people.”

“Each photo has a lot of metadata, but that can easily get lost. So, we want to bring the photography, negatives, and metadata to the blockchain, meaning that you’re capturing a moment in time and always looking back and seeing it,”

The global photographic services market grew from $33 billion in 2020 to nearly $39 billion in 2021. It could grow to just under $43 billion by the end of this year. According to Yahoo Finance, the NFT market is expected to increase by 52% from last year’s $14 billion to $21.3 billion this year.

“Simon and his team have also shown that they are focused on providing true utility to people looking to bring their work to Web 3.0, and in an NFT environment where style seems to trump substance, this is a recipe for long term success,” Randolph said.

He continued, “I’m very excited to be a part of this adventure and have a front-row seat as Cheeze figures out what this new world of Web 3.0 can provide.”

Key insight

NFT expert and marketing growth consultant, Jose Colmenares, has predicted a future where Web3 concepts would disrupt modern-day industries for several years.

Colmenares is the co-founder of Ups Future with Javier Romero (aka Javier Hala Madrid), a club where members can get access to exclusive investment information regarding trending startups, NFTs, and metaverse projects, so they can make educated decisions when investing.

All of this is focused on the Hispanic market, and therefore introduces a bilingual platform to help decentralize a sector that is becoming heavily English-centric.

“After careful research, we realized there is little to no information about potential investment opportunities and involvement in the metaverse, start-ups, NFTs, in Spanish,” Colmenares said.

“That’s why Ups Future is so unique. We want to reach those communities that, due to a language barrier, have not been involved in the exciting blockchain-related market.”

On the current condition of the market, he remained optimistic and confident, as in his opinion the technology is proven and growing. He blamed the inflation that is engulfing many countries as a reason for the market’s recent decline.

“I learnt very early on to not be afraid of what you don’t know or don’t understand. When you enter a space that has constantly been under attack by a diversity of financial institutions and others, it’s very easy for a project to fail,” says Colmenares.

“That’s the reason we want to make this all easy to understand to help bring it to the masses. There always were, and there always will be, people who refuse to embrace the future and technology. We hope we can be partially involved in keeping that from happening.”

On the Cheeze platform and further innovation in the industry, Colmenares previewed a time when more and more people will adapt toward Web3 to pursue a better and more efficient way of doing things.

“It’s a matter of time until most things including movies, songs, etc are ‘tokenized’”, he said. “We believe in the future the transaction will go from creators/producers straight to the end consumer. A real P2P transaction that could potentially impact streaming platforms and channels alike.”

“Cheeze allows for more transparency, a clean record through blockchain, and an advanced way on how people can share photos. Ultimately it’s allowing photographers, both casual and professional to bring their work to the blockchain.”

“Every industry has this opportunity, to vault themselves into using web3 to streamline their business and make it more efficient, it’s great that Cheeze is doing that for photography.”

Blockchain technology on Cheeze securely stores metadata such as time, location, date, creator, image size, ISO speed, and focal length. Meaning the data cannot be deleted or altered.

The platform will also be available on iOS and Android to enable ease of access for people taking pictures on their smartphones.