Kbean® – An open and secure marketplace for digital arts

After the unsettling popularity of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, the latest hype is about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). An NFT represents a digital asset like art, music, in-game items, and videos that exist on the Blockchain and cannot be stolen or pirated by anyone. The importance of NFTs lies in providing the ability to securely value, purchase, and exchange digital art using a digital ledger.

Kbean^® is an open and transparent marketplace dedicated to rights-managed digital art and affordable pricing through MicroNFT™. It allows you to buy MicroNFT™ and enjoy art at affordable prices. We had an interview with the executives at Kbean^® to know more about their products and services. Here are a few excerpts of the interview:

Q. What motivated you to develop a marketplace for digital arts?

Art is one of the rare forms that humans can produce and appreciate. Unfortunately, it has been a relatively closed industry for both artists and buyers for many years. With the rapid transformation of technology, the digital medium became a popular form for artists to create their messages and for consumers to consume. Yet, lack of digital right management has been a significant challenge for the digital arts, or any digital media of artistic creations for that matter, including monetization opportunity, authenticity, provenance, mobility, and information transparency. We were motivated to solve this problem and created an open and transparent marketplace.

Q. What is the impact of digital innovation on museums and art galleries?

The traditional role of museums and art galleries may fade out, but significantly different and innovative opportunities wait for them. Digital innovation has pushed the traditional boundary of the art, enabled mobility and virtual experience for consumers, lowered the barrier for emerging artists to enter the market, and enabled the artist to reach a broad audience via social media. With that said, those forward-looking museums and galleries have advantages to take over critical roles in the emerging digital art ecosystems, such as large-scale experience, expert validation, and proof of authority. Let’s put it this way. Your home theater still cannot beat the 3D IMAX movie experience. Well, at least not yet.

Delineate Kbean’s innovative technological platform and its significance.

Imagine you can have a large digital art collection at an affordable price which can help you turn your place into your own art gallery. That’s Kbean^®! There has been much news about NFT, Blockchain, and Crypto coins. And artists and consumers have been struggling to figure what these all mean to them. Kbean^® platform seamlessly integrated layers of technology into a simple marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and trade digital arts in fractions through Kbean’s MicroNFT^™, a Blockchain-based solution that securely manages the digital rights of the artists and the buyers. As a result, we offer affordability, streaming service, trading service, and continuous monetization opportunity.

Q. What are the advantages of the Kbean^® platform compared to a traditional buy-and-sell art gallery?

Traditional art transaction, whether done through online or physical, does not natively offer fractional ownership, transactional provenance, nor digital rights that are tied to every purchase transaction. Especially if the art is a physical item, custodial logistics and security are expensive enough that one cannot afford to enjoy. Kbean^® platform is a digital native and democratized through public Blockchain. Through our platform, artists can secure their arts and create a basket of MicroNFT^™, like shares of a company, to maximize their earning potential. The buyers are benefited from unprecedented affordability, transparency in art provenance, mobility to enjoy the art, and the best of all earning potential by re-trade.

Q. Where do you stand in the market today? What is your customer base?

We successfully integrated and launched all application suites in April 2021, including mobile applications, TV applications, dApp on Ethereum Blockchain, and web interface. So, we stand on the bleeding edge of innovation to disrupt and transform one of the oldest and most closed industries. 2021 has been good timing for us as NFT and Blockchain have gained a lot of popularity. Regarding our customer base, our solution would be perfect for anyone who wants a mobile art gallery on-demand with their own art collection. You don’t need to have a large space to keep them nor budget to refresh them as your mood changes. On the flip side, our marketplace platform serves the artists’ community who seeks a seamless DIY channel to monetize their creative works.

Q. What do you feel are the reasons behind your company’s success?

We are bridging the gap between physical arts in the traditional context and creative digital works available in social media. Like music and books, we believe art and any creative work for that matter would follow the digital transformation path with creators’ rights being secured. That is what we have figured out for digital art in the most democratized way. First, we offer unprecedented affordability of the art through microNFT™. Any one who loves art could purchase and build their digital art collection. Second, we make the customer’s process super simple and easy. For example, the process to securely register the art using the Blockchain and steps required to sell and buy

digital art without a complex crypto technology setup. Finally, we continually strive to provide various digital ways for consumers to enjoy their collection such as streaming to TV, augmented or virtual reality. One of the new emerging digital experiences that we are currently working on is a gateway between the metaverse and reality.

Q. Digital marketplace for artwork requires lots of creative and innovative thinking. How do you maintain efficiency in your service?

If Matt Damon from the movie “The Martian” could survive on Mars by innovatively repurposing his own humanure, I am sure we can figure out the efficiency challenges in this volatile and rapidly evolving technology. Collaboration and integration with other solution providers have been the key to our efficient and sustainable growth. For example, we chose to be a team player within the overall Blockchain ecosystem instead of a centralized service provider to solve security and tokenization of art.

Q. You mentioned MicroNFT™ a few times. What exactly is that?

MicroNFT^™ is Kbean’s innovative fungible crypto tokens that were born under NFTs. In some way, it is a hybrid. Through MicroNFT^™, artists can issue their own basket of tokens for sales, and consumers can enjoy flexible and diverse pricing that never existed before.

Joonho Lee (General Partner)

Joonho Lee has been an innovative and strategic leader for 20 years, who has played a leading role in developing and transforming technology, data management & analytics, and Cybersecurity for the financial industry, including U.S. Central Bank. Lee is uniquely capable of driving strategy, development, and cross-functional leadership for digital transformation with regulatory & compliance perspectives. He is the inventor of various patents, including mobile device protection and secure web payment, a predecessor technology to Blockchain.

Meet the key people of interest

Jaime Boyaca (CTO)

As an industry leader, mentor, innovator, and pioneer, Jaime Boyaca has built technology businesses from the ground up since the mid-90s. With over 25 years of product and management experience with cross-functional teams as small as two and as big as 200+, Jaime enjoys the challenge of building success through strong decisions, collaborative innovation, learning from mistakes, and finding the advantage in adversity.

Kiyoung (Kate) Nam (COO)

Kate has been a strategic business leader for 20 years in art, design, home and living product industries. She has proven track records in new business development, transformation, and organizational leadership. She is an experienced professional working with multinational global stakeholders applying emerging technology solutions to strategic consumer product lines. Kate is also a passionate artist and curator connecting traditional Asian art to wester living and digital technology.

Kbean^® is a pioneer of a gateway between the metaverse and reality.