In the Project Spotlight series, we interview projects developing on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Previously, we shared interviews with many projects including Tenderly, Defistation, PARSIQ, Injective Protocol, Mirror Protocol, BunnyPark, MOBOX, and Covalent. The next in the queue is Cybertino!
Spotlight on Cybertino
IMPORTANT: Please note the following content does not constitute an endorsement or approval of any of the products or services of the project, organization, or individual.
What is your core business, can you expand on your business strategy to those unfamiliar with your project?
Cybertino: Cybertino is the world’s 1st interactive NFT marketplace for influencers and their fans. On our platform, users can create, own, and play with virtual assets, enabling creators to connect with their communities through NFTs.
Our vision and roadmap look like this:
By the end of July, we’ll sign more top influencers with more than 200 million followers in total and we’ll announce our first round of influencers signing on media. At the same time, the following three features will all go live: 1. NFT factory smart contract 2. Cybertino.com as a NFT marketplace, and 3. Cybertinolab.com as the host of the developer docs to integrate our NFTs. By the end of summer, our goal is to launch 30+ influencers’ NFT and reach 500k+ active users/ NFT owners.
In Q3, we will launch the “Create Your own 3d Avatar” feature for all users, as well as the first NFTs social app ( Fashion show, Clubbing with influencers, and more) . Ultimately, we aim to create a developer-friendly community with a set of powerful virtual identity SDKs like 3D avatar creation, customization, and games and other applications integrating the 3D avatar.
Our mission in the short term is to build the first NFT platform that has true mass adoption and in the long run, is to build a universal virtual identity account system as the infrastructure of the upcoming metaverse.
Cybertino Roadmap
When was the idea behind Cybertino born, and what led to it?
Cybertino: The idea was born at the beginning of 2021, as we see DeFi was taking the ride to more applications, and we expect NFT would be the very next big thing in the crypto industry. So we started gathering the previous founding team for DLive.TV that was acquired by TRON by late 2019, and started cooking the idea.
We saw that current platforms do not satisfy either influencers’ or fans’ needs.
First, the existing celebrities-fans relationship is single-directional, as fans can only buy the ready-made swags that are offered in celebrities’ official stores. Moreover, it is arbitraged by the centralized social media platforms, as fans need to pay the fan-club membership fees to the social platforms (e.g. Weibo) that act as the organizing layer.
Second, the current NFT platforms are not best made for influencers to engage their fans.
Most influencers are not artists, and they may not be able to create high-quality NFT art pieces consistently. The value of the influencer NFT, therefore, lies more in their own influence instead of the NFT’s appeal.
Also, influencers have different needs than most NFT artists. They desire strong community engagement with their fans. Current NFT marketplaces cannot satisfy their goals of community-building, interaction, and recognition of die-hard fans.
We aim to be the solution.
Can you tell us more about your team’s background and introduce the core members?
Cybertino: Our team for Cybertino is made up of the same core personnel who created Dlive TV a few years ago, which secured $20 million of investment led by Zhen Fund at the end of 2017, at a valuation of approximately $120 million. DLive.tv long ranked 1st in Dapp Review platforms and it had 30 million active monthly users at its peak months. BitTorrent made an acquisition of DLive and our team successfully exited. The same team then started Cybertino, and additionally, we brought on a CMO, who is the CEO of the managing company where Pewdiepie, the most popular influencer on Youtube was. He’s been able to bring many top IPs with him to Cybertino.
What are the main advantages of Cybertino for the user, compared to a similar project from a mainstream financial market?
Cybertino: Per the existing problems we identified with the fan-influencer relationship and unsatisfied needs (see the answer to question 2 above) Cybertino provides targeted solutions, in the following ways:
1. NFT Co-creation
On Cybertino, fans can participate in the drafting process, and co-create NFTs with their favorite influencers. Fans can also suggest and vote for what NFTs they would like to collect next.
2. Interactive NFTs
We are introducing the world’s first interactive NFT that can contain a special layer to store upgradable voice messages, text messages, or signatures (e.g. Autographs). Influencers can intimately engage with fans by updating new messages into this layer. Only those NFT holders will be able to receive the exclusive messages.
3. Built-in revenue share system and royalty payment
A royalty payment will be charged on any NFT resale. We will develop a built-in revenue share system to fairly reward the fans and artists who co-create NFTs with influencers. Influencers can decide how they want to allocate the royalty to reward contributors.
4. Recognize top collectors and contributors
The most active fans and top contributors will be displayed on the influencers’ home pages and will be easily recognized by influencers.
What is your security strategy? How do you keep your users safe?
Cybertino: As a semi-centralized NFT marketplace, Cybertino aims at the massive adoption and lowering the barrier for non-crypto users. We pay special attention to the security aspect since we are storing NFTs for our users. We require 2FA (Email code verification) for each user at the time of login. We have a security solution for storing NFTs of industry standards based on our custodial experience of holding user’s blockchain assets on DLive (Cybertino team is also the team behind DLive).
Let’s say I want to use Cybertino. Where do I start? Where can I find some how-to guides?
Cybertino: Our information website is Cybertinolab.com. You can find all project intros and how-to guides there. Our official NFT marketplace will be found on Cybertino.com.
Why did you decide to build on the Binance Smart Chain?
Cybertino: We believe that the community of users on the Binance Smart Chain are highly compatible with our project, and would find our project appealing. We hope to invite more users to our platform, and at the same time provide first access to the BSC community, to interesting NFTs (great for fun and for yield) launched by top influencers on our platform.
What do you hope to see next from the BSC community?
Cybertino: We have already launched the BSC X Cybertino collection of NFTs, which we will introduce in more detail in our AMA with the Cybertino community. We hope to see active engagement from the BSC community with our platform and our products. We believe that the BSC community will not only be among the first and most active users on our platform; but together, we can also explore more ways of interaction within our merged communities.
What do you see as the main challenge for the future of DeFi?
Cybertino: Regulations from governments (including but may not be limited to China and the US) may stagnant the development and adoption of Defi. Trading and investments may be limited in those markets. However, we believe that the overall growth and mainstream popularization of Defi is an unstoppable trend.
Where do you see DeFi and BSC in five years?
Cybertino: In five years, we envision that Defi will be adopted as not only a mainstream investment method but also one of the default ways of trading. The ecosystem will get increasingly enriched, with top talents and projects affluent in the space, as participants and leaders.
BSC, we believe, will be a mainstream platform where people trade and participate in Defi projects, conduct their daily financial activities, as well as one of the largest, high-engagement communities in the DeFi space.
