Ink Mints Digital Signatures for Artists, Beginning With Lexi Jayde

Ink, a startup that makes use of blockchain to authenticate digital signatures, has introduced the launch of its operations and its first artist partnership: Lexi Jayde.

After elevating a pre-seed spherical of $1.5 million from buyers like Sound Ventures (Man Oseary and Ashton Kutcher), Mark Cuban, Betaworks Ventures, Lupa Methods and extra, Ink founder and longtime web3 entrepreneur Max Brody hopes his firm might help followers create significant, lasting experiences with their favourite artist by making a protocol for digital signatures on virtually something a fan might need signed.

To Ink, the idea is straightforward: there are few issues universally cherished from followers like getting an autograph from a favourite movie star. Not like different merchandise peddled by public figures, created in bulk portions and bought at exorbitant charges, an autograph is a singular treasure, one of many few issues you’ll be able to have that’s private and distinctive to your copy. Penmanship wavers barely from signing to signing, and the autograph turns into a personalised momento of your connection to the artist. Ink’s digital signatures are simply the identical, plus some added options, together with animated autographs in order that followers can watch precisely how their artist signed their title.

Ink’s mannequin goals to sort out among the trepidation with NFTs and web3 general for a lot of followers and to make the digital signature expertise as seamless as attainable. To purchase, there’s no cryptowallet required — prospects will pay with a debit or bank card. Additionally, maybe most significantly, the signatures are reasonably priced, sometimes within the ballpark of $50 a pop and bought in restricted portions.

Although the corporate is simply at its starting levels, finally, Ink additionally has bodily activations within the works, accessible subsequent to merchandise cubicles at concert events, festivals and extra, however for now, with the launch of Jayde’s choices, followers can purchase a signature from her on-line on the corporate’s web site.

The founder notes he selected Jayde as his first accomplice for the announcement as a result of he desires Ink to be a “model of the following period…Lexi is an ideal image of that — an artist that’s rising quick and a brand new determine of the following wave of music.” It’s additionally a intelligent option to get in with fanbases early, establishing digital Ink autographs because the norm from the beginning of an artist’s profession.  As a result of followers can get any screenshot or picture signed — like, say, a picture of Lexi Jayde’s present Spotify month-to-month listenership — Brody means that Ink can be utilized as a option to “put your flag within the sand, as a fan, to show that you simply have been there early on.”

Although the idea is straightforward, Brody argues “you couldn’t do an genuine digital autograph pre-blockchain.” As a result of this rising expertise offers followers with a real assure of an Ink’s “one among one-ness — the [characteristic] that’s already baked into folks’s minds when they give thought to bodily autographs.”

Focusing on rising musical expertise, nonetheless, is just the start for Ink. The workforce hopes to take the idea to all kinds of public figures, together with athletes, actors, influencers and extra. “We’re trying to accomplice with essentially the most genuine creators of the following era as Ink turns into some of the iconic web3 manufacturers on the earth,” says Brody.