Nft, the startup that uses them to help photographers sell their shots

Nft

"Photographs are probably the digital object that has the greatest exploitation online and at the same time the greatest problems of certain identification. In short, the one who most needs to be able to become nft ". This is how Davide Dellacasa explains why Metabrand decided to start offering a photo transformation and archiving service in NFT. The diffusion of photographs covered by copyright, after the classic Far West phase of the beginnings, has for years been in the hands of some large subjects who buy the right to negotiate the sale of journalistic and non-journalistic photographic material, and also deal with control uses and abuses of that material. Using nft could allow you to have unequivocal proof of ownership of that file. It is a procedure that photographers can also perform independently. Metabrand, however, offers to manage all the technical aspects and provide a simpler interface for management and archiving.

Davide Dellacasa founded the company after a life in multimedia publishing (but above all online) for, in his words, “to make a truly useful use of the blockchain, the great old dream of the internet: to try to open services as much as possible and not close them”. With him are the co-founders Silvia Saba, formerly part of the publishing and digital marketing company Brad & K, Gianluca Landone, former manager at Disney from 1998 to 2020 and Mentor of the Polihub accelerator, and Fabio Lecca, founder of Araneum Group srl, software consulting company, since 2018 is a member of the group of blockchain experts of the former ministry of economic development, today of companies and made in Italy. Besides them, Metabrand currently has three collaborators.

Photo certified by Metabrand

When the current beta phase is over, having a photo certified will cost a maximum of one euro. Metabrand coins the nft and makes available to the photographer the certificate that joins the photo to the information that the same photographer has previously entered (authorship, place of shooting, date, who is portrayed ...), in addition it publishes the photo with the watermark above and takes care of applying the exploitation rights set for that specific image. However, the goal is not only this, as the founder explains: "In the future we also want to support the management of the sale and monetization of the photos, also because those who do it today in many cases have revealed themselves to be a copyright troll, but it is clear that in order to get there, an ecosystem must develop that makes more and more use of the blockchain ".

It is a type of business and recording that can be applied not only to photos but to text documents, videos or any another type of information that online is at risk of duplication, however Metabrand starts from the photographs, says the founder, "because it is a world we already belong to with our publishing company that also works as an agency, moreover the images are a simple content from which to start, sufficiently small and immediately identifiable ".

Photo certified by Metabrand

The advantage over large photo agencies such as Getty or Alamy is that despite Meta brand takes care of the registration and can act as a personal archive, it is actually the photographer who owns the nft and has all the data to claim paternity. In short, it can detach itself from the use of Metabrand at any time. "We are not the ones who certify the existence and ownership of the photo but the blockchain and immediately you have your certificate, which is there and continues to exist even if we disappear tomorrow. What we do is simplify the procedures, you don't even have to have your own wallet, we use ours if you don't specify yours, freeing you from the need to own one ", says Dellacasa.

The reference blockchain of Metabrand is Algorand, “created by Silvio Micali, winner of the Turing Prize, who teaches at MIT”, remembers the founder, and is one of the most sustainable because one of those that consumes the least energy (ie fine gas) and is the safest. Metabrand relies on it for all its blockchain operations, i.e. consultancy services for other companies and a marketplace service, currently under development, which aims to function as an entry level for the NFT world.