NFTify is a multi-chain platform that enables anyone to create their own fully functional NFT marketplace in just a few minutes, without coding or upfront cost required. Join Jeff Kelley and Josh Kriger as they speak with the founder of NFTify, Nikita Nguyen. Nikita is a driven and proven technology entrepreneur with comprehensive accomplishments leading in global business development and partnerships. The crew deliver a solid conversation that reveals Nikita’s customer-focused agile development methodology delivered by a powerful team. Before they wrap, we dive into Nikita’s personal perspective and learn about her unique past, present and future as a driven developer who comes from humble beginnings and entertains gigantic, inspiring ambitions. All this and more in this excellent session!
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Nikita Nguyen Of NFTify On Delivering The Easy Button For Creating NFT Marketplaces
Check out this episode to learn how our guest has delivered an easy button for creating NFT marketplaces.
How Polygon has provided inspiration for setting and crushing big goals at NFTify.
Why a Navy SEAL training might end up on our guest’s bucket lists. All this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
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This episode features Nikita Nguyen, Cofounder and CEO of NFTify, a multi-chain platform that enables anyone to create their own fully functional NFT marketplace in a few minutes without coding or upfront costs required. The platform is one of, if not the first platform to lower the barrier for everyone to take full ownership of their NFTs.
Nikita is a driven and proven technology entrepreneur with comprehensive accomplishments, leading global business development and partnership. She is an impact player and proven leader in the IT industry, blockchain and venture capital. Besides leading NFTify, she has been spending a significant amount of time incubating and accelerating blockchain startups around the world. Nikita, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m not sure who wrote it or said that about me, but that sounds like a lot.
We are trying to deliver on your background as authentically as we can. We’re very fortunate to have you here on the show.
It’s been great getting to know you in this space and seeing you at all the different events and learning a little bit more about you. For the benefit of our readers, let’s start from the very beginning. What’s the origin story of NFTify? How did you decide to take things in this direction?
I get this question a lot. First of all, I’ve been in IT for my whole career for several years. I started my own blockchain service development company in Vietnam with two other cofounders back in 2016. We have delivered a lot of blockchain applications for startups all over the world, over 100. In the last few years, we started to see a lot of demand in developing the NFT marketplace, NFT auction platform and all things NFTs.
We started to run out of resources even though we have over 160 blockchain developers in Hanoi now. However, we feel like we can’t answer all demands in blockchain development. That’s how we came up with an idea of what if we create a platform so that people don’t need to do a single line of code anymore, but they will have the NFT marketplace that is totally customizable within minutes. That is the origin story of how we came up with the idea of NFTify.
NFT Marketplace: What if you could use a platform where you don’t need to do a single line of code anymore and your NFT marketplace is going to be totally customizable? That platform is called NFTify.
Companies cannot hire developers fast enough and scale fast enough to deal with all the demand. We’re at this amazing point of Web 3.0 convergence where people now understand the power of NFTs, but how do you harness all that power in an easy way? It’s exciting what you’re doing to contribute to the space.
Let’s go deeper on that front. Let’s talk a little bit about what NFTify is more precisely in terms of features and functions. For our audience, it’s unfamiliar. What should they expect if they utilize the platform?
Even though I don’t like to say this anymore, the best and easiest way for people to understand NFTify is that we are the Shopify of the NFTs. It means we provide a ready-to-go platform. Anyone without any technical knowledge can create their own NFT storefront without coding. If you are a retail seller, you want to have your own eCommerce storefront, then you go to Shopify or eBay or some other platforms to do that. We are that of the NFT space. Shopify nowadays is catching up on the NFT space and launching its beta program. I personally don’t like to integrate their name into our platform anymore but that’s the best way to describe us.
It’s a great way to do it and I totally understood. There is something to be said for building something from the ground up with crypto blockchain NFTs in mind. There’s something special about that. We realize building anything is a challenge. There are roadblocks and scaling issues that you run into and all of that, but fundamentally building it with blockchain in mind is something special. Those succeed will ultimately eclipse the size of the Shopifys in the world. As far as the tools are concerned, you have a few things that I wanted to elevate in there. You have all the basics that people would expect. You can integrate with Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, import NFT collections from other marketplaces and the transaction fee was 2.5%?
Yes. It’s been a journey for us since day one, with a team of over twenty developers for this platform only in Vietnam. We have consistently released a few new features every two weeks, including the most basic features from how to sign up. I got feedback from our users on Twitter almost every day that it takes them from 10 to 15 minutes to create an NFT storefront and get it ready to go.
We’re not talking about creating one NFT. We’re talking about creating an entire store for NFTs.
Yes. That’s the most basic feature. They need to create with their own email address and customize. The platform is fully customizable from the IP domain. We don’t force users to use our domain, NFTify.network, but they can customize. It may be a good idea for you to have the Edge of NFT store on us. It can be EdgeofNFT.io or whatever you want to name it.
We love co-creating and are definitely going to look at what you’re doing.
It’s completely free. You will customize the theme. We are trying to increase a lot of different things. People will be free in their creativity of how they want their storefront to look like, display the items, all the collections, best-sellers or anything. We integrated the platform with some marketing tools because, at the end of the day, we charge only 2.5% for every successful transaction. That means if they don’t sell at all, we don’t make any money.
Clearly, you’ve gone through this customer discovery journey that you’ve learned over the years of building software to try to figure out what’s working and not in the space. I think it’s an interesting time for you to launch something like this because we have this full year of data around what people have experienced. The question on my mind, which is a question we’ve asked when we’re looking at different solutions for Edge of NFT, is, what about the multi-chain support? What are the features around that? How do you help users decide what chains or combination chains to use for their projects?
We are supporting three chains, Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain. Integrating with other chains like Terra, Cosmos, Harmony and some other chains that are willing to partner with us is also in a development plan. We are letting our users make their own choice of which chain they want to use instead of forcing them to use some specific ones like some other platforms. One of the most important factors in this is the gas fees on the chain. A lot of our users have chosen Polygon and Binance Smart Chain to launch their own store and we don’t limit the number of stores they can launch and which chain they launch on under one account.
A clarifying question, have folks asked you to launch on multiple chains or is that capability is something that matters to you? Is it more focused? You pick a chain and then people can move their NFTs to another chain if they want. What’s been your experience with what that should look like? What’s that functionality now?
NFTify is the Shopify of NFTs. Click To Tweet
Even though you create a store on, for example, Ethereum, and you want your NFTs also on some other chains, you will still have to create another store on another chain. However, we have received feedback from our 6,000 users if they could bridge the NFTs from one chain to another like you breach any other ERC-20 token now. Technically, it’s the same thing. It’s very feasible. We are already working on that feature to create a bridge for people to bridge the NFTs from one chain to another.
You guys are on it. I love the agile development process you’re taking.
We do have our backbone development roadmap. We still want to focus on making this platform a very low barrier entry for anyone without technical expertise and money to try and build their own NFT business. That’s still our main focus, but to make it successful for more and more people, we are very flexible on adding more features and listening to our users to see how they think of the features, as well as, what if we have some new features and how that will help them in their business.
There are many ways. We talked about this all the time that when the internet took hold and websites first started forming, you had to get a consultant to help you build the website and not everybody had one. There are plenty of businesses that didn’t have one. People would look at you like you’re a crazy person if you didn’t have a website and had a customer or a business-facing operation these days, 100%.
It’s amazing that even though NFTs have been around here a few years but with it coming into the public consciousness in a big way in 2021, how quickly we’re at a spot where brands, public personalities, companies should have some NFT strategy if they were smart about how to think proactively about their roadmap. This tool overall seems like it’s a no-brainer for so many people to launch even a basic presence in the world of NFTs.
You mentioned it, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper. When somebody does come in to build their marketplace, how can they craft and make it their own? I would love to know more about those features. You mentioned backgrounds and other things. What should folks expect when they go in there to put their stamp, unique brand and vision behind the design?
From the look of the front page, for example, when you go ahead and create Edge of NFT marketplace, you use your email address, first of all, to register an account with us. It will take you to a setting page where you can customize from the header if you want to use your logo, whatever logo you want to use, your slogan or a sentence that you want your visitors, buyers or collaborators to read.
The body you can organize in different categories and collections. For example, you are in sports and there are so many different sports. You can have basketball, baseball, soccer, football and in those different categories, you have different NFTs. You can organize and sort it in the best collection, newest collection, best sellers and things like that.
You can customize your contact address and information. That’s the front page. You’ll be able to customize your theme too. There are different available themes that you can use. In the future, we’ll have more and more APIs so that you have more options in designing your own stores. If they are even like a million users out there, they will have a million different looks.
If you go to check it out for our readers, you can poke around some of the other stores that are on there and see how robust it is. There’s a simplicity to it that can help you get up and running very quickly, but there’s a series of options that allows you to make it your own. That’s the best of both worlds. It’s an easy button for launching your marketplace.
Those are the most basic features. Besides that, you’re able to customize your own IP domain, EdgeOfNFT.io, .com or whatever. Even if you decide on one domain, you purchase it, but in the future, your business pivots and want to change it. You will also be able to change it. I think one of the coolest customizations that we released is a custom token. I think that we are the platform that allows the most payment methods out there right now. People are able to do a transaction in Ethereum, Binance coin, stablecoins, our N1 token, but nowadays, projects are even able to use their own custom token. For example, if one day you guys decide to launch your own token, you will also be able to integrate your own token as a payment method in your store.
NFT Marketplace: NFTify are letting their own users make their own choice of which chain they want to use. They don’t want to force them to use a specific one like some other platforms out there.
There could be something like that in the works. You never know what a roadmap looks like.
This is fun and it makes me think about other possibilities down the road in terms of what you got cooking. I’m thinking about Fiat payment integration, the metaverse side of things and some of the more traditional eCommerce features like discount codes and subscriptions. Is that on the roadmap as well? How does all that fit in?
All of what the users are talking about are on our roadmap to make it as easy as possible for anyone. To use the platform however they want is our utmost purpose and mission in building this platform. Even now, when you create an account and create your store, you’ll receive payment in cryptocurrency. We will still need to connect to a MetaMask account. That is a simple and familiar process to a lot of crypto users, crypto savvy people, however, it’s still something that requires some time to learn, figure out for non-crypto users.
From that simple step, we try to change, together with integration with Fiat payment, as well as making the minting process easier. A lot of people still don’t understand what minting and NFT mean. It’s like, “I uploaded my content on the platform, but has it been minted yet? How do I know it’s minted? What is minting? What do I need? Do I need to pay any fees?”
We have to go through a lot of that questions. Especially, I think for artists, for people who are not blockchain engineers, they have tons of questions like that. For example, we have people in the music industry who asked me, “Do you know of TuneCore?” If you are a musician or a composer, you must know that. It’s a portal that makes the process of uploading a song to a lot of different platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and all the other platforms.
It’s so simple. Upload your song and you’re done. The next day, your song is already on all those platforms. We want to make it that easy for them. You are integrating with Fiat payments and making the minting and payment process, collaborating with other users, getting your project out there to communities and all of that easier and easier.
What’s the physical merchandise side of all this?
For the physical merchandise, we do have some users that are interested. We do also have requests for having the physical address for buyers when they purchase NFTs, so it will become an automatic process for stores that in the future want to tie their NFTs into physical items.
We’re in such need of this. I feel like we’ve been down at Art Basel here that there’s been an explosion of creativity, in particular, around the realm of digital art and digital creation. As people start to see a path toward monetization for these things, they’re spending more time doing it, and that’s so amazing. This is a critical piece of the infrastructure you’re building and have already built, so kudos.
It sounds like an amazing product. I’m excited to jump in there and build out our own marketplace. Obviously, there are thousands of amazing projects out there doing amazing things and changing the game here for everything and anything in NFTs. I’m wondering, for you, what other projects do you look to for inspiration or people in the space that inspire what you’re working on, your roadmap and how you’d like to see things go with NFTify?
This is quite a hard question because it’s hard to keep up with so many projects popping out almost every day. Before coming to this show, I was also thinking about that. I saw a tweet from Sandeep from Polygon. A few years ago, he said that Polygon was going to be in the top twenty projects and they are now in the top twenty. He said that one day he would be in the top three. That is ambition and as a business owner, I think that having a goal is very important because now you know where you are going and what you need to do to get there. I look up to people in projects like that.
We have several folks from Polygon coming on the show. We’re going to dive deeper into what they have cooking. There’s definitely been a lot of buzz about Polygon and what they’re building. You picked a good one there.
I think that at the end of the day, we’re on our own because everyone has a different path. There are no books or anything out there that tell you that, “Do this and then you’ll be successful,” or you’ll be in the top 10 or 3, whatever you’ll set yourself out there. I think that we need to have our own policy and know clearly what we’re building and stick to that.
We’re on an amazing path. It’s a rocket ship, that’s for sure. For anybody that hasn’t checked it out, you got to get over there and play around. It’s amazing. We appreciate all the background on the company, the product and everything that got you there. We wanted to take a step back for a minute and get your personal perspective on a couple of things. Let our readers get to know you a little bit better. It’s a segment that we call Edge Quick Hitters. It’s a fun, quick way to get to know you. There are ten questions. We’re looking for a few words. You can expand if you get the urge, but we like to keep it relatively short. Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It’s a watch. It’s like the Chinese watch that gets broken every time it gets in the water. I think it cost around $0.50 when I was a kid, like four years old. It has all the cool looks and colors, so every week I would buy a new one.
Any chance you still have one of those floating around?
I don’t know. I think this will be fun for our readers out there. I was born and grew up in Vietnam. Our culture will be different. My answers will also still be something that, “What is that?”
Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
I was selling a cockfighter. I got it when it was tiny and still a baby, a few days old. I got it from my grandparents. One of my brothers enjoyed cockfighting and still does. I sold that to them. I still remember that I used that money, half of it, to play a video game, Contra and then half of the money I used to have 30 minutes of karaoke.
Question number three, what is the thing you’ve purchased now?
That is two canvases that I bought for the dining room and the living room.
What style of art?
NFT Marketplace: As a business owner, to have a goal is a very important thing. You have to know where you are going and what you need to do to get there.
It’s about cities and places I’ve been to or lived in. I was born in Vietnam, so I wanted to have something about my country. I bought a very warm and cozy painting about a girl wearing the traditional ao dai, the costume. It’s the white one with the conehead on a boat with a lot of lanterns on the river. That is in my dining room. The other one is about LA because I live in LA now with all the palm trees, buildings, mountains and all of that. That is in my living room.
Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
That is a macramé wall hanging art that I made during COVID. That is one of my therapies when I have some free time. I learned how to do it and got so into it. I’ve made a lot of it that I realized that I don’t want all of that. That’s not my style. I put it out there and people bought it.
Is this physical?
Yes. I sold one of those for $250. I gave back $50 for the guy and went, “This is what I made out of fun and money is not a thing for me.”
Is there a digital equivalent floating around out there?
If you think that you can help me sell it.
You got one platform. We got another. It might be a match made in heaven. Let’s move on to question number five. What is your most prized possession?
I think that is trust. It’s not a physical thing. I have been doing business globally. Before Vietnam, I moved to Japan. I lived in Japan for almost ten years doing business with a lot of big companies. Throughout those years, what I learned and how my parents raised me to be a person that every single word you put out there, people listen to you and trust you because you deliver that or at least you try to deliver that. A friend told me, “You are so successful because now you have trust among people.” I thought about that and like, “Yes, I feel like that is my value.”
Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service and experience that’s for sale, what would that be?
I was thinking about two different things. I’ve always been scared of the ocean, even though I love a calm ocean, swimming very close to the shore. However, I am very scared of the feeling of being deep under the water. If I could be so still and calm under the water, I would love to know how that feels. Experience is number one. Number two is also an experience. I want to know what an utmost happiness feeling feels like.
I think Navy SEAL training can get you number one. You’re in LA. Coronado is not too far. You go check that out. Number two, I don’t know. That remains to be seen. That’s a more personal question.
NFTify offers an easy button to create your NFT marketplace any way you want. Click To Tweet
Maybe 1 million stores on your NFTify platform. At that point, you’re shaping millions and millions of lives.
Yes. Setting goals and then achieving goals is a great way to provide you with that feeling of happiness. We do have those kinds of goals for 2022.
Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would that be?
Go for it. I still remember as a kid and was born in a village in Vietnam. I went to a village school with normal friends around me who I grew up with. One day I saw my cousin, who is a very smart kid. He went to a gifted school. He seemed to be a very smart and different kid to me. I told my parents, “I want to go to his school because I want to be like him.” My parents helped me with that, but it’s been like that my whole life with my choice of the high school where I wanted to go and the college after that. After college, I told my parents, “I learned Japanese at college. I want to use my Japanese in my future job.” I admire and love the country, so I went to live there. That’s been my life. I don’t know what to do next, so I’m going to create a company. I figured out how to make it successful later.
Question eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
I don’t know the answer to this one because one of the ways of living is to try to become a better person every day. Even though I know and I’m conscious of a lot of personalities, a lot of sides in me that I’m not a fan of. Sometimes I get mad at something that later on when I look back, I’m like, “It’s not worth being angry or spending times that I don’t feel peaceful or happy with.” I have sides like that about me, but I try to be a better person every day. I have bad traits or whatever you call it, but hopefully, I’ll be better at it.
Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I was catching up with my team in Vietnam. I tried to see what was going on in Vietnam and Japan while I was sleeping. I try to talk directly with some of the team members while they are still awake.
How big is that team, by the way?
We have 160 members in Hanoi.
Moving to the last question, question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I plan to go to a testing booth at the Farmer’s Market to make sure that I got the COVID out of my system.
NFT Marketplace: Be a person that delivers on every single word you say. So when you become successful, people will be there for you because they trust you.
On the up and up here, that was Edge Quick Hitters. Thanks so much for playing along with us on that. I thought it was great to get to know you a little better. It’s been amazing to have you on. We want our audience to know how to follow you and everything you’re working on that is so amazing. Where should we direct them?
Our website is NFTify.network. We’re on all social media channels, including Twitter, Telegram and Instagram. I’m also on Twitter. I’m not very active. I’m trying to be more, but you can find us. Type in NFTify.network and you will find us.
I think from our earlier discussion, we may have a fun giveaway for our readers as well. Nikita, do you want to give a little background on what you have in store?
We created our own mascot, which is Ninawa, a unicorn fish. You can read about this story on our website. We made it an NFT. We have our own Ninawa NFT store powered by NFTify. We are giving away 50 Ninawa for our readers on this show.
I appreciate it so much. For the folks reading, check out our socials. You’ll learn all about it there, all the steps you need to take to have the chance to win. Thank you so much for the generous offering.
Is there anything fun about these NFTs that folks should know about besides the concept? It sounds amazing.
For sure, we are trying to create utility for the NFTs so that it will create more value for our holders. The first one that you will benefit from is a free one-month subscription for using the NFTify platform in the future once our subscription plans are rolled out. The rest remain secret for you to find out. We are creating more and more utility for the future.
Get pumped about that, folks, for sure. I think we have reached the outer limit. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on the Starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes right now, rate us, say something awesome and go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Remember, we always invite you to co-create and build at Edge of NFT.
We’re unlocking a whole new way to connect and collaborate with us through our own NFT drop, Spirits Seeds, leading to the living tree NFTs, which will light the way to our event, NFT LA. It’s one of a kind immersive, unforgettable experience at LA live in Los Angeles. Check it out at NFTLA.live and move quickly on early bird tickets as they are alive now and moving quickly. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Thank you for having me.
Important Links:
- NFTLA.live
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- NFTify
- Ethereum
- Polygon
- Binance Smart Chain
- MetaMask
- TuneCore
- EdgeOfNFT.com/Discord
- Ninawa
- Twitter – NFTify
- Telegram – NFTify
- Instagram – NFTify
- Twitter – Nikita Nguyen
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
About Nikita Nguyen
Driven and proven technology entrepreneur with comprehensive accomplishments leading global business development and partnership. Nikita is an impact player and proven leader in the IT industry, Blockchain, Venture capital. Lately, she’s been spending a significant amount of time incubating and accelerating Blockchain startups around the world.
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