AMA Session: Hacken and ArtWallet — Common NFT Future

7 min readAug 27, 2021

The NFT industry is experiencing a new boom, daily trade volumes are skyrocketing, and new projects are actively entering the market. One of these new projects is ArtWallet representing Hacken Foundation. The project’s core team has decided to re-launch ArtWallet. Huge NFT opportunities have come and the end of Summer is a high time to use them. ArtWallet’s comeback has been unexpected for many community members. You put a lot of questions about this project, the reasons behind its relaunch, and its future. Some of you consider NFT as a hype that will soon disappear while others see in NFT one of the most potential innovative markets.

To bring more clarity to our community members, we have conducted a special AMA session with Joel Dietz (ArtWallet Founder) and Dyma Budorin (Hacken CEO). The recap of this session is provided below. Read and find detailed answers to your questions. We are sure that after reading this material you will know for sure what ArtWallet is and what market needs it is going to meet.

So, you are one of the pioneers of the blockchain industry

“Yeah, in some ways it’s even more reasonable to say pre-blockchain. Because I had started exploring alternative economics and digital currencies even before the word bitcoin appeared. And, initially, I was actually a Bitcoin sceptic. I didn’t think it would scale.”

Could you please share some info on how you got into blockchain?

“So, I started developing my own digital ecocurrency in Clojure. Well, Clojure backend, browser extension, and mobile app front-ends. And we got some sort of small scale in different communities across Europe, mostly in Italy and Germany. But then we faced a series of regulatory problems. So I couldn’t build anything more. But anyway, I really started to appreciate bitcoin after regulators hadn’t let me do any desired things.”

What year it was?

“2011/2012. In the EU, you need to have a $1M passport license just to move a penny. Doesn’t really promote financial innovations. So then I started reading pretty much about bitcoin, its history and, generally, every article found in bitcoin magazine. And I became a big fanboy of Vitalik Buterin because his writing on every topic was always so extensive and clear, I really liked it. And then the day of the Ethereum whitepaper release came, I immediately read it and had a “nerdgasm”. So, I had no other choice but to turn my attention to Ethereum for a while.”

What was next in your story with Ethereum?

“Basically I was working on the promotion of Ethereum. I organized the first meetups in San Francisco, San Jose, and Stanford. I also invited Vitalik Buterin to give a speech and to stay at my home during the visit. And then I created a youtube channel to explain the mechanism behind Ethereum and this channel was mainly focused on developers. But we did a lot of code walkthroughs and stuff.

The first usable Ethereum language called “Serpent” was developed by Vitalik. And this Dutch guy and I, basically, compiled the code and were showing everyone how it worked. I think it was 2 years before solidity.”

What’s next?

“Oh, well, basically I had been working for free for Ethereum for a few months but then faced some kind of collapse. My other digital ecocurrency project was basically a huge failure. And Ethereum kept delaying its sale to correctly finalize all legal work. And during this time I became involved in the counterparty world that made the first operational DEX on top of the bitcoin blockchain. I also applied for the startup where Nick Szabo was working (he interviewed me). And, generally, I was actively trying to figure out what to do next.

I also went into this long list of possible smart contract use cases. I firmly decided that the most interesting for me were the matters around DAOs. Like new types of organizations that live on blockchains. But, in my opinion, the most useful were equity-equivalents like digital assets.”

Do you think there are efficiently working DAOs in our industry?

“Yes, there are a few, but they usually have some core value functions besides just being a DAO. I think DASH was actually the first true DAO. It’s still working, no longer in the top 10 but a truly good project. Sadly, I have never owned enough DASH to run a masternode. But there are not so many efficiently working DAOs. Partially because voting is too expensive.”

Dyma: “My goal is to shift the Hacken Foundation to DAO. That’s not just about writing a smart contract. All the processes need to be properly structured before going there. But I can assure you that we will do it.”

“From the legal point of view, it’s very confusing, but, generally, it’s a great vision. I tried to run our organization as a DAO back in 2014 as well. On top of the Bitcoin blockchain. We ran the first vote with Bitcoin coloured coins. In fact, we ran one for the Bitcoin Foundation that wanted to run its elections that way. It turned out to be a disaster. Everything worked but no one wanted to wait for one or two blocks to be able to vote. And many people thought that coloured coins were “wrong”.”

Could you please share some info about other cooperation deals with Ethereum? And we will jump into ArtWallet

“Yeah, I was pretty active in the Ethereum world during that time running many meetups. I organized the second meetup about decentralized governance called “Decentralized Autonomous Society”. And many famous people from Silicon Valley including Vitalik and Ralph Merkle participated in this event. I am not sure but I guess there was a bit of a utopian edge to many early Ethereum contributors that has been lost.”

Alright, let’s move to ArtWallet. Why NFT and why NFT wallet?

“NFTs have existed for a while. But suddenly everyone started speaking about them. There are many celebrities calling up me and my business partners, saying “let’s do an NFT”. And the same thing for big fine art collectors. But they actually need many things that current NFT marketplaces can’t offer. Namely, such critical aspects as guaranteed storage, insurance, digital rights management, ability to display on devices, etc. So I compiled a list containing all these features and then I was chatting with some folks from Hacken and they told me “We can build this”. So, that’s how ArtWallet started.”

Sounds like there is great and complicated work ahead. But very ambitious

“Yeah, there is a lot of work to do, but it also depends on the quality of our partners. And if we work with high-quality partners, we don’t have to build everything ourselves.

Like today I was talking with Ledger. Those guys are geniuses with super ambitious but highly aligned long-term vision. And we are not going to build our own hardware devices. So it makes sense for us to work with someone like these guys.”

New partnerships and cooperation deals are the key plans for the future

“I think of ArtWallet as a multiyear project. We can’t do everything at once.”

What are the first dev steps for ArtWallet?

“The first steps are really to nail down the most basic user flow in a way that would be accessible for the mass-market. I think it is a bit about usability and security and some first kind of dynamic. We can let people who have never even touched blockchain before first taste an NFT.

Current infrastructure is for sure too difficult for the masses. Needs to be much simpler

“It’s always a big challenge to educate people. But copy-pasting seed phrases is a terrible practice. So you need to teach people how to do it right from the beginning.

The other pretty simple but highly valuable thing is just letting people access the extra information in their app about the NFTs they already own. So like exclusive content belonging to their favourite celebrities or early access to deals that they are doing.”

Do I understand correctly that you see the NFT industry as very tightly connected to influencers? And the way they monetize their followers base?

“I think both the mass market audience and the fine art side are underserved right now. The usability isn’t there for one. But yeah, celebrities etc. have a large base of followers that they can bring in. And this will help facilitate the adoption. But I also love such categories as generative art.”

That will be huge for crypto mass adoption for sure

Last question about the crypto future. What is your vision? Where will we be in the 3–5 years perspective?

“I believe we will have an NFT Metaverse, something like the default layer for smart middle school kids to interact with each other and build new realities. It’s ultimately the future I want to build. Global cooperation and fun that bring profits. And those kids won’t need to go to a university because they will learn everything in virtual reality. We are just scratching the surface of what is possible in this metaverse.”

And what is the ArtWallet niche in this future?

“We may fill multiple niches. But the one niche that we will definitely fill is the high-end art market. Curated, insured, bankable, etc. But I would also like to see our solution super accessible to every person so that everyone entering the new metaverse will do it through ArtWallet.”

Thank you very much for devoting your time to read this material. The Hacken team is strongly focused on ensuring that our community members are fully aware of all activities within the Hacken Foundation. As you could read, Joel and Dyma have provided very sincere and, at the same time, detailed information about the new project, its vision, and challenges. We always deliver only proven information to you. The new materials about ArtWallet are coming! Monitor our announcements in social media to know up-to-date info about ArtWallet.