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Euterpe is the world’s first IP-powered NFT as a service. Euterpe is building a professional B2C marketplace of high-quality IP NFTs, immune from infringements and scams prevalent on other NFT platforms. Euterpe – a marketplace where copyright owners &creators can auction their copyrights by issuing NFTs. Euterpe received $8M investment from several well-known investment firms.

Dr.C @CC_IPNFT, co-founder of Euterpe @eut_io joineded us on Cointime Web3 Builder Hub Daily on 5th December at 11:00 am (UTC+8).Here is the Euterpe & Cointime Twitterspace interview record：

Cointime：For audiences who may not be familiar with Euterpe, can you use a few words to introduce what Euterpe is and what problems it solves?

Euterpe is the world’s first IP NFT-as-a-service platform. It’s a marketplace where copyright owners and creators can auction their copyrights by issuing NFT. Copyright investors can invest in IP NFT by participating in auctions and secondary market trading. Euterpe will automatically distribute royalty income to them through smart contracts. Investors can also resell the NFTs on Euterpe’s secondary market or on other NFT marketplaces. Fans can directly support their favorite artists and works, and earn tokens by streaming, promoting, and voting, etc.

Cointime：How do you get into NFTs? What’s the story behind the creation of Euterpe? Can you tell us more about your team?

I got my first touch with the blockchain industry around 2017. When I was in Stanford Law School, I took a course on Security Regulation. Blockchain, crypto and ICO were frequently discussed among the law professors and students. After my graduation, I joined a venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley as a partner. Blockchain was one of my investment fields. I remembered CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks were really hot at that time. I also was pitched by several GameFi projects.

In 2021 my partner Jerry, who was the director of IP and Technology Law Program at USF, shared his whitepaper on how to utilize blockchain and NFT to revolutionize the copyright industry. The whitepaper soon became the first blockchain whitepaper published in a SSCI US core law journal, and a winner of the first prize of Machine Lawyering Conference. We believed this could turn into a game changing product, then we talked to several investors and quickly closed our seed round let by Fenbushi Capital.

We have built a team mainly comprised of Stanford graduates, including several Stanford Law alumni and a Stanford PhD in Scientific Computing. Our team members include fellow at Stanford Center for Internet and Society, director of Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program at the University of San Francisco, counsel for International Phonographic Association and the American Motion Picture Association and other leading blockchain innovators and IP experts from Google, Tencent Music, ByteDance, Alibaba Entertainment, Sony Music and Warner Bros. Our core team members have more than ten years of experience in copyright, law, finance, and computer fields.

Cointime：Which blockchain is Euterpe used for NFT minting? Some companies choose to mint on carbon-neutral blockchains for greener NFTs, what are your thoughts?

Currently is Ethereum. Carbon-neutral blockchains are addressing a huge issue and I can see the value proposition. While, in our case, Euterpe’s NFTs are linked to copyright, it’s more like a asset with real value, not simplify copies. Therefore, the blockchain solution shall be safe, stable, scalable, and trusted by the users and copyright owners.

Cointime：NFT storage has been a long-term risk, NFT contents can lost, links can die, then NFTs would be worthless. How does Euterpe secure NFTs storage? How does Euterpe store NFTs? How do you deal with associated security and data availability risks?

Yea, we are developing decentralized storage solutions for NFTs. And also, we are integrating smart contract with legal contract. We will make it enforceable in the real world to protect our NFT holder’s rights and interest.

We’ll utilise both technologies solutions and legal solutions to secure our users’ rights and interests.

Cointime：Euterpe is a B2C platform model based on the auction model, what are the pros and cons of B2B model when compared to C2C platforms?

We are a B2C marketplace featuring high quality IP NFT. In current C2C flea marketplaces,  90% NFTs are valueless. Many C2C NFT marketplaces are plagued with widespread scams and infringements. We want to provide high quality NFTs made by professional artists to our users. Also, a B2C model can protect them from copyright infringements and scams.

A B2C model is also more valuable for investors. Just think of Amazon vs. eBay, a B2C marketplace can be 10 plus times larger than a C2C flea market and would eventually bring NFT to mainstream. 

Cointime：How can Euterpe benefit different stakeholders, ie. platforms, investors, NFT creators, and fans?

This is a really great question. We believe value proposition is the most important part for a project. Euterpe is committed to bring value to its stakeholders.

For copyright owners and creators: Traditional streaming platforms have greatly limited the value per stream of copyrighted works. Euterpe offers copyright owners a revenue per click which equals 16 times Spotify offers and 80 times YouTube offers.

In the current industry, every year 20% to 50% of the copyright revenue is not distributed to the right copyright owners, but eaten by black boxes. Euterpe's smart contract will make every revenue to be returned to the real copyright owners, in a fair and transparent way.

Besides, currently, usually 85% of the royalty is spent on the costs of financing, promoting, and royalty collecting. Euterpe will provide brand new NFT-based fundraising solutions and SocialFi-based promotion solutions to help the creators to reduce their costs and increase their incomes.

For investor: The investment in the traditional copyright industry requires a huge amount of capital, and there are huge risks. Through copyright tokenization, Euterpe divides the copyright of copyrighted works into 500 NFTs, diversifies investment risks, and enables more investors to participate in copyright investment.

Euterpe first developed IP-NFT. Most NFT projects only sell copies of copyrighted works to consumers. Euterpe directly tokenizes the copyright, so that NFT holders will be able to receive the future copyright income. Investors don’t have to spend crazy money to buy copies, instead, they will have access to copyright by holding Euterpe’s IP-NFTs.

For fans: In the traditional copyright industry, often only 15 cents of every dollar paid by fans can get to the creators. Euterpe maximizes the middlemen, allowing fans to directly support their favorite creators.

In the traditional copyright industry, fans are passive consumers and do not enjoy material benefits in the copyright value chain. Euterpe will regard fans' playing, promoting and voting as their contributions to the community, and will give them corresponding token rewards according to their contributions.

Cointime：What’s Euterpe’s current royalty setting? How does Euterpe attract music artists to choose Euterpe instead of other NFT platforms?

Euterpe will collect and distribute royalties not just in web 3 but also in web 2. The reason why we are able to attract professional artists on board is that we have formed a core team of top executives who have worked for TikTok, Tencent Music, Alibaba Entertainment, Disney, Sony Music and Warner Bro. In addition, our R&D team is comprised of senior software engineers and product managers from Stanford, Google, Goldman Sachs and Citadel. Our unparalleled expertise in IP management and blockchain engineering can offer strong protection, effective solutions, and ultimately best opportunities for artists who explore the Metaverse. 

Cointime：There are voices that, NFTs for music royalty do not have any tangible benefit at this point in time. NFTs do create ownership on blockchain, but the problem is that the collecting societies do not operate in the world of blockchain. That disconnect makes some music NFTs fairly useless. What do you think about that? Do you consider now the right time? How can we solve the problem of on-chain and off-chain disconnection?

Actually, there is legal framework regarding copyright not just for web 2 but for web 3. Web 3 is not a space without laws and regulations. But currently there are very few teams to provide services to help creators and users to navigate legal and copyright frameworks in the web 3 world. Euterpe is bridging the web 2 and web 3, helping the traditional content creators and holders enter web 3 and enabling the web 3 players utilize the mainstream creative contents and markets. We are providing ultimate copyright solutions for web 3 contents, including music and beyond. We will provide solutions to our content creators and NFT holders to help them deal with copyright registration, licensing, transaction, investigation, royalty collection and dispute resolution.

It’s a process of legal engineering, not just code development. We will combine smart contracts with legal contracts, and make smart contracts enforceable in the real world.

Cointime：Looking back on the last year, the so-called crypto winter or bear market, what’s the biggest challenge Euterpe faced? What’s Euterpe most proud of?

The macro economy is in recession and the as you said now is the so-called crypto winter. We have to deal with the bad timing. However, the market is always up and down. The winners will be the survivors, and we believe Euterpe will be one of them.

We are proud of our team. The core members are stable and committed to build a great product together for the community.  Also we are grateful to our partners, including investors and copyright collaborators. For example, one of our investors provides follow-up funding in last May during the bear market. And we have signed collaboration agreements with many new copyright owners, including studios in Hollywood and top tier entertainment companies in Korea.

 Cointime：How many artists have joined Euterpe? Can you name a few most impressive artists?

Now we have over 30 music labels on boarded. In the first batch of our music IP NFTs, we have music of Zhou Shen and Shan Yichun, they are definitely leading musicians in Cpop. They have tens of millions of fans, and both of them will perform in China’s Spring Festival Gala TV show this year.

Cointime：What if other big institutions started to purchase music IPs? How would Euterpe cope with that?

We welcome this. It’s a sign that mainstream investors join in this eco system.

Cointime：What’s your initial plan for Euterpe’s new feature SocialFi? Why Euterpe needs it? Would Euterpe launch DAOs for SocialFi or issue platform tokens?

SocialFi features are under development. Initially we have designed three SocialFi features:

- Mining by Playing: Users can earn token rewards by listening to music.

- Mining by Sharing: Users can earn tokens by promoting music

- Mining by Voting: Users can earn tokens by voting for music they like.

The SocialFi features will provide creators with a better promotion mechanism to reduce their promotion costs, and will provide fans with a better eco-system to allow them to earn rewards according to their time, social network and taste they contributed to the community.  To make the SocialFi features working, Euterpe will introduce its platform tokens. DAO is also an option to be explored.

Cointime：What other new items coming up on Euterpe’s roadmap? What kind of progress do you hope to see in the next year and the next five years?

We will launch different copyright products, for example, movies, videos, livestreaming, games.

We will collect different royalty revenues, from on-chain to off-chain, from online streaming to off-line ktv and concerts, etc.

We will also expand the markets from Asia to America and Europe.

Cointime：Would Euterpe launch NFTs in other industries other than music in the future?

In the long run, we see NFT as an important infrastructure for the metaverse. In the metaverse, most assets would exist in the form of IP, which can be represented by NFT. We will start with music IP, but in the future, we will gradually expand to video, books, games, offline concerts, celebrity merchandise, patents and trademarks. Finally, we can expand to the entire digital assets and real properties. Amazon started out as a book-focused company, but eventually became the Everything Store of the Web 2 era. Our long-term vision is also to build the Everything Store for the Web 3 era.

Cointime：Can you give some hints on your Euterpe’s fundraising plans?

We are currently raising our institutional round.

Cointime：I am curious that, not to stand for Euterpe official, what's your personal opinion on NFTs investment, do you consider it a risky investment?

Every investment has risk. Even so-called absolute return investments. NFTs carry risks, just like any other investments. Especially, NFT market is a relatively new and rapidly evolving market. Investors shall have a better understanding of the market and the portfolios before making decisions.

Also, I believe people buy NFTs for many reasons. Investment return is one of them, but NFTs can also be valuable because of its art taste, membership, or other utilities. In those cases, I don’t treat it as a kind of investment portfolio.

Cointime：Have you invested in any other NFTs yourself? If so, can you name a few? How do you choose which NFTs to buy?

Yes. I won’t mention specific names here to avoid promotion. I mainly purchased NFTs issued by solid builders or linked to well-known IP. Many of them I purchased not for investment, but for personal collections. There are many factors you can consider before you purchase NFTs for investment. For example, 1) rarity: whether it is rare or not; 2) demand: whether it is well accepted among the collectors; 3) creator: who is the creator and the project team; 4) utilities: what utilities it have beside investment potential.