Protecc Labs

The Thesis

I’m placing a bet that NFTs will be integrated into a tremendous amount of digital interactions and that the team at Protecc Labs will be a major player, beginning with the Protectorate Protocol.

NFTs took the world by storm in 2021. “Discovered” years after the ERC721 token standard was created, Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”) captured the imaginations of builders, speculators, investors and creators. Initially recognized as a trustless provenance technology underpinning digital gaming pieces, metaverse land and digital art, innovation around the technology ramped up and speculative money followed.

Now years post NFT-hype, builders and investors continue to bring value to the growing ecosystem.

I anticipate NFTs being used to facilitate an expansive set of use cases.

As more real-world and digital assets are tokenized, more entities will buy, sell and transfer them. An increase in marketplace transactions results in continuously increasing trading volume.

I view this emerging NFT ecosystem as resembling a version of traditional retail. When there are goods to be sold, stores will open (or in web3’s case, marketplaces). This generates a PvP game as manufacturers, brands and retailers (marketplaces) self-organize in competitive fashion to capture market share and increase revenues.

Amidst retail-style competition, another arena looms large. Distribution.

As new marketplaces (stores) open, fragmentation threatens sales velocity. If a user shows up on a marketplace that has a limited number of sellers and buyers, their experience is unsatisfactory. Many marketplaces operating in parallel fragments inventory availability and fragments demand.

Distribution in web3 requires, among other things, inventory aggregation, listing aggregation, demand aggregation, offer standardization and marketplace interconnectivity.

Who will be the major distributor for NFTs? Who will provide a virtual hub for spokes to tap into when they need access to NFT liquidity?

While creators, brands and marketplaces operate and optimize, the logistics of optimally identifying, aggregating and transferring digital goods becomes increasingly necessary.

I view Protecc Labs and the Protectorate Protocol to be out in front of this emerging sector.

Protecc founders, via their backgrounds building Redacted Cartel’s products, have significant experience with blockchain technology, DeFi concepts, and more importantly – the creation, flow and management of liquidity in web3.

I hold high conviction in this NFT-expansion thesis and have chosen to support a high quality team with relevant experience and first-mover advantage to solve the logistics & liquidity opportunity in a growing ecosystem.