RECUR Broadens The Pool Of Customers For NFTs

With the non-fungible token (NFT) bubble in full swing, a new startup is launching with a product that allows fans to interact with their favorite brands by buying, collecting, and re-selling digital products and collectibles. I sat down with co-founders and Co-CEOs, Zach Bruch and Trevor George, to discuss.

Amoils:  Why did you create RECUR?

Bruch:  RECUR was created to design & develop on-chain branded experiences that allow fans to buy, collect, and re-sell digital products and collectibles (NFTs). RECUR will be fundamentally changing the NFT market through the creation of a first-of-its-kind ecosystem industry standardization on recurring royalties for NFTs minted on Ethereum, with the goal of making NFTs chain-agnostic and keeping NFTs and royalties decentralized. Our vision is to bring billions of fans into the greater digital and crypto ecosystem. We will be working with some of the largest and most recognizable brands in the world, and ultimately feel NFTs will serve as a gateway for existing audiences and everyday consumers alike to enter this new digital space.

George: RECUR will be the first NFT experience to create a recurring royalty for brands & IP holders across the ecosystem. With the market’s current structure, NFT owners only receive a recurring royalty if their NFT remains on the platform or environment it started on. RECUR is bringing digital asset ownership into the future by building technology that allows the NFT owner to take the asset on-chain and interact with it anywhere they want. Also, by using this technology, once an NFT leaves its originating platform and re-sells elsewhere, the original artist, brand or IP holder will continue to receive recurring royalties on their creations every time the NFT is bought or sold…forever.

Amoils: What kind of brands will you be working with?

George: Having worked with many of the largest brands in the world, with relationships built and cultivated over decades, RECUR is well positioned to help usher these global brands into the NFT space by helping them navigate the intricacies and maximize NFT experiences for their fans. We have built a team of industry experts with backgrounds spanning licensing, gaming, and cryptocurrency to deliver truly unique NFT experiences to the market. Fans can expect RECUR’s first branded experiences to launch later this year.

Amoils:  If you mint on Ethereum, how does the technology allow it to become chain agnostic? 

Bruch: We are chain agnostic, meaning not only can we mint on Ethereum, but we can mint on various other chains as well. This allows our NFTs to have the widest range of distribution and ultimately allows for the audiences and fans of brands we work with to engage with the assets in the most robust and accessible way possible. As the digital and crypto ecosystem continues its rapid growth, more and more applications will be built around it. We want to ensure these assets have the ability to reach all platforms and places. The same way you can take a physical product with you to any of your favorite physical world locations, you should be able to take your digital products (NFTs) with you to your favorite applications, games and platforms. 

Amoils:  How did you come together to create RECUR?

George: I am also the owner of Trevco, a top 150 global licensee, and Blue Wheel, one of Inc 5000s fastest growing companies. Zach and I met in college at the University of Michigan. He went on to work at Kraken, Cumberland/DRW and JST Capital, so he has extensive crypto industry knowledge from a trading perspective. After realizing the synergies in our experiences and discussing the initial ideas we had for building something impactful in the industry, we brought on RECUR President, Stephen Teglas, the former SVP of Licensing at Disney; our Head of Engagement Chris Heatherly, Former EVP of Games for NBC Universal & SVP of Games for Disney; and our CTO James Seibel, the former Director of Engineering at Poloniex, among others experts in their respective industries.

Amoils:  How will this product help democratize access to these markets?

Bruch: Over the last decade since its inception, the cryptocurrency market has developed into a global industry valued in the trillions of dollars. As it has scaled, it has become increasingly fragmented with different blockchains and ecosystems that, for the most part, do not interface well with one another. This leaves users with a friction-filled experience that is off putting to many, and is not conducive to use cases outside of financial infrastructure, which has been the primary use of blockchain technology thus far. While NFTs may have opened the gateway for many new industries to engage with blockchain technology and unlock it’s value in new ways, the existing blockchain fragmentation continues. RECUR offers the solution to these problems by offering a blockchain agnostic experience that allows users to fluidly engage with any ecosystem or platform they choose. Through our chain agnostic approach, RECUR removes major barriers enabling more people than ever before to easily engage with the NFT space.

It is certainly an exciting time for content creators and broadening the pool of people who will be able to monetize their work will be aided by RECUR.