NFTs for all: Students break down NFT price barriers

Non-fungible tokens have taken the world by storm in recent years, and Blake Asherian, a senior majoring in business administration, noticed. These NFTs are digital assets, such as works of art, that have become collectibles.

Asherian observed the most popular and sought-after NFTs came with “crazy price tags.” After an expensive NFT caught his eye, he asked 10 of his roommates to split the cost. This gave birth to the idea of ​​Moonlight, a platform that aims to be “the world’s simplest Fractional NFT marketplace.”

“Everybody just put their money together within 30 seconds,” Asherian said. “It’s quite lucrative, the idea of ​​sharing the cost of something to buy it collectively.”

Using a GoFundMe-type model, Moonlight allows users to raise money to buy expensive NFTs. Those who donate become co-owners, each owning a part of the NFT corresponding to the part of the total cost they have purchased.

“It’s really cool because people want to feel like they own the cool stuff, but they’re not able to sometimes with the price barriers,” Asherian said. “We developed a crowdfunding technology to let people essentially crowdfund everything.”

Beyond crowdfunding, users will be able to sell shares of an NFT whenever they want. In fact, the technology Moonlight has developed allows owners to give up ownership instantly. In all, users will be able to crowdfund, collect, trade and sell NFTs.

Moonlight’s website outlines the project’s mission to lower the barriers to entry into the world of digital currency: “The digital future is to reconstruct culture by putting power in the hands of the many, not the few,” a blurb reads.

Moonlight’s current development is in website form. Since the team is in its early startup stages, this is a way to “test the concept,” Asherian said, and once the idea catches on, the project will transition to an app.

Moonlight was created and marketed by Asherian, Gabriel Perez, Matt Hausman and Can Toraman, who all met through mutual friends. Perez, a junior economics major, directs the team’s social media, publicity and outreach. Hausman, an alumnus who studied computer science, was tasked with building the website and Toraman, a senior majoring in computer science, is the technical advisor.

“The four of us on the team have a very solid understanding of how blockchain technology works behind the scenes and what it can be used for in the future. I think that creates great communication opportunities between the four of us,” said Perez.

During the development phase, Asherian was influenced by his work with his cousin Sean Rad, one of the founders of the dating app Tinder. Rad was also an angel investor in Web3 companies at the time, so while working with Rad, Asherian became seriously interested in NFTs.

“Sean was all about building really simple products that everyone would want to use, which is a big inspiration for what I started doing,” Asherian said.

Both Asherian and Perez said it took a lot of time to practice and learn about the complex world of buying and selling NFTs to develop Moonlight. Their target audience is those who are interested in the space but lack the funds to engage deeply.

“We’re providing a product for NFT-passionate people who feel like they’re very early in the space but somehow can’t afford anything,” Perez said.

In addition to helping people raise money, Moonlight hopes to increase the ease of the process for those who do not understand how to buy and sell NFTs on their own.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing in the beginning when I started NFTs and I just wish there was a site like this where I was able to get the coolest stuff easily,” said Asherian.

Moonlight also has a special feature called “liquidity supply”, where people can lock their ownership in a particular token. By signing a pledge that they will not sell their shares in an NFT, they earn a percentage of the trading fee that Moonlight collects.

“We’re once again hitting the audience of people who want to hold, and then we’re also hitting the audience of people who want to sell immediately and liquidate their position,” Asherian said.

The site is currently completing its final phase of development to ensure security before entering beta, a testing phase to check for bugs. Once that is ready, the team plans to do a soft launch and get the first NFT crowdfunded successfully.

While Moonlight is only going to be used to crowdfund NFTs at its inception, the team hopes the platform will be a place to crowdfund anything involving cryptocurrency.

“We see this as bigger than just NFTs; we see this as just letting people come together for a greater good,” Asherian said. “We’re targeting a very small audience, which is just the NFT audience. And once we have a proof of concept and we’re able to scale, we will hit each industry one by one.”