Young entrepreneurs take on gaming with a “smart” NFT

They linked together at first-year university over a mutual interest in cryptocurrency. Now they are embarking on the gaming world.

Maxim Sindall and Majd Hailat are the leaders of a start-up company called Altura, which operates the mysterious world of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) as part of the multi-billion dollar international online gaming industry.

And despite a massive drop in cryptocurrency values ​​in recent weeks, digital entrepreneurs are prepared to hold out in the hope of a prosperous future.

“We are starting to sign agreements with significantly larger gaming companies, with higher quality games and our infrastructure really coming together. So the company and our products and our path have not changed, and we are very safe, said Hailat.

Among its services, the company sells a “smart” NFT with changeable features (as opposed to standard NFT), offers a technology to game developers that allows them to incorporate cryptocurrency more easily into their games and has created a marketplace for buying, selling and trading items. in the game.

But to focus on their company, Sindall and Hailat made the big decision to drop out of university.

For Hailat, the Michigan-born son of Jordanian immigrants – the family moved to Windsor, Ont., When he was two years old – it was difficult to tell his parents that he dropped out of school last year, halfway through his sophomore year of computer science at the University. of Toronto.

“I told (my parents) myself a year or two before, that I really want to start something, and if I do, I have no problem dropping out of school. They were very hesitant. They said to me “You should have a degree no matter what, it’s a good backup. Later in the future, if something were to happen, you could use it,” Hailat recalled.

For Sindall, it was less of a struggle. His mother, a 24-year-old permanent professor who had obtained a doctorate at the age of 22 from Cambridge University and who has served as CEO of two listed companies, actually supported his decision to leave the mining engineering program.

“It dawned on us when we started doing very well, this really makes no sense (to stay in school). My mother was actually the one (who) came out and said, ‘look, I think it’s good that you left the university and continued with this,’ ‘said Sindall.

“The university will always be there. The institution has existed since 1827 in the case of U of Ts. There is no way, but this opportunity can so we can just as well embrace it,” he added.

In April 2021 – in the middle of the first year exams – they decided to continue with the company, only to receive a stop-and-refrain order from launch from a British law firm that requires them not to use the company name they had chosen.

“We changed all our marketing. Our community was incredibly confused 20 minutes before the launch about why it’s a new token name. It was a very insane day,” Sindall said.

The two had met at first-year university and formed a friendship over a shared interest in cryptocurrency. Sindall had been running a crypto-mining business since he was a teenager (both are now 20) and Hailat had been coding – writing digital code – since class 9. Both have different skills for the partnership.

“I bring a lot of technical skills to the table, a lot of coding knowledge and (Sindall) has many connections. Something about Maxim made me realize that if I was going to do business with anyone, it should be this guy. He’s a dynamic guy. He can not always explain technology very well, but everyone likes him right away. That’s one of his strengths, “said Hailat.

“We are one unit. There is no partnership that does not have its ups and downs, but we are a unit and we are focused on the same mission, and we do it, says Sindall, who grew up in downtown Toronto and attended Iceland Public / Science School on Center Island.

They are also introducing a serious innovation to the gaming industry that they hope will make the company a commercial success.

The most important among them, the creation of a “smart” NFT for the gaming market. An NFT, which up to this point has been a static or immutable object, is a relatively new form of cryptocurrency, which allows anyone to have digital ownership of an object in the real world, whether it is an image as a work of art or a photo. , or, in the game world, an object in the game like a sword.

«Before Altura… an NFT was a static image, title and description, which can not be changed. That was the nature of an NFT. Altura came up with this technology that allows NFTs to change without sacrificing any of the previous features. This is the first time the market has seen something like this, Hailat said.

The other big innovation: giving gaming companies the ability to use NFTs is much easier, reducing the time it takes – due to the technical difficulties of coding – from several months to a few days, he said.

“Our tools allow game developers to create games that use NFTs without having to know anything about crypto,” said Hailat.

They have also created a marketplace for buying, selling and trading NFTs, noting that game developers get a share of the action – royalties – from each transaction, giving them an incentive to participate, Sindall said.

“These items in the game have a whole economy and a separate market,” Sindall said.

It’s big business. In the gaming world, some NFTs have sold for millions of dollars, Hailat noted.

But the cryptocurrency market – which includes NFTs, which are similar to bitcoin tokens – has been a roller coaster of booms since its inception a decade ago, with a sharp drop in value recently.

“Over the last two years there have definitely been a lot of shady actors, shady companies and things that have put a really bad stigma on crypto. I think the audience has been a bit burned over the last two years and there is a lot of resistance now towards the crypto market … I understand that well, “said Hailat.

“We saw (NFT) pictures of dogs for $ 3 million” with (people) who thought they were going to get rich. So obviously it’s a sign of a bubble. I think crypto is here to stay, but it needs to cool down, he added.

Jon French, director of the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship program, said that cryptocurrencies, NFTs and blockchain technology dominated the conversation at the recent collision conference – which focuses on digital technology – held in Toronto last month.

“I would say that they (Altura) are in one of the most exciting areas we see in the technology and startup ecosystem right now. Although I do not know what the company is like without looking under the hood, they (Altura) are definitely playing in the right place, In French.

“Everything crypto-related continues to be very speculative. But the underlying technology … I think is here to stay. I agree that it’s a roller coaster for anyone in crypto right now, but I believe the underlying blockchain technology will continue to create new businesses and new business opportunities that we have not even dreamed of yet, French added.

Hailat, for his part, said that the company is performing well even though the crypto market is lagging behind.

“It felt like a dream because we went from being these nobodies at U of T to now, there are 70,000 people on the internet talking about our company, and suddenly money is flowing through the door,” Hailat said.

“The whole (crypto) market is significantly down. But the company itself, I am more confident in the future and success of the company than I have ever been,” he said.

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