The Latest Entrant in the Music Web3 World Wants To Be An ‘Operating System’ for Artists

It’s no doubt that the NFT world and Web3 has now settled into its own space, while still harboring ambitions to disrupt the traditional structures of how art is consumed. Among the newer companies starting out earlier this year, eDAO was announced by Ethereum platform Polygon.

In addition to strengthening existing communities in the NFT and Web3 world, they claim to provide investment, tech and support to artists making the leap from Web2 to Web3. eDAO chief operating officer Mairu Gupta says, “Our thesis is that NFTs should be available to everyone as a measure of their cultural DNA etched on the blockchain. They should be easily available with varied pricing models and built with solid use cases.”

With an eye on creating music IPs in the metaverse – not necessarily with the intent to replace but rather branch off from on-ground, physical events – eDAO has first ventured into the more familiar space of visual art with their collaborative NFT series Unlabel, which claims to have engaged over 60,000 art fans worldwide. Eight NFTs were minted between 16 artists in the span of eight weeks, ranging from Santanu Hazarika, Kidsquidy aka Aaron Pinto, Sajid Wajid Shaikh, Karen Francis, Dhil Krishna and more. There’s nostalgic pieces to psychedelic dives and animated craziness that pays homage to an Internet meme favorite, among others. Hazarika says, “eDAO was able to accumulate the most influential artists of our generation, and I had to be a part of it! Kinda like the Justice League of NFT artists.”

Artist Yash Pradhan adds, “I was drawn to eDAO because of what they stood for ‘no borders, no rulers, just people creating stuff together.’” He worked with animator Eeshani Mitra on the artwork titled Fragments of Foresight. Mitra says, “I joined this project because I really liked the huge collaborative aspect of it and also it felt like a safe space to be able to drop my first NFT.”

A favorite for Mitra from Unlabel’s first season was Priyanka and Jayesh Sachdev’s work Space Cadet. “As primarily a 2D vector artist, it was an extremely exciting opportunity for me to collaborate with Jayesh,” Priyanka Sachdev says. Another striking artwork among the eight creations is called Tripepe, created by Sajid Wajid Shaikh and Papertripping aka Vishwesh Menon as a homage of sorts to Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Shaikh says of his process, “I like to go by my gut feeling. There was no interference with my artistic vision, I could go down any rabbit hole. Vishwesh and I jumped in and found some interesting facts about ‘Pepe The Frog’ and its pros and cons.”

Other artists involved in Unlabel include Gaurav Wakankar, Jobin Varghese, Harsh Patel aka Blink It Up, Phil Cornett, Blade Bandits and Lapin Mignon. Kidsquidy aka Aaron Pinto adds, “This collective of artists that were curated was awesome and I got to discover some new artists in the process.”

With all NFTs from Unlabel currently collected, there’s a second season in the works and Gupta says the theme is bound to interest the indie music community. “We’re considering music as the theme for Unlabel season two. While the core principle of onboarding folks to Web3 remains the same, we will add some fun layers to get people excited! We want to be able to execute at least three to four seasons a year,” Gupta adds.