When an artist is prepping for their first drop, they’re aiming to make a splash – to get noticed. Sometimes it takes hours of work and marketing, sometimes it happens organically. What we don’t usually see, though, is a collector come into the scene and immediately turn heads. But that’s exactly what happened when Illestrater joined the NFT community.

Before the early 2021 bull market truly took off, Illestrater popped up on the crypto whale radar through his purchase of Pak’s infamous “mobius knot” for 77Ξ. Things began to snowball from there. Illestrater’s Twitter following started to blow up and Beeple himself reached out to the newbie collector (pre “First 5000 Days”) to give Illestrater a look into what he was working on. 

Beeple’s work gave Illestrater a whole new outlook on the influence Ethereum could have outside the world of finance. “Getting into crypto I’ve been waiting for something that could really communicate to the world that it’s not just this stock, you know,” he says. “So I realized maybe art is going to be the way to communicate to the world what blockchain is really about.”

After his introduction into the world of Beeple, Illestrater quickly became one of the most notable collectors in the NFT space. After a few months of solidifying his status as a major player in the community, he soon became a sort of people’s champion with the launch of his Sevens Foundation and their Genesis Grants.

On this episode of the nft now podcast, Illestrater talks about how he got into NFTs, his efforts to uplift the NFT artist community through his Sevens Foundation and more.

Established back in February, the Sevens Foundation’s Genesis Grants have been giving numerous artists the opportunity to gain a foothold and develop their careers in the NFT space. By covering (at the minimum) an artist’s cost to publishing works as part of a show, Seven’s grants give artists of all creeds – and especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds – the opportunity to express themselves on a larger scale.

On building the Sevens Foundation from the ground up, Illestrater says, “it was just like, a process of me trying to understand where I should take it… Some of the best artists are actually like, just now getting into NFTs, you know. Taking your time with things I feel like is reflective of good work in a sense.”

While Illestrater continues to build the Sevens Foundation platform in real time within the community, he feels that the next evolution of NFT technology could help in all facets of the creative and collecting processes.

“There’s just a lot to be built, and there’s a lot of opportunity out there for developers to create interesting projects and tools,” he says. “I think the next steps are really going to be iterative, in a sense. Projects that reach the community are something kind of new and are something that everyone’s really excited about.”

Be sure to hit subscribe and jump into our talk with Illestrater here.