Palm NFT Studio, whose founding partners include film producer and owner of Heyday Films, David Heyman, and the founder of leading art house publisher HENI Group, has named Straith Schreder to the new role of executive creative director.
Schreder previously held the same title at Vice Media, based in Los Angeles. She’ll report to chief content officer Matt Mason and oversee creative output at Palm NFT Studio focused on developing projects with artists, IP owners, NFT marketplaces and content platforms running on Palm.
Palm belongs to a fast expanding, sometimes confusing NFT ecosystem set up to create and sell so-called “non-fungible tokens” — unique digital works based on underlying IP or art, using blockchain technology. Initial projects launching on Palm include Damien Hirst’s The Currency (10,000 works on paper tied to corresponding NFTs) and Candy Digital’s collectible program with Major League Baseball.
“The blockchain is an artistic medium with massive potential,” Schreder said. “It’s changing how we create; it’s giving us the tools to reimagine how we resource creative communities.”
Palm co-founder and CEO Dan Heyman, former GM of protocols at software engineering firm and blockchain expert ConsenSys (and David Heyman’s younger brother), praised Schreder’s work “building decentralized content ecosystems, not to mention setting the tone and raising the bar for one of the world’s strongest youth brands.” He called her “uniquely qualified to lead this group and develop a new kind of creative practice where economics and token design are now creative disciplines.”
Prior to Vice, she was VP of Creative Initiatives at BitTorrent and had roles with Mozilla and ad agencies Deutsch and TBWA\Chiat\Day. She’s spoken on creativity and project development at global events like SXSW, Sundance, Vancouver Film Festival, Web Summit, Collision and RISE Conference.
Palm uses the Ethereum blockchain (Ether being the native cryptocurrency of that platform and the second largest crypto in terms of market cap after Bitcoin) and said it has a roadmap to decentralize over time.
Cryptocurrencies and the grids they use consume significant energy. Palm says its system is “over 99% more energy efficient than proof of work systems” that are used widely in cryptocurrency for validating transactions and mining new tokens.
Arts