After raising $4 million in their seed round last month, Neon soft-launched the first NFT vending machine – located at 29 John St in Manhattan – in December 2021. The machine is now fully operational with two NFT collections.
Running on the Solana Blockchain, the NFTs in the vending machine can be purchased with US dollars, no need to hold crypto or have a wallet.
Buyers can simply select the collection they want a piece of, and buy it with their credit card. They will then redeem the QR code on the Neon platform to reveal which NFT they bought. There is no way for the buyers to know the NFT in advance.
The two collections available right now are Project Colors and Party Pigeons. Both were commissioned specifically for the vending machine.
Party Pigeons is a classic 10,000 NFTs collection, while Project Colors has a lower floor price and gathers all the colors of the internet, with a total of 16,777,215 colors.
Neon worked with creative and production studio Buoyancy and pop-up and experiential company We Make Pop to design and build the space. It’s now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the team is relying on foot traffic and word of mouth to gain traction.
The two studios were excited about the project, although it did come with some challenges. It had to look futuristic while holding great security features and CCTV active all day long. The result was a success, and the vending machine is already bringing significant traffic to the marketplace, producing word of mouth, and giving Neon great PR opportunities.
Birnholtz, Neon’s CMO, says Neon is looking to add more vending machines and artists to its roster.
“We are expanding our vending machines to a handful of cities this summer. Having ironed out the technical challenges in dispensing and redeeming NFTs, we’re inviting artists and creators to feature their NFTs in our machines,” Birnholtz claimed.
What is Neon?
Neon is a marketplace and gallery built on the Solana blockchain. It uses Solana for fast transaction times, cheap fees, and a million-fold improvement in energy and environmental efficiency. Neon is supported by a distributed team based in the United States. They accept USD through credit cards and debit cards and will accept crypto in the future.
According to Neon, 2% of Americans have a digital wallet, but over 80% have a credit or debit card. Their marketplace and gallery are set to get that slice of the market, which now represents the majority of people.
Alongside the Neon gallery and marketplace, the team is boasting a creator program helping new NFT artists profit from their art and designs. They’re committed to assisting in generating whatever number of NFTs they’d like to put in the platform.
The marketplace currently holds 18 collections, and it’s growing at a rapid pace thanks to their option to pay with fiat instead of cryptocurrency.
