Two descendants of Singapore's wealthiest families have teamed up to create a private NFT-based social networking application, embarking on the growing wave of crypto-assets.
Kiat Lim, son of tycoon Peter Lim, and Elroy Cheo, from the family behind the cooking oil business Mewah International, founded ARC to create an exclusive community. The duo imagines an online club in which membership is open to anyone who owns non-functional tokens (NFT) of the startup, from entrepreneurs to social media influencers.
Lim, aged 28, and Cheo, aged 37, are both crypto-active enthusiasts, with famous socialite sisters: Lim's sister, Kimhas about 319,000 followers on Instagram, and ArissaCheo's sister, has about 355,000.
Lim and Cheo thus embark on a global race to profit from the rising wave of crypto-assets that is driving up the prices of digital currencies and the valuations of many startups.
ARC aims first and foremost to build an app-based community, bringing together individuals from Taipei to South Korea and Australia to network, collaborate on projects, and share stories.
After that, they plan to host exclusive member events, before creating an ARC metaverse, an expanding online virtual community with a gaming element. The company plans to charge an annual subscription fee for those who do not purchase their NFT.
"We are a network ecosystem that spans online and offline experiences and extends online boundaries," Lim explained in an interview with Bloomberg in Singapore.
ARC will rigorously authenticate its members to ensure that users are who they say they are. The founders have been quietly working on this startup since before covid-19, prioritizing referrals from members - just like in traditional clubs. The app is currently limited to iPhones, although an Android version is in the testing phase.
The founders said they chose the name in part to express their ambition to create a bridge between the real and virtual worlds and transition to Web3, a still ambiguous term for decentralized, blockchain-based systems designed as a replacement for the Internet as we know it.
"We want to create a community that Asia has never seen before," Cheo said. "We see the world changing a lot, especially after covid. People in this target segment now want a sense of belonging," he remarked.