This 20 Year-Old CEO Is Building Trust Into Web3, Not Hype

• SOL-USD

Antoine Lavoie is in his third year studying pure and applied mathematics at Concordia University. He is also the founder and CEO of ARKHIVE, a Montreal-based Web3 company that launched its token on the Solana blockchain on August 26.

That combination, a full course load and a company raising institutional capital, is becoming less unusual among the founders in this series. But what struck me most about Lavoie was not his age. It was how deliberately he is trying to replace reputation with structure, in his product, his cap table, and his own leadership style.

From a Family Studio to a Blockchain Startup

Lavoie grew up in Montreal, the son of award-winning photographer Heidi Hollinger. At 17, he co-founded Honeyïce, a production company working with musicians and visual artists across Montreal, Havana, and Miami, alongside his older brother, the musician and producer known as Rondo Banks. His mother’s decades of relationships in the arts became an early, low-cost network for the venture that followed.

It was that experience inside the creative economy, watching independent artists struggle for exposure and liquidity, that pointed Lavoie toward blockchain.

“I feel like the creative sector is one of the most underdeveloped sectors in Web3,” says Lavoie.

Real-world asset tokenization had already taken hold in capital markets and real estate. Creative work, he thought, should be next.

The pitch requires some translation, though. Web3 refers to a newer generation of internet applications built on blockchain, the same distributed ledger technology behind Bitcoin, that let people transact directly with one another without a bank or platform sitting in the middle.

Lavoie argues that most people outside the industry, older generations especially, conflate the technology with the currency.

“It’s the fact that [some] view crypto just as a means to exchange currency or monetary value… they miss the concept of an actual Web3 platform or a blockchain-based solution,” he says.

Rebuilding the NFT’s Reputation

ARKHIVE lets a creator — an artist, a musician, even a museum — sell a claim on future revenue or a physical asset as a tradable token. A musician can sell a share of Spotify royalties. A painter funding an exhibition can sell half the revenue it generates. A museum can tokenize a piece in its collection, earning a cut every time ownership changes hands, without ever moving the artwork itself.

The underlying asset does not necessarily move with the token. In one example Lavoie describes, a painting could remain safely housed in a museum while ownership of its economic value changes hands digitally.

Source: uk.finance.yahoo.com