Hi,
My name is Yoshinari Nishiki (a.k.a Inari), a Rotterdam-based artist originally from Japan.
I’m currently thinking of applying for NGI Taler with a new idea tentatively called “third-hand” clothes marketplace.
I myself have been a huge fan of second-hand/vintage clothes for practical (good quality for value), aesthetic (good designs that are no longer available), and ecological (avoiding support for the wasteful clothing industry) reasons.
I have seen different attempts revolving around the avoidance of the production of new clothing (mainly reuse or remaking). However, I have noticed a strange trend of wanting to erase the traces. Basically, even if dealing with something “old,” when selling it as merchandise, people want to make it look or feel like something “new.”
As long as we cling to this phase of ‘hating previous ownership,’ we probably won’t be able to shift the point of value creation. Therefore, I would like to start a “tag” based (such as verifiable credentials) trace storage system that overlays existing clothing. This means recording ownership data (such as date of purchase, place of purchase, history of amendments, etc.) from the moment you own a piece of clothing.
While circulating these “tagged” clothing might already be enjoyable, I would like to develop a dedicated marketplace exclusively for such items. I would then implement a payment system with a pseudo token (such as KUDOS) so that these tokens can only be used for the circulation of tagged clothing. I would call this the “third-hand” clothes marketplace.
If such tagged “good quality” clothing becomes only available using the marketplace with Taler, it would help promote Taler, I believe.
If you have any opinions, I would greatly appreciate them!
Best regards,
Yoshinari Nishiki (Inari)