Maecenas is the result of years of hard work and many product iterations. Following the lean start-up approach, we’ve built an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). A lot of sweat and blood has gone into it and we as a team feel quite proud of our modest creation. The product is currently in alpha version meaning that we don’t feel it’s ready to be shown to the public as it still needs polishing and some more features. We have put a huge amount of work into it and we want everyone to be really impressed when they see it, so we’re planning to release it once it reaches the beta phase.

However, many of you have demonstrated real interest and excitement to have a look at our platform, so we’ve decided to give you a sneak peek at it and to comment on some of the existing and upcoming features.

If you’re impatient or don’t have time to read about these features, you can jump straight to the end of this article and watch the screencast. (It’s a short 2-minute clip of me using Maecenas). If you can spare a few more minutes, please keep calm and carry on reading.

Firstly, this is what the alpha version currently does:

Art Collector and Art Investor roles. Each has different KYC (Know Your Customer) processes and platform permissions. One cool feature is that we store KYC hashes on the blockchain.

Anonymised Artwork Listing. Investors must sign a digital letter of intent before the artwork details are revealed. We use this for book-building purposes and to collect evidence of investor interest. This information helps us plan and prioritise the art auctions to maximise the chances of them being successful.

Art Marketplace & Live Auctions. Investors can browse our curated art catalogue, register their investment interest, and participate in live auctions. Portfolio ownership is tracked on the Maecenas blockchain.

Artwork Provenance and Performance. We store hashes of all provenance documentation on the blockchain so that they’re permanently associated with the artwork, for life. We also take historical prices of the artwork and of several other financial indices to make it easy for investors to compare the financial performance of the artwork against other types of assets.

Investment Dashboard. Investors can track their portfolio in a simple and friendly dashboard. Holdings shown on the platform match the ownership shown on the investor’s wallet in the Maecenas blockchain.

Other features that we have in development and will be part of the next version (beta) are as follows:

Full exchange platform for painting shares including API support for trading bots.

Smart contracts for Dutch auctions and other core platform functions.

Integration with banking API for segregated multi-currency virtual bank accounts (i.e. each user will have their own multi-currency bank account)

Now, into the exciting part! This is the promised screencast so that you can have a taste of our current version:

Additionally, we highly recommend you read our Whitepaper:

Visit maecenas.co to find out more about the project.

To find more about Cofound.it and the Token sale, visit Cofound.it

If you wish to talk to the team directly, join our slack channel, join here.