On Friday, Mastercard said at CES 2023 that it will be building a web3-focused incubator to assist artists in establishing new channels of communication with their audiences.

“The essence of this initiative is giving new musicians with the web3 tools and abilities they need to flourish and expand their music careers in this digital economy,” Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, told TechCrunch. Throughout the semester and afterwards, artists will be advised on how to integrate web3 into their work via access to experts and visionaries in the field.

Mastercard joined forces with Polygon, a blockchain designed for scalability that is based on Ethereum, a platform that has been making significant inroads in the Web 2.0 industry as of late. Over the course of the past year, Polygon has partnered with a number of other major brands, including Starbucks for its Odyssey digital collectible rewards programme and Disney for its accelerator programme. It has also helped major fashion houses like Prada and Adidas launch NFT projects through its blockchain.

Artists who join the incubator, according to Rajamannar, will learn how to mint NFTs, create online personas, and form communities. We can now see that web3 has great potential to help artists and creators create, own, and profit from their work, but only if they know how to use it.

The firm has collaborated with a number of crypto-centric companies to issue credit cards and has teamed with Coinbase to assist extend the NFT ecosystem, among other things, so this news signals to the company’s further expansion into the digital asset realm.

It was a significant year for us, with experimental web3 activations all across the globe,” Rajamannar added.

For instance, Mastercard collaborated with Roblox to hold the first-ever Grammy week in the metaverse, complete with in-game branding, meet-and-greets with the artists, picture ops on the red carpet, and more.

Experts at Mastercard have expressed optimism in public about the future of the cryptocurrency market in the past.

At Benzinga’s Future of Crypto event in December, Grace Berkery, director of startup engagement at Mastercard, stated, “I feel that once you have the momentum for an institution up and going, it’s hard to persuade them to turn their head and pivot.” “Therefore, if [institutions] enter, they will remain in the area.”