One Utility for all NFTs - Panel w/ Dave Lockie, Fxnction, Danijel Gornjakovic, Milos Rakcevic

hello everyone so we are about to have uh one hell of a panel here and if you are interested in the nft space you are in it for a treat so without further Ado let's introduce our panelists Dave um is from automatic Dave do you want to introduce yourself a little bit sure I joined automatic just over a year ago it's the web 3 lead so I'm the guy who's trying to figure out how the Juggernaut of web 2 and like the Ethereal nature of web 3 coalescing to Great user experiences we have the legendary Michael AKA function so Michael I I don't think that you need introduction but please tell yourself a little bit to the audience what's up everybody I'm Michael you may know me is function on Twitter um I run a web 3 marketing agency and we also have a Discord uh tool called sense good to meet everybody and finally we have Daniel from Tales um Daniel do you want to give a little bit more briefing to the audience as well yeah sure um I'm the founder of dailies and related to it over time we are actually a protocol that's not directly tied to nft but I do think we leverage nfts from you know kind of a different point of view so I'm eager to share some of those examples I'm basically a software engineer smart contract architect thanks so yeah we have seen the growth of the nft industry going rapidly over the years but the question we keep getting is what's the end goal for the utility of the nft and how can we implement it into our daily lives and more most importantly how can we use that technology to onboard people from web 2 to web free so Dave let's start with you yeah I mean it's a tough question because I don't think there is like One Singular future utility for all nfts I guess that's like Miss selling this panel a little bit but it's a little bit like crypto and money itself the nfts mean different things to different people and there are lots of creative ways of using them I do think that the world is converging lots of experiences experiences are converging you know whether it's education whether it's work whether it's play um so nfts for me represent almost like Memories or little celebrations of the transactions that we have along the way so they're they can be very interesting in a practical way so at automatic we're thinking about are they a better way to do subscriptions or are they a great product for merchants to sell is there an intersection there with AI and I guess like proving identity proving authorship of some content is it a different way to think about content entirely so rather than content living within a website is content itself just this sort of like uh Atomic cloud and it coalesces into different experiences whether it's web or ar or whatever it is so yeah lots of lots of room for play so from this perspective um in which direction you see automatic going the most where when it comes to nfts and where do you see the utility of the nfds I think right now with to we have great power right 40 of the web runs on WordPress and millions of stores run on woocommerce so we have this great uh ability to connect web 2 and web 3 but we also have a responsibility so we tend to be quite conservative we tend to look at what's already happening it's an open source ecosystem anyone can build anyone can innovate it's very it's got a lot of harmony with the permissionless nature of web3 and people are already doing interesting Integrations so we're watching some of those we also tend to go with the most proven use cases first so just something simple like how can a merchant sell nfts alongside traditional products do they sell them separately are they digital Twins What's the post purchase utility is it gating is it a cross-platform subscription what does that look like even just getting some of those fundamental bits like how do you provision wallets for Shoppers so just trying to get some very basic but smooth and meaningful end-to-end experiences as a shopper I love this Merchant they've got this cool digital product how do I buy it and like what what are our mutual experiences around that so yeah it's pretty modest to start with yeah that's amazing that that's definitely amazing so switching to function as someone who is the true OG of the nft industry um and who has seen a lot of things and I do mean a lot of things in the end of the industry like what do you based on your experience what are the nft projects that do well in the market like like a five year or not five years A couple of years ago like um are they working are those models working today and are those utilities going to be beneficial in the future as well 100 that's a good question I'm going to type both questions in together I have a unique perspective on this I really like a lot of people are always talking about utility like oh well it doesn't what does it do does it do this does it do that this that I'm less concerned about like what I do with my nft and I actually think that the utility is the fact that I own it and the way that I interface with the community around it so I think it's like a really like undervalued thing because everybody's always looking for something physical to actually do with it but in in my world the way that I observe it and to answer your second question what projects will do well it's the ones that realize that at least in the current ecosystem of nfts the only thing that matters is attention it's the only thing that matters and how that attention is utilized in order to congregate people and how inspired those people feel to self-congregate self-organize is how quote-unquote floor prices go up it's how like you see sappy seals 90 of the time when you log on to Twitter um and I find it to kind of be like an existential dilemma that the nft industry is in right now is I do see the potential to be utilizing nfts for key card access for tickets all of those different things um but we're just starting to interface with the technology and the only thing that people care about is congregating together and I think that's not just not just enough it's more than enough like it's actually the the real utility of nfts is to bring people especially during coved like when people are segregated and stuck in their homes to have people to give people an access point to connect with each other in the digital in a digital world and to be able to experience what it's like to interface with this entirely new web3 like chaotic industry together and try to figure it out together like that is utility like that's honestly the most important utility because no one here in crypto can do it alone it's just a fact yes so here's another question if you had an opportunity to start like okay you did tons of really cool things within the nft space but if you like said today I'm gonna start a new nft project what would your focus be well I like um would you focus on on building the community would you focus on creating the utility for the community like what would be your secret Edge so to say well for me personally I'm very passionate about Taos so I'd probably have like a unique angle about like creating Dows or like doing some sort of experiment to figure out how to self-organize people um but to answer your question very directly and very clearly I would have no expectations I would give them nothing and it's what I've done with all my NFC projects it's like you are joining this like I'm not going to make you a promise of what's going to happen I might have a mind map of some ideas and some things where we might go but I understand that like in crypto you have to be able to like pivot instantly and if you're over promising to a community it almost puts you in the corner where you don't have the capacity capacity to Pivot and if you don't have the capacity to Pivot in web 3 you're just not going to make it like you have to be able to constantly move and and adjust to the way that the ecosystem is moving I mean if you look at it Bitcoin ordinals weren't relevant three months ago you know and now the majority of Solana projects have created derivatives on bitcoin of their own ordinal projects they're they're pivoting into the way that the ecosystem is moving and navigating and I think it's like one of the most crucial skills that Founders can have and they box themselves in the majority of the time when they make way too many promises to the community up front and they do so out of insecurity you know well I want to sell this out I want to make sure that everybody likes me and that everything's going well but like if a Founder like one of the better founders in the space that I've observed since the beginning of Frank from D Gods one of my good friends like he just doesn't really give a [ __ ] he does he cares but he's not going to like what I mean by that is he cares but he's not going to change his perspective or his opinion based upon the guy with 50 followers talking [ __ ] online a lot of Founders will waver in that and so that's kind of my answer you gotta just stick to your guns that's that's brilliant I I love it I love it so Daniel tell us a little bit about where and I mean you are kind of indirectly working with involved with the nfts so how did you come up with that idea and like what moment was what crucial for you to say okay look like let's start implementing and playing around with the nfts and what use cases did you explore on that Journey yeah definitely um I I laughed a bit when you talked about pivoting because I think you in in the two years since Taylor's has been you know has started we've pivoted more than I can count definitely part of our journey did have to do with nfts and how we leveraged that said we aren't directly an nft oriented project but we did experiment with some interesting concepts of it I think one I'm most proud of and I'm actually baffled that no one else is using it in such a way it's directly tied to onboarding users um nfts are actually smart contracts like the nft standard it gives you the interface which is like free methods but it actually doesn't stop you to leverage everything else that smart contracts and the technology has to offer we've taken that idea um also just those people in here but I'm kind of troubled with the nfts being stored centrally like the art itself the jpegs are like many times actually stored on AWS buckets or wherever like sometimes some ipfs but even that is arguably not as decentralized as just storing it on the Chain itself and with the optimistic Roll-Ups with the l2s in the future l3s gas has become dirt cheap and I do think we should strive towards actually storing nfts and the art on blockchain anyway back to to you know how we leverage the nfts um we actually have this concept of I mean we don't have it it's a standard the dynamic nfts nfts that can mutate which you render on the blockchain you actually write SVG code inside of smart contracts and they actually mutate and represent the state of the nft um as it changes um we did things such as vouchers we are essentially what you could understand as a sport book but with web free and onboarding users is very important referring friends is very important so you can actually take say 50 usdc you actually mint an nft voucher with it you can send it to anyone it's a pretty and what you get implicitly with that is get you get referral which is tied on chain via Smart contract other things we did we had this very fun uh you know uh squid games was a thing at the time and we did this like Battle Royale because we are a binary options protocol so you guess the price of let's say Bitcoin does it go up or down so we did this battle royale where we have six rounds everyone chooses up and down it's sudden death you miss you're done but when you let's say you log in into the game you get your same squid game you get your number and this means an nft that actually is represented by an image that renders itself as the state to change if you die in round one the image says X you're done if you make it to round two it says you made it to round two and what this does it gives you a secondary market like an open C when you can trade and you get like there's you identify the state you know if this guy made it to round three and he's telling you his entry you come you know it's a swap like in wrestling you tag you tag him so anyway I don't want to go on a round but yeah those are some use cases no that's that's brilliant like like definitely definitely something I actually um see being used down the road and that actually reminds me of web two companies that are struggling to capture the audience especially the Gen Z audience which is pivoting towards newer Technologies such as nfts so we see a lot of web 2 companies um needing Wesley entering the web free space just so they can get the approval from the audiences so Dave what's your intake on that and do you think that's really necessary or even a good approach towards the Gen Z Market well that's a good question [Music] um I think we're in a lucky position in that we get to watch what's happening with the ecosystem so if you're running a centralized platform to some extent you're in charge of the Innovation you have to kind of come up with the good ideas you have to execute them you have to get people to like them that just happens with WordPress that's the way that WordPress has always grown um so if Genesis want to come do crazy stuff with the platform they can come do it and if it makes sense for us as a as a company operating a WordPress to partner with them and help them do that that we can do it but we're I guess I like to describe this more as sort of later stage investors than sort of seed or range around would be more like a you know a series C or a VC we see what's already working and then we apply resources strategically to help them do more and go further I think we're all underestimating the extent to which our lives are going to change over the next few years when it comes to digital and like the idea of even the idea of having a website has been super challenged by cha GPT this year like wait till there's augmented reality and like better immersive Tech in the mix as well I don't even know whether gen Z are going to know what's hit them with that stuff so like we're we're now all just we're all like the Red Queen right we're all running as hard as we can to keep up with what's happening around us and figure it figure it out and explore together and I think that speaks to functions point which is like these are Technologies to help people connect and figure things out together like whether it's for fun whether it's for work where as people like learning how to use the web you know we've gone from becoming like an individual animal to a super Colony like a super organism that's like we're closer to a an antlers now than we are to you know a beetle and we're just figuring this stuff out and I think nfts and the communities around those are just one of many ways in which people are uh playing exploring having fun funding like-minded people it's about opting in to folks that you connect with that think well together and it's those emerging communities like with no agenda with no set outcome like that's that's the only way that you can face this uncertain future and have any chance of success is to expect chaos and complexity and change and find other folks who want to play in that place with you right so function what's your intake on it I mean what's that what's your what's your opinion when it comes to and do you think there is a need for it first of all and secondly do you think that's the right way to a proud approach younger Generations that are adopting nfts by like my point is like do you think that web2 companies are necessarily um switching to web free just to adore and capture new new younger Generations that already adopted the nft without the actual any need for the nfts yeah I mean when something gets so much attention especially in the media it's just as and especially in like the financial sector where there's so much Capital flowing into something it's just an immediate assumption to me that like General companies or any like sort of media brand will start to Jace that um I've worked on a couple celebrity celebrity projects myself uh with ratio our marketing agency and it seems to be the most common misconception to me especially working with celebrities when they're launching their own nft that it's just a gap of Education you know like when we're working with uh Logan Paul or Tory Lanez and they're launching an nft they'd still think they're selling merch you know they're still think they're selling a T-shirt and to a degree like if you set up the expectations correctly maybe you could structure it that way but uh the benefit and like the the real potential of what's being built here is for those type of people celebrities Brands to actually build something that's sustainable um and not just sustainable but allows their brand to like this was the thing that I always saw when we were working with like Logan Paul I mean my boy Sam and Tory Lanez like they they want to be connected to their fans because they know that's where the value is but at the same time their social hierarchy also brings them value like the fact that they are on a social hierarchy Spectrum above their fans is why they have fans and the more like the way the world's going in my opinion the more the more that that occurs like the less people like pedestal those like those type of individuals the less they care the less they they see through the mask they see through the facade more um and that's what I was trying to educate these guys on is like this is your opportunity to actually like level yourself out and to like bring the like bring yourself down or bring your fans up or whatever it needs to happen so that you're on the same level and I actually think that their brands would be more successful if they were able to like accomplish that and connect there and so that's the major opportunity for it but it's just such a big disconnect in the education because like the last Bull Run was all about nfts so much money is flowing in why wouldn't celebrities come in and launch something really quickly and make five million dollars it's a lot more than their movie they just made you know it's a lot more than the 20 YouTube videos you just put out uh honey you can do it in 30 minutes and a couple hours you know um and it's all part of the process too like I think a lot of people demonize that and villainize it but like I don't I honestly look at it as a good thing it's like that's how attention got here that's how more money got here and we're all in a bear market now and we all know that the money's not there but the people that are here and sticking through it are the ones that have hopefully capitalized a little bit financially on that but B been inspired enough to utilize some of that Capital to grow and build whatever they want to build yeah I like I I do like that you are working whatsoever a lot of celebrities and I think that we've seen in the past um like you mentioned um they still perceive um nfts as web2 products you know like merger and stuff like that which is cool but I do think that we need to work closely with them and educate them of the things they can actually um do exactly so I gotta um hear your opinion as well Daniel so like like do you also like what's your opinion when it comes to web2 companies um trying to switch I think it's a I'm conflicted I mean the attention is good right um it gets you know it gets more recognition more people hear about nfts crypto maybe some of them tap into deeper but you know having said that uh lots of not just companies celebrities per se I'm gonna take the example of Sir Anthony Hopkins who I admire the most but like he got into nfts launched the collection um the attention is good but it actually focuses people on parts of blockchain that aren't about permissionless about justiceness about smart conscious per se so we are kind of conflicted I I do think the the way forward for you know the technology is to get integrated on a much deeper level in our day-to-day lives not replace Banks per se like talking about D5 but actually become integrated like no smart contracts the trust execution and yeah maybe nfts and just you know riding the hype are the way towards that and like you said get more funding get more budget and actually leverage that to you know make something more substantial so um here's a question for all of you um how do you think that we can bypass the momentum where the only incentive is the financial gain so how can we like what would that be from your perspective Dave how did you bypass I I mean I don't I don't think you can ignore it for me it's about how do you use it you know it's it's a force in the world it's part of human behavior so the the real work is to acknowledge that and to use it has a force towards whatever your purpose is you know and that's the way that's the way that you win you know you align incentives and you create an environment which is supportive of progress towards your goal and I think that's where that's where I get really excited about web3 is a possibility because it really allows us to go I guess like back down the stack of human values and like what is it that you care about uh and the brands I think we'll see doing really well in the future and by Brands I mean like whether it's an individual celebrity whether it's a company or the ones that have a really clear mission and they find ways to harness everyone's energy and align those incentives towards it so I think what Nike are doing kind of cool back to the previous question they're not a web 2 company they're a traditional brand but what I think they're trying to do with the swoosh's build a new kind of company where if you care about like great fashion excellent athletes and excellence in athletics then you can find a community that also care about that where you can contribute your your energy your creativity and that can get harnessed by the Brand Plus Community towards like supporting that as something that people care about um I don't know if that answers your question but I think it the job is to integrate all of these different incentives whether they're Financial whether their status hierarchy whatever it is and give them shape and nurture them so that they they grow and if we can go and do the work that matters in the world you know there's a lot of work to be done in the world a lot of play to be had a lot of fun to be had how do you create a garden where that stuff can can can happen nice so function what's your intake I don't want to move past the financial part of it I like selling monkey pictures for three hundred thousand dollars it's nice um but on a serious note like it's what brings the industry what is what brings so much attention to the industry is the financial gains and so ever since like I got into crypto in 2017 I've heard the same same question asked very like through a lot of different Twitter spaces or or panels and things like that and sometimes there's like an air of like there's something wrong with it you know like Oh Well everybody's making so much money but like where's the attention on the actual building where's the attention on the actual technology and my argument is is the opposite like I don't think people would give a [ __ ] about the technology if the if the money was if there wasn't Financial incentive there and to have so much Financial incentive there is only accelerating the a like rate of attention that the industry has given and this technology is given and bring way way more interested and a lot more smarter people into the industry so I personally would like I take the stance that it's a net positive not just because the dude in his basement can go flip a coin make fifty thousand dollars and change his life but also because you look at these other like industries that have high level technology that are changing things VR AR AI is a little different because it's having a little hype period right now but none of those three have Financial incentive for the modern day individual they've got cool technology and maybe Financial incentive for creatives and Builders over a long period of time but for the dude sitting in his basement or the the the the the guy that's just working his nine to five and living his normal life there's no real impact on his life in an immediate short term uh uh a period and so I look at it as like the best thing possible because with that much attention and that much eyes on it and that's much conversation happening like it doesn't matter if sixty percent of it's 70 of it's just purely degenerate and only gambling and only people making buku money and losing buku money doesn't matter what it really matters is that the other 30 is growing and getting bigger and getting stronger and thinking new thoughts that have never been thought and having new conversations that have never been had and if it takes the seventy percent to gamble and have fun and bring a super like a [ __ ] ton of attention to the industry in order for the 30 to correlate together and build new things and be creative I'm all for it because that 30 is only going to grow definitely agree what's your intake Daniel I mean very interesting um opinions and I I love how how different we we feel about the topic because I am an engineer and you know that comes with my own you know but they take some things and I am more focused on the technology and I am a bit frustrated with how low the attention span is about how everyone is in it for the quick Buck but I understand the necessity of it I understand the hybrid attraction and yeah I think we can we we need to leverage that like I already said in the last question um but you know to get people to actually understand the value of the technology you actually have to show them how it improves their day-to-day lives right like right right now our approach is you know the the people who are in it per se we just scream look how cool it is look how great it is but you know how does it really help you as an individual and I'm just going to speed both some examples of how I think the technology even now helps or can help you know our day-to-day activities but definitely you know it can go much much broader than that doing a wire transfer to us from Serbia right now close to impossible we're talking about days of bureaucracy we're talking about 10 30 percent provision you know fee doing it with blockchain doesn't matter if you're sitting with me next to me if you're in the US or wherever like 10 seconds right depending on the Chain fees Dirt Cheap another example the UEFA Champions League finals are approaching it's of course sold out every year there's a lot of secondary Market Black Market if you will 99 of it is scammers how do you solve that how do you solve people you know send selling things without being able to really validate until you meet him but even then like it's pretty easy to fake a ticket right well you know nfts and smart conscious can solve that quite elegantly and there are already applications of having nfts as tickets as you know entrances to to events or whatever you mean the collection you sell the nft Via opens it needs to happen on Smart contracts when someone comes in you actually validate you change the state of the nft that the person has the ticket that it actually says he's in it's been burned you burn it so yeah those were the two examples that I think you know showcase how we can leverage the technology and when we get to a level that is really part of our day-to-day lives when it's accessible via your mobile phone we don't need to just you know hype it anymore it's gonna be pretty yeah pretty visible to everyone so here's here's the question how do you think that onboarding process from web 2 to web free is simple these days and how can we Implement NFD technology in order to make the onboarding experience more smoother I mean it depends what your end goal is I mean I think what Reddit did with their digital collectible stuff was like it was very slick it was very seamless there's no mention of the technology and unless you work in the crypto industry you don't really care about the jargon what you care about is like is that is that cool do I want it um and really did a great job with producing the artwork they did a great job of marketing the thing and then they made it super easy for people to to get involved and they have this like social network that's part of their platform already that meant that it was self-propagating and that suited them really well um I think I just think we're in a very experimental phase there's a lot of noise I think the Innovation is not clean right it's messy there were hackers there were thieves there were scammers there were genuine Builders and we're like I personally and us as a business are watching to see what signal emerges from all this like what is the best way to onboard people to work through like will people ever even know or care about crypto and web 3 or are they just gonna have like their their stripe thing now has a bunch of their digital products in it like when they go to their shop pay account they've now got all these like uh digital invoices and access tickets is it just that the instruments that they already use now suddenly become well not suddenly but gradually become more and more useful and as we layer in AR actually they can wear that thing that they bought as well in you know in in the metaverse so I don't mean again I don't think there's like one utility there's not one right way to onboard um very context specific and it's what you're trying to do as well if you're a web 2 brand that's just trying to make a bunch of money you're probably going to end up being a little bit more explicit about it if you are just playing around with lots of different Technologies and there were business purposes for which these Technologies are a better fit than probably they're like behind the scenes and the experience is less obvious that you're going from one world to another so people talk about this transition I just think it's like it's additive they're now just more things going on and people are going to slip in and out of that as makes their experience online easier and more seamless like I don't have to set a buddy cookie preference on every website I go to because I've got like a first party uh data profile that I take with me every website sees that and accepts it that's like a better user experience and people will uh adopt that but they won't know that they're that's a web 3 identity and a web 3 data profile it'll just be a wallet that their browser manages so yeah a lot not just one way lots of different ways what do you think about is function I actually don't think it's our responsibility to onboard people onto web 3. that's an interesting I know a lot of people what are you talking about um what I mean is I think it may if you choose to you can hold some responsibility in educating people about web3 educating people about crypto but some like it's it's first off it's every single individual's personal responsibility to make the decision to step into the chaotic world that is webbed through like there's no other way to do it besides making your own decision and that's the point that I'm really trying to make um and second off sometimes at least in my observation of the space when that is the goal you don't get the goal right it's like it's like the thing that you're looking at and when every time you look at it it's not there anymore or it moves you know it's like the goal post constantly moves the more you look at it and I think that's like where a lot of people get stuck in in the web three spaces they're like well we need to onboard more people not really like the onboarding is happening like people are getting interested in the time they're getting interested in in fact like sometimes I even question if our forcing of onboarding people is like slowing the process down you know um a lot of people aren't ready for web 3. and they're going to be ready when they're ready so you can't really force that experience you can educate that experience you can bring more awareness more attention to it you can bring like you can have conversations with people when when the converse when the topic naturally arises but I'm not one that's like hmm like an Evangelical evangelicalist of of web3 you know I'm not I'm not a Mormon of web three I'm not going to people's front doors knocking on the door being like have you heard of John Smith you know you heard of Satoshi Nakamoto no I'm I'm not one to do that but I am open to conversations when people are interested and I usually find that most people nowadays have at least a very very core basic amount of knowledge around it which stirs the interest already um so my opinion is just like relax and let it happen you know so so here's another question um I definitely think that's an interesting point of view and refreshing point of view if I I can say so when you when you think about it should we focus on developing the royalty towards the web free rather than um focusing on onboarding people to from web 2 to web free I think you just build cool [ __ ] I mean it's a fact you know you look at D Gods like a great example like they're not building a bridge from web to web three they're not like out there saying we are going to be the Pioneers that are but they're doing it naturally because of the unique Vision that Frank had and the way that the team organized around that vision and the way they executed on it and it all happened like pretty naturally there's nothing to say that it was smooth but it was natural um same with board Apes for the most part you know like same with like azuki or Solana you know all of these things for the most part don't get attention because like those people who created them are trying to force the attention it happens because of the right time the right circumstances the right energy the right person and and as soon as those like things click into place like onboarding happens naturally you know you get Carmelo Anthony and basketball players wanting to wear D Gods hoodies you know because it is the thing that became popular now because of a certain certain set of circumstances that you just had to be in the moment to connect with um and I think the main point I want to make is like I think when people build solely for the intention of onboarding web 2 to web 3. it's like how how do you how do you even know what that looks like like how do you have any idea like you I might have a a bias you know you might have like your your expectation your projection of how you want it to occur but the reality is nobody really knows how people are going to get interested nfts were not popular last Bull Run no one gave a [ __ ] about crypto punks about crypto kitties like and for a very brief period at the end of 2017 and now arguably it's the largest largest onboarding tool for crypto that we've seen yet and so my stance is like keep building cool [ __ ] things that you're passionate about things that you're excited about uh stick your flag in the ground and just wait for the world of crypto to come to you instead of chasing it nice Daniel how's your experience uh when it comes to building cool [ __ ] I like to think that we built a lot of um but you know I I would love to just relax and wait the users come but unfortunately we are burning our funds so and even though we build a lot of cool [ __ ] like our reach is what 100 200 users that actually use we are an optimism chain so actually you know have access to Smart wallets you know know how to use Smart contracts so actually no matter how hard we try our reach is very low because it's still a niche market and we really struggle with onboarding users so I'd argue that a good even spending of our funds is trying to improve the onboarding experience however we can which is why we build things like gift cards that are elaborated on um but you know I'm very bullish about the onboarding future there's this EIP from ethereum Foundation about the the account obstruction standard that is declared as an nft so I do feel that will actually make the onboarding much easier and I do think next few years we'll get another hype another you know just wave of people coming in and actually staying for the technology not for the quick turn of you know of funds so so yeah I'm staying in for technology that's that's the most famous quote probably in the web free space but the truth is that our like in general not only the nft space but in in general like web free space is still full of people who are there purely for financial reasons so how do you see that developing in the years to come do you think that those people perhaps like heard about the free there's like get quick fast kind of thing they get in they get scammed or like how do you think those kinds of things are going to impact the future of the web free they've I mean money's as old as people you know like it's just the money for the internet and we're figuring out like nobody's prepared for the internet nobody's prepared for every human to have a smartphone in their pocket like we're blowing up thousands of years of Institutions and culture and civilization and everything else we're all just trying to figure out what I mean it's like money's not money is not the root of all evil love of money is the root of all evil so like people need money and the more that we rely on digital to put food on our family's table and to connect with each other and to build cool shirt the more essential it is that we have money that is supportive of what we need out of it you know to be there to not to not get rugged for it not to get devalued for us not to be controlled by like a panoptic and cbdc I mean there were but you know again like money means so many different things to different people it's so circumstantial it's so so subjective and that's why that's why I love this space because there's something for everyone and what you need you know your relationship with that money with this Tech over time changes as well like what mood are you in what are you trying to achieve like what are your circumstances I just think it's like the very first principle is it's like the internet's money and we are the internet's people now so like what we use from there how we use it like let's go and figure that out function when it comes to figuring it out how far did you get how far did I get I'm still figuring it out man still learning every day um but to feed off off of your question off of your answer as well like I think what really is going to happen is the people that are paying attention the most participating the most and are the most engaged are just going to become [ __ ] Savages and what I mean by that is crypto as a whole and what I've always seen it since I really entered in 2017 is like part of its purpose on this plan it is not just to like change the financial systems and do all of that like on a broad level but actually to change the way that you think about money on a micro level as an individual it takes you from what I call the Fiat Paradigm the the Paradigm where you're constantly calculating how much you can afford how much uh your time is worth all of these different things it takes it gives the individual who chooses to participate and engage on a high level the capacity to completely shift and alter the way that they interface with money which is for a lot of people a large majority of how they interface with life as well um and what I mean by that is you're moving from a Fiat Paradigm of a paradigm of scarcity per se it's a one where really there isn't any scarcity there's just purely abundance and a lot of abundance and a lot of opportunity of like all over the place and for the people that are attuned enough uh sharp enough and attentive enough it really can alter like the base core structure of like how most people interact interface with money which is from a place of scarcity what about you Daniel I think I think he you are you're really qualified for this topic given the fact what you do so what's your what's your um intake on that and I mean first of all I think we are all qualified but from different perspectives which I think brings value to this panel as a whole um like I kind of tapped into it I think we ultimately just saying please use blockchain because it's called would not suffice like you need to show the people why it's actually Superior than to using the web 2 alternative um the best you know I think explaining by example is the best approach we are in natural sports book sports betting if you will we want to be competitive with Pinnacle with javkins locally against Mozart so how do we compete with that like they have 1000x the funding the infrastructure already established the marketing the reach the you know ease of access well you know there are arguments we can use first of all is the the trustlessness I don't know in maybe in Serbia it's not the case but I've heard you know globally especially in U.S a lot of people get banned from betting or the the bets aren't paid out they aren't collateralized so you could bring that value with the smart contracts but actually it's you know everything we offer is 100 characterized so the funds are sitting in the world for you to claim if you win if not you know they are returned to the house um there's no Banning you cannot ban anyone in crypto right you cannot stop I mean if you are a circle you can Blacklist people but we don't do that we have immutable contracts in that aspect um I mean lots of other things but yeah like in nutshell you need to make your product better you cannot reach everyone some people are just happy with the web 2 thing but you know there are people who appreciate and you know that's how you you get the stickiness level you know because actually you offer something Superior so using the technology as it's intended the smart conscience the trustlessness using it to replace the the human counterparty the counterparty that can rag you I think that's you know how are we gonna get to the stickiness in the next few years nice so a lot of people here are already aware of it but gaming in web free is becoming a Hot Topic and we've seen a lot of of capital BC Capital being deployed towards the web free gaming so let's kick off with that a little bit like where do you see web free um gaming like right now and where do you see it um going forward people try and differentiate like gaming from everything else like it's uh as if play is somehow not real life as if it is its own sort of Silo and bucket and I think some extent that's because our relationship with gaming has been through specialized consoles or gaming PCs or like what like it's a particular type of experience but going back to like what I said earlier I think these experiences converge so the communities the like the friends that you make the play that you have Within like what's at the moment a gaming experience is just going to start transcending beyond that and really gave me is a way for us to to act together like to transact and one of the principles that I use when trying to figure out is something good for woocommerce is it's good good for WordPress is like those projects are founded on open source and open source is about Four Freedoms for very explicit freedoms and so I spend a lot of time thinking about how how is freedom relevant in this like in this new disruptive context of the internet with crypto with everything else and it's about the freedom to transact it's the freedom to act across and together like we don't matter individually so much as we matter in our relationships with others and I think gaming is just a really intense and focused very structured way that we act together you know as a team to go and be that boss or achieve that Quest and you know you look at things like layer 3 or um Galaxy I never know how to pronounce that you know they're they're kind of like quests and challenges but they're also learning but they were also like earning some money or helping you to learn professional skills so I think it's that that that property of crypto and blockchain that like makes things open and makes things permissionless and allows us to take all of this activity all these relationships that happened within this gaming context and apply them to any context to a financial context to a community context to a professional context so that's what I think it is it's just like another way for attention and collaboration to to grow and then more importantly it's a way for us to like break out of that Silo and build into the world that was a bit of a rambling answer but hopefully uh hopefully you all stuck with me what do you see is going on um right now it's just really in an image of his you know like and rightfully so it's nothing wrong with it it's just people are building games that nobody wants to play for the most part you know uh there's a couple out there that I've I've played around with that are fun and interesting but for the most part it's spend 20 minutes in it and then I'm done you know or play the game with the intention and the of of making a financial gain from the game which shouldn't could be a potential uh benefit of like web3 gaming for sure but shouldn't be the main focus like I don't go sit down and play Halo because I'm making money I do it because it's fun you know I play FIFA with my boys because we're we're betting although sometimes we do but I play it because it's fun and I want to kick their ass you know and that's kind of the energy that needs to be brought to the like web3 gaming ecosystem is like build something that people enjoy to play you know build something that interfaces with blockchain technology but people don't really even realize that they're interfacing with it and that's a great way to educate people because the gamers are the people that get it the most they already sell CS go Skins for hundreds of fifty hundred thousand dollars uh somebody just unboxed one yesterday was like 37k he got an offer for it's not even an nft it's literally just a skin in the game that could be deleted at any point off of the server so they get it and they know the value of it and like deep down it's just educating them definitely like when you when you actually start thinking about that if you go to steam and you sell your CS go item and you get steam credits but you can't actually get money out so that's actually the one like really strong use case for the actual blockchain and to come into the play and like get you an opportunity for your money not to be stuck and uh yeah I like I love that I love that what do you think about it Daniel I mean you've tapped into the the single actual use case of web free gaming right now which is uh tokenizing items you know tokenizing armor sets and I think web free as a game web free gaming is kind of a meme like the games are not executed on blockchain games are developed and executed on centralized servers and where while that's the case I'd argue it's you know not web free per se the web free aspect of it could be the like I said like you gave an example like I said um so items you know even players avatars and you know you could tie everything to that player Avatar you know to your identity like the items you have the armor the whole inventory aspect of it even within the game I've kind of played with decentraland you can own the real estate in the game you can build something but that said the game is still executed centrally so yeah I think for now we just stick to those things that we can tokenize and I do think tokenizing items is is a really good use case because you know you gave the example of Cs go like you see something as legendary but it's actually just as rare as the centralized game designer decided to be like he can create a new one he can let so but with blockchain if you actually mint an nft collection representing a legendary set of items you know there are just five of them you know who owns them you can trade them on openc so I think that's the the use case for now maybe down the line when we've got L freeze and when we have dirt cheap gas we can actually render the games on blockchain so then I'd say web free gaming is actually a thing absolutely absolutely so with seven minutes left of the panel I want to use this time to ask to let you engage with amazing speakers that we have today so please if you have a question for any of our speakers feel free or all of them feel free to raise your hand and yeah no one this is so broad topic like but okay but okay so I actually I actually have a question for function so I raised the hand exactly so so you you executed multiple marketing strategies for the nft space itself and when you start designing a marketing campaign for a new project what's what's the first what what's your road map in defining the strategy for the nft project mostly I pass it off to my boy Sam right there he builds all the strategies but really when when we're looking at different companies that uh come to us searching for strategies we really look at a couple different things we we run them through brand voice documents we run them through Niche Discovery because essentially the major question or the major thing that people come to us they say we want to be DJ on Twitter you know we want to say GM and we want to get attention like all the dgns do and like all these other companies are really good at doing you know um and we asked them okay cool like how d-gen do you really want to be you know because uh Sam has run Anna mocha brand subsidiary accounts all the way over to Radio Shack you know me on Twitter probably because I'm trading some crazy nfts or made some dick jokes and got a lot of attention there so we have the capacity to go extremely D gen which can get attention really really well or scale it back a little bit so a lot of our processes working with the company to figure out what it is they actually want how they want to communicate with their audience and how you can at least tie a little bit of the Degen nature into it in order to connect with the community it really does become the largest question because if you're building a product or have a service or anything like that you can tweet all day about it but unless you have the capacity to connect with the people that care about that product and know like how those people interface with each other you're gonna have a very a very hard time if you don't understand that interfacing and getting into the community we've been like built and raised and we know how to do it very very well and it's not hard for companies to do that if they have like the right touch and the right guidance so yeah like you you actually launched um sense um it was last year wasn't it yeah yeah so so the the fun use case that we we actually use since um so it's to to give you a little short intro you would probably do it better but um it's it's a it's a Discord um tool which basically allows you to text your audience from Discord to telegram so we actually find it as it found it as a useful tool because we figured out among our Discord Community who's committed enough for our project to put their name into into that um tool so so uh I I like the way how you actually I I mean what you just said made a lot of sense in my hand ahead because you knew how to communicate that to the community and actually bring the the value for the community so yeah it was like last year Max and I were just standing on my balcony and sitting around thinking about all the the challenging things Max is the CEO and he also built the tool um and we're just thinking about all the challenging things in the industry and we looked at Discord we said this is a fantastic tool to congregate individuals into communities and to have the commit community be semi-filtered it is a terrible tool to stay notified if I'm in more than one community and for me in nft land and and trading land I'm joining nft discords all the time in the bull market I have 50 60 maybe 100 Discord servers I'm in and so I personally have to mute the whole app or mute individual servers and just make sure that it's not bing bing bing bing bing bing all day on my computer so max and I said you know what like what's a good solution for this building an SMS uh marketing tool inside of Discord so that the people that are in there don't have to leave and go do other things and so the founders the creators of the Discord server can quickly go into their Discord server type a message click Send and then boom right on your phone so whether you're doing a Twitter spaces whether you have a mint that's live or coming up whether you have a white list whatever it is senses essentially in my opinion and maybe a little bit biased the number one Discord marketing tool is there's nothing better to make sure that your community knows what you're doing yeah I I I I obviously love it but here's here's another topic that Daniel actually initiated but somehow we switched to another topic so you mentioned the um a bit of a not I'm not gonna say struggle but but um a bit of a what's right word for it um what's the struggle for now when it comes to onboarding new users and retaining them so what do you think are the strategies to actually like onboard you web free native users to already existing products in this our particular case for this panel nfts so so um what do you think about it Dave make it fun make it fun I mean if people don't want to be there then like you can pay them to be there but that's not a very sustainable way to do it so yeah you just have to make it a a great experience what about what about your function I agree make it fun and make it simple you know even if the technology that you've built isn't simple the way you communicate that the the technology to the people that are going to use it needs to be simple uh it's one of the biggest things that we find at ratio at our marketing agency is a lot of the times we just we're talking with developers and they've built great products very useful products but they have no idea how to communicate what that product does or the value of that product to the consumer because they built it and they're too close to it so make sure that you a build something that's [ __ ] fun and also make sure that you communicate it in a simple way to the people that are going to be using utilizing it so we are actually out of time but Daniel did something really cool with gamification process and I really wanted to share this with the audience the the game itself or yeah yeah so we we actually built a game um that unports users to our products so the user actually using in the tab there's you know a special page um it's this Indie kind of game where you actually get through our origin story of how the protocol came to be what we are about from the game you actually there's like this tutorial mode where you play with fake money but you can actually play with real funds and access it's it's a dab on its own so the idea itself is very exciting technically it is a bit challenging so but yeah I mean we love it and this is what also we leverage what we talked about we actually build uh armor sets and items that are nfts and users get them as rewards if you do if they do daily quests so yeah we are a protocol that tries to Brand itself as gamification protocol in in a sense so we gamify everything and this is how you know like you have Dave this is how we try to you know stick have the user stick around you know after they try the the product you know feel they like they're playing a game but not losing money ideally so so so I I'm curious we really need to wrap it up I'm generally curious how did that gamification process actually impact the products and your performance in general I mean the thing is um the house or the protocol is profitable when users are losing but you know you have also to be very careful you cannot gamified to a level where you obscure the risks the users need to know the risk otherwise Gary is gonna knock on your door like you have to be very you know transparent about the risks so um you'll be gamified by this you know having everything as a quest you know make one trade win one trade you know then do a parlay if you know sports betting you do a party combined games make a parlay win a parlay or just lose by one game so you just do this Quest and you give rewards to everything and this is where your native token plays in because you kind of subsidize even the losses with your native token and you want to allocate it to those users that actually stick around you know use the product and you know ultimately become also ambassadors of your product perfect thank you so much for for being with us today and thank you so much for sharing your amazing knowledge and experience with the audience and everyone present here so we gotta wrap it up but I do hope you enjoyed the panel so please give it up for our Magic free Trio foreign [Applause]