Daryl Xu: Building B3, The Next Evolution in Crypto Gaming Infrastructure

Transcript

you're now plugged in to the deli podcast hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the deli podcast today I am delighted to introduce you all to Daryl he is the founder of B3 uh Daryl and I go back many years now actually uh you know regular sinks and catching up and sort of exploring different different areas of overlap and so super excited to see him now in the in the driver's seat of his own project uh which I'm you know proud proud angel investor in and very excited for the sort of upcoming token launch Daryl thank you for being here thank you for having me Pierce yeah I just want to say huge huge pleasure super pumped to be here today as Pierce was saying I think when I was first exploring the crypto gaming space you were one of my first calls so I can say you know in a lot of

ways like you kind of brought us to where we are today on this journey so super grateful to be here today excited to chat and share more about B3 in our background absolutely appreciate that man um yeah let's kick it off then we'd love to hear yeah give us a bit of context on sort of like yeah journey into the industry what you've been up to you know prior to B3 and obviously sort of coinbase based uh trajectory and kind of how that's uh yeah anchored things for what you're focusing on now yeah yeah absolutely I won't bore your listeners with all of the detail but I'll give you guys the quick and dirty I've been working in crypto since late 2015 I first began experimenting with I think more Enterprise blockchain

applications at the time if you folks remember that was like the meta at the time where Fortune 500s were going to take you know payments and supply chain and make that more efficient onchain and I think actually we've come full circle some folks are actually doing that in a meaningful way but that was my first entry point and then I worked on a venture studio with a few Partners business partners of mine and we did that in you know 1718 bar Market hit pretty hard so we went our separate ways I found a home at coinbase joined as one of the earlier members of the go to market and ecosystem teams and I think from there was my real you know crash course into crypto and at coinbase I helped to bring

a lot of our crypto native products to Market E2 staking help to you know position our thinking around gaming and the last tour of Duty you know I and my co-founders we worked on Bas so we helped bring that from testet all the way to mainnet and grow the you know initial base of Builders and ecosystem participants so that was what we did and then made our way to B3 cuz we saw an opportunity to really help scale gaming on base and that yeah landed us to where we are today I love that and yeah maybe you could give us a bit of flavor in terms of like you know why gaming as in like you know on from a personal perspective like uh yeah would love to know a bit more about why that was why you naturally sort of like gravitated

towards as well yeah I feel like that comes to basically like Elementary School barl like I've always had I think a deep deep passion and just been drawn to gaming almost as like an outlet for for me it was like when Elon said gaming was like therapy it resonated a lot with me actually because you know I just love back in the day you know plugging into Diablo II or you know Starcraft blizzard was basically my home I lived in blizzard for the longest time and just kind of you know checking out and just playing and grinding and so I've always had like a deep deep affinity for gaming and for me when I saw axi right and

Ronin and let's call it the first cycle of gaming really take off I felt like there was so much opportunity that's why I was so insistent on you know working with coinbase at the time to figure out how we can really scale gaming right coinbase had this pool of 120 million 100 million users how can we bring all of those on chain to play crypto games right because there was very very strong overlap in terms of demographics and so I think for me always felt like there was a natural tie in between gaming and crypto and I just think back to the early days like if you know I was playing Diablo and I was doing bail runs and grinding for hours on end and you know I could actually make some money

from that right and keep ownership in that that would be incredible that would be like I probably wouldn't even be in crypto today I would just be you know a lifetime gamer cuz you could could just play and earn and that could be your entire life right so I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to do that you know we had a few false starts in the industry but this time it feels like we're ready for the main show I love that I love that I love that framing um I uh hadn't quite reflected on if I was actually getting material dollar value out of the games I was grinding on growing up whether I would have ever ended up doing you know other things probably not it's a it's a good point but uh so yeah maybe you can give us a bit of an overview like obviously you

mentioned um some of your co-found is like tell us a bit about you know who was the original kind of founding team like what's the kind of company structure look like right now um yeah would love bit of an overview yeah yeah of course so we're team of all you know X coinbase base so the founding team myself one of my co-founders Victoria hying and our third co-founder and CTO Sean gang all worked at coinbase together you know Victoria and I helped to bring base to Market Sean was a engineering leader on the wallet side and I think for us we all had just this similar passion for gaming you know Victoria's favorite game is like the Sims her her dream is to bring that on

chain one day so it's not GTA actually for her it's Sims and Sean was like a roomescape maxi so actually he's building just as a side quest this like RuneScape open world that you know we'll be sharing more in the coming weeks but basically we all bonded over like gaming and how we can bring gaming on chain and and so the idea of B3 really came about when we had like so much demand and Pi you remember this right like so much demand from large Studios to come and build large gaming worlds and ecosystems on base I think the problem at the time was you know twofold one base was too expensive as a blockchain so these

Studios that wanted to you know run marketplaces right run a lot of AAA gr titles on they would have paid like hundreds of thousands of dollars in compute costs per year that just doesn't make sense as a studio when your margins are super thin right and then two I think they were looking for publisher like support and what I mean by that is they're looking for an ecosystem chain partner that's going to help them along with marketing distribution and also financial support to scale the games on UA right once they're ready and I think at base we were doing as much as we could but usually it was a in out feature or a tweet right which moves the needle I think for a lot of projects but not

for a game that's looking to onboard hundreds of millions of users so that's how we came together and said hey you know why don't we build a layer 3 ecosystem on base and we launch it just as a gaming Focus ecosystem so that way you know transaction costs are super super low it's about 1/ 100th of the transaction cost of base and from a support perspective we're able to offer publisher like support So support across marketing Tech and you know Financial as well so that's how we came together team is pretty lean today so we only have let's see 12 folks full-time and around eight contractors so similar structure to how we launched base back in the day

we want to keep things like really really lean and really mean and I think you can accomplish a lot with you know just a handful of folks and I I couldn't think of a better team to be building with love that and then yeah would love to get a bit of a view from your perspective right you touched on some of these needs of like the developers that you were speaking to um like you know a lot of that kind of like publisher support like maybe some of the sort of um you know more esoteric knowhow about launching economies on chain and things like that like sort of be Beyond some of these uh Dimensions to what you're talking about like what do you think it really takes to kind of differentiate in a pretty saturated infrastructure landscape right now right like we see everyone and their mother launching

chains and like um putting the cart before the horse I think for really the demands there like um obviously the kind of base centricity and your experience working around that is like you know hugely valuable but yeah how do you guys think about you know what what these people are looking for and what's actually going to like sort of stand out from the as I say the the pretty saturated kind of infr landscape yeah I think for gaming it's going to come down to and and I feel like everyone has beat this dead horse but really it's going to come down to fun engaging content and I don't think necessarily it's a bad thing that everyone's building their own chain I mean I think sure you're going to get some chains that are you know ghost chains let's call them right and

maybe some chains are actually just vaporware right but I do think that for any large game you know whether it's in the Casual genre like a candy crush or you know the amazing Off the Grid Godzilla team right that's building in a more sophisticated genre right you're going to need your own chain cu the amount of throughput that you're going to be running through right even Candy Crush right millions and millions of Da right it makes sense to run your own chain because if you're putting that activity on chain and you're doing it on you know let's say like Layer Two right or layer one ecosystem you're literally going to bankrupt yourself in just compute costs

right and if you actually run your own chain then the fees that you could acrew right you could put it back into the ecosystem invest in growth or you could almost become a publisher yourself right and onboard third party title so I think this idea of a saturated like infrastructure landscape I feel like it's a point in time issue like right now we think there's too many but that's cuz the content and the apps haven't caught up yet I think like Fast Forward two three years like we'll see amazing applications and amazing games and people will naturally say like Hey we're finally here we don't you know that's not an issue um I think when it comes to differentiation like right now because we don't have that many apps yet I think

it's really around the community that you can build I think abstract just to give them a shout out they've done a great job right like that's a good example along with Bas of building this like culture and Community where you're bringing in awesome Builders to build those apps so that's what we're trying to do here just like we did back at base where we're building this culture and community and publisher like support So then we're bringing in these like amazing AAA developers that you know built some of the biggest titles of your childhood and they're going to be building those games and the idea is even if just a handful of those games hit right like that's going to be you know the millions of users that we've all been waiting for and I think gam is the best way to do that like out of all

the consumer applications and use cases gaming is the best way to onboard millions of users couldn't agree more on the last point of course uh still fighting the good fight and yeah yeah strong believer I think a lot of us on the dely team you know share that view that in terms of yeah that big kind of consumer facing onboarding funnel like uh still feels like games are incredibly well placed for that um to your point around it being a sort of point in time issue I also love that as well right that uh yeah need more of the apps I guess the the only place where I tend to have reservations is we see so many people like you know just building infer and tooling without a clear path to engaging like actual pedigree apps games products developers that are actually going to come and drop this stuff and so

um that the stuff that I expect to see you know uh going to going to have a tricky time with but um I guess taking a bit a bit of a step back like would love for you to give us an overview of like you know what are the core products you've got on B3 right now right you kind of have this Flagship with basement which I'd love to hear um your thoughts on and then talk us through what like the next pillars are in terms of engaging these big devs and like what that looks like and how it fits into the overall kind of uh offering if you like uh or ecosystem here yeah yeah absolutely so the the way that we're building out the B3 ecosystem is very similar to how we built out bass and how you know J The Envision bass back in the

day right so there's a couple layers to this I think base was the blockchain right but you have apps right that are being built on top of the blockchain and you also need basically a discovery surface for those apps so we're taking that same Framing and same framework and trying to apply it to gaming so if you think about the B3 ecosystem there's two parts there's B3 mainnet which is layer three that sits on top of Base that transactions can run on super cheap super fast right and then there's also basement. fun which was actually a core problem that we found like early in the day when I was at base where a lot of people had asked me like hey you know what are some of the consumer apps on

Bas besides friend Tech right besides some of these meme coin launchpads like where can I find them there's literally no place to do that I would send them to like b.org and just like hey check out the website directory and see like the links right that's a really terrible user experience so I think for us the first thing we wanted to do in addition to building mayet was build what we're calling like the homepage of onchain gaming and you go there right as a new user that maybe is interested in discovering crypto games maybe not as familiar with crypto you can go in and just start playing the games and I think that's where the mini clip experience really resonates with some folks cuz you just go in Jump in just like you did you know in the HTML days go in and start

playing and you reach a certain level or you get a certain amount of rewards then you get prompted to create a wallet right so I think for us we want to make the experience super accessible and also start to build up this you know roster of games that are featured that are the highest quality so then new people that come in can just go and check it out so basement. fund that's like the discovery app right the homepage for onchan gaming and then when it comes to B3 main net so our main net right now we have about 6 million wallets and we have about 200 million transactions so in six months I think we are you know one of the top if not the top l3s now in the ecosystem and

the next phase of the road map which I'm really excited about is this idea of bringing game chains to Market so I think you know the the concept of a game chain I don't think is actually that new right avac subnets right and you know polygon supernets I think other people have evented this idea in their own ecosystems but what we're trying to do different and what we're trying to solve for is actual interoperability between different game chains so I think one example that I usually bring up is you know Godzilla right is going to on board like a crazy amount of users so is maple story they're both technically in the avac ecosystem right and they both have

their own chains and they're both building massive user bases I think one of the promises of this like larger super chain ecosystem is supposed to be this idea of like chains working together and being able to interoperate I think it's great from a technical perspective we have Giga brains out there they're going to solve that I think what's missing is the economic incentive for these chains to actually work together right and so you know even if maple story on boards like a million users are they really going to go out of their way to send that to another avax chain in the ecosystem without an economic incentive I don't think so so for us like we have you know amazing studio Partners launching these game

chains we're going to have five you know very soon here and the difference between our ecosystem setup our stack and another ecosystems is this idea of referral incentives so if you're you know on Prim chain for example which we announced a couple months ago right and you're user on FR chain and you go to a new chain and you you know buy an nft that's onchain right or you trade or you swap something a little bit of that user's revenue is going to go back to parallel the developer so there is this referral incentive SL affiliate fee model where we're encouraging the different chains to actually work together because they both benefit ends

up being like a win-win so from a tech perspective I think you know a lot of what we're building is super cool but I do want to highlight that you know we are really excited about this super chain for gaming Vision because we have this like economic incentive for everyone to work together yeah I mean I'd love that I think it makes a ton of sense right you're sort of like everyone's encouraged to maximize like LTV of these users no matter where exactly the interactions or whatever is happening right because you have that kind of attribution and like participation you know whoever onboarded and what whatever they end up doing I actually think that's one of the beautiful parts of like doing things on chain in general right like um is the ability to build these sort of like pretty rich like user graphs player

profiles where obviously all subsequent transactions you can basically see yeah where they originally came in where they end up going and like yeah as you say allow people to participate in in those economics broadly I think that's uh yeah super strong um very excited to see some of that like uh in action um and see how things I think our diagnosis exactly what you said I think our diagnosis was you know I think we have a decent Chuck of users in crypto today that are active right maybe in the low Millions if you include you know mem coin Traders and snipers right but I think if we don't create this broader economic framework and incentive everyone's going to be competing for like the same users right and so we want to find a way where we're growing the pie not you know just

competing for the same user pool every time for sure um yeah makes makes a lot of sense as I say very excited to see how all that all of that piece evolves um and then yeah just wanted to double click as well right like I love this framing of like onchain mini clip you know basement basement's already like a really dope place to go and check out all of these mini games like definitely hits the sort of nostalgic element of you know logging in in 2005 on Mini Clip and seeing what things are like like um yeah what curious just like what the like evolution of that is to be like what um what you guys have seen sort of resonate with users already so far like yeah would love a little bit more color on there for for people that maybe haven't jumped into the product yet yeah

th% I think Nostalgia is in just generally right and and I think there's an interesting play here where we can make the crypto user experience super seamless abstract away as much as possible and also just play on like new and old IP remix it and bring it to life right on chain so I think that's really the strategy on the mini clip side and a lot of the games that we've seen where we're bringing them back to life right giving them a breath of fresh air on chain have done really well so they've been some of the top games GES that are played on basement today we have around 300K active users and if you look at the user breakdown right some of the top

games are those nostalgic games that we've been Reviving they have the most play time the most hours played which is a metric that we track on basement. fund just again trying to move us in the direction of like better attribution and higher quality users so yeah super excited about that and if you guys recall like there were a few Mass mive hits back in the day on Mini Clip and you know we will be bringing some of those back to life on chain so we actually you know had the fortunate opportunity to talk to a lot of those game developers that you know built some of those OG games back in the day and they're going to be launching crypto versions of those games that will be available to play on basement do on

really really soon that kind of stuff I'm very excited to see taken a step further like I don't know whether we I mean I'm sure we've touched on in conversation at some point but I still think you know stuff like those super fun old school like co-op games like bubble trouble or whatever if you had an ability to set like um you know uh stuff like Fraser right where you know you were trying to crack that smart contract you got one prompt per day but obviously it's like the the the cost per prompt scales things like that right where basically you can uh with a friend group can basically wager to like you know pay an entry basically to take a shot at uh getting on the leaderboards amongst a friend group that's like everyone's opted into and basically whoever takes the kco you know in terms of high score

after X period gets like everyone else entries and stuff I think those old school super casual fun like nostalgic games and allowing people to sort of uh yeah like I know it's like a trivial amount of money maybe if it's amongst friends but it would be like a really fun kind of Engagement Loop that I'm excited uh excited to see people like try and Implement so I'm curious is there any any aspect of that that you guys are looking at in terms of like yeah additional stuff around just bringing bringing these games back yeah th% yeah I feel like there's so many things that crypto is uniquely enabling right and I think you know payments crossb payments is obviously one of them but even game specific things like what you just mentioned around multiplayer experiences and more realtime wagering I

feel like that's one of the key like pieces we can unlock through crypto right so just one simple example you know one of the I can't mention the name just yet cuz we're announcing it pretty soon but one of the games that I think was top three on mini clip right where it's like a sid scroller you're able to play right that was just a single player experience back in the day but what the game developer wants to do is do like a multiplayer experience right and do wagering on chain and so you know wagering can take many many different forms right but it could be you know wagering a high score right or wagering against you know an outcome right tied to the game and I think you can do that

on B3 uniquely in basement because one like our chain is really fast high throughput and also just really cheap so microtransactions just make a ton of sense right so you don't have to wager that much and so yeah those those are the things I'm super excited about and also think the social element too is really why like gaming to me is going to be able to exponentially scale right from like one million users if we just find that breakout hit it'll go very quickly to like 50 right or 100 cuz like if you find that Viral Loop like you're saying right you're you're going to be able to bring in like not just the folks that played the game initially right but all the folks that you know are in that person's Network so very similar to like

Zinga back in the day right we just got to find maybe farcaster frames is it because I know you know Dan's doing a lot but we just got to find that platform to unlock it yeah uh totally totally agree um I think that kind of social viral uh aspect of things is is really cool and um I don't know a lot of these things where as as I say even they're trivial Stakes but you you know like the The Wager aspect just makes engagement and retention like it's it's so much more fun when that's involved and um especially some of these ones where you have like yeah runaway pools of money as people come in and like you know one person takes it home um there was some app that got huge in the UK a few years ago I forget the the name of

it but it was like basically everyone uh would watch adverts to get like a lottery ticket entry and there would be a portion of the ad revenue generated over like a fortnite where basically the amount of tickets you had like gave you some uh chance obviously winning it and it was like you know whatever teenagers playing it like University students but every two or three weeks someone would get like a 20,000 payout and obviously like even though it's so few people it's just the prospect of it is uh is really cool like we saw similar stuff with things like pull together right of like people wanting to get engaged things so yeah very keen to see how that evolv crypto versions of it right like crypto the game was another partner I worked with back in the early days of BAS I think what they did where you had like

Survivor onchain right was super interesting put in a little bit and you know have a chance to win like the gosh I think it was like 20 30 eth price pool or something like that that was cool right and yeah I'm still like my wife in general is bearish on crypto right but I think there's going to be two things that could convince her to be you know mildly bullish let's just put it that way one is if you know the Bitcoin strategic Reserve happens I think that's going to be a big you know um thing that could move the needle but the second would be if we somehow brought HQ trivia on chain like a version of that uh because she freaking loved that game uh

she would play it at work with all of her friends like it just feels like a natural fit to me where if we can make you know the payout experience pretty smooth right like that that's a natural fit for like an onchain game absolutely uh yeah let let's see I think there's tons of those that would would that would uh qualify and it's not hard to do right and again like the kind of viral social Loop when you have these more casual experiences is so easy for people to opt into and on board through that uh yeah think it's a think it's a very strong fit I'm curious as well um obviously the whole AI agent gaming all sorts of stuff going on like uh is there anything going on in your ecosystem that you're excited by your trends that you'd like like to see perhaps either around

basement or elsewhere I feel like um yeah there's like almost more experimentation on that front happening in crypto then outside of it and uh again the ability to speculate on that is part of the Allure so um yeah definitely something I'm tracking quite closely this year as that continues to evolve but curious if there's anything stand out so far on on your side yeah I think AI is top of mind for us but we want to make sure to do it in a way that you know enhances either the products that we're building or delivers more value to you know B3 token holders right we announced our tge that's happening pretty soon last week right we want to make sure that we continue to deliver value for everyone in the ecosystem particularly the token holders so when I

think about AI still feels like it's pretty early days right and like like you said a lot of the you know experimentation I think is happening more with crypto devs that are plugging into AI tooling than actual kind of AI researchers right plugging in crypto tooling let's say the vice versa of that but I think some natural lwh hang food and entry points for us which we've already started number one is building games that can embed these AI agents right and so taking some of their models that are existing and evolving putting it into a game like a casual game and then have that feed into the gameplay itself right that's something that we're

experimenting with at the moment we'll be launching a few games with some of the AI agents I think folks already know where basically you can play as the AI agent right and the output from the agent is going to dictate the outcome of the game so I think that's the super interesting thing we're excited about because you never know like where the game could end up like for example a simple text based Adventure right like if the you know Adventure game is changing based on how the AI agent interacts with it like the outcome is never never the same so I think that's one thing we're super excited about and then the second is you know building a AI agent LaunchPad where you know some of these game chains

right that are launching these like big titles if they want to launch agents associated with those games like is there an opportunity to do those through a Launchpad that you know B3 is working closely with I don't think we'll build something inhouse there's you know a ton of launchpads out there that have built you know really really vibrant ecosystems so the idea there would be to partner with one of those right and have them be you know a strategic partner of ours to launch and grow AI agents from B3 that's interesting we'll uh we'll keep an eye out for sure um so you kind of touched on obviously like a few of the kind of old school Nostalgia games that are um yeah sort of been drawn towards basement and I'm excited to see all the stuff that that's sort of unlocked around that as well to make

them more engaging and when they are bought back um but yeah maybe you could talk us through a bit like what is the kind of strategy on the game chain front right now like you know what does the sort of Ideal client look like and what are some of the kind of key ways that you're trying to sort of pitch this set up to them as well would love some more color on on that front yeah I think the ideal client is you know someone who has experience building games you know Pi you and I know that games are incredibly difficult to build I think anyone who like is building games as a career has to have a deep passion for it otherwise they're just torturing themselves because it's not the it's not an easy money maker if you will just go launch

like you know an AI agen token or something right Absolut but I would say you know we're looking for someone with a lot of gaming experience but also a real understanding and belief in crypto which I think is like the big change from like the last cycle where all the tourists have left right and the folks have stayed like truly believe that you know crypto can enable new experiences like wagering on chain right and also you know I think crypto I said this earlier today I think crypto is going to be the anec to a lot of the problems facing traditional gaming today right cuz I feel like the traditional gaming industry that we're calling big gaming the problem is you know innovation has

stalled and a lot of the newer titles that you're getting out right now are just like remixes and sequels right like there's no you know Final Fantasy there's no Diablo there's no even like on the Casual gaming front right everything that Trends on the App Store is just like a derivative and so I feel like crypto you know along with what you guys are doing right because you guys are a major you know fundraising partner in crypto we're like backing these builders that are going to try really crazy and really wild ideas but that's the kind of spirit that it takes to actually bring like new titles to market right Riot and Activision and Rockstar they're not going to back these guys but we will and like who knows what could come out of it

right it could be a new genre it could be a hybrid genre but like that I think that in ation is just going to be driven by crypto like it's not going to come from traditional gaming so that that's what I'm excited about just working with like top builders that have like this passion um and when it comes to the tech like we don't index too much on like you know smart contract or Tech capability because we can do that in-house right like we can like they can build a game and we can build tech for them right if they have crazy ideas around smart contracts like we'll just build in and ship in for them right our CTO and the entire in team is you know pretty cracked here so like we we can build and ship pretty quickly for them I think it's just finding like these builders

that you know have experience building games and are super passionate about crypto I really love that Framing and uh I feel like it's not a point that's emphasized enough is like not only there well obviously in terms of traditional funding Avenues a lot of people that are like got a finger on the pulse if they do have a good Vision to build something it's like you know generally speaking uh it has been a better source of funding within crypto you know thanks the last run and all that kind of stuff but also something I feel like a lot of people underestimate and don't fully appreciate is like due to the headwinds faced by big gaming as you say and kind of the atrophy that we've seen in terms of all of these layoffs and like there's insanely strong developer Talent that's kind of been like you know uh out of a

job that a lot of the big studios like or or teams that have raised within crypto have basically been able to hire and like whether these people were ideologically like you know crypto inclined to begin with lots of people are actually now supporting a lot of these teams and so we have some really crack game devs as well that are that are working on projects in this space so I'm excited to see what comes um obviously speed of iteration feedback loops of games uh takes takes some time but yeah I uh just wanted to kind of echo echo that excitement yeah yeah same same here I think I always use my nephew as a barometer for what's cool and upcoming he's about to he's about to turn gosh he's about to to turn 10 and so last year he asked me for Roblox gift

cards or I guess not just last year but like you know the last many years and this year he asked me for genjin impact I actually shilled him basement he was like this is so cool because to a young kid right like he's never seen mini clip or addicting games back in the day so he's like wow this like flash experience playing on browsers is like so new and novel right but I going back to what I was saying earlier around genin impact I think like we're really trying to like find the builders and support the builders that are going to build like these kind of titles right and I think it's going to take a massive amount of capital massive amount of community support and and that's what we're building at B3 you know we we raise a

ton of money and we are going to deploy that Capital towards building this ecosystem that's going to encourage these Builders to come and build that massive breakout hit looking forward to it looking forward to it um I wanted to touch you know you touched on earlier obviously around very briefly just on approach to kind of token holders and whatever but I I wanted to yeah kind of hear the overview on the B3 token like how's that woven into all of this like what are the the key pieces that people need to know about this sort of heading into launch yeah yeah absolutely so launch is coming up we announced that early last week so launch is imminent and we're working very closely with the foundation right now to basically

publish these tokenomics and what you know as a user you can do there's a few core elements we divide them into two buckets so one is for users and Gamers the other is for developers on the gamer and user side you'll be able to stake the B3 token and get rewards right from what we're calling this open gaming ecosystem which is basically all these game chains that are launching with us so Prime chain and you know the many others that will be announcing pretty shortly so you'll be to stake and get a uh gosh for for lack of a better word get a stake in you know these game chain ecosystems that are coming out and being built that's one thing the second would be you know it is your ticket

essentially into the basement ecosystem as well so as a B3 holder you'll be able to vote on games that are published on basement so featured and really pushed by you know the basement team and then also you'll be able to get you know early access to games and early access to like new features like wagering that could happen on basement DOI so that's another Avenue and the last one will be governance because we still are this you know B3 main net and protocol ecosystem right we you could think of us almost as like the optimism of gaming in a sense because we're building the super chain ecosystem but we're doing it

specifically for games right and as a governance you know partic participant you'll be able to vote on the direction of the protocol so where some of the treasury goes right what new game studios will be funded and how we think about like technical upgrades so you know what stack we're using where we're settling like all of that you'll be able to play an active role in as a user as well and then as a developer um it's broken down into a few buckets so the first is there's all these like tooling and different services that we built for the ecosystem as a developer to use those you'll pay for a B3 token so that's a sync for the token as well and then this idea of referral incentives that I mentioned earlier right where you

know if a user goes from Prime chain to another chain the revenue from that user a portion of it gets paid back to parallel the developer that is going to be paid for in B3 token so again this B3 token is like the currency for developers to actually pay for services and also to receive revenue from the ecosystem the those are the two primary you know buckets today and you know the one thing we're scoping out very very you know closely right now is the idea of okay we have the content and we have the users right what's next and you know we think part of that is going to be you know enabling this like defi ecosystem

and building defi primitive so then when these game chains launch tokens right and when these game chains launch assets there's like a a place to go and trade these so that's that's next on the road map and you know ideally right the idea is you know fees from those right would go back to B3 token holders in an indirect or direct way honestly feels uh feels better baked already then than lots of stuff that that comes across the desk so excited for excited for all those things I think in particular one that that kind of stood out that I'm curious for the sort of imminence of is um the like governance aspect effect around actually voting on like which games get funded and whatnot because obviously on the one

hand you obviously want to curate games that are coming in and you guys want to try and um you know provide some degree of like filtering and on the other I think it's actually really cool that like early you know community and and like the people that have been there day one um have some saying yeah what does get grants what gets like fully funded like uh yeah just wanted to get your view on like is that something that's like Downstream or like when when do you anticipate that kind of uh functionality coming online cuz I think it's something that would resonate with people yeah yeah absolutely so that kind of functionality we expect very very close to launch and so you know maybe the UI won't look like super fancy like a Kickstarter right but you'll be able to go to our governance forms and make

proposals right on which games and game studios you want to fund so there's basically going to be two pools where you know financial support and grants could come from one is the B3 Foundation but the other is the B3 Dow right and B3 Dow is what I'm referring to when I'm saying hey like Dow members and token holders can go out and vote on like which games they want to fund and which games they want to publish so it'll be available I think I am I think I'm bullish on both you know established talent and new and upcoming talent and I don't think you know with the team that we have it would be crazy to say that like we can go out and find all the talent in the world right A lot of it is grass Roots a lot of you know Talent is

you know hidden and we we don't know who they are today and maybe this route through the community could be a way to uncover those you know Diamonds in the Rough those gems maybe the next Minecraft you know because that was like that was just out of nowhere right 100% but I totally agree right I think also more so than ever on a more zoomed out view of like not just AI tooling but where these game engines have got to right like solo devs like tiny teams with little funding or like being able to do the craziest stuff ever now and I think um yeah uh allowing you know Community to drive more of that Discovery aspect is really cool there's uh non crypto I mean I I tried to shill him on it several times but there's a game called out of action being built

which is like a Ghost in the Shell inspired sort of anime like FPS with all these crazy like time dilation properties and stuff like that by this solo Dev called dku and it's like it's one of the coolest like freshest shooter ideas I've seen in a while and uh I mean he had a Kickstarter up for like 70k and it was like no one bid a single thing basic basically and it almost like on the last day he managed to get it across the line but I think um finding you know ways for uh you know Community out on the web to be aware of something like this and try and drive someone like that for example towards maybe alternative funding that's not Kickstarter but for Indie devs that like uh you know might um might actually increase curiosity around the sort of onchain whatever like

maybe let's explore this stuff so I really like that yeah 70k that's crazy that is that's all he needed I was like dude just sell one nft ex you'll be fine but uh just launch one pump do fun and he'll get that in seconds exactly exactly anyway um you know what he stayed true to his guns and it's working well we'll see maybe we'll get him maybe we'll get him to doing this space longer term um but yeah I wanted to double click obviously the Dow spec really cool great to know that's going to be live pretty early on um on the foundation front like you're at this amazing stage where you know uh super robust like infrast stack really strong engineering team like obviously pretty bu business oriented and business-minded as well around executing all of these different pieces

alongside each other um the token itself right is this huge like in the same way games give out incentives and Emissions right in terms of attracting devs nailing like you know who's going to be doing what early on like um can you maybe talk us through how you're thinking through the Grant and like funding aspect with you know B3 from the foundation as well like how are you guys looking to sort of like structure and like Market that or or yeah because i' I've seen teams do this well and teams do it really poorly and I think as a as a space as like the gaming side of this industry we've learned a lot around you know how these sort of incentives and grants should be given out but I'd um yeah love your love your two cents on this yeah yeah absolutely I think when

it comes to the exact structure the foundation is leading a lot of those discussions so you know we're at the labsco so we typically work you know hand inand with the foundation to make sure that we're funding the right Partners but I would say like the exact details are usually handled by the foundation but from what I've seen in crypto gaming today that I don't think works is this idea of very you know very detailed and very complex Milestones because I think those don't align the you know incentives of the developers with incentives of the ecosystem so what I mean by that is one simple example if you let's say

you know put in a milestone that hey like you'll get some financial support if you hit 100 million users I'm taking a very extreme example right like you'll get you know the vast majority of the financial support you need like to me that is one I think very very unattainable in the near term right and two it doesn't actually meet the developers where they are because I think for these game developers right if through the alpha or beta like you start to see some signal right then the idea should be to actually give them the money that they need to scale and take the bed and see if this works right now I think as a publisher right that is your job to take on some risk right but I think in the

traditional conventional you know grants that we've seen I think the ecosystems are trying to transfer all of the risk onto game developers themselves right by putting these like crazy Milestones because if they hit the Milestone then it's like no risk to the publisher in the chain to give them the money right but you know by by doing these Milestones that are like crazy and very very stretched out they passing all the risk onto the game developer where I think you know the risk should be like shared if not even a little more weighted towards like the publisher chain just just like you know NBC right so I think for us like the the way we've thought about grants historically is more developer friendly and giving more

upfront Capital to game developers that need the capital to scale and build their game there's obviously going to be risks involved not everything's going to work out right but I think it gives you know us the best opportunity to produce those breakout hits makes a lot of sense makes a lot of sense well yeah excited to see which uh which of the sort of early cohort that have been backed by the foundation you know where they where they get to um I was also curious for your perspective I mean obviously you guys uh you know know the drill with coinbase and base and obviously the Market's kind of starved for these like base proxy tokens I'm curious like uh how you guys sort of reflect on this whole notion like obviously you're very well positioned from that perspective like um yeah what's your view on this is

this something you guys are like actively looking to leverage uh yeah I would love to understand the team's thoughts because um you know uh punters are already suggesting things to this effect yeah yeah I think it's hard to control people's perception in general I think we at B3 focus on what we can build and that's building let's say you know a great product experience and what we think will be you know the largest gaming ecosystem you know for many years to come I think we can escape the fact right that we are from base and a lot of the momentum let's say too has been you know the growth of the bass ecosystem as

well right so myself right Victoria she led you know creators on the Bas ecosystem our head of foundation Sammy Kim she led defi on base so we have a lot of like think the knowhow and expertise to really connect with the base ecosystem and that's what we've done to date right so we have 6 million wallet addresses if you look on Shane a ton of those actually are from kind of Base folks that you know have assets have done stuff on base and they want to like play an earn they want to check out more games and more engaging content so I think there's naturally a lot of synergy with the bass ecosystem and in some ways I think because there's such strong user overlap right like the

growth of the base ecosystem will translate into growth for us as well and vice versa right because we want to make that bridging experience really seamless but yeah I think it's you know something we can't escape from like we we are the base team we we put out a post the other day you know once base always Bas and yeah we're here to scale gaming on base and you know I think Jesse always says like hey we want on board billions of users you know we think the way to do that is is through gaming I like it I like it a lot um yeah will make sense and yeah I must admit I need to need to Tinker a bit more and and see what that kind of um ux of you know shifting between the two is like I know base sort of proper has a few um game projects

they're working closely with so excited to see all those sort of synergies in in full flow um yeah yeah I think just just to touch on one thing there like we if you go to basement do fund today I think you brought up a great point of like what's the experience right between B3 and base if you go on basement today basement is not just is you know indexing and showing games on B3 it's meant to be the homepage for all of oning gaming so you can go and you can play base games and you can play you know games on you know salana eventually right so we will be adding support for basement from other chains as well so yeah for us it's not just you know B3 and B3 mainnet makes sense to add chains from other ecosystems cool I like that

um yeah I mean I uh obviously think it's a huge exciting thing to to go after the homepage for onchain gaming um know there's a a few people you know uh taking a swing at such things but obviously early days in terms of uh yeah something becoming fully entrenched so I like that a lot um yeah I wanted to ask as well like um you know all these years sort of building in crypto working in crypto obviously proximity to coinbase and base as well like um yeah curious what some of the kind of key learnings are what what what like what do you wish you knew then that you know now man great question gosh I would say it it feels like we've aged like a ton apologies for cussing but um yeah I

think when people say like you know crypto is like dog gears it's so true it's just you know so much Innovation and volatility and I think my main takea away from that is not to just jump on the new narrative and new meta I mean have conviction in what you're building for us that's gaming right and when you make it a reality that will be the new meta right for crypto and and those create the most you know outsize opportunities right when you're able to create your own meta just like kind of back at base you know the the chain was launched in gosh the depths of the bare Market if you look at like the charts right like that was I don't know if you remember that was like bad that that

summer that August right and and that was the thing that lifted I think us out out of the bare Market it made consumer crypto right an actual narrative and something that people were building right made forecaster grow like tremendously right and so I think you know a lot of the new metas are going to pop up here and there right I think for us is just staying put and just focused on what we're really passionate about and what we think is going to move the needle and that's that's gaming um gosh the other thing is like find like an amazing team I mean you guys have an amazing squad over there I would say for us we you know are equally fortunate to have found each other like at coinbase

um and I think like amazing teams even if small can just make like awesome things happen um and yeah there will be problems along the way but like if you have a good team you'll be able to figure them out that I think that would be my two main takeaways um and then also just yeah amazing supporters like like yourself like thought leaders in the space like yourself I think that's that's very important because I think for us like we're focused on building and shipping product but sometimes you know that um that's like a little bit narrow right like we always want like the macro view of where things are going and I feel like you guys always have the best pulse on that so it's like combining kind of the day-to-day and also like long term of where like people think things are going would appreciate

that sir and uh yeah I love the first point right there's a nobility and stay in the course uh especially in industry like this where it could be very difficult to do so I um I was giving a talk last weekend and I was saying exactly that I think especially in gaming right where you have these super long feedback loops even product Milestones like delivering a game like to be the kind of person that not only understands crypto and loves crypto and wants to build something with crypto in games but also understands game development and that world and to be able to come in and manage a team every single day for years on end especially if you got a liquid token out in the market where like like it or not when gets rough people are checking this stuff obviously it's true across many

sectors but I think especially in gaming uh where maybe you know a lot of the people as I kind of touched on earlier like didn't like maybe have come from traditional games development whatever and they're like not dialed into the uh mystery and magic and Terrors of the market in crypto yet like uh that's a super difficult thing to do right to get people to maintain morale keep the head up and just keep shipping when it feels like you know uh everything's on fire around you and so yeah totally totally agree on that point and um no uh I I say blessed are the teams that are able to do it you knowa it's uh it's cool I also think you you h on such an interesting point there like you you have to really love crypto to be like a long-term

builder in this industry I would even go A Step Beyond that and say not just love but I think some of the most successful Builders are addicted to crypto Like For Better or Worse you know they wake up right they they check Twitter right to just you know figure out what's going on during dinner during you know there's that Meme of like you with your girlfriend in bed and you're just checking crypto I think like that that Meme is freaking real I mean at least for me sometimes it's it's real like all I think about is you know like how crypto can enhance gaming like 247 you know and so like I think you have to have that kind of mindset to be a long-term builder in crypto it's proven to be successful in defi right now everyone wants to tokenize everything L

think is super on board right but I think it's up to us on the gaming side to to make that same reality happen and it's going to take you know those folks that are like the most addicted to crypto to really make that happen absolutely there's also that Meme that like none of us are ever leaving kind of thing right like even if you think you are always going to be drawn back in um exactly and I I can see why right like um I feel like the any any other Avenue of time spent in terms of whatever the dop in hit that comes with all the trials and tribulations of crypto the um yeah probably tricky to match but uh yeah let's see I'm I'm feeling yeah I'm feeling very excited about where we're at with the the gaming side of things in

particular right we got a ton of insanely cool products we got lots of people some pretty cool new approaches to the whole token side of things in terms of you know maximizing bang for the buck on each like token emitted whether that's air drops or these other sort of incentive campaigns and so um yeah excited to see what comes this year do you think the regulation piece is going to be a game changer as well it's something you know they the SEC commissioner posted out some new guidelines and focus areas yesterday right and I was thinking that one of the biggest blockers for crypto gaming today has been the let's say negative sentiment and posture from App Stores right because that's obviously one of the you know not the right or not one of the but the biggest distribution channel

for mobile games um which is obviously the biggest po of the gaming market and so I'm thinking like if there's more clarity around the regulation side not only will it encourage game developers to be you know more bold I think with their ideas but also these app stores to relax some of their rules so then more crypto games can be distributed marketed published right so I feel like it's net beneficial but curious for your thoughts no I absolutely agree right I think um even something as simple as having clear like stable coin support and Integrations with these things like you know one of the points that uh Gabe leaden was making on that brilliant piece that he did with uh on on invest like the best ages ago when he was getting into the space was just like around even something as simple as like

spend ceilings right we always talk about how like crypto is like the most important and ultimate consumer class on the on the planet right because you have people that spend a million bucks on nfts but it's true right like um you look at app store like spend ceiling right in terms of I think it's like a thousand bucks whatever in single transactions the same's true on stuff like steam Marketplace like loading up your wallets and stuff even something as simple as as integrating that and like uh increasing the appetite to do so on behalf of the app stores 100% I think it's going to be amazing I also just think um you know like even prior to the App Stores fully embracing this stuff like what's happening right now in terms of the you know us Centric kind of momentum like people that were maybe

kind of on the fence I mean we've got some um teams in our portfolio that have like you know been super focus on product and they're like okay we'll figure out exactly what we want to do in terms of like some kind of Founders pass the onchain like Downstream they're like for now there's a lot of uncertainty around it but we'll revisit this because we do really want to do it when the time's right and now it really feels like you know the pendulum is swung the time is right people are looking you know more actively at like you know let's implement this stuff now and so yeah I think that's that's hugely exciting um I think there's right now I see it as almost more like uh narrative than substance if you know what I mean though which is kind of true of lots of

crypto but lots of people like you know very sure that that will be the case but it's still a bit how in terms of you know what what does the regulation look like how's it going to get implemented what does this materially mean on you know the you know for a game developer I definitely think there's a lot of stuff as well around like you know the money transmission stuff the way that like you know uh someone like Forte was positioning getting all these licenses different states and whatnot like I think as there's a more active Embrace from a big government that like okay actually running stuff on stable coin rails running stuff on onchain economies like that's going to remove a ton of the friction that a lot of people will kind of foot spting around for a while out of fear that they were going to get

you know done done in sort of like you know State jurisdiction or whatever um so yeah I mean there's no way to frame it negatively at least so let's see yeah yeah yeah no I think you made a great point there and I think even something as you know gosh I don't want to say non-sexy but you know sometimes you know people don't think of payments as like the most sexy thing despite the fact that it's like Mission critical to a game right like getting for example which I know they're building you know on ZK sync right in the blockchain space but getting them to really adopt um stable coin payments the same way that stripe has right with their acquisition of bridge that would be like massive too right something as simple as that right

and I think that yeah that point around hey like let's Punt tokenomics and let's punt onchain Primitives until later that just is a formula for like disaster right the fact that people are bringing that up and like you know focusing on it now as the game come out comes out that I think that's yeah that's super super encouraging to hear 100% right I I I agree um uh generally even even people that haven't wanted to obviously encourage this stuff needs to be weaved in all together it's very hard to sort of retroactively or later super complex I think people underestimate the amount of work required to really you know build and I know you guys have like actually been the thought leaders on

this so I'm sure you guys resonate but build like a really balanced token economy if you have like a lot of nft assets maybe some of those nft assets tied to tokens later down the line right like if you don't if that's not a full product and that's just like a marketing initiative like you're really shooting yourself in the foot like that needs to be its own product uh in and of itself right and uh the fact that people are thinking about it that way is very encouraging totally totally I mean I've been saying for years that the kind of people were looking for is that intersection of the crypto experience crypto Dev token oriented and proper Game Dev like that vend diagram has been very slim for very long um but it's you know expanding and it is all the time

and stuff like the regulatory aspect and app stores and as we get more and more proof points of this kind of thesis is only going to draw more people in so hopefully expand you guys are ahead of your time as always yeah well let's hope let's see uh got got lots of projects we're excited about but um big year for sure lots to lots to sort of prove and and deliver on um I wanted to ask you as well as someone that's very into games and obviously digital things what would you regard as the most impactful impactful digital experience you've ever had digital experience okay can that be a game or is that it can be a game it can be anything anything to do with the web and the internet and the stuff that we all live and breathe I think Diablo I mentioned that earlier but Diablo I was

my I mean I played a lot of Pokemon back in the day too right played console played you know played like anything I can get my hands on but d Diablo I was really my first experience like getting super addicted and like grinding for days on end and also I didn't buy like the full price version like my parents wouldn't let me buy any games so I actually had a bootleg copy from China where battl net was like super funky and sometimes didn't really work but I would invest like hours hours on end to that game maxed out all my characters you know got all of the legendary items and I think one day I just like grew out of it you know but like I would go on eBay

and like sell you know my my characters through my cousin's account because I was still underage so I couldn't do it myself but um I think that was one of my most formative experiences and it feels like it's come full circle and that like if I could give you know the younger version myself that opportunity to like you know actually monetize his time maybe his life would be different maybe he would be a game develop himself right cuz he's just you know so passionate about kind of what he was able to create so that that was definitely my most formative experience um I was too slow like at Starcraft so I never was that good I think that was like the second thing um and I made a lot of internet

friends through Neopets that was another random one yes I I played literally anything you can get your hands on I also think I have ADHD sometimes so I would just like Bounce from thing to thing but Diablo was like the one thing I could like literally sit there for like 6 hours and play four in one session there's no better feeling I love it when I find a game these days where I'm capable of doing that obviously don't do it in quite the same way anymore but Krypto man krypto's a game dude I say I've been putting in the hours and Off the Grid though I love that game man like 300 and something hours already which is good fun but now there's nothing like the magic of like yeah first falling in love with a MMO or or something like that and just put it

everything about it just like triggers a dopamine H for you like the music I think the even some of the NPC like names and responses like all of that if I if I still hear it today it's still like oh absolutely it's insane how it left such a strong imprint on the mind uh for me that's 100% RuneScape and my brothers uh it's oh amazing okay dude you and Sean our co-founder would get along so well you guys definitely have to meet one day but he was big RuneScape Maxi um secretly he's also building a RuneScape inspired open world uh basically like this open world marketplace where you can go and you can like trade and you can swap the grand exchange I like it yeah yeah I I'd love

to check that out when you mentioned it earlier I was definitely Peak the interest so you have to shoot me something over on that um I was gonna ask as another question what your favorite game ever is but I feel like you just touched on on probably Diablo or yeah no definitely Diablo I think Diablo 2 is my favorite game um yeah probably the game I put in the most hours on too game bad yeah my mom hates the most too good man um I wanted to also ask sort of in closing um what would you say is the most important or sort of impactful book that you've ever read it's a good question wow I love that question okay the most impactful it's going to be a little bit philosophical here unless like cuz I I don't really like reading those you know

business books right like I feel like you know a lot of it is not applicable and it's very you know like sometimes it's generic advice I think there's definitely a good set of business books out there right but I think for me like one of the books that's been most impactful is actually a non- business book and that was when breath becomes air and that that was a book by you know it want to pull it surprise but it's the story about this um surgeon that I think had you know really really strong aspirations to be the top of his field which he was on the path to and then all of a sudden one day he got like a devastating cancer diagnosis and you

know the book is about his journey dealing with that his I'm not going to spoil the book but like you know his learnings from that and I think my take away from it was like yeah like life is pretty short unexpected things can happen to you so if you have conviction in something right like really go out and um try to make it happen right and I think for us that's you know on the gaming side that's why we're taking such a big big that here um so yeah that's that was kind of yeah that's one of the most like um inspirational books I ever read and also emotionally moving too great book if you haven't read it I've been recommended it I must uh must give it a go there's a book that I read years ago called Tuesdays with Mori which seems to have struck a similar vein uh

for me but about a similarly sad story and and the key takeaways were somewhat similar so maybe uh maybe post launch you should give that a read someday when Once SC is a little less hey yeah yeah we have some time back awesome man well Daryl I appreciate you making the time uh very excited for you guys heading into into launch and all things come with the ecosystem looking forward to learning more about uh which the studios which the other game chains are um looking forward to yeah people being able to get get engaged um you know help sort of vote on what gets funded how the ecosystem evolves and uh yeah excited for it and um once again thank you for the time amazing man thank you for having me