DeFi by Design EP#77: On-Chain Networking for the Ethereum Naetion

Transcript

welcome to d5 by design where we talk all things blockchain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate empower and enrich it's your boy andy and welcome back to the defy slate youtube channel smash the like button on this video that really helps us out and sit back and enjoy the content thank you very much hey what is going on good morning everyone welcome back to the d5 slate youtube channel today we are super stoked to be talking to nation with omar and alec uh from their team and nation is super cool because it's bringing interconnectivity between employers employees open source projects and uh you know coders shadowy super cutters community members project managers if you're looking for

a job in web 3 nation is your place it's your job hub it's really like the yellow pages of uh the metaverse of web3 of blockchain so i'm super stoked to talk to omar and alec about what nation has been building and dive into kind of how we can bring more uh developers more community members into the fold uh in these projects and you know talk about kind of some operational stuff so alec how you doing today man i'm doing great uh yeah super excited to do this been ever since permissionless had a nice chat um but yeah you know we can we can come back i think um

i'll start just by introducing myself so so alexander co-founder and ceo of nation if we even have ceos uh nowadays you call them mayors instead maybe but uh yeah so we're right now we're building the new world of work um it comes with a like a background within bc within supply chain sales um you know not in web three uh but got to sniff around so um now we're here home i'll give the word to you yeah so um i started out uh my well my background is marketing uh that's what i studied i graduated in 2020 uh got into a marketing agency position and then

from there actually left that got into the crypto space started in investing in nfts full time and then from there i discovered i could kind of marry these two backgrounds and i joined on with an nft marketing agency and uh yeah from then i joined up with nation as the community manager so that's what i'm doing and um yeah i believe you and i rob we met at permissionless so uh maybe we can touch on that first yeah definitely yeah yeah omar and i were uh i don't know i think we were running around the booths chatting and uh yeah we we kind of struck up a conversation and it sounded really interesting what you guys

were building um as far as you know actually on boarding these people directly to projects and and um it it created kind of this landscape where i think the incentives are a little bit difficult to iron out since you're dealing with projects you know that are you know probably tokenized open source but they have their own kind of human resources and onboarding process and that nation more as like this recruiter middle you know where um but obviously providing a important tool and a service to the overall ecosystem could you kind of talk about you know like what that onboarding process looks like for anyone that's you know joining nation and they're looking for a job in

what three of course yeah so you know first of all i think our approach is um it's a bit different from some of the other players in this space um you know because to be honest it's it's really you know the big opportunity realize that you know the intersection of consumer encrypted right and how we can make you know easy ui and ux and make make red 3 feel uh you know web 2 but better um so part of the the onboarding plan is for us to verify uh what what people did previously uh and make sure that there's that we don't store any of their uh previous work history on jane that's you know not correct i mean we're obviously targeting

you know specifically like resumes and linkedin where you can just like put whatever you want uh so we want all the the info on that to be right and once people complete that and we verify the portfolio that like previous clients stuff like that we make sure to bring them on a quick call to to verify you know this is actually the person and you know they're super engaged and want to do this yeah yeah so i guess talk us through like the mechanism design a bit uh as far as the um you know like the help token um and just kind of like end to end if someone wants to you know let starting from kind of the employer side like uh if there's projects out

there that are looking for talent whether it's uh developers or community managers you know kind of all across the board what you know is it you know just kind of talk us through that process of like trying to you know bring in uh the outsiders of this ecosystem like on to these projects yeah for sure so you know first of all i would say that you know nation believes in a very transparent and community driven work life um so so with what we're doing and what we're building believing in is this ecosystem of of you know service providers creators talent um and giving them a place to easily show off monetize and and even manage their skills like automate bookings automate invoicing um so they can really

focus on what they do best but also make sure that they keep 100 of their earnings uh which is especially what's totally often in web 2 at the moment but on the other side uh interacting with that this network you have companies you have people um who's all able to find these great services and talent instantly because we you know we pre-bet we make sure that you know what they've done previously is actually verified um and you can like build trust instantly instead of you as a hr team needing to do all the vetting yourself um and yeah so you know we can create community ownership um already doing so so uh paying out as we go uh the ntn token like the nation ecosystem token to um you know top performance top

performers for five-star reviews stuff like that for building the ecosystem for educating the ecosystem for uh you know being an ambassador for the ecosystem we have like a grains program um but by doing so for the hr side of it we can also turn payroll into revenue and i think that's um we would probably need a bit more time for people to like wrap the head around it so we can touch back but also like align incentives so we want to make sure that the employee and employer relationship is also taking like 10 years ahead you know we save this like work like it's 2032. um so what we mean by that is essentially right now employers would also take you know most of the value generated within the employees but

we want to make sure that once you also perform once you also deliver um you know on the employee side um there's a very strong in incentive for you that's what and the bonus coming yeah so doing that with the token and doing it with the utility nfts dropping very soon live right now right yeah so we have a token preset live um and we also have like a free mint so people can go secure their spots yeah that's super cool and i'm still like kind of wrapping my head around the uh the nation incentives that continue after

they're employed you know like uh i guess my understanding of nation is is kind of this this uh you know landing spot for anyone who's looking for a career in web three and you know from there they can kind of branch out they can find these different products and projects and and end up joining one um as far as you know the the middleware service that it provides it's kind of like this uh it's kind of like an indeed right or like a online recruiter that you know helps you kind of find your your place in the in the web3 world and you know right now once you get hired from indeed that's kind of like you're you know you're you're off of that recruiter

um could you unpack kind of like the ongoing incentives that you mentioned that nation provides even after you join a project and you're getting compensated from that project like you know what is nation's role uh after you're employed of course of course so you know besides from further educating you and and you know especially the freelancers often of lacking the feeling of you know a team missing an identity um so you know we can also do do so by the community but i think that the biggest incentive um that i want to spend a few minutes on is how we you know turn payroll into revenue and make sure that there's you know this um uh you know

that as incentives are aligned by them between the the employer and the employee so essentially what we do then is um when when people join people from nation we do they would uh they would do it on nation contracts um yeah need to get started so they do it on nation contracts and what we do then is they pay their salaries and stuff in fiat currency if you know it could be cryptocurrency but in most cases right now it would be um in fiat currency what we do then as a nation is we take the ntn token and best on those contracts so essentially you turn that that job contract unchained

into your investment case yeah and let's say the token is now trading at not trading but being sold at uh five cents so once there'll be 10 cents that'll be 100 yield so essentially what that means is you have 100 you have hundred thousand dollars of salaries um on on people pay through nation on nation contracts we also invest that contract with let's say 150 000 usd and there'll be a 100 yield and 75 of that goes back to the the company hiring so essentially you would have free payroll and you would make a profit from your payroll

and you would also earn a bonus for being hired on that contract cool so there's like yield farming on these like uh salary contracts almost yeah you could could put it like that yeah cool cool so like i'm an employee employee and then i can continue to earn these and this nation tokens um by by almost like by staking my investment contract right like once i get hired i have the salary and i have this contract with my employer i could stake that contract on chain and earn the yield of the nation token

for staking that salary yeah correct but it's all made by us i mean we believe that that you shouldn't know um you know how to do all this so we we just do it and uh pay you you know the yield when it's ready great cool so like what what are some of the activities you guys are seeing now like you know is there projects out there that are using nations like really you know uh actively um i guess what are some of the trends and patterns that you guys have seen in in the recent months yeah so you know started off um especially within uh you know designers like creative work

um some professional stuff and and really only you know only picked up like for real and like web 2 companies uh wanting to innovate and a lot of them wanting to tap into f3 um but especially after permissionless talking to you know all these were three companies um that's really you know growing space too so i think uh we're working on a bunch of it so can't really um disclose any names but i would say that um you know there's a there's a lot of a-list opportunities coming to the the community very soon awesome yeah that's sweet yeah there is uh obviously uh you know a bit of a rocky road here in

terms of the markets you know like uh correcting a bit yeah there's a bit of a hiring squeeze uh around web3 do you anticipate that pattern kind of uh happening indefinitely kind of like you know over you know a sustained period of time do you think this higher squeeze is going to last it seems like you know once the bear market kind of corrects whether that's another three months another year you know the cyclic nature of the market's moving back up will kind of revitalize the hiring market um you know what what kind of trends are you seeing do you anticipate like you know coinbase like you know really laying people off or do you think you know this this trend

reverses relatively soon yeah i think you know it's definitely like we need a correction um that's for sure um and and it's been you know out of control for the past uh you know year and a half i would say you know where where there was stuff happening where like you know that that can't be true um so yeah we need we need a correction but i think for us it's all right because our scope is like wide enough to adapt to it it's not like we we need you know you have now even with the apple announcing the you know apple pay later right and it's really you know destroying business models for all those by now pay later companies because they're so narrow in their scope um and you know within financial

services but it's only financial service they they really weren't run so in our case we are wide enough to just adapt to it um and already you know got a foot inside web 2 as well so it's not like we're relying on android 3 only um yeah you know interesting times and just trying to keep think on the pulse every day and uh see what's going on yeah just just to add on that um this idea that our vision and our scope is so much bigger and just to kind of add some more color to that i want people to imagine being able to work at any time uh from anywhere in the world like i want people to

we want people to experience freedom and financial freedom and that's that's a vision that's a goal that is way bigger than cyclical market activities so we're trying to build something that is resilient and long term so awesome yeah yeah it's important to have kind of like this this web of tools um for you know really the the different industries that you guys are looking to drive a foothold in um primarily web 3 and web 2 although you know there's kind of like mentions of like you know plumbers on

nation's site and you know like you know more like blue collar uh you know physical jobs that aren't online um is there is there a path to like you know kind of like real world careers uh that are also uh represented on chain through nation smart contracts yes um yeah but sure so we we run you know as much as possible we have a few things where we're still trying to figure it out so stuff like you know with with the uh we just call them offline services we would have to like provide insurance and stuff which we also do um so you know we still need to see um you know parts of it that we can't really put on chain yet

um but yeah you know i think the whole setup of how your help profile uh works is like if you think of instagram where you you know you're kind of given the platform and the profile but you can just take full ownership of it and you know customize it and make it yours make it your own services um and use it for whatever you want as long as it's you know for for bookings and for invoicing and for like running a business right and that's why we see people doing all kinds of different stuff like where they maybe like you know they their plumber as you mentioned but they also have you know potable speakers something they would want to rent out on weekends like they can just like customize all the services in their profile and just you know send over the profile to to anyone

who might be interested in and you know we think product wise that's that's pretty cool um and to elaborate a bit more on it um you know there's a lot of software build intonation as well and next one up um launching very soon too is a product called payroll so it's like a hr software for for really all of these businesses to manage a global workforce it's really a headache right now to to manage people globally um and you know in the the local currencies and you know compliance wise especially if you don't have an entity in that country so you know we're taking care of all that so the only thing they need to do is just find the talent they need and hire it through the the payroll product

next up is money this is like a neo banking uh where your earnings are always yours so all your intent tokens will go into this neo banking you can do like staking guild farming and you can even in 2023 there'll be a um a uh like a nation card so you can do you know crypto to fiat spending uh super easy directly from from your profile and i mean all of this sounds like a lot so i think this is also the time where we make sure that people know we just secure 150 million dollars in funding to make all this happen quickly [Music] the you know the feeling around that raise like obviously you know super exciting congrats

uh on on raising and like you said it'll accelerate you know not only does it extend the runway but it also accelerates your timeline on uh down the runway and ultimately launching um as far as kind of like the intention of that raise and what what you guys are looking to hone in on uh could you talk maybe about like who your capital partners are and their expectations over time um and kind of like you know how you align nations uh endeavors with those expectations to make sure that you know them as stakeholders as well as your community are uh you know all aligned with incentives and and uh you know excited about the path that nation is going forward on

of course yeah so essentially you know first of all like how it felt because you know we all build us like the whole team is builders and we really just want to build right so we needed money to make all this happen so we have them quickly and to just you know continue growing also because you know working with networks you need to get to critical mass right you need to go to that point where there's enough people of enough professions that customers can actually find what they're looking for um when they come to the platform so right now we're looking at a bunch of different paths to do so um one obviously being at this date acquisitions of you know networks that's already around but maybe you know they're broken

for some reason are they like very local um but they like they work um this would be you know a great way to to onboard people fast um and you know capital partners so it's uh it's gem digital and gender detail really you know focus on you know upon some hours it's like bigger rounds right so it would be like assisting a company to an ipo stuff like that but they just saw like this wet three um space for like crazy as well and wanted to you know get in on it and and really wanted to find something with you know tapping into the real world first of all but also you know with a big enough market uh because a lot of work three projects like you know wallace has a bunch of wallets a bunch of exchanges

um but they're all serving this niche which you know to be honest brethree is still a niche um so they wanted to you know you wanted to find someone who was working to to take wet through web 3 to like you know the the my the mass market of consumers right um and it's not like this there's a lot of um you know goals for them i think that we we have to accomplish but it's it's definitely um going to like 30 000 service providers talent uh like vetted ready to go in the platform in the network this year and then 100 000 in 2023 um those are some of like the main

milestones that we need to to hit and then obviously launching all these products um within a certain time frame so it's until q 2 23 uh we would need to you know everything that we touch on so far needs to be live and working yeah that includes the payroll as a revenue service um the the nfts okay cool and money the neo banking yeah the neo banking as well the debit card credit cards that the fiat on ramp off-ramp if you will awesome yeah i mean that's building out like this this you know more robust kind of like ecosystem where people can can transact it's almost like nation is you

know like a like a chain at a certain point like you know you guys have your own ecosystem you have your community but then there's also like these on and off ramps to go directly into crypto and d5 through nations specifically and maybe not interact with you know several of any of the other uh applications that are available on on on and in that sense you know the nation is kind of building out like um like a digital nation if you will and that was kind of the thesis of you know is like this digital nation state um and it's you know like providing a landscape for people to like transact but it's also culture and it's like you know this digital identity that's living on

chain and nation you know you know what's what's your thesis on nation as a nation you know is it kind of an adjacent yeah uh parallel to eve uh you know is it a layer on top a layer below like you know what what's your you know i guess what what are your general thoughts as um this digital nation yeah it it's fun because i think almost a year ago we actually launched a um you know a press release on our thoughts on like a virtual country and you know potentially even uh getting like actual land um to talk about nation but i think if you if you think about it you have the help product to make sure that you know the citizens are covered right that you can go there and put up your you

know the professions that you want to uh trade in the nation then you have uh payroll where people can interact with the nation and you have the money where you know everything money within the nation will be handled then you have the decentralized governance so as much as possible we try to to decentralize all of the the decisions even how much we should bet on on new contracts with companies uh you know resolving disputes vetting talent all of that um making sure that's decentralized then we also have um nation hubs coming this year already um which is you know physical workspaces that you can access if you're providing your services on the platform uh so go meet up with you know a bunch of other nationals if you will

asian citizens um in you know cool locations kind of like wework but where is like you just need to hold nft and provide services on the platform so yeah you would start to see you know all the like the the key pillars of a nation forming yeah omar is there anything uh you know like as a citizen but also maybe like a uh you know like a congress member i'm not sure you know like exactly the role like within this digital you know decentralized entity um you know like how does it how does it feel being like one of the one of the builders i guess of this of this new world um this new you know digital nation like

what what are your thoughts kind of like your vision as far as like how nation progresses and how the citizens you know have a more robust like digital life as part of this digital nation yeah yeah the way i see it as like a figurehead in the community i suppose is like our vision is somewhat inevitable if it's not gonna be us someone else is gonna do it but you know it is gonna be us where you know people can experience more freedom they can you know own the platform that they work and live through they can earn a hundred percent instead of having 20 to 40

percent being taken from them uh by you know web 2 platforms and so web 3 enables all of this and and like i said it's inevitable and so yeah i see nation becoming a global economy of work yeah yeah it's it's exciting and it's scary and it's like it's just like really wow like you know when the power of like these digital nation states and like the inevitability of their growth over time and uh like what they can what they could bring back to the ultimate like value provider is really exciting i was

spending some time looking at like there's a project called citizen that i think is doing some stuff with these like soul-bound nfts um and then if you couple that with like you know one of these uh these like i don't know like digital constitution types of projects like the framework is really being built for like these you know digital nations um and ultimately it's kind of bringing elements of like uh you know the the physical landscape like the economy you know governance all of these entities that exist in like you know the the centralized world are being represented on chain with much more division of labor like it

seems like it's much more fragmented and then there's a lot more plugging in right and it's like um you know there's there's trade-offs and i'm curious kind of like the trade-offs that you guys have identified of like these digital nation states when everything is kind of plug and play versus the centralized ones where you know maybe you already have this idea and you think you know it's available to kind of grow through the brand um but there's not already a tool out there uh that's providing that service so like when you're stacking these money legos i guess if you will and you're plugging in like these different these different blockchain technologies into one another what it what are you looking for in terms of integrations like to to you

know bring more value to the helper right or the or the nation citizen like what kind of services are you looking to provide them and then what you know kind of value should they be accruing either through the token or just through using the nation platform i'm not sure if you want to elaborate omar it's a good question which i think like like a quick one is just one of the biggest problems we we identified pretty quickly is just setting up a wallet uh which is you know essentially your id right in in web3 um and and just to get someone who's never tried it before either they you know

they can't figure it out or they just you know skip everything and they forget you know the seed phrase for metamask so it's really like problematic and and so what we first of all want to want to build in is how we can you know once they make a profile you know give their email and stuff to to do their profile um we'll automatically assign them a wallet uh that'll be the id for you know going forward within the ecosystem i think really like to to be honest it's like every thing is kind of out there during the last three years or so where i believe you know before then there was all those tools that you know at least i just

missed every day um but it's like you can kind of find everything or do it yourself pretty easily nowadays and um and for me to answer a question in kind of like a larger scope sense i believe alex you recently sent a tweet by someone into our slack where it said the next big breakout in web 3 is not going to be marketed as a web 3 project it will simply be useful and i think that boils down exactly what we're doing and what we can offer people um you know just tools for everyday living that are just better than the alternatives

and you don't need to be a web three wiz or experienced in any way really to to benefit from the ecosystem awesome yeah and you know with the the result of that raise you know that that's really gonna fuel a lot of the development a lot of the building that you guys have going on now uh you mentioned like several products that are you know looking to provide value back to the user who in this case is you know anyone who's a citizen really like anyone who's looking for a job and you know contributing to the overall landscape uh is a potential user of nation um and then you know giving value back

to those users is kind of like your your mission statement right there is you know by by doing something useful if it's just better um you know it doesn't it doesn't need to brand itself as web 3 it's just like this you know valuable product that people want to use and then of course you know what the demand is going to uh you know show itself with um you know kind of the the value that you guys are providing back uh is certainly in demand when it's when it's useful over and above uh typical everyday products so um yeah i'm super psyched to kind of like see the the rollout uh of like the the the entire product line over time

um i think is is really important probably starting with the web three space and bring more interconnectivity there and then obviously as web 3 kind of you know branches into more of the mainstream um you know rising tides will will lift the boat and you guys will will rise as well so um yeah i'm super psyched to to see uh nation continue to evolve um as far as you know everyone who's listening um you know what where can our community find us and start to get involved and look for some of the opportunities that are available yeah so i think discord is a great place to start um if need be if people need to learn more

or are just curious we actually have like a learn and earn system built into discord where you can earn a hundred dollars in ntn while learning about uh like our vision the road map and getting more deeply involved with us directly um so yeah i would definitely head over to discord uh we have sign up forms if your talent uh if your talent if you're looking for talent and um yeah also got that pre-sale link and uh a premium link and we'll make sure everybody can find those yeah i think that they're all um you can all find them in the link tree on our

socials so that will be you know on our twitter and uh yeah instagram you know everywhere where there's the link tree yeah we'll leave the link tree in the description below uh alex and omar you know thank you for coming on it's been a pleasure and um yeah guys like go get involved you know hop in the discord like omar said there's a hundred dollars kind of just waiting there to be claimed uh you know for that learn and earn system and go get yourself an nft there's obviously you know tons of value that's getting provided to nft holders over time um so you know pre-sale is live now uh on june 8th by the time this is posted you know it's probably a few more that would have been sold so go and get

your nfts and of course leave a like and subscribe on this video if you enjoyed it uh we'll be you know obviously sharing tons more d5 content and uh bringing the alpha right to you guys so uh guys it's been a pleasure absolutely thank you for coming on and thank you for doing it again yeah pleasure pleasure man thank you