Blockchain Meets Social, Gaming, Entertainment

Transcript

um super so hi everyone excited to be here uh today we're going to talk a bit about different topics mainly around the blockchain in the entertainment industry we're going to be talking about music and gaming and we have a great group of leaders so first off I think I'm GNA start off with like an intro about who you are and what you're working on and then we can get to our questions so why don't we start with you Andre uh hey everyone my name is Andre uh more professionally I go by the name RAC and I've been an artist and musician since 2007 uh but I've been uh pretty deeply involved in the ethereum ecosystem since uh 2017 where I became obsessed uh with uh with these things and I think I had

um almost like a a naive uh uh sort of vision of what it could be a lot sooner than it really is and it's been an amazing journey sort of getting to that place and and it's been uh a real honor to sort of like be a part of that conversation and this ecosystem so thank you for having me we can hi my name is Joseph I'm a co-founder of mod house uh mod house is a K-pop entertainment agency which has uh Trip s and EMES as our artist and also we we are a developer and operator of uh Cosmo which is K-pop fan uh Community platform and thank you for uh

inviting us invite me to this uh place thank you hello everyone suji of math Network we start doing social network decentral social network back in 2016 and then we realized there's always like five team doing 10 protocol but it's actually the same thing and we try to say hey dude don't fight we want mer together so we eventually launch our token Mass token 2021 and we even start a venture arm doing acquisition investment incubating all in one in terms of like uh social and entertainment there's I think 50 different gaming company 20 different social protocal and but they never talk to each others we feel it's like super

stupid we just want everyone talk and we just connect everything together so that's basically Mass 2 like uh I always say we are just five years away from Mass adoption uh first time I see that was uh 2017 and I think we're still five years away from Mass adoption and that's what Mass doing put everything together and we're mostly social gaming staff yeah I think we're already in Mass adoption we already passed you know um hey everyone uh Ronan here uh co-founder of game seven game seven is a gaming community that focus on Three core problems which is player acquisition and retention distribution and economy management uh I've been in a space since 2016 I started the blockchain at Berkeley Community back then um and then

led a few VCS since then and and now I'm here focusing on on bringing Mass adoption in in gaming with a gaming use case hi uh I'm L I'm director in Tech in ois uh since 20 uh 2018 uh I have been part of double jum Tokyo where I developed my crypto Heroes on eam so the blockchain game that rank top in volume trading volume and active user for uh 2019 for one year so uh during my experience of micro Heroes we founded

Oasis uh the blockchain design for gaming so uh ois adap a two layer architecture and has already roll rolled up uh more 10 10 they to and uh more than 40 blockchain game uh already uh have been delas uh ois since uh our main net launch since uh 20 uh 2022 uh that's it thank you awesome thank you everyone for the intros um

yeah there's definitely like uh we'll be talking a lot about gaming and um music and also like how social media fits in um so my first question we did touch upon it a bit and sui you mentioned interoperability and stuff like that but I kind of want to start off with Andre and if you can talk a bit about like how you see the music industry being shaped by blockchain what kind of especially around maybe fan engagement or just kind of want to hear your perspective on this yeah absolutely so um I'm not going to spend too much time talking about the problems of the music industry because I feel like even most consumers sort of are at least aware that it it's it's uh it's like many other Industries it's there's a sort of an incumbent uh a very powerful incumbent and there's and

there's not a lot of malleability in in that so you know I I I feel like it was it was always one of those first kind of let's call it uh targets for blockchain technology you know uh let Let's A lot of people are like okay let's use let's use uh you know crypto let's use ethereum to sort of disintermediate and that's a great idea in theory but we haven't actually made that much of a dent yet I mean we have in some ways but not not not fully um so it's it's been uh I I think it's been like kind of a trying time to sort of like put put a dent in it so I I I don't mean to be overly pessimistic about it I think it's been actually like an amazing experience to learn like where the weak spots are

in in that industry if you will and um you know a lot of people have focused on on the asset side of it a lot of a lot of people have focused on sort of you know F like changing the the methods with which you know the that industry already operates in which you know they have no leverage in so basically uh the the only way that I think this thing kind of moves forward is if we try to create novel behaviors and and and kind of meet fans where they are so uh you know it's I think like there was kind of a brief moment in the nfte let's call it Mania uh with uh you know music nfts where there was actually like a tremendous amount of optimism and and

and I was I was also like very excited about it and I I I think I I watched you know my industry sort of embrace crypto in a way that I had never experienced before and you know I was getting some very crazy texts from people that I never thought I would hear from because they were very interested in this kind of thing and uh it was it was wild to see that rise to see the backlash from fans and then sort of like the the waning of that interest and and I think like again like I I I think of all of this stuff is sort of a learning opportunity um it it it it's almost like those uh like the music nft sort of let's call it

format didn't quite uh connect with an audience maybe people don't think of music as like a collectible you know there there there's a lot of layers there to unpack that are probably beyond the scope of this uh of this panel but um that that's that's kind of where we're at where we're uh almost in this existential mode right now where we're trying to figure out where do we go and again like I I have a theory I started a company around this so obviously I'm biased so uh I'm going to say that but you know we're we're basically focus on on that relationship between the artist and the fan because that's not really uh can't be really controlled by um by the the music industry so if we focus on that we can build on that and create open systems around that I think we have

a uh a real CH a real shot at something here so um perhaps I'll leave it at that awesome yeah that's a very interesting take especially like not focusing on the asset side but more the community engagement and on that note I do want to pose it to Joseph as well because you're also like working on similar lines do you have um how do you see like the music industry reshaping especially with like Community involvement yeah uh K-pop industry is one of the fastest growing uh Market in music industry and observing characteristics of K-pop fandom there are a lot of fans who just started out uh who listened who consume contents of K-pop Idols or listening to their music

and they are like fundamental of the uh fandom of that artist who uh you can build um popularity or reputation of the fan of the artist with this behavior of phandom so so what we want to do is I think with block with uh utilizing blockchain technology we can authenticate or reward uh those uh fans uh actions and for the fans who purchase merchandise albums or tickets I think uh they like to collect it they like to collect it as a digital asset so uh I think with the nft technology you can

atiz a those um like merchandise albums or tickets and that's what we are pursuing right now okay awesome so uh I do want to change like a bit the direction and pose the question to sui as well especially like we talked about like fans and well like social media is of course daytoday uh in our lives can you talk a bit about how you see uh the blockchain industry reshaping like social media uh when it comes to these yeah I mean number one thing people going to try to do and don't advise I think it's never never going to work it's buy your B sell friend trade your friend that like it's a human natural thing it's being like people trying to sell a friend for like 20 years since

like uh Myspace right and every time someone say hey we have a new idea of like buy and sell friend I think 100% is going to fail uh we got pitched by frch uh now I can probably say that that their first round valuation was like 55 million I don't know what Paradigm invest it's a bad idea don't trade your friend and then there's some rules of social like social I think it's like human natural thing it's like you need to learn anthropology not really too much coding anthropology please and you'll figure out people love cat also dog but always cat first for some reason I don't know always cat first so when when we were talking with like Tom there's a lot of Tom minia app T mini apps we don't know which one to take off

we don't even know whether this thing take off or not then we see like people playing with cats like the cat an app we become the first investor we we help them a lot because because people always love cat first they also love dog but always cat first and then when you see like Twitter um back in days Twitter was like actually a music app if you remember Twitter was started from South by Southwest which is a nerdy geeky music festival in Austin uh more than 10 years ago 15 years ago they start there and somehow it become a social app because it's text to social so you can text people to go to a bar to drink do weed whatever and and you know it's music festival and they start there become more journalism tech people so it has the rules like it has to be you know

if you never start from nerdy guys you know like you never start from n guys going it's not going to work even Facebook it start from like um you know attractive however it goes right that's there's like human natureal thing so when we see all these things over the years we start 2016 to build social networks when we see all these things over the years I think first you're repeating the the the the you know the mistakes that people are trying for decades second I'm I'm not sure why you are fighting each other like you know back in the days before Elon when Twitter tried to integrate nft um the major chance are other like oh why you only support ethereum and pogon why don't Sana and then the flow thing is try to do the dier laab integration

with Instagram uh then they should on each others now it's happening again like uh Bitcoin people say oh Noster it's D D4 decentralized social app because josi was on there but there's again like why you sh on each other to not to to the normally it's the same thing I think I think for entertainment social it's the natural thing of everyone we we all talk we all game we are social we all you know drink and have music just respect what people love just don't add stupid ideology on top of don't trade your friend uh I hope more people can realize that before they start something and we we here to tell them the lesson and to back them to do something uh but so far I fail to see so many Innovation but still very

optimistic as you guys said yeah okay um yeah trading your friend is not very ideal uh but I do want to pass I bought your I bought your uh a FR share H so I do want to pass it on to both Ronin and yoy to talk a bit about more like how you envision the gaming industry reshaping with blockchain um so I can directly pass it on to you Ronan cool um yeah I mean I think social in general is the games is the most social app that I see you know like In Our Lifetime right there's like 3.6 players in the world right it's like a third of population in the world playing some sort of games um and I think we've seen that growth over the last about 15 years

with mobile and with freeto playay but I think and but I think what happened is like today is that the industry is really in these Crossroads where you know the like when you mentioned um RC like the the the majority of the of the games that are making money like the top 1% they're controlled by the distributions and I think for the small developers and the in developers there's not as much opportunity to sustain themselves and and fund their own you know their own creativity right and I think as a result of that basically what what happening is that um a lot of the game developers have to find other Solutions and they have to look elsewhere or they have to shut shop right so they either forced to basically go into these extractive models that you

know you have to use pay to win because otherwise you can sustain yourself players hate it but they still have to pay if they want to keep playing the game so it's really created industry where nobody's really happy and there's a misalignment so I think with blockchain to me is really a technology it's not like the solution at the end of the day like what is this technology can allow us to create that we couldn't exist before what kind of a game experience that that we couldn't do before and I think like a lot of games in the last decade or so try to create this like open economies like RuneScape and wow and you know Second Life and either was either in the game or outside of the game it's something that people gravitated to do because it was it's it's fun something that player want but

it was always outside of the game and I think blockchain technology as a tool could potentially help secure those assets so you can intermediate a lot of the offchain and the gray markets just bring it in the game and and now players can do what they want to do anyways but in the game obviously it's it's uh it's it's a bit far from now there's a lot of Bally think about an economy right there's a lot of failing economies in the world so it's like now you're trying to build again game economy from the ground up there's a lot of ways that it can go wrong but I think in the next 20 years like probably most games or MMOs games that really rely on player-to-player interactions would be like having assets on chain and secure asset on chain because I think it's something that people want but really

hard to do and and blockchain just allows that to be marginally easier uh when it comes to just like technology and speed to to make that happen and iterate on these experiences uh do you have have anything to add on like the how blockchain will reshape the gaming industry in your perspective as well working in the gaming industry yourself sure and I talk about two main points uh the impact of blockchain on ownership in gaming and highrisk nature of game industry uh first is for uh game users so uh blockchain technolog hold uh a great potential for the gaming industry

particularly when it comes to ownership uh through through nfts game player can uh truly own the uh in-game assets this means uh game uh item gaming items uh characters and viral real estate can be uh both sold and Tra trade traded securely uh like physical asset the uh so the ownership of this digital asset is verifiable and immutable so providing players with confidence and security second for game

developer so blockchain addresses the challenge of us uh saturated and uh highrisk gaming industry uh so traditional game company uh game developers require uh significant upfront invest investment with no granty of success uh making it highly risk business uh perhaps uh or globally especially in Japanese Japan so blockchain allow for a minimum and scalable uh scalable approach through tokenization

by using token developer can raise fund uh M make communities and test uh game concept incrementally so this reduce Financial Risk and uh provide sustainable model for game industry so blockchain also enable decentral economies all allowing players to ear and uh trade token play are supporting game develop uh development and player engagement so in essence uh blockchain technology offer a new way uh to launch and sustain game making the industry

more accessible in this uh super I think there are like similar teams around like both in-game like Assets in the different Industries and then also how you engage with the community I feel like it's kind of simil across the different Industries here uh so we do have well we have six people so limited time uh so my last question is going to be around like what you think is the biggest barrier against adoption and perhaps like what you're working on and because we have limited time it's going to be a bit more lightning mode so we can go off with you Andre first um yeah I I think the the largest blocker to adoption has more to do with um you kind of touched on it a little bit like

uh don't Focus too much on the technology focus on the use case focus on what what are people getting out of the you know experience um obviously if you're building like a technical product that's kind of a different story but I think we're all here talking about more consumer level Mass adoption kind of stuff you know if we focus on the experience and and provide a a a fantastic user experience and they're getting something that they can't get anywhere that's enabled by this I mean I think we're winning and and I think that's how we get people it's not by sort of um you know I I think we we all obviously believe in the the tenants of this technology and why a lot of a lot of it's why we're here but you know that's not uh I don't think that's going to move the needle I think you need to

focus on the use case y uh with blockchain you can provide transparency in the process of uh building Idol group or uh creators but uh if you're asking users to uh install metamask and pay for pay with automaic and um calculate for the gas fee I think it's going to be really hard for them to enter to participate in this actions so what we really focused on is to designing the platform Service as web to service so you can uh easily sign in with your uh email or you can buy nft with Fiat or a credit card and all the

gas Fe all the gas fees paid by the country company with with those efforts uh 90% of our users is their first time ever purchasing NFD experience in our platform so I think that's the biggest challenge for us and that's how we um deal with those challenges I think the easiest part already done like get get on board nerds and Geeks and hardcore people already done if you find like any nerd people never heard of blockchain they're not nerds right um so now is the hard part you Board of real people normally people and then you have to compete with the real web two apps like Twitter Facebook WeChat Kaka every major one so the real users are there is our job to find ways

to attract them you can either use air job you or user some like cool activities you know uh Creator tools uh I think we're not done good enough job on that and stop fighting internally it's not there's no point from one chain to grab user from another chain because it's the same group of people so I think that's something we we should do together just to grab the user from the major social apps or major consumer apps web 2 yeah yeah I mean I think in our industry is pretty straightforward you need good games you know there's no really way around it um I think in you know if you look at startups and what's their ratio of success is like 1 to 10 and then games is really 1 to 20 so you really need way more games and a higher quality to actually be in the market in order to

show that this technology could actually have like have legs for in the gaming industry so I mean I don't know if there's really anything else and technology is obviously always going to be improving and and on boarding is all going to be improving uh but at the end of the day the only thing that will bring more non Crypton native people in the industry is a great experience that they can have fun that they can invite their friends they can talk about on social and you know that will BR that will bring more people in I mean there's I don't see any way around it really uh ultimately the key key is increasing the number of application or gaming that capture user interest so I think uh when

users are interest interested they will adapt the uh technology more willingly um I think that's a great intro especially like removing the blockchain element from like what we're doing but just making it something where people can relate to and use uh and I like the way sui described like nerds versus normal people that was kind of funny um but so uh when we started Sushi also had like a take that a blockchain well would gain mainstream adoption in five years in 2017 uh so I kind of want to hear your perspective today on like what you think are like some of the models that are successful or or and if you see them like gaining mainstream

adoption in the next like two three five what's your like take on this um like when do you think we will get mainstream adoption in the relative Industries and yeah sorry to ask you all the time first but no no no I'll go first um uh yeah so like I kind of mentioned when when I first started speaking the the music industry has sort of embraced it a little bit when when it was making money and then sort of completely ignored it when it stopped making money so uh that that that was like sort of maybe the first taste of it um you know I I uh I don't know I I think like [Music] um I I think like just like maybe

perhaps like focusing uh not focusing on trying to sell sort of like uh again with music specifically like like uh um I'm actually very curious about your perspective on this because I feel like it's a little bit the fandom in in the in the US is like a little bit different when it comes to like Indie artists in my world but uh you know people there's not like a huge appetite for that uh in in in my context like people were actually like kind of taken aback by it and and weren't really sure uh you know like well what do you mean I have to pay $300 for like a collectible when I used when I'm used to buying like a $30 vinyl you know and and and like a lot of people made that connection to sort of the art nfts and it didn't quite um like

it it didn't quite connect in the same way uh so I I don't know I think like what what I'd like to see is uh again just like those um you know putting the technology uh sort of a little bit more underneath the hood and and letting letting the experience sort of speak for themselves and like I think that's like how how we get there you know u in terms of mass adoption I think we have one of the largest number of uh users and nfts minted in polygon uh we have 170k users uh within uh one year and a half and now we have about uh 3. 2 million nfts minted in our platform uh

within the same time period and um for Mass adoption I think you you need to provide what uh people really like to collect or people really like to put um put um their interest in it and we adopted nft in Pho card format which is familiar to kPa fans and they like to collect and trade it and I think that's one thing we um we put more effort on to get some uh Mass adoption I think one thing clear now working is in the last cycle we see people like R it big company that R it

they just pre-install wet for you and assume this sticker or assume this uh aventer is inft assume people understand create a lot of Wallet create a lot of wallet on polyon and also the Starbucks create a lot of wallet on different chance clear is not working because people don't know what it is and it's important to convey the things clearly to the users okay this is yours and and and we we need to unify the message to convey to the users right uh right right now the one thing is like every chain is try to represent the blockchain uh and say hey we are the digit guys I think that's not necessary and once you unify the voice to the users just like Bitcoin already unified voice two nomies they're the digital we

need to unify our voice to the users like oh this is your I don't know digital VA of something digital whatever and then they oh okay this is actually different from the ring I used to own this very different and then they start to think about things differently uh without that transition if you just add a wallet just add nft to a major Web Two app uh people try it it's not working and I think that's a barrier we need to overcome yeah I'll have an unpopular opinion I think that we're already in Mass adoption because you know the US government election is like you know there's a lot of talk about crypto already right like metamask mentioned few 30 million unique downloads of metam mask alone like I think we're there I mean there's a few hundred million

people hold crypto in the world so yeah like obviously we're not there in a world where you know we're using our phones we don't care it's using the internet right but like so we're not at the point that you know we're using apps they just using you know blockchain in the back in the backend and just like don't care so we're not there yet but when it comes to like users and how many people hold crypto and how many people talk aboutto crypto it's it's a mainstream conversation right now uh and I think for all of us who have been here since 2013 and 16 this this is unheard of like it's like you know like we never really will'll reach that point there's so many times we thought it's going to die you know and like it's actually didn't and we still here so I I think

we're pretty much like in a good position already so uh we are serious far from M show uh uh in o me uh many game will be released in this uh this year and we are supporting them so I believe uh I believe this year a crucial one for uh gaming and crypto industry yes amazing okay so we do have um we are on time for our panel no more seconds I think now we do kind of slide into the Raman ball I don't know how exactly that will work

but thank you we'll see how that works but thank you everyone for being here with us today um and all the audience for being like listening as well uh it was great to be here and I'm excited to see where entertainment is going with blockchain thank you thank you so much a round of applause one more Make some noise yeah that's what I'm talking about oh hold on hold on hold on so we've had a few close calls today people like go rapid fire down it and we've had some close calls um I know it's Japan and we

have good health insurance but you know not that good all right so yeah just once some the person's down there and they're almost out then you're good to go all right you got you guys got the order ready I mean I mean they they look like gentlemen so ah drum roll please oh she's off hey hey who we got next ready oh he's out of here there he is very nice next one [Music]

[Applause] [Music] nice yo he just two footed the egg you see that did a he there he goes oh it's pretty good all right one more oh yo did you see he was taking a selfie damn as soon as this yeah thank you thank you