The NFT metadata problem and how to fix it

Transcript

gmgm welcome to web3 Academy a place for entrepreneurs businesses and creators to explore and learn how to use web3 to transform business models and build thriving communities I'm Jaybird unfortunately Kyle's not with us today he's off meditating getting deep but we're still here I'm still here with you to make sure I keep you on the Forefront of technology so that you don't fall behind on today's episode we're diving deep on a doer Spotlight talking about the nft metadata problem that nobody is talking about

very quickly metadata is the piece of an nft that is the picture or the video or the the GIF it is basically the piece outside of the token so when you have an nft you have your token which is on the blockchain which is a mutable which confirms your ownership but then you have to also attach that token to a image of a board ape and where is that stored is the big question where is that image of the board ape stored and how do we make sure that that is secure and

safe and immutable in the way that blockchain enables and not many people realize currently over 40 percent of these images are not stored in safe ways and this is a big problem because it's not secure millions of nfts are not secure currently so we're going to talk about the current state of nft file storage and how ipfs solves that if you don't know what ipfs is you're going to learn all about it in this episode we're also talking today about the future of nfts we're talking about use cases around token gating we're talking about nfts as apps what nfts is apps what does that mean

okay you better listen in the future of that we're also going to talk about attending hackathons as a non-technical and what is that what that is like and how you get your feet wet and we're going to talk about building a company from startup in your mom's house to raising 20 million dollars and here to discuss this with us today is Kyle Tutt Kyle is the co-founder of pinata which is the leading nft media management platform and recently raised 21.5 million in funding from investors including Greylock Pantera and open C uh welcome to the show super excited to have you yeah happy to be here

let's jump in by you telling us a little bit about your rabbit hole story you know you got an interesting story about how you got into the space uh attending hackathons and getting getting into the weeds and making sure you're in the right places uh and maybe that'll lead into how you uh developed and uh created a pinata yeah for sure so actually I'd love to uh even go further back in my story and start with um I originally wanted to be a car mechanic okay you know it's not like a a grand aspiration uh and so when I was like seven years old I told my mom I wanted to be a mechanic and she said something pretty profound

at the time and it's obviously stuck with me all the way to today which is uh she said Kyle you know it's okay if you want to be a car mechanic but make sure that you own the mechanic shop um and like that framing to me has always been extremely powerful because obviously you get a bunch of agency and autonomy and no matter what you were doing um you know it's very powerful if if you're actually the one that's running running the mechanic shop and so that kind of framing um is ultimately what led me to quitting my job in April of of 2017 and and jumping into crypto full-time uh at the time you know uh 2015 is

actually 2015 2016 I bought um some crypto but I'm not like a a Trader uh I'm not like a finance guy obviously from from the mechanic story I've always kind of had this um desire to to start my own company and so when I quit in or in 2015 2016 I'm I'm learning about crypto like I've got some Bitcoin but ethereum was uh in 2016 was just like extremely fascinating to me and and smart contracts uh were were blowing my mind and you know back then there wasn't that much information it's like you know you get a little bit on Twitter and and maybe you get a little bit on on Reddit somewhere and that's

about all you can learn um but so I was learning about uh crypto and smart contracts in by April of 2017 I felt uh you know this was a great time I'm gonna I'm just gonna quit my job uh jump into blockchain and crypto full-time and I I really didn't have like a a place I was going I just knew hey like this stuff seems incredible it seems exciting uh and I want to build a company uh on this technology even though I don't know what that that idea is going to be yet and so uh when I you know when I quit I'm based in Omaha Nebraska there wasn't a bunch of um you know kind of resources for me in Omaha there there wasn't a network of people that were were really into this

space so the the first thing it wasn't an eth Omaha at that point exactly uh and there still isn't so probably I should get on that get on it but so I did is uh you know I was like I'm not technical so I'm I'm the kind of the business side of the house and uh but what I knew back then is like I needed to understand the technology at a much deeper level um for kind of a couple reasons but main one being uh you know it was still very technical and I think the space is just generally still very tactical but back then uh even more so um and I did want to like understand the space so I could like decipher kind of the real stuff from the the fake stuff um and in the way that I thought to do

that was all right I'm just gonna go to a hackathon um and and compete at these hackathons and I'm going to sit next to blockchain Engineers um and and people who truly do understand the technology and and learn from them so I uh in May so like a month later I jumped on a plane flew to New York and competed at a blockchain hackathon we ended up being one of the winners of that and I just kept doing that all summer of 2017 uh it's kind of where I cut my teeth and and actually understood like what blockchains were capable of especially back then um and and really just kind of learned everything I could and tried to build out a network of of people that you know

I still know today and and have met many great friends all the way back then um and just kind of kept building but I still had a problem where uh you know I still live in Omaha Nebraska and I I needed friends in the space uh to be closer to me so what I did is I I started the blockchain Meetup Group in town and it grew to four or 500 people it was actually like like a nice yeah it was uh pretty incredible um and when when I did that uh my co-founder Matt uh was one of the first people to to reach out to me and he I was like hey let's go get drinks um and he's he's a software engineer I

was working at a a Dev shop in town and I was like hey you should come with me to these hackathons and the first hackathon that he came with uh me too was uh actually eth Waterloo the first Heath Waterloo and that is where crypto kitties launched and so we saw you know kind of the Genesis of nfts all the way back in in 2017 and and Matt and I's story um you know kind of tracks right with uh nfts from essentially from from day one and it's always been a part of our story however that's not like uh you know where we were at at the time at the time

you know we just met uh and um I was like hey we you know we should go to these hackathons but we should also start a Consulting business and let's build smart contracts and and blockchain applications and those types of things and so we were doing that continuing going to hackathons building applications and through all of that experience so going to these hackathons and and building uh is where we realized that storing data on chain um is just super expensive um so at the time if you wanted to store one gigabyte of data on the ethereum blockchain it was going to cost something like four million dollars or just like yeah just like a obviously a

ridiculous amount um and so everybody at the time was using this protocol called ipfs or the interplanetary file system uh but it wasn't very fast it wasn't very stable and so we just came up with this simple idea of Let's uh make ipfs as fast and stable as we can uh and then uh let developers use our our ipfs nodes and so we launched that in um in October or November of 2018 at the eth Berlin hackathon and actually ended up winning uh winning that hackathon and at that point you know we thought we were going to take over the world and and raise a bunch of

money and everything was going to go great unfortunately uh that's that's not what happened and we had a we had a long journey to get to where we are today but uh yeah that's kind of our uh our our our you know story that's where it kind of like starts that's where the the you know we were trying to find our way and then piano launches and then we had another two or three years of hard grinding but I'll stop there for now we'll we'll get into that for sure first of all what's your mom's name Vicky Vicky incredible advice just yeah incredible advice to own own the own the mechanic shop yeah because you know she wanted me to be like an astronaut or like you know reach reach not that there's anything

wrong with it no but um I you know I think as a seven-year-old she was hoping I would have higher hopes uh and uh ultimately I I got there because of of her parents and her wisdom I gotta just talk quickly because I've never had anybody on the show that has attended as many hackathons as you have and I'm not a tech guy either uh and so I'm just always so curious about hackathons so you're like you're flying these hackathons hey I love that you're like your commitment is just incredible you clearly have a drive unlike so shout out again to to Vicky and your dad as well

like you they gave you a drive because you have to Top-Up planes and fly all over the world to go on these hackathons especially as an American when I know a lot of Americans don't necessarily fly outside of America so yeah you know you're going for it um but what's it like when you show up to a hackathon and you're alone and you don't necessarily have any friends like what's the vibe like how do you get in there yeah so I'll start with the the first one uh so when I went to that one in New York I had never been to uh I'd never been to New York at that time uh so you know I'm like fish out of water coming from Omaha Nebraska getting dropped into uh you know downtown Manhattan and um I was so nervous uh I because like

I'm non-technical so I can't really build anything so it's like what value am I I really going to provide and so I just kind of showed up and uh I just tried to talk to as many many people as I could you know I kind of like mentally prepared myself for uh like all right when you get there you just talk to everybody and then try to like get on a team and ultimately um you know I found two developers um and Dion and Zen were their names and I was able to you know get on their team and you know essentially all I did is kind of help with ideas uh and uh did the pitch deck and ultimately the pitch uh and they did it did all the hard work

but yeah it was like super anxiety uh inducing back then um but what was cool is then Dion Zen and I um started going to hackathons together so like then that summer we were traveling together as a group in in competing um and then like from there you kind of understand the construction of hackathons and how they're how they work it's kind of like a it's kind of like a game almost or um uh I I'm big into Motorsports so I kind of think of it like a weekend uh at the races where right you kind of you know there's a structure to it there's definitely a way to to be good at them

right and uh so yeah we we just kept going to them and what I like about it is it's a it's a set amount of time right it's 24 36 hours uh you don't sleep a lot everybody's kind of in a haze so just drinking Red Bull and drinking yeah exactly uh and um there's just a lot of great ideation that happens even even if it's not related to the project you're working on or the project somebody else is working on there's just a lot of ideas that are being shared and are kind of flowing um through the environment and it's it's just a ton of fun um and we've actually launched uh We've launched a product we launched pinata at

hackathon but we've also since then go to them and actually launch products oh interesting at these hackathons and use them as kind of this tool to number one just like get things done that maybe we're putting off yeah they were like we just want to test something out and yeah I just think uh kind of the uh the specific timing and nature of hackathons leads to really interesting Concepts and I do think it's kind of like this Niche environment um where really kind of Niche ideas can start and then like you take them out of the hackathon and you kind of build on them and and try to mainstream them from there but yeah just a great environment they all have their own kind of flavors

and and Concepts and uh yeah I I recommend anybody go there and if if you're non-technical like I was just try to make friends and uh you know leverage whatever whatever value or skill you have uh try to leverage that and get on a team but interesting that there is a place for non-technical like to be honest I would have assumed that there was no place for non-technical at hackathon so that's I mean that's encouraging in itself right and the other thing that comes up for me is uh I went to business school and we used to do 48-hour case studies where you sort of similar to a hackathon you had 48 hours to do one case and then you had to do a pitch and presentation at the end

and I'll never forget those experiences because of what it taught me about resilience like right you're you're not sleepy you know you're up all night uh but also like just that feeling of accomplishment that can come from that level of focus and productivity I think it's a really good thing for for for humans to just feel that oh wow like I can do that you do really you come out of that with I'm not surprised that you guys came out East Berlin like with pin you won the hackathon you guys like we're gonna take over the world like yeah for sure right that feeling yeah no doubt strong yeah but okay so sorry you got one more thing you want to say well

I was just gonna say like uh one of the things you know we learned in one of the earlier hackathons is typically what happens is like the biggest skill you can have is time management at a hackathon and I've seen it a million times at this point where people uh start with the one idea they don't like it and they try to change it at midnight uh on on Saturday or whatever and they just can't make the pivot and so like there is actually quite a bit of value in you know business people or people that understand time management uh unlike making sure that whatever the idea is you get it you set with it and you're just gonna roll with it regardless because when you make that

pivot late it's it you just don't have enough time uh it's kind of like the British Bake Off or whatever it's like once things start going wrong like you may as well just throw in the towel completely and just kind of hang out and so there's there's definitely value of all all skill sets it doesn't doesn't matter who you are what you do you can you can add value at hackathons yeah I feel like there's a uh like a t-shirt or something uh from that like you know don't make the midnight pivot yeah that's great yeah something like that to to to wear it a hackathon okay well so let's let's fast forward uh to where were I to today uh I want to get

into pinata and uh the and the Rays and everything you guys have built but before we do that um I just want to set the stage a bit here for um really the current state of nft files uh I want to talk a little bit about what is ipfs you mentioned that uh interplanetary file system I just think that's one of the best acronyms I I don't know what alien came up with that but that is so good um and yeah like let's just set the stage for us of what's what's the current problem in the nft space uh that you guys see right now

yeah so um what we're focused on is is the files and and managing a thousand a lot of people uh might not know but uh the nft is just a a token that's sitting on a blockchain and it's really just kind of representing or pointing to everything else uh and that everything else would be like the files so the the image the video the whatever whatever it really is um and so we're focused completely on that everything else kind of portion of of the nft so the images the files the videos and whatever the the data ultimately ends up being and uh you know what what we've seen is people

want to keep pushing the boundaries of what nfts are and what they're going to be and to do that you have to kind of have um a lot of infrastructure so at the end of the day we're a Dev infrastructure Tool uh if you will that helps developers distribute media distribute content at scale and if you think about what we've we've done with web3 is we've said all right uh we're not going to uh I always kind of like to say you can't sell a YouTube link as an nft um and uh it's because number one you don't want ads obviously related to your nft that you can can't control but

you're also not controlling the environment right it's it's the YouTube's environment it's not your nft projects environment um and so with that when you try to serve content at scale to a million people or a billion people uh web 2 platforms got really good at it right so Instagram's really good at it tick tock's really good at YouTube's really good at it but these nft projects don't have that technology in that scale and so you know what we try to help them do is um be able to serve content associated with their nft at scale uh make sure that it's secure uh there's some security properties that that ipfs helps with and that we help with to ensure

that the data or the files aren't changing and making sure making sure that everybody uh is getting what they're they're supposed to be and and there's you know I'm sure many people have heard of kind of like the fraud in the nft space ipfs can certainly help with with a lot of that and so yeah it's just kind of like figuring out all those edge cases and all of those uh difficult things that when we started with nfts in in 20 17 2018 nobody nobody would have thought of so yeah so then so just to to clearly understand this uh the the current infrastructure of so let's let's pick a a board API Club let's pick a popular project so uh

the the token itself is on chain and but the image of the ape is not on chain because as you mentioned before it would cost four million dollars probably doesn't cost four million dollars anymore but uh it you know to have uh yeah the gigabytes necessary to have that much media on chain is just not worth it right right so that image is off chain and the challenge with that is if that image if my ape for example is off chain what some people have done to store that is they've stored it just in web two ways correct they just yeah just yep just like on a regular cloud or

um uh you know like AWS or any kind of cloud system right even like a Dropbox uh right right and and the problem with that is uh you don't have a way to uniquely prove that that image is what it's supposed to be and so so what's unique about ipfs is when you upload content to ipfs it generates what's called a Content identifier or a CID that is unique to that file or that data and so what you do is you you take that ID and you embed it into the nft and now you have a link between the nft and the content or the data and you can always verifiably prove that it is what it's supposed to be and if it's not you can

prove that as well and so it adds this um this verifiability uh to the data to the content to prove that you're you are buying what you're supposed to whether it's a board acre um you know any other nft content um you're able to actually prove that out and you can see that and verify all of that right which like it it we're using the example of a board Abe I mean and I'm not making light of of board AIDS great projects incredible success that yoga Labs had all that uh but you know we're talking about like an image right like does it really you know I guess the risk there is that if if you if it wasn't if the image itself wasn't

secured properly then the Creator could go in and change the image and I'd have a different looking ape right yeah which like yeah that would suck but like I don't know forgive me it doesn't seem like the end of the world uh but but the bigger issue is when we get into other use cases of nfts I think right yeah when we talk go ahead yeah and so you know kind of what we've always thought nfts were going to be was much more than just images the the first blog I wrote on nfts was actually in December of 2017 and being from Nebraska I was trying to apply what I knew which was uh farming and so I was like how do we like buy and sell combine data uh so

like combines have like data that's just constantly flowing off them related to field yield and uh like GPS and all this forgive forgive me I'm not a farmer what's a combine okay those big green tractors that drive through and like pluck up The Corn okay yep cool those things uh and I was like how do we take this data and then tokenize each acre with an nft and then you can like buy and sell um the the acre information based on based on that and so the first application I I used for it had nothing to do with images or videos it was it was Data um and data is extremely valuable and so when you start running nfts forward

Beyond just kind of images uh what you realize that nfts are doing is they're they're just transacting data between parties right you were you were buying and selling something of value between two parties and and what's always unique about um blockchain is there's a high chance you don't know who's on the other side of that right that trade right um and so to make that efficient what you have to do is you have to have that provability or that verifiability that the data is what it's supposed to be and you're getting what you're supposed to be getting and this may makes theoretically this should make Commerce much more efficient at scale when when you're doing this when you're buying and

selling data when you're buying and selling apps or you know whatever the future of nfts are and and the analogy I always like to use is basically what we're solving is the telephone game problem which is you know when you have a line of 10 people and you start on one end and tell that person a sentence by time it gets the to the 10th person it's a completely different sentence now you know what's great about the telephone game problem is none of that's on purpose it's just like uh you know data kind of transforms over time whether you wanted it to or not and what nfts and ipfs and kind of this whole Space is solving for is ensuring that the data doesn't change and if it does change you can you can see that it does and basically just elevates trust in a

in a transaction and makes people um capable of transacting in a much um more trustful environment right right because it's immutable right right whereas what you're saying right now the current state and and maybe you know some stats but I don't know you know how many nfts are using you know web 2 servers to store versus how many are using I think yes the I saw the latest that I saw something like 60 of all nfts use ipfs and then the other four 40 percent is some combination of um you know either web 2 or maybe it's other web3 technology so a significant

portion so it's going in the right direction then yes yep right absolutely right and is there any reason why somebody like is there any other solution other than ipfs or is well yeah so yeah there's there's definitely um other Solutions out there but um what ipfs is is so good at is that it can run anywhere and it's a relatively easy protocol to run um and so from an adoption perspective developers really like it um and that that CID component that I mentioned earlier uh is just really simple to understand once you kind of understand the power of it and um yeah so it's it's kind of taken off

um and has become the the dominant protocol for files and in the blockchain space and what's cool about ipfs is it works for every every blockchain so whether it's ethereum or Solana or or name of blockchain that that same CID Paradigm works for every single one of them right yeah and the other thing it makes me think of the other use case is uh is soul-bound nfts and and when we talk about identity you know like when we think about what just happened with kovid and the manner in which we uh I guess ensured that everybody was vaccinated you know like I'm flying

around the world with a piece of paper that I mean anybody could have forged that piece of paper it would have been so simple and that was my verification of this stopping this pandemic like the the the potential to have like identity based uh nfts and obviously if we have an identity based nft we've got to make sure it's immutable because then what's the point right uh so ipfs would definitely solve that as well yeah and um what's interesting is uh the digital world is actually much easier to to prove that content is or the data is

what it's supposed to be right uh in your example where it becomes difficult is real world things are actually much more difficult to prove that they are something and then like attach them to the nft without the nft becoming disconnected from it right and ipfs helps with that but like if you want to prove that a car is the car that you said it is yeah you essentially have to create some data trail uh that that thing was never like stolen or the VIN number was never changed or like there's all all sorts of stuff um related to with uh with real world assets that actually becomes really interesting of like how do we identify

these things reliably um people you know we can do thumb prints we can do I we can do facial recognition but all of those are kind of actually gameable uh as well and so you got to think kind of outside the box of like what is something that like absolutely cannot be spoofed or changed um and then you take that data set upload it ipfs and then you attach it to an nft and then you have this like nice little supply chain of data related to whatever it is we're trying to prove right wow you guys are really thinking deep about this stuff uh so I've been thinking about this for you know six five six years now so which is which is like like that's got to be what is that

60 years in crypto time yeah it's it's been a while so it's like the thing that I loved about this latest nft boom is like um you know it showed I always kind of thought of it like performance art where it's like you know we're kind of arguing over somewhat silly things uh I feel like when it's related to Arthur uh art nfts or game nfts or whatever and property rights and ownership and I intellectual property and all that stuff um but like I think generally speaking um they're they're all hinting at problems that are that are real and are are coming uh and as we apply these uh Concepts to

um more and more things uh you know we're gonna have to think through a lot of the stuff that people were thinking through in this bubble and what we ended up with is a lot of smart people dumping into the space and and uh you know taking their perspectives and applying them so that's uh super valuable uh to move the space forward yeah yeah completely uh all right I wanna I wanna chat a bit about pinata uh and um where you know sort of we we talked about your story up to winning East Berlin and launching pinata um but take us a little bit through about uh and you don't have to go back to the early days of pinata unless you

want to um oh it's my favorite it's my favorite yeah it was hard because the grind is hard or because of the the crash the the last crash that happened in 2018 yeah or yeah there were a bunch of factors so um you know we launched uh at Heath Berlin which I said was October 2018 or something like that we won thought we're gonna you know take over the world raise a bunch of money and the problem was there was two problems one it was crypto winter so we were in a downturn um people were coming or getting out of the crypto space uh the hype was wearing

off from the Ico boom uh and all that kind of stuff so that was one issue the other issue was we didn't have a market or a use case so in October of 2018 nfts were not like a real thing uh nobody was building with them and it was a very very very small community there's like you know one person out there that was like uploading cat pictures and attaching them to nfts and that that was like about it and so um you know we didn't have a use case nobody was really storing data off chain they were they were mostly just kind of like building token token use use cases on chain and and we had no customers essentially and I was talking about it

like um you know we were right it's just like when you're right and you're early it's the same thing as being wrong and so we were wrong for for two years essentially um until the the market kind of found us now what we did in the interim is Matt and I survived so like we did everything possible just to like keep the lights on and make sure we can keep working on pinata including like we were doing consulting on the side to like and then just putting that money into putting out our decision I was living uh at the time in my parents basement because I had to like cut burn as much as possible I didn't know how long you know how long this was going to take uh

I remember uh you know there were definitely times I got broke down of like this is just this is way harder than uh way harder than I thought it was going to be but in that in that time period from 2018 all the way until 2020 uh the one thing that Matt and I kept doing is we kept going to these hackathons um and then I call Matt built uh pinata right he was like making sure to scale it and those types of things adding nature what I was interested in this taught us and I was calling everybody I possibly could in this place just constantly every day I would call you know three to five people and try to uh understand why they would or wouldn't use pinata why

they would or wouldn't use ipfs and we were just constantly kind of outbound calling but then we were also talking to the the literal users we had which was like less than a thousand uh we were trying to talk to all of them constantly and so we've always been very customer driven and we always talk customers as much as possible and um through that we then took all of that information and we blogged about it and our blog goes all the way back to 2018 and it's just chock full of information and uh really good insights and you know what we saw is in 2019 we saw people were starting to to build nfts and like we're actually doing interests and

things with them and we were able to identify that and and start writing about um how to build nfts using pinata and things like that and so when covet hit um nfts like really started like developers really started building a lot of them and a lot of them looking at us and using our blog and using our our technology to to build their nfts and so as the space took off we we took off directly with it uh but we still didn't have like a business model which uh uh a bad like startup 101 we need we somehow needed to make money um and so we figured out kind of our

business model in 2021 uh and we're able to you know start making a nice amount of of Revenue uh with the users and customers we had that were building in the space and have been able to you know grow uh significantly since then I think um you know in 2020 we were four people 2021 the beginning of the year we were four people we ended at like 20 and an hour uh I think at 40 people or 40 plus people um and so yeah it's just been kind of a crazy ride uh and it's been it's been a long of fun and the cool thing is we do get to work with so many interesting projects in the space you know we're involved with uh you know most major nft

projects and marketplaces so we do get to see quite a bit of innovation and and are still regardless of of the prices of nfts were extremely excited about where the space is going to go I mean this is the time when to be honest I I'm I'm excited about this time right like sure we're in crypto winter nft winter uh you know all of our bags are way down but this is when all the speculators get pushed out and the builders stick around and you know and it is when the real Innovation happens but I just gotta go back so you really you you were early like you said and so you had to grind and survive for a few

years there uh just you know going to these hackathons and staying positive uh that's a that's a tough one but now now you've just done this this big raise uh and am I getting these numbers correct you've got 240 000 users worldwide over 120 million files pinned uh on ipfs like incredible the the growth once once the market caught up to you so you were lucky in a way that you thankfully you stuck with it thanks yeah like I mean so if you know if we didn't grind for those two years we wouldn't have like we wouldn't have been there and uh

I don't think anybody would have identified what we were doing uh and came up with a concept uh if if we weren't there early so essentially like I don't think you could have entered the market in 2020 when stuff started to take off and would have been as successful as as we have been uh today you really kind of had to to be there and understand what was going on and have kind of of that context uh to to what the market was and where it was pivoting um the other part of that story is like I was pitching uh VCS the whole time right okay 2018 all the way in 2020 I kind of stopped and gave up but um like it was just no after no after no they didn't even understand like what we

were or what we were doing I've went back and actually looked at um looked at some of the decks and we don't even talk about nfts because I I refer to it as gaming because like crypto kitties was you know the use case and um it was like we couldn't talk about nfts because the you know VCS didn't even know what they were right and so um it was just something you couldn't even pitch so yeah it was it was definitely uh yeah the long the long uh overnight success as they as they say so just a because you just raised um and I don't want to dive too deep into this because I want to talk about token gating and asset nfts versus

consumable nfts and apps as nfts there's all these other topics I want but just because you just raised any any advice or takeaways from doing arrays and from finally getting in front of VCS and being able to pitch them any lessons learned to share uh yeah so my story is probably not as um uh kind of as good as maybe some other people's but uh I never actually got a yes from a VC that I I reached out to okay um so in April of 2021 or February of 2021 um uh our our seed investors actually reached out to me cold reach out to me

because they saw two things they saw uh our blogs they were reading our blogs and they're like oh wow these they're thinking like really differently uh about about the nft space even though you know the bubble was kind of already like starting um and they they liked the way they were thinking about it and then when they were like going around and talking to different companies uh about it they realized like everybody was already using us and so we were we were definitely like a very Bottoms Up um kind of Grassroots company uh and by that time had already had like 20 000 users or something to that point um and so you know my ability to sell uh to VCS is probably not very good

um but at the end of the day we you know we put in the put in the work and we've got users and we like we found a market um and that's ultimately what got us to it yes and so uh you know I can't tell you how to pitch or sell successfully but I can you know share my story on how to build a successful company and ultimately that's the thing that truly matters and and what will get you to it yes totally and I think is exactly the the two takeaways for me there one create content right like clearly that got you a that gets you a lot of attention from your customers it shows you as a thought leader it it's what it's how your first seed investors found

you right there's so much value you know if you're out there and you're creating a web through business creating any business make a Blog and create content right like just write but second as you said in the end being great at making a pitch deck like sure maybe that works but I think you know the proof is in the pudding you just put in the work and that's that's what really works um I gotta ask one more quick question before we move on to the next topic um the name pinata what's yeah what's the story there yeah so actually there was a lot of thought that went into this um so uh the we had created our consulting company and uh the name of it was block

era and um what I didn't like about it was I didn't like how it was attached to the technology of blockchain uh it was so specific and the thing I was specifically thinking about is like IBM or International Business Machines it's like IBM wasn't able to Pivot into personal Computing back in the day uh because their name essentially you know there's there's a bunch of problems structurally within the company that probably prevented their success but ultimately uh their name was very very specific and if you understand like apple and kind of how that was like a abstract kind of innovative concept back in you know the late 70s Apple has been

able to transcend time because their name isn't specific to a technology right they started with computers and then they went to iPods well you know they they kind of had their are jobless years there and then they went to iPods and then iPhones and you know as they move on Apple as a brand is always able to transcend the technology underneath them and I I was really um you know kind of inspired by that concept and so I was I was looking for a name that was abstract like that and I didn't want it to be related to the technology itself and so but I did want it to actually be derived from the technology

and so with ipfs what you do is you don't store data on the ipfs network you pin it and so I was like pinball pinwheel and then uh you know we landed on pinata in our um you know the the other portion of this is our logo which is like super fun uh one of the things I didn't like about the crypto space at the time and it's still even true today because it's kind of dark uh and Moody and you know uh and so we wanted to go the other direction we wanted to be as happy and and fun as we possibly could and we wanted a sticker uh of our logo that could like go viral at hackathons right so if you think about it again we're spending so much time at these

hackathons and um you know as as the non-technical person I'm just kind of sitting there just watching uh because I don't have that much to do uh and I'm just kind of looking around at these hackathons and like I'm I'm noticing how stickers are like currency on laptops and like if you could get a logo and a brand that just takes off at a hackathon you know it's probably going to be successful uh outside of that and so um yeah we we put a lot Matt and I sat in this office and put a lot of thought and effort into um or look in our our feel um and thankfully it's kind of held up um and we haven't had to to change it or anything like that so very we we love pinata at nft NYC we had a eight foot

giant pinata we have one hard rule though uh and people love to ask this uh no you cannot hit the pinata it's just not it's not a good one we don't want people uh hitting our logo But but so so there's no summer barbecue or summer company event where you guys have pinatas to hit and then maybe more pinatas fall out like maybe it's like it's like a big pinata with small pinatas inside so what we've leaned into so one of our values at pinatas um being Whimsical um in whimsiness uh and so kind of how we lean into that is like uh you know everybody wants to know what's inside of the pinata and uh it's it's always you

know kind of better to think of it as uh whatever your imagination can make it and you actually never get to know so it's kind of a you know just uh an unknown that you have to you have to be okay with I love it I love it it's so can can I get a sticker can I get you know if you guys are listening to the podcast and you can't or if you're if you're watching on YouTube you can see Kyle right now he's got a pinata hat on which is just a sweet looking hat I want one of those yeah pinata shirt on you got the neon sign in the background you got there must be 10 pinatas on the screen right now I mean it is such a good brand oh there's a couple more yeah yeah no it's just

it's a it's a lot of fun um yeah and like it it emanates across the company um like our our company is is very you know happy and upbeat and when you know when people meet us at conferences or at hackathons like it's it's truly infectious um how happy people are and like obviously we put in the work and and you know do the right things with the product and and have a good product and and all that but uh the the brand is also a big portion of that and it's it's just a fun fun environment to be a part of it's amazing I love it that's a great story thanks for sharing that okay let's talk about let's switch gears here let's talk about token gating nfts because I

think this is such an exciting further use case of nfts I mean there's there's one of the things that I think you have said so clearly uh in your blog which I was reading in preparation for the show was at just how one of the challenges with nfts is they can be used in so many ways and so we're sort of stuck in this like the same way as really as the beginning of the internet you know a we're stuck in that it's so difficult to conceptualize different ways to use technology right like it's just unless you're you know somebody like yourself or a vitalik buterin or you know one of these Founders who just

have that ability it's very for the average person it's all you see is like oh nfts are these jpegs and that's all you can think of it so that makes it very difficult but in the other thing that's so cool is when we do put nfts in the hands of our consumers as a business well then what can you do what come comes next and that's what we really try to talk a lot about on the show is that it's not just about oh selling an nft it's actually we often say give away an nft just give it away just so you can get in the hands your consumer because then you can do so much more and token gating is one of those things that we talk a lot about so we'd love to hear you talk about token getting the sort of

use cases that you're seeing or the examples of token getting uh and and we'll lead into that yeah for sure so uh I first saw or understood the concept of token getting back in uh it was probably like April or May of 2021 um it may have been board API club or you know one of the 10K pfp projects out there and what I saw was they were using this thing called I think collab land uh it's this tool where if you had the nft you could then go to a Discord uh they would verify whether or not um whether or not you own the nft and

then if you did it would give you access to a private Discord Channel and then within that private Discord Channel obviously there's like the conversations that are going on but then what they were also doing is that's how they were sharing uh like private content so whether it was a musician or maybe it's a video or you know podcast I saw people doing podcasts or whatever and I was like I felt it was a really really cool concept but uh like the flow of it felt uh very convoluted like why are we using Discord as our file sharing mechanism is essentially what I was asking uh and I kind of realized um that it was a really powerful kind of

motion of you know check if this nft exists if it does in the wallet uh then served content and I was like how can we just make this as easy as possible and so you know we took um we took pinata and figured out that we could make this much easier and just verify whether or not they had the nft and then serve content based on that and so at pinata we call it submarining or we you know use submarine content um and it's just based on again ownership of the nft and that can be any kind of content you can imagine and so what we're seeing is people are using this um this token gating concept to distribute content in new and unique ways and the the other thing it does is

it allows you to build new and unique business models um so maybe it's hey do you have this nft if yes then you get the content or maybe it's hey do you have this nft and this nft um you know we've even added things like hey you have to be in this location and have this nft to get this content so you can you can not only tokengate but you can location gate um and you know you kind of just keep layering uh layering these Technologies on top of each other and what what you realize is that if you if you go and look at most um web 2 platforms the majority of them are based on role of permissioning so you either have to have an email or you have to know that person or like you're

an admin or something to that effect it's it's a role and what token getting is is it's based on events so uh is this true if it is then we'll we'll do something and it allows you to be a lot more Innovative I think as a you know as a Creator a content creator that wants to distribute content uh it no longer they no longer have to follow you they can just like get the nft and get the content um it opens up again just business models that we we haven't even thought of then what's funny like looking back on it is in the beginning of the nft space uh there's a lot of rhetoric on on Twitter that everything had to be public and what we're seeing now is like no now

everybody wants everything to like be private and right you know what do we do with it from there so yeah we we love the concept of token getting and think it's going to be a major part of the space moving forward yeah so tell us a little bit about submarine dot me I mean you mentioned quickly that you guys call it submarine you guys are so great at branding I love it uh so this is another product that you guys have launched yeah so ipfs is a public network just like all blockchain or majority of blockchains are public um and so what we realized is we needed some way to do private ipfs essentially and the reason we call it submarine is

actually I spent a little bit of time my first idea in blockchain and crypto was I was trying to tokenize intellectual property which if you think about what nfts are it's very similar I just was like way off on the implementation the implementation of it but um uh when I was doing that I was learning about patents and uh back in the day what companies could do is they could submarine a patent and what that meant is you could submit the patent to the patent office but it wouldn't become public until a later date and so it gave companies this like period of time to hide their patents from their competitors and gave them a like a

significant advantage and so I was I was thinking about that and I was like uh inspired by this idea of like oh what if we put content uh uh on an nft you can you can prove that the content is supposed to be there but you can't have access to it until a later date and so this isn't again this is in like 2020 so if you're if you're thinking about this today you're like oh this doesn't seem that Innovative but at the time it was like fairly Innovative and uh just yeah so was inspired by that concept and we just kind of kept iterating on that concept and iterating on that concept until you know we then rolled in token getting with it and we're like all right so we have an nft it's public the nft is on a public blockchain there's content

associated with it but we need to ensure that it's only served based on certain parameters and and how do we do that so that was the first concept with pinata submarine I was just making private ipfs content and then now we have this product that we actually launched at a hackathon called submarine dot me which just makes it basically easy for anybody to do it so if you go to submarine dot me and and use it you can set parameters as a non-technical person so it's no code where you can just say hey um let's only distribute content based on this nft uh whether or not they own this nft and you can upload the content easily like a Dropbox or Instagram or whatever and then you'll be able to start serving and distributing content

based on that and so we're we're always kind of playing with this kind of idea of like all right we have an API which is for the developers and that's the majority of uh of the people building with us but how do we like also make this more accessible uh to non-technical people and submarine.me is is really our first implementation of that yeah yeah and the use cases for that are just enormous right like you think about creators who have followings on all these web 2 platforms Instagram and Facebook and Tick Tock uh and how you know it's so difficult to monetize as a Creator right the only way

creators really monetize right now is they have to create another product right they they have to go create you know they create merch or they make a course or they have a retreat you know or maybe they have something to access to themselves but it's difficult for them to do that whereas all you have to do is you get a nft into the hands of your customer now you have access to them through the knowing their their wallet and and that nft allows you to then say okay because you have this nft you get access to more of my content which they're so great at creating in the first place right yeah it's just and I mean that's just like that's just the tip of the iceberg I get so I I just get

so fired up about token getting uh yeah I mean and I'm not the only one at tnyc you know Shopify launched their Toca getting plot for their store and at the Doodles event and if you had a doodle you could get access to merch through Shopify and so there's just there's so much that's gonna come around token getting I mean I'm cognizant of time so I'm going to move on to the next topic because I want to keep going because I want to pick your brand a few more seconds but we could we could keep going on tokengating uh not all nfts are the same you wrote an article about this break down that article for us what do you mean when you say asset nfts versus consumable nfts yeah absolutely so I don't uh I don't

remember specifically when I wrote that it might have been like October of 2021 or somewhere around there and uh if you think of the time like the the rhetoric on Twitter is like you know nfts all have value and the value of them are all going to go up and which which is just not true let's just exactly uh and so I was like um and I knew this right because the reason I knew this specifically is like I had cryptokitties from 2017 2018 and and they were worthless uh I also you know I created my own nft in 2017 or 2018 and it's also worthless um and so I was like all right

nfts are not all assets uh there's no way that these things are like a property that just go up in value and so what I did is I developed a framework for us to think about these things as some nfts are going to be assets and their value is going to increase but the majority of these things are consumables which means ultimately that their price is eventually going to go to zero and the way I frame this uh in that blog is as a coffee shop so uh with nfts uh in a coffee shop the nft can represent you know the building the property uh the nft could represent the LLC uh it could represent the lease of the building but it could also

represent the cup of coffee itself right and those are not all the same things uh some are Revenue generating uh and and some are not and uh I think it once you understand that nft can you know go to zero like a cup of coffee but it doesn't mean you don't own it right so like when I buy that kind of coffee uh and I take possession of it I give them four dollars or whatever it costs now uh and they give me that coffee uh I own that coffee and for the next 20 minutes it has some amount of value until it goes to zero uh once I drink all of it right and it's like that's not a crazy concept to most people but in the nft space at the time like uh it was very hard to get

that message out um and you know now now that reality has kind of sunk into the space I think uh you know this resonates a lot more but back then it was like it was difficult for people to kind of wrap their not difficult but like it was in the best interest of the space for you know nfts to keep going up in price but right um once you have it on that Paradigm of assets to consumables and kind of understand this concept then you can start thinking about like what are the other use cases uh can I make can I make a nft that only lasts for three seconds or one second or maybe it lasts for a year you know you start playing with the the parameters of like how long does an nft exist because there's also a bunch of rhetoric in the space that nfts had

to last forever and I was like that seems like a that seems kind of like a ridiculous uh thought like my card doesn't even last forever I think the average car lasts for 10 years and they're made of like real real materials you know um and so once you kind of get over those um I guess mental hurdles I'll call them uh in the space uh you can you can start building you know really cool things and so that Paradigm to me kind of like obviously conceptualizes it uh to things that that people know and is a nice analogy and hopefully helps helps the listeners out there understand that these things can can be anything in every thing and it doesn't mean that they have they have to go up in price

yeah it's so true because right now I mean Collectibles is really that's that's what's taken off so far with nfts right I mean that's even the word that you know Facebook and Instagram when they launch their nft platform or their integration and I should say they call them digital Collectibles so so any any examples you have of consumable nfts I mean obviously do you foresee that somebody's gonna buy an nft in order to get a coffee um so maybe not that use case but it's like um uh you know if you buy even music if you if you

bought a song technically like that is a consumable just like back in the day when we bought CDs those were technically considered consumables the the most of them effectively goes to zero over time um and so if you buy you know buy one song uh and I've kind of played with Concepts in my head of like what if you know what if a musician released an album early a month early uh and there was only you know ten thousand um 10 000 albums that you had access to if you think about it like that uh and you know the Die Hard fans would buy it maybe for five hundred dollars but every single day that you get closer to the

day when it actually releases and everybody has access to it technically the price is probably going to go down right right if you think about it uh and it's going or it's going to neutralize to whatever that price of the the album is on the release day and so there's like cool things you can do with that and you know technically that's yeah consumable um yeah I don't know I was I always think of just a gallon of milk and how it like spoils in like thinking of that concept of like what if what if games spoil or um disappear or you know those types of things so I don't I don't have a great answer for you no but it's uh yeah it's fun to play with and the one thing I'm always trying to help my company with

and just like the general space with is like don't get too locked into like the word collectible like I think that word is almost harmful because it makes you think a very specific way and uh I'm always trying to like think of basically the opposite direction and try to you know build mental models that uh look at things from a different perspective totally I love it thanks for being such a great thought leader Kyle um I'm being cognizant of time here uh what's your time looking like can you go past yeah schedule a time yeah I got plenty of time okay sweet okay let's keep going then because I wanna I wanna unpack uh the other another use case for nfts which is apps as nfts I wanna I

wanna talk about that uh and get get your thoughts on that and dive into that yeah absolutely so again kind of going along this line that uh nfts don't just have to be Collectibles or they don't just have to be jpegs um what we saw early on is that early on in pinata so in 2018 2019 we had a bunch of people that were uploading full-blown applications to pinata and serving them uh through pinata and you know what we knew was if you can upload it to pinata you can attach it to an nft and then ultimately you can be an nft so we've always had in the background this idea that apps could be uploaded uh to us and attached to an nft and uh we're starting to see that uh a lot more now the the

first implementations are like games so people will upload a a full like mini game if you will uh they'll attach it to an nft and then they'll sell it on on whatever Marketplace um whatever Marketplace they want to sell it but we effectively think uh if you combine the idea of app nfts with token gating uh in in the permissioning kind of aspects of token getting that all apps can be nfts in the future and then uh you know instead of going through App Store the app store or Play Store or whatever that's effectively these nft marketplaces become app stores right and you can get access to uh to these apps now

what that's going to look like specifically I'm you know again I can't predict the future but uh you could imagine maybe you get access to the full game maybe you get access to a level right uh maybe there's 10 levels in a game and I only uh I only want to play level three so I'm just gonna buy access to the level instead of like trying to work my way through it or right you know they're they're cool things that you would be able to do but uh maybe going to music uh maybe the the musician wants a very specific environment that their music is being played in and instead of going on Spotify and it's streaming in that direction uh effectively they're serving an app to you and they're managing access through that through

token getting uh to that to that music uh through an application that they built themselves um so you know internally we did a hackathon uh and the theme of it was app nfts and in our business development team ended up building a uh CRM system uh for nfts right so we're trying to apply these things to as many different things as you can imagine um and the again the cool thing about nfts is they can go anywhere and be anything um and so we we definitely don't want to limit how people think about what app nfts can be but uh you know they could be desktop apps they could be mobile

apps that you know again if you can access it through a wallet uh it can it can be a it can be an app too so that's where that's where we start to get really excited but the one thing where we're still unsure about is is the app um attached to one nft and then uh you know somebody owns that app right that's their business um and then people buy access to it and you can see the revenue streams flowing into that singular nft or is it you know there's 10 000 nfts that all hook into one app like what is that construction going to look like yeah we don't know yet uh and we think you know there's going to be a bunch of experimentation around this but that's uh one of those

unknown questions that we're still kind of uh playing around with yeah because for me that gets into this that was going to be my question too is this is where and quite frankly we should almost stop using the word nft because it is a people people's thoughts of it there's an issue with the media and the public thoughts of it but also it's limiting to the technology to be honest because it's just one piece of blockchain technology that we we had a I guess on the podcast recently we were talking about gaming and we were talking about a semi-fungible tokens sfts and ERC 1155 and the importance of that in the gaming

world and so I that kind of translates for me to apps as well because as you said If You're Gonna sell an app as an nft is it really a one of one that you're selling with a limited collection right maybe maybe for certain apps it is because scarcity is important to your business model and that's the manner in which you are looking to create your business but I also think there's I I tokenizing apps makes a lot of sense right that for sure in the CRM example I mean that's a and and Salesforce has announced that they have a whole blockchain Division and that they're looking to develop some form of CRM on

chain which makes just a ton of sense but exactly how it plays out I think like you said it's so difficult to know yeah and you know one of the things we do at pinata is we don't and and we're lucky in this fashion is that we don't have to know exactly what it's going to look like we just right now like generally these are the capabilities you need to be we need to be able to serve an ad right and that's something that we need to be able to do and underneath there you know the the super smart developers out there and and people building in the space are going to figure out the the playbooks and um you know really iterate and find what works and what doesn't so we're just trying to help like people people start

thinking this way and then they can take it and run it and and actually build cool and interesting things beyond beyond the things that I'm thinking of well but the infrastructure is really that's the layer that we need so much focus on right now because the problem is if you don't have the infrastructure layer then you're a startup and you want to build everything yourself you have to build everything okay yeah that's crazy yeah so we're all just kind of like building on top of each other yeah you know eventually we'll get we'll get to the end and and web 3 will be will be mainstream and uh that'll be a lot of fun and what's so cool is when we talk about building the manner in

which we're building is this open source manner you know getting back to web one days which you know you and I would have been very young for but it was you know so we don't necessarily remember but from what I've heard you know there's there is a different feel to web 3 compared to web 2 because of really that view on open source and of building together and this shared economy and that is that hasn't existed for a for a while we've you know we've focused on walled Gardens and protecting IP and that's uh we're flipping the switch which is an exciting way to be a studying place to be building right now

yeah for sure and um I'm stealing this from somebody and I forget who said it but uh effectively what's so great about web3 is you can't Google the answers to it right in web 2 the answers exist somewhere um somebody's probably thought of it somebody's probably already um solved the problem especially kind of um you know on the software development side a lot of things have been solved um and so what web3 is doing is kind of like opening it up again and saying hey uh let's rethink everything and uh let's come up with uh new questions and and new answers and creativity is um is super valuable right now and if you're if you're someone out there

building you can easily kind of influence the direction of the Space by kind of being a uh being a person that is thinking of new and new and Innovative things and and you're not tied down to what the answers were on on Google or you know as you mentioned the walled Gardens or the platforms or anything like that and I think that's that's the most fun again we we've kind of opened up the playing field again I love it yeah you just know that that's such a great line it reminds me of uh um a line I heard the other day which was talking about we all complain about the ux in web 3 so much uh and somebody was the uh the founder of um digidaiku

the nft which has just taken off recently Gabriel Layton is his name and he said that everybody complains about the ux he said that he saw that the ux was bad and he was like that's where I want to be that's the sandbox I want to plan because if the ux is bad and the VC money is Flowing that way and the users are also flowing that way it must be good right there must there's something you must be wanted and desired right so yeah I love that awesome well let's uh let's jump into a speed round but before we do uh I just want to give you a chance is there anything else that you wanted to mention about pinata about submarine uh any

other products you guys are working on that you want to tease out anything else on your guys end that you want to talk about or let us know about um I mean the one thing for us was like we are we are hiring so I'll give up I'll give a hiring plug and you know just go to pinata.cloud um and check out check out the roles and positions um we are a fully remote company um so we'll we'll hire anywhere and we're always looking for people that have different different perspectives on the space even you know if you're probably listening to this you're probably somewhat um informed on the nft space but we hire people that you know don't even have experience in the space because we we need those different perspectives and

um you know one of the things I do is when I hire or when we hire somebody that doesn't have any experience in the space I always try to tell them like hey you know you have fresh eyes coming into this make sure you take notes and be like uh you know this word was too hard or this concept was difficult to understand or like those things are are valuable if we if we do want to fix some of these uh ux problems how do we how do we improve how do we improve that and the way you improve that is is listen to people that haven't been in the space for you know five years and really try to improve it so anybody anybody and everybody is is uh valued uh at pinata and we'd love for them to apply awesome well we'll uh we'll link to that in the

show notes and I'm sure that if you join the pinata team it comes with multiple pinatas uh and yeah probably lots of stickers and lots of merch which uh I'm kind of guessing I got to figure out how to get some pinata merch we'll get you a hat because that would be sweet obviously I don't want one of those hats uh okay speed round to wrap up first question what's an nft you'll never sell uh yeah so it's the first nft I made which uh I I forget the time it was either late 2017 or 2018.

um and it you know it was it was just me playing around with the concept of of nfts um back then and all it was was a simple image uh it's it's my version of the pinata so um I created like a version that kind of looked like me um and it's in like this cyber it's just my Twitter if you go look at my Twitter uh it's that picture I made an nft of it back then um and so yeah that one just has a bunch of sentimental value that obviously I would I would never be able to get rid of otherwise I actually um you know I haven't bought a bunch of nfts other than nfts that I think are very interesting from a technical

standpoint I was always looking at it from you know are they pushing the boundaries of the technology not like will a bunch of other people buy it or anything like that it was more like explore territory like oh this is you know this is cool I I like where this person is innovating cool I love it you're the second person to say that the entities will never sell is they minted themselves so yeah I really I really like that and I think that's something that we're going to see more and more people doing uh as it becomes easier and more fun just to Mint your own nft uh another one of our guests just minted his own photo like a photo that somebody took of him uh and that was his his nft which he then you know used as his Twitter profile so

which gets into the whole digital identity thing but we won't go down that Robin hole right now uh next question where are you learning the most about web3 right now uh yeah so this is where um this is where we have a huge Advantage it's our customers it's our users people building with pinata I I truly believe um that we have the most Innovative customers um in the space um and that's because uh you know we don't mint uh and so we've said minting is going to happen either you're building your own smart contracts or you're using other platforms to do it and so we get to see all the other stuff which is the content

the files like what you know what do they want to do um and so because of that we you know we see people that are building games we see this concept of app nfts that are happening uh and you know we spend all day every day talking to our customers and trying to help them build and create that next iteration in that next generation of nfts um and you know they're the ones that come to us they'll be like hey we read your blog or uh whatever and that sparked an idea and this is how I'm applying it to my life and and what I know um and that's like the most fun um thing that that we have going on I actually you know I don't spend a lot of time

listening to podcasts or um you know reading other Concepts I I really do spend a lot of time just like with our primary source data which is our customers um and trying to understand you know where they're going and what they're doing and when you have you know we now have 240 250 000 of them it's um it's it's just a lot of fun to like see the experimentation happening in front of you and trying to help them out and making them better and they're making us better that's awesome let me ask a question which I didn't ask earlier so when we talk about data one of the most exciting things about blockchain is the access to data that's all on chain you know I just love

cruising around doing analytics and just seeing all the crazy data that's available so is the same true with ipfs is that yeah so it's available yep yep so it's uh because it's a public network so it is it is available and you can go around and um you know look at it and that's how like people like uh find out about um new drops or uh certain nft things you can go explore the ipfs network now usually the way they're doing that is it's going to be from the nft first and then uh you know they have the link to the CID and then they can go explore um other pieces of ipfs now that's not

true with um you know like our submarining right that is private data and people don't have access to that and that truly is private to them um but yeah on the public ipfs network uh anybody can go across and and go find find what's out there cool cool okay next question something you've purchased recently for under 100 that brings you Joy uh yes so I bought a cowboy hat the other day nice and that uh it was under a hundred dollars so it's not like a super nice one but um I'm not like a cowboy but every once in a while I'll put that put that on kind of give me Texas Vibes uh pretend to be

pretend to be a cowboy uh that brings me a lot of Joy I'm like I'm a fairly simple person so like pretty much my computer and my backpack and then like my car is like all I really need to survive um and so anytime I get like new shoes or a new hat and I like it's years goes between getting new things like that uh I'm always like pretty enamored uh with them at the time so yeah cool cowboy hat is there is there a pinata on the cowboy hat no so I I got it down in uh Marfa Texas which is in West oh wow cool middle of nowhere uh it's like this art art Town

um art blocks actually did something down there but um you know a lot of kind of Holly a lot of Hollywood will go to to Marfa Texas it's a very beautiful desert Vibe um and while I was there they suckered me into getting a cowboy hat so it sounds like it was worth it that's awesome yeah okay final question if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it so um there's only like one um there's only one quote that I ever remember but obviously it must be important to me if I if I can remember it uh it's the measure of who you are is

what you do with what you have um and the reason I love it is because regardless of um you know maybe the the benefits or drawbacks that you've had and where you came from you know everybody starts from a different position um the reason I love that saying is like that it takes it into context um and you know somebody can come from way behind and maybe not get as far as as somebody that started way ahead but like you know contextually uh they made it much further in life and and that you know can can help with with happiness um and understanding that um you know it's it's not all about um

how far you made it uh just point blank it's how far did you make it in the context of of who you are and what you have so I really love that one and have had it on my wall or written somewhere since since high school so that's really inspiring thanks for sharing that Kyle for sure awesome man this has been just a great time love chatting love learning a little pinata thanks for sharing and thanks for building infrastructure we need more Builders like you guys in the space uh really appreciate the time and uh I think we're gonna have to get you back for a part two at some point in the future once uh I mean this space moves

so fast well once app nfts and those things are all coming out would love to have you come back on the show Absolutely this is uh this is my favorite podcast I've been on so far so I really appreciate the effort and uh work that you you put into it I know you have to do a lot of research and and it's not it's not always easy so I appreciate uh that you're able to to get all that out of me uh it was a lot of fun to be on thankfully you guys have written a great blog as you said so uh while I can't Google a lot of this stuff that we're talking about the show I can Google pinata in your thoughts yeah so thanks for creating content Kyle have a great day my man thanks again absolutely thanks Jack thank you for

listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one