The Evolution of NFTs

Transcript

hi everyone so this is the we're gonna talk about the evolution of the nfts and we're going to make it as informal as possible so first we're going to start this by asking everyone to just maybe introduce themselves shortly before we get into the conversation um yeah would you like to take um i'm will uh co-founder of syndicate where we set up investing dows and creator of adventure gold which is a derivative for the loot ecosystem um that's an in-game currency for loot um i got into uh ethereum since the pre-sale i'd been doing hackathons um and side projects in the bitcoin ecosystem and i saw how ethereum could solve a lot of that so i took the ten dollars i got for free as

my coinbase signup bonus and tossed it on the pre-sale um if i'd put a hundred bucks in i got about a house but you know heinz at 2020. um and then got into nfts in 2018 back when people thought that blockchain gaming would be really big um i did not bet on the right blockchain games um but i saw a lot of that come to fruition with loot um hi zom hi everyone um i'm santiago i guess uh um it most recently was uh at perify and uh we were very focused on defy but to me um i started getting more interested in nfts for a couple of reasons i think they're they're the trojan horse of crypto they're on boarding so many people you know over the last like 10 years or so it's been like difficult to explain to the average person why they

would want to be or get interested in in crypto but i think nfts are very relatable and and i think it's very exciting to see that so i'm spending a lot of my time investing and also just collecting um at this intersection of like d5 and nfts and gaming i think they all come together really nicely and like really changing our relationship with money and how we think about just you know our experience and using the internet so yeah hi i'm people pleaser i'm a digital artist and stoked to be here cool um yeah so um yeah so i'm lily and i've

been working on the project called crypto manga nfts i've been working the ethereum for a while now and um the first project that i made with few friends called like ready cards so we made the first like hong pao on ethereum and it was really fun like in i think end of 2018 um yeah so let's get um started well um okay so i actually want to kick off by talking a little bit about monograph which was a project like that i would consider like the first ever like um digital collectible based on the blockchain like it was there since i think 2016 um on bitcoin um that was super

interesting but then there was a project after that that um you know one more step into this what we know as it is digital collectible right now which is uh for example rare peeps and this project has it was for the first time introduced a rarity score for digital collectibles but after that then i think most of the progress has been like happening on ethereum ecosystem and one of the quite notable uh ones quite in the recent time is probably about the loot right and um this is i would say one of the you know first time that i've heard um about like composability in a way that is linked to game as well in terms of like you know

the usability of nft uh would you like to maybe talk about this yeah definitely um so i think the genius of loot and what made it successful was that tom hoffman the creator of loot he put it out there and it was intentionally very simple and very stripped down and it was a fundamental rpg building block that any anyone could do anything they wanted with um the thing that was really interesting is that because all of the data was on chain it was fully composable so what do we mean by that so in loot you have weapons you have armor you have uh headwear you have a foot you you have shoes and all of these is available on chain

for other nfts and other smart contracts to access and this is really transformative and this is a step forward in the nft space where on-chain data is not typically done because it meant that other projects could start to leverage loot for the rest of the ecosystem so one example is that there's already a playable loot game that everyone can play right now which is called genesis loot where it took all the loot bags and it essentially scattered key items of loot lore throughout the entire ecosystem so you have to go and you have to track down all these items of loot lower which is only possible because all this data is available on chain so i think that as l2s expand and as storage costs drop

we're going to start to see a lot more on chain nfts and then that allows you to create entire ecosystems just like loot rather than like one-off communities that don't really uh interact with other communities at this point in time yeah and san diego you have been in the like working ethereum for a while right what would you think is kind of like the most notable use case for an nfts or what what what interests you yeah just to build off what will was saying i think uh if you're if you're a project building in web 3 and ethereum um i think nfts are great customer acquisition vehicles i've seen so many d5 projects or just projects in general use nfts as mechanisms to attract or re-engage their

community not only is a great way to obviously you know raise funds in perhaps the most like safe way which is you're not selling anything other than art um and i think it just really reinvigorates the community you know uh you know projects uh from all kinds of stages um or using nfts to you know because when you think about it you're you know i when i invest in a project to me the most important thing is a community and i think really nfts um are you know wrapped together really nicely your people feel they're they're they have more attachment and there's a lot of emotional cachet to that nft uh you know certainly you can have like a big a big ownership and a protocol you can own the token but there's something about nfts it just makes it more

relatable it's very visual it's uh you know sometimes it has you know utility like in the loot ecosystem and so um i you know all kinds of projects can really use nfts as a way to not only like you know build alignment with their community but also like protocol to protocol nfts i've seen uh like you know like it could be pretty interesting cool um and then i also want to ask um emily about the um the from the perspective of an artist right because we also talking about the nft like have composability and then also like in terms of like help fundraising for example and um there was this project um this infinite garden

um yeah maybe if you want to talk about it yeah um so infinite garden is um a documentary project or a documentary about ethereum that's currently being made in fact i think i mean i don't think they're here right well they are here at liz conn today the filming crew um and so essentially what happened was um they approached me to see if we could collaborate and do a crowdfunding for the film using nfts and so i think this is probably one of the first like use cases for it um and i mean it was like largely successful we raised over a thousand e within 48 hours which essentially just

funded the entire film just um basically from selling my nfts which are also like the first movie poster nfts that like i made um and essentially how it works is like with different like tiers you know so based on like the top contributor would be the co-ex that would be the executive producer and then the second one would be co-executive producer and then everybody else who like contributes a minimum of one etherium will get just um an nft as a reward and also a token to sort of show that you supported the film um so we're seeing and obviously after this happened we saw way more use cases of this and other films like adopting the same way to crowdfund their

projects using you know platforms like mirror and so yeah this is just like from an artist's perspective i think it's great that i could provide some value to uh cryptocurrency space as a whole um in a way that i didn't think was previously possible yeah totally i think that like in the past months i think in the past one year i have seen like so many like shifts in approaches new use cases and it's just so amazing because it's getting better every time what do you guys think is going to be kind of the next step going from here so i have a tiny opinion here that i think it's gonna be the

mixture of like nft and game and kind of defy and i have this theory that i think um because people are now like knowing what nft is you know and they're more like developer working like like building like smart contracts so in a way we may be able to kind of onboard new group of people who's like interested in playing games interested in arts and you know maybe also have the like kind of interest also in d5 as well instead of like coming here to invest in instead of like traditional finance what do you guys like think about um sure uh i guess i'll start um i i think uh it's super interesting so like

board apes for instance 50 of their buyers never touched crypto before um it's stuck in the team and you know it's there's a couple interesting things with board h1 obviously new users that had no interest in crypto officers do and they may not even realize that they're they're using crypto in the same way you would explain bitcoin or ethereum but but you know they have to get initiated they have to set up their own wallet and think about buying this thing called eth and so again it's sort of like really good technology gets adopted because it's it just provides a really good experience and people come here without maybe realizing all the intricacies of crypto and all the nerdy tech things that we love to talk about uh nft is very relatable and the other thing is like they kind of inverted the go to

market strategy which is they've created this incredible community um and then they've done all these partnerships and the roadmap is just it wasn't just an nft drop which i think if you initially you just say they're just selling like these these apes and whatever i didn't think much of it and then their roadmap has just expanded so much and they've had so many different protocols approach them and do collaborations but both in in the crypto sphere and outside as well they have meetups all over the world um a lot of artists are getting interested in that and so again i mean i think um you know the nice thing about nfts is that they're they're kind of your digital identity in many ways and so that's very relatable to everyone and and and i think more more people are going to latch onto this idea that we're spending

more time in digital world and nfts are how you dress up your identity right i don't think of myself as i guess more and more i've just started to uh look at my punk as my identity and i'm i'm never going to sell it because it's just just tied to me you know and so anyways yeah and related to that i think that nfts right now they're mostly bought and because they're mostly bought you see a lot of criticism of the space of well what does ownership really mean if you're buying an nft and it's an image that anyone can access i think that's very much a take that like is uh not looking at the future because the future of nfts that i think is really interesting is related to identity is on-chain track record where nfts are things that you receive for actions you

do and they become mementos they become milestones they become your credibility in your resume um and that's where i think the criticism of nfts that exists right now about ownership will go away because like yeah sure you can photoshop your name on a diploma but that doesn't mean that you like actually graduated from the school your photoshop in your diploma of and when nfps become on-chain reputation um i think that that is the future that where ownership starts to really click because ownership of an image kind of clicks it's really interesting when like i believe boarded give away commercial rights for the nft it's like that's super fascinating and we're already starting to see some ideas of ownership in terms of ip but as soon as we see ownership in terms

of verifiable track record i think that that will accelerate the space tremendously yeah i think it's really interesting what you mentioned about like nft as identity solution right as i think for most people like who's not crypto native actually entering ethereum or like understanding the web tree through nft is much less intimidating it's like you're starting with fun and like maybe you know it's like it's not right or wrong right but when you're entering it through device like it's like either you lose money or you win money and i think this is a very different mindset that it brings to people who like joining this um yeah yeah that gets to another thing about the nft space that i think is uh

going to shift over time which is that currently ever since bitcoin there's the mentality that scarcity is what gives things value um and san diego i can tell you strong thoughts on that um i'd love to hear them yeah and scarcity is what gives things value and that things that are scarce because there's few of them and lots of people want them the price will go up over time and i think that the nft community right now has mostly relied on scarcity i think as they shift to an abundance mindset through things like unchained reputation and unchain track records where what you've done naturally inflates nfts but inflates it in a way that shows what you shows shows what you've accomplished i think that will start to move away from the scarcity mindset and

towards more of an abundance mindset yeah yeah i totally agree with that i mean i think it's it's utility drives value not not scarcity and and i think you we're very early in the nfc journey but i think i'm very excited to see you know how these different nft communities will collaborate with each other how the metaverse will evolve you know loot is a fascinating example but how is going to loot going to interact with a game like axi and how are you going to stitch together these virtual worlds um is is i think sort of like the design space for that is vast but i think we're more and more over time we're gonna have to think about how do we you know bring more utility to all these people that are are here they're interested um and it's not it doesn't stop with

collecting that's sort of just the first entry point um and so yeah um maybe talking about the artist's perspective a little bit more because i think like artists i'm not calling myself an artist i'm a designer but like you know these creative people also we are like a big part of the nft kind of movement right what do you think we can do more to like um on board like um artist or illustrator who's currently not like super into crypto yet into like more talents into this industry what do you think um well i mean i think speaking for myself i kind of got into the space because i you know i feel like the world before

web 3 and crypto especially for creatives and creators is a very saturated market already there's not that many job opportunities and it's very very competitive so honestly the biggest drawing point for to motivate creatives to even enter crypto and web 3 is just that there's so many more opportunities to advance your career and make money in a way that's not as easily accessible in a pre-web3 world just because it's already so saturated so yeah i mean i think that alone is a huge like drawing point especially for myself that was pretty much the case yeah i mean from a perspective of like

the curator i also kind of think because i used to work for advertising agency before and at that time i feel like someone like us would just kind of like you know it's actually very important right because like the creative like department is one of the important department but the thing is we are not the main like person on the other hand we actually doing the artwork you know but then somehow the industry flipped in a way that no you know we actually didn't come before but then somehow nft is just i think the business model is just so straightforward that you go straight to someone who make this piece like not through the layer of i know like five departments you know and then like actually we we make this work

but we kind of lost in the conversation like who actually make this and i think it's great yeah i like i'm not an artist i i could barely draw i guess but um i think it's really fascinating that anyone can be discovered and i think it's a discoverability piece that has been again gatekeepers right you have to be in a gallery and i mean it's so hard probably to get like access to these people and they extract a lot of value from you and it's really fascinating to see artists um connect directly with their communities and you know a lot of people are like well why would like this random piece of art have so much value and i think it's really kind of in your face of how uh you know a lot of what we think about value is being like put put

to test um you know it's not just a pretty picture you know you might not like board apes some people love them other people hate them but the reality is it has a very deep community and and the memetic culture of that is strong and so this is fascinating to see these um you know what we think of value and the perception of value is is is put the put the test i think yeah and relates that value i mean i think that composability is one thing that makes nfts very interesting portability is another um the fact that if you don't uh want to use a specific marketplace or a specific wallet you can use literally any of a half a dozen options and a lot of the web to your world was about capturing as much

as much proprietary data as you could and keeping it all within one platform whereas nfts are fundamentally interoperable from the start which i think also explains some of the values we've seen in the space like uh is that something where when you know that it's portable you know you're not dependent on one provider or one platform being successful as long as the whole nft space is successful you don't need to bet on instagram being successful or can just being successful or etsy being successful you can be across every marketplace so i think for for as speaking as a builder um like not being stuck in a platform and not being dependent on a single

ecosystem is incredibly valuable because it means that i'm not beholden to that ecosystem's choices i'm able to move around to any of the ones that's the most builder friendly or artist-friendly which is fantastic yeah i mean just one thing like loot for instance was fascinating because it wasn't like it was just us words right and then you have and it really kind of placed a lot of the emphasis and focus on composability and on the data and that allows you as sort of like inverting on on how you can build on top of nfts and so i think it was just sort of shattered a lot of notions of what nfts are and can be and it just opened up a whole new kind of design space for

what nfts can can be um what about what do you guys think about the aspect of the dow because obviously i think d5 dial and nft dial they're like quite different and even the nft dials there are many different types for example there are like collector dials right like please set out as a collector now i would say or curator now but there's also for example me beats down which is like also a collector now yes but like less of a curator is like we in it together in the same community so it's kind of have a different goal what do you like think about yeah i mean hello is it working

hello oh it works now um i mean i think i think a lot in a lot of ways dows are also you know a way for people it's it's like online clubs right like it's for people to find like meaning purpose belonging um you know people are familiar with this even like blizzard games or you know world of warcraft there's like different like clans and stuff like you know you can almost think of dowses this way except that obviously with blockchain now there's a way to sort of either monetize that or also make decisions like you know using governance tokens and in like a more fair way but none of these are concepts that people

are not familiar with um and so yeah like i think you know every dow which is different is just a different subset or club or you know social group that people are trying to like fit into because humans are social creatures yeah and i think that um yeah uh at sundicate we set up tons of daos and the thing that's really interesting is that if you look at the ethereum white paper from 2013 they define two types of dows they define decentralized autonomous corporations which produce dividends and are profit-seeking entities and you vote with your number of shares and they define decentralized autonomous communities which are membership groups where every member has an equal vote and

the funny part is i think that like nfts are the decentralized autonomous communities envisioned in the original ethereum white paper where it is membership in a community it is voting based on that membership and nfts are actually quite true to the original vision from 2013 um that was that was defined there um it's just that uh the concepts have evolved so much that the things that we call daos are not really decentralized or autonomous anymore um but they're like larger communities and the things we call nfts are in many ways the decentralized autonomous communities outlined in the original white paper yeah actually what i want to see is um some sort of like a new like game

experience that using like being dow being part of the dow as part of the game like currently there is a model like token gated right so basically like friends with benefits and so on which is obviously you use nft but but you know maybe maybe it could be part of the game that you like being in a game you are automatically being part of the dow and then somehow you use nft as a representation of like identities and and maybe some items you gain from the games it could be interesting i mean i have i haven't seen anyone doing this maybe already exist yeah i mean oh yeah ultimately i mean i think like what uh i hate to say but nfts are like cookies of web 2 because you know it had there's so much richness

so like if you're here today i put up a qr code so you scan this you can get an nft because you're in my talk and all of a sudden i know that you're here so at any point going forward or i could just you know airdrop all of you over time certain things because hey you're here right and it's kind of an empty room so um so there's value there um and and so i think over time as well as saying like you know you you start collecting these things and it just creates a profile for who you are and again you know that nft gets you access to other different things and so ultimately you know we're early right you know um and and uh one of the other things that will is saying which is great which is you know earning nfts not just buying

them i think will become more and more of a trend um especially as it relates to dows and you know giving finding the right people in this metaverse anyone can go out and buy an nft but earning it i think is where the real value will become over time as you think about your digital identity yeah so we're going to wrap this up now if anyone has anything that you would like to mention before we closing this panel please feel free yeah i think that um over time like nfts and taos will begin to blur they're really getting the same things which is how do you build strong communities and we start to think of

honestly the original definitions from the ethereum white paper of protocol treasuries our decentralized autonomous corporations and nfts are decentralized autonomous communities i think that we actually like they are they are hitting on the same thing and just because one happens to be an erc20 and one happens to be an erc721 in many cases is is not the dividing line um and a lot of people think it is but i think that the line is far more blurry between nfts and diaz than people think 100 on that cool so thank you everyone for joining us and thank you all of us being here thank you