From the White House to the metaverse

Transcript

GM GM welcome to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm Jaybird and I believe that blockchain is going to change the world that's why I'm carving a path for doers to competently build and invest in web 3. today on the show we've got Dan shmirin the founder and president of metaversal a 50 million dollar venture-backed web3 native company that is incubating producing and curating the next generation of cultural while unlocking the vast potential of blockchain the metaverse web 3 the whole

thing to date they've invested in 15 essential web 3 businesses and acquired a collection of over 2 000 nfts and Dan's going to tell us at the end what the one NFP is that he'll never sell now Dan has got an incredible range of experience to bring to this conversation started off his career working at the White House the U.S treasury spent time in the state department and was part of the economic meltdown in 2008 when he spearheaded the unprecedented 30 billion dollar initiative that was developed in response to that economic crisis he's also spent time at a leading Fine Art

and collectible warehousing storage if you're in web 3 you could probably think about the application for Fine Art storage and blockchain verification and display of your items and he also spent some time at a more traditional mutual fund understanding the groundworks of investing and investing billions of dollars in a value-oriented investment firm so Dan's got this incredible experience and today we're going to talk about so many different things we're going to start with Dan's experience and what led him to web3 and the police he has in web 3 we're gonna talk about Dan's Brother who is the web 3 skeptic and what Dan is doing to onboard Dan's

Brother and also what he's doing to onboard more people to web 3 across the space we're going to talk about data and really Dan's belief around ownership and control of data what web3 enables and I think a lot of us know that already so we touch on that but then we jump even further into where does this go when our data is on chain what will be private what will be public will we be able to opt in will we opt out what is going to be a world for brands that can interact with us when they can see so much more of our data on chain how is that going to lead to a better user experience and an experience where we actually have

control unlike now where we don't have control over our data it's just owned by a couple major web 2 tech companies and we're also going to talk about a few projects that Dan is really excited about that is invested in in the past few months one around a proof of achievement protocol that they're building and another around Bitcoin ordinals and a project there so buckle up we've got a great show for you today thanks so much for for joining us it's going to be a blast before we jump in we're just going to take a minute to hear from our sponsors the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the

epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables

self sovereignty for yourself photograph and interoperability across the internet at Webster Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today what if I told you that industry Pioneers from Flagship web 3 Brands such as consensus polygon binance Unstoppable domains Ledger and uniswap will all meet up in one place this summer you don't want to miss this I'm talking about the Epic web 3 conference taking place in beautiful Lisbon on the 9th of June with over 20 curated talks speed consultations with web3 experts

networking sessions with investors and even the opportunity to raise funds this conference has it all and you'll get the tools you need to succeed in this industry plus we at Webster Academy will attend it hosts a community Meetup with you in the other smart Community before the main event so come along meet us Network and start building alongside leading web 3 innovators we can't wait to meet you remember Lisbon Portugal 9th of June we've got a 15 discount for you but ticket prices go up every few days so get your tickets today by using the link in the show notes and to of the promo code web3 Academy 15 to secure your spot or if you become a pro member you can get an even bigger discount so

GoPro today and we'll see you in Lisbon Portugal the 9th of June at the Epic web 3 conference Dan what's up welcome to the show so excited to have you here what's up Jay thanks for having me I've been a fan of metaversal for a while now subscribe to the newsletter listen to the goats and metaverse podcast with your business partner but before we jump into metaversal and web3 I want to hit pause and go back to the beginning of Dan Sherman's career because you've had quite an interesting career which I think really brought you to this point in web 3 and I want to kind of retrace the steps so we can understand what you've seen along the way and what

lessons you've learned that has led you to really believe in blockchain and the ownership and control of data that web3 allows so let's start back in 2008 or maybe you want to go further back than that when you're working at the U.S treasury and the economic collapse happens what was that like being part of that and what lessons did you take from that yeah so chapter one was me back in the swamp uh spent eight years in Washington and I bounced around between the treasury as you say the state department and the White House those were three areas that were of keen interest to me and all of my roles had to do with the intersection of economic policy and national security policy so I

was very much exposed to issues like counterterrorism Finance in 2004 and five as we were hot on the trail of the bad guys and then targeted sanctions programs as we were concerned about Rogue Estates and by 2008 I ended up inside the treasury building for what I thought would be a nice sleepy end to my Washington experience events and little did I know I was stepping into this complete Firestorm and I ended up spending just shy of three years working on a handful of the rescue programs including this public-private investment program every good government rescue program needs an acronym so the one we worked on was called ppip focused on

Legacy Securities and that was really the toxic assets the commercial and residential mortgage-backed security markets that had completely Frozen those were the assets that were clogging bank balance sheets that was what tarp was designed to do and the Paulson team actually didn't have enough time to implement those components of the rescue program and so they went with direct capital injections to Major financial institutions but when the Geithner team came in they wanted to address the fundamental issues since things had started to stabilize and I got to work on that and so the takeaway from that first chapter was very straightforward the system we had and the system we have

is far from perfect there are plenty of fault lines built into the formal Financial system and if 2008 wasn't concerning enough we have that resurfacing in 2023 because all of a sudden a spotlight is shining on the very banks that you and I do business with this idea around uninsured deposits what do you mean my deposits may not be safe I'm aware that there was a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar limit and for most people that is plenty of Headroom but not for small businesses small businesses aren't keeping the excess cash above 250 000 that they

require to operate under the counter and dishing it out as they need they keep plenty of money in these institutions and often they rely on their local or Regional Banks not just the Big Money Center guys not just JPM and City Wells and others so those were some of the takeaways and part of what had inspired me to at least have an open mind to want Alternatives might exist and the Alternatives should ease some of the pain points when we look at Financial transactions and you've also spent time at uovo I believe that's how you pronounce

which is quite different you've really jumped around here Dan it's amazing your background they're a leading Fine Art institution storage of Collectibles so you kind of got into the collectible Art Space as well well and then you also served as a director of investment at a leading fund a capital investment fund so so second chapter yeah second chapter my career was working at a more traditional investment firm it was really a mutual fund manager so think about your retirement accounts we were a value-oriented manager so if you think about style boxes people want to invest in growth or people prefer value those that are Buffett acolytes and like Uncle

Warren and Charlie uh style of investing slow and steady that was a big part of the thesis behind the investment firm that I worked for and we had a very concentrated portfolio usually no more than 15 names so we really got a chance to know those businesses upside down and as well as one could behind management I really enjoyed that process I love the research and became really interested in operating businesses and so that's what inspired me after eight years of of doing that to explore opportunities where I could really roll up my sleeves get under the hood of Niche businesses

and wovo is one such example and there are a number that are in that category but they're not well known and I say that because most people don't think about where all the Fine Art fashion and collectibles reside they may assume it's in museums they may assume it's in galleries or even in people's homes religious institutions colleges universities all these categories have ownership over enormous amounts of these cultural treasures and yet 94 percent of them are out of sight 94 percent of them are actually insecure storage effectively Behind Bars

so I found that fascinating I was asked to come and help lead this particular business and find ways to grow what was a new york-based operation into a national player and there were really two schools of thought one is how do you physically grow this business and that was largely self-explanatory but the more compelling part from my vantage point was around digital activation how do I take Jay's collection of incredible sculptures over Incredible Oil works and begin to unleash the stories that are embedded in those treasures and the idea around digital

activation to me was Jay is paying an enormous expense every year I called it a negative yield by virtue of maintaining that incredible collection this is true for major museums as well just keeping their items in storage there's Insurance expense conservation expense certainly Logistics and transport if they end up participating in shows and then there's the storage expense itself and those are expenses that they have to foot the bill for rain or shine those institutions have mandates a mission to educate to inspire to grow awareness and they're trying to fulfill that mission usually by showing less

than 10 percent of their outstanding collection really but what happens on my 42nd day in the seat at wovo when pandemic is declared those museums close their doors those galleries are no longer open you are displaying zero percent of your collection on the 43rd day and so that idea around digital activation was front and center and that is what was causing me to call some of my friends at coinfund and ask them to ideate with me and my initial thought bubble was simply is there a mechanism for me to alleviate some of the costs that J in my

hypothetical is bearing as the owner of these tremendous Collections and the same is true for museums cultural institutions how do you alleviate part of that burden that would be a huge win if they could maintain ownership continue to have these incredible pieces in their collections but not be subject to the annual expense which can certainly add up Insurance never goes down I've never seen insurance bill down they only go in One Direction so that's why buffer loves it so much so that was sort of the formative I've taken you through with the different chapters of what led me to put those pieces together as it

pertains to web 3 and nfts the same crew at coin fund that I called in late 19 and early 20 were some of the some of those Partners were the ones that had introduced me in Earnest to crypto in 2015 2016. so inevitably when you're talking about a new ecosystem I prefer to call people I know and trust and in this case these are some folks that I went to college with so I've known them for a very long time and I know that the information that they're going to share is legit I don't have to worry about wading through a lot of the nonsense I do a lot of nonsense in this space unfortunately as there isn't any new tech space there's when there's opportunity there's going to be

scammers but won't go down that that rabbit hole right now so take us to the next chapter which is metaversal was there a light bulb moment when you were like yeah this is what I want to spend the next chapter of my career doing or was it just all these friends too many smart people and you were like I Gotta Get on Board and get on this ship before it's too late it's definitely the former you heard me say that I was really interested in operating companies and I was particularly interested in the structure of holding companies akin to a Berkshire akin to a Leucadia National or even a small business in Florida called Hico which is not so small anymore they all created structures which give them

enormous flexibility in our space in the web 3 space dcg is a representative example what Barry silbert created in a flexible holding company that has media assets that has investment Assets in the form of grayscale and at one point Genesis and then a portfolio of other discretionary Investments and along the way they're looking to solve tangible problems in the ecosystem and so that was greatly appealing to me what started out as my interest in solving for this digital activation question quickly expanded to there's going to be an enormous amount of web 3 native intellectual property that's

developed in the years ahead here I was sitting in a warehouse with all of the web one intellectual property or web zero web zero yeah depending on how far back that sculpture goes and it arises great interest in people because irrespective of your specific area of focus there's something for everyone I often say to my kids everyone's a collector I used to collect baseball cards and Matchbox cars my brother had little action figures he preferred Jets memorabilia because he's a lifelong suffering Jets fan so all of us have these particular interests

collecting is a parcel of what we do yet our ability to reach others who share those similar interests historically has been challenging yes you can go to this stamp fair and the baseball card trading Expo you're not really reaching large swaths of humanity you're reaching people that are in Geographic proximity in studying what was happening in this ecosystem and having dabbled with some of the blockchain technology in the Years prior to 2020 eventually the light bulb went off that what we were talking about specific to Fine Art fashion and collectibles was really just the tip of the iceberg that

this was going to be an entree to an enormous unlocking the tokenization of all illiquid assets bringing things that we encounter in the physical world real estate automobiles art and collectibles you name it and finding ways for that to be tokenized in many respects becomes the great equalizer a great force for democratization you think about KKR tokenizing their health care fund which they recently announced private Equity has historically been the province of the already wealthy the average Joe on Main Street can access it usually doesn't know a ton about it

and yet doesn't benefit from the long-term attractive returns that the Yale endowment and many other institutions pensions retirement plans and high net worth individuals have enjoyed tokenization is not only going to allow for greater liquidity in those types of vehicles but it also opens a door for greater access so those are all things that were front and center for me and again partly inspired by The Experience going back to my days in Washington how do you reduce frictional costs and how do you begin to level the playing field because this was a time you may recall when the big Banks were

culpable for a lot of misdeeds a lot of wrongdoing and some of it was macroeconomic so it was a facet of the environment they were operating in and some of it was just unfortunate wrongdoing where you had you know rejections from opening accounts to getting access to home mortgage loans so on and so forth right that that history has all been detailed but again it came back to this idea that there may be a better way even if it's not a 100 solution for those that don't have the same types of access that you may have or that I may have right we often take for granted

we go down to our mailbox and it's filled with Flyers filled with credit card offers that is not the rule that is the exception at least in America most Americans aren't getting those offers they don't have the credit score and credit score which has been such a driver such a determinant of your access to the formal Financial system hasn't really been updated terms of its metrics in a long long time there are other factors which we all now are aware of which should be brought to the table and there are some companies which are now taking a more expansive approach to

Jay's credit worthiness but we know that by and large they look at that one number and if it's below a certain threshold you're not getting that car today you mentioned so many use cases for blockchain and web3 there I just want to highlight the Collectibles one for a second because I think that collectibles is easy for people to understand in physical items but difficult for people to understand in digital items because we have this copy paste world with digital items up until now have been so easy to replicate and well what do you mean you own that I can just screenshot it or copy paste and it's mine too who

cares right I'm curious you use your brother a lot as an example of a normie and your brother as you said collects he I think you say he collects baseball cards or something like that is that a use case you can explain to him does he can he wrap his head around digital Collectibles yet it's still a struggle right we just had dinner last week but I'll give you an example that I use with him and it dates back to the time I spent in the art warehouse storage business so what I found very surprising is that some of the wealthiest people in the country that own some of these incredible masterpieces don't necessarily display them in any of their homes they display replicas and they are

high quality replicas now this isn't Universal but I saw enough examples of this to resonate and you'd say well why is that if Jay just bought a 50 million dollar Basquiat or a hundred and fifty million dollar Basquiat what do you mean he's not going to put that on the wall I mean he needs to enjoy that piece that's why he bought it right well maybe maybe not okay he may have bought it for investment purposes in which case a lot of this Art stays in Secure Storage but he may want to enjoy it personally and he would love to have it in his apartment in New York there's just one problem Grandma upstairs has a leaky bathtub and Jay's not willing to risk it because

he's had a flood before so let's think about that tangible use case Jay owns this incredible work he wants to enjoy it there's only one of them and when we go to his house for dinner because he's so generously invites us we look at that art on the wall and say what an amazing buy I read all about it at the Sotheby's auction congrats to you not for one second would we think that that piece on the wall could be a replica I know Jay owns it but he is showing us a fake he is showing us the replica and in my house I may have a poster a less high quality replica of the same work because I'm Jay's friend I

loved it I was with him at the auction and this is my way of remembering and celebrating that moment and when I see the work even if it's on my wall it still brings me pleasure still brings me a smile and some happiness there's nothing wrong with that so the question I posed to my brother is why is it okay for us to have posters of Andy warhol's Marilyn all over the place that is in essence the right click save for the real Maryland work no one says I can't have a poster the Warhol Foundation sells the posters they're encouraging it because it's part of

getting Andy's work out to more and more people and they've been incredibly effective in doing that so it comes down to property ownership in the physical context for which our cohort knows so well that's where we have operated physical ownership is sacrosanct given how much time we spend crossing the t's dotting the eyes if we go to buy a piece of property it's not a one-page document it's usually a binder you go to lease or purchase a car I've never seen a one-pager when I walk out of the dealership these days they give you a thumb drive and it's got 20 different documents including lemon laws

that you need to be aware of so we take great pains to Define our physical ownership because there is scarcity and we always assumed that in the digital Arena because there's digital abundance there can be no such thing as digital scarcity that now has changed there is an opportunity to have unique digital ownership over all sorts of goods and not just Collectibles even though that's what we're talking about you get me excited in so many ways Dan so appreciate your energy while we're talking about ownership I want to steer into ownership of data because data is

one of the biggest parts of the web now is that we have we have a ton of big companies we actually have a few very big companies that have easy access to our most sensitive data they know exactly what we do where we go what we buy where we search and they have a Persona built on us they've built an entire identity of us and then they carefully use it to monetize and to sell us things and I think we're all aware of that world I hope we're all aware of that use is a nice verb okay exposure would be a better there you go there you go so what does web3 do differently with ownership and control of data and not just what

does it do because we talk about that we've talked about on the podcast I'm curious what does that look like in the future like push us into the future I don't know if there's any projects you're involved with that are looking at this where do we go with data assuming we all get on chain one day what does that look like so you know you bring up an amazing point you say that most people are aware I would challenge you and say that if they are aware they're not really caring yet you know most Americans are agnostic right this is a grand bargain which we have clicked into winningly or unwittingly I get free search

Google gets everything about me they give me free Gmail they can essentially see all the emails I get a Google Drive account my life's documents my Google photos all of those items again we go back to the physical ownership context I used to physically own those things on a floppy disk I used to take it around with me put in my pocket guard it we keep it in a safe time progressed we had external hard drives same ideas floppy a little bit more reliable and then you move to the cloud and somewhere along the way we say well

this is just so easy I mean I can access it from anywhere I don't have to carry this orange external hard drive around with me that's clunky and yet does Jay really have ownership over his prized data and by price I mean your financial documents your personal email documents medical or communication of any manner of its personal and private to you that if you've given the option hey I would like this on the front page of the Washington Post most of us would say hell no right that's not appropriate this belongs to me and yet it doesn't really belong to us we are renters to den so long as I pay Google a monthly

fee I can continue to access their service and Grant that I'm paying them because I use more of the gigabytes if you're a very light user maybe you qualify for free service but increasingly they have created tiers that push us into a fee based Arrangement and that's true with Amazon too the beauty of Amazon it's not just that I get something for free and they get the data these companies are so smart that they actually get us to pay them to take all our data I just told you I'm paying Google so are many others we pay Amazon to be Prime members and in return they have given us the ease

of delivery and ordering online which has been an incredible Innovation and yet all of that purchasing data all of the browsing data all of that machine learning that's built into Amazon's recommendation engines hey Dan if you like these types of swimming shorts you may like this other type of swimming gear okay we as consumers in theory benefit because they're making our lives easier easier and that's the grand bargain to this point but Jay hasn't had an opportunity to actually own or control any of his own data that's now changing for the first

time because of blockchain this is the promise embedded in web 3 is that we can take back some of that control we can decide which aspects of your private data you are willing to share and if you do for what type of cost what type of benefit there's other data you may never be willing to share and you'd like to keep that squirreled away out of sight and out of mind we can dive down into this but that to me is the big unlock around digital ownership and the idea of control in fact you mentioned this very notion of control our team is working on an exciting project right now based around Bitcoin ordinals and I won't go

down the rabbit hole because that can be an episode unto itself other than to say it is not only Innovative but it's playing directly on this notion of who has control and why has it always been that control is subsumed by the biggest entities in society at the expense of the Lola guy hmm it's been very hard to challenge that equation until recently I've got to ask so let's go down the road hold for a second here do you think Bitcoin is going to become a smart contract blockchain and do you see that as a future or is this just a moment in time part of that outcome is going to be determined by

the Bitcoin Community yeah of which there are strong opposing views today right you had a long-standing group of Bitcoin Maxes who see it as a store of value and aren't interested in seeing it in something beyond that and they're entitled to that view but you also have continuous innovation which is part of what we love about this space to the point where some developers were able to figure out a methodology for breaking down these SATs satoshi's component parts I should say in layman's term that underlie an individual

Bitcoin token and in which we can now inscribe certain things including art which is what our team is working on in a unique and Innovative way we still believe I still certainly believe that the ecosystem the ethereum ecosystem is going to be the dominant smart contract force and I say that based in part by the scale of adoption by Major institutions right we can't be confused by the double speak this is another point I often raise with my brother on the one hand you have Jamie dimon out there saying that

blockchain and all things associated with this ecosystem must be evil they are in the embodiment of evil and yet JP Morgan has an enormous blockchain team and has been one of the leaders in adopting blockchain tools for their own business and that of so many of their Partners so there's a little bit of a disconnect back and it could be because there's Nuance in what leaders say and what the mainstream media picks up same thing with Larry Fink at BlackRock for the longest time saying crypto is for pirates it's like Pirates bounty and yet in his recent letter to investors he's heralding the opportunity

that blockchain yields for Securities markets and so many financial instruments which will now be more accessible with less frictional cost yeah he's right they're both right in what they're doing what their companies are doing may be less right about what they say or how they say it we recorded a episode a few weeks ago where we talked about will Bitcoin become a smart contract blockchain and what does that do to ethereum and exactly what you said ethereum's got a seven year Head Start they've got a massive network advantage of all of the apps and layer twos and even their threes that are being built on top of it

it would take Bitcoin a long time to catch up not to mention the energy consumption of Bitcoin versus proof of stake on ethereum now where there's certain countries that wouldn't even be able to adopt Bitcoin if it was a smart contract platform you go back and listen to that show if you haven't already if you want to dive down the should Bitcoin go smart contract path coming back to data and ownership I'm going to tee you up with a few different questions you don't have to pick them all take which one you want you mentioned monetization of data I think that's very interesting will we be able to sell our data what does that look like have you actually seen any projects doing that we had Brave browser on that's probably the only example I can think of so far but

maybe you know of some others that's one micro personalization I've heard you talk about this on some other podcasts you've been on I think that's fascinating when we all have ownership and control of our data but we allow access to it to Brands and we bring our own wallet I love that term bring your own wallet that's what we'll do in the future what is micro personalization gonna look like you know when you check into a hotel or Jump On It American Airlines flight what does that look like or third Point sorry for throwing this all at once Dan General consumer engagement how does Consumer engagement change and maybe this ties into micro personalization to be honest when we have all of our data

on chain again don't have to do them all so let's Let The Tackle them maybe in reverse order so what's the big conundrum for most brands that are out there the conundrum isn't just gaining attention it's actually retention I can figure out various ways to get in front of Jay how do I get him to stay how do I get him to be loyal to my brand we were just down in Austin Texas around consensus one of the themes we heard from Big Brands Anheuser-Busch on down is that they need help in three areas they want to improve retention which I

just mentioned they want to decrease customer acquisition costs and they want to increase customer lifetime value if you can help them with those three things they will listen and they will adopt it whip 3 has a unique opportunity in those three areas because what's the marginal acquisition cost for the next person via the web it's very very low very very low particularly if it's built around communities that Jay becomes an ambassador he becomes an evangelist for Dan's brand and he's out there scooping up his friends he's wearing the merch you're wearing the moon Birds merch right now

you're an ambassador for moonblers whether you know it or not that has really interesting implications around how Brands start to interact with those individuals it reminds me of years ago on college campus a foreign auto manufacturer tapped my brother to be a campus Ambassador and what that meant is that they gave him one of their little mini sedans and he got to drive it around school show it off to friends all of which was working perfectly until a car collided with him in West Philadelphia in their eighth or ninth week and the project came to an abrupt end for my part I remember walking down the main drag of college campus for a

company called big words this is at a time before Amazon had really established itself in big words was selling textbooks online it was an e-commerce solution for textbooks because if you went to the campus bookstore each textbook was 150 200 why is that yes it's hard bound why can't it be forty dollars and so after you use it for one semester you have no need for that chemistry book again big words would allow for you to basically recycle those books get a portion of your proceeds back sell it to the next person so it's environmentally friendly and lowering cost and they had these one-piece jumpsuits that I used to wear so I was an ambassador an evangelist for it and I got benefits from it so you

take that same mental model and fast forward to today how do you become an ambassador for particular how do you help Brands Target you and really precise ways that you find beneficial not onerous you're opting in today we don't opt in we always have to opt out right so I like to turn things on their head and invert rather than having to opt out how about you have me opt-in well the reason for that is typically user adoption user engagement is very low so they rather say hey Jay we'll give it to you you tell us if you don't want it but many times that actually turns off the customer I think that one of the key ways to

actually improve retention is you demonstrate real value beyond that initial sale and Beyond the point of sale because you speak to areas of Jay's interest one example United Airlines is one of the biggest Employers in the world they're not alone but they're unique in that they have a footprint in over 70 countries meaning they have employees in so many it's very rare right it's very rare to find that type of footprint Global airlines are special in that case for obvious reasons but what I find interesting is that if you think about the romantic era of air

travel think back to Pan Am black and white photos people wearing suits and ties drinking champagne it was a real luxury and where we have devolved today where you see scenes of chaos on board as people are fighting and getting dragged off what happened here you had costs that came down but you also had an experience that went from aspirational and high-end to something considerably less we don't have the same level of trust in those providers I give you the United Airlines example because they have enormous reach why is it that United's value proposition is to take J from point A to

point B that's it you don't talk to me about United Airlines but when you're going from Newark to Canada and yet they have massive relationships with credit card providers sports teams who they carry Hotel brands for which their employees stay all over the globe so many city-specific arrangements and venues not just in the transportation space isn't there an opportunity for United to actually be an experienced provider not just an air travel provider they've looked at it through a very narrow lens we need to do this part well let's get Jay from A to B and they have over time started to provide some

ancillary benefits through their loyalty programs right and those have been hugely successful American Express has been a leader in it Airlines have been huge players in it they are moving quarterly earnings that's how powerful these loyalty programs are and more recently we're hearing about programs like Starbucks which has over 30 million loyalty members I'm not a coffee drinker so it's less applicable to me but for those that are loyal to Starbucks they swear by the Starbucks app and it's only about 10 years old okay incredible adoption and the more pertinent point is that Starbucks has enjoyed enormous

free floats come back to Uncle Warren because J prepays on that Starbucks app he loads it up with twenty dollars at a time or fifty dollars at a time so that when he orders his Frappuccino he can seamlessly pay one click through the app it's produced it's ready it's got his name on it waiting for him at checkout when he walks into that location and one back 1.8 billion in cash they have in their app number through their app that's a pretty big number which they sit on that's prepayment the portion of which is used and a portion of which just like gift cards and other rewards cards goes unused it ends up being free money so that's been an enormous Boon to

Starbucks they have maximized it beautifully and they are now leading the charge and incorporating web 3 technology in the form of smart contracts the form of nfts into that very program you could do all the searching you want you will not hear them talk about nfts as part of the program they don't have to when you and I talk about music we talk about the experience we talk about listening to The Beatles we don't talk about the MP3 that's delivering that music to our ears and so the same is true in our space because it's so early because it's so nascent a lot of the focus has been around the technology rather than the

experience we hope that 2023 is the year where that begins to shift my brother doesn't care about the technology he doesn't care how Google is actually storing his data he just wants to know that it is happening seamlessly yeah and then the next time he goes to search he gets better results because they know him and they understand him and he gets customization it solves his problem he gets convenience accessibility easier cheaper doesn't have to pay for it as you said there's a great burden involved that maybe more of us are missing it than I would like to my knife AI is all the rage it's all we can hear

talk about there's recently been Congressional hearings about how to think about and and police and regulate AI no one's really diving into the machine learning systems that undergird something like chat gbt4 we just know it's Google on steroids yeah you prompt it and the more information you prompted with it's going to give you extraordinary output for most people that's great I just want to go on living my life and hope that you're going to make it easier for me make me more efficient than I used to be so I want to come back to you know Point around ambassadorship and retention how does web 3 enable that more I mean when I think about ambassadorship

ownership makes a difference if I own a digital asset if I feel owner of a community then I am more likely to be an ambassador in your case for big words you were paid or compensated in some way perhaps the new community you don't need to compensate is is that one of the reasons why web3 enables more ambassadors more retention or is there something else I always think that incentives matter incentives Drive Behavior if Jay currently leases a car and let's say it's a fancy car it's a German luxury car and that lease is set to expire at the end of this month would competitor automobile manufacturers want to know

that Jay is coming off lease you better believe it they want to know how much are they willing to pay Jay for that information how much are they willing to see a digital copy of that model lease that confirms hmm he's going to be out of luck in two weeks right he's been paying this month monthly he's trustworthy he's committed to this car he's gonna need another one right we know what he likes he likes the smell of that fine leather do we have a product that we can put in front of him can we incentivize him to come to our dealership not only by potentially paying him to confirm that he is in fact an eligible bachelor

but offering him some loyalty payment you know most of the manufacturers today they offer you a loyalty benefit or some other cash incentive if you shift bring one brand to the other all right if you've owned a Japanese car and now you're going to buy an American car they'll give you 500 for switching but usually people only find out about that when they're at the dealership already and only if the dealer asks them and prompts them with the right questions more of that information is now available online as consumers are getting smarter they're saying well I can go to this dealership and demand that loyalty track but what you're touching on is an initiative that we have metaversal have now been working on

largely in stealth mode and has a lot to do with Personal Achievement all of us as individuals have achievements that we have accomplished and we are thinking about achievement we Define achievement based John Jay's time skill and energy right that those are components that allow you to power through it could be power through for certain academic achievement it could be some professional certification you become a doctor or an engineer it could be sports related you were able to complete a marathon or climb to the top of a big mountain those are all individual achievements we're not

talking about attendance you didn't just show up at a concert it actually is something that's hard to do that's the skill part not everyone has completed a marathon it's not easy to travel 26 Miles by foot yeah what happens when you cross that Finish Line let's use you in this example you cross that Finish Line in the Big Apple it ends in Central Park they wrap this foil blanket and they give you a physical medal and you make your way home you hobble home you high-five your friends and family and that metal typically goes somewhere in a drawer in a closet not to be seen

again you might post about it on social media okay but you rarely wear that metal out to dinner you rarely bring that to the office and try to get excitement out of your colleagues they're proud of you they may be happy for your achievement but it's not something that you regularly advertise and yet there's a lot of brands that would love to know Jay crossed that Finish Line let's imagine that there was a digital version of your physical metal and you'd say well that seems simple and stupid Dan has nothing to that but that'd be missing the point we're not

just talking about creating a digital twin so that you have something to show off on a social media page I'm talking to you about what is the utility in knowing that Jay was able to successfully complete that Marathon would a life insurer be interested to know that Jay had the capacity to run 26 miles you better believe it would a health insurer want to know that for sure would certain types of running shoe manufacturers think of Brooks running think of New Balance not just Nike these are not casual walking shoes he needs a specific type of Runner to go that distance

so too for his gear maybe there are companies that cater to someone who is going to need to recover he's going to need those massaging machines right to a hypervault which are now all the rage maybe a hotel or Spa is going to invite him to use their facilities during the day because all of those Hospitality facilities post covid have been rethinking how they make use of their spaces in Monday through Thursday common areas conference rooms even a penthouse not for Jay to stay in for Jay to have a business dinner in the

penthouse is unused most nights of the month because they know that I just completed my University degree or I just got this new job some achievement that they know that I have which aligns with their Persona that they believe would fill their would buy their product or buy their service so to me that is micro targeting rather than Mass marketing hitting Dan left right and Center with just do it advertisements yeah guys I know Nike I hear it I get it I like your tennis shorts that's about all I wear they wouldn't know that Jay they

wouldn't know that years ago I used to play a lot of tennis and if I play tennis at a certain level in my youth there's a good chance I still play tennis today and that would be true I achieved certain things when it came to tennis that's not on Google it's not on LinkedIn it's not something we readily advertise because it's both personal and a bit dated we don't put everything that we accomplish on there but think about the ability for us to own those achievements in an easy to share format doesn't mean you have to it means Jay now has the luxury of choosing I have these digital items

consider them to be medallions and I have the choice of whether to reveal that they are associated with me does that unlock rewards and incentives and benefits and other experiences does it unlock new social interactions with people that also finished that same Marathon how many of the thirty thousand Marathon racers in New York did you get to speak to as you're running the 26 miles let me Venture a guess very few you're huffing and puffing you don't want to talk to anybody but how many would I want to speak to you're in a unique Club probably all of them right all managed to finish it yeah and what about the people that helped you accomplish that

achievement your spouse your partner who is training with you right your spouse because she lets you have five hours every other day to go and train and race and stretch and do all the things you need to your training partner for giving you the mental fortitude to not quit after the 12th mile to keep going so the ability to acknowledge and pay it forward to friends family and others who are often instrumental in making those achievements come to life very rarely get to the top of a mountain alone where does all this go from a a

standpoint of right now when we have take some sort of action transaction on the ethereum blockchain anybody can look it up it's on etherscan sure etherscan is not the easiest platform to use unless you're a tech nerd and understand how to dissect that data but it's available there's zero lots of zero knowledge proofs being worked on and coming online into mainnet is this all going to be data and this could be your proof of achievement related or it could be something else that's going to be private to us and we're going to open it up to those who we want to share it with or is it continue to all be public and it's just all

on chain and available for anybody to look up and any brand can go and see it how do you see that playing out so I Envision a world where all of this information is on chain it is all on public Ledger the key is whether it is associated with j definitively or not Jay will know what is his the question is I may not know it's James and I need mechanisms to associate that information with him today we use a phone number an email address and that's usually the big unlock when you go to a pharmacy like CVS what do you type in at checkout a phone number phone number no one

remembers a 14 digit CVS loyalty number you put in a phone number it calculates a little discount and next thing you know there's an eight foot long receipt that they give me for my loyalty right that's their way of saying hey Dan come back and buy more cosmetic products you may not need I Envision this future where all of this data that's associated with Jay is verifiable that's what it means for us to put it on a blockchain that is a public Ledger it's trustless I don't need to go and ask the registrar's office of some University if Jay graduated because he says he did I could look it up as long as Jay gives me the

clue of where to find it I need that Association so I Envision that people will have a private digital wallet which they may not share with others and they'll have a public facing digital wallet which they are opting to share and they're doing so with the knowledge that things should benefit them in terms of access in terms of rewards in terms of experiences incentives because they're providing a patchwork of their digital persona and that ties to their physical interests and their physical habits and in that way it begins to unlock the Holy

Grail of well what is Jay really excited about what is he excited about what are his habits anytime you have to try and change adult Behavior I think that's dangerous what excites me here is that yes there are challenges with the clunkiness of the technology that is already being that would be solved yeah there are tens of thousands of developers coming from the best and biggest companies streaming into our space I have zero concern that we're going to get super seamless one-click access for all of these issues just doesn't all exist today on a Tuesday so then how do we meet the consumer where they are without necessitating that they

change everything that they do I'd rather they not change a lot of what they do and as time progresses they see the benefit my parents the other day sent their first payment via Zell okay massive Innovation okay because they like writing checks I'm always scratching my head who is still writing physical checks and mailing them what a process now I know but they successfully sent a first payment via Zell and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread welcome welcome to the 21st century so that's still largely web too yeah and these are the same folks that would stick to a flip phone except

they understood the power of an iPhone of a smartphone I was a traditionalist and that even in my time in Washington we were all given blackberries I love the Blackberry a little keyboard your thumbs were so happy and so when the iPhone was first introduced I watched Steve Jobs on stage what a gimmick who would you need that for what am I going to do with all those other apps it's just a distraction they have fast forward a few years and I became obsessed with all the ways that I could use the iPhone and it continues to improve right you don't need measuring devices your iPhone has them built in

measuring device for rooms not just a piece of paper I've been using that well I've been renovating recently so it doesn't necessarily replace the tape measure most Carpenters still have a physical tape measure but it is seamless and easy for Jay who isn't a carpenter and doesn't carry it around in the normal course just like I don't carry around my external hard drive these all become unlocks well it makes me think about how right now when Apple privacy policy changed and all of a sudden apps had to request to have access to your data to track your actions through their app all the apps

ask and they they use the language of will you allow us to improve your experience right because that's the the mindset that they're taking right no so everybody everyone's saying no and yeah very simple but that same lens of improving experience is really what consumer data on chain will do is it will allow us to have an improve improved experience not because we're going to be advertised to though I mean I guess that could be part of it but there's so much more that could be done with our data in terms of giving us access to communities giving us access to events providing us with opportunities that we had never had

before we all want to be part of a community and I think it all comes back to community and you mentioned that at the beginning being such a core aspect of the blockchain experience and web 3 is really going to unlock that for the first time and we've all desired that for so long so this proof of achievement that you're talking about it's very exciting to think about where we are 10 years from now when we're all on chain and we all have on-chain purchases and data that's what I really get what you control which you get to decide what you do with it there's also a philosophical piece here that excites

me when you talk about Community because I think it goes to a much broader issue we have a deficit of Happiness not only in the United States but around the world and the science around happiness has become very very popular if you look at the number one course at Harvard and the number one course at Yale you'll find both have to do with the science of Happiness really perennially sold out thousands of people trying to jam into these courses and the science around happiness in human beings is very complex a big chunk of it is genetic which means we can't control it but there are portions that you can

control and study after study shows that the Common Thread is not just family and Faith it's never about money and material things hopefully people remember the refrain money doesn't buy happiness and yet they still yearn for it money can buy them more time it can buy them access it doesn't necessarily buy happiness but human beings derive happiness from social interaction from being part and parcel of community if you go back to the Prehistoric Age you had small tribes those were small cohorts of individuals they were helping one another they were responsible for one

another when we talk about the Arc of decentralization back then prehistoric times we were definitely decentralized there was no government Dumont there was no State Authority these were Nomads and they got along as best they could as society progressed that you had more and more centralization taking shape providing law in order but also beginning to influence what happens to your particular personal property your rights your sense of ownership and the historical Arc now is on the cusp of this decentralized wave

which fits into the natural course of historical Evolution but my point is it shouldn't surprise us that as Society has become more sophisticated that we're more aware of ways in which we can function and operate independently with greater ownership of a lot of what we do rather than relying on a centralized institution be it Financial be it regulatory to dictate all that we do doesn't mean we're a vote for lawlessness doesn't mean that anyone is voting for hackers and criminal misdeeds but it gives the opportunity for Jay to finally

take back control like he used to have before technology was so pervasive and so when we look at all the benefits that technology has brought to us right you guys wonder how did I meet you at the movies in the 1980s how did we coordinate to see Top Gun in the theater what if you were running late what if you couldn't find the bus and today we just take it for granted certainly our kids generation they're planning every move on their devices and yet we know the concerns we know the ills from a lot of these apps because especially for young women there's no happiness at the end of the

Instagram or Tick Tock room okay it has substantial effects and feel like each month you're reading about the next warning and so I see the power of building these communities as a form of bringing and restoring some of that happiness quotient to your life because inevitably if you want to stay a very private individual no one's going to force you to get out of your apartment or your house but you're only going to have that true sense of fulfillment when you venture out to meet folks for dinner when you venture out to that conference like I'm gonna do tomorrow and then part of the purpose is learning and exposing

yourself to new ideas and also interacting with others that brings us the greatest sense of fulfillment and happiness I I think what came up for me when you brought up the pursuit of happiness and the number of people that are trying to achieve that and how difficult that has become is this feeling of isolation and I think it's in the UK that they have a director or a governor of isolation who is focused on reducing isolation and I think America as well has recognized many countries around the world have recognized that isolation is a leading cause of mental health issues and what is isolation the opposite of it's the opposite of community and it is hard to build community it's hard to find like-minded

people particularly if you live in a small town or if you live in a country that views things differently than you but now with the digital age all of a sudden we could connect with like-minded people online but we were we so far have been doing so only in a way where we had to go out and find it whereas what could happen in the future is when we have our data on chain it's possible that we could be brought into communities as a result of our achievements of our actions of our poapps the the events that we attend all of a sudden it can be brought to us by brands or by companies or by events

because they can create those experiences and create community and yeah possibly shared experience and it's super it's supranational yeah right it's not just limited to my geographic region if I were a major Moon Birds holder I wouldn't easily find you Jay you don't live in Geographic proximity to me and yet we would share certain interests in common all of a sudden There's an opportunity for us to not only form relationship it's not simply hey let's start hanging out with strangers that's not the message the message is that we have shared interests that transcend borders

and we can begin expanding those Horizons because what's the benefit when people travel what do they come back and love new experience new learning new interactions with people new observations of how other cultures and societies operate those are all things that inspire they not only educate so to me this is part and parcel of that which we already know and accept we're just now finding ways to document it to inscribe it I don't remember all the achievements that I've had I don't remember all the trips in detail that we've been on and yet

having a catalog even if it remains private that I can easily pass down you know what keeps you up at night what keeps you up is night is trying to remember where all the photos are that you have from the last 20 years because they're not all on Google Drive some may still be on that external hard drive some are physical copies you want to hand that to the Next Generation there's going to be easier ways and we're on the cusp of it and that's what makes us super excited about everything that we see and it comes back to evolving culture because top part and parcel of what brings us happiness is our cultural interests just like we're all collectors we all have some cultural

interest they can be incredibly diverse that's what makes it exciting and finding individuals that share some of those cultural interests that has always been the driving force of society going back hundreds and hundreds of years so part of our mission at metaversal is really around acquisition and production of web3 native intellectual property and that positions us right on the Leading Edge of culture we're seeing new projects and new communities forming around those projects that are incredibly inspiring does it mean that every one of them is going to stand the test of time you know the answer don't

wait for the buzzer 98 or 99 of the nft projects that have come out will have a terminal value of zero I'm far from the first to say it doesn't mean you can't participate and enjoy that particular nft project we're talking about lasting value we're talking about franchises we're talking about media companies there have been lots of efforts to build the next Disney few have managed to do it and yet we know that the next great media and entertainment businesses will be born out of this ecosystem and so we're very focused on participating in it finding ways to be supportive of it and ultimately of the

underlying creators and this will be the last tangible example because you asked a series of questions and we've touched on I think most of the answers the last tangible example is why this is so beneficial for the individual creators you think about Taylor Swift who's been having this massive tour through parts of the U.S right now those are not easy tickets to get they may have a face value of a hundred dollars but you'll be hard-pressed to pay a hundred bucks and walk in that Stadium why Brokers resellers StubHub you may have to pay a thousand dollars to get that ticket now let's think about that transaction it's an e-ticket so we're already in the electronic digital sphere the face value

was a hundred bucks which means Taylor gets some contractually specified percentage of the hundred Jay decides he's not going to the concert maybe he never was he was just a Speculator he decides to go and sell that ticket today to me I want to go to the concert where my wife wants to go to the concert I'm going to buy the ticket but I'm not paying the face value anymore Jay has marked it up 10x it's now a thousand dollars pretty expensive really better like her music can I be certain that that ticket is valid we hear plenty of examples where people walk up to Madison Square Garden they have a QR code that they think is their electronic ticket and they get the beep boop like what's that sound that's never a

good sound this ticket is not that way all right the guy's scanning it Boop Not Gonna Let You in I'm sorry but what do you mean I pay a thousand dollars for the ticket I want to go and see Taylor Swift nothing we can do fake ticket sorry so seamless verification if that ticket were on chain trustless immediately that issue goes away we know it can be verified instantaneously and like you say it's not going to happen through some of the available search engines right now that are online it's going to be new protocols and new mechanisms to bring that data so that Jay has the confidence to say hey this ticket's legit let's do it but we haven't solved the other part of the equation which is this is a very expensive resale and Taylor Swift is the one that's on

stage singing two plus hours has she earned another dollar as a result of that resale not in the current system she doesn't earn a shiny penny more but if you take that same process that we described and embed a smart contract into that ticket smart contract isn't so fancy it simply has a series of if then statements if Jay sells it to someone else for a price above the face value a royalty will redound to the benefit of the creator you tell me what the right royalty is could be ten percent could be fifty percent after she's been one singing maybe it should be eighty percent cut down on some of the aftermarket nonsense

and all of a sudden it's dramatically changing the economics for her as the one who is really putting on the show doesn't that make intuitive sense the same is true in the Art Market Andy Warhol never sold the piece for north of 100 million dollars in his lifetime and his estate hasn't been the beneficiary of resale royalties by and large same is true with automobile manufacturers my last example Jay wants to go and buy we talked about luxury automobiles for a bit before Jay wants to go and buy that new electric Humvee General Motors said we're going to put out a super duper Hummer enormous horsepower Jay decides he needs one of those a hundred thousand

people went into a dealership and said hey love that concept I want that car here's five hundred dollars refundable deposit refundable deposit five hundred dollars a hundred thousand people 50 million dollars sitting in escrow waiting for them to manufacture the car what have we achieved it's really just consumer preference it's reservations you're taking a sequencing Jay is number one thousand I go to the dealer late I'm number 48 000. Jay comes home it's like you know and I'm not sure I need this car so soon it's not going to fit in the garage maybe eventually I'm going to want it not sure I want to be the first batch could have some issues that need to work

out he doesn't have a mechanism to go into a dynamic Marketplace today and sell his spot he can't find me nor can I find him because I go home and my spouse says love that thing how soon are we getting it we're pretty far down on the list sweetheart that could be months from now may not even be this year you know she's not going to be happy when she looks back at you is there something I can do to advance on that list not today but if we take that same transaction it's a reservation that Jay holds an embed a smart contract that says look you can take this you can potentially transact on it you can go into a Marketplace and find Dan no one's forcing you you're willing to

wait Dan wants to expedite his delivery date you guys can transition it's just like the NFL draft I'm going to bump up and take a first round pick I'm going to give you three of my third round picks it happens all every year but now there's an exchange of value and so that I may have to pay you some additional compensation to get your special slot shouldn't the manufacturer participate in that transaction well now they can for the same reason we gave them the ticketing example and is the consumer better off Well you certainly know worse off we have arranged consumer preferences according to your interest and your willingness to pay no one's forcing you to go to the

dealer in the first place no one's forcing you to move up in position the manufacturer benefits because that 500 refundable deposit turns into a 500 non-refundable deposit to start they have sold it to you do as you wish you can show up and collect your car as scheduled you can sell it to someone else and they will participate maybe they take 50 percent of a subsequent resale I pay you another five hundred dollars to get your slop maybe General Motors takes 250 of that think about all the value creation that could happen and all we've done is align the ordering of when people get those cars they haven't even built the vehicle yet it makes me

think about Ledger Stacks which was sold all on pre-sale they sold out I mean obviously they set a quantity that they were willing to sell and pre-sale and if you missed out on that pre-sale still right now if you wanted to you could go because you can't buy a ledger Stacks in the like direct line installed your currently so you could go and you could go to a secondary Marketplace you could buy the nft that gives you access to burn it to claim a ledger stacks and boom you gotta let your stacks and you wouldn't be able to do that previously and as you said there wouldn't be a Marketplace for it it's amazing Dan to hear your mind and get excited about all these real consumer use cases which I'll

bet your brother will even be excited about okay I want to wrap up with a speed round but before we do Dan where can people follow you where can they find you online anything you want to tell people about metaversal the floor is yours for a little bit of a shill at hello metaversal is the place to find our company Twitter Instagram Tick Tock LinkedIn at Dan schmarin as my Twitter address and you can look up Dan schmarin on LinkedIn you'll find me there as well folks find themselves in South Florida feel free to send us a note stop by metaversal HQ we have a growing presence in lots of

other places now because we have team members that span the globe from Africa and Europe all the way to Canada and the U.S so if you can't find us in one of our workplaces you'll probably find us at a leading conference so don't be a stranger awesome okay a couple quick speed around questions and then we'll wrap up first one what's an nft you'll never sell you know when I started metaversal with my business partner Yosi we're having a good time one day and bought some nfts together called Maison dugot Maison to goat is definitely in the 99 that will have terminal value of zilch but it is a

Memento to the early days the early struggle as we were putting together our Manifesto for metaversal and so that that's a puppy I'll never touch awesome okay one thing you've bought recently for under 100 that brings you Joy does not have to be a digital product the thing that has brought me great joy is a expandable folder because I believe in organized mind and organized desk and when I travel now it brings me happiness to flip through the different folders and see different items and different it's the small stuff Jay yeah I was gonna say as a fan of David Allen and

getting things done I love organization so you're speaking to me for sure on that one okay last question if you had a billboard that one billion people are gonna see what would you write on it be kind it goes to the heart and it goes to happiness our brains are wired to take us down really negative paths it's that fight or flight Instinct it's built into all of us and no amount of therapy is going to undo that wiring the best thing we can do is be kind it doesn't cost us anything pay someone a compliment open the door give up a seat on an airplane I know that's a touchy issue for a lot of

people when you are traveling alone and you see the mom with the kids and they're separated be the person that goes up and says how can I help because karma is a boomerang I love it Dan this has been a great conversation thank you so much for the time thanks for all you're doing for this space and I hope to meet you in the metaverse sometime in the future thank you great to be with you talk soon thanks for listening and everybody have a great day thank you for listening to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at

it there's a link in the description for a free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3. make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and Webster are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one