Building a New Era: The Intersection of Gaming and Web3 at Korean Blockchain Week 2024

In this episode of Edge of NFT, co-hosts Richard Carthon and Josh Kriger bring you a special edition live from Korea Blockchain Week. They sit down with three distinguished guests:

• Arief Widhiyasa, a pioneer in the Indonesian gaming industry and co-founder of Agate, now leading Confiction Labs, where he’s revolutionizing collaborative entertainment.
• Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, who reflects on his journey through the crypto world, Mt. Gox’s impact on the industry, and his current ventures in building secure, transparent exchanges with Ellipse.
• Andrew Saunders, the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Skale, who shares insights on gaming, blockchain, and the unique features of Skale’s gasless and modular blockchain solutions.

The conversations span the future of Web3, gaming, blockchain technology, and the innovations each of these guests is bringing to their respective fields.

Please enjoy!

Listen or watch this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Myco, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Iheart Radio, YouTube, YouTube, Amazon, Audible, or on your favorite platform. Remember with Myco.IO you earn for your attention.

Sponsorship and Advertising:

If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, please fill out the Sponsor Interest Form, which we review 1-2 times per month.

Key Topics Covered:

• Arief Widhiyasa’s Collaborative Entertainment Vision: Learn how AI and blockchain are shaping Confiction Labs’ future for game creators and players alike.
• Mark Karpelès on Security and Transparency: Mark reflects on his experience with Mt. Gox and shares how his new project, Ellipse, aims to create a safer and more transparent exchange.
• Andrew Saunders on Skale’s Innovations: Dive into Skale’s unique gasless blockchain infrastructure, how it is revolutionizing gaming dApps, and its potential impact on the future of Web3 gaming.

‍

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/

Episode Highlights:

• Arief Widhiyasa: “The combination of AI and blockchain is unlocking a new frontier where players are not just gamers but creators, owners, and contributors to the game’s universe.” [Timestamp: 12:15]
• Mark Karpelès: “After Mt. Gox, I made it my life’s mission to build a crypto exchange with transparency and security at its core.” [Timestamp: 22:30]
• Andrew Saunders: “The gasless transaction model of Skale allows for frictionless user experiences, particularly in gaming where we aim to bring in millions of players.” [Timestamp: 35:10]

‍

For the full transcript, see further below. 

People and Resources Mentioned: 

• Confiction Labs Website: Confiction Labs
• Mark Karpelès' Ellipse Wallet: Ellipse Wallet
• Skale Network: Skale Network

Connect With Us:

• Website: https://www.edgeofnft.com/
• Twitter: https://x.com/EdgeofNFT
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edge-of-nft-podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edgeofnft/
• Phaver: https://app.phaver.com/xxg1YpPHFZZ9oTjK9
• Discord: https://discord.gg/CQhZUdsV
• Telegram: https://t.me/edgeofnft
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edgeofnft

About Our Guest: 

Arief Widhiyasa:

Arief Widhiyasa is a trailblazer in the Indonesian gaming industry and co-founder of Agate, the country’s largest game development company. A Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 honoree, Arief now leads c, where he’s pioneering a new model of collaborative entertainment using AI and blockchain. His vision is to empower players to become creators and owners within their favorite gaming universes, reshaping the future of the industry.

• Website: Confiction Labs
• LinkedIn: Arief Widhiyasa
• Instagram: Link
• Twitter: Link

Mark Karpelès:

Mark Karpelès is the former CEO of Mt. Gox, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges before its collapse. After facing the complexities and challenges of crypto security and regulation, Mark is now focused on building Ellipse, a crypto exchange and wallet service designed to provide state-of-the-art security and transparency. His mission is to ensure that the vulnerabilities that led to the Mt. Gox incident are never repeated.

• Twitter: Link

Andrew Saunders:

Andrew Saunders is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Skale, a high-throughput, modular blockchain network that focuses on gaming and AI dApps. With a background in emerging technologies from his time at Amazon, Andrew is helping to position Skale as the go-to platform for frictionless, gasless blockchain gaming experiences. He is passionate about bringing blockchain to mainstream gaming and developing the infrastructure needed to Skale Web3 applications.

• LinkedIn: Andrew Saunders
• Twitter: Link

‍

Subscribe to the Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts link
• Spotify link
• YouTube
• Myco
• iHeart Radio
• Other podcast platform links

‍

Disclaimer:

This is not financial or tax advice. Edge of NFT content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Whenever making financial decisions, we recommend doing your own research and talking to your accountant for financial advice. Disclosure: From time-to-time we may feature sponsored content for which we receive value and we may share links for which we receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. See our full Disclaimer (https://www.edgeofnft.com/disclaimer), Terms & Conditions (https://www.edgeofnft.com/terms-of-use), Privacy Policy (https://www.edgeofnft.com/privacy-policy), and Copyright Notice (https://www.edgeofnft.com/copyright-notice) for details. 

‍

Transcript:

Richard Carthon: What's up, everybody? Richard Carthon here from the Edge of NFT. We are live at Korea Blockchain Week, and today we have a very special guest. We have Arief Widiyasa, who is a pioneer in the Indonesian gaming industry, co-founded Agate, the country's largest game company, and earned a spot on Forbes Asia's 30 under 30 list in 2016. Now he's at the helm of Confiction Labs, and he's revolutionizing collaborative entertainment, creating innovative gaming experiences that empower players to become co-creators in their favorite universes. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Richard. Nice to meet you. Absolutely. So I want to start with just learning a little bit more about your background. So you have a very unique background and you somehow find your way into Web3. Tell us a little bit about that story.

Arief Widhiyasa : Yeah, so I was born in Bali. So in the very north side of Bali, it's very actually a rural area. And growing up, I have like too many questions that actually not a lot of adults want to entertain. And then I kind of like confused as a kid, but I found video games. Like in video game, like I really able to experience anything. I could be a policeman, I could be a hero, I could be a knight. So I think that experience really bring a lot of colors in my childhood. And then at that time, I really did, I really, already decided that I want to dedicate my life in the game industry so after I go into college and then decided to build like one of the first game studio in the country and then we are lucky that we are survived and now becoming one of the largest in the game industry. Until 2021, I got some exposure on Web3 and I decided that this is a very beautiful technology that actually able to Skale like to what we call collaborative entertainment like it's the new future of how the gaming industry will look like. So I think at that time, I stepped down. I previously was the CEO of the company. I stepped down and then created Conviction Lab.

Richard Carthon: That's great. And you know, your background and how you like describe it, like you hear the passion of what you're doing. So the collaboration makes a ton of sense to me. But you're coming up with a concept that it's pretty new to a lot of people. So collaborative entertainment. Break that down a little bit more for us.

Arief Widhiyasa : Yeah, I think that my favorite way to break it down is actually a little run through history. Do you know what is the first game ever created? Like the first game. Like Atari? Atari, yeah. That's actually one of the first video game ever created. And that's actually how we actually want to highlight why technology able to unlock new things. So video game actually started because of semiconductor technology that allows Atari, Nintendo, arcade games to flourish. And then I think that Skales to like 20 years until like around the 90s, it stopped. The game industry is not growing anymore until mobile and internet. So mobile actually unlocked everybody could play, and internet unlocked distribution. So a kid like me in the north of Bali was able to play games because of the internet. But now it's also stuck. As you see in the web 2.0 game industry, we see a lot of news that there is a lot of layoffs, the industry is not growing anymore. So it's actually the same what happened in the early 20s. So now, the market is stuck. And we believe that the next revolution of technology is coming, which is AI and blockchain. So these two will enable a new frontier of industry that we call collaborative entertainment. So the idea is that, the shortest one is that, it's a future where gamer is not only a consumer, but also could be a creator, could be an owner, could be a promoter, anything. And AI will actually solve capability gap. Like before, if I want to create a game, I need to study programming. But now, in the future, no. You will not to have that capability to actually create something. And blockchain will actually solve trust, because if there is so many people actually creating, there will be a lot of trust issue, and blockchain is the one that actually solve it. So I think the combination of those two technology will create a new entertainment era that we call cloud-technology. Sorry. No, no, no.

Richard Carthon: Thanks for bringing that down. It's a really good storytelling, and how you go from the beginning, where things were, to where we are now. I even myself, so I'm a big gamer, love playing, and I've always wanted potentially to be able to have the ability to create a game and haven't been able to do it simply because I'm not a developer, right? But with AI, like you said, I can do this, have that collaborative approach and go from there. But one of the things that you're also building is Rift Storm. So tell us a little bit more about that and how does that work with the collaborative entertainment?

Arief Widhiyasa : So the idea of Robotic Entertainment is that we want to create the next frontier of entertainment. And one of the ways that we need to have a first game that actually solve a mass problem. But coming from a developing country, we don't really have that much budget. So we need to be mindful on what problem they were solving. So we're looking for what we call secondary game. So the idea is that most people that play multiplayer games actually want to play with their friends. But majority of multiplayer games is a PVP games. If you haven't tried PvP games, let's say you play Dota, I play LoL, it's very hard for us to play together because it's a very different skill. And not to mention, let's say we play Dota together and I suck at it. Maybe after five times you don't want to play with me anymore. So the problem with the PvP games is actually hindering playing with friends. So our rift storm coming in the idea that we want to be everybody's number two game. So everybody's secondary game. So let's say you play Valorant, I play Dota, but if we want to play together, we play Rift Storm. So I think that's a need that's actually very big that no one's actually touching. So we're aiming that spot. Because if we are successful on that, that will become everybody's number two. So that's the idea.

Richard Carthon: I like it, and like you said, it's a way that we can come together and enjoy a game together, right? Because everyone wants an opportunity to have a real chance of winning, and having that game that you can meet in the middle is amazing. So one of the other pieces that you kind of get into is around the idea of proof of exposure, which is a deep user profiling mechanism that helps attract higher quality users to your games. So walk us through that as well.

Arief Widhiyasa : Yeah, so we honestly were very new to Web3, but when we realized what is the amazing thing that Web3 also brings, but also becomes too age-old, is the financialization, the offer incentivization. And the problem that that brings, initially, incentive is very good to attract new users, to attract users that actually reinforce others, but now it's kind of filled with bots. And then we see that if we go to that part, it will just bring vanity metrics that will not go in our way. So I think our idea of Proof of Exposure is actually to create a deep profiling system where any users need to prove that, oh, let's say, oh, I'm a deep gamer, so I need to connect my Steam profile, and we see the level, we see what achievement that they get, oh, we give them score based on that. Or maybe, oh, I'm a very big achiever in my academic world. I write a paper. So I give the link of the paper, then we could score it. And, oh, maybe also I'm a creative person. I have this kind of art book. I have this kind of GitHub code. So I think the idea is that we will give everyone a chance to actually prove them what kind of exposure they have in their life. and then hopefully we score them right, and then give them access to the ecosystem so that we kind of, in a way, it's a preference board, but we also know them, what they are capable for, so it also enhance the potential of future cloud entertainment. Because we need the profiling to know, because you are good at art, so this is the art opportunity that we have. You're good at coding, this is, yeah, so I think that's the idea.

Richard Carthon: It's like a really good way to align people with what they're able to thrive with, right? And also if they're on the cusp of being good at a thing, you can kind of steer them in that direction to try this new skill that they might even be really good at. So it's a really cool way to help with bringing alignment. But another thing that you have is XPSR24.

Arief Widhiyasa : What is that? So actually it's our premier collection. So technically it's called XPS-R, but it means Exposure. So the idea that we realized that we are very new in the Web2 industry, so we want to create the first collection that becoming our main exposure to the space. So that's why it's called XPS-24. So technically it's a premier collection to the world of, we call it Occultical Universe. That's actually the Rift Storm is inside the Occultical Universe. So it's a premier collection for any community member to actually join us as the premier collection. So it will actually unlock a lot of benefits in the ecosystem. It has a lot of in-game utility, and it also has a lot of feature rewards also waiting for the users there.

Richard Carthon: That's awesome. So the premium collection, for people listening to this, obviously that's a way that they can get more involved and be part of that. But I also want to take a deeper step, right? So we're in Korea at Korea Blockchain Week, and we're getting a lot of exposure to builders and a lot of various ways on like where the industry is heading, right? Between deep end, between gaming, between cross international borders on like how things can be interoperable and work together. So when you look at the future of gaming, what does that future look like to you?

Arief Widhiyasa : That is a very hard question. But I think in the next 5 to 10 years, we will see the cloud-based entertainment starting to fruition. I think a lot of games already see, for example, Web 3 is very good because of the decentralized technology. It's very easy for anyone to do a cross-IP kind of mechanism in the game. I think in the next 3-5 years we'll see interoperability, where the same asset could be used in multiple games easily. The technology is going to that. I'm still in a way believing in, I don't know, but this is not popular theory, but I still believe in the next 20-25 years, imagine that as a humanity be able to solve global warming, so energy becoming more sustainable. And at some point, the robotic and AI technology is also improving. So I think at some point of time, we might be in a situation where 80% of the job that we do might not really need human anymore. That's actually a good future if we're able to allocate the free time that humans have to more exciting and maybe adventurous opportunities. And we believe that games are there to fit that slot. Because now everybody has the time to enjoy what they love. Anyone that loves fishing could play a fishing game with all their friends all day. So I think that's what I believe.

Richard Carthon: No, I like it. It's a very optimistic view, and I think we need more of that positive outlook on what can be. And like you said, gaming is helping to do a lot of that. So as we kind of wrap up here, what are you looking forward to at Korea Blockchain Week, and how's your experience been so far?

Arief Widhiyasa : Yeah, I've been looking forward to meeting a lot of builders. So this is very nice to meet you also in person. So I'm looking forward to meet more builders, meet more partners also, potential partners, and really love to enjoy the week. It's a very nice week so far.

Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show and glad you could be with us and hope you enjoy the rest of the week.

Arief Widhiyasa : Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.

Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. This is Josh Krieger. I'm here with Richard Carthon, co-host of Edge of NFT. We are live at Crypto Blockchain Week and we have a very special guest with us today. None other than Mark Kripopoulos, the former CEO of Mt. Gox. It's amazing to have you on the show today. Thanks for joining us. You know, there's so much that has happened as a result of Mt. Gox, obviously, and I'm sure it's changed your life in many ways. How has it shaped your philosophy on business and humanity?

Mark Karpelès: Actually, Mongox was a very big event for me in my life. Until now, I mean, when I started Mongox, I even didn't know I would be facing governments and having so many issues with banks because it was very early. 2010, 2011, people didn't really know about Bitcoin yet. And with the Mongox bankruptcy which had a bad effect not only in the crypto world but also everywhere. I mean for Japan I was on national TV with bankruptcy for every single people to see. despite Morgux being so small. But after Morgux, I actually expected things for me to be much more reserved. I mean, when the case moved forward, of course, things changed a little bit. But I didn't expect to be involved in cryptocurrency anymore, ever.

Josh Kriger: You're like, I'm done with this.

Mark Karpelès: I mean, I'm done with it. I also think like crypto people are done with me. They probably don't want to see my face or anything anywhere. Yet people invited me to conferences. And I was, even during the Mongoks case, before, like, today, the distribution is happening, we're finally seeing the end of it. But back in 2016, 17, people from the crypto world reached to me and told me, hey, would you be I went to a couple of conferences in Japan, and each time people wanted to take a picture with me, I felt very different from what I was expecting. Especially when the bankruptcy happened, people told me, I mean, I had death threats. I had a message from someone who told me that he would kill and eat my cat. That same person actually contacted me again two years later, telling me he was sorry about that. And he wrote this way, he was very angry. But yeah, we went from bankruptcy, from being angry, to actually some people reaching out. And today, the situation is happening. People are getting paid, which means for many people, actually, they're getting a lot more than they used to have.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, I want to speak to that just for a second. So obviously you, there's a lot of people that were impacted by this and people fall on both sides of it. For those who aren't necessarily embracing you back, and obviously there is a lot of people in this space that, you know, for a lot of time, this is going to be their first time being able to hear from you. So like for the audience who haven't had the opportunity to speak to you and want to know, like, how did this not only of course impact your life, but you know, that have impacted others, you know, what is your message to them on like what you're trying to do moving forward?

Mark Karpelès: Well, my main purpose in life today is to make sure that something like MongoX is not going to happen again. We do have a lot of things that evolved since MongoX, so there are less crisps. We have, like, fiber MPC technology and many, many things. And yet, there are some things that haven't changed. Many centralizations are still very opaque. Well, I'm not using the latest technology to protect crypto. I do think that's something that I can do something about. I try different ways. I try to talk to people, tell them, yeah, we need to do this, to do that. And I think, based on what I've seen, that it might be easier to just show by example, like create the most secure and transparent exchange, show how things can be done, and give the recipe to anyone who wants to do the same thing.

Josh Kriger: And what are you going to call the exchange?

Mark Karpelès: The exchange is called Ellipse, which is E-L-L-I-P-E-X.

Josh Kriger: And what was the sort of meaning behind that name choice?

Mark Karpelès: The name actually comes from the elliptic curve, which is a cryptographic element used by Bitcoin from the very beginning and used by every single cryptocurrency. The first thing we release actually is a wallet, the Ellipse wallet, which is available on the Apple Store now. that use MPC to protect keys. And MPC is a computation system that works because of elliptic curve cryptography. I could go into technical details, but I don't think we have the time for that. But the idea is, thanks to this elliptic curve, which actually has a shape not unlike the one I've got here, We can do things like MPC wallets where multiple parties can sign together to provide one single signature, which is, I believe, at least what we have as the state of the art today in terms of protecting crypto assets.

Josh Kriger: So fascinating and we'll definitely learn more about that type of technology just from my own edification. You reflected in some of your thoughts so far in this interview that some things have changed dramatically since Mod Clocks and some things are still the same. We still have hacks on a regular basis and auditing issues and projects that are known as rug pulls in our space that happens on a frequent basis. At the same time, there's been a renewed energy and focus on Bitcoin. While we're at Career Blockchain Week, there's a lot of Bitcoin side events. As you reflect on sort of where we are in the present state of the development of the industry, what surprises you and what was predictable in your mind?

Mark Karpelès: I mean, I expected the crypto world to move forward in many different directions, so I don't think anything really surprises me. My philosophy on this actually is I want to see projects exist in as many different directions as possible. And we can see this way many different ideas. And we don't know in advance which ideas are going to be the good ones. It could be that something is easier to use, so people are going to go in that direction or not. I see, for example, Ethereum with smart contracts really exploded after 2015. At the beginning, nobody knew if it was the right direction or if we needed to go to Litecoin. It was still very early. I like seeing things going in different directions because it gives opportunities to new technologies to thrive. And you cannot predict what's going to work next. So Ethereum was a very big success. Maybe we don't know if something else could move forward in the future, or we could go back to the roots with Bitcoin. But I like to see different decisions being taken. That's the main

Richard Carthon: Yeah. And with that, like you said, there's, you know, back when all that was happening, you know, you had less than a thousand projects. Now, when you go on like a CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, you're on almost a billion projects, right? Just thousands and thousands of projects that have come into fruition. What are, for what is being built right now, what currently has your attention? So like, kind of like Josh was saying, like, are you like hyper focused on like Bitcoin ecosystem? Are you looking at layer ones? Are you looking at layer zeros, like gaming, AI, etc? Like is there any of these like subsets that like really like grab your attention right now?

Mark Karpelès: For me personally, I like to have a broad view and look at everything. I'm a technical person, so I like to build new technologies and I also like to see new technologies being built. One thing that brought my attention a few years ago was MPC wallets. I read through all the papers that were published, checked the security, did some testing myself, and I found that it can be used in a way that is easier for people to set up a wallet because you don't write the seed phrase on paper. You can forget all of this and still be much safer than if you did. So there are many, many new technologies being developed. I'm not going to name any project because I don't know if they are good projects or not. But for me, the most important when I see a new coin or a new project is what is actually being done behind it. It's not, does it have a shiny website with good looking people? It's what is the technology behind it? something new, how it's being built, and is it going to work.

Josh Kriger: I appreciate your perspective there. And I know the exchange is one of several projects that you're working on. You had mentioned to me that you have a wallet. And we can maybe touch on that a little bit. And then let's spend some time on this fascinating concept of a sovereign island for crypto as well. So what's your wallet all about and why does the world need another wallet?

Mark Karpelès: Okay, so the wallet is an MPC wallet, which basically means that the private key that's used to sign a transaction is split into multiple parts. On the way we've built it, we use three parts, with two of three that are required to sign anything. And the three parts are stored. One is stored with us, actually, at Ellipse. We secure it with SMS authentication. So if you want to sign something using that part, we will send the SMS. You need to input the code. It's a fairly standard process. and the two other parts are stored one inside the device secure area which you can only unlock with biometric authentication so typically face id or fingerprint and the last part is stored with the password you input and stored inside your device cloud provider So if you have an iPhone, that part is still with iCloud. The way we did this this way is because for one thing, the part we hold is not enough to do anything. So even if someone tries to hack us, for example, to get access to the keys we hold, they cannot do anything with those keys. On the other hand, if you lose, for example, your device, you can still get a new device, get your iCloud account, input your password, get us to send the SMS and do the verification, so you get access to the crypto.

Josh Kriger: So I was talking to someone recently about sort of the issue with deep fakes and how they're getting close to being able to sort of corrupt password access to exchanges and wallets. It sounds like you're thinking ahead in terms of how this could prevent sort of deep fake technology from interfering with getting access to your crypto.

Mark Karpelès: Yes, it's a high security that is basically based on what exists in Europe in terms of payment regulation. We have in Europe the PSG2 law, which defines that user authentication needs to be done with three things. I mean, two of three. One is something the user is, so for example, his face or his fingerprint. One with something the user knows, the password. And one with something the user has, for example, his mobile phone with a SMS authentication.

Richard Carthon: So as a quick follow up, obviously getting into wallets, it's when you think about crypto, it's the most safe and secure place that you want because you want to feel that nothing can happen to it. So why just to address a potential elephant in the room, why would someone potentially trust the wallet that you're building and how are you going about to ensure the safety and security of building this?

Mark Karpelès: Well, for one thing, the Wallet assets are stored on the device mostly, so let's say we have three parts. We only store one of the three parts, and the remaining is either with the user's device or the user's cloud provider, which means that only the user can do anything. I mean, you need three, I mean, two out of three parts. we cannot do anything the way it is built with this kind of security in mind. The second part is actually when you store crypto, there are two risks. There are one risk that for example someone steals your crypto, but there's also the risk that you lose your crypto. The reason we start one of the three parts is to alleviate that part, because let's say you lose your device or something happens which is broken, typically you still have your phone number, you can go to your provider and reset it, and you still have your cloud backups, so you're still able to access your crypto with the processor. And the name of the wallet again? It's Ellipse Wallet, so E-L-L-I-P-X Wallet. Perfect.

Josh Kriger: So we have to wrap up and speaking of parts, we'll have to continue this interview later, but you're working on a fascinating project called JOSEN. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about it. What was the inspiration and where it's at at the current moment?

Mark Karpelès: Yes, so Chosun actually is a long project. It's a very long story to explain, so I'm going to go not too much into details. But basically, someone I used to work with, with Mongols, Andrew Lee, became the king of Chosun, which is a dynasty from the old Korean Empire, which doesn't control Korea anymore, but still exists because it still has its king. And we decided to see if we could do this not as a regular nation but as a cyber nation, so chosen as its own blockchain, as sovereignty over its own cyberspace, and as a cyber country chosen as political ties with a few countries. which means that it's being recognized by some countries in the UN. It's not enough to ever see it at the UN, but eventually that's what we aim for. And anyone can go to chosen.com and restart to be a Deninzen, create a company and do business inside Chosen.

Josh Kriger: Sounds really fascinating and look forward to learning more about it in the future. Really appreciate your time today. And it was an honor to speak with you and get to get a better sense of your insights on where the space is today. And definitely look forward to more conversations in the future.

Mark Karpelès: Thank you very much.

Josh Kriger: Thank you. Hi, everyone. This is Josh Krieger, co-host of Edge NFT. We're live at Korea Blockchain Week, and I'm here with Andrew, who's the chief marketing and growth officer for Skale. It's great to have you showing, Andrew.

Andrew Saunders: Thank you for having me. It's great to see you again.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, yeah. So it's been a minute since we've talked to Jack about what's going on with Skale. Maybe you can kind of just give us the high level 411, what you guys have been up to.

Andrew Saunders: Absolutely. So best way to think about Skale is, you know, we're not a Layer 2, we're not an Alt-1, but we have certain kind of components of each. I like to kind of frame us as a high throughput modular blockchain network. What does that mean? When you talk about high throughput, what you're talking about is the types of dApps that drive very significant amounts of transactions. So that tends to be things like gaming dApps, AI dApps, things like social, right? And then when I talk about the notion of it being modular, I think the difference is a layer two is effectively a vertical scaling solution. We're more of a horizontal scaling solution, which what that means is we have what are called hub chains. So think gaming chain, AI chain, very kind of purpose built. And we have a lot of dApps that end up launching on those, but at the same time, if it's a dApp that's either going to process a very significant amount of transactions or a game that's going to Skale to 25 million users, they can launch their own chain very seamlessly next to it. Cool.

Josh Kriger: So, you know, last time I talked to Jack, you guys were onboarding a lot of new games to the chain, but you mentioned AI as well. What are some of the more recent use cases that you're seeing with deployments on chain?

Andrew Saunders: Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, you know, one of the big factors that kind of drew me into being the first CMGO of Skale is the fact that there's no gas fees, right? You know, a lot of folks ask me, well, how is that possible? It kind of looks a little bit like a Web2 SaaS model. So, you know, developers choose to build on Skale and then effectively, you know, pay for block space in advance. And by doing that, it effectively creates a frictionless experience for users where they don't have to pay gas fees. And in some cases, there's actually no transactions, right? And so, kind of the best case example... No transaction fees. No transaction fees, exactly. Or even, I'll explain, like, on certain dApps, they even don't have to process transactions manually, right? So an example... Transactionless transactions, okay. Exactly, exactly. So a good example of this would be, you know, on Epic right now, we have four video games. We have about two more coming. I think one big thing that's different is these are not, you know, individuals in their mom's basement. You know, these are indie game studios of 50 to 200 people that have already been developing for Web 2. You know, they're building games on things like Unity and Unreal, so very playable games. And then they're really leveraging blockchain for things like digital assets or, you know, in-game utility, right? So on Epic, for example, you can go to the Epic game store, download one of these games, play it, and not even realize that there's blockchain technology there, right? So good example, if you go to YouTube, you'll see these videos where on one half you're seeing kind of this frictionless game experience that looks like something you'd play on a console, and then on the other side, you're seeing all these transactions being processed, right? So we are actually the largest gaming chain. We've got about 250,000 active gamers, and I think part of that is we're bringing in traditional gamers through funnels like that.

Josh Kriger: What's your most popular game right now on Skale as the highest volume?

Andrew Saunders: Yeah, I mean there's a number of them that are popular. I think right now we have about 13 that are doing over 10,000 DAUs consistently. I would say some of the bigger ones are probably Motodex, which is like a motorcycle kind of racing game. There's another one called World of Dippians, which is a little bit more of kind of immersive experience. Some of the ones that I really like personally, we have a new FPS game that's in beta mode on Epic called Stray Shot. Really kind of high-end graphics, really, really solid development team. Another FPS called Haven's Compass, which is also on Epic. And then we actually have a couple really cool TCG games coming, one that even kind of merges with RWAs. So the best way to think about it would be, you know, if you played Magic growing up or you played, you know, Pokemon, you know, these are physical trading cards, but they have NFC chips in them. It's called WITS, what is a sorcery? And so what you can do is download the game on Epic, play it with friends all over the world, but at the same time, you can buy physical trading cards, tap them on your phone, and then instantly they are imported into the game.

Josh Kriger: Very cool. So what's the AI use cases that you're seeing right now? And any specific examples there you can share?

Andrew Saunders: Sure, sure, sure. So, you know, fun fact, like, so I worked at Amazon headquarters for about three years, primarily in AI and machine learning. So I did a lot with Alexa. And I think, you know, in terms of AI on Skale, you know, the dApp that probably processes the most transactions right now is called XORed, which is a lot of kind of AI data use cases. But I would say in general, you know, some of the AI apps will look very similar to things like a chat GBT. But again, decentralized security, decentralized data. Then you're also seeing things like Chirper, which I would put in the category of an AI agent. And for anyone that doesn't know what an AI agent is, best way to think about it, an example I can give is, I shop at Ruka, right? And over time, it knows my sizes, it knows my colors, it knows the types of fabric and materials that I like. And then an AI agent, in a sense, can become a personal shopping assistant, right? Or in the case of O2. personal travel agent, right? So AI agents. But I would say those tend to be the use cases that I see the most. Yeah.

Josh Kriger: Very cool. And I guess as you're sort of looking at the evolution of this space, obviously there's been some consolidation among L1s, there's been heightened focus on the Bitcoin ecosystem and a lot of side events going on even at KPW around that. How do you sort of look at sort of integration across chain and with folks that are sort of How are you? What's your sort of vision on sort of where the Bitcoin ecosystem is going and how that might or might not intersect with Skale or short?

Andrew Saunders: You know, it's a good question. I mean, right now, full transparency. I mean, we're not integrated into the Bitcoin ecosystem. You know, just for background, like my first role in crypto, I was the first CMO of Arbitrum. So I've now worked at multiple chains. And then after that, I worked at a EVN to non-EVM DEX aggregator. So, you know, Solana virtual machine. I've always believed that the future is multi-chain. We're going to have a significant amount of chains in the future for different purposes and reasons. Right now we are what's called an EVM-compatible chain, which means anyone that's built a dApp on Ethereum or another EVM-compatible chain, can very easily multi-chain to us or migrate to us. And so an example of this would be like there's a lot of games that are built on other chains. Typically they'll go there because there's a significant grant and then they'll run out of grant dollars and they'll say, oh, but no one's actually playing our game, right? And then because we're EVM compatible, they can then migrate over to us very quickly. And because we have the largest user base of actual gamers, 250,000, very quickly they can go from zero to 10,000 daily players. And the other thing that I've noticed that happens is the users on the previous chains will end up oftentimes migrating with them because, again, for us, we are the fastest chain, we have the data points to prove it, we have 99.9% uptime. We're high throughput, meaning if you've seen some of these chains having gaming competitions, sometimes they crash because of congestion issues. We never had that issue. But I would say the number one reason they migrate over is we have no gas fees, right? So if you've been playing this game on another chain, and maybe you're one of the 20 players, you could easily be paying anywhere from $10 to $100 a month in gas fees. So just by coming over to Skale, all of a sudden your gaming experience is free, right? Unless you start to get into digital assets and things like that. Very cool.

Josh Kriger: So one last question on gaming and let you kind of get on to all the great networking here at KBW. So, you know, there is sort of a lot of hopium around sort of gaming. You know, a year ago that was the talk, you know, the future of NFTs, the future of Web3 is gaming. It's a little bit different these days in terms of the sentiment there. My personal perspective is that the next six months are going to be really telling because you have all these games that have been built over the last three or four years that are coming to fruition. Lillium just launched. games that we really haven't even seen these games come. And so we don't really know what the future of gaming is at this current moment. I appreciate your perspective on where we're at with sort of the importance of gaming to the blockchain economy.

Andrew Saunders: Yeah, I mean, I'll take a step back. So my entire career, I've pretty much worked in emerging tech, right? I was like early in digital and social. You know, early in AR, VR, AI, machine learning, you know, pre-crypto, I was working in autonomous vehicles. And so I've seen, you know, what we call kind of like the mass adoption bell curve in numerous industries. I still believe that the masses are going to get onboarded through kind of one of three different areas. It could be gaming. It could easily be social, because social tends to Skale very quickly. Or it could be consumer. Right. And I'll kind of tie it back to gaming. I think, you know, there's I still believe that gaming is going to bring in the masses. I think there's a couple of reasons it hasn't yet. I think one of them was quality of the games. Right. So two, three years ago, when I first entered crypto, these were not playable games. They were, you know, show up, process a transaction, try to drive value against an NFT, you know. And so what you had was folks not playing to play, but playing to speculate. And then it shifted a little bit more into this play to earn model. But again, I would argue most of these games were not at the same level of what you're used to on a console or, you know, a Nintendo Switch, right? Or even a PC game. What's happening now is, again, you're not getting, you know, blockchain developers that want to make a game. You're getting Web2 game developers that have been building games for years. So that's already kind of the first good thing. And then the second thing is rather than building games fully on chain, they're building them using traditional game engines like Unity or Unreal, right? And now what they're doing is they're really just using the chain for certain components and elements of the game, right? And then when you look at Skale, the gas-free nature, you know, you can again go through something like Epic and just start playing it. Whereas in the past, you know, a traditional gamer had to, you know, set up a wallet, do wallet connect, add gas to their wallet. I mean, there was a lot of friction and steps, right? So I think where we're at now is what I see for the most part, at least in Skale, is again, these 50 to 200 person indie studios all over the world, right? But you're not seeing, you know, you and I both live in LA, you're not seeing the Activisions and Epics. You just doxed me. No, I'm just kidding. Everyone knows I'm in LA. LA! So I think like, when I think about kind of the future of gaming, there's kind of a couple different paths that I think could bring it in. So the first one is like, let's take the Stardew Valley example, right? So for anyone that doesn't know, Stardew Valley is, you know, it's kind of a farming simulation game. It started as an indie game, and it just became massively popular, right? So you could have something like that, where one of these indie studios develops a really great playable game, you know, really great kind of game economics integrated into it, and it just explodes, right? And so similar to Astoria Valley, that could bring in a lot of traditional gamers. But again, you know, you're talking about indie studios and you're talking a little bit about kind of needle in the haystack, right? So that's the first one. The second thing that could happen, which I tend to kind of keep a close eye on, is we actually start to get regulation clarity in the US. And what I mean by that is, you know, all of these big game studios in LA, I'm very close friends with a lot of folks that work there and even at places like PlayStation, They're all really interested in crypto and blockchain technology. The challenge becomes they have very large, successful businesses already, and what they don't want to do is integrate tokenomics and then potentially jeopardize their traditional business.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, for them it's like, I think gaming studios are some of the most innovative companies in the world, right? And they love to try new things and see what works, what doesn't. But it's in the R&D space until it works.

Andrew Saunders: Correct. It's $50 to $100 million in marketing behind the title, they can. If they want to leverage their existing audiences, you know, across all their different games, email lists, things like that, they can, right? So the ability for one of those to very quickly onboard millions of gamers is obviously significant, right? So that could happen. The other thing that I think could easily happen is, you know, like I come from Amazon headquarters, we had Amazon Gaming, we had Prime Gaming. You know, if they do things like integrate blockchain into the Prime member program, And if you use, again, Skale, where it's completely frictionless and gasless, they could easily take what is a enormous marketing machine, largest annual spend of any brand, and start to hone in and focus that into things like crypto gaming. So I think what's probably most likely to happen is we'll get some regulation clarity, we'll start to see the big studios come in. I think if we don't get that, what we'll probably see, and we're seeing this a little bit already, is developers from these big studios, like Paul at Wildcard, who all of a sudden say, well, I'm really interested in this, I'm an innovator, I'm going to go build. Right. Yeah.

Josh Kriger: Appreciate your perspective. I was recently just tried the gaming feature on Netflix, which I thought was really cool. So would it be possible like for one of these games on Netflix to be powered by blockchain?

Andrew Saunders: So, you know, I would say in terms of Skale, absolutely. Because for us, you know, very similar to the Epic store. I mean, you could have a game, you know, on Netflix. that has blockchain technology built in the back end. And because again, you're turning on your TV, you're clicking on the game and you're playing it for us, it could actually work. But I would say for every other chain that I know of, it wouldn't work because again, you're not going to be able to physically connect a wallet to your television screen, you're not going to be able to click process transaction every time on your TV.

Josh Kriger: The coolest thing I will say about it was that it turned my phone into a video game controller. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because that would be like, that would be the first it is. I don't want to, what am I going to do? Buy another, you know, controller that ends up, you know, being an antique. Exactly. In a couple of years, so. Pretty cool how this has evolved. Appreciate your perspective on everything.

Andrew Saunders: Yeah, total pleasure. Thanks for having me, man.

Josh Kriger: How can people stay in touch with you? Are you on X?

Andrew Saunders: Yeah, I'm on X. So my X handle is at Andrew Saunders. We're at Skale Network. And then I would say if you're new to Skale and you want to experience blockchain, you know, seamlessly gas free head to Skale.space. And actually two exciting kind of updates on the Skale side. So about a week ago, we launched the first ever gas free questing site. So it's swell.Skale.space. So again, if you're new to crypto or you love questing but hate paying gas fees, you can go there and start exploring the entire ecosystem for free. And wink, wink, you may qualify for some interesting rewards. And then today we actually launched a new feature. So if you go to the Skale site, let's say you're a gamer. We have a new ecosystem that's kind of multi-tiered filtering, so you can say, I'm into games, but specifically FPS games, but I only want PC FPS games. And by logging in with a wallet, you can save all those things and now, in a sense, have your own gaming hub every time you go to the site, which is kind of cool. Very cool.

Josh Kriger: Some alpha here on Edge of NFT. Thanks for joining us.

Andrew Saunders: Appreciate it. My pleasure, my friend.

‍