Sandman, Justin Melillo, and Alun Evans share insights into BitDOG, Mona’s open metaverse, and LAOS Network’s scalable NFT minting solutions.

Connecting Web3 Worlds : The Future of NFTs, Dynamic Assets and The Metaverse

October 9, 2024
Podcast

In this special episode live from NFT NYC, co-hosts Josh Kriger and Richard Carthon welcome three innovative leaders in the Web3 and blockchain space: Sandman from Crown Studio, Justin Melillo from Mona, and Alun Evans from LAOS Network. Each guest shares insights into their projects, from NFT collections to creating open metaverses and scalable NFT minting solutions.

Sandman, President of Crown Studio and managing partner of BitDOG, kicks off by discussing the highly anticipated BitDOG 10k PFP Rune collection on Bitcoin. Sandman delves into how Crown Studio is building unique IP and connecting communities across Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin. He explores the impact of meme culture on Web3, the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals, and the ethos of creating experiences rooted in storytelling and community.

Next, Justin Melillo, CEO and co-founder of Mona, reveals Mona's dedication to an open metaverse. Mona’s platform enables digital creators to take assets across different games, creating a flexible and interconnected metaverse. Justin also highlights the role of spatial computing, including innovations like Apple Vision Pro, and how Mona’s SDK is empowering developers and enhancing the creator economy.

Lastly, Alun Evans, CEO of Freeverse.ai and co-founder of LAOS Network, explains how LAOS Network is transforming NFT minting. By eliminating traditional blockchain bridges, LAOS Network provides a low-cost and secure solution for NFT creators across EVM chains like Ethereum and Polygon. Alun details how this scalability allows developers to create vast numbers of NFTs, from gaming assets to real-world applications, in a seamless, efficient way.

This episode of Edge of NFT is  sponsored by LAOS Network, the cutting-edge blockchain platform simplifying and scaling NFT minting across multiple chains, helping creators deploy assets at scale with minimal cost and complexity.

Please enjoy!

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Key Topics Covered:

  1. The Rise of Ordinals on Bitcoin: Sandman explains why Bitcoin’s Ordinals ecosystem is gaining momentum and how it harkens back to the early days of Ethereum.
  2. BitDOG's Community-Driven Model: Insights into how Crown Studio and BitDOG are using meme culture and cross-chain engagement to build an inclusive and vibrant Web3 community.
  3. Mona's Vision for an Open Metaverse: Justin Melillo discusses Mona’s mission to foster interoperability, allowing creators to move digital assets between virtual worlds and games.
  4. Spatial Computing’s Role in Web3: Justin elaborates on how spatial computing, particularly Apple Vision Pro, is redefining immersive digital experiences.
  5. LAOS Network's Efficient Minting Solution: Alun Evans explains how LAOS Network’s low-cost NFT minting solution supports developers by offering seamless cross-chain communication without the need for bridges.
  6. Scalable Blockchain Assets for Games and Real-World Applications: Alun describes how LAOS Network enables mass NFT minting for game assets, invoices, and beyond.

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:

  • Sandman on Community and Meme Culture: “Meme culture isn’t just about profit. It’s about story and community, and that’s at the heart of BitDOG.” – Sandman 
  • Justin on Interoperability in Gaming: “Our aim is to build a system where digital assets can accrue value as they move from one game to another.” – Justin Melillo 
  • Alun on Scalable NFT Minting: “The power of LAOS is in making mass minting affordable so even smaller projects can participate in Web3 without high costs.” – Alun Evans 

For the full transcript, see further below. 

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About Our Guest

The Sandman

Sandman – President of Crown Studio and managing partner of BitDOG, leading the 10k PFP Rune NFT collection on Bitcoin and actively building community-centered IP in Web3.

Justin Melillo

Justin Melillo – CEO and co-founder of Mona, a pioneering platform for an open, interoperable metaverse, empowering creators to move digital assets across virtual worlds.

Alun Evans

Alun Evans – CEO of Freeverse.ai and co-founder of LAOS Network, a revolutionary blockchain platform enabling scalable NFT minting across multiple blockchains without bridges.

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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. 

Full Episode Transcript:

Josh Kriger:

Hi, everyone. This is Josh Kriger here with Richard Carthon, cohost of Edge of NFT. We are live in New York, NFT New York, with some new friends and, having a lot of fun here. Today, we have none other than the Sandman on the show. It's great to have you on.

Sandman:

Likewise. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Josh Kriger:

So, for those that don't know, he's deeply involved in the Web 3 community, and, spare time has also been engaged across ETH, Bitcoin, Solana, Polygon, since NFT, and he also serves as president of Crown Studio and the managing partner responsible for overall strategic direction, execution of the BitDOG, NFT k Runes collecting mint on Bitcoin, coming up. This is part of a media partnership. We're we're we're definitely excited about this one. Looking forward to working together, to get the word out to everyone about what you guys have cooking, and, a little more context. You know, Crowd Studio and and BitDogg are are partners for this, airdrop, and let me let me redo that. And a little bit more context, BitDogg, is sort of produced with Crown Studio, which is a really interesting collective we'll get into. And, again, it's a 10 k PFP runes collection, we're gonna break down. Good to have you on the show.

Sandman:

Thanks. Yeah. Appreciate you.

Josh Kriger:

So so we started to talk about this, beforehand, but you have a really interesting background in the space, and you've seen a lot of cycles. It seems like you Kelley focused on finding communities that you could really connect with and be involved with deeply. Maybe you can kind of touch a little bit more on the genesis of of Crown Studios and how it relates to sort of your passion in this space.

Sandman:

Yeah. Well, for anyone that doesn't know about the youth community, right, it really was built around creators. Right? When you think back to the youth list and the fact that that community was was effectively built, for the ability for creators to come together, and it was curated for that. Right? Everyone went through the application process. We literally melted the Internet, right, with with that whole thing, and the benefit of that was that there was just a trove of different artists, creators, entrepreneurs, people who, like, really all kind of believed in the same vibe.

Josh Kriger:

And that was approximately?

Sandman:

Gosh, man. I would say probably 2 years ago, year and a half ago. Yeah.

Josh Kriger:

So, like, 10 years in web free time, but yeah.

Sandman:

Yeah. I know. Dog dog ears. Right? But, so it was very unique in that respect. Right? And then the second piece of it that we realized and so Crown Studio was founded, about 2 years ago. Right? And it started off just as people who were kinda of trying to create a DAO, if you will, around a trade. Right? And it was like, oh, we all have crowns and you know, whatever. It quickly evolved, though.

Sandman:

And so, as things started to evolve, we started to have more and more artists join, started to have more and more business people, and there's a person who was a Harvard trained doctor and cancer researcher. AI? We have somebody that is a founder of an animation studio. AI myself have been in the industry for a very long AI, since 2012. A couple of who are in different marketing capacities, and so we looked around the room, and we realized we had quite a bit of talent. And and so, and we also realized that there's a big contingent of people in Web 3 that maybe aren't here to go trade. Right? They're not professional traders. They don't know how to do technical analysis. They don't, there's gotta be other ways to, like, grow and make money in Web 3 that doesn't necessarily require, like, flipping bags.

Richard Carthon:

Oh, definitely. And, I mean, being here at NFT NYC, we're we're here with those communities whether they're here I mean, not just for the flipping the bags, but for the communities. We've we've gone to several side events with several huge communities that have been built throughout the years, and some are OG. Some are new to the game, but there are a lot of different people from different backgrounds from all over the the world and country. And so, like, having launched Yoots and and and having that type of experience, now you're here with BitDo. Like, why are you choosing this moment now to enter the ordinal space Mhmm. And and enter into Bitcoin and and to to go this route and start this project.

Sandman:

Yeah. Well, I mean, as soon as I learned about the Bitcoin ordinal space, and it started evolving, which is still very, very young, but AI guess the number one reason for me personally was, it really gave me old school Ethereum vibes. Like, it was it's the AI, wild west. Everyone is building, you know, very bespoke parts of the ecosystem. It's very immature and raw in terms of the technology capabilities compared to Ethereum, certainly, and Solana. And everyone's really building kind of in parallel towards something, but it's kind of hard, right, because you don't know exactly what you're building towards or how you're going to configure with something else, some other product or app that somebody built. And so through that, to me, technology very much becomes art more so than just a science, right, or something like that. And I think that's kind of the ethos of what you see within Bitcoin.

Sandman:

Right? The communities are AI, and people are there for the art and for the communities, which was kind of the way it used to be on Ethereum before everyone started, like, all the farming and, you know, flipping and all that. And so you kind of have that vibe there on bitcoin, and Josh like this open landscape of places to go build. And so when Crown Studio, who has a lot of crossover with the old OXBT community, there's a lot of community members that were in both, and and so we realized as rooms were starting to launch out that there was going to be a real opportunity here, And, and we of, like I said, really figured out how to put together a game plan around, first and foremost, having a great IP and something that people are really going to attach to and because it always starts with that. Right? We're benefited from having a large community to begin with, so there's about 15,000 wallets, existing with the old BRC NFT of 0XBT. Right? And that, also extends through to the folks in the Utes and d AI community, from Crown Studio and all of that. So it's a pretty good cross chain of community members that are coming in.

Richard Carthon:

Yeah. And one quick distinction I wanna make because I I think it's really important, especially for a lot of our newer listeners that are getting into ordinals. When he says runes, that's basically just saying, like, a token on top of Bitcoin.

Sandman:

That's right. Yeah. No. It's essentially a an altcoin. Right? Just like you would see a different meme coin on ERC NFT or you see all the, you know, the memecoin on Solana, right, the SPL tokens. Bitcoin has not had that to date. Right? That's really what twenties were, but from a functional standpoint, they, I would say the user experience wasn't the same, certainly. Right.

Josh Kriger:

So, you know, I can relate a lot to your background in the sense that I I I come from, you know, corporate culture. You know? I've I've worked across a number of different industries, including food tech. And I think one thing that's interesting about all this and and what excites you is some people may see some contrast. I mean, you work with Mercedes Benz and AT and T and and Disney, you know, and HR Block. Right? These are big brands with, fairly, particular and pristine, you know, brand reputations, in in where IP has, like, a long, long life, probably, you know, way before you you you Janney you got in the boat to help them. Right? They had a so my my assumption here, correct me if I'm wrong, is what excites you about this space is the chance to leverage what you've learned about longevity and IP and to create new IP, from the ground up at this moment in time based on everything you did know with some fun new technology. Is that is that fair to say?

Sandman:

It is. Yeah. And I would say the biggest difference that I've noticed, between web 2 and web 3 is the organic community development, and I think that really is the sauce. And, you know, you deal with these large brands that spend, you know, tens of 1,000,000 of dollars to get audiences and traffic and viewers and all of that, but, like, how authentic is it? Right? And, are those your super users? Right? Your you know, your power fans, if you will. And then you ship that lens over to web 3, and, you know, these startups, they didn't have tens of 1,000,000 of dollars for marketing budgets. Right? So they, you know, they had to be gritty. They had to find out how to drive virality and social content. They had to go out and and really drive organic connections and, you know, mobilize communities to be evangelists, right, which, you know, is marketing power.

Sandman:

Right? And the statistics the statistics will show you that, you know, programmatic or paid media, the conversion rates are going down year over year over year because we're all being inundated with ads, right, at the end of the day, and more importantly because we're inundated, even if you give me a discount let's say you find a $10 discount on a browser somewhere, right, for for a hotel, I'm probably not going to click it. But if you said, yo, go stay at this hotel because I love this place and I had an awesome time there, I'll book it. I don't even care what the price is. Right? And so people are more likely to engage with and, probably make buying decisions, based on what their friends or peers are doing. Right? And that capability, I think, comes out more so in organic based content and media, especially with user generated content.

Josh Kriger:

Okay. So circling full circle here back to this project, BitDogs, which is essentially a there's a meme element to it. Right? We've been talking a lot on the show this week about, you know, the trend towards meme culture in in our space. It seems like it's it's the only thing that we can't escape right now. It's it's all over Twitter. There's a lot of of multidimensionality to what's happening in the space in gaming, the metaverse, and infrastructure. It seems like it's been sort of covered up. At the same time, there's some depth to BitDogs in in in in what you guys are are trying to achieve here that's sort of built on this meme culture.

Josh Kriger:

And I think this is an opportunity for us to explain to everyone, what's really going on with this this meme mania. So maybe you can kind of unpack it for us and, like, how you're looking at the the broader meme culture and how you're looking at this project and and how it might be distinctive from some of those broader trends.

Sandman:

Yeah. Well, I mean, certainly right now, meme culture and meme coins are all the meta. Right? I mean, the last several months, that's really been most of where the market activity has been. I think people like those sorts of cultures because they're fun at the end of the day. Right? It's NFT, like, super crazy expectations or road maps or anything like that. It's mostly about brands and IPs, right, and story at the end of the day, and I think that's what people are connecting to is, you know, it's kind of rooted in different elements of humor or of cultural connection within the Web3 community, and that's what people really mobilize around. Right? And so I think the best elements of meme culture are really rooted in in IP and in storyline, and and that's really where we think BitDogs is really going to shine. Some of the folks that work at the Crown Studio actually work in Hollywood building movies for large animation studios including writing all the movie, the AI, all the scripting, and all of that, and so BitDogs actually has a full storyline written, and, all the content that everyone will start to see will start to play this out.

Sandman:

It's actually Satoshi's dog, and they kind of come through a vortex, and the dog loves to dig in the grass and in the yard. And when he starts digging in the yard, out comes a couple of runes. Right? And those runes are the token, and so the next vector of that NFT you start to think about what historically has been really cool about meme coins, we said it's story and IP. What, what it didn't have was identity. Right? The old versions of the coins, you just had a logo of the coin. How How are you going to PFP that? You're not. Right? Well, now you have that personal connection because you not only have the coins, but you have a PFP and some badass art, right, that you can really go out there and represent. And so at the end of the day, we think that's going to drive, take advantage of what's really good about meme culture, right, which is the story and the AI, but have more of a AI.

Richard Carthon:

And I like the lore of it. Right? Like you said, people get behind a story. They get behind a community, and they get behind different ways that they can interact and be part of ultimately what's being created. And you talked about it earlier, and I AI gotta bring it back. The team that you have has a lot of experience in being of, not just amazing art, which you shared some with us, which sick. Can't wait to share some of this with y'all. It looks absolutely incredible. Huge.

Richard Carthon:

It it it's it's fire, bro. And, I'm I'm excited to see some of that, but being able to have that amazing art, being able to put this story and lore together and then tie it all in together between the, the ordinal piece and the token piece and, like, having it all fluidly come together. Like, talk to us about, like, how has this journey been for your team to kind of compile this together? And, of course, you have some pretty big things happening pretty soon, with all of this. So tease that up

Sandman:

a little bit. Yeah. The Janney, it's been a learning process for sure. Right? Anytime you're doing a community based project, it's really exciting because there are a lot of people who have a lot of really cool talents. Maybe they've never had an opportunity to be involved in a project launch. So people are donating their time literally for free, like, to launch this, so that's really cool. The the learning side of it is, you know, just finding the right level of organization, right, and who actually makes decisions for things. Because you talk about DAOs and, okay, we're all gonna sit around and vote and do all these things.

Sandman:

At the end of the day, it's not efficient. And, No.

Josh Kriger:

I mean, when you're doing a project, you're having to make, like, decisions every 6 seconds.

Sandman:

That's right. Exactly. And so you Janney, like, okay, Well, let's take a vote on this one. Right? But, you know, you you almost have to self elect those. You have to create roles. You have to say, okay. You're a project manager. You're, you know, the editor.

Sandman:

You're the artist. You're the, you know, the the content strategist, the marketer, And so, you have to really identify those, and you have to build structure around it. And that was probably the biggest, opportunity that we had when we first started through it.

Josh Kriger:

And how long ago was that?

Sandman:

Gosh. Well, for Crown Studio, it started, like, 2 years ago.

Josh Kriger:

Okay. So you you you've gone through the growing pains. But for this project, when when this

Sandman:

We started working on this, gosh, I'd say about 3 months ago. Nice. Yeah. So, and that's really a combination of about close to 30 people, about 10 to 15 from Crown Studio and the balance from the BitDogs community, and NFT all different talents and backgrounds 30 person team that's kind of banded together. And, otherwise, it's very similar to any, like, legit launch you would see in, like, a traditional web 2, of, legit launch you would see in, like, a traditional web 2, campaign launch.

Josh Kriger:

And can you speak to any any other aspects of, like, the composition of the BitDogs community that you came together with? Like, you know, what's the background of this group? What connected you to decide to do this project with them?

Sandman:

Yeah. So, myself, I mean, I was involved with previously the 0xbt, BRC NFT community, AI, pretty much from Mint, and a lot of the folks that are involved in this have been, AI, and that was a really cool project. It was actually one of the first out there that did that on BRC20, so it was kind of the OG, if you will, with BRC 20s. And, you know, there's a lot, as I mentioned, a lot of crossover of people within different communities across Ethereum and Solana, and and so, the goal for BitDogs really is how do we start to introduce opportunities for people outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem to have a good price point and come in and start experiencing these things called ruins and, you know, ordinals and all these things, right, because we've all seen those collections that are more dominant in the space now, and they are I mean, they're exploding. Right? And there are a lot of people, I think, that got sidelined. They didn't know about it or they got priced out, and they became way too expensive, and they're really just waiting for that opportunity in our view to have something that's got really cool art, a good price point, and something that kinda, you know, strives onto this whole narrative with ruins, which if you look within the bit you know, the Bitcoin ecosystem, the next 6 months are gonna be all about Roons. Kelley, I mean, it hasn't even launched yet. So Right.

Josh Kriger:

We've got The Havating, and, Casey Radmore was here at NFT New York, which was really interesting to see him on stage. And, you know, at all the after parties, it's just AI, I'd say 50% of the the audience is Orlando's fans. I AI, certainly, it's it's a it's a whole different vibe than just a year ago. We're really excited about this project. Is there anything else on the road map that we didn't touch on that you Josh wanted to mention?

Sandman:

You know, I I think as we start to roll out the the BitDogg brand and IP, you'll continue to see a lot of story develop out of BitDogg. Right? So we've kinda laid the groundwork for that now. Right? From a Roon standpoint, there's still a lot of unknowns exactly how that ecosystem and marketplace is really gonna unfold, but what we do know is that we crush it on IP. We have some of the best artists and creators in the space, and so if we just stay really connected to what we're best at, which is content, IP, and, and really building good communities, especially communities from different chains altogether, that it's gonna be successful. Right? So it's kind of one of those Josh focus on what you can control and, you know, let everything else, you know, be what it is. So we're super confident, and AI think the art's gonna speak for itself. Maybe I'm biased, but I think it'll be top AI art out there on Bitcoins.

Richard Carthon:

Hey. It it really looks that good. So, like, I I don't I don't think that's too bold of a statement. But so people are listening to this. They're excited. They're like, oh my gosh. Like, I wanna be a part of this community. You know? What are what are places that people can go and learn more?

Sandman:

Yeah. So, check out BitDogg's Twitter for sure. We've got some content on Crown's Club, studio as well on our, Twitter Edge, And, yeah, just make sure you put notice on, man, April 17th. So it's just about 2 weeks away.

Richard Carthon:

Awesome. And, you know, we always like to give a moment for for shout outs. Right? There's a lot of work that goes into making this happen, and a lot of people, like you said, that that have spent time without necessarily getting paid. So, like, this is a moment for you to be able to to shout out and and give some kudos to the people.

Sandman:

I wish I should have wrote down a list before. There's so many of them, but, of course, everyone crowned studios. So a it starts with AGZ. Like, she's the artist behind this. This is really her her coming out party in in a way. She's AI she's one of my favorite humans, and, she Josh she put her, you know, her heart and soul into this collection. Kelley Horse, Twix, Coub, Els Cadet, Van Gogh, AI, the list goes on. Chef pretty much everyone.

Sandman:

Chef, Kenny, those guys all do a great job, really building the Crown's community and the AI community, so that's gonna be a big part of the folks that we obviously wanna bring in amongst others. And then over on the BitDox side, of course, Skittles is the president over there. Bonds, Loco. Gosh. I'm missing so many here. I'm gonna feel bad, but, sorry if if I missed you guys. There's a whole And

Josh Kriger:

everyone else.

Sandman:

Man. Dude, I'm telling you, there's, like, literally over 30 people.

Josh Kriger:

We just wanna put you on the spot AI see if you can name all your and name all

Sandman:

one thing. If you just give me a list, yeah, whatever. I'm down by

Josh Kriger:

No. No. AI I'm sure everyone on the team has sort of contributed here and, looking forward to to the drop. So, thanks for, hanging out with us today and, you know, AI to sort of see how all this unfolds and appreciate your perspective in the industry. So thanks for hanging out.

Sandman:

Appreciate you having me. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you.

Josh Kriger:

Alright, everyone. It's now time for Edge Quick Hitters. Edge Quick Hitters is a fun, quick way to get to know our guests better, and there's 10 questions we're looking for. Just a short or single few word response, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. How about that? NFT, you up for it? I'm with it. Alright, man. What's the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?

Sandman:

First thing I remember purchasing, a Yo Yo.

Josh Kriger:

I had one of those.

Sandman:

Yo yo yo yo king.

Josh Kriger:

You you were able to do all the tricks and everything?

Sandman:

When I was younger. Yeah. But they didn't have the fancy yo yos that they do now.

Josh Kriger:

Now it's like it's cheating. It's like yo yos on training wheels.

Sandman:

I know. Right.

Josh Kriger:

And what's the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?

Sandman:

A, Ghostbusters figurine toy. Yeah. And I was heartbroken by it because I didn't wanna sell it, but I got a good offer.

Richard Carthon:

Oh, man. That's tough. Well

Sandman:

Paper handed it.

Josh Kriger:

Oh, paper handed it.

Richard Carthon:

That'd have been a really cool collectible, especially now that a ghost brush is coming back around. They got the new movie out.

Sandman:

So Yeah. Yeah. I'm A collectible is probably worth something now.

Richard Carthon:

Oh, definitely. So if you could buy anything in the world, and we're talking, like, digital, physical, service, experience, that's currently for sale, what would you buy?

Sandman:

What would I buy? I'd probably buy a JPEG, and I'd probably buy an OMB.

Richard Carthon:

Okay. Okay. Both of those are solid. If you could, pass on any of your personality traits to the next generation, what

Sandman:

would it be? I would say that's a hard one. I don't know how many I'd wanna pass on, but, no. I would say, focusing on inputs rather than outputs. Yeah. I think a lot of people focus a little too much on outcomes and get distracted through the process.

Richard Carthon:

Yeah. I'm really glad with that answer, man. Now on the flip side of that, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits for the next generation, what would it be?

Sandman:

So Xiidama's got a lot of lists. But, yeah, I would say, my detail orientation. I'm not the most detailed guy. I'm more of a big picture idea guy.

Josh Kriger:

Alright. Well, that that was fun. And we we always like to sort of end with a bonus question when when we do this. There's a little bit of a theme to this episode. So the the bonus question for you is, who is your favorite superhero of all time

Sandman:

Josh, let's see. And why? Wolverine. Yes. He's just an absolute g, and, like, no way you could take him down. You thought you took him down, and he gets back up. And,

Josh Kriger:

You you kinda have that, like, Wolverine esque vibe and, like, voice too. Like, it's a little little gruff, but, like like, you know, everything that comes out of Wolverine's mouth, you take very seriously.

Sandman:

Right? Oh, yeah. Well, low key, I actually am Wolverine.

Josh Kriger:

Okay. So facts. There you have it. Edge quick hitters.

Josh Kriger:

Hi, everyone. Josh Kriger here, co-host of Edge NFT AI at NFT New York. I'm here today with Justin Malillo, who's the CEO and cofounder of Mona. We've talked on Twitter spaces and caught up on the show, but it's been a minute.Good to have you back on. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah. So for those that don't know, Justin's the CEO and cofounder of MONA, which is a 3 d creator economy for the metaverse. And in his previous roles at Magic Leap and DreamWorks Animation, he helped build the world's 1st AR digital human AI, and volumetric capture experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. Yeah. It was a crazy time.

Josh Kriger:

Yep. And, you've also sort of worked with a number of different household musicians such as, Lizzo, Pearl Jam, Cardi b. That's

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. Designing, AR NFT experiences for, you know, social platforms AI Snapchat, Instagram. Yeah. Those are those are a lot of fun too.

Josh Kriger:

Nice. I just, had dinner the other day with someone that that helped get Cardi b over to a bar mitzvah party.

Justin Melillo:

Really? And

Josh Kriger:

she had a great AI, apparently.

Justin Melillo:

That sounds a we should do a show. AI. I wanna hear about that. Yeah. That sounds Kelley interesting.

Josh Kriger:

I I wish I was there, but she was she was enjoying herself, apparently. So, you know but but you guys have have been really busy building, so I'd love to better understand, what's going on with this idea of the open metaverse? Where are we at now?

Justin Melillo:

Let's talk about it. Yeah. Well, at Mona, you know, our mission is really to accelerate the growth of the open metaverse. I think, you know, we hear about this concept of interoperability. We hear about the metaverse. The reality is that many platforms today, across gaming, you know, there are these walled gardens. Developers benefit from keeping, you know, their own closed economies, keeping users in their own ecosystems. But I think when you talk to users and when you talk to developers, everyone gets really, really excited about the concept of being able to bring your asset from one game or one platform or experience to another.

Justin Melillo:

And so at MONA, we are dedicated to actually building that and actually making it happen. So getting a lot of platforms bought in on this idea, building a lot of first party content in collaboration with communities, and also hosting many build a thons game jams, where developers can essentially use our SDK, leverage, different layers of composability across our stack so that players can take avatars they own, wearables, AI spaces, use them not only in Mona, but they can also use them across other platforms and other games and in a way that adds value to, everyone in in the network.

Josh Kriger:

Cool. So let me try to unpack this a little bit because we've had we made on the show. We've had comp to us on the show. We we we work with Gala Games.

Josh Kriger:

Are these gaming companies NFT to throw anyone under their bus? Are they open to this idea? Is this something that's welcomed by the community?

Justin Melillo:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I was just at GDC a couple of weeks ago. I actually stopped by Avalanche booth. They had a massive gaming booth there if you were there. And I chatted with so many developers there, and, you know, they were talking about their game and the avatars you could buy and the power of And I asked, well, can I actually use this somewhere else? And they said, well, you know, you can. It's on blockchain.

Justin Melillo:

AI said, okay. But, you know, there's no way for me to actually do it. And he's like, no. And I was like, well, if there was a way, would you be interested? And he flat out said, yeah. He was really excited for it. There's no there's just no way to do that now, and so we're really excited to be solving this issue.

Josh Kriger:

So is this sort of like having a credit card that lets you sort of convert miles to different denominations? Like, I mean, is is your gun in one sort of metaverse gonna be worth the same amount of value as it is in another? How do you deal with those types of wrinkles?

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. I mean, it's it's a really good question. There are different layers to it. I think there's the technical layer, and then there's the layer of the economy and, you know, who benefits and what the financial incentive is like. Right. The technical layer, the good news is this problem is, for the most part, solved. There are many standards that are built around this notion of interoperability. You know, if you've heard of GLBs, it's a 3 d file type.

Justin Melillo:

It's basically like the 3 Janney is

Josh Kriger:

it SanPort

Justin Melillo:

GL GLB? GLB, it is actually, I have to get back to you on that. Okay. Good.

Josh Kriger:

I'm not the only one that doesn't know that.

Justin Melillo:

Alright. Cool. But it's basically AI the the JPEG of 3 d. Cool. And, what that means is assentially you can render a GLB in JavaScript in 3 JS, you can render it in a game engine like Unity, Unreal, and it all, for the most part, looked the same. So there are these standards around 3 d assets, but there are a couple of issues that kind of make it difficult to integrate, which, you know, we're working on and which we solve with the SDK. But, you know, to your point and your example, it is kind of like the notion of, I have this this gun in one game, and it performed a certain function. You know, the developer of another game can actually have the authority to say what kind of function it performs there, and it could be very similar to the first game or it could be entirely new.

Josh Kriger:

In one game, it could be, like, grab a bullets, and the other, it's shooting bubbles. Bubbles. That that literally was my thought.

Justin Melillo:

I think you were in my head because I I literally thought of a bubble gun.

Josh Kriger:

I was like, that'd be fun. Right? Like, I have this, like, crazy other than I'm playing some more, like Exactly. Kids, adventure, fantasy, game and yeah. That that that's really interesting to think about.

Justin Melillo:

What's great though is that also to your point of, you know, how value accrues to the object. You know, today value accrues around an object based on your achievements in a game, you could say. Right? Yeah. But now what's gonna be great is that those achievements will carry with you with, you know, through ownership of the asset. And so it'll become even more valuable when you bring it over to the next game and those achievements carry over as well. So what we're really working to do is make, an additive and win win system of value for everyone in this network that owns all these assets.

Josh Kriger:

Oh, yeah. I just came home with this idea that I have to say on the on the air because it's it's it's too amusing to to not share, at least to myself, which is like you could have a a a sort of gun for toys drive on some game in another metaverse where you get someone to donate all their, like, guns and convert it into toys or another game.

Justin Melillo:

Josh? Yeah. I mean, there's something there. There's definitely something there. We should build that. I I love that idea.

Josh Kriger:

Alright. Well, anyways, you can you can steal that one.

Justin Melillo:

But it's Alright. There you go.

Josh Kriger:

On the record, and we should mint this moment to make

Justin Melillo:

sure We'll make sure you get the royalties on that on that

Josh Kriger:

Appreciate it. So, there's also this other sort of aspect of of the metaverse, which is sort of special computing. And, of course, we've been talking a lot about the Apple Vision Pro app. It's pretty exciting. How does that relate to what you guys are up to?

Justin Melillo:

So, we firmly believe that the future of the Internet is gonna be immersive. I think when we think about the metaverse, many people think about this image of Of Player 1, of all of us being fully immersed with avatars in games. That's definitely a part of it. Basically, where spatial computing comes in is that next evolution of that. So you have virtual reality, you've probably heard of augmented reality, extended reality, mixed reality, all the realities. Basically, spatial computing comes into play. It was actually a term that we were using at Magic lead. Apple is also using the term, and it's it's a new take on the idea of augmented or virtual reality. I think they call it spatial computing Kelley because it's a new way for us to not only interact with content, but interact with computers, with operating systems.

Justin Melillo:

It's a more spatial context. If you've tried the Apple Vision Pro, you'll see the user experience is based off of your eye tracking and a simple hand gesture of a pinch instead of AI a click on your laptop or a tap on your iPad. And how this is gonna come into play is basically, you know, if we look NFT, 20 years into the future, these devices are going to come are going to come to replace all of our phones, all of our tablets, essentially all of our screens and computers NFT. And we as humans are gonna be able to interact with content in a way that is much more conducive to how we interact with the world around us. We live in a 3 d world. So we're really excited for spatial computing, very excited for the Apple Vision Pro, and soon Mona is gonna have an app where, I believe it'll be one of first apps, if not the first, where you can actually interact with digital assets in your wallet in a new way, pulling them into the world around you and starting to play and share them.

Josh Kriger:

Okay. So we just had a show earlier, with this really cool new web 3 superhero NFT project. And we talked about Sora and the ability to these heroes to then, you know, enter into movies. So I am kinda curious as as we talk about these objects and how they can interact. Is there an element of AI filmmaking and sort of interaction that's possible here that that is sort of that Mona can help facilitate?

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. I I love that. Absolutely. I think with AI, there are a number of implications there. For example, like, you could program an AI and, you know, give it to Janney avatar and have it perform a certain behavior or task or, you know, actually learn more about, you know, what they're doing, interacting with different players. Yeah. There's so much potential here. Imagine bringing an avatar into your real world, giving it a, you know, an AI brain, and then it, you know, performs that behavior of function and starts learning about the world around you as well, and you can interact with it in a way that feels very real.

Justin Melillo:

It kind of reminds me of the project that you alluded to earlier when I was at Magic Leap of Micah, this digital human, that was just standing right in front of you as though, you know, she were actually there, and it was all driven by AI. So very similar concept.

Josh Kriger:

Very cool. So excited about all of this to come and great to catch up. I guess there's a a a something going on now that you guys are promoting a NFT Mona claim that people can take advantage of.

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. Absolutely. So with spatial computing, with this entering this realm of 3 d, I think it's a very exciting time when you think about 3 d collectibles, 3 d assets, and 3 d NFTs. There are a number of really fantastic artists, creators, and communities that, have launched already, 3 d objects that exist on Ethereum, Polygon, you know, a number of different chains. But what we're realizing is that if you compare the amount of 3 d assets to the amount of 2 d assets or, you know, moving images that are on chain, it just pales in comparison. So we're really excited as a platform to elevate 3 d creators, 3 d artists, game designers specifically. And through the Mona claim program, every week we're gonna be highlighting a different Carthon. And so anyone can come to the site.

Justin Melillo:

They're gonna be limited edition, but you can actually have a chance to claim a free 3 d Of all through monaverse.com and start filling your wallet with these incredible three d works of art that you can then use across the Mona ecosystem.

Josh Kriger:

What are some of the artists that you'll be featured?

Justin Melillo:

So we just launched this, you know, and we're gonna have some, you know, posts that are gonna go out about the the artists that are in the queue. I can't say too much about it now, but if you go to monoverse.com now, we're first featuring Auggie Worlds, who is a veteran VR artist. He's been in the NFT space for a number of years, and is just one of the most incredible 3 d creators.

Josh Kriger:

Kelley, a lot of fun to to give all these folks a a platform to showcase their art and and do that type of collaboration. Anything we didn't cover that you just wanted to mention before we Jeff? I think that's

Justin Melillo:

that we we covered a lot. Yeah.

Josh Kriger:

Thank you so much. I mean definitely covered a lot.

Justin Melillo:

Yeah. We're well, you could find us at a number of upcoming conferences, like NFT and NFC Lisbon. But, yeah, otherwise, we are we have the call out for anyone who wants to help build the open metaverse. We're looking for developers to join us, 3 d artists who wanna wanna build with us as Kelley. So come find us at monoverse.com or on Twitter at monoverse.

Josh Kriger:

Cool. And what's your Twitter right now?

Justin Melillo:

Mine is Justin m Malillo, AI on Twitter. And Awesome. Of is at Of.

Josh Kriger:

Alright. Well, thanks for coming by, Justin.

Justin Melillo:

Thank you so much, Josh. Appreciate it.

Richard Carthon:

Alright. This is Richard Carthon. We're live here at NFT NYC, and I'm here speaking with doctor Allen Evans, with Laus Network. Really excited to have you here. He's the CEO and founder of Freeverse dot AI and the cofounder of Laus Network. He is a visionary in the tech and blockchain spaces with over 2 decades of experience with his work at shard.io, AI, and most notably, Barcelona World Race, where he pioneered the 1st video game allowing real time competition in simultaneous real world sporting event. Meanwhile, Lao's network is revolutionizing the net NFT landscape with its seamless integration for minting and deploying vast numbers of assets across blockchain networks AI Ethereum and Polygon AI the gas fees and congestion woes. This approach not only simplifies asset minting for creators, but also enriches player engagement through tradable dynamic assets like platforms AI OpenSea.

Richard Carthon:

So, let's go ahead and jump in. So NFT, very great to have you here. Hopefully, you've been having a great experience so far. So, from collaborative 3 d content creation to online retail and fashion, online gaming and beyond, you've been super busy in your career. And, you know, you could've gone in

Alun Evans:

a lot of directions. Like, what brought you to web 3? Yeah. So interestingly, about 5 years ago, my cofounder, one of the 4 cofounders of of of Free Verse and now Laoss Network, and a good friend of mine, Tony, he called me, and I'd worked with Tony 15 years ago. And, Tony is a man with, 30 patents to his name. Wow. He co invented the technology, which is now known as Dolby Atmos in cinemas. He won an Oscar for it very just this year, a few weeks ago. Wow.

Alun Evans:

And so when the man calls you and he says you have a good idea, you tend to listen to it. Right? And at the time, I knew nothing about blockchain, and, but he'd fallen in love with it, and he came to me and explained that he had the vision. And wouldn't it be cool, he said, if you could have, you're playing a video game, and you could, like, Kelley the thing in your video game. You'd NFT hours, like, building up your magic sword or your player in your football game or whatever it is, and you could sell that to somebody else for, like, real money rather than just in game content. I thought, well, that would be cool because it'd be more fair. As you as a gamer, you'd NFT so much time building up this and leveling up your character or whatever it is. And then to throw it all away and someone might buy it from you, I think I thought that sounded really interesting in it. And, and so I dug into it, and I also fell in love with the blockchain.

Alun Evans:

So here we are.

Richard Carthon:

Man, that is full circle, and and, yeah, you take that call. You you Yeah. You don't hang up on that. You you take that every time. And, with that recommendation, you are now in space, and you're building it. You're you're talking about it. And, you know, one of the things that you brought up and is a challenge within the blockchain space is as these assets are being created, having a seamless experience from, integrating digital assets across multiple blockchains are being able to do exactly what you said by you just you did all this work. You got this really awesome asset, and now you want to either move it somewhere else or sell it or whatever it is.

Richard Carthon:

Like, how is Laos going about making that seamless? So one of

Alun Evans:

the things that we've noticed that even in the in the bull run of sorry. The bear market over the last few years, if you look at Ethereum and its various layer twos, you know, the polygons and the optimism, the arbitrands and so on, around about 20% of the transactions on Ethereum are minting transactions. So people minting NFTs, right, which is great. And, NFT an NFT on Ethereum is expensive. Right? It costs a lot of money. And so one of the things that we thought that that was sort of holding things back in many spaces. Right? Holding back people who want to create, digital collectibles and and, you know, create really cool collections and artwork because it's expensive to mint as NFTs. It's holding back the deployment of tradable assets in games because if you've got a 100,000 gamers, which is not a lot lot in a game, you're not gonna gift them all NFT if you happen to pay them a lot of a lot of money to mint that, even if it's on Polygon, which is which is much cheaper.

Alun Evans:

And in also in things like real world assets, I mean, people are now tokenizing things like mortgages and AI real estate, but they're not tokenizing things like invoices or or even they're trying to tokenize gold, but even that's expensive because how many gold bars are there in the world. Right? So it gets expensive to mint at scale. And so what we wanted to do and we've always wanted to do is create a a way where it's, manageable and viable to mint at scale whilst keeping the actual ownership of those assets in the mature ecosystems, such as Ethereum or or now Polygon or or or its layer twos or Ethereum's layer twos. And so what we've done with LAOS is is exactly that. It's it's a new layer 1. It does nothing else apart from mint assets. That's the only thing it does. You can't deploy smart contracts on there.

Alun Evans:

You can't trade assets on there. You can't do any DeFi on there. It just mints NFTs. That's the only thing it does. And what it does is, thanks to some clever technology that's part of the the Polkadot ecosystem, is that it connects without bridges to any EVM chain. So the actual ownership of the assets and the trading of the assets happens on Ethereum or Polygon or Base or wherever it is, but the properties of the assets are stored in a NFT system on Laos. And what that means is that you can mint a regular ERC 721. It appears in OpenSea or Rarible.

Alun Evans:

Whatever it is, it's tradable there. But instead of paying ETH to mint that asset, you paid naught point naught naught naught naught 7 of a Laos token to do so, which is very, very cheap.

Richard Carthon:

Yeah. That, Wow. So breaking a lot of this down, when you talk about, like, truly making something very niche and very focused, this is very focused. Right? NFT. A 100%. And because you're building on on Dot, which I'm a fan myself of of Polkadot and what they have going on and for all the listeners, I have a Polkadot show on just to show it. And and there's a lot of great things that they're they're helping to build, but making it to where it's it's bridgeless and it's just happening synergistically across all these these platforms is is very powerful. And you you brought up this technology piece, and it brings up question I want to ask you because, like, recently your CTO published an article on bridgesly connecting other platforms, which is, again, a really interesting concept. You kinda broke that down for us. Us. What is that core concept, like, that's your your layer 1, like, not really needing a layer 2 because of this seamless bridging?

Alun Evans:

So one of the the problems with, connecting blockchains is is bridges. Right? And so if you want to connect one blockchain to another, you know, usually, you have to build a bridge. And bridges have problems and that they, you know, they're very well documented problems of security and trust and so on and so forth. And there's lots of great work which has gone into to building those things. What Polkadot have worked with over the last few years is the idea of cross chain messaging, so the idea that one of the parachains of Polkadot can refer to another one via a agreed upon standard. And what they're doing now with the 3rd version of the of the XEM, the cross chain messaging, is they're creating this thing called universal location. So the idea here is that rather than having just a a system for, power chains within the Polkadot system to refer to each other, They're actually proposing as a system that all different consensus systems can refer to each other and refer to specific locations. So, for example, you can think of an analogy might be, you know, when you type into a web browser, you put in the the URL of the of the server you want to go to, and that that breaks down to some numbers which goes to a particular machine in a particular place in the world. And so idea of universal location for consensus systems, and you say, well, for example, slash Ethereum slash smart contract number slash asset ID, and that might be a generic universal location for a specific NFT. And so we're harnessing that, to link Ethereum and its other and all the other EVM chains to, the Polkadotec system in that way. So that's AI of the way we're using it.

Richard Carthon:

And I think that is a very great strategy on, like, how to approach this challenge of bridges. As you said, some of the biggest, hacks that have been out there have been through bridges. And as long especially in the world of NFTs and, like, how a lot of this comes together, people always looking for vulnerabilities and and and people have had experiences with badminton or or people coming in and, like, kind of disrupting how everything goes. And y'all are taking a lot of approaches to go away with a lot of these challenges. And so an another thing that y'all have going that I think is really unique, is the universal node, which is a pivotal innovation, that is unique to Laos. So can you kind of just explain this a little bit more, and and how does it apply to your ecosystem?

Alun Evans:

Yeah. I mean so you can if you want to mint let's say you want to mint an NFT on Ethereum tomorrow with Laos. It it's very straightforward. You connect to a an Ethereum node. You connect to a Laos node. You do have to deploy a smart contract on Ethereum, right, once, and that smart contract points to Laos, right, if you like. But you do have to connect 2 nodes, an Ethereum node and a Laos node, which is fine. Right? But wouldn't it be cool if you could connect to 1? So, what we're building at the moment as well is a single node.

Alun Evans:

We call it universal node, which combines a regular EVM node, which you could connect to Ethereum or Polygon or Optimism or wherever, and also, a Laoss node built into it. So that means that you're kind of, like, combining the 2 things to make it even easier for developers to build. So rather than having to deploy here and deploy there and then connect the 2 things, it's just like a one single call, create a new NFT on Ethereum, but actually behind the scenes, it's doing it with Laus. You're paying with Laus tokens, of course, but the NFT appears, as a regular ERC 71. You can import it into your MetaMask. You can trade it on OpenSea, and it's all easier for the developer to use, basically.

Richard Carthon:

I love it. Simplification, making things cheaper, making it safer. Like, I like, those are the types of things that innovations that are gonna keep pushing, NFT adoption and making things happen at a faster rate. And speaking of you are a speaker here at NFT NFT. And yesterday, you were on a panel with, Bally's and Metacort and Superfast Games on interoperability, which has kind of been a theme of today's conversation. So web 3 gaming is a huge part of the space. And for our listeners that couldn't make it out here, can you kinda just give us an overview of, like, what was discussed in that conversation?

Alun Evans:

Yeah. I think one of the things that I'm particularly interested in is, how can, you take an asset from one game and use it in a different game. Right? And it's kind of like a pipe dream for many gamers. Right? Like, my daughter plays Minecraft. She wants to take something out and use it in Roblox. Right? And, like, tried to explain to her, you can't do that. Right? AI, why can't you do it? And you can't do it because they're different games. They have different IPs.

Alun Evans:

They have different art pipelines. They have different, you know, tech developments. They they build different engines. It's just not possible. But if you have this concept of, and the and the biggest blocks at the part of me is that, how can I prove that I own something in one game and another game? AI? Right? Because, you know, the those 2 games are not gonna share their database access. Right? So they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna say, oh, do you know Allen Evans? No. I don't or whatever. They're not gonna do that unless they come to some sort of high level agreement.

Alun Evans:

And, of course, with the blockchain, we solve that problem. Right? And so you solve this idea of of who can own it. Now you still have these major problems of, you know, art and development and so on. But one of the things that allows us, which we're not pushing so hard on the loan, but it it it does do, it allows you to extend the metadata of any, NFT out there already. So say you have an Janney NFT for a sword in a game, you can be another game, and without asking anyone's permission, you can Josh add metadata to that NFT and say, okay. With that sword, now in my game, it has power 10 or experience a 100 or whatever it is. And then you can create your own artwork for that sword, whatever it is. So if that user comes into your game, they can demonstrate they're the owner of that sword.

Alun Evans:

They can use it in a different way with a different art style, a different IP, and different everything else in that game. And so I'm really interested in that. I think there's a long way to go on that, so we're kind of not pushing it as a big thing of of right NFT, if that's possible. But I'm really fascinated. I'm I hope that we get to that stage in the future AI, as a as a gamer, I would love to be able to take my hero from, you know, Baldur's Gate 3, which I'm currently right into, and take it into, you know, Dragon's Dogma 2, which is coming out next week or or it's just coming out now. And I'd love for you to do that, but you can't do it yet. So

Richard Carthon:

I love that you're building it, and I love that you're having that conversation because it's something that I've always, like, thought about myself just with, like, some of these RPG games and and AI world games. You you spend so much AI, like, creating your Right? I'm a 100

Alun Evans:

and 10 hours in Volsgate 3 NFT, so far.

Richard Carthon:

It's just like It it Josh, AI, I have this really awesome thing. Like, what if I could just start bringing it somewhere Kelley? And even if it doesn't come with all the power, it at least has, like, maybe some of these special, like, features that you can then, like, keep, like, adding on to it and, like, eventually, you have this super sword that goes across, like, all these different games and like AI Janney want that, right? And so like that part is AI super cool, super critical, and I think is like something that is very much worth, like, creating. And I'm glad that y'all are going down that path. And so for AI now, for game developers that are kind of interested in exploring the, you know, potential of fully on chain games and these, you know, cross platform NFTs, like, what would you encourage them, to do? And, like, how can they either be part of Laos or or or how can they start to, like, dive deeper in building this type of future?

Alun Evans:

So I think there's a a a couple of messages there. One is that, I still think that we're figuring out the best way of running a player driven economy in a game. I think we've all kind of agreed now that, we're we're beginning to agree that blockchain games or web 3 games are not a thing, but blockchain in games and web 3 in games is of AI viable thing, and it is something that I think the gamers will want when it's presented to them as a as a in a fair way that's beneficial for them rather than clearly being some sort of, like, you know, speculative, you know, thing. Right? That was the that was the the negative feedback. So if if I were a game developer and we say to the game developers who are building on ours at the moment is is think about how, you know, a player driven economy is going to work within your game. And, also, think about how if you have this idea of it doesn't actually cost me any money to mint NFTs. Right? And they're dynamic NFTs that can be upgraded based on what the gamer does. So if you have a 100,000 players or a 1000000 players, excuse me, then you can gift them all an NFT for free.

Alun Evans:

Right? And therefore, it's worthless. That NFT is literally worthless. It has no value. Right? But then their player can upgrade that NFT by how they use it, by how many monsters they kill, how many races they finish, or so on and so forth. And so the value of that asset to somebody else becomes based on how it's being used rather than just simply how rare it is. And I think if game developers go in that direction, I think we're gonna create some things that will be of genuine value to the players, and I think it will see much wider adoption.

Richard Carthon:

By far. And I also think you're creating a new economy that a lot of people that are in this space, especially whether you're in esports or NFT, you're just a hardcore gamer. It's it's something that will open up the doors for so many next gen current generation, next generation players to to go and experience that. So so as we kinda wrap up here, like, you're looking at Laos. You recently just had your auction on on Polkadot, and you have a lot of other exciting things, I'm sure, on the horizon. Like, what are what are what's next? Yeah. The next thing is to get as as many, builders building stuff on Laos as possible. We're gonna be running hackathons.

Alun Evans:

We're really interested in exploring the real world asset space as well and partnering with people that are are, you know, beyond gaming. You know, how how can we tokenize invoices? You know? As I mentioned, gold or certificates or things like AI. There are things that don't need to be on the blockchain. Invoice is a classic example. Things don't need to be on the blockchain, but it makes a whole lot of sense that they are on the blockchain because then there's an absolute immutable proof that this was sent in this date and it was paid in this date and so on and so forth. But you're not gonna mint an invoice on Ethereum right now because you're probably gonna spend more on minting fees than you are on on on the cost of the invoice. Right? So I think there are lots of things to be explored there. I think they're still a bit green.

Alun Evans:

I think there still Janney to need time for those those to those to mature. AI I'm really excited to to go in those directions. And, you know, we have our grand program in place at Laos. And so, builders who want to come along, we're happy to help support you to to help create your your dream as well and, help bring our dream to to reality reality as well.

Richard Carthon:

So I know the work, Grant, makes a lot of people excited. So for everyone that's been listening or and is very curious to learn more about Laos and everything that's going on, how can they connect with you, and how can they learn more about Laos?

Alun Evans:

Yeah. So the best thing they can do is follow us on x slash Twitter, whatever it's called these days. We're at Laus Network. Can follow me at alunthomasevans, a l u n Thomas Evans. And then go also go to our website. Right? So lauusnetwork.io. AI, you can see our community. You can join our Discord, and you can find information about our grant program there as Kelley.

Alun Evans:

And, and, yeah, get in touch. Love to hear from people.

Richard Carthon:

Excellent. Well, this has been another amazing episode at NFT NYC. Really excited to spend time with Alan and learn more about Laos. And everyone, make sure you go check it out. So thanks again. Thanks very much, Richard.

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