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In this episode of Edge of NFT, hosts engage with various leaders in the Web3 space at NFT Lisbon, discussing the integration of Ordinals and NFTs, the launch of the Sandbox DAO, and innovative approaches to music distribution in the decentralized ecosystem. Key highlights include insights on market trends, community engagement, and the importance of creative custody in the evolving landscape of digital assets.
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Key Topics Covered:
- Integration of Ordinals and NFTs: The podcast discusses the unprecedented collaboration between Ordinals and NFT communities, highlighting the growing interest and curiosity around Ordinals at events like NFT Lisbon.
- Market Resilience and Growth: Despite claims that Ordinals and NFTs are "dead," the conversation reveals that the ecosystem is experiencing steady growth, with over a million downloads of the Xverse wallet and ongoing user engagement.
- Decentralization and Community Empowerment: The introduction of the Sandbox DAO emphasizes the importance of decentralization, allowing community members to participate in governance and decision-making, thus fostering a more inclusive and democratic ecosystem.
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:
- "When everybody says, or not everybody, but when people say, hey, ordinals are dead, I'm just like, guys, come on. I know it's a good meme but you know realistically it's bullshit." - Jan (00:05:40)
- "To get adoption, you need cultural authority. So the artists will lead the way, which is why it's so important for us at Ledger to work with artists and double down on our commitment."- Arielle Wundgraf (00:22:20)
- "We want to make sure we get great proposals at first, show a good example, and then leave the community to run itself." - Cyril (00:38:05)
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Jan Smejkal LinkedIn
- XVerse LinkedIn
- Ariel Wengroff LinkedIn
- Ledger LinkedIn
- Violetta Zironi Website
- Cyril Forté LinkedIn
- The Sandbox DAO LinkedIn
- Yat Siu LinkedIn
- Shannon Snow @shannonsnow_sf
- Frédéric Montagnon LinkedIn
- Jean-Michel Pailhon LinkedIn
- Ordinals Website
- Transient Labs Website
- Pizza Ninja Website
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Full Episode Transcript:
Josh Kriger: Hi everyone, welcome back to Edge of NFT live at NFT Lisbon. Shout out to our friends at Pizza Ninjas for bringing us over to this amazing event and get to hang out with someone I keep running into. I was just at your event at Ordinals Asia. Yeah. This is Jan, the CSO, Chief Strategy Officer at Xverse. Man, a lot's been happening the last few months. I'm sure it's nice to be able to take it all in now and not be running a conference where the only thing you're taking in is the tactical side of that conference. But it was a great event, by the way. I think, what's your thoughts on the fact that we're now seeing this integration sort of an Ordinals event within an NFT event? I think this is fairly unprecedented with this type of cross-pollination. It is. What does that signal to you?
Jan Smejkal: Yeah, I mean, the signal is pretty clear, right? Like if you look at 12 months ago, we have been pitching this kind of collaboration ever since Ordinals really took off. Right, so we have been in the space from the very beginning, from day one, obviously with Trevor, we have been building a community through the Ordinal show, we have been on spaces every week just like never giving up on Ordinals, even though everybody is saying for the first time that like, hey, it's dead, it's not gonna go anywhere, which is obviously bullshit. But yeah, I think we have been pitching this kind of collaboration between NFT communities and obviously kind of integrating Ordinals into it since the very beginning. And this is the first time it's actually happening. So I have to give props to Trevor for making this happen, because I think… And John. Obviously, John is hosting this entire event. So shout out to these guys because I think we're going to see a lot more of it moving forward. I think it makes sense. I think Ordinals have established themselves as the asset. They're not going to go away. There's going to be some ups and downs. Obviously, it happens in every ecosystem. You know, I could claim that NFTs on other chains are a lot more debt than Ordinals. If you look at some of the metrics and if you look at some of the floor prices, etc. But ultimately, yeah, I think this is a great stepping stone. I don't know, like, like the real data, like how many people we actually onboarded these two days. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to figure it out, but probably 5,000 people came here these two days, and they have heard about Ordinals, if they didn't before, or if they were just kind of like, oh, what is this Ordinals?
Josh Kriger: Yeah, and it starts with that curiosity, like, oh, something's happening. And then you kind of go deeper from there. 100%. So I should disclaim to our listeners that I use your wallet on a daily basis, so I have some bias because I enjoy the product. And what I'm really curious about, we'll talk about the product after, I want to know about the data. Like this idea that Ordinals are dead, NFTs are dead. You have a wallet that's sort of a key connector to the marketplaces. People are buying and selling it. What does the data tell us about where we're at in terms of the state of the market?
Jan Smejkal: Yeah, I mean we have basically been growing nonstop. since the beginning of Ordinals, just because we are the first wallet that actually supported Ordinals. And to some extent, I do believe as well that we have kind of the most comprehensive product offering when it comes to Bitcoin, when it comes to Ordinals and all of these other protocols around it. And so I think that the data, the data, it's pretty clear the ecosystem just keeps on growing. Obviously, there's always ups and there's spikes because, for instance, around halving with runes, we have seen an incredible amount of interest just… Are you able to talk about specific numbers at all in terms of… I don't think there are specific numbers. We have posted publicly that we are way above 1 million downloads already. And so, again, that growth has been incredible and I think we just keep on growing even today. When people say ordinals are dead, there's still a lot more people that are coming through. As I said that there are going to be events like runes, there are going to be events like certain collections launching where you're going to see a massive interest. You know, we have seen a massive interest thanks to things like, for instance, when Memeland was farming for Arsic, one of the runes, you know. And so we have seen an amazing spike in interest into Reverse and into Ordinals. And so there's always going to be those kinds of events that onboard like tens of thousands of people within a very short period of time. But even beyond it, we just still see very steady, very organic, very healthy growth of downloads, of the usage, and even certain other things that people actually use on a daily basis, on a regular basis. They're not just like, okay, I'm going to download it, I'm going to get some airdrop from Pizza Ninjas, which is something that is happening throughout this conference, and then I'm going to forget about it and never use it again, right? That's not really what the data is telling us. It's like people just come. and open the app every day, check it. Some of them obviously trade very proactively and degen really, really hard. But even if you're not that extra super hyper degen, you're still using that product on a regular basis. You said you use it every day. I do use it every day, obviously. And there's a lot more people like that. And so that's what we see. And so I think when everybody says, or not everybody, but when people say, hey, ordinals are dead, I'm just like, guys, come on I know it's a good meme but you know realistically it's bullshit.
Josh Kriger: Yeah we saw like you know the size of the Asia Ordinals event and you know all those side events that you know spun off of that event there were over like 700, 750
Jan Smejkal: We had a lot more than that actually, I mean we had around like 1100 people signing up for that event and you know not everybody showed up obviously, but we had had I think around 900 people coming through you know the event and the after party and you know maybe even some people that just sneaked in you know which always happens.
Josh Kriger: We're always fuzzy in Web 3. Yeah, because people don't necessarily follow the rules.
Jan Smejkal: We try to make sure that obviously people cannot do that because it's not fair compared to the other people that actually bought a ticket early. But you cannot 100% prevent that from happening. It was a great event, man. It was big. And to your point, the momentum was crazy, right? When we started thinking about doing that event in the first place, I was like, in my mind, I was like, what would be a success criteria here, right? And in my mind was like, hey, let's have like 400 people. And if we can do that, then it's going to be a huge success in my mind already, if we can do it in a way that people actually enjoy the event. And we have had more than double that. And so to me, it just tells you that the energy is strong. And yes, it's not always going to be straight up to the moon, all assets going crazy, ballistic, everybody making money. Obviously, that's not how it works in Web3 in general. And so people just have to have realistic expectations. What I'm super excited about to see is that the core group of people, the people that are real builders, investors into those builders and people that really care about this ecosystem here on Bitcoin. It's organically growing and you can see that people are just showing up to events around the world. Like I'm here in Lisbon, I'm usually in Hong Kong, but I flew in just for this, you know. And I'm probably going to fly to another. I'm going to be in the US in one or two months attending a bunch of other Bitcoin and Ordinal events. And so you see that this core group of people that really kind of make that ecosystem happen just keep on showing up. So like, it's not that.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, we also have all these interesting Bitcoin L2 development folks like BitLayer that were part of your event. They're in Austin right now, though. They're represented here, too. So I think that convergence is really interesting where there's a new narrative around Bitcoin where it was this incredible store of value that you had to explain to your parents and your siblings and your web 2 friends. But now there's more to it. How do you go about explaining where we're at now, where it's like, just kidding. It's actually, yes, it is a store of value, but there's a lot more you can do in that ecosystem. How do you explain that to folks that maybe previously you were talking about it as just a store of value? Because it's a different conversation these days.
Jan Smejkal: It is a very different conversation. I think ultimately, I think it just takes time. Right. Because there are many groups of people that will think about Bitcoin differently. And I think that's right. That's correct. I mean obviously, sometimes we meme it and sometimes we make fun of people, but it's really it's really just for the sake of memes. I really love to hear and see the diversity in the Bitcoin ecosystem. There's always going to be a certain group of people that will only look at it as a store of value, that will buy it, store it on their ledger or any other cold wallet and never touch it. And just like, OK, let's stack sets. And it's great if you do that. Just keep on doing it if that's what you want to do with your Bitcoin. But beyond that, well, maybe let me put it this way. In the past, that was the major narrative. It was the only narrative like Bitcoin is really just a store of value. Right now, we have kind of flipped that on its head. And now we're kind of seeing what else you can do. Now, people are talking about art on Bitcoin. People are talking about meme coins and shit coins and fungible tokens on Bitcoin. And people are starting to talk about, as you said, like, how do we make Bitcoin more usable? How do we kind of add more programmability? How do we scale it? Like, should we do another soft fork or not? And so I think that these conversations are important and they have to exist. Because otherwise, like, like Bitcoin is not going to be relevant in a way that maybe other cryptos are because people just get hyped about something else, you know. And so I think the fact that we have this diverse conversation and people are experimenting and doing things that maybe are true to themselves, it's great. And not all of these things are going to win. Not all of these things are going to be successfully turned into a billion dollar companies. Of course not. Some of these L2s are going to succeed. Some of these or maybe most of them are going to fail. That's just what it is in startups in general. And so I think that's very important to understand. And I'm just super excited to see that people actually want to do shit with Bitcoin. I think that's the most important thing. And we should celebrate creativity. We should celebrate people spending their time and people spending money trying to actually build something. Of course. Are we going to see a lot of scams? For sure. I mean, that's what happens everywhere. this world not just in crypto. And so ultimately, yes, like we have to work as a collective to support the ones that are actually building real things that add value to as many people as they can. But it's progress. So we're still at the very beginning of it. The L2 narrative just started, really. So we cannot really make any conclusions. We'll see where it's going to be in two, three years from now.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely. So speaking of building, it's the day-to-day building that makes products great. And I know X-Force is continuing to iterate on your product. I've seen those changes in the app and the experience. Adding the Rune sort of interface is really cool. What's next on your roadmap that you can share?
Jan Smejkal: Man, so many things. I mean, ultimately, when it comes to X-Force, there's always like 35 things that we have to be doing and we have to be improving. Top 5 or top 3? We're very demanding and I'm a big user of the product as well and I'm on my team every day like guys. We need to change this, we need to improve this, we need to do that.
Josh Kriger: So in my food tech company we call that the yeah buts, right? You want to get rid of all the yeah buts, like this app is amazing.
Jan Smejkal: But I want that yeah exactly and so you know I think immediate road map you know what we are working on you know we're doing a lot of stuff kind of underlying in front to improve you know stuff so that people don't really have to think about like OK. why this UTXO and this UTXO and why do I spend more money on fees because I have way too many UTXOs and stuff like that. There are these problems that if you're not an advanced user, you're not going to understand what I am even talking about. But these things exist and we need to kind of abstract them and we need to make sure that a casual user, somebody who is new to here, doesn't really get overwhelmed by this, right? And so we're really working on these kinds of things kind of like under the hood that maybe it's not going to be something that you see in the UX, UI, et cetera, like immediately when you open the app, but we really want to make sure that their experience is as smooth as possible. You know, we're also obviously working with a bunch of other companies that are developing on the Roons protocol and the Ordnos protocol. You know, making it better allows people to mint edge runes more easily and allows people to trade runes more easily. We're working on integrations with many different platforms in the Ordinals ecosystem to integrate them into the X-Royce wallet directly to make sure that you don't have to figure out, okay, where do I go? Where do I go to sell it? You just click one button and it's done, right? And so that's the stuff that we're really kind of like spending a lot of effort on right now. But at the same time there's always a lot of things to improve. There's a lot of tiny bugs that happen that people report. Oh, I would like to improve this. Why does it work like this? So we have to address those things as well as we go as we grow the company.
Josh Kriger: Cool. That's exciting. I'm just kind of curious. You said over a million downloads. That's a lot of downloads relative to sort of what you might expect for a Bitcoin-focused wallet where you have OG folks that had their wallets they were using, you have the exchanges hold a lot of this, the government holds a lot of this, and then you have like a fairly tight-knit Ordinals community. Where are all these downloads coming from and how are they hearing about your product?
Jan Smejkal: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, there are a lot of users in crypto that maybe obviously know about Bitcoin, but they were not really using Bitcoin before. They were all degening on other chains. And so we definitely see the majority of people that are playing around with NFTs on Bitcoin, Ordnos, with obviously, Runes, etc. They're coming from other chains and rediscovering Bitcoin again, because now, oh, cool, I can actually do some cool stuff with Bitcoin. I can buy some meme coins, I can buy a dog, I can buy some random meme coins because it's fun. That's what people want to do. That's what degens like to do. And so many of those issues come from there. Obviously, we also are converting some of the Bitcoin users that were not really using Bitcoin. They may have a wallet. that the Bitcoin sits in, but it's not being used. It's not like they're like transacting with Bitcoin every single day. And so many of those users are also kind of like trying it out and like, okay, I can maybe buy this art, I can buy this, I can make money here, I can make money there. And so ultimately, I would say most of these are really coming from the existing crypto ecosystems, just rediscovering Bitcoin. And also like in the process, we're onboarding new kinds of Bitcoin users and reactivating some of the old Bitcoin holders into and turning them into actual users. Because I wouldn't say that Xsource, even though, yes, we have had this milestone of like a million plus downloads and we just kept growing since then. So it's a lot more right now. You know, I wouldn't say that in terms of the number of wallets, we're the biggest one yet, right? Because as you said, there's a lot of these like dormant wallets that like to have Bitcoin, but they're not really doing anything with it. And that's probably millions of people. And then you have these exchanges, also millions and millions of users that have Bitcoin just on the exchange account. And so I wouldn't necessarily say that Xores is the biggest Bitcoin wallet, period. But I think we're the biggest Bitcoin wallets. where people are actually using Bitcoin every day and doing something with it. Because if I have my Bitcoin in Sparrow, I usually just have it in a cold storage and I don't really do anything with it because I cannot even use Sparrow Wallet to connect to a marketplace, you know.
Josh Kriger: It's very clear your focus is on daily utility. How can I open up this wallet and do something that is meaningful to me today? Exactly. If you want to, but it also works as a store. If you just want to hold your Bitcoin, that's fine.
Jan Smejkal: Yeah, I mean, it's a hot wallet at the end of the day, right? So I would never recommend anybody to store a lot of assets that are worth a lot of money in a hot wallet, right? Ultimately, if you do that, you should at least connect it to Ledger, which you can do with X-Source. You can connect X-Source to Ledger, and then you can use it as a cold storage interface type of thing. But ultimately, yeah, wear a hot wallet similar to MetaMask. You want to use it for your Web3 applications. You want to connect to a marketplace. You want to deal with these things. And if you get lucky, or if you're really that good that you make a lot of freaking money, then you should probably put it in your cold storage. That's what you should do.
Josh Kriger: Practical advice. Thanks Jan for hanging out and catching up and doing all the things that you do to support the ecosystem. It's great to spend some time.
Jan Smejkal: Thank you so much, man. I appreciate the interview.
Josh Kriger: Hello, everyone. This is Josh Krieger, co-host of Edge of NFT, live at NFT Lisbon. And this series of roadshow conversations is powered by Pizza Ninjas. I just got here with a red eye. I'm ready to go. I'm here with Arielle Wundgraf, who's the executive producer and VP of communications at Ledger. And we've been chatting for a while. It's great to meet you, Arielle, and catch up on what you guys are up to.
Ariel Wengroff: No, thank you so much for having me on. It's the beauty of this conference. You get to meet people that you haven't had the chance to meet yet.
Josh Kriger: Is this your first time in Lisbon?
Ariel Wengroff: No, this is our third year at NFT, which is amazing. It's so fun to see so many familiar faces and just be able to reconnect with people that you know so well. There are some newbies as well, which is great.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely. And I guess you were telling me you had a big announcement today, the Ledger Stacks launch. Yeah, that's right. That's Stacks, S-T-A-X. S-T-A-X.
Ariel Wengroff: There's other Stacks in our industry. Yeah, and it goes like this. It's actually magnetized. It was designed by inventor and godfather of the iPod, Tony Fradell. And it has Ledger's uncompromising security. And this is something that we had to work really hard to be able to produce at scale. yeah it's really beautiful looking yeah i mean it's the world's first curved e-ink display and on top of that you can personalize the spine and you can personalize the face of it with your nfts so we really see this as like the next standard for secure secure wallets and logins what you can do with it
Josh Kriger: Very cool, very cool. Well, congrats on that.
Josh Kriger: All Alright, so yeah, so Ledger's coined this concept of creative custody, and I know custody is such an important topic as we kind of get into this mainstream adoption world, so many stories of sim swaps and hacks. And we don't need more of that. We want a real, true, bold market, right? So tell me more about what you guys are doing there.
Ariel Wengroff: Absolutely. I mean, every year is the worst year for cyber attacks and crimes, as you said. So now, as there are more creators and collectors building in this space, we want them to understand how to secure their value, how to use it, and how to do that on a daily basis. So we've worked with many different artists and communities, from Bright Moments to Grand Noon to Buck Render to more and more. It's something that's important to us. We couple education with creative value and we do a lot of custom ledgers. So creative custody is really our expression of that and we know as we continue to grow and be chain agnostic, that'll be a key component.
Josh Kriger: It's been really interesting to see sort of the evolution of the NFT space and now, of course, ordinals. Obviously, art is sort of core to it, it's added a lot of culture to our industry. You know, speculation only goes so far, but it hasn't been easy for the artists during the bear market. What's your sort of aspirational vision of where art and sort of cryptography fit together moving forward?
Ariel Wengroff: Well, art leads revolutions. I mean, you need a crisis usually to create a response, which is why Bitcoin and cryptography came out of the 2008 financial collapse. But to get adoption, you need cultural authority. So the artists will lead the way, which is why it's so important for us at Ledger to work with artists and double down on our commitment. We actually have an NFT collection at Ledger that we know one day will be worth the same as JP Morgan's art collection. And so we continue to work with different artists and community leaders across the world. It's very important to us. And even when the bear market was happening last year, we doubled down on our commitment to creative resilience and that's why we're at NFT again. It's not necessarily the largest trade-fi conference, it's actually about people who care, who are creating and building and they're getting thousands and thousands of people to build with them and that's how you start a movement.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I remember back in the day when I lived in Washington, D.C., Busboy and Poets was sort of leading the charge with the renaissance of some of the most vibrant areas of Washington, D.C. now. And it started with, like, bringing the artists and the poets to that part of town. And then, of course, like, we have to make sure that we keep supporting them, right? Because often, especially if there's any parallel and sort of the world of industrialization, artists oftentimes get forgotten later and not acknowledged for their contributions at the jump.
Ariel Wengroff: Yeah, I mean, it's been really interesting because so many brands in the last year walked away from the artist commitments that they've made or from the conferences that they've made. And for us, it's like, That's everything. That's your trust. That's your experience. That's your relatability. Because if you don't have sound, you don't have words, you're teaching something new, you have an emotional connection. And that's what art does. So we believe in it really deeply. And it's been fun with Ordinals getting into space, like even Jack Butcher and some of that work. We're huge fans at Ledger. And when we see something new happening, we're like, cool, we want to work with that person. We want to be as chain agnostic as possible.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't have seen, like, we're right next to the stage for the Ordinals Lisbon, right? We wouldn't have expected that last year, right?
Ariel Wengroff: No, 100%, which is why I love it. And then, like, the room is filling up, and that's a testament to that.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely. It's getting louder. The next talk is about to begin. But it's great to have a chance to chat in person. We'll dive deeper on a future show, for sure. Anything else on your roadmap you want to cover before we jet?
Ariel Wengroff: I think the most important thing for us is making sure folks who need self-custody get access to a ledger and educate a friend, make sure that you're staying aware. But Saks is shipping today, and we have more surprises coming this summer. So stay tuned.
Josh Kriger: You can just go to Ledger's website and social media, and if people want to follow you, what's your handle on X?
Ariel Wengroff: On X, it's just at A Wengroff, so you can look it up, and yeah, more to come.
Josh Kriger: Alright, thanks Ariel. Hi everyone, Josh Krieger here, co-host of Edge of NFT, lives at NFT Lisbon. This roadshow is powered by Pizza Ninja, shout out to those guys. And I'm having some really fun conversations with leaders in the Web3 space and got to catch up now with Violetta Zaroni. It's great to see you. Last time was in LA when you performed at our VIP event. So it's been a minute. Yeah. Where are you based these days, actually?
Violetta Zaroni: I live in Nashville.
Josh Kriger: Oh, cool. So, two United States guys are heading over to Lisbon to see what's going on. What's the vibe here? What brought you to NFT Lisbon?
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, I'm actually performing downstairs at the Ordinals Lounge thanks to the Ferrum Network and Paimon Studio. They flew me out here to do a couple performances and I just spoke in a panel as well.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And what's your take so far? I know it's day one, right, in terms of what the community is like over here in Europe.
Violetta Zaroni: Well, I'm from Europe, actually. I'm from Italy, and I only moved to the United States two years ago. So it's actually pretty good to come back and see that there is a very thriving community. I've never been to Lisbon before, but it does feel like it's one of the hubs for Web3 and crypto. Absolutely.
Josh Kriger: It's been 20 years for me, and I've been wanting to come back. It's just been there's so many different events around the world, but the timing just made sense to come and see what's going on. And we have an Ordinal stage, right, which is, I think, a good sort of segue to the conversation I wanted to have with you, because I know you've always been looking at pioneering ways to sort of advance distributed music and decentralizing, getting away from the Spotify and iTunes of the world. And it sounds like you've been doing some experimenting with Bitcoin. Can you tell us more about that?
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, for sure. For me, the more decentralized you can get, the better. Obviously, I don't necessarily believe this is the way for every music artist, but I do definitely want to try and provide an alternative way for musicians to make a living and expand their communities. And so last year when I heard about Ordinals I immediately dove in and I started inscribing one-of-one songs to really embrace the Ordinals theory you know the one-of-one sats and everything and also like trying to establish this narrative of one-of-one music which is not really a thing. People don't really collect music as unique pieces and you can do that now on Ordinals.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I guess there's like people that have collected albums historically, like signed autographs albums, but even them, I mean, those are multiple edition prints, right? It's not like one. So how's that going? Like, how has the world responded to this concept of one on one?
Violetta Zaroni: You know, when you try to explain it to people, it makes sense to everybody, but they feel really stupid that they haven't thought about it until that moment. And they're like, how did I not think about this until now? You know, because it does totally make sense. I personally have purposely not sold any of mine because I think we have plenty of time and this is only the beginning. And I think like we were saying on the panel earlier, scarcity and longevity are keys in this ecosystem. So, yeah, I'm in no rush.
Josh Kriger: Cool, and what kind of music have you recently released? What do you have coming out soon?
Violetta Zaroni: I mean, I've recently, to be honest, just been building and touring a lot. Like, I just released two albums in one year between 2022 and 23. It's just been nonstop, 15 songs or so. So for the past year, I've been, for the past six months or so, I've just been traveling and performing and building connections and have another tour coming up at the end of summer.
Josh Kriger: Now, is that going to be the decentralized tour that you were, tell us a little bit more about that. I think it's a really interesting concept.
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, I want to prove a point. I want to prove the point that a musician who's using Web3 to build a community can also go on tour and do a sold-out headline tour around the United States without the need for a booking agent, a manager, or a label. But they can do it themselves, leveraging their community. So I've asked my community to tell me where they live and basically provide a venue and invite all their friends to every show. And so we're going to have about 50 people per show and onboard every single one of them. through music to Web3. So yeah, it's ambitious, but we're going to do it. That's amazing.
Josh Kriger: I mean, it's sort of like a more decentralized version of like SoFar Sounds. That's right, exactly. Which is great for those that aren't familiar with that. And it totally works.
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, we'll see.
Josh Kriger: That's cool. So is that going to be a global tour?
Violetta Zaroni: U.S. first. We're going to test it, of course. And then if it all goes well and smoothly and actually we do manage to onboard a bunch of people, then we're going to go to Europe next year and then Australia, South America. This will be a fun chance to see some cities that you've never been to and catch up with some cities that you already have… Although it's going to be like three shows back to back in different cities and a day off then again. So it's going to be very hectic. But I just want to bring music to people that would not get music otherwise, you know.
Josh Kriger: Cool. What are some of the cities you're hoping to make it onto the tour?
Violetta Zaroni: I mean, I already know where I'm going in the U.S. I hope to go to Australia at some point. That would be nice.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. But in terms of the U.S. cities, what are the cities that are coming up?
Violetta Zaroni: I'm very excited to go to Arizona. I've never been to Arizona. I'm excited to go to Wisconsin. I'm excited to go to I don't know, like South Dakota these places where like big artists wouldn't necessarily go to, but like those people need music too, and that's what Web3 is about, like actually being inclusive to people that they don't need to move, like I want music to go to them, I don't want them to have to go out of their way to look for it.
Josh Kriger: I love that. So, taking a step back from what you're doing, as you're looking at the space, ruins and ordinals, is there anything in particular you're excited about that you've been sort of exploring personally?
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, I mean, I can give you a little bit of what I'm hoping to do soon. I would like to inscribe a music video, like a proper traditional music video with myself in it. Because I did some acting as well, a bunch of feature films as an actor. And I would like to shoot a music video with myself in it and inscribe it full length. So that's ambitious, but we'll see. Maybe there's a smart person in there that can help me.
Josh Kriger: Is it one of your songs that you already have in mind for that?
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, definitely. I can't, I can't say.
Josh Kriger: All right, I just have to wait for this upcoming opportunity. It sounds really exciting. And where can people go to follow you and sort of maybe join one of your tour stops?
Violetta Zaroni: Yeah, violetazzerone.com. You'll find everything there.
Josh Kriger: All right, thanks for hanging out.
Violetta Zaroni: Thank you.
Josh Kriger: Josh Krieger, co-host of Edge of NFT, lives at NFT Lisbon with some old friends and some new friends. Shout out to Pizza Ninjas for powering this amazing roadshow for us. There's been some announcements here. There's been some exciting news brewing for a while. Seb, always great to see you. We've hung out, I think, all over the world the last few months. And you've been telling me something is coming. And now that announcement has been made. So let's hear it. Let's tell our listeners what you guys announced.
Sebastian Borget: Exactly. As you know, we have a lot of things happening all the time at Sandbox. We just passed 5.8 million users. We have 1,000 experiences live. And just yesterday, we finally announced the Sandbox DAO. So it's a major milestone for us. It's really stepping forward, like decentralization. We started building the Sandbox using and incorporating blockchain technology at the core, Web3, NFTs, to provide freedom to the players and the creator for true digital ownership. Now we're leveraging this, setting up a foundation and leveraging the DAO to empower players and creators to have more autonomy, to voice basically their suggestion, to be able to vote, to participate in the future roadmap of Sandbox, define the priority on the development, define the abilities for players, the gameplay, the way that the rewards will be distributed, the amount of the reward for season or event, the way we should manage the lands, for example, that we have in reserve, and many other things that pertain not only to the sandbox platform, but the sand ecosystem in general, and all the initiatives that will continue to grow the metaverse and grow the sandbox as well.
Josh Kriger: It's really exciting, and in a moment we'll dive into that with the head of the DAO, who's also with us, but I guess to sort of Take off the conversation to get into more depth here. Why now? Why do you all feel like this was the right time to do this for the sandbox community? And what do we have to look forward to?
Cyril Forte: All right, thank you for having me here. It's the right time to do it because the Sandbox has been committed from the start towards the path of progressive decentralization. And like Samet has mentioned, everybody can go and create their own game on the Sandbox, right? So this is already empowering the creators. And now we want to take it a step further, which is now everybody can sign and then can actually participate in governing decisions, in the governance of the Sandbox and help grow the ecosystem by casting your vote, by making proposals. It's a natural step for us.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, right? We've seen a trend towards sort of giving power to the people. That's what Web3 is all about. And we build these things to create a different future, an economy of sorts that sort of lives and breathes on its own, right?
Sebastian Borget: Yeah, you're right. Actually, the first thing that we decentralize is the economy of the Sandbox. When we first launched the SAND token back in 2020, we really wanted to have the ability for people to buy and sell using the SAND token on the marketplace, the content they create, to buy the land, to participate as well in various activities and sometimes even outside of the Sandbox platform itself. So SAND has grown as a top 10 gaming token, a top 100 cryptocurrency, it's listed globally. And now, through the DAO, they can use their SAND, they can use as well their land, and we'll talk about it because it's quite unique in the way that it was designed, to express their voice, choose, again, how the roadmap should be made, and which project and initiative we should support. And why now? You know, it's been part of the white paper of Sandbox since we published it to progressively decentralize Sandbox over five years. We're roughly at year four of the project and it's time But we also wanted to make sure that we establish the right direction for this ship to sail, that we have the right product and technology for the creators to build, exciting experience, fun content, that we have enough content from the creator with a thousand experiences live, that we introduce the monetization mechanics for the creator as well to drive the creator economy. and to share the core value that we have as a platform. That's why also we will talk about the Council and the Advisor, like what they represent, a very inclusive metaverse, very diverse. We have 30% from Asia, 30% from Europe, 20% from the US, kind of like content, landowners, partners and more. And all of that should be reflected instead of decentralizing too early and maybe not giving really an idea of the potential and driving the direction forward. That's exciting stuff.
Josh Kriger: So Cyril, you have your work cut out for you. You're going to be quite busy evaluating all these different types of grants and creative ideas. So I guess you're geared up for that. How do people apply for the program? What's the criteria, the options that are available for grants? And then we'll kind of go into some tips for success, but first… Yeah, thanks for asking.
Cyril Forte: It's a great question. So, like I said, because we're committed to a journey of progressive decentralization, we're not letting organic proposals just pop out like that. We're helping people, curating their proposals. We're helping them along the way. So to answer your question, the process is very simple. We've got a website, soundboxdao.com. You can go in there, and there's a template where we ask you a series of questions. Anybody can go download the template, and anybody with a great idea can make a proposal. And then you send this template to a mail address, sip at soundboxdao.com, and my team will get back to you, and we'll help you create that proposal along the way as a way to make sure we get the best possible proposal that we put forward for the community to vote on. Later on, we'll release a little bit of this mechanism and we'll enable organically more proposals to see the light of day. But this is like our path to progressive. We want to make sure we get a great proposal at first, show a good example, and then leave the community to run itself. And we are alive. Yes, we have five SIPs live, right? So you can already go in there and vote.
Josh Kriger: So are there different levels where I imagine larger grants require a little bit more of a rigid process than short, smaller grants? Are there different tiers of grants?
Cyril Forte: It's all tailor-made for the moment. There's no official tiering per se. It's because it's human conversation with people, right? Because you realize that sometimes people, they have a great idea, but they don't know exactly how to process it, how to explain it, right? So this is why we're helping you along the way. Yes, we have a limited budget, but it's still a significant budget. It's a 25 million cent annual budget to support all proposals, so it's still a significant amount of money. But we can't give 20 million in one proposal, so we have to be reasonable as well.
Sebastian Borget: Do you want to spread it out geographically, creatively? Actually, it's a very good point. Maybe just to walk back, 25 million cent per year as a budget for the DAO is a good amount of money already to get started. One important thing is we also want to make transparency at the core of this DAO. So right on the sandboxdao.com website, you can see how the budget is being split between all the different verticals. And every time one SIP gets approved and the budget is deployed, you can already see the remaining budget balance. So any new SIP that comes, they need to be realistically aligned with the remaining budget, and it's going to be also revised by the council that we put in place. I think we should talk about a bit who is in this council, who are the advisors, ensuring as well that every SIP that we'll go through is actually really for the greater good of the platform, of the project, of the sound and the sandbox ecosystem, and not for the self-interest for a few people who could control the votes. And we work hard as well on those aspects of design, we'll tell you more.
Josh Kriger: I mean, there's a lot of lessons learned from DAO's the last few years, right?
Sebastian Borget: It's very challenging, like some landmines to avoid. It's hard to get things right when you want to decentralize, but we have enough like learning and takeaways from other DAOs that we inspired from, ApeCoin DAO, etc. So the two things we've done, and what's unique about the Sandbox DAO first is the fact that how votes are actually being counted. So you can use not just the token sand to vote, but you can also vote with lands. Because in Sandbox, as you can see on this map, the map and all the lands are essential. We have 27,000 landowners and 166,164 land in total. And landowners are active builders contributing to creating the open metaverse. So for each land, it will count as 4,000 votes, whereas for one sand, it's one vote. That means that we have a more balanced approach to our distribution of votes. 27,000 landowners own one or two lands on average. 250,000 sign holders who own 10,000 signs on average on their wallets outside of the centralized exchange. We did a lot of simulation. there should be no single party or group of people who can influence the vote just by themselves. So ensuring true democracy at the core and ensuring that Sandbox on the long term can subsist, can live forever, even without the team to be involved.
Cyril Forte: Any closing thoughts, Cyril, before we leave the chair? Go visit our website, propose your ideas, download our template, and don't forget to vote.
Sebastian Borget: And a quick note as well, a DAO would not be something if you didn't have a proper council behind. So we're really proud to have announced five council members that will ensure as well the review of the proposal and a fair process and alignment. We have Yatsu, the CEO and chairman of Animoca Brands. I think he needs no introduction. We have Shannon Snow, the CEO and co-founder of World of Women, with the largest community. We have Frédéric Montagnon, a serial entrepreneur with a strong background in Web3, a veteran. We have Jean-Michel Grayon, Jean-Michel Payon, who is ex-executive at Ledger, and also now the founder of Grail Capital, very versed in art, and myself as well. So we're all responsible for reviewing the proposal. And we are currently elected as well, so people can vote on the first free SIP, on the constitution and the composition of this council. And we'll be here to ensure the transparency and the delivery afterward of this SIP. And we have seven amazing advisors who also are very versed into what Sandbox is. They have built projects in Amoja, who is like a United Nations ambassador, supporting the Code Green project. We have a ZapShow. Loretta Chen who is building a studio in Sandbox, Matheus Vivian and Anthony Chow as well. So they cover different ground, different thematic. They all built something in Sandbox before. It's not about just influencing or influencing. It's about real builders as well.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. Well, I'm excited. I'm going to check it out. And as someone that sort of builds ecosystems in the community and tries to think about thoughtful ways to actually produce real KPIs, I'm going to be thinking about maybe what we can do at Edge to support the sandbox ecosystem. So absolutely. Thank you for that. And yeah, thanks for your time and excited about what's to come.
Sebastian Borget: Definitely looking forward to more decentralization.
Josh Kriger: Hi everyone, this is Josh Trigger with Edge of NFT live at NFT Lisbon and You guys have heard of comedy in cars This is a new Thing we're trying we'll call this Gab with Gabe, I like that. So basically Gabe is generous enough to include me in this very special edition drop he's doing at NFT Lisbon with his partners at Transient Labs. But you can probably talk a little bit more about this collaboration and what you're up to.
Gabe Weis: I don't want to distract you from… I got to charge my Apple Pencil for a second, so you're good. So, yeah, I've been doing three NFTs, plus a print for people, 101, where it's my style, so it doesn't necessarily look exactly like you, but it's going to be a cubist rendition.
Josh Kriger: I actually prefer that. I'm more into interpretive use of one's own image.
Gabe Weis: So we're going to do that. And then you tell me your favorite colors afterwards, and you'll help me color it in.
Josh Kriger: That's so amazing. I've gotten the black and white sketch from you. This is like a whole other level.
Gabe Weis: I was going to say, we're trying to take it up one notch from that. Yeah. But I mean, I feel like that's kind of how I, one of the ways I got popular was doing the black and white sketch. So always trying to find ways to kind of incorporate that into what I'm doing.
Josh Kriger: It's a new market, right? You have to keep evolving. Yeah. And I know you've been doing a lot of travel lately. What's going on in the world of Gabe?
Gabe Weis: I got a solo show going on right now in San Francisco that I spent like four months on. show in London going on until June 8th.
Josh Kriger: So you're doing simulcast here, San Francisco and London at the same time?
Gabe Weis: Same time, just got back from Doha in Qatar, did some art for some galleries there.
Josh Kriger: What's the difference between your show in SF and your show in London?
Gabe Weis: In London it's a lot of paper and like one giant canvas. The show in San Francisco, I painted the floor, 24 different paintings and this giant horse.
Josh Kriger: Okay. Giant horse.
Gabe Weis: In your style. In my style, yeah. That's so cool.
Josh Kriger: I was just at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C. and was able to appreciate some of Picasso's work and Goya's work and Cezanne's work. When you sort of look at your art journey, who are some of the masters of the past that resonate the most with you?
Gabe Weis: To be honest, I think my number one is Basquiat. I think he did the most good for artists these days, because he let people become free for the first time. I mean, you can make an argument, like Jackson Pollock did it a little, but this symbolism meets faces, meets everything. I feel like Basquiat, if people are being honest, has done the most for us contemporary artists. but I also love Picasso.
Josh Kriger: Nice and who are some of your art mentors in your early stages of your art career and maybe like some of the more memorable artists that you met or observed their work, their contemporary artwork, and it made an impact on you.
Gabe Weis: I mean, to be honest, I've got a very untraditional… I didn't go to art school. I was in politics for 20 years. And I did not study art very much at all. So, like, everything I've learned has, like, been a lot of, like, trial and error by myself to be honest. Like I wish I had some of the old school stuff but a lot of it is just kind of coming up on the fly and then spending 20 years doing it every day.
Josh Kriger: Did you collect art before you got into Web3?
Gabe Weis: No, not at all.
Josh Kriger: So when you're creating pieces like the one you're doing now of me, Besides facial features, is there an energetic side to your art where you're picking up on people's energy?
Gabe Weis: I would say a million percent. It's hard to describe because they don't look like them per se, but I'm trying to get people's essence.
Josh Kriger: But it kind of speaks to you through its own language.
Gabe Weis: Yeah, right? It's cool. Do you have a favorite color?
Josh Kriger: Yeah, so historically I've always been a blue guy. Like dark blues, light blues. But over time, my girlfriend has also gotten me to appreciate green. Green. And red.
Gabe Weis: What do you call your eyes?
Josh Kriger: Hazel? They're hazel. So the brown and the green kind of. Yeah.
Gabe Weis: Yeah.
Josh Kriger: So I try to do a little bit more green than I used to do. I also like black a lot. I think black is just a powerful bold color that I just incorporate into my wardrobe a lot more. I think having a company that has like black and white lettering maybe has sort of made those two colors grow on my palette. I feel like I'm always in the world of edge of company or edge of energy. But it was fun to do a different palette and branding profile for our event in Riyadh where we picked up all the desert themes. with different browns and blues and yellows. That was a fun branding project.
Gabe Weis: Yeah, did you like Riyadh?
Josh Kriger: Riyadh was really, really special. You know, Krista Kim came and Bessa came and we highlighted 12 different local Saudi artists through a partnership with Newtalk. Shout out to them for powering a really cool art experience. I learned a lot about the underpinning of creativity that's sort of present in so many economies that doesn't get discussed. When's the last time you heard a news story about the art scene in Saudi Arabia? Probably never.
Gabe Weis: I would say never.
Josh Kriger: But it's there, and it's pretty cool. We had a lot of artists and creators come to our event
and I would say there's a lot of passion and excitement for supporting art and creativity in that region that people aren't aware of, so it was great to shine a light on that. We had this giant screen outside, probably the size of like eight movie theater screens combined together, that we had some art displayed on throughout the event. It's like a Times Square style screen. Oh wow, that's enormous. That was pretty dope. Bess has said he had not seen his art on a screen that big ever, so it was special for the artist to get to have that experience too. Because like, I think art looks different digitally versus a smaller canvas, a larger canvas, right? So I'm sure you can appreciate what it's like to see your art in different environments.
Gabe Weis: All right, the reveal. All right, we're there.
Josh Kriger: Wow, that's so cool. I'm so into it. You even got my mustache in there, my goatee.
Josh Kriger: Thank you, man. That's amazing. My pleasure.
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