Fireside Chat with Valerii Makovetskii: The Web3 Future of Fandom, Gaming, and Earning

In this episode of the Edge of NFT podcast, host Richard Carthon engages in a lively and informative conversation with Valerii Makovetskii, CEO of maincard.io. They dive into the intersection of sports, gaming, and Web 3, exploring the innovative ways in which maincard.io is revolutionizing sports predictions, fantasy management, and blockchain technology. Valerii shares insights on the unique developments happening in the world of Web 3 gaming, and discusses the future plans and expansion of maincard.io in the gaming and esports industry. The episode provides valuable insights into the growing influence of Web 3 technology in gaming and its potential impact on the industry.

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Please enjoy!

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Key Topics Covered:

• Web 3 Gaming and Sports Predictions: The episode explores the intersection of sports, gaming, and web 3 with MaineCard, discussing how fans can predict the future of sports while earning rewards and fostering a new era of engagement and community.

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• MaineCard's Approach to Community Building: Valerii Makovetskii discusses how MaineCard focuses on building a socially responsible, community-oriented platform, providing gamification and a play-to-earn model while eliminating entry fees and pursuing partnerships with esports teams for expansion.

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• MaineCoin and Tokenomics: The conversation covers MaineCard's native token, MCN, which is used as in-game currency and facilitates trades within the gaming platform. Additionally, Valerii emphasizes their focus on steady growth and the creation of an economy with zero selling pressure for the token.

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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:

• "The California and LA, of course, it’s, you know, the motherland of the gaming industry, sports, entertainment. So, NFT LA, I guess, unites great people." - Valerii Makovetskii [00:02:44]

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• "The NFT in maincard will be the in-game currency, which the price increases as the value increases and as utility increases. And it should always go together" -  Valerii Makovetskii at 00:11:06.

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• "We decided that we will take down all the barriers there are to start the game. Basically, if you’re a web 2 user, you we will create your wallet for you. We’ll create it on the back end." - Valerii Makovetskii [00:14:40]

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People and Resources Mentioned: 

• Valerii Makovetskii - LinkedIn
•  Maincard Games - LinkedIn
• Maincard Website  
• Polygon Website
• Ben Noble LinkedIn
• Bee Davies IG
• David Bianchi LinkedIn
• Two Bit Circus Website     

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About Our Guest:

Bio: Valerii Makovetskii is the CEO of MaineCard, a pioneering Web 3 sports Fantasy Manager platform built on the Polygon Blockchain. He is a serial entrepreneur known for his extensive experience in hardware manufacturing and sports entertainment. Valerii has successfully launched multiple companies, including AI School Connect, Spartacus Sports, EveryTalent, NFT Touch, and Venkard, and has generated over $100 million in revenue through his ventures.

• Website: Maincard
• Twitter: @MaincardGame
• Instagram: @valeriymakovetskiy
• LinkedIn: Valerii Makovetskii

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Disclaimer:

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

Full Episode Transcript:

Richard Carthon [00:00:00]:

So join us in this conversation as we explore the intersection of sports, gaming, and Web 3 with Maincard.io, where fans not only predict the future of sports but shaping, earning rewards while fostering a new era of engagement and community. The show is going to be recorded on our podcast, Edge of NFT, which recently hit 117,000 subscribers on YouTube in addition to our audio and streaming cable audience. Making us one of the top wave three shows globally. To celebrate, we're going to give away $100 to 1 lucky subscriber. So if you want more information on that, make sure you go check us out on Twitter. Alright. Let's get on with the show. 

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Richard Carthon [00:00:38]:

Alright. Welcome to the Edge of NFT, podcast created by Josh Krieger, Ethan Janney, and Jeff Kelley featuring top notch guests and hosts like myself, Richard Carthon. This show is sponsored by the Maincardcard. Io, and we are taping it live here at 2 Bit Circus during Curiosity Circus as part of NFT community week. Maincard is a Web 3 Sports Fantasy Manager Platform built on Polygon Blockchain. It transforms sports predictions into interactive experiences to earn MCM tokens. As players engage on the Maincard, they navigate the realms of sports entertainment and blockchain technology, bringing novel dimensions to sports, fandom, and gaming. And now it's an honor to introduce the man of the hour, Valerii Makovetskii 

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Richard Carthon [00:01:22]:

So Val is the CEO of Maincard.io  and a serial entrepreneur and noted for building a hardware manufacturing company in Europe NFT with over 100,000,000 in revenue. He advises, holds patents in assistive technologies and launched multiple companies in sports entertainment with AI, ISchool Connect, Spartacus Sports, EveryTalent, NFT Touch, and of course, Venkard. So, Val, a few weeks back, we had you on Outer Edge Twitter Spaces. For those that missed that, we had amazing people like Ben Noble, Bee Davies, David Bianchi, Eric Pouillet, Bee AI, and Bee Gan from AI, Alsa, all who are celebrating everything that's happening here at NFTA Community Week. And we're really excited that you can be part of this with Maincard.io. So, what made you decide to make sure that Maine Car was a part of this great experience?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:02:11]:

Yeah. Thank you, Richard. And, you know, pronunciation of the names is always a challenge for, you know, US people, when it comes to the Ethan Europe, etcetera. So I prefer Val. It's easier for everybody. Yes. So, actually, California and LA, of course, it's, you know, the motherland of the gaming industry, sports, entertainment. So, NFT LA, I guess, unites great people.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:02:44]:

And for us, it's the way to engage with the community, just meet potential partners, employees, you know, Josh a great space. And, I think that you're doing a great job year after year because, personally, we attended it 2 years in a row. And NFT, when somebody from your team reached out to us, we just think we decided to join after, like, 50 seconds of a talk. So, yeah, recommend to everybody to stick to the community and grow with the community.

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Richard Carthon [00:03:21]:

Oh, absolutely. I really appreciate it, and it was great talking with you and glad to hear that, you know, you were part of our first two experiences. And I I think a lot of people in the audience have also been to some of our other NFT community weeks that we've had throughout and appreciate you all being here. But, you know, being originally from Europe, and you've now been working in the manufacturing sector, and now based in Orange County, and you are suddenly now in Web 3. So what made you wanna break out of manufacturing and break into the web 3 space?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:03:54]:

Yes. Sure. Good question. So, basically, I've spent the last 10 years building the leading hardware manufacturer in Eastern Europe, and we're going public next year. But, you know, for us, for our team, we always wanted to compete in the biggest markets. So, even though we crossed 100 millions in revenues, we operate on the market which is like NFT% of the world's GDP. And, we want to go to the market, which is NFT% the GDP, which the US is. So, yeah, I think the competitors' competitiveness is in our blood.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:04:34]:

So, we just want to move to the bigger markets, and expand new territories. So, we were lucky enough to create a highly profitable business, and it gave us it gave us the possibility to start investing in the the US. So, in 2019, we went to the event space, and we became the biggest of the event platforms on Amazon. And then, after the COVID started to, you know, decrease all the this madness, just stopped, We pivoted to the streaming platform and became, like, the 2nd biggest sports NFT or streaming platform in the Latin America. And we always wanted to solve the problem of interacting among, you know, the viewers of the sports events because it's not fun to just watch NFL games for 4 hours straight without being able to, you know, somehow interact with the content. And we started looking at the fantasy sports, and the fantasy platforms, from Europe and from Asia that's expanded globally. And it brought us actually, you know, to be honest, it was just for fun. So we got, like, a couple of developers.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:05:46]:

They started building it. And within 3 months, we launched. And, we were hoping, like, developers were, like, will we NFT, like, 50 to a 100 users to test it? But the Web 3 is a crazy space. So we got 50,000 users in 3 days. And NFT, we decided, yeah, it might be a big thing. We increased the team. Now, it's, like, 25 people from 12 countries. So, yeah, happy to.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:06:11]:

And, actually, I missed all this, you know, 2017, 2018 stuff with the development of those AI, you know. Lots of people lost their Janney, and I'm being one of the least worst people in the web to space. I wanted to build something for myself to help me understand blockchain is the easiest way possible. So, yeah, we created this game to introduce blockchain to the general web to users in a gamified manner. So this is how it started.

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Richard Carthon [00:06:46]:

Now, I love it. And, you know, you brought up fantasy sports, and it's been a great way for different sets of groups of people that I've met through life playing fantasy football, whether it's ice friends from high school, from college, work colleagues, etcetera. And being able to find a way to merge Web 3 into that AI, like the idea of AI play to earn for example, like Kelley excites me. And so, you know, how do you envision play to earn like, pay to earn models changing the traditional relationships between gamers and game developers?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:07:18]:

Yeah. That's a pretty challenging question, because, you know, first, you just play the game and you have fun, but then somebody says, hey. We're gonna be paying you for doing this and that. And, you know, Eathan, you know, excites you, and nobody thinks of, hey. Where do I get this money from? Like, this, you know, it's basically the old stuff, but we remember stepping all the time. Like, you get $25 per day by walking in the digital shoes for 10 minutes. Where do you get this money from? Nobody asked the questions. And, so the great thing is that NFT rates with the mechanics of the play to earn.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:08:10]:

But NFT, after all, you should think of a balance of the game. And, it's a great retention feature, but then, it increases, you know, the workload of the game developers, the game designers, etcetera. So cool mechanic, but after all, people will play it if it's a really exciting game. Because the backside of this coin is that, usually, you have a lot of hype and thousands of people come to you. But they are just NFT of them, you get too excited. But NFT, you release, like, a couple of airdrops and you see, like, people are hype. But then you list your token, 99% of people just sell. And, you were, AI, you got loads of NFT investments, and now you're sitting with a couple of people who really enjoyed your game.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:09:03]:

So, this is a tricky Carthon, and you have to figure it out before listing your token. This is why we were delaying listing the token. We first wanted to NFT, I think, in April, we'll break, like, 50 players. And then when we figured out the logic, the balance, etcetera, then we list the token, and then we, you know, we might be sure that it's gonna work out great.

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Richard Carthon [00:09:30]:

I like it a lot. You mentioned this, Stefan, and it was an interesting model that, you know, at first garnered a lot of attention, got people excited, people are earning, but it was a model that ultimately failed because it's just AI. Where does the money continue to come from? Right? Yeah. Exactly. And so being able to use different models, learn from those mistakes, and build something that's more encompassing of bringing in people that are excited, but then also being able to retain them with something that's sticking and that makes them want to stay there, is a delicate balance Josh like you said. And Maincard's going about a lot of different ways to do that. And one of the ways is bringing utility to Web3 by inventing new ways of using NFTs. So what were the problems that you were trying to resolve through MaincardCarthon to help tackle some of those challenges with NFTs?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:10:13]:

Personally, my problem was, I couldn't figure out how to sell you on, ours, you know. Why do they cost, like, $1,000,000? Why does nobody buy it for, like, $1,000 now? Because, they are AI utilities. So, for us, NFT should be like a chip in the casino. You enter the casino, you pay $25 for the chip. It's a 1,000 that you can make with this $25 chip. But when you leave, you should be able to sell it for $25. So, we decided that the NFT in the Maincard will be AI, the in-game currency, which is, the price increases, as the value increases and as utility increases. And it should always go together.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:11:06]:

So, for us, super simple. The NFTs have, like, the specific price and you see specific rules that increase or decrease the AI. And everybody sees it in the white paper. Yeah. So this is how it should work, I think, globally.

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Richard Carthon [00:11:26]:

Yeah. Like, it's straightforward, and people know what to expect, and it takes a lot of the Kelley, the variability out of it. And so I'd like if you can kind of walk us through the approach for Web 3 Janney Sports and how does this differentiate on this platform versus traditional? Like, how is this how people can interact with MaincardCarthon different than, what I can do on, like, DraftKings or something else?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:11:50]:

Yeah. Thanks for NFT, DraftKings. So, basically, this is, yep, on a platform. And in gambling, there are specific patterns. So, male, 37 years old and it's the game. It's not a community building game, you know. You just load the money for some team and then you're waiting. So, not a lot of not a lot of interaction there, but then there's a risk of losing the money.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:12:22]:

And we didn't expect that, but since we're AI, we're getting a bunch of messages that, hey, I used to lose the money. It was a family budget. I suffered from it, but I get the same adrenaline playing MaincardCarthon. But, it's a free to play game. I don't lose the money. I'm so excited. I can earn some tokens. And then, you know, once it's NFT listed, I can sell it.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:12:46]:

But then it's a community building, because you would have to unite in guilds. You can find like minded people, and it's all about the interaction. So you play in the team tournaments, etcetera. So it's not necessarily that you wanna, like, outplay everybody and, you know, earn all the cash in the world. But, the Maincard differentiator is, it's socially responsible and, it's, has a lot of community building mechanics that increase the retention and people just form the groups, etcetera. It's not like, you know, I'm betting on these scores and then, you know, it was Right.

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Richard Carthon [00:13:25]:

So it's not just a pure gambling, like, mechanic. It's truly community building. It's gamification. It's allowing anyone to be able to come pick this up, play, learn, and grow on some other to learn different strategies and other stuff which I think is an interesting approach to going about that. Something that I wanna bring up though is one of the challenges that typically comes up for users is entry fees. And usually to access blockchain games, there are Josh to to get started. And, typically, it detours a lot of players from, like, trying out different platforms. So what are your plans for navigating this challenge and enabling a lot of these newer players who are interested in playing blockchain games?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:14:05]:

Yeah. As we basically started, we were pursuing, like, the social mission, the blockchain mass adoption. And, like, 99, I would say, percent of startups were lucky enough to have their own funding. So, basically, you know, we have, Internet, runway. We can load our own cache into the game. So, we decided that we will take down all the barriers there are to start the game. Basically, if you're a web 2 user, we will create your wallet for you. We'll create it on the back end.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:14:40]:

You will not even know you're playing the web 3 game until you're ready to. So then we'll explain to you how the mechanics work. And then, we made it gas free. I think we're one of the first to make it gas free. Nobody pays the fees for the transaction. We took it, you know, and it's part of our budget covering the fees. And NFT, of course, to help you, to incentivize you, to spend your time and help us develop because we're in the testnet phase. Of course, we give you something within the 1st 14 days of the game.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:15:15]:

On a daily basis, you receive something that NFT you to keep playing. And, you know, it Josh us us probably, like, 50 to a $100 per user. But then we're making sure that you understand the basics, and then you decide whether you wanna stay or not.

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Richard Carthon [00:15:31]:

I like it. You're truly invested in your initial community to come play and learn and grow, and it incentivizes stickiness. Right? Because you're really wanting them to be here for the right reasons and to not have to worry about all the money and ability to be a part of a lot of blockchain gaming. So, I wanna talk to you. You really brought up the coin side of things. So you have a native token, Maincardcoin, MCN, that can be utilized within the Maincard ecosystem. Can you tell us more about this, coin and different utilizations?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:16:02]:

Yeah. So now you see many projects where you can talk of NFT meme coins. Yep. In our case, the token is just the in game currency. The similar currency you have here if you play Call of Duty. You have the in game currency. You play Travian or whatever game you have the in game currency. So, you use your token to basically repair your NFT, upgrade your NFTs, enter the new guild or you form the guild and you tell the players that to enter this guild, you have to pay this AI, which will go to the treasury and help us develop, you know, develop and Eathan the other guys.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:16:45]:

So it created a lot of trading. So our amount of trading is roughly, like, 2 to $300,000 per day in the tokens and the cards. So players just exchange NFTs, and then, you know, they pursue different strategies. Some of them invest in upgrading their cards. Some of them, you know, will upgrade and then sell them. So Kelley in game currency. And the great part of it is that we created an economy where we did not distribute any of the tokens to the influencers, to the investors. So we have zero selling pressure.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:17:29]:

Like, 100% of the token is either in the treasury or the players have it on hand and they will sell it to other players who will come to play the game after the MaincardNAND starts. So, it's great for the pricing. The price will, you know, likely go up. But NFT, we don't wanna know pumps and dumps, and we just eliminated all the possibilities for it to happen. So it's gonna be, like, steady growth.

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Richard Carthon [00:17:57]:

No. AI, again, go on the grassroots approach and making sure people there for the right reasons and join the game and and wanting to just be on the platform and not really worried about all of the back end web 3 side of things, I think is a very strong use case for having the right kind of community for, any type of game. Right? When you have game mechanics that have a web 3 aspect, but they don't necessarily know that they're using it, but it's still there if they want to, I think is is a really unique way of going about it and also having the type of utility that, in tokenomics that, like, really help and and benefit people for being there for the right reasons, right? So, some of that's coming up is sports leagues for MaincardCarthon, and it's set to be a focal point over the next quarter. So is there anything that you can share with us, about what that expansion looks like? And is there anything else on the road map that you would like to share with everyone here?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:18:51]:

Yeah. Usually, when startups start to think of, you know, the 3- 5 year plan is just, just, you know, nobody knows what's gonna happen. So we're talking about the next 6 months. Every, every team member is aligned on, you know, the next 3 to 6 months. So, our audience is mainly 18 to AI. So, where do we look for them? We go on Twitch, on Kik, and what do we see? We see the esports streamers. So we decided that we will try to engage more with the esports community. We invested roughly half a $1,000,000 for the prize funds of the DOTA events, and then we'll launch Valorant as well.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:19:37]:

So we just, we could go, finished our first tournament for Latin and North America. And then we're gonna expand into Europe and hopefully Asia, mixing up the games. We signed 2 partnerships with the top notch esports teams. Our ambassador is the only 2 times world champion in DOTA 2, NFT the so, hopefully, you'll see a lot of NFT partnerships in this space, with MaincardCarthon featured. And then, our, you know, the team works on NFT Mainnet because we were getting lots of help from the TON Foundation and from the TON network. So we decided to work not only on Polygon, but build it, truly cross chain. So we're gonna be adding arbitrum, optimism, etcetera. And, we're launching on mainnet, on TON, in the NFT of, April.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:20:42]:

And in May, hopefully, we'll list our token on one of the DEXs. So, yeah, we'll keep you posted.

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Richard Carthon [00:20:50]:

That's awesome. A lot of stuff. Exciting things happening in the next month, in a couple of months. I guess, the final question before we kinda wrap here is just, like, as you look upon 2024, it's already been a crazy 3 months. Right? Bitcoin, new all time highs. Everything is of picking back up in the right directions. Where do you see the future of Web 3 gaming headed?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:21:14]:

Yeah. The budgets of, Maincard  is all in Bitcoin. So so far so good. And we have here the guys from, Call of Duty, developers. But, it's tough to move Edge companies. You know, they earn their cash. They didN'T want to move. But, as soon as, one company decides that I can take my AK 47 from Call of Duty to PUBG, and as soon as they deploy it, the whole industry will shift.

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:21:46]:

So, hopefully, we'll see it. And with this bull run, we have more incentives to invest in this space. So, probably, in a couple of years, we will see a huge shift in this paradigm.

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Richard Carthon [00:21:57]:

Absolutely. Well, we definitely appreciate all of your insights. And, before we include, conclude this incredible discussion, you know, where can people go to learn more about you and what you have going on and, of course, everything going on over at maincart?

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Valerii Makovetskii [00:22:11]:

Yeah, maincart. AI, we're partnered with the Edge of NFT. You can find us through the social media of Edge of NFT LA, etcetera. We got Discord. We got, like, 200,000 people in the Telegram community. So, just type in MaincardCarthon or Maincardofficial. You'll find us everywhere.

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Richard Carthon [00:22:34]:

Excellent. Well, we definitely appreciate you having you as a partner, and, again, we wanna thank MainCard for being our sponsor at this event, making a lot of this come together. Really appreciate that. And also wanna give a quick reminder to everyone that, don't forget to get your drinks, with Favorites AI. You can go and use your QR code to download the Favor app. And, again, this is one of your last chances to go and experience the great favorite that they have. We have a ton of other really good sponsors here as Kelley, and we wanna NFT thank Maincard  for helping this event to happen. So, thank you again, Val, and appreciate you being here.

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