In this episode of Edge of NFT, CEO Joonatan Lintala discusses Phaver's pioneering efforts in web three social networking and the upcoming launch of PhaverUp NFTs. He also shares insights on the evolving landscape of decentralized social media and the potential integration of Farcaster into the Phaver platform.

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Please enjoy!

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Key Topics Covered:

• PhaverUp NFTs: Phaver is introducing PhaverUp NFTs to bridge traditional social media and web 3 innovation, offering tangible and liquid rewards to users while preparing for a token launch in the near future.

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• The Impact of Meme Coins on Web 3 Adoption: The conversation delves into the impact of meme coins on driving adoption into the web 3 ecosystem and how they can potentially lead to the awakening of users to the benefits of decentralized social media.

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• Integration of Firecaster: Phaver is set to integrate Firecaster, allowing users to seamlessly post content on both Phaver and Firecaster to increase their reach in the web 3 space and bring the content back together into one feed.

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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:

•  Joonatan Lintala: "So if you hold 1, you're gonna be getting a lot of perks in the near future. Because these are the NFT edition. These are the first 2,000, favorite NFTs ever minted." [Timestamp: 03:11] 

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•  Joonatan Lintala: "Yeah. I think it's kind of both. So obviously, meme coins as such are not taking the industry any forward if they're, like, purely that. What it does obviously on the good side is it brings in new users, and reactivates old users into the ecosystem.” [Timestamp: 08:21] 

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•  Joonatan Lintala: “And what we've been realizing is that kind of the biggest challenge for people adopting Web 3 social media right now is that it's, kind of, divided. So when you want to be a creator in Web 3 social, you have to choose between NFT and Firecaster, or you have to manage 2 completely different social graphs and 2 different apps." [Timestamp: 16:06] 

For the full transcript, see further below. 

People and Resources Mentioned: 

• Joonatan Lintala - LinkedIn 
• Phaver - LinkedIn
• Phaver - Website
• NFT NYC - Website
• Airstack - Website
• Magic Eden - Website
• Crypto Punks - Website
• Bored Apes - Website
• Budgie Wonderland - Website       

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• Phaver: https://app.phaver.com/xxg1YpPHFZZ9oTjK9
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• Telegram: https://t.me/edgeofnft
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About Our Guest:

Bio: Joonatan Lintala is the Helsinki-based CEO and co-founder of Phaver, a Web3 social media platform. He is also a partner and senior advisor for Shook Digital, a Web2 advertising firm. Joonathan previously worked as the head of business development for Smartly.io, one of the world’s largest SaaS digital advertising platforms, and in sales and marketing for Google.

• Website:  Phaver
• Twitter: @joonatanlintala
• Instagram: @joonatanlintala
• LinkedIn: Joonatan Lintala 

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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. 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Joonatan Lintala  [00:00:00]:

Hi. This is Jontan Lintala from Phaver, pioneering the Web3 social networking experience at NFT NYC. You're tuning to Edge of NFT, spinning the social fabric of tomorrow with stories of innovation and rewards. Keep listening.

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Josh Kriger [00:00:13]:

Hi, everyone. This is Josh Krieger, co-host of Edge of NFT at NFT New York. Here speaking with Jonathan Lintala. Those who recently tuned in to the show or popped by NFTA Community Week know Joonatan as the CEO of Phaver. He has an extensive background at Google and has been a key player at Smartly where he's also been instrumental in scaling the largest base book and SaaS toll. And for those who missed our previous episode on Phaver, we did have a chance to meet this awesome team live in LA. They are a decentralized social media platform transforming Web3 engagement by removing the friction around, creators having an empowered economy and they're using the NFT to do that. For those that missed the Phaver episode or didn't have a chance to get to know this awesome team in LA, Phaver, a decentralized social media platform that's transforming the Web through engagement by redefining rewards for creators through blockchain technology.

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Josh Kriger [00:01:14]:

And for full disclosure, everyone, the Edge of NFT podcast is sponsored by our friends at Phaver whom we appreciate. And, their support at the Curiosity Circus and many more partnerships are probably to come, because we love what these guys are doing. So let's dive right in. Thank you. Good to be back. We just finished hanging out at punk's brunch, which is a lot of fun.

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Josh Kriger [00:01:38]:

I would say, like, for all things considered, it's a pretty happy group of guys and gals today.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:01:44]:

Yeah. The market is doing pretty well so people are back from their hiding.

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Josh Kriger [00:01:50]:

Absolutely. Now you've been on AI for a bit of a world tour and it was great to have you around LA last week. I'm curious what you've been to a lot of different places. You've seen the communities. What was NFT LA for you and what might have been different about that community? Yeah.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:02:06]:

I think LA has a very different vibe as it usually is compared to New York conferences and most of the other US. I think there was kind of a distinct LA vibe to the event as well, especially, since the event in Venice was great and met a lot of great heavy-hitter people. So I think usually a lot of the conferences are, like, 10,000 people out of whom most are not very interesting. Whereas, in LA, almost every conversation we had was meaningful. A lot of creators, a lot of musicians, a lot of, who are some of the people who should be benefiting, from Blockchain even more than the crypto bros.

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Josh Kriger [00:02:46]:

Yeah. And for them, social media is everything. I mean, like, in LA it's like, you know, you churn information on your Instagram. Right? And people are all trying to make sure the world knows who they are and what they stand for. So I would imagine that now, for that audience, a platform like Phaver was really interesting. Yeah. I think that's been great to see the reception from the creator crowd. 

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:03:11]:

So it's a very strong narrative when they start realizing that, hey, for the first time, I can own my audience. There are no intermediaries between me and my audience. If you're a musician, it's not Spotify and your record label who are kind of gatekeeping you from your listeners and Janney, but you can actually take direct connection with them, through NFTs in various formats. And what's New York like for you? Like, what's been the vibe here and what sort of the unique nuances of the conversation you're having in New York? Them. I think, as always, New York is crazy, so we're on, like, almost minute-by-minute agenda all week. For me, it's good to be back here. I used to be based in New York for 3 years before, before kind of seeing the light and stopping Web 2 and starting to make amends in Web 3. But, it's always good to be back apart from the dreadful weather this week.

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Josh Kriger [00:03:58]:

Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t love that side of things. I remember why I moved from Boston to LA. It's been, like, really cold in multiple layers. Looking forward to heading over to Dubai next and getting and warming up. Nevertheless, the market is warmer and there's a lot of exciting stuff happening with Phaver. You guys have your Phaver NFTs coming out that bridge traditional social media and Web 3 innovation.

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Josh Kriger [00:04:27]:

Let's talk about those a little bit. This is the first time I'm talking about those publicly so you guys get all the alpha.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:04:33]:

The idea here is that, while we are preparing for, a token launch in the near future, we wanted to do something that's tangible and on-chain for, the people who have been with us for a long time and also something worth kind of coming into Phaver for, even if you haven't been there before. So it's very clear that, like, the points that we have are a great way at scale to reward everybody long term, But then, people want something tangible. They want something that has a liquid value in the market, that's in their wallets. So the Phaver NFTs are kind of the first step towards unchaining the reward economy and making sure that what people have been earning is also now liquid and tradable in the future.

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Josh Kriger [00:05:17]:

Cool. So what's a specific mechanism with these guys?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:05:20]:

So, essentially Phaver has been building an NFT-based social graph for the last 2 years. So we have about 150,000,000 worth of NFTs connected from third parties, whether it's the punks or apes or our partners, budgies. And, we decided that now it's time to start making something of our own that's also part of. So every NFT you connect on Phaver already earns you an NFT soft yield. So you don't have to stake it anywhere or do any of these complicated things. You have to authenticate once and then every NFT you have, earns you points every day and the points will turn into tokens in the near future. So it's kind of always been a way for people to start earning, while they're doing social and at the same time we can actually connect people who hold for example a punk AI that social sphere and get them into gated experiences inside communities And then FavourUp is doing all of this and more. So, if you can go and check out what the artwork looks like, there are a lot of mystery packages, raining, with parachutes from the sky.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:06:20]:

So this is definitely gonna be, that Goody NFT where if you hold 1, you're gonna be getting a lot of perks in the near future. Because these are the NFT editions. These are the first 2,000, favorite NFTs ever minted.

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Josh Kriger [00:06:32]:

So if I'm listening to this for the first time and I'm not on Phaver yet, can I still get a hold of these? 

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:06:37]:

Yeah. So we wanted to do it in a way where those who have been with us for a longer time will have an advantage for example, they can use their points in an auction mechanism to bid for the first hour I saw the highest bid was 50,000 points which is something that already kind of puts you probably in the top 1,000 point holders in the whole system. So I think we're going to be probably hitting 100,000 by the end of the auction with the bids. But then for anybody fresh into Phaver, all we need to do is download Phaver in the 1st week's qualification to get on Magic Eden. All you have to do is, connect the protocol profile, make one lens post and then make sure you've connected at least one wallet asset to favor. So then we can verify that you're not a bot, but you're a real user. We for example have free proof of a person that you can do just by showing your face to the camera once. Seems simple enough.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:07:32]:

So not too late. No need for FOMO. Still very early and so is the evolution of this new platform.

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Josh Kriger [00:07:40]:

Let's talk a little bit more about the broader market NFT. What's going on? Because you know I travel to a lot of these events. You've been traveling around. It's the point season. There's no doubt about that. And it's a polarizing conversation because on one hand, we're trying to get the mainstream to respect our industry, and there's all this incredible building. We're meeting these founders. Games are being developed.

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Josh Kriger [00:08:05]:

There are ones that are sort of being refined. There are onboarding mechanisms that didn't exist before ZK rolled up. All this exciting stuff. But all that everyone's talking about is meme coins. What's your perspective on what's going on here? And is this a good thing for the industry or is this a challenge?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:08:21]:

Yeah. I think it's kind of both. So obviously, meme coins as such are not taking the industry any forward if they're, like, purely that. What it does obviously on the good side is it brings in new users and reactivates old users into the ecosystem. And we have seen a couple of actually good examples where meme coins kind of into social media of Farcaster or Bonsai of Lens have been driving more adoption into the social protocols even though there are party meme coins built on those. And I think, if you make kind of fun ways that tie into that social space, then you can create utility even with a meme coin even if it officially doesn't have utility, probably not because if you don't have any utility in the long term, it's really hard to keep up that market price and that's kind of why Phaver hasn't aped into just throwing in a meme coin. We're building things for the long-term foundation. So the Phaver token will be not just a meme, but there will be a lot of utility in a built-in ecosystem for that.

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Josh Kriger [00:09:24]:

Will there be an opportunity for people who do have meme coins to sort of interact with Phaver's ecosystem? Is there, like, that sort of interoperability?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:09:33]:

Yeah. We are now kind of, we've been working with our partner, Airstack, who can index all of the coins, meme coins from all the different protocols, into, also the same API that we're already using. So probably in the near future, we will be bringing also our meme points into the mix. I think overall they're a bit less interesting than your NFTs because you're typically maybe not so much of a community-driven, kind of meme coin collector. Obviously, there can be, like, gated communities for people who hold over 10,000 coins in their wallets. So there's still ways to build communities even around coins.

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Josh Kriger [00:10:14]:

Yeah. I mean, I guess some of the other obvious, like, communities besides obviously the NFT communities that you guys are entrenched in our gaming communities. They're really tight-knit and pretty into what they're doing. You know, offline membership communities. And we've been in a lot of conversations the last few weeks with people into music. And I think, you know, those communities are really strong. You know, you have artists, people who travel all around the world to see 50 different times..

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Josh Kriger [00:10:43]:

So are those also use cases that you're looking at really seriously?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:10:47]:

Yeah. We have a lot of Web 3 musicians. So musicians who have already realized the power of, on chain, minting your songs and minting clips of your songs and all of these things, who are part of the Phaver creator program. And we're looking to onboard a lot more of that because we see that musicians, like any other creators, are the ones who can start monetizing and building that community in a very native way. And I think even more so than crypto, like the people when your favorite musician tells you that, hey, if you want to be closer to me, come to Phaver There's a gated community only for my superfans. You can get one of these badges for $20 at this new fan platform somewhere because it doesn't have to be a Phaver NFT. We can use any NFT from anywhere. That's the cool part of them.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:11:35]:

So just when we start getting those kinds of mainstream artists eventually on board, I think that's gonna be a huge shift because, if Taylor Swift tells people to do something, they do that, whatever it costs.

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Josh Kriger [00:11:46]:

You know, we talked about this a little if I remember on the first show, but I wanna bring us back to this point before we close out because I think it's a really important thing to understand. You and your team are so passionate about decentralized social media. And it feels like this is a different time in place for sort of elevating this industry than it was maybe 10 years ago. People are critical of social media and have been for quite some time. But what is different in your mind about this moment that gives you more sort of, I guess, hope and sort of optimism around the adoption of this distributed social media where you have more control of your personal identity?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:12:32]:

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things that sort of are for the first time meeting, kind of in the same place in time. So obviously technical reality you could not build a decentralized ocean at work on Bitcoin or even Ethereum, because it's just not scalable enough. But now we start to have actually scalable enough technology that you can decentralize the social graph in a way that it doesn't cost a fortune and it's not slow and it's not hard to use necessarily. There are still obviously things to figure out, but we're getting to the point where that user experience can be just like Facebook or Instagram. So, like, just to boil it down, the on-chain experience is not sort of gas intensive, you know, laborious to execute on.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:13:14]:

For the first time, it's possible to make a Web 3 social app that feels like a Web 2 social app. Yeah. But it has in the background all of those benefits of you owning your content and you're not tied down to only one algorithm provider. That's I think the biggest thing that we see as kind of actually something imperative for pretty much the entire world right now is that AI knows if you look at the social graphs, we have Elon Musk, we have Mark Zuckerberg and, some people in China who are in control of pretty much the entire online narrative, which news are being shown, what are the teenagers learning, which political parties are trending? All of that is pretty much controlled by 3 parties because they have all of the data and control of how they show it, how they sort it, how they rank it. And that is a very dangerous thing for democracy even because that means that 3 parties can decide where the US election goes, where the Finnish election goes, where pretty much any democracy goes. So that's where kind of Of 3 Social can really hopefully end up fixing things where if users own their own data, nobody will have a monopoly on deciding which things should be shown, which political narrative should be pushed above others because there will be dozens of different interfaces where you can actually get your information.

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Josh Kriger [00:14:28]:

I guess to flip back to Mean coins for a moment, if this Mean Coin does in fact create more adoption of decentralized society and in the process people awaken to the reality that you are just NFT, then, you know, it's all good. 

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:14:46]:

That that's the thing, like, people don't care enough about these underlying issues that you

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Josh Kriger [00:14:51]:

They don't always. There's this awakening that happens sort of over time. And some people are woken up. Yeah. And other people, you know, may not be yet. Yeah. But they will when it hits home.

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Josh Kriger [00:15:05]:

Right? Like being trapped out of my Facebook account for a year. So if someone is messaging me on Facebook, I'm not getting your messages because there was a 2-factor authentication error and, every time they try to remove it, I can't get back in and it's in a vicious circle. And so I like, even though I should have rights to my data, I should have the rights to my profile, I can't get back in.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:15:30]:

Yeah. These are kind of the cases where you're in a single point. And, obviously, if meme points or any other kind of speculative fun, a semi-trivial thing is the thing that gets more people to adopt the new protocols. That's all kind of progress. So definitely, like all code for Degen and all of these other things that are driving adoption because it's all driving adoption in the right direction.

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Josh Kriger [00:15:54]:

So speaking of flying and driving and moving to new places, I know I'll see you over in Dubai next. We're both gonna be heading over there. But on the Phaver road map, what's next that you're excited about and look forward to?

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:16:06]:

Yeah. I think the one big alpha I can drop for you as well today is that we are gonna be integrating Firecaster, later this month. And what we've been realizing is that kind of the biggest challenge for people adopting Web 3 social media right now is that it's, kind of, divided. So when you want to be a creator in Web 3 social, you have to choose between Lens and Firecaster, or you have to manage 2 completely different social graphs and 2 different apps. And it's not very easy when the audience is still pretty small. So we've had a very good reception for the concept of in Phaver soon. You can make one post. It goes to lens Phaver and Farcaster.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:16:41]:

Gets you by far the biggest reach in Web 3 right now in one place. And then we're gonna be indexing all of your content, so the comments and likes from each of those protocols back into that one post. So just making it really easy for people, to users, they can start using Warp Cast. If they wanna be using Lens exclusively, they can go on Orb or one of the other apps. But I post on Phaver, it posts on Farcaster simultaneously.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:17:07]:

And Lens. So then, kind of and when you get followers, you can get those followers directly on Lens and Farcaster and Phaver. So that essentially backs you up into 3 different social graphs at once and then brings all of them back together into 1 feed.

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Josh Kriger [00:17:18]:

I'm so glad that you said that and that's really exciting because I've been stressing out because I've been using my favorite app. I'm enjoying the fact that Edge of NFTs followers are cooking. I think we're up over AI already. But, I was also having a little bit of FOMO because to have to deal with multiple platforms, it's the whole issue where,

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:17:41]:

You know, the thread was great, but it lasted a minute. Right? So that's amazing. That's the cool part of, like, Web 3 graphs is that we can do that. Like, if you try to bring threads and Twitter into the same place, they're both gonna block you. Because neither of them wants to be merged into 1. But you're all for it. Yeah, like we're like, I don't know if others agree on that, but I think everybody, and I think they both will agree that actually at this point, there's no point in us fighting for slices of the cupcake. We need to grow it into a pie first for that to be in any way meaningful.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:18:13]:

So if we have less than half a 1000000 people in Web3 social, dividing market share makes no sense. We need to work together to figure out, like, how do we grow the entire industry to be, tens of millions or 100 of millions of users? And then you can start fighting for market shares later. But at this point doing things together is actually helping everyone because that means both graphs are gonna be getting more high-quality content, they're not the competitors AI Twitter and threads and, the Web 2 apps are. So if you're divided between should I go on Lens or Forecast or you're gonna go on Twitter because that has both. That's the same audience. 

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Josh Kriger [00:18:45]:

That's really exciting. Well, congrats on that and excited to just continue on the journey. You know, it's been an amazing partnership. We love what you guys are doing. We're really excited to give our audience to get into the mix and thank you for your generosity here. So, for those of you listening to this at home, we're announcing that one of those special Phaver NFTs is gonna be one of yours. We're gonna give everyone a chance to own a digital asset and be part of this platform.

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Josh Kriger [00:19:15]:

We'll share those contest roles but, obviously, you're gonna have to download the Phaver app and find us on there and be one of our new followers. We're having a lot of fun, so thank you for that opportunity. It sounds like it's gonna be a pretty scarce resource that they're getting.

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:19:30]:

Yeah. These are gonna be very exclusive and very valuable So, definitely worth joining. You guys indeed have, like, in the 1st week on Phaver, you got 25 100 followers, which is one of the fastest growths I've seen. We're the 2nd most trending profile last week already after your first post. So I think after this giveaway, we're hopefully seeing you back on the pole position.

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Josh Kriger [00:19:49]:

That's what's up. That's what's up. Well, this has been fun, man. Thanks for catching up with me. I know there are probably, like, 5 more events you have to go to tonight. But, as we wrap up this edition of Edge of NFT New York, anything else you wanted to mention and how can folks stay up to date on what you guys are up to? 

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:20:07]:

So, if you wanna find other ways to qualify for the Phaver NFTs, and be part of these early days of socializing, download Phaver, spelt like the way in my hoodie. So, I found it from the App Store Play Store.

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Josh Kriger [00:20:24]:

And for our listeners, it's p h a v e r. 

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Joonatan Lintala  [00:20:27]:

Because with an f, the domain would have been too expensive. Sure. So this was the way I'm going like the rappers. But, yeah, download from the app stores, sign up, and you can always tag me, at Joonatan, in Phaverif if you have any questions or feedback. I still can read most of those so look forward to any feedback.

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Josh Kriger [00:20:48]:

Yeah. I have to say, you've been so sort of in the trenches with the local community learning what people care about. That shows from a product development perspective. It's a great app. Encourage everyone to check it out. And, it's been great chatting with you as always. And thanks for supporting us at NFT LA. It was great to have you as part of that community week.

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Josh Kriger [00:21:10]:

I'm sure there'll be a lot more fun collaborations to come. So for those of you at home, we've reached the outer limit at the edge of NFT for today. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures in the starship. So invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey also much better. How, if you're listening, go to Spotify or Itunes right NFT, Say something awesome. Or if you're following us on YouTube, join over 120,000 other followers by hitting the subscribe button and passing this episode on to a friend or 2. Lastly, you should tune in next time for more great Web content.

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Josh Kriger [00:21:44]:

Thanks again for sharing this time with us today.