Innovative technologies can only be adopted in the smoothest and most rewarding manner if people work together. Tyler Durden of Mocaverse leads the charge in ushering new levels of collaboration and community in the Web3 space. He shares with Eathan Janney and Josh Kriger how they are building an ecosystem NFT with more than 8,000 distinct Mocas, curating an amazing user experience for all through collective knowledge and partnerships. He breaks down three main themes of their strategy, the threefold identity of the Japanese market, and the impact of AI technology on Mocaverse as it intersects with Web3. For this episode’s hot topic, they discuss how the NFT Aggregator market heats up as OpenSea Pro overtakes Blur.
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Listen to the podcast here
Tyler Durden Of Mocaverse — The Platform That Derives Value From Its Network, Plus: OpenSea Pro Overtakes Blur
This is Tyler Durden of Mocaverse, the one-of-a-kind ecosystem for Animoca members here at the Edge of NFT, the one-of-a-kind show that brings the most exciting evolutions at the Outer Edge. Keep reading.
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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how Mocaverse is breaking ground for new levels of collaboration and community in Web3, why spaghetti is the new lemonade for kids to start their entrepreneurial journey, and what OpenSea's new product means to the NFT marketplace landscape. All this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
Finally, Outer Edge LA, our awesome community-centric gathering returned to Los Angeles. If you think you missed out, here's a way to catch up on all the interactive experiences, discussions, presentations, and more. Simply go to Watch.OuterEdge.live and register with your email address to get a full recap of over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Game on.
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This episode features Tyler Durden of Mocaverse. With a history in the tech startup sphere, Tyler has cofounded and managed a variety of ventures, including those in renewable energy, cross-border eCommerce, and AI. His fervent dedication to fostering the widespread adoption of innovative technologies has elevated him to a pivotal role in championing AI and Web3 integration for Fortune 500 companies.
Tyler's deep exploration of NFTs, DeFi, and ReFi has led him to his role as Head of Projects at Animoca Brands, a prominent name in the blockchain gaming industry. His visionary leadership is set to propel Animoca brands into new territories within the rapidly evolving Web3 domain. Mocaverse serves as the membership NFT collection for Animoca Brands’ exceptional network of companies, projects, investments, shareholders, and partners. This unique collection embodies our values surrounding Web3 and digital property rights, as well as our unparalleled ecosystem. Tyler, we'll welcome you to the show.
Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
We’re so glad to have you on the show. It was great to meet you at Outer Edge LA. Thanks for making us your first stop on what seems like a Mocaverse world tour.
It’s Lyft and traveling around. We were in LA and then Singapore. We also were in Tokyo, which was very exciting. It’s great to be on this show as well. The Edge of NFT conference was amazing. I was on a good panel with Yuga Labs. Thanks for pulling that, Josh. It's been amazing.
It's our pleasure. For full disclosure, Eathan and I should share that we are members of Mocaverse as part of the Animoca portfolio. We have our Mocas and we're holding. This is a pretty revolutionary project that we're going to get into. It features 8,888 distinct Mocas. Why don't you start by telling us about the origin story and explain how you got involved in all this?
Initially, it was Yat Siu, the Chairman of the company and the Cofounder of Animoca Brands, who was like, “We should do a PFP collection.” Basically, a team is picking that and then being like, “What does that mean? What do we want to achieve? What utilities are we trying to provide?” The team took it from there, one statement, “We need a PFP collection,” and then keep expanding the potential of Mocaverse. We call that ecosystem NFT. That's probably something that no one has called it before, but we believe in the space. There are not a lot of companies that can build an ecosystem. NFT. Meaning, for example, Animoca Brands has invested in 400 portfolio companies and has a very wide reach and network.
Our role here is to bring that network effect of the portfolio companies and partners to be accrued to the NFT itself as a collection. There's a lot to do. Since we announced that we're launching Mocaverse, we got 100-plus different portfolio companies reaching out to us and different partners to work together. We have launched something called the XP system, which we think would be instrumental in the Web3 space because it's going to bring a lot of motivation for people to participate in the ecosystem. It's not just the holders but also as well as the Web3 projects that would be participating in the ecosystem.
I feel, Eathan, these guys have an unfair advantage and that Animoca Brands has this vast portfolio of Web3 projects and partners already. You guys have seen what works and what doesn't work, and you're in it in terms of having a feel for what's happening on the ground. I'm excited about all that. I know we're looking forward to diving into this conversation.
At Animoca Brands, we have been talking about synergy collaboration and all that, but I don't think anyone has cracked it in terms of what's a real collaboration and partnership in this space. You see a lot of the whitelist and all that, probably shilling or doing AMA and all that. There's a lot of potential in terms of a deeper level of collaboration and partnership.
What we mean by that is we think there is a scrappy way to achieve interoperability across different projects. It doesn't have to be coming up with a new standard and everyone needs to follow that standard. We believe that in the partner ecosystem, there is a good way for an asset to be cross-chain, cross-ecosystem, cross-platform and the user engaging with different platforms. In the end, the value is being accrued to the same centralized but decentralized ecosystem. The Moca experience is very interesting. It's being accrued to the token ID and the NFT itself. We'll love to talk more about it probably later in the session as well.
You've mentioned into a good degree so far the collaboration opportunities here. We're a member of the Animoca ecosystem and we have our own things that we can offer to the rest of the ecosystem. How else do you foresee the collaborations playing out here? What's the way that you imagine this stuff moving forward?
We basically have an official partnership with Amazon, mainly on the Amazon web services side. We announced a partnership with Sky Mavis, formerly Axie Infinity, and with GMEE Arc8, which is a hypercasual game. The collaboration and partnership are going to bring a vast diversity of experiences to the holders. We are not concerned about the volume of the partnerships and collaborations, but then we're very cautious about how we curate that experience along the user journey.
The partnership and collaboration are not limited to games. For example, Azure NFT can probably make a proposal to the Moca DAO, which we will be launching soon, to be the advocate of the Mocaverse and have podcasts creating content either in text or video format and all that to basically share about Mocaverse or even having a dedicated section or channel podcast for Mocaverse.
The beauty of this is that the Moca DAO and the community can propose anything around a few key themes. I'm going to publish a light paper very soon, but the DAO has three main themes. One is governance. The second is about building the culture and influence in the market, building the Moca IP. The third is about building. How do you build a new product? How can you make the onboarding experience amazing?
There are tons of things like making a proposal on building experience on Sandbox. Sebastian and the team have been having great conversations. Sebastian himself, the Cofounder of Sandbox, is very bullish about Mocaverse, and he loves Mocaverse, and we have been working very closely together. I would say the potential is endless and the sky is the limit.
You mentioned Moca XP a little bit earlier. I’ve gone on and I’ve checked, and I'm excited to see that we are at the top of the leaderboard. I should say there are quite a lot of folks at the top of the leaderboard right now. I’m personally very curious about how that system is going to work and the significance of it and how we're going to be able to stay at the top of the leaderboard while everyone else slowly goes down the leaderboard. That's what I want to know.
The XP is coming from four different dimensions. One is more on sticking. Basically, you don't list, you don't transfer, and you don't sell. It's more passive in terms of earning the XP. The second category of it is also activation. If you're active in participating in games, for example, we are going to launch a hypercasual game for the Mocaverse holders. It’s going to be pretty amazing when people participate in those activations. We even have a tribe versus tribe leaderboard as well. There's a social element in it and also a competitive element in it. If you're active in activation, then you would definitely be ahead of the leaderboard.
Third is community engagement. The more you share, the more you tweet, the more you participate on Discord, and then the more you earn as well in the future. The fourth category would be contribution. This is something that we value a lot. For example, are you active in making a proposal? Are you active in bouncing ideas about a proposal in the DAO? Are you active in voting? XP would be a way to incentivize and drive that robust and thoughtful conversation about the longevity of the project as well. It's not pump and dump or talking about prize action.
Sounds like there are quite a few mechanisms there. That's exciting to get to work on. You also dropped some alpha that Mocaverse is one of the largest ApeCoin DAO governance delegates, and you've acquired 1.5 million ApeCoins. Can you tell us a little bit more about the decision to be that deeply engaged with ApeCoin and the implications there?
We are probably the first project ever to delegate a huge amount of ApeCoin or any kind of tokens to a more decentralized community. Our whole vision about that is how we can play a role in the decentralized economy and the voting process in the DAO by delegating the voting rights to the Mocaverse holders to thousands of people and thousands of wallets. That is the first intention.
The second intention is that Animoca Brands could have delegated more to the Mocaverse holders, but the reason why we are so specific about 1.5 million is because we don't want to completely swing the vote. We don't want it to be deterministic. If you look at the ApeCoin DAO proposal, some of the controversial proposals and voting is about 1.5 million difference, and Mocaverse holders are going to have a lot of influence in the ApeCoin DAO proposals.
A lot of people probably don't completely understand the influence and the power of it and potentially what tangible value would bring. It's very funny. There are some community members that are like, “Why don't you evenly distribute 1.5 million ApeCoins to all the holders and get all the financial rewards and all that?” First, it doesn't work that way. Second, it's going to be a zero-sum game if we do that.
The thing that I'm personally very against and also the rest of the company as well is to have a zero-sum game. We make less than 10 million, we are going to distribute 5 million, we keep 5 million, and then keep the operation. We don't believe in that way. What we believe in is that, for example, it starts off with 10 million.
We believe this can be 100 million or 1 billion, and then the holders are going to benefit from it. Basically, ApeCoin allocation and then the delegation, we are the second largest in the ApeCoin DAO holding. What it means in terms of implications is that we have already seen a lot of Ape holders coming into the Mocaverse community first to lobby and second is to educate.
The ApeCoin holders want to make sure the Mocaverse holders are educated enough along the DAO process to make the right decision. Also at the same time, they want to use Mocaverse as a platform and probably to make a proposal and get the proposal approved. First, if everyone is familiar with politics, especially in the US, there's a lot of lobbying happening when you have something.
This is something that would foster the collaboration between the largest DAO in the open metaverse space and drive collaboration between Mocaverse and ApeCoin. We don't know what that would be right now. We don't have a very vivid what the first proposal would be, but I think that's the exciting part of it. The Mocaverse community can submit their proposals and fold on it. That's exciting. I'm looking forward to the community making great proposals on that.
If you have something good, expect a lot of lobbying in US politics. Click To Tweet
It's a novel way of bringing more value to the project. I appreciate how thoughtful you all are being about this process and trying to lead the charge here. One particularly interesting component is you're doing these travels, and you have a global community. From our travels as well, we are seeing the nuances and distinctions between different parts of the Web3 community in terms of Singapore and Korea as well as Hong Kong and Japan. Japan is particularly interesting in the metaverse market because of how passionate they are about that element of Web3. I'm curious about what Mocaverse’s strategy is for engaging with a Japanese audience and how you intend to navigate this unique market and cultural landscape.
I came back from Tokyo. I met a lot of local communities. I met a lot of IPs and IP commercialization partners. The beauty of the Japanese market is threefold. First, it’s the anime IP and Japanese native IPs in the country. There's a huge fan base in terms of Japanese IPs. Part of the Mocaverse division is to onboard a lot of users and bring interest to cultivate that interest in Web3 through a Web2 IP and the fan base.
The Web2 IP is amazing. That's the first point. The second point is that in Japan, there are a lot of great commercialization opportunities in terms of leveraging IP. What Mocaverse aims to be as well is we want Mocas to be everywhere in the world and starting from Japan. How can we do that? In this space, there's no silver bullet and there's no best formula in terms of how you can commercialize NFT IP. What we want to do is we want to bring in the best brain in the world to show and give an example of how those artists and how those fashion brands can commercialize IP. Not just commercializing but also spreading the influence of it.
Third, I would say the Japanese community is amazing. They huddle all the way, very united and forgiving at the same time. They're here for the long-term. Those are the three points why we're so excited. Fresh off the news as well, we have appointed a new CEO for Animoca Japan as well. Definitely, we’re super excited about working with them and working very closely together, especially on the Japanese IP side of things.
I’ve never been to Japan. I’ve been to Hong Kong. Josh has gotten to do some of these more global travels than I have as of late. I’m fascinated with the cultural diversity in the space and all the different ways that these different places are bringing their own culture to Web3. We're going to cut out here in a couple more questions and get on to Quick Hitters, which should be fun to hear about your personal history and personally connect with you. Before that, what does your roadmap look like going forward with Mocaverse? There are partnerships and artist collabs. I know you mentioned a couple of things, but anything else we could look up in the future?
The Realm Tickets are going to play a key role. Realm Tickets in the future are going to be a consumable asset. The Realm Ticket is that you need to consume in order to participate in an activation. We're not monetizing those Realm Tickets because we're going to redistribute 100% of the Realm Tickets back to the community to incentivize and motivate active participation. That's the roadmap for Realm Tickets.
The PS Realm Tickets is 1155, so the reputation is not going to be accrued to the token ID, but then the reputation is going to be accrued to the wallet. Potentially, the roadmap of Mocaverse is your Moca is your identity, and then you build up the reputation around it, and that becomes your identity in the ecosystem.
We talk about the XP system as well. You can see the wallet or the Moca as your identity. The XP is basically your on-chain proof of your achievements and how much you contribute and all that. At the end of the day, it’s going to be related to something tangible and something exclusive that might be intangible. Along the process, everyone would be guarding a lot along the process but also at the same time getting a lot of value.
The IPs would play a huge role as well. I see Mocaverse as a growth platform. What I mean by growth platform is coming from user acquisition, user engagement, user retention, advocating, and along the whole user funnel and the conversion funnel. The Web2 IPs would be very significant and instrumental in user onboarding. I still haven't seen an amazing onboarding experience. I'm staying in the Hacker House of the wallet solution. They're trying to push the boundaries in terms of how to onboard the next billion users with social lock-in, no safe phrase management, and all that. Mocaverse is definitely aiming for that in terms of the onboarding experience.
Where's this Hacker House?
It's in Singapore right now. It's a four-story house. There are a lot of remote teams in Vietnam, the Philippines, and all that. They probably come regularly, staying in the same house, sometimes maybe sharing a bed. I don't know. There's an elevator. The house is pretty cool with an amazing rooftop. I want to do probably a shout-out to the founder of the company Web3Auth. They’re amazing. They’re one of the hottest startups right now in terms of wallet solutions. The COO is here. Basically, we are chilling and talking about the space. Usually, the space is used for engineers to come and code and for remote records with colleagues. I love the idea. I want to do one in Hong Kong. It’s just the property price in Hong Kong doesn’t make sense.
We’re going to be doing some more hackathons, so that’s something fun for us to talk about. At our hackathon at Outer Edge, we had 21 teams compete. That was on the Saturday and Sunday before the event. It was incredible what people came up with. Shout out to Playtags for winning the $10,000 grand prize. It was a cool concept there. I love what hackathons can do in this type of builder climate. Out of curiosity, what is the staple cuisine of choice at the Hacker House? What are the drinks? What’s the food that you’re seeing in the greatest abundance over there?
I looked at the fridge. It’s all stocked up with beer and soju if you want a shot of soju in your beer. Apparently, I reject it. I stick with my beer. I have a beer right here right now. The team is so well prepared in terms of hosting guests and stocked up with all the alcohol.
You got our pre-prep form to have a drink before the show to make sure that you’re fully lubricated and tell us all your secrets. Thanks for that.
It’s probably too early for a drink over there now. It is always 5:00 PM somewhere else. We can definitely drink.
Tyler, I wanted to rewind a little bit into your background in AI because that’s such a relevant topic these days. Things are moving fast in that area. I was curious. How do you see AI intersecting Web3 over the next year and how will this impact Mocaverse and other blue-chip projects?
Back then, when I was in AI, when we started with computer-efficient natural language processing and analyzing those images and text and all that and then building one of the best customer lifecycle management and prediction machine earning models. Also, supply chain prediction models and for the consumer businesses. Back then, I remember I was on a panel, which is AI Summit, and then people asked about, “Where do you see AGI happening?” Back then, I was like, “It’s going to be probably 50 years from now.” I’m totally wrong because it is happening very soon. Definitely, AGI would still take a while to get there, but we can already see generative assets from it.
Why it’s important to the blockchain or Web3 spaces? It’s because we have been talking the whole time about UGC, but then the honest facts about UGC are that they're not that good. With AI and generative algorithms, the amazing thing is that AI can be a support tool for users to generate their own content and to even monetize it.
That's what's amazing about it. Imagine anyone who probably doesn't have any artist use that can create great art based on the message that they want to convey and based on the story that they want to tell. They can be focusing on being a storyteller but not having the nitty-gritty about creating art and all the creative side of it. We call it AIGC, Artificial Intelligence Generated Content. I see people building a game through ChatGPT by giving a prompt. That's crazy. It is going to be amazing.
Definitely check out AIBlocks.app. Shout out to our friend, Ed, who was also at Outer Edge and was on a metaverse panel. He has created this app which will allow projects to generate generative AI with their own IP that they own for their community. I'm curious about what you think about this product. It seems it could be an example of what you're talking about for Mocaverse and other blue-chip projects. He did Frogland, which was one of the earlier projects that created a metaverse experience of their own. I was hanging out with him when he mentioned this tool, which sounded very relevant to what you brought up.
We'd love to get connected. We're very active in terms of searching for great partners to work with in the AI space. Imagine creating all those official assets in seconds. That's going to be very exciting.
For our readers who may not know what AGI is, it's Artificial General Intelligence. It's an agent which can understand and learn intellectual tasks that humans or animals can. We're all getting more comfortable with this lexicon. AGI is here.
It's definitely coming. It can be scary. There is a lot of stretch in the AI space to replicate or impersonate a human being. To be honest, I personally don't think that's necessary. AI is a support tool for people to do work more efficiently and probably to do things more creatively. AGI could be pretty scary in some sense because, at some point, you cannot differentiate whether that person is a robot or not. That's scary.
Before we get into our Quick Hitters, is anything quickly that you think the readers might be interested in that you enjoy in the space outside of Mocaverse or are inspired by?
I personally am pretty passionate about ReFi, Regenerative Finance. I was talking to one of the biggest gaming brands on the road. You'll definitely know. I tweeted about it. They have been breaking about working on the carbon credit as well. The carbon credit industry would be one of the best use cases for blockchain because there are a lot of double dips. There's a lot of misconduct in the space. There's a lot of the on-chain proof and value that they can bring with the blockchain that would be huge and very instrumental to the space. That is one thing that I'm very interested in.
Another thing is the intercession between AI and blockchain, which we talked about because of my background. The third is no one has figured out what is the best Web3 growth model and what's the best way to activate users and reach them, but at the same time, to consider data privacy in terms of users able to and have the option to share the data.
Coming from a data background, I'm excited about this space. When you look at the companies and products right now, we're still super early. I would say the companies that I work with or consider working with, everyone is probably about 30% there in terms of comparing to the Web2 100% model. I built the product many years ago being an executive, and now it feels like catching up with Web2. The interesting part about the Web3 space is that the benchmark is not that high, to be honest, in terms of products. In the end, you can create the Web3 version of XYZ. It's going to be a lot of opportunities. We are super early here.
Thanks for the general conversation there. We're going to head on over to Edge Quick Hitters. This is a fun and quick way to get to know you a bit better. There are ten questions and we're looking for short, single, or few-word responses, but you can feel free to expand if you get the urge. To be clear to the readers, if you haven't figured it out already, Tyler Durden is not our guest's real name. This is an alias, but likely, you'll be sharing some interesting tidbits about your personal history and your personal life. Let's start out. First of all, are you ready to go?
Let's go.
First question, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Not Web3 or NFT?
No, just like when you're a kid or something you can remember that that far back.
I have a bad memory. Probably the first thing I bought is a streetwear item. Maybe a pair of jeans or sneakers.
Do you remember any specific brands or things that you got excited about, or is it just, “I got some cool jeans and or sneakers?”
There's a streetwear brand called Franklin, and it was pretty hot. I was in Tokyo. When you're in Tokyo, you spend a lot of money on streetwear stuff. That's where I started. When you grow older, that stuff doesn't matter anymore. I'm basically plain Lululemon from head to toe. I wear the same freaking T-shirt and the same color, same jeans, same shoes, different socks, and different underwear every day.
We're glad to hear about the different socks and underwear. We appreciate that.
I found this comfortable Lululemon shirt that I was wearing a lot. I went to Lululemon, and now they have the shirt in green and I'm wearing that now. Shout out to Lululemon for comfortable attire for working remotely in Web3. I wonder how popular they are among Web3 folks.
There's probably not any significant difference there.
If you, me, or Tyler, it's just us doxing our Lululemon obsession.
Time for a Mocaverse Lululemon partnership. What's the first thing on the flip side of this that you ever remember selling in your life, Tyler?
That's an interesting question because when I was twelve, I realized I can cook a little bit. I saw a bunch of kids having lunch and all that. Some of their parents traveled a long way to bring lunch. Some of them are having lunch boxes. Back then, I started making spaghetti and then started selling it to my colleagues at school when I was in high school. I was selling for $20 Hong Kong or $3 US for a box. That's the first thing that I started selling.
That's right up Josh's alley. His previous company was a prepared meal delivery service.
We were into the low-carb stuff, maybe some Zucchini pasta or beet pasta or spaghetti squash. That has to be the first time in over 200 episodes that one of our guests was selling spaghetti as one of the first things. That's exceptional. I don't know what to say.
You got to know your market. My question is, did you find out that the kids spaghetti, or is it that as a kid, that was the best thing you could get?
I got another question, Eathan. Why is this not a thing? All kids should be selling spaghetti and meatballs in the US. That would be way more popular than lemonade.
We started having some FDA issues there with kids selling spaghetti and meatballs right away.
I see a lot of interesting businesses as well on delivery. Food Panda is buying Marks and Spencer frozen food and reheating and delivering them. They're making some arbitrators. People are super creative. I also explored starting a cloud kitchen business for proximity and also for the economic scale. That sector of the business is coming down after COVID. It is just about me super curious about any kind of industries and products.
That's my past world. Next question. What is the most recent thing you sold?
Mocaverse is probably the most recent thing we've sold.
What's the most recent purchase?
I cannot disclose the collection, but I was sweeping projects to support. In this space, I believe, everyone needs to support each other, not calculate, “How much do we sweep?” I'm using my personal money to sweep and support good founders and good builders who are genuine about this space. It's where to find genuine builders who want to contribute to this space.
Whenever I see one genuine builder, I do my best to help. My team also reminds me, “Tyler, stop giving away your own money because it's not sustainable.” However, I feel happy giving and I would continue doing that. The impact that we can make on lives and the influence that you can bring are priceless. That is something that is my core value in terms of giving and being genuine.
The next question is, what is your most prized possession?
As in the biggest gain?
No, most prized, meaning you value it the most. It’s like, “I would never want to lose this. It's very special to me.”
I'm trying to get the 1 of 1 Moca. There's an Aqua Dad that is memeable and I love it. Let's see if I can get it. If I get it, that would be the most prized ownership.
That may be your answer to a future question that we have on the list here. I feel like it's Santa Claus' present opening time or something. Tell us. What do you already have that you value greatly?
I value culture a lot. Even though it's not making money, I followed on chain proof of that moment. There are many key moments. For example, I invested in a token called KlimaDAO. It is regenerative finance. I was very active in it, even discussing the proposal and all that. It brought me to the world. This is the amazing part. When you invest in something, you study the how of it, and when you study the how of it, you gain a lot of knowledge.
That's where I learn a lot about the carbon credit standard with Verra, Coding Standard, and all that. I know about different grades, nature base and renewable energy base and all that. I will say I value that experience a lot. It’s one of the Olympus forts. People have been saying that Olympus is a Ponzi scheme and all that, but to me, I still believe in the project. I love the team. I love the people. They’re super smart and intellectual. I would say I value Klima the most.
If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience that is currently for sale, what would it be?
Let's try to do a dollar amount. Let's say I have $5 billion. I would probably sponsor 500 high-potential kids to be the best version of themselves and have them to have the commitment to having another 500 kids in the future when they're successful. I think that's the best way how you make an impact on the road.
Personally, I don't 100% believe in giving money away to charity. The impact that you can make personally versus the impact you can make versus donating money is very different. When you can cultivate and nurture the right people, the next generation, they're going to help the next generation and so on. I will spend my money that way, and that's why my team asked me to stop giving out money.
It's pretty uncanny, Tyler. In my former life, I started a nonprofit initiative called Put Your Best Foot Forward, where I helped over 400 homeless individuals in DC to find and keep jobs. It was all about empowering them with the tools and community for success as opposed to giving them money. This is a tier of homelessness that are ready to go. They are down on their luck and all they need is a little bit of a boost. That's what we were able to do with that program. At Outer Edge, I'm not sure if you realize, there's a lot going on while you're here. We did a program with K12 Crypto that empowered 150 Los Angeles youth to learn about Web3. There are lots of fun stuff that we can talk about.
I respect what you do. What you do in this space would bring a positive impact. We need more people like you to stop talking about financial gains but thinking about bringing positive impact to the industry.
Arielle Caputo on our team led this initiative. Shout out to Arielle. She's been doing great things, bringing this visibility. We had a philanthropy day that a member of your team came by with me where there were over twenty philanthropic social impacts Web3 initiative organizers all together. I'm excited about our shared values here and what we can co-create, and that's why we ask questions like this to learn more about each other. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I would say being genuine and having integrity. That is something that I cannot ever lose. The credibility, reputation, and trust of different people come from integrity. The reputation and integrity that you accumulate over time, no one can ever take that away. When I say take that away, what I mean by that is the personal relationship and the trust that you build between people. I would pass that on, and I hope the next generation would be genuine about all kinds of relationships.
It's particularly important in this day and age of such a digital world that we maintain that trust, reputation, and integrity in an authentic way. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
I would say having a work-life balance. That's probably something that I don't want the next generation to have this level of workaholic mindset. We all need to touch some grass, breathe, and relax. To build a true family, being proud of what you build is also something that should be a part of the achievement and not just about work. I hope everyone can take the time to think about the purpose and the impact that they want to bring to the growth instead of working for the paycheck.
If you agree with Sam Altman on Lex Fridman's podcast, AI will help us achieve a higher quality of life. Time will tell.
I’ve been talking about it. I think about this a lot. What happens if AI automates everything? When I think about it, the entertainment industry would be booming. The reason being people got nothing to do. People would be sharing income, profit, or everything that the machines and the codes are able to generate for them. In the end, people would be bored, sleeping on the bed and all that. What they need is entertainment. Entertainment would play a huge role when AI takes over the road. I thought about humanity a lot in terms of what impact AI would bring to people.
The last two questions are relatively simple. First, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I was meeting the Mocaverse holders in Singapore. We were at a bar where the Mocaverse's first entities are everywhere. That's great. I went to have dinner with the CEO of Web3Auth. He brought me to a nice restaurant, which is a Malaysian Singaporean fusion restaurant. He brought me to the Hacker House, and now I'm stationed here. We had a beer in the living room. I'm going to grab a coffee with him and I'm going to head off to the airport.
It sounds like a great day. You get to top it all off with an Edge of NFT episode recording. Perfect. What do you plan on doing after the show?
Probably get another beer, wash up, and then pass out. I got a flight to catch. I’m looking forward to being back home. Sometimes, when you're away from home for too long, you want to have your own pattern and know where to get your tea and where things are at, and go to local restaurants next door.
We wish you a safe trip home, and we hope you enjoy yourself. That concludes our Edge Quick Hitters segment. Thank you, Tyler, for participating with us on that one. Next up, shall we cover a couple of Hot Topics, Josh?
I think we have time for 1 or 2. Let's do it.
Let's give it a shot. The first topic here in Hot Topics is the NFT aggregator market is heating up as OpenSea Pro overtakes Blur. It started off with the launch of OpenSea Pro. It's a marketplace aggregator that builds on Gem v2, which OpenSea has operated since it acquired Gem back in April 2022. When using the relaunch aggregator, users are able to browse listings from over 170 NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea. It also keeps them with aggregated cross-market data and a suite of tools designed to help collectors and traders optimize how they buy and sell NFTs.
OpenSea has been a huge leader in this whole game for quite a while. I would hope they had some cool plans up their sleeves. We did see some scuttle about Blur entering the market and some issues around royalties and things like that. It looks like OpenSea is trying to step up to the plate and do something cool that serves a community. Any thoughts on this, Tyler?
Interestingly, our drop was supposed to be on February 21st, 2023. It got postponed mainly because OpenSea, just 24 hours before we launched the mint, announced that they're not going to respect creator royalties and people who don't implement the operator filter are not going to get royalties. Back then, it was a big decision and we need to be bold and decisive and then make the decision. We postponed the mint for a couple of weeks and then we upgraded the contract. We're going to implement everything again and implement the operative filter of OpenSea.
Also, at the same time, giving us the option to turn off the OpenSea filter as well, and then we can implement our own filter. In this space, with ever-changing dynamics, we need to add an extra layer of flexibility and smart contracts. In the old days when the contract is not upgradeable, people are stuck. I was pretty disappointed about OpenSea not respecting creator royalties and also not respecting the previous promise in terms of the grandfather status of the collection, but then I think they made a pretty good comeback. Whatever, the past is past, but the comeback is great because a company and a marketplace or an aggregator that respects creator royalties having a good comeback, I cannot be happier than this. I believe that's the right way to go, and they're doing a great job right now.
It's not easy when you have competition that's cutting you out with 0% royalties. It’s a complicated matter, but it comes down to integrity and doing what's right at the end of the day in looking at the long-term implications of your decision. I do appreciate that OpenSea continues to innovate. This healthy competition between Blur and OpenSea is a good thing. It's never good to have a monopoly in any type of industry segment or technology suite. At the same time, I am concerned about this race to the bottom that seems happening right now.
The culprit of that is Sudoswap. Sudoswap starts with 0% royalties and then Blur is just following. I was talking about that at as earlier in LA and on the panel. There's a creator of products. If there's no product, what is the marketplace selling? People need to respect that. Imagine all the products that the creators are going to sell. They have the right to choose where to sell it and how much they should price it. It's very frustrating to see something like that.
Also, at the same time, on the bright side, I think Blur and Sudoswap inspired, triggered, or stimulated the creator to think about the new business model. There are no bad changes in the space. Every change triggers the next revolution. I'm very curious about the future, besides dropping more NFTs, what is the next sustainable complex business model for creators if it is going to zero? I'm pretty sure the industry will find its equilibrium and find its way.
I think so too. I think NFTs 2.0 and 3.0 are going to be vastly different than what we can even imagine. We're excited. We're going to be interviewing the founders in New York. We have to look at what's going on there with inscriptions and ordinals and whatnot, and what the implications are there for the broader industry.
It is pretty controversial. It's small. For example, Yuga Labs is launching it and people doing it for hype. One person I would like to shout out and whom I probably respect a lot is Danny, the Founder and COO of OnChain Monkey. He is definitely a pioneer in the inscription and has been coaching different projects as well on Bitcoin ordinals. They're one of the first to launch Bitcoin, so shout out to them.
Thanks for doing that shout-out. We'll probably wrap up our Quick Hitters now so we don't run out of time but then move on to another opportunity for you to shout out in a segment that we've been continuing here. We are going to ask you if there's anybody, any friends or other projects, or anybody in the community that you think's worth giving a shout-out to on the show. We'll try to get some tags out there on the socials and stuff when the episode goes out.
I feel like winning the Golden Globe, and I need to thank everyone but worried about not thanking all the people that I need to thank. A big shout out to the self-initiated sub-communities in this space. For Mocaverse, those are Moca HK, Moca China, Moca Korea, Moca Japan, Moca Club. They have been amazing in being proactive in driving community engagement. Big shout out to particular different kinds of members in the space in Mocaverse, The Exile, CK Kong, and then Becca. Prima and Becca together are hosting community Twitter spaces all the time to represent the community and to ask the right questions.
We got Chang. I cannot thank enough Raven and Karma. If I miss you, I'm sorry, but all of you are amazing. A lot of love to you. All the partners as well. Brian Evans has been amazing. He has been connecting me with a bunch of people. Also, at the same time, my buddy at Sky Mavis. Quinn is a great guy. I'm very bullish about him. There are a lot of people and all that on Amazon. All people are good friends of mine, and I appreciate them.
That's pretty much it for the episode, although we do have a giveaway that we're going to be conducting with you all over that Mocaverse. Josh or Tyler, do you guys want to share a little bit more about that?
We're still figuring out the details on the fly, which is the Web3 way. These Realm Tickets seem awesome as a way to onboard new folks into the Mocaverse ecosystem. Tyler's been generous enough to offer some of those Realm Tickets to our audience. We'll work out some fun contests. Look for that on our socials coming up. Thanks, Tyler.
No problem. My pleasure.
That means officially we've reached the outer limit. Thanks to everyone for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this Starship. Invite your friends. Recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes now. Rate us, say something awesome, and then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. You can look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great Web3 content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Mocaverse
- Watch.OuterEdge.live
- Web3Auth
- AIBlocks.app
- KlimaDAO
- OpenSea Pro
- OnChain Monkey
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
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