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Background
Mint Season 4 episode 2 welcomes Dayo Adeosun, founder and CEO Glass Protocol. In this episode, we talk about all things video NFTs, the fundamental macro problems facing short form mid form and long-form videos in web 2, why people want to own videos, how we can better educate creators around the world on the concept of ownership, and so much more.
- 00:54 Intro
- 07:45 Problem Solving
- 19:29 What are you Optimizing for?
- 32:25 How do you price a video?
- 37:57 What’s under the hood?
- 44:48 Monetization: Youtube vs Glass
- 49:18 Importance of Ownership
- 1:02:18 You become your own coach!
- 1:03:21 Outro
…and so much more.
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Intro
Let’s dive right in. Okay. Who are you? What does the world need to know about you, but more specifically, like what were you doing before crypto and where are you now?
Wow. My name is Dayo Adeosun. You can pronounce my first name, like Cinco de Mayo with a D. I am the co-founder of glass protocol and I focus mainly on community creators, collectors, curators everything pretty much around like the social networking of improving the product in the overall,,network of just the community as well as the actual product. Before crypto, I actually graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020. I was playing soccer. I actually was known as a soccer player for a majority of my life,,where I’d play for a bunch of academies in New York, where I went to high school, in college at the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, I actually started my first startup, which led me to Glass actually, it was like a crowdsource map, hat helped people find, heir people and find their places around campus. COVID kinda wrecked that and that was my first foray into startups. It was a web two social map and I’ve always been someone who was not a bystander and someone who wanted to make a change. And I read like a little bit of Marx in college, and it talked a little about, about this technological revolution and a little bit about where the world was going. I just kept reading a bunch of books and all these books in college that kind of just changed my worldview and that kind of prepared me for this information age and really being just an adaptable, I guess, information, internet, I guess, historian slash entrepreneur.
So talk to me more about that first startup. Like what did that consist of? How big did that grow to and what were some of like the biggest lessons you took away that you’re now applying to glass?
Yeah, so the first startup was called Spot and that really started because I saw this trend of loneliness that was coming from like the cultures around me. The idea was that like in 1987, [inaudible] used to hang out with like 38% of their community at least five days a week. And then by 2017, that went all the way down to 5% and you’re on campus and you were saying just a lack of engagement amongst students and spot was really just the goal was to just maximize connection and maximize the time that you had that was free on campus to see who was available, where they were at and to link up. And so we actually raised like a little bit of money from like University of Chicago. They gave us like $10,000 to work on this. We applied like we, we did this caution venture challenge, which I think GrubHub came out of Braintree came out of, I think they, like, I think PayPal bought Braintree and some other like pretty bigger Chicago native,,startups came out of and like Chicago, I guess, YC, at the University of Chicago, which is called the CNBC. And that’s when I met Varoon and Varoon, as my co-founder till today with Glass but we kind of just like iterated for a year, just on the idea of what would like a map that help people find the things they want. And then we kind of went into like a stall point and we didn’t necessarily have like the backing capability to make out the full iOS app. And that’s when we found Sam who was working on like this machine learning, itHub for machine learning, essentially startup, this pitch contest at Polski or at, he computer science lab at U Chicago. And Sam was like working on like the lightning protocol. This is like 2018, 2019. Sam was like, hey, like I had this idea, in high school, would love to work on it with someone who can do community and someone who can kind of code the front end. I always do the community, Varoon do the front end, Sam would do the back end. So then Sam kind of joined the forces and, w kept building out Spot and then we built it out for a full other year and kind of went through iteration after iteration. Like we had a map with messaging, we had a Twitter maps. We had, , ie find my friends. We had Four Square, all types of ideas, centered around the map and the final one was like this map with like, kinda like Tik Tok on the map. And that’s what led us to this kind of videos a little bit. I mean, I’d say there was a lot of other things, just like a lot, a lot of ideas that were like culminating around. But we, Sam actually was like, oh, like he, he tested out like just videos on IPFS. Like I don’t, I think it was like December and, we were still working on spot then. And then we, we figured that, Hey, there might be something here with this just cuz the backend technology is still crazy.
Problem Solving
So, but what were like the bigger macro problems you were trying to solve with Glass protocol? Like what were you guys after? So I actually really loved the journey of like kind of like throwing at the fan and kind of coming to some point where you’re like, okay, wait, if we would’ve started this originally, would’ve never seen that. We kind of landed over here. And now that led you to a whole other journey that you’re working on right now. But like you get to this moment, you realize, okay, this technology is actually revolutionary that we could do something really cool with this. How did that involve into actually solving a problem?
Yeah. So I’d say like with our other startup, we never really had like a problem we were solving outside of just like we saw an opportunity to connect people with Glass. The problem was really obvious to us. My brother’s girlfriend one time was like, Hey, I want to go to this Beyonce, Grammy performance. Like I had this Beyonce, Grammy dance performance. They wanted me to dance, but I don’t have like enough money to get there to LA the span of like a couple days. And it’s like, she has over, like she had like around 200 K followers on the gram. She’s an amazing dancer. Like literally people sponsor, people love her and like they sponsor her to just stay with her at her house, but she could didn’t have enough to just go to the Grammys, to dance for this Beyonce performance. And so we had experienced that like there are like star creators out there who don’t have enough money to like get their actual career or even going to that greater level. So we were like, wow, even a top 97% creator still doesn’t have enough income to really expand their business. And so we just did some research and 97% of YouTubers, make less than minim wage. And so if 97% of YouTubers make less than minim wage and over 30% of like gen Z wants to be video creators and YouTubers.
It’s like a misconnect kind of thing.
Everyone can’t be poor. , Like we need someone, , we need to provide a sustainable income for video creators. And so just living around video creators every single day and seeing all the infrastructure that went into video creation, there’s lighting there’s camera.
It’s a whole Production, just for like a ten second clip.
Exactly. Right. And so we’re like, this is a lot of effort, but every single video is a loss leading experience. You’re not even breaking even. And so it’s like, we were like, let’s make something that not only breaks you even, but 10Xs to a 100Xs, every single and thing you do on YouTube or TikTok. And so that was like the idea that like, if we’re going to like this creator world where it’s like, TikTok is like, you get famous. It’s like, maybe we can help, you get rich and ownership of a platform that you’re using so that you can own what you’re consing. And like that was like, it like 10 to a hundred X monetization. Then the opportunity to own. Like these were opportunities that just weren’t there before.
So these were the problems. These were the opportunities. How did that manifest into a product now? What does that look like? So for those who aren’t for familiar with Glass, what does that product look like to solve that problem?
Yeah. So what glass looks like today is as a video creator, you’re asking, how can I make money for my videos? I just spent X amount of money to produce this video, right? Let’s say like $10,000. Now I want to release this video and make money from that video. And you go to glass, which is a video NFT marketplace, where you upload your video similar to how you would upload a YouTube video and where you go to like create glass.xyz, and then you’re brought to like an upload page similar to like YouTube. The only difference is as you go to that upload page at the end, you can actually mint that video to the blockchain and that minting is actually stored on our weave. And if you wanna do a live stream. We might use live peer to do the decentralized trans coding. But if it’s just a video, you then can upload your video, mint it to the blockchain, sign a couple transactions to get minted. We’re using Ethere right now. So it’s going to Ethere. Might have to pay a little bit of gas costs, right? We might subsidize and then that video thing goes up and then people can go to glass.xyz, you can click on the video. It’s kind of just like a basic, , video, video, video, video, video, you click on the video, watch it. It’s just like a YouTube video, really high quality. We’re using very, very like quality video player backing technology with HLS. And then you can bid on the video. So you could do an auction where you could bid to buy the video as an NFT. And that auction starts after the first bid. And then in the last 15 minutes that someone else bids the clock resets the 15 minutes and it’s just a 24 hour auction, or you could do additions, which is like collectible additions, where you as a creator, I could upload this video and then kind of have 25 editions of this video. That 25 of my friends can all collect as their individual video.
By the way, I can back that because I’ve used glass I’ve, I’ve watched videos on glass. I’ve like, I’ve seen biddings happen on glass. So it is actually really high quality and people think like, oh, the blockchain is janky. It doesn’t work. Like it’s actually really good. It’s a really good experience.
Thank you. We spent so much time in college just working on a user experience and that’s kind of like our background, just working on user experience, like community, making sure that the community was engaged and this was all with like kind of minimal functionally ready products. I’d say like, we never really had like that perfect product, moreso we had that just community enthusiasm and a really, really nice UI and UX. And now we have like this backend that is just like amazing. And these actual incentives that make you want to contribute even more to the community. And like, that is the big difference. Just like you can get, the incentives have just changed. And like, I studied economics at U Chicago, so like when the incentives change, everything changes and that’s what this gives here.
So is the goal here because it is a protocol, is the goal, is that like something like TikTok gets built on top of it? Is that what you guys are like striving for? Or like how, how do you kind of see this coming to fruition and reaching a million users, for example?
So the goal, I would say in the next 9 to 10 months is that glass becomes the home of decentralized NFT videos. And if you want to put a video that lasts forever, if you wanna put a video up that can, be a revenue generating video, if you want to put a video up that you might want to stay, stored forever, you would choose glass as the place to upload and mint that video. Over time, we would want to, of course have that, full protocol layer where it’s like, you could have TikTok hosted on glass and build out that functionality to actually have platforms minting their own, like best videos on glass and hosting those as NFTs there right now we’re more so just like a platform, more so than a protocol. And we are just kind of facilitating out to other marketplaces or essentially using videos that a creator might have posted on YouTube right now or on their Instagram or on their TikTok right now. And they can then say, Hey, I think this of all the videos I have is the video I want to NFT. And then they come and they NFT that video on glass. So a lot of the creators are just saying, Hey, I have this YouTube video that has like a thousand views on YouTube. Like the Delly flashy video per se. It’s like that video has 3000 views on YouTube. Right. And then we sold that video for 1.41 E. And so he’s made 10 to 100 X on that video. So he’s made at least X on that video from putting it on glass, than he did from putting it on YouTube. So it’s like, that’s what we want from everything. Like the two feet video that was sold for 11.11 E . He put that video out on glass on November 19th 2021, he also put that video out on YouTube that same night. That video got to about 800 K views on YouTube after about like five to seven days. And in five to seven days, he made 11.11 E on Glass. And so he was like, yeah, you guys literally 10 X the amount of money he made. And that he actually said he can never make this much money on YouTube from a video.
What are you Optimizing for?
So you gotta ask yourself, what are you optimizing for? Are you optimizing for like distribution eyeballs? Are you optimizing for money? And I think actually the two can be combined down the line without a doubt, right? Once more of these protocols and more of these platforms get more mainstream recognition. But as of now, the model that you’re talking about is like, it reminds me a lot of what’s happening in music right now in the crypto scene, which feels like very underground. A lot of artists are experimenting with NFTs and social tokens doing mirror campaigns, catalog sound, all these platforms. They’re either experimenting around fandom or like co-ownership, but also putting their stuff on more of the web two platforms like Spotify and Apple music. So they’re getting the reach and the algorithmic distribution of these centralized platforms, but then using these micro platforms as a way to monetize their, like 1000 true fans kind of thing. So the way I kind of see it also like transitioning into video and content creating like long form short form, from what I’m understanding is like, you can come to glass, you’ll find the collectors, you’ll find audiences. Different audiences maybe they might overlap, but it’s likely different audiences. You can monetize that audience, but then you can also publish on YouTube to kind of take advantage of your still like widespread algorithmic reach kind of thing. That’s how those are the types of models that I’m kind of seeing emerge right now. Is that what you’re seeing as well? Are you seeing something different?
That’s exactly what I’m saying. So I think, like you said, right, web one is, that was consing content and learning how to buy content with like Amazon and Wikipedia. Then you had web two, which was like, okay, we can create like, how do we become creators? All artists are also collectors. And so all these creators are also, collectors in a way. And web three is like, okay, how do we turn these creators into actual owners of content and owners of things and all of like, Wikipedia is still here, Amazon still here, YouTube, Google’s still here. I do think, there’s room for web one, web two web three, as long as that product is fundamental and what it’s bringing and what we’re bringing is, videos that could be sold. And in like 5/10 years, everyone will own 100% video, or at least a GIF. I think we are, like you said, our main thing is monetizing that video more so than it is distribution down the line. We are seeing, Marky Basey say, why would I post a video on YouTube when I could just post it on here and, get money for it. We do have ideas that can potentially an artist on Billboard and millions of views and , the money. And it’s like, of course that’s what we want most, and that’s what we’re gonna get to. But right now it’s like they’re coming here for the money. And it’s like, that’s what 97% of creators actually need
What it feels like, like money and fame are like detached a little bit, because like the fame comes from like distribution and eyeballs and recognition. And the money is like starting to appear to more of these like underground types of platforms and protocols that have it, like it’s niche collectors that see the value and understand what it is to fundamentally own something. And I think like while money and fame is like very, like very adjacent, actually works hand in hand in many other industries. I’m kind of understanding that they’re slightly being detached here and artists need to consistently think about like. Do I want to be vulnerable like that and allow the selling of something that usually has never been sold rather rented. And actually, what does that mean for me down the line? And now that I have a tokenized asset, like how do I build community around that? And these, these are like the things that I think we’re like starting to like open up are the types of conversations that are slowly starting to happen.
The creators that we’re looking for have three core pillars to them, and this is creators and collectors, because they’re really interchangeable. First is the creator pursuing excellence. I feel like all the creators that are coming into this space are artists that actually want to be excellent at their craft. These are artists where it’s like Drake samples, their lyrics, these are like kind of the, the artists behind the main artists that the main artists are stealing from. That is where all of like, like the Marque Basey, like he has a billion streams, but it’s like, no one would know that because it’s like he’s behind the scenes a little bit or, ASAP 12E , he’s in ASAP mob, but he’s not ASAP FERG he’s not ASAP Rocky, , but it’s like walk on water. I was developing that at college. Delly, he’s literally so well known amongst the Harlem community, and amongst the New York City community, but it’s like, he’s not like on the main stage. He’s on insecure. But he’s not on the main stage. And so it’s like, we’re looking for artists that are excellent. And oftentimes in the web two, it doesn’t reward the excellent artists. Right. It rewards the loudest artists and the artists that have the best like industry connections. And so it’s like web two isn’t about artist excellence. Web three is about like actual artist excellence. And then I also think it’s about artists that are commercially adept and artists that have that commercial acumen to figure out, okay, my art is not just my art, the business of how I do my art is also a part of my art. And so these are artists that are thinking even different from a business perspective. And then the last is like this community minded. So it’s like, these artists are like, okay, how can I be proactive with my community? And kind of almost like, NBA Young boy or Lil Baby, or Billy Eish, how can I serve a community that is totally different. Olivia Rodrigo, these are, these are communities that are totally different than targeted. And so really community minded those three things, excellence, artists excellence, commercial acumen, community minded. Those are the artists that are gonna succeed. And we are making business models for a video economy so that your videos are almost turning into startups where it’s like, you want to get on your videos earliest and the next round to get in on your videos it’s like, your videos are more expensive now but less people are gonna get access to them.
This is like introducing a whole new thought right now. It’s almost as if like I was born, my generation was born until like an era of rent okay. Of renting. Right. And nobody really woke up and was like, wait, how can I own and only the smartest people, the richest people, the most successful people understand the concept of ownership, but there still lacks this element of education to these creators because they see an algorithm, they see the ability to get thousand to hundreds of thousands, to millions of viewers on a video. And they’re like, this is the definition of success. Right? Forget the money. Somehow I’ll find a way to monetize. But I feel like it, sometimes comes at a compromise, right? Do I strive for the virality? Do I strive for the money? And my question to you is like, how do we actually introduce a world of education where people are better understanding what ownership is and what is glass doing to kind of combat that because that’s the missing link. The second people have the aha moment that like there’s value in owning my art, and actually what I am doing is art. Despite it being 10 seconds, despite it being three minutes, how do we actually educate people? What does that look like?
I’m so happy. You said that because I’ve been talking to, I’ve had a bunch of conversations this week. People like Valerie Sam, like all these entrepreneurs and creators in this space. I think it takes people like you, Adam, it takes videos that are educational content videos that are making thousands of dollars in everyone versus like, wait, this is like the web three Salcon and they made a hundred thousand dollars by doing video online education. It’s like, I tweeted when I graduated from YouTube, YouTube university, 2020. And it’s like, what if you had a glass teacher that was making millions of dollars a year and everyone was just watching their educational content. And the idea was like, oh wow. I saw this teacher make a million dollars. Now I’m interested. That is the aha moment where you’re like, whoa, how did this teacher make a million dollars doing video educational content? And then after that happens, it’s like a, okay, let’s look into this. So it’s like, it might take, ASAP 12E saying, yo ASAP Rocky, let’s go make a video on glass cuz in the end we’re gonna own this platform. Right. So he puts video up on glass and , more people watch it and then Rihanna sees it and Rihanna’s like, Hey, let’s go put this video up on glass, cuz we’re also gonna own this platform and this is a, we shape the culture. And so then it’s like, oh, this person, Rocky did a fashion video on glass and he made more on the fashion video than he made at the actual fashion concert, on the live stream. And so it’s like, boom, that is gonna catch some eyes. And so I think because it’s, you do have to have the theory, like you do have to have the slight crypto knowledge to have the money in your wallet and to actually be able to make transactions. What we’ll do there is first we’ll get these bigger splashes with these bigger artists while building up native web three crypto artists where it’s like, you might have come for Rocky, but you’re staying for like Luca Maxim,[inaudible] Latasha. And it’s like, oh, you saw big artists, but you really realize, wow, like it has all these low key artists that are actually like web three native artists that are super, super fire. And it’s like, you might have heard about blah, but now you’re, looking at Daniel Allen or something like that. I think that’s a big thing, big artists to little artists like splashes. And then we’re working on this thing called onboard DAW actually, which is like just educational video content that isn’t just on glass, it’s on YouTube, it’s everywhere. And it’s just like quick TikTok like videos, just educating every person about like, okay, say you’re a musician and you wanna, , figure out what’s the best way to, get the most on this one track. It’s like, where do you go catalog sound, blah, blah, music video, glass, right then live stream. You could do that with glass, make some money on there. Then you could do, a other video clipped from that live stream, on glass. So it’s like literally you can make a whole bunch of revenue from one track in like a bunch of different ways from the music audio file to the music video file to the live stream of performing that to the video of that live stream performance all the way back to, he audio of that live stream. And so it’s like, there’s a whole bunch of opportunities for artists in onboard dial and glass learn project is devoted to just teaching people about like web three onboarding experiences. How do you learn about web three? Who do you call almost like customer service? Where we have certain people who are like, ask Val, ask Sam where it’s like, you are like a little confused on token bonding curve. You can just go in and ask Sam or ask to me to help explain to you how token bonding curves work. Or you’re a little confused about what marketplace supports Solana or ethere. To help you figure out, which marketplaces are for that. So it’s like literally the most fundamental questions to the most like complex questions and then just directing you where to go when you get lost. And when you need that friend.
That makes sense.
How do you price a video?
Do you guys have a model for educating creators on how to price a video and what that looks like?
So we’re still really early. We only have about 15 videos live on the site. We have in our network lecture learn class that is educating a bunch of people right now about how to search ether scan. When it comes to pricing videos, we work with the creator based off what they’ve previously priced their videos at. So we’re trying to have videos constantly be increasing in terms of value for the creator. And it’s actually more of an evolutionary process where most of the creators when they work with us and then when they’re first putting that video on, it really depends on the creator because it’s like sometimes creators like, Hey, I want to put this for 3 E sometimes the creator’s like, I wanna start short at like point, 0.15E and be a little conservative. So I’d say we advise I mean last week we used to advise, let’s put it at 0.15. So it can go up in the auction now we’re like, Hey, maybe, wanting it tweaked depending if we have like just collectors who are like, Hey, I really wanna put this towards glass creators. So it really depends, honestly, like we have to adapt it constantly to like what the market is looking like and,,what the creator, like how much the creator wants to push or whether the creator knows they have collectors, which are like a thousand true fans that want to support it. Or if we have to have a thousand true fans from our side that just wanna support anything that we’re putting out. So it’s like, it really depends. But for auctions we typically say like, start low to go high. Then for additions, it’s like, start low so that more people can collect it. But the goal is for us is to make sure the video uploading to minting it onto the blockchain process, is really clean, really easier than YouTube. And then we also want the monetization model to be whatever you need to succeed. So it’s like auctions, collectable editions, crowd funding, tips, bounties, whatever it is we want to iterate on the monetization model so that it works for the creator. And so it’s like we’re adapting on the monetization model and the experience of uploading the video and viewing the video. And of course some social features. We do have comments on the videos. We’ve thought about, , potential NFTs because everyone’s seen like TikTok and TikTok comments or Instagram comments. And it’s like, these are million dollar comments here. Like some of these comments are great. Why not bring comments into the game. Start low to go high. But it really, really depends on the creator and the market, like at that point.
I wanna share my screen for a minute and actually go to the glass protocol website. Honestly, very, very cool layout for the most part, right? Like I think this is super visually pleasing. It’s not like intimidating, it feels very normal, which I think is like one of the biggest steps into making this more approachable and just to add like more context to our conversation. So it’s not just words, this is like, this is the kind of like the video portal kind of thing. So I’m gonna be talking out loud here. Okay. So a couple things for a lot of these video content creators that want to get on chain for the most part. Right. Let’s just call it that. We’ll see a couple things like what is Arweave. People know what discord is share video game. What is Arweave? Like talk to me more about how do you actually host these videos? What does that look like? What makes you guys different on that front?
So we store our videos with Arweave and Arweave is a decentralized storage blockchain. And essentially what makes Arweave different is that Arweave allows for the storing of multi-form content. It allows for storing that content and like these bundles that essentially just allow you to upload packets and packets of data. Pretty much like not at one time, pretty much simultaneously. And so it’s just the best option we’ve found in the market today to store data in a decentralized way. And so we believe fully in Arweave and Arweave has really just provided that storage mechanism that can allow us to be the home of decentralized videos.
What’s under the hood?
Got it. Got it. So do you think that’s important to the creator, like what’s happening underneath the hood? Do you think, do you think like creators care about that? Like the food on their plate and where it comes from?
I think creators are caring about it more and more. I think the way that we’re going to where privacy and where your data is stored is becoming more and more of a top of the mind idea, but when it’s like a day to day thing, no, I don’t think creators care, that my storage is being stored, it’s decentralized or it’s centralized. It’s like what the creator cares about is making money and getting ownership of the platform over time for the contributions and building out a platform that, displays content that is easy to view that makes it easy to create as a creator that has the right categories, whether it be music, movies, gaming, memes, whatever. And so I think creators care about, the representation of the platform, the community that it is actually bringing to them. And I think right now from a vibe check, all the platforms don’t have any like the community’s not there, all these products that people use on a day to day, the soul is really lost. And these products like the last time, I’d say a product I used that had soul in a community that I was attached to, to use. I think, clubhouse had it a bit. But they didn’t have the incentives. The incentives were wrong until they lost everything. And like, that’s really what happens. It’s like if your incentives are just wrong, which is what we learned from our first startup, you can have that engagement and that love for temporary, but the loyalty will not be there. The soul, the pull to want that product to succeed really badly will not be there. And so I think creators since like, wow, like this new idea of ownership is actually gonna get me to stay on the days where I’m having trouble creating on the days where like I hate the internet or on the days where, , I don’t wanna see my phone, a laptop or whatever. And so I think they’re coming for money ownership and of course they’re looking for a web three platform that does videos long, short form, and that us and we’re the only ones that do that right now. And then also they’re looking for like the community and I think those are like the main things they’re looking for. And then they would hope that that community would build the right things on the back end. Yeah. Right. And it’s up to the core development team to have that care and to have that care of let’s make this decentralized, let’s make this, with the ethos of the community, it really comes down to the core development team. You want them to have that ethos and that idea to make it what the community would like most.
How do creators intertwine incentives into their content? What does that look like? Like let’s talk about like short form and like long form, like longform actually mid form. Introducing bracket, mid form being like music videos. Okay. Short form being TikTok, Instagram reels. Youtube shorts. Are you guys building something around that too? Or what does that look like? Yeah.
Yeah. So we, we have a lot of fun stuff that we’re building on the way that is just gonna totally like that experience. You just showed with the Marky Basey, if you could go back. But like that is literally like the 0.5. Like we don’t have profiles yet. We don’t have a homepage with like the top with countdown for the next videos coming. We don’t have a video wait list, almost like a film festival for what’s coming. I would say with that Marky Basey video, if you look at the comments, it says NFT rewards and the rewards say lifetime gold pass, which means you can literally to any Mark Basey concert forever. So go up a little bit.
Okay. One second.
Right. And then show more in the description,
Show more in the description. Where is that?
Right above share video
To the left. Oh, okay. Got it. Cool.
NFT rewards at the bottom, it says VIP plus one, all access to any show on his upcoming tour. Lifetime goal to take a 30 minute FaceTime with Basey. The collector of this literally said, I got a bargain for this NFT.
This was 8.2 K
And mind you, Marky Basey is going up for the Grammys this year and this was the top 10 Spotify alb. So it’s like, he literally is gonna be backstage with Mark Basey. Literally gonna be at any Marky Basey concert forever is of course worth more than $8,000 if you add it up over time. Yeah. So the reality is we wanna make a UI, a user experience for these rewards, more prevalent and just open in general. And then we also wanna.
Wait, this is such a steal. I’m just realizing this not to cut you off. A lifetime golden ticket accepted at any Basey concert for life for 8.2 K like the resale value on that is actually……
It’s such a steal. So it’s like, we literally are actually every video we’re thinking it through where it’s like, we actually, not only do we want the creator to break even, but we also want the collector to get a steal, like a steal. So that’s for a medi form. For short form. It’s like, you can add those steals in too. Or maybe you can say, Hey, on my next video, I’ll make it with you? Or you could say you can choose, the next idea that I make a video to. So we have a bunch of ideas that we’ve always wanted to test. Now you could just tie to the NFT where you can have that on chain off chain of experience tied together.
Monetization: Youtube vs Glass
I have a question for you. 8.2 K. How many views does that need to be generated on YouTube to make 8.2 K?
So 1 million views is about a thousand dollars. So you need about 8 million views.
Wow.
Geez. Like around seven to eight,
Seven, I feel like that’s like the marketing tactic right there, like Marky Basey made 8.2 K, which would otherwise be needed to kind of stream, how many views you said?
7 to 9 million views.
7 to 9 million. Wow. What the hell?
Million views.
Adam Levy (01:36):
Wait, this is such like an aha moment. Like, I feel like everybody who’s listening right now should just like take a moment, like take a deep breath. Like that’s a freaking aha moment right there. To show you that there’s value behind that type of art. Like let’s think about the life cycle for a second. Okay. This video that I’m watching is super high production, probably costs thousands of dollars to make within itself. The YouTube video will not cover the cost of that music video. They’re banking on the fact that the entire album does exceptionally well and the tours go exceptionally well and that all the revenue generated makes up for all those micro costs down the line. I’m just like having this moment right now. That’s really big. That’s really big.
This is what we do it for because it’s like we did a live stream Sanverin and I did a live stream to test out the software in like August. And we generated $10,000 by selling 15 editions for that live in 22 minutes. And that wasn’t even in a video, but that was the moment where we said, whoa, what the freak is this? Like, we’ve never made this much money in our lives. And $10,000, 20 minutes on a live stream from editions. Like how does that work dude? It’s something you just have to see. And we need to put it in as many people faces as possible.
Fricking game changer, game changer.
Crazy, crazy. Like this podcast right here, like 10 Xing to a hundred Xing the min podcast revenues is our goal. So it’s just like, that’s gonna happen. That’s gonna happen. And so it’s like, that’s, what’s crazy. It’s just that every single company, every single person uses video. And so it’s like a video is a 57% of all internet traffic is video traffic, and that’s just so much more than all other traffic on the internet. So in terms of bandwidth, the internet and those wires it’s videos. And so now we’re giving video’s a chance to at least break even, but definitely 10 X, a hundred X, what they’re doing on every other video web two platform.
Importance of Ownership
All right, let’s talk about this. If I start posting mint videos, I ditch YouTube because my reach on, on YouTube is like, it’s growing. I’m not gonna say it sucks, but it’s getting better by the day. Okay. If I ditch YouTube because like, I think it’s important to post on there to have a presence. Okay. Despite everything, but to tap into more of this like web three model, because a lot of what Mint does is like the business model is very web three. So I sell, everybody knows this, or I keep saying this, at least it’s on the website, whatever I sell three to five FTS per month to sponsors who then promote on the podcast, all revenues on chain, you can see all that. The content is very web three native. The only thing that’s missing that I’ve been wanting to do is like the infrastructure, the publishing is not web three native on the podcasting, the audio side, it can’t on the video side, now it can. Okay. So, and this is without the expectation of me kind of like making money or not making money rather for the shits and giggles of just like doing it. When I post my video on Glass, what does that mean now for copyright? Like, let’s say somebody buys it. Okay. First of all, can I sell part ownership? Number one, and number two, if I can’t and it’s all complete ownership, what can that owner do with that video down the line? Like what does that entail? And is it wrong for me to impose, added legal rules and structures into that video? I can add a bunch of add-ons to this, but I’ll shut up and I’ll let you kind of take the lead. Cause I think, where this is going.
Yeah. So yeah, this is like one of the biggest questions. This is why we’re taking our time and working with independent artists and making sure that every creator is getting full approval and authentication to upload any video from the actual core creator who made it. So I’d say we’re experimenting honestly right now with different copyright models, but we see videos as a public good where anyone could actually potentially, enjoy it, get ownership over it. We kind of wanna think of it as a public good. That is, you could take that piece of content, reproduce it into something else, sell that content as something that’s a new content and potentially refer and link back to that creator. So where we’re creating this thing called hyperlink, which is essentially just it’s called hyperlink data, but it’s essentially linking NFTs back to other NFTs. And so that can kind of create that tagging or that linking back to, sampled works for the future. It also provides like almost like a list of, okay, where did that video derive from that video derive from that? Or, I use that sound and that sound connected to that video and, you’re linking and deriving things in that way. You’re linking NFTs like that. And so I think we wanna make the technology allow for sampling and mixing because everything is a sample. There’s no new things under the sun, that’s in the Bible or, I think there, there’s always gonna be new combinations of things and that’s what we wanna monetize. And we wanna help, the OJ creators, monetize with royalties off of iteration or a sample of that creation. And so figuring out the exact model cabaret model, that’s gonna get that done. They’re out there. And I think CCO mono where you, you just are essentially like able to, take that work, refactor it, and link back to that other work is a good model. When creatives are uploading that work, we’re gonna add in like verification and authentication when it comes to creatives uploading that work. And then last is just like, you’re gonna have this social, web three is very social contract focus where it’s like, if it’s not, that person’s work, if that person isn’t, behind the community and that person isn’t like someone who’s in the future doing this, not just to grow themselves, but also to grow the community. Like I said, community mind, commercial and artist excellence. It’s like that person probably will not be able to sell that video. Of course you’ll have similar problems with web two where it’s like someone, takes, someone’s content augments it and it’s not their content, but it’s just like, will that sell as if the original content from the actual creator it’s like social contracts are in the real world are gonna come in and play, let alone that won’t be able to link to other NFTs, that that creator might make. And so, you combine that with the hyperlink, combine that with the social contract, combine that with just basic like public goods, like copyright laws, then it’s just a lot harder for that creator. And we know all the pathways at which, , a scam, which is like, fake title.
That like, that was, that was my next question. Like, there’s a lot of like Steve Waszniak Vitalic videos of like doing a thousand airdrops on YouTube. You remember that period where it was just like nonstop back to back, these scammers were taking clips and like of other actual religion videos of interviews and putting like a skin around them, even Elon Musks did this, like, how do you prevent stuff like that? Like, well, by the way, Elon Musk didn’t do it. Someone did it on behalf of him, right. Illegally, like tried to scam people just to make that clip. How do you prevent that? How do you prevent that malicious activity? Because if everything’s decentralized and everything’s being done on arweave, their team can’t come on and like delete. So that stays there. How do you kind of fight that? Cuz that’s a big problem.
It’s a big, big potential problem. And so arweave does actually have like some content moderation that they are building. So they actually help [inaudible] in that case. We’ve seen with like, I’d say like open sea being the biggest volume marketplace right now they use this verification check and we’re seeing that like, , open Sea is working, it’s working pretty well there, but like, of course, like, like we said, that is a centralized platfrom, whereas we are more decentralized. Like I said, it really comes down to how does the creator behind the video want it to be shared? And then if they are gonna share that video, they’re most likely planning to work around that video to add value to that video or whatever that thing is. So over time that original NFT, accrues value around the artists. And it’s like, I like to say that it’s not about the art. It is about the artist. Right. And it’s like the art is just coming from the creator, but it’s like, it’s really like, I’m buying an Adam NFT on a mint because cause of Adam, , like even though this was a great podcast, it’s like, I’m still buying it because it’s like, yeah, he’s gonna do more podcasts and they’re all gonna be great and it’s like, I’m gonna be able to say yeah, of all the great ones I own this one or , of all the great ones like this is the one. So it’s like you are still investing as much in the artist, more so than you’re investing in the art. And so it’s like, that is like, if you’re not monetizing or if, , you’re sending people, these fake things, it’s like, they still have to know who is the person who’s sending that. And how is that person official? And link to your Twitter or like we link to Twitter and then we show the title. And so it’s like that Twitter link is almost showing you like where you’re really linking up to.
So I like to think about it like this. Okay. I actually love that. I think that could be even a great title for the podcast. Like invest in the artist, not the art. And it really that’s like super, super fundamental too. Like I come from like the VC world. So prior to like doing mint, I was working at a blockchain fund and it’s like, you bet on founders, you bet on early stage founders for any early stage bet you bet on the people and like the market opportunity and ideas and like other components, but like you bet on the founder and if they can execute the vision, right. And a lot of these creators, they have the vision they’ve been executing and now they’re coming into web three and all that traction kind of validates their worth per se. This is just like a new step in the right direction, in my opinion. So it’s like this concept of like betting on the artist and not the art, like let’s look at Ali Straza from Ali coin on Rally. She has a top performing like social token. She has half a million followers over half a million across Twitch and YouTube. She does gaming. That’s her niche. She’s produced hours upon on hours upon hours of content, of live streams, et cetera, and then came into crypto and it’s like, this is not a fresh face. This is not a new person. This is like an existing person who has reputation. Who’s consistently executed on her vision, on her mission with her content. The only thing that’s changing is the concept of ownership and value. Right. And me betting on these people is basically me betting on the fact that they’ll actually continue doing this, but now the value will accrue differently. Right. And I think that’s like, I think that’s like the missing link. Like a lot of people they see this. Okay. I’m just gonna flip JPX I’m just gonna flip all this stuff. Like yeah. That’s one way, it’s a very like investment type of approach, but like the long term way, my opinion is like betting on people. Right. And investing on people and not necessarily like sure. There’s like the financial upside, but there’s also something beautiful about being able to support a creator and seeing that amount of money, like being able to change their life kind of thing. And like realizing that like 8.2 K is over 8 million views on YouTube. How many people actually get that that are actually like talented creators. Right. But just, aren’t like breaking the ceiling, the Glass ceiling of the algorithm.
I think that’s exactly it. I mean, you explained it perfectly right there. I mean, ownership, change, mental reshaping of value. Just seeing that aha moment. I mean, Salem Harley was our first video that sold for 5.82 E by a random person named the Sugar Glider from the Caribbeans. And he’s planning to put that video up in like a Caribbean Dow museum. And it’s like, who knows that video could go into the central land? Like that video could go anywhere. I say music decorates sound and art decorates space. And it’s like video art is gonna decorate all of these metaverse spaces. And it’s like, we want this video art to go everywhere. We want it to literally be super visible in as many places as possible. As well as being the home, we also wanna link out. Like it’s like the mirror article, our network lecture is on mirror, but the videos are on Glass, that’s un-monetized, but the conversation with the comments in the discord is even cleaner though, than like a YouTube conversation so the two way interactivity that we’re bringing when it comes to like, yeah. Like you’re literally bidding and you’re interacting as a viewer, but now you’re a collector and you’re buying this video that is fun. People have no idea how fun it is. You can bet on the video, I played sports my whole life. We were always like, we wanted, we always felt like, oh, we could get out there on the field. And it’s like, I have players on the premier league that I used to play with. I have friends who are winning national trophies. I have friends who are on the US national team. And it’s like, I sometimes am like, dang, I wanna get out there. I want to interact with this game? And it’s like, I feel like, honestly, it would be sick to eventually be going to a world where it’s like, if I felt I could play against one of these players, I could potentially did enough or whatever, or do enough to get onto the field. And so I think this is just moving the world towards where everyone who was previously on the bench is just gonna get more and more like, I wanna play. Even the coach.
You become your own coach!
You’re your own coach. And like, you’re putting yourself in.
That’s exactly it. Like your Jerry Crouse, Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan in one person? You gotta limit your Jerry Crouse. You gotta come with, that win-win mentality, it’s like in web three there’s this tension though, because it’s like, I put a video up. Oh, like now they own my video, what if I don’t want that to be my owner? Am I gonna go buy that video off of that person? And it’s like, there is this tension where it’s like, who do you want to be your owner, blah, blah, owner, master your situation. But it’s just like in the end, we’re going towards, just ownership and wealth in the end.
Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Outro
I think that’s like the perfect place to end off. Where can we find you before I let you go? Like, where can we find Glass? Where can you find you like show yourself
At Glassprotocol on Twitter, Glass.xyz for the website. And if you’re a creator, just click the create and fill out the creator application. The goal is to get everybody uploading videos on Glass uploading videos depending on the gas cost. So we are, , looking to, , be multi chain with Solana. And, , if you have other chains, you would like us to be on hop into the last discord, which can all be found at the Glass Twitter at @Glassprotocol. My Twitter is @dayoadeosun10. I think my Instagram is the same thing, but reach out to me, Twitter, IG, DM’S inboxes are open, always looking to talk about creators, look at videos. Do whatever chat, chill. I’m in Lagos Nigeria right now, but I’m also in New York city. So if you’re in Legos or New York hit me up also down to link in person. We have a video coming out with Deosun our first dance music video NFT. It was like I’m not sure if the Rema song, audible] it like just came out, that’s about a drop. And then, u, got some other cool drops. Luca Maxim, John waltz, Riley, Wada, Sirisu visionary, Fortune, a lot of cool jobs on the way we’re looking to really just break the doors down in 2022. Glass is coming and we’re coming crazy.
Thank you so much, bro. I hope to have you soon again.
Thank you, Adam.