Mint Season 6 episode 19 welcomes the co-founder and CEO of n.xyz, Sridhar Ramaswamy (ra-mas-wah-mee). This ex-googler previously led the largest search engine’s $115 billion advertising division and has his eye on a new focus: blockchain data. With their debut launch this week, followed by an impressive series A led by Paradigm, we explore how he’s building web3’s indexer of choice and how his time at Google lead to where he is today.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:13 – Intro
04:27 – What It’s Like Managing Over 10,000 People and $100 Billion in Revenue
06:32 – Leaving Google to Start Neeva
09:20 – The Birth of Web3 Neeva
16:10 – Less Obvious Applications Using the Power of Neeva
17:41 – Web2 Search Versus Web3 Search
20:36 – End User Blockchain Search
22:57 – On-Chain SEO
24:20 – The Future of Advertising in Web3
30:15 – The Emergence of New Tech and Zero-Knowledge Proofs
32:33 – The Next Trend for Neeva to Tackle
35:02 – The World of On-Chain Data
39:55 – Thoughts Around Data Access in Web3 Versus Web2
43:04 – Outro
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Sridhar, welcome to mint, thank you for being on the podcast, a part of season six. How are you doing, man?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Very excited to be here. I know, we started with some technical glitches, but I’m sure everything will go just fine.
Intro
Everything will go just fine and even better, I’m sure. I’m super stoked to have you on. It’s actually a privilege to be talking with you, a man of your level of seniority, doing what you’ve done at Google plus more now on web three, I’m super excited to dive in. I think a good place to start, Sridhar, is who are you? For those who don’t know you, okay. How do you typically introduce yourself to someone. And I’d also love to kind of like, tag along your entry into web three with that, too.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: That’s great. Well, I start by saying, I’m an immigrant came to get a graduate degree at Brown University on the East Coast, kind of tried my hand at being an academic worked at Bell Labs, the same place where the transistor was invented for a few years, before deciding to come out to the valley to work on software. And it was my true passion, super early at Google, none of us quite realized, the juggernaut that the company was going to become, started as an engineer, but sort of grew as the company grew, I went from being like, you know, a team of one myself, to leading a team of over 10,000 people and a business of over $100 billion, amazing opportunity there. But left about four years ago, to pursue a passion of mine, that’s Neeva. It’s a search engine with a very different goal. It’s to always be user focused, undertake search back to it’s roots. And really, web three came as a result of exploring the Neeva mission of sort of just making the world’s information available to everybody, started looking at web three and what was out there, I got super excited. And that was the beginning of another pun chapter and the overall journey.
So what employee number were you at Google?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: I think it was like 300 and something. It was a pretty big company, even by the time I got there. So, it’s not like 10 or 20 years.
Do you remember your initial motives and reasoning for joining that company such as so quote, unquote, early on?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: It was a very successful company already, I think the year Google was going to make $1.6 billion of revenue, it was like, in some sense, the best kept secret in the valley, here was this quiet little company working on a boring little problem search. And my god, they were printing money. So, I had some friends who had moved. And they said, it was an amazing place to work. And I had actually tried my hand at managing a team at my previous startup as a company called Epiphany. And so, I decided that I really just wanted to be an engineer to learn. Google is doing some incredible things, distributed computing, as we know it today, really has its origins at Google, they were sort of really good at taking low-cost machines and creating something very reliable. So, it was very exciting for an engineer to just go in there and learn. And there was this era of success in the company already.
Did you did you have to have a startup sort of mentality entering at 300 people? And I only ask that, because you’ve been there for, you were there for a very long time. And I feel like you could get distracted very easily to work on other stuff. Right, based off the experience that you built up. I’m curious to hear that side.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Yeah, different people handle these things differently. There are some people at Google that switched from team to team, they’re like, oh, I work on ads, now I work on this, now I work on search. For whatever reason, you know, I stayed on with the same games for a very long time, I kept finding ways to challenge myself there were still like new things to learn. I started in the infrastructure team and then I learned more about advertiser tools. And then I learned about quality and machine learning, then about what it was to run and grow a very large business, dealing with customers. I can look back every year and say, like, yeah, I learned something new, learn payments, learn shopping. So, it’s just this incredible opportunity. Because Google as a company has had so much impact on so many aspects of our lives.
What It’s Like Managing Over 10,000 People and $100 Billion in Revenue
What’s it like managing over 10,000 people and being in charge for sort of being responsible for managing over $100 billion of revenue? And I’m sure you get this question all the time. But yeah, I’m super curious.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Well, I mean, first of all, the thing that you learn very quickly as a leader, if you truly want to be successful at it, is a service mentality. You realize that you know, you’re there to serve. You’re there to make the teams better. By the time your team is even like 100 people, most smart leaders figured out that they personally cannot do all that much, not compared to 100 people. And so, you very much have to learn what it is on to bring out the best in other people. You learn about motivation, you learn about, you know how to convey a sense of purpose to your team, you learn how to make each person feel in your team, feel that their work is worthwhile. So, in many, many ways, being a leader of a large team is a humbling learning experience. But you also get the privilege of betting on lots and lots of people. I became what I became at Google, because people like Eric Schmidt, people like Bill Campbell, or Larry Page, they saw things in me that I never could have seen. And I’m always grateful to people like that for giving me amazing opportunity. So, I’ve always taken it as kind of my job also, to take bets on people. And so, you spend a lot of time you know, coaching people, you spend a lot of time helping people truly excel, you problem solve. But you’re, you know, you’re a coach you are betting on people. And every big leader, you know, very, very quickly realizes that they are there to serve other people, they are there to motivate other people. It’s a lot of fun and you’ll learn a lot.
Leaving Google to Start Neeva
And I’m sure I could spend hours upon hours asking you about Google but I want to sort of transition now into Neva, at least the web two Neva, okay. Another, it’s an ad free sort of search engine, right? And it’s become your passion. That’s what you coined it. That’s my search is my passion. So, talk me through the transition of going from Google to then starting Neva and what did you sort of set to aim to do at the get go?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Yeah, towards the end of my stay at Google, I realized that, you know, any company that aspired to keep on growing, that was ads based, essentially would see no limit to how many ads it showed within it’s products. There are no natural limits, especially for a company like Google that honestly has no competitors. And so, I saw a world in which the search experience was going to get worse and worse. Funny story, true story. We were playing around, looking at Google’s UI on the phone versus that off Neeva’s. And, you know, a query that we tried was what to do in a car accident. If you try it on Google today, you will get four ads for lives. And on Neeva, it’ll kind of be like, first of all, it’s time to get to the side of the road, make sure that you don’t put yourself in danger. If like, if you’re involved with another car, and if they need help, make sure that you call 911. We showed this to people and there were some people that just went like ballistic, they’re like, I’m just in like a car accident, you guys are showing me ads like what the hell. So, you know, in many ways, that sort of is a sad outcome but it also points to the opportunity, which is you want, search is a very deeply personal function, you have a headache, you’re going to search, you’re bothered about something, you want to search, you want to buy something, you want to a search, you don’t remember the lyrics to a song, you’d like to search. And so, we wanted to take search back to it’s root, create just a worry-free, truly useful product. And that’s what we are in the process of doing. It didn’t come immediately after Google, you know, tried my hand at investing for a little bit with my friends at Greylock. That was fun, but I like creating things. And the early parts of conceiving of an idea and seeing like it worked out, is there like a cool product here to be created. That’s always the most exciting part. And so, Neva came a little bit after I left Google and I’m also very fortunate to have my co-founder and partner Vivek, in this journey. And yeah, this one has been our passion for the past three and a half, four years.
The Birth of Web3 Neeva
And now there’s a web three native Neeva, right? And that’s why we’re here today. That’s why I added you to the seasonal lineup for season six, because season six is all about on chain data. And yeah, you guys are sort of focusing your attention on what’s happening in web three. Talk to me about sort of what were some of your findings that we were like, wow, we need to enter web three, we need us maybe shift the product focus from web two search to web three, search and how did web three Neeva sort of come about?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Well, so web three Neeva actually is an independent company. Neeva is a big shareholder in that company, but it’s an independent company. The journey started with a simple question of what should web three mean for a search engine? You know, as a startup, we know that our strength is in going and exploring areas that others will be hesitant to explore. So, for example, if you look for a product on Neeva, we’re going to, we’re going to stack the page full of reviews, because we’re like, ah, you’re going to educate Adam about the product. And if he wants to buy the product, sure, we’ll show it to him. But we are not in a rush, as soon as you type of product name to get you to go buy the product, that is his element of education, that is always an important part of search. So, we started looking at this question four, how do we make it easy to find information from web three? Now, what exactly is about three, of course, there’s the on-chain data. And we started looking at that, we also realized that there was a lot of web three relevant information on Twitter, on Discord, on some websites, but this information was everywhere.
So, we initially started to build out an NFT search engine, because we thought, oh, that’s very visual. It is clearly, you know, pretty popular. Let’s look at what it would take for us to index on chain data. And then we realized that at least when it came to NFTs, a lot of the information whether it’s metadata or media are actually off chain. Sometimes they’re on IPFS. But quite a few people also put them up on regular web two sites, not something I would recommend, but people do that. Anyway. So, we wrote a little crawler. And then we use the power of the search stock that we had built for, to run Neeva’s web search, which runs at petabyte scale, in order to create this NFT search engine, which we call Neeva XYZ, we kept it separate from Neeva, because we wanted to iterate very, very quickly. You know, there have been days in which I personally have pushed out like a dozen releases on a single day. And that’s the benefit of being a small team. There’s just five people and me, by the way. And the hide, like as a shoestring team, we built this great search experience. And then we started showing it to friends to get feedback. You know, I know a number of friends who had moved in web three or like that three, oh, geez.
And while they love the idea of an NFT search engine on thought that a consumer product could be interesting. A number of them also said, hey, carrying at web three data, creating just obligations, knowing what’s going on. In, you know, in the blockchain, whether it’s Ethereum, or Polygon or Solana, that part was really hard. That’s when we decided to change the focus of the effort from creating like an end user search product, which is like Neeva XYZ is to providing a set of developer API’s. We also decided that we wanted to have focus, we wanted to have great investors, you know, for this new effort, you know, crypto emojis, and so be splintered off as a separate company. We are lucky to have the backing of folks like, like Paradigm like Greylock and Sequoia that invested in Neeva, but also people like Coinbase ventures, and a whole bunch of other folks that were very excited by the idea of creating amazing technology, to provide much better data to developers, get in early beta testing, we’ll have more to say about this in in a few weeks. But if you want to build any web three application, whether it’s a wallet, or an NFT minting site, or a gallery or a marketplace, or you just want to do analysis on this data, to figure out like hey, can you do time series prediction on NFT or defi prices? We’d love to talk to you. That’s really the focus of the company lightning-fast access to web three data.
Such a difficult problem to solve. Very difficult problem to solve, especially when there’s no real standardization around on-chain data. I’m curious how you attempted to sort of approach that problem, especially around the metadata when you’re trying to create aggregation sites, right? I know it’s a big problem in the music NFT side of things where you try to create like a playlisting site, right. But the music metadata is all over the place. How have you guys’ sort of approached that problem?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: In a few different ways. At one level, we looked at what was common to all the different categories of NFTs. So, we basically constructed this schema for NFTs, we constructed a similar schema for ERC 20 tokens, we’re in the process of constructing, essentially doing a whole bunch of data engineering, data diagnostics, to figure out how can we represent different defi products, whether they are like swapped liquidity pools or loans, and so that work can be done time consuming, but it is well worth it. And then something like search is a very powerful tool on top of it. This new company, which is called an XYZ, by the way, a little bit of an abbreviation of XYZ, you know, it’s not just a search API is also, it’s an API to get at the contents of what is on chain. So, if you want to know what’s in a wallet, but you want it to be real time as of a few seconds ago, you can use our API’s on, so there is an element of standardization that we did for common asset classes. But even for custom used cases, whether it’s the nouns project, for example, logging their own metadata, or other people like rabbit hole, we’ve had a lot of conversations close to 100 for the past couple of months, just trying to figure out, how do people want to index this data? What are the best tools that we can provide to, A, make it easy, B, make it flexible, but much more importantly, make it highly, highly performant at.
Less Obvious Applications Using the Power of Neeva
What are some of the more less obvious applications you imagine being built using the power of Neeva’s API for example real time?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: We’ve experimented with fun little projects like hey, can you write a predictor or bot wallet? As you know, detecting civil wallets is a game that lots of people play. And as things like Airdrops become more and more important. As a marketing tool, you want to make sure that you Airdrop to real people not, you know, not wallets controlled by a program. So that was like a fun little project, that insurance firm who worked with us over the summer did, I can think of other things. You just played around with it; can you establish a trust score for a wallet? Is this a real person? Are they holding real assets or is it one of these like pump and dump wallets? What can you say about things like that? Other obvious applications? Can you trace money movement across chains in real time? As you know, there are companies like 0x, like layer zero or Nomad that are creating protocols for moving money cross chain, can you track that in real time? So, these are all like, you know, I would say these are not the V one applications that we are creating. But these are the kinds of things that might be pretty fun to create on top of the data and infrastructure that we create.
Web2 Search Versus Web3 Search
I’d argue that on chain data is just another form of data that somebody may want to search, right? And kind of get answers for and I’m curious from your point of view, how does web three search differ in compared to web to search? And maybe you could also take it from like, how does the product experience differ?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: I think web three search is still being defined, simply because the entities that make up the search are not completely clear yet. The great thing about the web, is that this notion of a web page, a page that had some information became common currency. Everybody, like literally think about it in the world, sort of implicitly understands what a web pages, they implicitly understand what a click on a link is, there’s nothing obvious about it, that you can go from one page to another. Remember, books had this but they’re more like bibliographies, you had to go to the end of the book, find the name of a book, and then maybe go look up the library index, was all painful. The web made all of these things instant. So, I think they’re still figuring out things like, what are the interesting concepts that you want to search over? So, when we think of NFT search, for example, we think in terms of is something that token, is something a wallet, is something a contract, one that mint tokens, but as you can imagine, there are other people, other things like, what is a collection? Or what is the person that corresponds that’s like a creator of different contracts? it’s not quite a lot.
And so I think there’s this first question of, how do you like, you know, how do you figure out what is it that you are looking for, and then you begin to define like, the relationships between these entities on you know, Neeva on XYZ, you can just throw in some words, and you can search, and you can click on a token and go from there to the wallet that has the token or you can go from there to the contract that has the token, and then you can do like attribute filters on the tokens that are contract issues. It just makes navigation possible. I think over the next few years, as these concepts will become more and more solidified, and then people will truly be able to say, well, I am looking for a Dao that has these people in it. And why don’t you tell me? I think things will get clearer as these things grow in popularity. Right now, we are still trying to define what exactly we are finding. And this is a ton of information on Twitter on Discord, anything that claims to do web three search needs to bring all of these together as well. So, it’s a fun problem. It’s a big and it’s sort of a loosey goosey problem right now.
End User Blockchain Search
Right. I’m also trying to like I’m thinking out loud here. I’m also trying to understand like, does the user understand what even searching on the blockchain means? Like, what would they even be searching for kind of thing? Right now, it feels like we’re just searching open sea or ether scan, for the most part, right? Or maybe we’re using some analytic platforms to get some statistics and interesting insights, right? But I think like, if you think about the like the web two user and how they use a product like Google or Neeva, right? I feel like they go, they would obviously go and use that product with a different intent, as if they were to use a web three type of search product. And I don’t know if that user sort of exists in web three just yet, to kind of get to that level, you know, where my head is at?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: 100%. This completely makes sense. And many ways, what you are describing mirrors the development of things like the Yahoo directory, back when the web was very, very early, Yahoo literally had a bunch of people that constructed this catalog, this directory, that basically said, if you want to look for shops, look here, if you want to look for something else, universities, look over here. And over time, what happened is, there were so many stores, so many universities, so many other sorts of like sites, that it became impossible for anybody to categorize it. The reason you go to open sea right now to look for NFTs is because it is the definitive marketplace for NFTs. If you imagine a world where there are like 100 marketplaces, all of a sudden, an aggregation play becomes more interesting, if there are 20 blockchain. So, this idea of like looking at ether scan, which is already Ethereum data suddenly sounds a little bit silly. On this part of what we do, by the way, if you search on Neeva on XYZ, we will return data back to you. Whether it’s on Ethereum, or polygon or optimism or arbitrage, we are like, you know, continuously adding more chains. And so, search is fundamentally an aggregation play, it makes sense only when there are so many things that you and I simply cannot keep track, or we don’t want to bother to keep track of all the different places to go to.
On-Chain SEO
Yeah. Another thing that I’ve been thinking about in preparation for this interview is like trying to understand what is on chain SEO look like, right? Search engine optimization, as a marketer myself, right? I’ve done a ton of gigs where I try to optimize blogs or pages on Google to kind of come on the first search results, right? I’m curious what that looks like. In the future. I wonder if you have any takes on that.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: People are doing this today. Remember when you create a hot new collection, you get your friends to like go buy the NFTs from that collection. And so, it is all on Twitter, if you have a handle, yeah, you try to build up a following. In many ways. You know, the, the founding principle of page rank, by the way, is like this funny definition that says, a page of popular page or a good page, if other popular pages say so, it’s a little bit like high school phase, right? This is like you’re cool, if like the cool people like, let you in. And so, to a certain extent Twitter is also like that, you’re cool if a lot of good people follow you on Twitter. So, there are similar things that will happen. I think those things are universal in, you know, in nature, a collection of school. I don’t know if like Zink owns one of your tokens. And so, I think stuff like that.
The Future of Advertising in Web3
Interesting. Interesting, interesting. Okay, interesting. All right, let’s transition into advertising, where web three meets advertising. Okay. That is obviously a big hat you worked at Google. It’s something that you may know a little bit about, I’d argue. What does the future of advertising look and feel like in web three?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: That is one part of you know, web three, a lot of early players. They are actively against advertising that are, you know, focused on things like more value for the early users. So, the ethos of web three, the ethos of Daos around like community ownership, community management, you know, puts on a very odd user as community, or community as owners, I think it’s a different set of principles. I think Daos are very powerful. They, you know, hearken back to collectives that have existed, like in humanity for a very, very long time. So, I think, loosely coupled organizations working together, has a lot of promise but on the other hand, as they said, you know, things like what has value or what is popular is inherently a social phenomenon. And so, whenever that happens, that is going to be advertising, you see this today, there are, I’m sure you get a lot of token drops. And that’s a form of advertising, people are like reaching out and saying, hey, you should claim this token. There might be something cool that is out there. I think that is also an opportunity for social networks, where basically you decide on membership in a particular group, depending on whether you own a particular token or not. I see recommendation engines coming as NFTs become more popular. If you own the sets of NFTs, maybe you should consider owning something else. And that is always like whenever there are recommendations that are made, there’s going to be a promotional element to these recommendations, I think it’s early to call. But I think things like better Airdrop, which you can think of as marketing, early advertising, definitely have a role to play. But the whole ecosystem is super nascent. And then if you lay it on things like metaverse, truly immersive experiences, that have an element of web three, of blockchain of like, you know, decentralized state also associated with them. I think that adds an additional twist into how advertising will work. Overall, I would say the world of web three metaverse, advertising is very, very young. But it will develop, advertising arises naturally whenever there is commercial interest and that is a reason to stand out. I don’t expect web three are the metaverse to be wildly different.
Yeah, I think there’s a or at least it feels like there’s a notion amongst many users that they don’t want advertising. Like they don’t want that same experience, a lot of users feel like that if we introduce, for example, the most common or memorable form of advertising is like display advertising, right? It’s like, it’s like if we go back to that world, are we just moving backwards? Like, what are we doing, right? And I wonder, I wonder at what point we’re actually going to see like more web three, native advertising, air drops are a great example. What other forms of advertising sort of live and exist or have yet to live in exist in web three? We have yet to find out. I wonder if you have any more additional thoughts just around that.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: I think, as I said, the culture very much is that off, like, hey, let’s leave the worst of the web two world behind. And this sort of utopian promise of advertising will deliver great content to all of us, and it’ll all be free. Everybody has realized by now that there is no free lunch. And these ads can get more and more intrusive. In many ways a company like Neeva, is like the opposite of the web two model where militantly pro user, and the ads and the tracking. So, I think that is definitely the ethos. And the thing is, you know, blockchains also offer the potential for much lower transaction costs. Marc Andreessen calls the lack of payments on web two original sin. So, a lot of like low-cost services could not really be created, advertising became the way in which to monetize like, lots of eyeballs into something tangible. I do hope that, you know, things like gas fees come down low enough. So, through innovations that all of us desperately need, like microtransactions, like the ability to aggregate value in terms of what is being delivered to you and me, I hope things like that truly come to pass because the current world in which the minimum cost of moving any money, like in the real world is like 35 cents plus 3%, which is ridiculous. You’re just moving bits from one computer to another. And the sad part about Ethereum right now is like oh, wait, like what? 20 bucks, 50 bucks to move like one little bit of information, that’s a terrible place to be. But, you know, I think that our chains like polygon, where this is cheaper. But really, we need this kind of innovation, we need innovation in which like, value can be transferred with much less friction.
The Emergence of New Tech and Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Sure. I want to talk to you about also like new and emerging technology. How do you imagine like new tech like that of which Vitalik recently proposed, he proposed a new token standard for stealth addresses, for anonymous NFT ownership. And also like the introduction of like, zero-knowledge proofs, right? How do those play an effect on sort of the vision of what you guys are after, let alone the entire level of transparency, and openness of what crypto is today?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: You know, I’m still learning, I heard a bunch of amazing podcasts about zero knowledge proof, obviously, you know, companies like Stark ware projects like Stark ware, or CK sync, are super, super popular or the range. I think there’s always a balance in all societies, between like, anonymity, and sort of the openness or the visibility that is needed to prevent bad actors, and, you know, subversive elements within. And so, I think there’s always going to be tension there. I think like we all, just like, we all realize that a truly advertising driven like internet is a pretty ugly place to be. I think we also realize, you know, thanks to the various tech trends that we’ve all had on Twitter, that a place in which someone can be absolutely anonymous, also removes the incentive for any of us to be like civil to each other. So, I think there’s always going to be this balance between how much anonymity is provided by a platform, and whether that leads to like, good, you know, good behavior, I think a certain amount of this kind of attention is natural. And it’s also very clear that the current Internet, current online world has gone to like the other extreme of having all of our information, just get like, you know, bucketed and bottled up and sold and resold, it’s a pretty nasty place to be. So, innovation is desperately needed.
The Next Trend for Neeva to Tackle
Sure. I want to talk to you also about other products that can kind of spin up out of what you guys are building at Neeva. So right now, the vision is sort of provide really extensive, reliable APIs for developers, right? But I feel like by setting that level of foundation, you also open yourself up to a world of new opportunities, right. So, you may be focusing on the API section, because that’s what’s hot right now, right? And that’s what people need. Where do you think we’re going next? What’s like, sort of like the next trend beyond here?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Oh, there’s so much fun stuff to do, as I said, that are things like wallet trust scores, or better ways to figure out Airdrops, I can think of everything from, you know, hedge funds that use real time data to sophisticated modeling, of ERC. 20, like token prices, or NFT prices, you know, things like figuring out fractional ownership really becomes a thing. I think that’ll be interesting. And as more assets get digitized and gets stored, you know, on the blockchain, I think that’s going to be another interesting area, in which people will want to know more stats, even things like Dao warding records, the tooling for that is very poor. And so, being able to, you know, just have information, like how many people that belong to Dao actually voted? What’s the voting record? You know, how much are different projects raising? It’s a fun platform in which to build stuff. We’re also working with some early projects on things like goal ownership, so that people can make, you know, you can be part of like a social club or a network. And you can create new groups similar to WhatsApp groups, based on chain behavior. And, you know, you can get recommendations for groups that you can be part of. So, I think there’s a lot of fun applications that can be created on top of this data, not to mention things like oh, can we do real time aggregations for different kinds of contracts, like you know, how long protocols doing? How is something else doing? I feel really excited because it’s just really very early and here is so much to be built, and so many fun product ideas to support.
The World of On-Chain Data
I love seeing you say that and the smile that appears on your face as you, all those words come out of your mouth. Another thing I want to talk about, which is a core theme of season six is on chain data. Okay, we covered a lot about that, but more specifically how it pertains to the creative economy. A lot of my audience, the people who listen are creators, they are the musicians, the artists, the project founders, the community managers, even collectors and web three founders in general, as a whole. I want to talk to you more about like, the data analysis side of things, okay. Because there’s a big trend, kind of shifting towards how creators can either better use data, how communities use data today, whether it be through the financialization of the data, whether through understanding who your community is, and kind of creating better experiences. How do you see that world sort of emerging, especially with what you guys have going on at your company?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Yeah, I mean, that’s a whole other category of fun, you know, fun application. So, for example, one product that I think needs to be created is, let’s say that, you know, you want to create a new NFT collection. And you’re like, I think people that like this collection, are going to be people that like on this particular token, or maybe have done this kind of behavior, I wonder if that is a way to reach them effectively or maybe you start with like a set of people that you think would be excited about what you’re doing. And then you want a tool that lets you expand out, by the way for this is Deja vu all over again, for people that are worked in ads, because this is a product called similar audiences, when you start with a set of people and you try to expand out to other people that are like that. I’d say one of the things that is often disappointing, people don’t necessarily know this, about even pretty large creator ecosystems like YouTube, is that the number of creators that can make a living off of those platforms is shockingly small. Most people will be shocked to know that the number of people that say, make more than 50k, 60k on YouTube, is like tens of thousands, is not millions, you know, there are like, you know, five, at least 5 million software engineers in the United States, if you include the larger ecosystem, that’s 20 million people, all making, let’s face it, a pretty decent living.
And to me, part of what platforms like you know, like Instagram, like YouTube, or even like, you know, Twitter or Tik Tok have not really done, is create like mass employment opportunities. That’s because these platforms are so powerful, that they don’t really share that much of their wealth, with the people that are creating, the platforms reap all the benefit, especially ad supported platforms, that is so much concentration of power, but they reap all the benefits of scale. Not really the creators, it becomes very head heavy. I love the NBA but let’s face it, it’s not going to imply like a million players, It’s very, very head heavy. I’m like, yes, all of us want to be Steph Curry, but there’s like one. And so, to me, what’s exciting about web three, and the creator economy is you get decentralized, you get to set things like I created this beautiful piece of digital art. And whenever it gets sold, there needs to be a way for me to realize value. So, this is why things like creators shares that can be burned into the contract. So, you get like a steady supply. And as the items that you’re creating grow in value, as they are traded, you also benefit from it. To me those are like the egalitarian aspects of that three, I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to scale to the level of like, you know, hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people. I have no issue with like top-heavy economies like the NBA, as I said, but we should also be careful about it, you know, things like that not becoming the aspiration for every teenager, not if they cannot support like millions of people operating at that level. And the hope with web three, and it’s not clear that we’re going to get to it, we all have to work towards it, is that it supports a broader base of prosperity than the Vette head heavy ecosystems that pretty much all the existing platforms like YouTube, like Instagram, like Tik Tok have created.
Thoughts Around Data Access in Web3 Versus Web2
I think web three will enable a larger middle class of creators, that can be. Yeah, that’s also what I’m hoping for, if you sort of look at what’s happening right now in web through the creator economy, and you measure the number of creators based off how many collections, NFT collections exist, it’s about 150,000, collections and communities that sort of exists today in web three. And of course, not all of them are making the same amount of value as Board ape yacht club, right. But as long as you have that, sort of like hustle, grit and entrepreneurial type of energy, or at least an ounce of that, you can find a way to not only use web three as a tool to tokenize your art, but you can find a way to monetize it as well. I think what’s also super interesting is that, as a creator in web three, you get to tap into all this interesting data to become a smarter, and a more intelligent and a wiser creator, data that you otherwise maybe not would have had in web two, right? From being a YouTube creator, a Google creator, etc. Do you have any takes on that? Any thoughts around that as well?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: I actually, I completely agree with what you’re saying. I think part of what the big platforms that the music labels before that have gotten away with is, the incredibly opaque pricing, and the opaque contracts that have hidden sort of a lot of things. And the nice thing about web tree is all of this data is in the open, and people can see what is creating value, they can get their fair share. And they can also like that is more, you know, chances for experimentation. If you did a project in a certain way, or collection in a certain way, and you saw that it had some outcome, and you want to do better the next time, you have the chance to do that. And part of what like an XYZ wants to enable is like all of this data to be easily accessible to people, so that they can reach better decisions.
Yeah, yeah, I’m a big fan. I really am excited to see one of the products go live beyond just the beta test that you’re doing right now. And kind of see where this vehicle ends up going. I’m curious, from your point of view, what questions am I not asking? Do you think I should be asking to be a better-informed creator in the space and how to use data to sort of build an audience, build a community, etc?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: I think you’ve gone through many of the questions, but I think, you know, having a sense for what creates value. And once something is out there, how quickly are you getting that information back? You know, are you able to come up with hypotheses that you can then test, that you can then check out in real life? I think the tooling around that is pretty early. But I think the openness of the data will lead to lots of companies like an XYZ to get this data, to give it to more people. And I said, I love that phrase that you used earlier, which is hopefully web three will lead to a much bigger middle class of creators of all kinds.
Outro
Yeah, I hope so as well, I guess, before we wrap up, and I let you go. Sridhar, where can I find you? Where can we learn more about what you’re building? Show it away?
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Yeah, so our little website, which will get bigger soon is N.XYZ. And you’re lucky to get like a single letter domain. And then we are also on Twitter. Still hanging to N.XYZ handle, but right now you have to put underscores between all of the letters. It’s like underscore N, underscore X, underscore Y, underscore Z underscore, but just look for us
Also memorable by the way. Yeah, also memorable.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Also, memorable. Exactly. And, yeah, we’re going to be making a big announcement, hopefully in less than a month. And I’m super excited to be in web three. I know that, you know, these are tough times overall, in the stock market on web three. But the foundational infrastructure that is there, things like decentralized state, things like currency natively built into how these amazing systems operate. I think they are very early; I think there’s a lot of value to be created and a lot of work to be done. You know, I think of this as what the internet was, like, 2025 years ago, no one could have predicted, you know, the Internet of 2015 from like, the Mozilla of 1995. So, I feel it’s that early. There’s a lot of great work to be done. And the more we build, the better the outcome that we create. And I personally am super excited to be part of the journey.
Amazing. Sridhar, thank you so much for being on a part of the season. We’ll have to do this again soon. But till then, appreciate you and good luck.
Sridhar Ramaswamy: Thank you, Adam, lovely to chat
Mint Season 6 episode 18 welcomes the founder of Aave and Lens Protocol, Stani Kulechov. Throughout the hour we discuss his vision for web3 social, how creators use crypto to communities, how creators make money on Lens, user-generated content as an asset class, migrating collectors from other chains onto Lens, how to use the lens social graph outside of their protocol, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:00 – Intro
00:12 – The Current Web3 Social Landscape
03:15 – Web2 Social Problems That Web3 Aims to Fix
08:31 – What is Lens Protocol?
11:23 – Building the Web3 Social Network Experience
17:23 – Thoughts on the Music NFT Wave
20:55 – How Do Creators Make Money on Lens?
22:37 – Tools Missing on Lens Protocol
26:32 – The Asset Class of User-Generated Content
30:42 – Creators That Own Their Audience
34:22 – Converting a Different Collector Base to Lens
37:53 – Leveraging Your Social Graph Across Other Networks
40:48 – Risks That Come With Owning Your Social Graph
43:55 – How Do You Build Collaboration Versus Competitiveness?
47:27 – Community-Specific Applications Built On Lens
50:09 – Scaling to Facebook’s Level
54:18 – Sub-Communities That May Create a Cultivator DAO Experience
56:09 – The Overlap Between DeFi and Web2 Social
58:14 – How Does Lens Make Money?
01:00:12 – Outro
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Intro
Stani Kulachov, welcome to mint, how are you doing my friend? Thanks for being on.
Stani Kulechov: Very, very good. I can’t remember when we last time actually did this.
The Current Web3 Social Landscape
Last time we did this, I was working at Draper going home and we were on blockchain and booze. And I think it was during the defi madness. And you’re the only person or one of the few people that I reached out to, to talk about their protocol in their application that actually answered me, and was able to put a face behind their projects. So, I’ll never forget that. You were super early on in my creator journey. So, I’m really excited to be kind of doing this episode with you and figuring out what are you working on now? What is lens and all that good stuff? So, I don’t think you need an introduction. I think the crypto community knows who you are. But I think a good place to start because I want to focus this conversation around web three social, okay. I’m curious to hear your perspective. Let’s just set the tone. How are you seeing the current web three social landscape? And any interesting applications, trends, or just anything in general to kind of give the listener idea of what’s happening in web through social right now?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I think we were very, actually extremely early on web three social. So, the applications we’ve seen, and even the protocols are pretty much trying to solve like one of the earliest problems in diversity, social space, things like how do you create a profile that belongs to you and have portability between one application to another? And you have the two ownerships of that profile or how do you connect with between different peers? And how you can like, repaint that connectivity with the peers? And also like, how do you actually distribute content across the social landscape. So, there’s multiple different things that the early protocols and applications are trying to solve. And I think like a lot of things are deriving from the idea of that, we’ve been feeding and building this web two social where, you know, previously, it was very difficult to actually create and distribute content across the globe across the internet. And what the bigger social media companies actually did is they provided a platform for users, any user to actually create content, and then connect with their peers on areas that might be interesting to them. Now, we’re in the face of, hey, we actually can do this in a more decentralized fashion. So, what do we can actually recreate? And let’s try to recreate, you know, the Instagram of the world and the Twitter’s of the world. And, like, basically, we architecture in the current ecosystem and I don’t know if it’s that that’s the right way to do it. Like, do we should we actually try to decentralize something like Twitter? Or should we actually try to find new ways and new applications and use cases that enables because of the battery aspect?
Web2 Social Problems That Web3 Aims to Fix
Yeah. I think one of the more interesting things that I’m seeing on the web through social front is how creators build audiences, and monetize audiences in web three. And before we sort of go into the different tactics and strategies that maybe you’re seeing, I still want to kind of like unveil the problem that web three, web two social kind of like failed at, right? And how web three social aims to fix that, can you shed more light on that topic?
Stani Kulechov: Well, the way I see what’s not working in the web two social space is that you as a creator, you build this magnificent, exciting audience around yourself, for example, but you usually build up, you know, specific platforms. So, for example, many of us who are very active in the crypto space, we tend to build our audiences in Twitter, and we call it actually crypto Twitter, because all of our networking is there. But there are many creators that have audiences, for example, in Instagram, based on what they create, and what kind of content they’re actually creating. Or it might be Tik Tok, as well, or any other platform, actually, it can be even not that social, for example, Spotify, where you have distribution, and you have audits. So basically, what happens is that the creators, they’re generated this massive amount of user generated content and feeding the content liquidity into the platforms and end of the day they, it’s the platforms that are actually benefiting from that content, and barriers data points that the users are generating by liking different kinds of posts, sharing them, or just spending time watching one particular video. So effectively, ultimatelyzation actually happens within the platform in a way where it’s the platform that is taking all or most of the proceeds. This, for example, is happening with Tik Tok. Twitter is a good example where you might be sharing a lot of content to your audience, you’re creating everyday content, but it’s actually the platform behind that it’s getting all the monetization, and you are kind of like you’re benefiting to draw in your audience, but you really don’t have the portability of the audience or actually, direct way to monetize.
Yeah, I think with all the Elon Musk Twitter, Jack Dorsey field that’s happening online. Now. There’s like that whole court trial. One, I’m curious to get your opinion on the whole acquisition take and what may happen over there. But to what’s even more interesting is all these conversations that are surfacing between Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and how Jack Dorsey was like, I wish Twitter was a protocol, right, in a decentralized fashion. And sort of alludes to maybe what the vision that you have for web three social is kind of like coming in building towards right. Am I getting that correctly or what do you think about the entire situation?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I guess like, what’s been happening there is that, you know, there’s definitely value creating a more decentralized networking, and way to share content, and also a more decentralized way of preserving your identity. So, I guess, like, what’s as be challenging for Twitter is that, in many of these platforms is that the way they’re build is that they’re actually, you know, extracting value from the users and from the creators, and that value goes to the shareholders. Now, in protocols, the idea is that a protocol is just a way of connecting with peers, and preserving some of the values and what the tree is doing with protocols also is, giving the ownership of those protocols to the users and letting the communities to steer how those protocols will be improved in the future. And to be honest, like, I definitely agree that Twitter can work pretty well as open protocol, it will mean that anyone can actually innovate and compete with the data. But also having something like on chain profile would mean that you could actually have the ownership of the audience you create, and yourself expression, and no one can actually take that away from you. So, giving those rights to the users brings a lot of benefits. And I think, why it’s valuable discussion now is that, we spend for the past couple of, actually a few years building this very fascinating financial infrastructure on top of the web two ecosystem. And now with the NFTs and creator economy, we’re actually seeing a lot of power and opportunity to actually empowering creators and empowering the actual users of social media. And I think that’s why it’s becomes even more, this discussion is taking place now than, than ever before.
What is Lens Protocol?
So, I think that’s actually a perfect segue to give me like a more formal introduction to what lens protocol is because you talked about empowering the user, empowering the network, to own their profile, own their content, own the data. Can you introduce, to someone who’s maybe not familiar with web three, for example, how would you explain lens protocol to them?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, so lens protocol, it allows you to create your profile once and retain the ownership of the profile. So, you’re not locked into any platform specifically. So, any application that is built on top of the protocol, you as a user have the flexibility to access those applications. And you don’t need to give up your follower base or profile into one particular application. So, this brings sort of freedom for the users. And also, it changes the dynamics because this means that anyone can actually freely build a better or new algorithm, how you find and discover other users or content across the lens protocol or across web three ecosystem in general. And also, the experiences actually have to compete first time ever on your kind of like a, I would say like, as a user, you can you can vote with your feet, which of the experiences are more just aligned towards finding, maybe content that you might like more or what values are important for you as a user, and what, it actually makes those applications more of communities. So, for example, Twitter is a community, but you can’t really actually affect how Twitter’s built in the future, besides giving feedback. But here, you can actually have skin in the game and actually vote with your feet. If you if you find an application, that it’s actually more aligned to what your expectations are, so it changes those dynamics quite easily. So that’s the kind of interesting parts that that actually, your profile is secured with the blockchain. But actually, it’s the applications that can choose how they reflect data. So, you can effectively use an application that reflects the data and stores it on a decentralized file storage, just like IPFS. Or you can choose an application that stores data in a cloud, just as a traditional social media application, but you still have the ownership of your profile. So as a protocol, it gives flexibility for the users, but also for the developers to choose how they want to build their application and how much decentralization they want to have in their own particular use case.
Building the Web3 Social Network Experience
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I remember in the beginning, when lens protocols sort of came out, it started with this tweet of yours kind of saying we’re gonna build Twitter on Ethereum. Right? When Jack Dorsey countered the whole Bitcoin should be the network of choice, or when they started integrating Bitcoin more religiously across Twitter, you sort of had this epiphany, like, we need to build Twitter on Ethereum. Right. And I remember initially, one of the sorts of features that stood out to you, that stood out to me the most as a creator was the ability to collect something, right. And of course, like in web three, collecting in supporting a creator is like it’s second nature. But the way you’ve sort of orchestrated is that, I can collect a post, for example, on Leinster, right. And I remember in the beginning, I was skeptical about it until I actually got on the platform and saw the power of being able to collect something. And it got me really rethinking of the entire model of building an audience in web three. And in web two, you sort of have the subscribes, you have these followers. But in web three, you collect and show your level of patronage, you show your level of contribution, by sort of proving you were there by having something in your wallet, right. And that entire shift sort of changed the way how I think about building an audience because I use a lot of web two to sort of build virality and distribution, but I use web three to capture that value. And now on Leinster, across lens protocol, all these cool applications are popping up, where I can actually do both. Now I can build an audience and capture that value in web three, which I think is super unique, super unique to Lenster, can you talk more about sort of building out that initial product flow, that initial experience for users to have that web three feel of a social network?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I mean, obviously, when you create your profile, and you have the ownership also, whoever follows you basically have that relationship between you and your audience. So, you can actually move from one application to another, and you don’t lose that audience, which is very valuable for the creators. But what that audience does for you is that, you actually have a direct way to distribute content to your peers, regardless of the applications built on top. So, the applications itself are effectively tailoring the user experience, curating what data users should see and how they should discover new content. But as a creator, from creator’s perspective, effectively, like collect is what the founder of, from mirror actually pretty well, the collect is the new like, so effectively, you just don’t like what you actually like with skin in the game. Which means that you can do that contribution and in return, you get a user generated content that is actually an asset and creating music, generally content as an asset classis as well. And as a concept. It’s not really that novel, because we already have this idea of being able to share digital art across your own community in form of NFTs. And in return, you actually you get, as a user, you make a contribution as a fan, and get in return the asset and you are part of that community. And I think the same thing is happening in music, NFTs, and also it resembles me quite a lot. My spare hobby where I collect vinyl’s, to go to different record shops and buy vinyl’s because you know, I like the feeling of having a physical piece as music, and at the same time having like, a utility and hearing the audio, as well.
And I think I think kind of like taking that concept in theater and thinking that actually, when we are paying for music, are we actually paying for listening or are we paying for distribution? Or are we actually paying to support the artists to actually create more in the future? And this is where the kind of like a radical mind change happens, where we have to think about like, is the way we create an IP anymore something that is reflecting what the thing about culture art content in general? And should we actually go directly to a model where, you know, we actually contribute to the creator by basically buying digital content and have that provenance as well. And I think that’s something that we baked into the lens protocol, in a way that all the content if you choose so, can be collectible as an NFTs, meaning that actually, it’s the market and the users and the followers that can actually benchmark and decide what content is valuable based on how they collect. And you can also charge for the collection or have it as free NFTs. But the main point is that when we look at also like content tokenization, we’ve seen previously examples where the dodge memes was token as NFT, Vinyl and cat as well, and the other one was sold for $4 million. So you’ve seen the retroactive tokenization of user generated content and memes, specifically, in this case, when it actually bringing that model into the spot where the actual content is created, and letting actually the early adopters of that content and early fans to decide how valuable or culturally relevant that content is and creating that value looping into that content.
One thing I didn’t know about you is that you collect vinyls, I think that’s pretty cool. How many how many vinyls Have you collected to date? Do you have a number?
Stani Kulechov: I don’t have that many. I think I have roughly, I think I have a couple of hundreds, one fifty or so. Probably even more.
Thoughts on the Music NFT Wave
That’s quite a bit. That’s quite a bit. So, on that tangent Okay, on the collecting Vinyl tangent, there’s just music collector, his name is Bin Zedeway. He’s, I’ve never met someone that loves music more than him. He’s a big music NFT collector. And he wrote this really fascinating blog post sort of reflecting on his experience collecting a vinyl to then collecting a music NFT because we’re already on the subject, what do you think on the entire like music NFT trend that’s happening, with all these artists kind of like breaking steam, finding creative liberation through their music? What do you think about all that?
Stani Kulechov: I think there’s little value in that, because I just see, there’s like a lot of layers at the moment that has been built in the music industry. And many of the monetization layers are based on the copyright, intellectual property, which is, which has been working to some extent quite well, up to this date. So, you can guarantee that, you know, musicians, when they create content, they can be rewarded afterwards as the content is consumed. But at the same time, IP has its own challenges. And I think because of the fact that you can actually verify who is the creator of the content and owner, you can create more interesting, parallel economies and monetization models that are based on the own chain aspect of content. So, for example, that if I, if I know that there’s a very good artist that is playing very good music, and creating very good music, I should be able to support it directly and have that contribution on chain. And because they have that contribution on chain, and I have that digital asset that creates me more accessibility to other kinds of things.
But also, I’m more of a believer of this idea on chain, kind of like property, commercial property rights. So, I think that you could actually create content and revoke all rights to that content, in terms of intellectual property. And at the same time, you can create different kinds of on chain commercial rights. For example, if you want to use my piece of content. Let’s say that I create a nice drumkits and into your song, you can actually split fees that you collect between us together, so it’s more of kind of like a altruistic model and you’re actually kind of like attributing to other creators. But I just feel that that might be the more aligned model in our open-source economy and how we can actually build better monetization models compared to IP and the restrictions that they’re bringing, because I think that what IP is doing, and I’m talking from also my lawyer hat, as, as you know that I’m also a lawyer in my background, so basically, that you are limiting the innovation and creativity with IP. But in an ideal world, you don’t want to limit creativity. And actually, you want to get the creativity and innovation to thrive. And I think that’s what open source as software has been doing for a long time now. And I think we have to somehow translate that into all the kind of like a more creative industry as well.
How Do Creators Make Money on Lens?
Yeah, makes sense. On that thought of monetization, how do creators make money on lens? What does that look like?
Stani Kulechov: Well, in the protocol itself, we’ve baked a couple of interesting ways to monetize, one direct way to monetize is, allowing the users to collect the content NFTs. So effectively, you’re buying a digital asset as NFT from the user generated content from the creator. But at the same time, you can also if you have a bigger audience, you can mirror someone else’s content to your audience. And if someone collects that paid content, you can actually get middling fees, yourself. So, there is like, there’s the idea of monetization of actually, directly from the users. But also, the curators can get monetization by sharing the content to their own audiences. And these are the just two models that we have baked into the protocol. But if actually, you can build more into that, so you can build your own ways to monetize, you can still create some sort of transparent promoted advertising as well. And this is something that someone is actually building on top of the, our protocol or you can sell some sort of visualizations, as well. So, like, the protocol itself, it’s flexible on what do you want to use in your application, it’s more of like a business decision, what you have to do, by yourself or with your community.
Tools Missing on Lens Protocol
My favorite feature at the moment with lens protocol and just sort of how I’ve seen people use it on Leinster is the mirror feature. I think it’s one of the coolest things that creators can tap into as a way to incentivize virality, right, incentivize collaboration, and sort of like reward. So, the way it works that I’ve seen is like, let’s say you post a piece of art, right? And you can set this rule where every time somebody reshares it and mirrors it, they can basically earn 10% on that. Right. And it really aligns incentives. And it’s a cool way to kind of build a viral effect online. I don’t know, I think it’s really cool. Are there any other ways, any other tools that you think are missing from the lens protocol, from the tool stack on lens, that have yet to be built out? Anything you can share?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, a ton, I think like, we just, we kind of built the bare, like, bare minimum in terms of what you can actually do in social media. And so, the way the lens protocol itself is built, it’s sparker check based protocol. So, you first you create a profile, then you can follow other profiles and every profile can publish content. And the content can be reflected on chain, it can be off chain, in a decentralized file storage, depending on the application use case. So, you kind of like choose the amount of decentralization you want to have. But what’s exciting is that you have these different kinds of modules. So, you have follow modules. So, for example, you can create a smart contract-based module, which says that, you pay to follow, let’s say, a creator, but then if the creator collects monetization feeds from the collects, those are split with the followers, kind of creating some sort of creator crowd funding or something similar in that sense, and you can create different kinds of modules also for commenting. So, one of the earliest things because of the size of the lens protocol is that, there’s currently 80,000 profiles at the moment. And in the beginning, there was a few of the bots so we actually started very early to experiment, how we can get off, get rid of the bots that are in the protocol. And what we created is this kind of like a module where you can comment to my post, if I don’t follow you, but some of my friends follows you. And you can actually set the degree up to, let’s say, six or so.
So, for example, if I set the degree two like two, it means that if we have a common friend, then you can comment, if I set it to three, that means that you can comment if we don’t have a common friend, but that someone has, my friend has a friend who is friend with you. And this is based on the idea of that every single person in the planet is connected by six degrees of separation of people. And it has been super effective at the moment. I think, if Twitter starts to use this, tomorrow, you stop seeing those crypto, spammy bots that you get all the time in your feed. So, this is a smart contract-based module. And I think the cover on smart contract-based modules and also like the composability, is that you can create these rules, and you can’t really circumvent them, because they’re smart, contract-based computation, and anyone can actually come in and contribute to the modules.
The Asset Class of User-Generated Content
I love that. I think that’s a really, really powerful feature, as a way to sort of curate quality, and a new experiment to see how you can use an on chain social graph, right, to kind of figure out connections, deviations, all these interesting things that we may be used in real life. But now you can sort of implement digitally. I think another cool feature of the mirror element is that one of the most direct forms of monetization that creators use today, is through affiliate links, right? Whether it be their Amazon affiliate link, or some type of brand that they collaborate with. So being able to embed that directly into the platform into the protocol, I think off the gecko is really powerful. I want to also talk about user generated content as an asset class, because essentially, when you start to implement, like the financialization of everything, give or take, even though there’s a lot of free collect options on lenses, the user has dictation over, what does it mean to a creator sort of to create user generated content that’s an asset class? And what’s the potential behind that?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I guess it boils down to the same idea that you can create digital art as a collection, and then make it available to purchase or somehow gain within the community. So, the idea that these are successful, because it’s a way for you to participate in the community, and also by a digital good, which can be digital art in most cases, with different kinds of media later, threads, and so forth. The same concept is effectively extended also to content, that is videos, we’ve seen the NBA top jobs work in a similar way. And just any content that you produce, audio, text, and a making it as easy as possible. And I think like the creators, in general, as a user group is interesting, because even in depth to creators aren’t really that well supported, you know, so, the monetization aspect is one. So, you create you as a creator, you always start from the very low level of the food chain. So, you basically have to create a lot of content, you put a lot of proof of work, to actually ensure that the content is something that is interesting consumable. You have little competition, you gain, you have no choice than joining a bigger platform like let’s say Tik Tok and start actually creating a lot of content and creating follower base. And you can’t actually, you don’t have much of control, what you’re doing and your only kind of like goal is to create audience into that platform, and then hopefully, somehow direct traffic, right. But being able to actually create the content right on spot and also having your own distribution channel. It’s equals the same as walking with your own social network. So, it’s not just like it’s like, what Len’s protocol is doing is that it’s giving you your own social network and your own social identity. So that’s, you know, you can choose like how all these applications are reflecting your content. And being able to do that, and being able to distribute your content directly to your followers, without anyone can actually coming in between, takes these creators and puts them into a completely new position and also elevates the content itself. Because I know that this content actually exists as an asset class. And I know that I can get directly from the user, it creates different kinds of elevation for the creators, so they actually own their own distribution and relationships with their audience, which is significantly different than we have now in web two social.
Creators That Own Their Audience
I think a lot of the success of web three social is going to be dependent on used cases of creator’s kind of like seeing success through it, right? Either through building an audience either through making money. And because we’re so early, in the adoption curve of web three social, are there any creators that come to mind that have used a decentralized social graph as a way to kind of like, really, really push the value and push the example of what it actually means to own your audience what it means to own your distribution funnels? Any creators come to mind?
Stani Kulechov: I think in terms of like creators and less protocol, like we have a smaller music creator that come and actually drop content, there’s also like, there are doing it on a daily basis. There are also creators, for example, like the rides that came in did a significant drop within the lens protocol, effectively fundraising directly to their causes. And I think that’s, it’s a valuable tool, but also like, I’m more excited about creators that are coming into the applications, that are built on top of the lens protocol, and starting to create their audiences, which takes more time. The cool part is that, like, once you create your audience, it’s yours to keep, so you aren’t locking yourself into a new platform. And that’s a bigger an important factor to think about. Because if you start investing time into building audience into new application, and that application doesn’t take oh, and I remember this happening during the whole web two, beginning where you saw a lot of reddit, big competitors, and people were spending a lot of time there. And they didn’t go anywhere. You know, there’s Slashdot is still a place, like it even became that big eventually, you have contents of example.
So, like, you’re actually like, your investment of time is more important, because you can actually wait that someone else creates another application that might be actually more interesting to you. And I’m looking into like, into those creators that are actually building those audiences, and constantly creating a narrative of what kind of content they want to produce. And from the developer’s perspective and application itself. I think like, my idea of like, creating decentralized, Twitter was more of a troll like I never thought about the idea that’s, you know, like competing a Twitter, because Twitter has a very strong social network. So effectively, because you can’t port your audience, and innovate and in web three, you will be able to jump from one application to another, very quickly the same way as you’re swapping one to another. So, it’s kind of like pointless to compete. But what you can actually do is, now that the barrier to enter and build those applications and leverage the fly deal of an existing social graph, you can actually build a new kind of experience, or curate the content in a way that it’s services, one, some sort of a type of activity that is fascinating, or something new, and get that fly deal effect. And I think that’s where most of the attraction will come, where we are seeing something new being built, instead of recreating the old.
Converting a Different Collector Base to Lens
Right. When I think about the evolution of web three social in the context of crypto’s history, I very much think back to 2017 to 2021, when NFT started picking up steam, creators started issuing NFTs and building collector bases, right? And now when I think about lens protocol, it’s like the next evolution of that to tie in that entire network together, right? Because if you’re just building a collective base on Ethereum, there lacks that content distribution through Twitter. But if you’re building on lens, right, and you build a collector based on lens, you sort of tap into the value of distribution in the value of monetization. I think what one of the interesting sorts of onboarding funnels that maybe you guys’ face is how do you port a creators existing collector base that’s already built on a Ethereum, polygon into lens? What does that look like? Because I know for me, I have a bunch of collectors that have collected my free NFTs. Right. But not all of them have a lens profile yet, right? How do we make that transition?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, well, currently, it’s easy, because you can actually collect content without having, I mean, the creator can set the contact rate creating the way where you don’t need to have a profile. So, you can actually not be a lens profile user. But over the long term, what we think is more valuable is that, every user that is collecting will have a lens profile. And effectively what we’re looking to do as protocol developers to be as much as more unopinionated, so where the protocol could be servicing as a network, how the namespace is working, how to create your own namespace and making a bit more flexible for developers to build, actually. And I think that what is interesting about content, actually, is that you can have the same content, but actually, you could create different kinds of ways of letting the user to choose where they want to mint their content. So, for example, I have some NFTs, where actually most of my NFTs are on Ethereum, I have a big chunk of NFT’s on polygon. And then I have NFTs also on optimism. So effectively, you could see the content in one network, but actually initiate a transaction to make that content into a digital asset, into in another network. But also, it boils down to a bigger, this question is, where do you want to see lens protocol? Do you want to see cross chain or do you want to see in a one particular ecosystem? And this is something that’s the community members are saying already how the cross-chain functionality will work and how the scalability will function. And there is also the argument of that because there is the middleware, which is now the lens API, then there’s other middleware, like the graph, which is more decentralized, where RSS free, which is also a way to index the data. And the idea is that while you could actually decentralize that middleware, and you don’t actually mind where the social graph is deployed, because you can get, you have all that data availability that you can capture, because we have a social, it’s more about data than a state.
Leveraging Your Social Graph Across Other Networks
So, on that same topic, you talked about being able to leverage your social graph across other networks. So, paint me a picture of how would a user leverage their social graph outside of lens? What does that look like?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, it’s interesting thing, because we put a lot of value into the social graph. So effectively, your social graph is the strength of your social capital. So, you can actually use that. If you want to distribute collaborative content to your audience directly, have monetization opportunities, but also, I see very valuable used case, in thinking of the civil resistance part. So, for example, if you take the example of a degree separation commenting module, so for example, if we’re able to get rid of the bots in the lens protocol, in the platform itself, you can actually use that as a service to basically have other civil resistant used cases. For example, if you have a game where anyone can participate, but you want to play with people, you know, or real or any other used case where you actually don’t want board activity, you can actually use that social graph. And you can look into, for example, who are the, for example, Adam follows or the people that Adam follows or their friends of friends. And from that, you can actually use that social graph in civil resistance. And another aspect where you can actually use it is, something where you want to create also a reputation score. So, the reputation score is also in that kind of like a civil resistant form. But also, you can create a reputation score. For example, if you want to measure what is your strength of your social capital that you apply into, let’s say, should you be able to legislate to comment on different posts, but for example, should you get a access to a particular user group or access to a loan? So effectively taking the social graph idea and creating more accessibility for the users in a decentralized way and because the social graph is on chain, that data is verified. So that’s the key kind of like a difference, because why do you want to have a profile and the social connections on chain is because you can use this data and that data is verified by the blockchain. And you can use in used cases like the civil resistance, or alternatively, in something like building an on-chain reputation.
Risks That Come With Owning Your Social Graph
What do you think are the risks or responsibilities for a user to own their social graph, to own their distribution, to own their content? What sort of challenges or risks come with that?
Stani Kulechov: I think one of the important things that you have to keep in mind is that, you know, you spend a lot of time of actually building social capital. So, first time ever, that social capital becomes very tangible for you, because you’re not building it into an application and building the follower base in a specific database, but you actually build it yourself. So, whatever you create, you have to also secure the same way as you secure keys, for example, that you might have. And there’s a lot of ways to actually make it a bit more user friendly, for the mainstream audiences, something we’re working on the lens team itself, but also like account abstraction, where you can add something like social recovery directly to your Ethereum addresses and on chain addresses, is something that will help down the line. But basically, securing your cases is one of the aspects that you need to mind. So, it’s more of a challenge of like outside of the protocol. But how do you actually do that. And there’s something we’re currently working. And also like, it’s more of a user experience, thing and a lot of user experience concerns is something that we’ve been addressing down the line all the time.
So for example, the way you interact with one of these applications build on top of the lens protocol. For example, if you go today and use something like Linster, or favor or orbit, the mobile apps, you actually post the content right away, and you don’t, you don’t sign anything, you don’t pay any gas, because you delegate your signing power to a dispatcher, which pays your gas and signs a transaction for you. And also, the UI is built optimistically that you see the transaction, you see actually the content being posted. But the blockchain logic happening in the back end, so you can actually continue your user experience. So, kind of like, when we were building web two social, we also have to rebuild the way we’re building applications. Because we’re not building any more finance, we’re building something where we have to meet the expectations of the users in the web two socials. And then another part, which is important is that you need to build the applications in the right way. So, you need to know where you want to use privacy more, for example, where you want to create transactions that are not on chain, or you can actually remove them later. And so, depending on the use case, and I think that’s the best way to achieve is by community guidance on how to build these different applications based on their used cases.
How Do You Build Collaboration Versus Competitiveness?
Makes sense. I want to jump into audience questions really quick, because one of them is very relevant to what we’re talking about. So this one comes from Charlie of decent dot XYZ. He basically asks on Twitter that there’s tons of vertical specific apps competing on the front end. Are there any concerns about power users always chasing like the next coolest feature, fragmenting maybe friendly activity and making web three social less fun? I guess the question is sort of like coming from the point of view of, if you have these decentralized social graphs, and you have endless applications building on top of it. How do you build stickiness? Right, and how do you sort of build collaboration versus competitiveness?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, it’s a good question, that it’s definitely something what will happen in the beginning that you see users being super excited about, hey, there’s one application and I will love to use this. And, hey, there’s a new application, which makes the same experience that I used on lens but now it’s a mobile, and hey, this application actually finds things I like, faster and actually more accurate way. And I think that’s happens a bit in web two social because we are users have multiple applications. So, you might be using, at the same time, Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok for different reasons maybe Tik Tok because of the algorithm, and Twitter because of the kind of like a, maybe like a work network or electrical networks there. And like it’s already happening, but I think like inventing social, what I personally believe will happen is that you start to see more of like communities form behind of those applications. So, for example, that I feel Reddit has, as a web two platform has accomplished it to some degree where you’re actually using Reddit because that only that content might be good for you. But also, like, you’re excited about the values and how the moderation and other things are happening community based in Reddit, and then you can find also the relevant content for you in those subreddits.
So, like, you’re very aligned with the community, the application community. So, you will start seeing that each and every application will have a community behind of it and they will reflect certain values. And this goes towards the recently what we launched with the cultivator Dao. So, cultivator Dao effectively is just a Dao that governs trust and safety, content moderation and curation within the lens ecosystem, but anyone can actually take that cultivator Dao fork it for their own kind of a purpose and have their own policies and said it behind a new or existing application. So I will say that all these applications, they become more of communities. And the reason they are not now in the two social is because they’re more of products where the users are kind of like look and you don’t have you have little choice of choosing algorithms, choosing experiences and have a say or even have part of the monetization that is happening within the platform. And you just choose to be a spectator and consumer than actually a community member. And this is what is going to change now.
Community-Specific Applications Built On Lens
That as you’re talking my mind is absolutely racing, because I’m starting to think what sort of application can I build for my community? Right, and maybe we’re entering a world where all these Daos, all these token base communities start having their own applications that they build out on this decentralized social graph. So now you have my mind sort of like going off on what else can I provide for my community on application web level that they might find interesting. Have you seen communities sort of build out like their own native applications that’s specific for their communities on lens, have we gotten to that stage yet?
Stani Kulechov: I actually saw, like couple forks of Leinster. So, Leinster is just a community to build applications. So, we don’t have a front end actually, for the lens protocol. They’re either built by third parties or community members and Leinster is a open-source front end that anyone can actually port, you can contribute directly, you can help the Lancer team to actually improve the application and it’s actually happening on an ongoing basis. And I’ve seen like couple of like forks where you people have created a smaller given it is, I think if Leinster will be something similar to Reddit in terms of like the ideas of you can create sub communities, we will see probably more of this kind of porting. And probably we will in the future. But that’s, that’s pretty exciting. Because like you can actually just have the user experience that you really want, your community and your committee values and algorithms that are most aligned with what you’re building and as a community in one particular user experience. So, I think that’s kind of like a valuable aspect. And I think another thing that is going to be very big is the monetization. So how the protocol and the front ends that, let’s even put it this way, like the monetization problem will be more on the front-end sides. So how the front ends will divide the monetization between the protocol and the applications because the applications actually, they are the ones that tried distribution for the protocol. So, there is a healthy feedback loop there and then the protocol needs the application because of the distribution and utilization as well. So effectively, we probably will see some sort of forks of the existing smart contract modules where you will see sure featuring between the front end and the protocol.
Scaling to Facebook’s Level
That makes sense. I want to talk more about challenges with building a social graph, let alone lens. This one also comes from the community; this one comes from Nima. How do you plan to scale to Facebook level of usage slash adoption while remaining decentralized and trustless? What does that look like to you?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I mean, on the infrastructure level, it’s very much basically, going into more layer twos, in the sense that you can do a lot of transactions on Polygon, but down the line, what you need to do is, you have to get into a roll up where you can have a vast bigger throughput for the transaction. And so that’s on the infrastructure layer. And then, on the actual middleware, what we’re planning is to decentralize the middleware. So, we have the lens API, which currently is basically a way of indexing all the data on lens protocol and making it usable for applications that are built on top. And these applications are choosing either going directly to the blockchain or using lens API, or using the graph, or RSS fee. So basically, there, we want to create a decentralized network where network agreement of the data indexing and providing that as a service for the application. So, like, all that infrastructure stack isn’t really that hard, because there’s already a way to scale. The more challenging part actually, is the user experience. So how do you make the user experience accessible and something that works for billions? And when it comes to that level, you need to think of actually all the way down, how do you manage keys? How do you plan the key recovery for the users? And how do you ensure that best experience and also that the content is relevant.
So, I’m more kind of like, thinking that the bigger heavy lifting is on the application level, and also on that user experience level, where you need to actually show that web three social is actually possible and it’s actually easy to use. And you don’t need to do big compromises to use something like this entire social media. And then there’s the question of like, actually, like, how much security you need from the centralization. So, something like decentralized finance you for example, you might need the Ethereum scaled security, but something where you’re dealing with decentralized social, you want to have the on-chain ecosystem, because you want to secure the profiles. So, no one can drop you out of your profile and your follower base. But then you can actually have a scale on that like, on layer twos or even layer threes and then obviously, on the content side is that not all content, but certainly to be on chain depending on the used case, I would say something like public Dao, discussion forums, could be completely on a public on chain or reflected into a public accessible endpoint like IPFS. But then something that is maybe you want to keep more private can be actually reflected to a cloud instance. So, you have to know what level of decentralization you will choose. And then also making the user experience easy. But the groundbreaking thing is that with lens protocol, you have that scale, so you can choose actually what you want to apply from the stack.
Sub-Communities That May Create a Cultivator DAO Experience
I also think as lens sort of encounters Facebook like adoption, there’s going to be pockets of sub-communities that care about specific things that lens will essentially be able to incentivize and empower, to sort of take ownership around that, one of them is the cultivator Dao that you guys’ sort of announced, when it came to when it comes to at least content moderation, instilling trust and safety in the ecosystem. I’m curious, are there any other sub communities or users or features that may be more relevant to create like a cultivator Dao experience for management?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, I think like cultivated Daos aims to solve mainly on the content curation aspect. But there’s multiple things that you can actually think about it regarding Daos in terms of servicing content, the content itself, but also the algorithm. So how do you rate different kinds of algorithms? What’s the benefit to it? And how you can actually make it more Dao centric. So how you can actually vote within the Dao, which algorithm is actually beneficial to the users? And those kinds of Daos can be very flexible? So that you don’t need to ask every single user on a application, like which algorithm you want to actually consume. But also, I think like the Dao as it is, is interesting, because you can create various different support systems for the craters itself. customer support, so anything that’s really requires some sort of a human assessment, smaller Daos are very valuable.
The Overlap Between DeFi and Web2 Social
Makes sense. Okay, so I have two final questions for you before we head off. Okay. Number one, you obviously have a deep defi background. I’m curious how you see the two overlapping defi and web two social, what does that what does that world look like?
Stani Kulechov: From more for like a builder’s perspective, I would say that’s, we’ve always had a vision of actually building access to users. So in with the audit protocol, we were able to build access to fair and transparent financial markets that work globally. And with the lens protocol, where you’re creating access to your own social, ownership, your own social identity, and your own social network. And I think like, it’s a broader kind of like idea that Internet brings accessibility by in general, that’s where I basically spend my time growing up. And with web three, were even like reinforcing their accessibility by giving you guarantees of ownership of the properties that that are there exist on the internet. And then the overlap is interesting question, because this boils down to the topic of how you could use the three social graph in a in a different kind of context? And I think that’s where reputation score plays quite big of a role, because you could actually gain access, you can also get accessibility into under collateralized loans as well. And that’s where things can become very powerful. We’re very far away from that idea. So, I don’t expect to see any decent implementations in the next couple of years. But as we start to see, like how valuable on chain verified data is, from the social graph perspective, then we’ll see a lot of interesting features coming up.
How Does Lens Make Money?
The last question that I have for you Stani is, how does lens make money, either on a protocol level, on application level? What’s your vision around that?
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, the protocol itself has already coded into the smart contracts, a way to collect protocol revenue. But what we’re more excited about is to figure out, how the front ends will actually start collecting the fees of the interactions that are happening, or the collections across the protocol, and then deciding what the fee is sharing together with the protocol, and the community. So, end of the day, I think, you could assume a feedback loop where the protocol needs applications for distribution and adoption. And at the same time, the applications need the protocol because of the functionality, but also, because of the network effect that you’re getting when there’s multiple applications plugged into the same social network. And because of these two, kind of like incentives are aligned, you will see that’s both the applications and the protocol. They want to actually see each other to succeed and share that revenue together. So, there’s definitely like the two built in collection modules for collecting content as NFTs, as monetization and also the mirroring. But I will be excited to see additional ways to monetize and across all the applications and I could see in the future even an interesting way where someone might originate the content on Lenser and someone else might collect it on orb and there is app specific fee sharing and that will be super cool.
Outro
That is really cool. Look I’m a big fan of building a better world for creators, I think you guys are taking the right steps to do it. I’m building an audience over there, I’m actively on there, so if you’re listening to this and you’re on lens, hit me up at levy chain. Stani, before I let you go, where can we find you on lens? Where can we learn more about Leinster? Show it away.
Stani Kulechov: Yeah, so you can find me on Leinster, so it’s or any of the applications built on top. So, my handle is Stani.lens and feel free to interact with me and also, I assume this video will be available on the Lens protocol for collect. So, remember to hit the collect button.
Exactly. Stani, thank you so much. We’ll have to do this again soon. But till next time.
Mint Season 6 episode 17 welcomes a dear friend and mentor Joe Vezzani. He’s the CEO and Co-founder of LunarCrush, a social media analytics platform empowering traders with top-tier insights and sentiment on your favorite crypto projects.
In this episode, we discuss key strategies for navigating through a bear market, the evolution of the web3 social landscape, on-chain data vs. off-chain data, how traders and creators can best leverage data, common pitfalls analytics fall trap too, and what Joe is focused on in the bear market, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
02:08 – Intro
06:09 – Ideas Before LunarCrush
08:24 – NFT Social Analytics
13:57 – Key Strategies for Navigating Through a Bear Market
17:30 – Evolution of the Web3 Social Landscape
24:36 – Owning Your Data
27:07 – On-Chain Data Versus Off-chain Data
31:22 – How Traders and Creators Leverage Data
34:31 – Common Mistakes People Make When Using Data While Decision-Making
40:07 – Things Joe is Excited About During This Bear Market
47:10 – Outro
Support Season 6’s NFT Sponsors
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Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social graph, ready for you to build on so you can focus on creating a great experience, not scaling your users. Learn more by visiting: https://lens.xyz/
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Joe Vezzani, welcome to mint.
Joe Vezzani: What’s up?
What’s up? I’m gonna have a hard time doing this interview. I feel like I’m gonna break character too much.
Joe Vezzani: How many episodes have you done of this?
I think we’re approaching 160
Joe Vezzani: 160 episodes and out of those 160 episodes, who do you think was the best interview? So, meaning like, they’re the best, everyone else slightly worse, or you probably don’t care about those people. So, like, who was the number one?
Should I call out the bad people? Is that what you want me to do?
Joe Vezzani: No, I’m not saying that. But if that’s what you’re saying.
You know what, I think this is going to be the best interview. Okay, I’m convinced, people that I really enjoyed conversations with. So early in the season, I had these two guys on, they barely spoke English, so, it was hard but their story was the most fascinating. They were the cyborgs that sort of experiment with their bodies. And they have like, one has an antenna that’s like surgically implanted into his head. And he sells NFTs that give people access to the camera of his antenna, so that they can manipulate his color vision at all times. And then his buddy has like a pacemaker. And he sold an NFT that gives people access to manipulate his heart rate at any given time. So that was probably like the most fascinating guests I’ve had on. Nobody has topped that.
Joe Vezzani: Is it like a standard deviation of like how high the heart rate could go. I mean, you can.
You can kill the guy. No, I don’t know. But he had no limitation.
Joe Vezzani: If he could, he’s like, fuck it.
He’s like, fuck it, just like hit me at 180, welcome to the podcast, a part of season six. This feels a little formal, yet informal. You’re an OG in my podcasting days from Draper going home, doing blockchain and booze together. And now here we are, how are you doing?
Joe Vezzani: I’m good, man. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I mean, it’s, you know, I couldn’t be like 160 episodes, and now I’m on.
Now you’re on, I know.
Joe Vezzani: You have to go through 160 people.
Intro
Let’s not go there. Let’s just get into it. I love starting with a quick intro. Okay. For those who aren’t familiar with you, Joe, and your epicness, and all the cool things you’re doing with LunarCrush, give us a quick background.
Joe Vezzani: So, I’m CEO co-Founder of LunarCrush, LunarCrush is a social intelligence tool. So, what we do is we aggregate all of the world’s social media data, that’s crypto NFT, and stock specific now. And we aggregate that over time, so that people understand what do the communities look like, across each of these projects, or companies or communities or, you know, Daos, whatever it may be, we try and help people and protect investors by giving them a little bit more intelligence and a little bit more research in a world where, you know, sentiment and social has such a great impact on what’s going on in the markets. We help people kind of dive deep into that. And so, you know, started it back in back in 2017, 2018, co-founders, John, and Dan. And yeah, man just been cranking ever since.
So how did you actually get your start into crypto? Because I feel like you’re an OG, you’re as OG as it gets, at least from a 2017 perspective, but you’ve been a professional for a minute now. How did you get your transition into web three?
Joe Vezzani: Yeah, I actually consider myself like, almost like a second-generation OG in a way where I mean, I bought my first Bitcoin in January 2015, probably sold it in January 2015 at a loss, and, you know, just kind of found Bitcoin and just, you know, always looking for interesting industries popping up. And it’s more about the people that were in and around the space at the time, you know, I played a lot of video games as a kid, but also, you know, worked in finance, and have done a lot of things. And so, it’s all kind of this like, weird crossover of, kind of, like just gamer type folks that I grew up with and that type of mentality, but also, like a crossover with money and, you know, financial instruments in a way and was like, what is going on over here, and, you know, kind of consider myself an entrepreneur at heart. And, you know, I was like, I need to start something, I need to do something in this space. You know, just too exciting too many people that I saw that I just respected and you know, or whether they were, you know, they were ultra-risk takers or just wacky or just into kind of counterculture type things in a way, it felt like that in those early days. And, you know, I was all in.
So, you’ve known the other two co-founders for a minute now, right? You guys worked at an agency together, right? Like a digital agency, a design agency, remind me.
Joe Vezzani: that an ad agency, John and I have worked together. Yeah.
And then how did Dan come into the picture for LunarCrush?
Joe Vezzani: Dan, and John had built a little, like website building CMS company together. Like they build superfast websites, and it was, you know, your agency can build sites very quickly, or consumers can build out site. So, they built a cool little app. It’s called blocks, it’s still, you could still make websites on there. And they had worked together on a couple of other things prior to that. And so yeah, man, just, you know, they were friends. And so, I knew Dan, through John. And so, John, and I just kind of going back and forth on crypto craziness, we had a bunch of different ideas that we wanted to launch. And then we came up with kind of what we thought would be, what LunarCrushed in, it turned into, and we just went to Dan, and we’re like, yo, do you think you could, like pull this data and kind of get it together in a way that makes sense? And he’s like, yeah, maybe I figure that out. And that’s the beginning.
Ideas Before LunarCrush
The rest is history. So, the ideas that sort of spiraled before LunarCrush came into existence, you remember what those ideas were?
Joe Vezzani: Tons of ideas. I mean, we had, I mean, there was one. It was like a lot of there were some interesting ones around, like restaurant suggestions. So, like, like lunch suggestions based on, you know, kind of what you were interested in eating, like, we kind of think about, like Uber Eth, but not having to make the decision, you know, so like, basically kind of like, on how you felt and everything else, like a recommendation engine around that, that was kind of cool. We had one that was kind of LunarCrushy, which we’re always kind of talking about. And we kind of have features in LunarCrush with like influencers and everything that we have, that kind of plays off this, but we really felt that any sort of talking head out there from a financial industry, so think like a CNBC or, like Jim Cramer’s of the world, and every one, these people are constantly making calls out there of like, this is going to go up, or this is going to go down, or here’s my call right here. And then they can either delete those tweets, or delete that Reddit post, or they can kind of move something. And so, we kind of had, we wanted to find, we wanted to create at one point of a platform where it was kind of memorializing people’s financial calls. And so, we kind of always felt that there was this outsize return for attention, for people that were, you know, kind of click Beatty, or, like, just pushing on hot button issues out there, like kind of Twitter, but we felt like, man, there’s probably someone that is trading so much better than that person, or is so much better of an investor that should have clout, you know, so we were kind of say, like, there’s a, you know, there’s a supply and demand issue there. So that’s still something that we kind of think about a lot and can definitely play into what we do at LunarCrush, but yeah, man we had like, like, we’re constantly to come up with ideas, but where there’s like 20 to 30 ideas at one point, we created like a decision matrix and just, you know, weighted everything on what we thought was gonna potentially go and then you know, kind of you build what kind of fits into your talent to, any time in place, what’s ready, being early is the same thing as being wrong.
NFT Social Analytics
Yeah, I’m a big fan of LunarCrush, because you guys have a very unique product in the market. And you guys’ very much aggregate social insights and sentiment around what’s happening in the space across multiple platforms. And now you guys recently introduced the NFT side of things, right, and tracking sentiment around NFT communities. That was released last month, a couple of months ago. Right? What has been the progress and so far? Like, how are you seeing people utilize a tool? Has it been utilized the same way as are utilizing the other sort of ERC 20 based social metrics, or are you seeing anything different?
Joe Vezzani: I will say the NFT community is a lot friendlier. It’s a lot friendlier. When we post things out to Twitter on that people will congratulate other influencers, will they call these are the top influencers on this thing, and people will be like, go Adam, or this is awesome. This person’s great. A lot of times in crypto, it’s very tribal, and people are like, you know, fuck that guy. Like, why is he beating me, which I don’t think is the right way to think about it. No, we’ve seen, you know, NFTs are probably 10 to 15% of the traffic we get now on the site, which is pretty cool. And that’s kind of continuingly growing, it’s becoming a larger piece a bigger share of what we’re doing. And yeah, we’re, you know, we launched crypto, it was just kind of you feel it out, you know, which communities do you add, you know, where’s the attention? Where’s the audience? How do you support that? And so, we launched a couple of months ago, and I’d say we are in kind of reconnaissance phase of just seeing what the community thinks about it. How are those communities using it differently than, you know, potentially using it for or trading with crypto, how are people potentially going to integrate our API into maybe what they’re building, but we felt with NFTs, we also launched it, I would say, like, you know, smack dab in the middle of a bear market, you know, people don’t even want to, like open their phones and look at their portfolio, like, I have no money left. But I think, you know, when you think about crypto and you think about the type of information and data that you can get back, you know, there are no earnings reports and 10 Ks, you know, I was talking about this of, you know, there’s not a very specific way to delineate value. And it’s very community driven, but there are some fundamentals there, people can still draw their lines and charts, and they can still look at wallet addresses or you know, maybe GitHub commits, even though you can’t see all the GitHub commits. And so, there’s really no value in that. But you can, with NFTs, it’s just pure community, it is just what is the sentiment of that community and that project, and who is a part of that. And so, it’s a more, I would say, you know, native sentiment driven, you know, community driven marketplace. And so, for us, it’s pretty cool to kind of see that happen. And I think we’re still figuring out, we’re still learning.
Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on this season is because it’s all around on chain data, and data in general and crypto. And as more creators sort of enter the space, and as you guys’ sort of added the NFT social Insights tool, I think it’s interesting, maybe if you could even share some trends or interesting findings, you’ve sort of discovered, you or your team, or maybe someone in the community discovered that, maybe it wasn’t as apparent as, yeah, as not having that insight, for example.
Joe Vezzani: I’ve been from a global or a macro perspective, right now, I think the interesting part to me, you know, being in the industry for four years now, as an operator, and, you know, being an investor a couple years before, this is the,, you know, as we always say, like the kind of the base level of, you know, community members, or contributors, as we call them in the industry is a much higher number than it was like in the last, you know, bear market, there’s a ton of people waiting on the sidelines right now that are, you know, know exactly how to use a Meta mask wallet or have money sitting in Coinbase, or have connected bank accounts to the, you know, to the web three ecosystem that are just waiting in the wings. You know, they’re out there, and everyone is feeling what’s happening from a macroeconomic standpoint, right now, inflation is hurting people, you know, I just posted last night, mortgage rates are at seven and gas prices are at seven in California. Right, I just drove by gas station this morning. It was 659, 689 and $7 for gasoline and, you know, to own a, you know, million-dollar house, which, you know, is not that crazy out in California, like, believe it or not, you know, it’s gonna cost you $8,000 a month to own something like that. And it’s a two bed, two bath, like, things are all out of whack right now. And I think that’s kind of making its way through the system. But, you know, kind of what I’ve seen is that the community is there, the community is strong, and the builders are building. Yes, there have been, you know, some blow ups in the space. I think we had our, crypto had our Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns moment this year. And I think it’s going to come back 10 times as strong after that, because of what we’re seeing, and how many people are still talking about crypto and are out there and what the communities look like, and what’s growing. So, you know, I think we’re collecting anywhere from four or 5 million posts a day, which can mean a billion to 5 billion engagements. So, people interacting with those posts a day, they are out there, those are pretty big numbers. And so, people are out there, and they’re ready to go, I think when things kind of come back.
Key Strategies for Navigating Through a Bear Market
Yeah. What do you think is the best way on strategies to sort of navigate the bear market, because you’ve already been through a few cycles, and you’ve obviously stuck through, you’ve built a company, you have users, like you’re figuring it out, right? And a lot of people that may be entered through this last cycle, whether it be creators, everyday users, they’re sort of maybe seeing this downturn, maybe losing faith losing hope. They’ve issued maybe NF T’s and they were maybe optimistic about them, but now sort of seeing the dust wave sort of kind of like scatter across crypto Twitter, because also engagement online, I feel like has decreased right? Like it’s maybe even gotten quieter a little bit, but I feel like more quality like the people who are there are there like they stuck through thick and thin, right? But for those who are going through it for the first time, how do you sort of advice someone to navigate the situation?
Joe Vezzani: Well, if what you’re saying is true, that person is probably not even listening right now. They’re just like, oh my God, but if they are listening, I would say, you know, my kind of story right now is you know, think a great uncle, he just turned 101. And, you know, he, I think he had his last startup he started when he’s like 92. And like, like, sold it when he was like 97. All right, so it’s like that was a five-year-old business, like, it’s older than LunarCrush. That business was long older, and he started at 92. So, I’d say if you’re like, 25, and you’re like, oh, my God, it’s like, you could start a business and 62 year or whatever or at 60 some years, odd years from now, and still run a business and maybe sell it, like the time horizon and the way that people are thinking about what’s in front of their face versus what’s happening 3040 years down, the line is just outrageous. Right now, this is a long game, and I think even been through a couple of cycles, and just kind of get numb to it a little bit and you just try to make the adjustments and you are kind of, you know, as you get older, you kind of see around the corner just a little bit more. Because you see a little bit of the signs in history repeats itself to a degree. You know, what do they say history, does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Like, it’s kind of you kind of see some of those things.
And so, I’d say, if this is your first, like bear cycle, I’d say like, just be stoked that like NFTs even exist. And like, you get to even be a part of that, and just go learn, right? Like, if you had to go tried to do a startup yet to go get a job for a little bit, go get a job for a little bit, you know, enjoy that. And, you know, maybe do a couple of things, especially if you’re in your 20s go travel, go figure things out, you know, if you’re highly obsessed, and you need to be starting a company, you will be and you’re just gonna naturally figure things out based on just the grind that you go through. So, if your heads down, and you’re gonna go do that, you just, you’re going to figure it out. If you’re curious enough, I would say and so if you’re an investor, you’re someone out there, that’s just a community member and excited about what’s going on in the industry, I’d say like, just keep enjoying those communities and keep trying to add value where you can, keep carrying the industry forward. And then they’ll look for ways that you can go work for potentially companies, that are still hiring in web three that, you know, are, you know, that way you can get the experience because we will hit a day where, you know, there will be a lot of people with enough experience in web three, where that’s not just a differentiator, to say like, oh, yeah, I love crypto. So that’s enough to get me a job there. It’s like, you need to start kind of figuring out how the infrastructure works and get some experience.
Evolution of the Web3 Social Landscape
Yep. And I think that sentiment applies whether you’re starting a company, whether you’re a creator, starting a new project, minting NFTs, whatever the action may be, just sort of powering through learning, trying to find a way to give back and not just take right in the bull market, a lot of people extracted value that didn’t really get returned back into the ecosystem. And now, everybody that sort of power through is trying to find a way to still like build momentum, sell out a drop, but it needs to be done in a more strategic way. I feel like using LunarCrush, you can even kind of like figure out what those sentiments are, what the behaviors like what the energy is, like across crypto Twitter, amongst other platforms. I’m curious to hear your point of view. On a recent trend that’s sort of emerging in web three. And across crypto, Twitter web three social. And we’re seeing a lot of new, like decentralized social applications emerge, and that are sort of creating like a new environment, one for creators to build communities and to monetize communities, two I guess, also, from your point of view, like different, like new markets for people to trade and speculate on, for example, how are you seeing this news social, web three social landscape sort of evolve? Do you have any thoughts about that?
Joe Vezzani: It’s not fully decentralized yet. It can’t be. Right, we still have a couple of missing pieces in the infrastructure, right? We don’t have an AWS for blockchain. Right? There’s, you can’t scale an application. You know, imagine like Instagram and like waiting for like the transaction. Right? Like you’re waiting, you’re waiting, you’re waiting. It’s like, oh, I gotta pay gas fee on this, or I have to have a wall with something. It’s like, it’s just not possible yet. But there are these kinds of blends, right, like a web 2.5. And a lot of stuff is like that, I would say. And so, I would say, you know, to the purists out there, they’re just like, this is not even, this isn’t what three, right, which is interesting to think about. But I would say from a social perspective, there’s a drive, right? For that, because people are nervous about their data. Right? They’re nervous about, you know, trusting, massive corporations because of the complexity of those massive corporations. Right? Like, it’s not necessarily like Facebook is evil. It’s, you know, how are the controls in place for the three to 400 potential admins at that company that are just, you know, everyday people that are out there, trying to live their lives that make a salary, and you know, even if Facebook’s paying that person $500,000 a year or a million dollars a year to be an admin of that. It’s not a lot of money for someone else to come in and exploit holes, right? And so how do you have those controls in place? It’s like you can’t and so I think it hasn’t been solved completely yet. And so, I think that the consumer out there is just they want their data. I mean, you see it in all the privacy commercials, you know, Apples, I think I think Apple is trying to own privacy. And now Google is trying to own security, like they’re picking different words that mean kind of same thing, because they want, Google is like, hey, we’re gonna keep all your passwords secure, right? That’s like their ad right now. And Apple is all about, like privacy and creating mass emails. And there’s this shift there, and everyone’s trying to get out ahead of that.
It’s such bullshit, though, because this whole marketing scheme on security and privacy, and the reason why we have data exploitation, and sort of like surveillance is because they all started on these hardware devices, like they enabled that, right, and the level of access and security that they kind of granted. And the features that platforms were able to build alongside on iOS, whatever Android, like, they were the reason like they were the foundation. So why these exploits happened, right? And why we’re sort of like in this new evolution of decentralization, of interoperability, of data ownership, of network ownership, right? These are ethos and values that didn’t exist, I guess, like maybe 10 years ago, when a lot of this stuff was brewing. But now you’re starting to see the consumer mindset shift. And there’s a reason why they’re targeting all these new marketing campaigns towards the consumer, because now people care about that stuff, which I think is a very bullish signal for web three.
Joe Vezzani: Yeah, I mean, that’s where it was going, which is, that’s why I think people want that, right. They want to own their data. And there’s a massive opportunity that’s being missed right now from, like, from a machine learning and an AI standpoint around your data, right? Because, like, this is why encryption is so important. And this is why owning your own data is so important. Yes, it’s because it’s yours, right. But it’s what it could potentially unlock. Right? Imagine if, you know, I had this camera open all day. And this camera, and maybe I had a watch on or I had some glasses on that actually got my blood pressure, right, not just my heart rate, which I actually just talked to an amazing company, go through TechStars program that’s doing that, where you know, my blood pressure, you now have a computer vision on my face. And I’m working all day. And between the two of those, it’s now picking up, hey, it knows that my blood pressure is going up at this point in time. It knows that maybe I have I’m like my face. Like I’m squinting or I’m doing these things, I’m upset. And I can get you know, if you’re in the zone, or you’re focused, you’re doing something, you can get a notification that says, hey, it looks like you should take a break, right? Your heart, your blood pressure is now going up. Right? You look like you’re upset, right? Like the if you’re driving a vehicle, right? And you’re it looks like you’re tired or, you know, a baby’s crying the backseat God forbid, leave a baby in the backseat like that does happen, which is crazy to think about. But I don’t want some company having all that data, or something that’s crazy. It’s like, hey, what if you want to walk naked around your house all day and like, hey, it’s like, hey, it looks like you have added a couple of pounds. Right? Or whatever else it may be. I don’t want someone else having that data. I don’t want 400 engineers at Google.
You don’t want that?
Joe Vezzani: Depends on how you are. I mean, if you’re like, you know, maybe it’s like, you just gotta put it all out there anyway, you just post off to the internet, you get out, I think that would be a great, you know, I think Bezos did that, didn’t he? And so, I think I think the amount of intelligence that you could get from this is unbelievable, right? But I don’t want 300 engineers at Facebook, looking at that data. I don’t want 300 engineers, you know, wherever else it may be having and having access to that. And so, you know, this is where I think the rub is for web three is, can we get to a spot where I do have full autonomy over that data, it is encrypted to a level that is not breakable, right? Like quantum computing is potentially coming here. And how do you find things that are quantum resistant? Now people are talking about, it’s crazy that we’re even talking about some of these things, but it’s out there. But it’s like, man, I just want to own my regular data, right? And I want to be the person that’s out there so that I can pick the algorithm to go and, you know, I could say, hey, I do want to know if I’m, you know, if you need a bunch of angst and I need to go like listen to Taking Back Sunday for a couple hours, you feel better, you know.
Owning Your Data
So double down more on what you mean by owning your data. Because in web three, there’s this whole notion of like, you are the co-owner of a network, right? You own your community or your community kind of like they have a level of ownership amongst each other in the value that they create. They even capture more of it, as someone who’s building data products, right? How do you sort of further understand the concept of owning your data? What does that really mean? So, you talked about the ability to sort of like, say yes or no to things that sort of use your information. How does it go beyond that? Because that tends to be the sentiment that I hear over and over again, like, I can basically turn off this accessibility from a product or a company using my information like, no more like, you can’t leverage that, right? How else do you see that evolving?
Joe Vezzani: Well, that’s step one. But even if you give someone that data, like how encrypted is that data, right? And can they, you know, say I give someone access to that data, and now they’re storing it on their side, right? And so, everything that I’ve given them at a point in time, sure, I can turn it off. But is that enough of a step forward and I own this data, and I know that no one will ever see it, right? And this is my data. So, when I say owning data, I mean, it’s yours, like no one else has access to it, you own it, no one else owns it, or has it or even has it, it might own might be the wrong word, right? Because it’s who owns what data? And how and why and what is proprietary, right? Like what is a novel piece of data, right? If I use Facebook’s platform, and my data is on there, and I upload a picture, or I upload that picture to Instagram, that’s whose data now, it’s a picture of me that I uploaded to an account. I’m paying, their advertisers are paying them for my attention. Who owns that picture, right? It’s an interesting thing to think about. And right now, it’s like, it’s out on the internet. Yes, it’s public forum. It’s out there. But what’s that ownership look like? And I think web there is moving so quickly and disrupting this so fast that, you know, I don’t even think regulation is even going to be able to catch up to some of this stuff, just because it’s gonna go so fast. And so, I think that’s the cool part. Like the sovereign side of, the sovereign individual is, hey, if the government’s not going to do it, not going to protect me, someone else is going to protect me, I need to protect myself. And so, I feel like there’s that just kind of like macho vibe that is in web three space where people are like, well, we need this to ourselves.
On-Chain Data Versus Off-chain Data
Right, right. But the way we’re sort of doing things right now, is that everything’s on an open network, across multiple open networks. And while things tend to be anonymous, users have choice whether or not they want to Doc’s themselves to an extent, right. Maybe there’s like more advanced tools like chain analysis, that can sort of track the activity online and piece of back to individual in the real world. But in general, like activity, individuals, they tend to be anonymous online, and something that I sort of look at, and I appreciate when it comes to building an audience, monetizing an audience, and web three is sort of the level of access and transparency you have that information, and being able to build and become either a smarter creator or a smarter user, on how you navigate your way across the internet, right? And in the decentralized internet. And I’m curious, like, for someone who’s building, like social sentiment, right? And maybe, and I’m not sure how much of it is actually on chain data versus off chain data, like do you have a percentage mix or is it all off chain?
Joe Vezzani: We don’t pull any on chain data. So, for us, you know, if you’re gonna say, hey, would you guys go in? You know, what is your roadmap look like? Would you go and add? You know, I mean, we have RPCs, that we’re hitting, and we’re pulling data constantly to understand what’s going on these chains, whether it’s for NFTs, and we’re looking at different things, but we’re not showcasing that in an analytics format, or a time series way in any way. For us, it’s, Hey, we’re gonna go grab, what’s the community look like on Tik Tok? Or what’s the, what are these discord communities look like? You know, what other kind of social media, you know, can we pull or go deeper on the analysis of the social media that we have. And so that’s kind of what we see the value as and our mission is to kind of create transparency across social for investors or anyone that that is part of it. But I also love what’s going on with a lot of the the on-chain analysis, because data is important, right, and you do get smarter and operate your business and you can create better products, and you can create more efficient businesses, if you do have the correct analytics to know what’s going on, right? Or if you’re a startup, you know, imagine going to an investor, you know, and them saying, like, oh, what is the user base look like? Or do you guys create enough value that people want to pay for it? Do you have a business there? And you’re like, yeah, we just don’t really know. Like, we just don’t know what all what’s going on, because it’s all anonymous and all everything.
And so, I think you have to get smarter and work with the KPIs that you get as a business. And, you know, the KPIs start to change, and they start to adjust. And I think a lot of the web two companies are gonna have to take a deep look at this and say, hey, I can’t drop a SDK that does attribution, you know, across like my five apps and drive ads to that to do paid media in these places, you have to get smarter. And that’s where, like what you’re doing here with this show. content creation is insane. It is the, like, I forget where I heard this, but it was someone talking about what’s harder? To create Kim Kardashian audience, and then launch a shoe brand, or to launch a shoe brand, and then try to build Kim Kardashian audience to sell those shoes? It’s impossible to build Kim Kardashian its audience right. And so, it’s like, right. So, it’s like, these content creators and the media is changing. And so, it’s so impactful, and so important to go down that route, because it’s also your built-in organic audience that’s going to drive the brand, it’s going to drive that affinity and the faster people can figure that out. I think the better and there’s this point in time where someone’s an influencer. And then it’s like a brand, right? And you can tell the different way that those people create content, right? Like when you see a tweet from Nike, versus, you know, a tweet from a NFT influencer, right? The Nike thing is like, oh, we created this spot, or we created this thing. And here’s how we want you to feel about what’s going on. And then the influencers, like, here’s how I feel, here’s what, here’s the way I want to see the world. And so, people are, it’s easy to build a brand around that, it’s easy to build products around that. And so, if you’re building a business, you need to think about that in an interesting way.
How Traders and Creators Leverage Data
So, give me some examples on how you’ve seen either, traders’ creators leverage data, because in many instances, Joe, like what you guys are building is very analogous to what’s happening on chain, right? So, you guys are sort of scraping open networks, open ecosystems, right, and making sense of the information very much. So how a lot of these on chain like analytic tools, for example, are scraping on chain data and trying to make sense of that noise.
Joe Vezzani: Well, using the data that we have, you know, there’s a bunch of different types of customers that we have, or users that we have, or community members, right, because everyone, you gotta remember everyone’s goal, when it comes to money or investment is different. It’s a completely unique and individual. And so, you might have someone that’s just coming into the industry, that’s trying to understand what’s going on, maybe they land on LunarCrush, and like, oh, cool, I could see, you know, what chain links community looks like, over time versus, you know, maybe what API threes community looks like, over time. And that’s interesting. And so, I’ve done some research, and I think that, you know, Oracle’s are a interesting way that I want to, I think, are going to be very valuable in the future. And so, I’m going to pick one of those, remember, I’m going to pick both, right? Because both are pretty solid, right? And so, we give you that kind of extra dimension, to make a decision on for things like that. And, you know, or discoverability, right, like, you’re out there, and you’re saying like, man, what projects are out there that are interesting, I’ve got, you know, I want to, you know, look at a project maybe that is smaller, maybe it’s a small team, you know, maybe they only have a couple mentions across whatever, like, you know, social media site that’s out there. Or maybe I saw something or a friend messaged me about it.
Now you can come and get that kind of extra layer, extra dimension of, it’s not just the price and the market cap everything else. It’s like, what does this community look like? who are maybe some of the influencers that have posted about this? Oh, dang, I saw this influencer, I’ve seen this influencer, I’m like, 30 other tokens that have gone to zero, probably stay away, right? Like, so there’s those types of things. We’re trying not to make judgment calls too much. Because, you know, we do want to provide the cleanest and most organized source of data possible, so that people can make those educated decisions on their own. But people ask us, like, oh, why did you guys listen to this shit coin or this scam project? And I’m like, well, first of all, how do you know that this camp project? Do you have any, like, Who are you right? And second off it, if we don’t list it, and show that this, you know, we calculate spam and we calculate, you know who the influencers are, if we don’t show that, they don’t have anywhere to go to make that decision. They’re just in the dark again. And so, you know, you have to look at the good and the bad, and you have to kind of create a playing field, that’s even. And that’s doesn’t change very often, so that people can over time kind of know, the decision and the decision doesn’t change on them. And it’s not like we’re changing the algorithm a year later. And now suddenly, it’s different, right? Like you kind of benchmark these, you know, you benchmark the way that you collect and what these, you know, these metrics look like, so people can get a little bit smarter decision.
Common Mistakes People Make When Using Data While Decision-Making
Yeah. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making when using data to guide their decision-making process? Any come to mind?
Joe Vezzani: Maybe too much. They’re relying too much on the data, and they’re not going a little bit with what their intuition is. You know, I see it as, I forget if it was like base camp or something. I think his name is Jason Freedberg, Freedberg and he was talking about, I mean, they never took VC money. You know, and they didn’t really even have like KPIs. They probably had some KPIs were like, hey, how much money did we make this month? Is it more than we had to pay? You know, but it was very light touch. I think when it came to roadmap, and you know, tons and tons and tons of user testing, I would say, and like, oh, we need to, you know, ABCD test this color on the homepage, right? It’s like, no, no, like, you don’t need to ABCD test that and have a designer just like hate their life while they work for you creating like AB test for like, in perpetuity. So, I think sometimes too much, too much data is maybe a burden, I think it’s finding a KPI that’s so valuable that you don’t even want to tell anyone want that KPI is, and boiling that down to one or two things that you think really impact your business or really impact your investing strategy. Find what works for you, what your, everyone’s risk tolerance is different. You know, I’m sure you got people aping into crazy, you know, projects that are coming out. Yeah, they’re just like, you know, like, you know, and like those people a little sadistic, right. It’s like, almost being addicted to gambling, like, they want to go to zero, right? They want, like, they need to get there. There’s a little bit of that. So, if you have a friend like that, like maybe, you know, send it there’s a one 800 number to send them.
But I think it’s more about it’s more about finding what works for you, what’s your risk tolerance, and, you know, then kind of working your way out from there, because trading is very difficult. It’s very hard, you know, even like, investing can be seen as trading in a way, you know, first off, it’s like, what’s in your funnel, right? What do you actually see, right? Like, if you’re coming on to your VC, and you’re gonna launch a fund, it’s like, do you just think you’re gonna get like the best deal flow? You think we’re just gonna walk in your front door? Like, no, it’s not. So, there’s a time period to understanding. You know, are you seeing and do you have enough preview? Do you have enough time to dedicate to it? I think, for the most part, I think most people probably don’t. And so, I think the future is, in order for in our space to kind of keep swinging that pendulum towards the consumer and giving them power over some of the institutions and some of the kind of the not level playing field that’s happening out there, is to create more automation. You know, it’s kind of like with Robin Hood, like, everyone’s an investor now, right, like, Robin Hood made options easy. Like, who can make options easy, it’s impossible, right? But it’s like, if they figured that out. And they made the interface so simple, that people can figure out how to do that. We can make crypto easy, right? And we can make investing easy in a diversified low risk basket of projects. We can make that happen. And I think that’s another piece that, I saw Michael sailor post something about, he was like, oh, bitcoins up at 6% in the last two years. And then like Google, Apple, blah, blah, blah, all these things were down, right, all these equities were down.
And then, you know, what he didn’t mention was there’s like 48 others, whether it’s a layer one or a large cap crypto project, that’s now a massive Dao and ecosystem fund and has a larger VC fund than most VCs in the country, is up to 1,914%. Right? It’s like they’re just glancing over. And these were two-year timelines as well. Right? And it’s like, sure, like, you could say that, you know, maybe sometime in the future that those things might not exist, but like, you were talking about a two-year timeline, and you glanced over 50 to 100 other projects that just absolutely destroyed the return of the kind of main project out there. And I think there’s something interesting that because, you know, the S&P 500 is only 500 stocks, QQ is only 100 companies, right, the Dao was 30 companies and so like to not pay attention to the top 100 to 200 projects in the web three space that have outperformed everything. Even if there are only 250 Crypto projects going forward, that’s still a massive piece of the market. Everyone’s like oh tens of thousands go to zero, well so do tens of thousands of companies go to zero every year people start, lots of pizza shops, and they don’t make it and so I think it’s, people just are, they’re not, their perspective is so skewed because of what, you know their feed looks like, their individual feed and my new thing now is don’t trust your feed. Like I just told you they’re like five.
I just saw you tweet that, yeah.
Joe Vezzani: 5 million posts a day like having, who I see I see like you posting like some dumb things on Twitter and then like John replying to them and like that’s it right? That’s like three people and then I’m just telling you there’s 5 million crypto specific posts a day and 5 million engagements on top of that, like you can’t see what’s going on.
Things Joe is Excited About During This Bear Market
Crazy, wild. As we continue our path down the bear market, Joe, what’s on your radar? What are you looking forward to? Any new topics, any new sort of primitives, ideas, communities? Show away? Like, I’m curious to get some alpha, because you’re so close to the data.
Joe Vezzani: What are you saying? The bear markets are going to continue? You’re saying we’re going down? I think maybe it’s over.
Whether it’s down or not, it’s going to it’s like, it’s still walking forward. That’s how I sort of see it. It’s like, it’s not going up yet. It’s not going further down. But it’s sort of steady. And if the tide may sort of continue at that pace for a minute.
Joe Vezzani: Okay, September 27. That’s Adams calling the market?
Yes, yes.
Joe Vezzani: 2022. Yeah, I do think, I think we’ve got a lot of uncertainty still out there. I do think that the worst of at least, the major kind of news form from Crypto is kind of through or through the woods, on a lot of that. So, I think there’s just going to be this choppiness. You know, as everyone kind of trades off the same narrative, you know, which is also interesting to me, because it’s like, you know, if I’m the chairman of the Fed, and I’m saying I’m going to raise rates in the United States, and then suddenly, like, you know, maybe my company is on, you know, the, the DAX in Germany, and my company now goes, you know, the value of my company goes down, because of like, the chairman of the US, I feel like, that’s also just kind of interesting, like, it just shows you how correlated and how uncertain everything is right now. But, you know, when you think about different technologies that are being built right now, you know, what I’m starting to see the beginning of right now that is coming to market, is the industry is going to start kind of horizontally scaling. So as opposed to, you know, when you think about you can vertically scale. So, like make Ethereum super-fast, low fees, everyone just can be on Ethereum. Because it’s just epic. And, you know, there’s no gas fees, and there’s no, I think you don’t need a bridge over that’s like a vertical scale. And then you think horizontal scale is, you know, going out from there. So going to different layer ones. So going to the, you know, the polygons the world, the stacks the world going, you know, off to Cosmos, right.
So that’s kind of the horizontal scale. And so, another layer out from that, though, is what you’re seeing across, you know, by Binance application side chain, or polygon super nets, I think avalanche, sea chain, maybe and then, like cosmos kind of pioneered this with like the internet of blockchains. I think they’ve been just kind of, the brand has been obviously beaten down a little bit by what happened with Tara. But you still see really solid projects rebuilding over there. Because the interoperability and the composability part of being able to kind of move around from standalone blockchain to standalone blockchain is very intriguing, I think. And so, you know, you can almost think about it, is if you’re going to create an application sidechain, or you’re going to create some sort of standalone blockchain, I’m not calling it a layer one, right? Like, it’s not like these projects are going to have a standalone blockchain and then go, like, for the most part, kind of compete with Ethereum, or compete with a polygon. That’s not what they’re doing. They’re saying, hey, like, I want to be my own gas fee. And I think that the transaction speed, and the decentralization is great enough, that that’s the, that’s kind of the trade off, right. So almost think about spinning up like a test net on Ethereum, you know, and you’ve got six to eight nodes, or whatever you have. And now imagine that being its own standalone blockchain that you build your own application on. And, you know, you could kind of bridge back and forth to whatever kind of chain or ecosystem that you need to, but for whatever the specific purpose is of your application, you are spinning something up, you’re spending a couple of nodes up for that specifically.
So, I think that’s an interesting thing that’s starting to happen. And I think we’re gonna see more of it. And it’s because the infrastructure is getting a lot more simple to do so. So, you know, it used to be very hard to go, you know, buy a bunch of boxes and stand up like servers in your garage. You know, I think we’ve all seen like, HBO, Silicon Valley, who’s got like, blow through the wall, right? Like, they even had a name for it. I should know, I watch that show so many times, it’s hilarious, but you know, that was the way that you know, servers used to be run. You know, it even used to be, you know, the dumb terminals, right? And an office, you’d have this IBM mainframe sitting in this kind of back office and then you’d have a terminal, so you’d have your monitor, you know, it would go to this mainframe and then like in the 90s, you started have like processing speed increase and then like the amount of space on you know, the personal computer increase and things moving back to the house a little bit, cable started to kind of go out there and Ethernet went out there and so then it started to go there. but they were like zip drives, and that you’re a lot younger than I am. But there’s that thing going on. And then like the cloud came, and it was like, right back, right. And now we’re almost going to a dumb terminal again, like I’ve got my phone. And it’s all up there, which when I say up there, it means it’s in a data center in Ohio, or a data center in Oregon or wherever it may be. But I think that, my point there is, it’s gotten so simple to spin up a cloud instance and build a, you know, a cloud app that runs super-fast and can be all over the world, there’s an advantage that you can build huge businesses on top of that infrastructure.
And so, with crypto and with web three, we’re now going to continue to build out that infrastructure. And so, it’s going to be much more simple for projects to kind of build out application side chains that are easy to use, and more of that content is on chain. So, the transparency increases, you know, imagine, like Coinbase, like just saying, hey, we’re gonna build on an application side chain, and we’re have these nodes that are run by these, who knows consulting companies or whatever it may be, proof of authority, kind of like V chain, kind of pioneered some of that stuff, but you have Coinbase doing that, and trying to bring as many transactions on chain as you can. When you send money to Coinbase, it goes to like, their Coinbase wallet. And then, you know, they have other kind of sub wallets, which, you know, they have their own kind of internal system there, which is interesting. If you think about Coinbase everyone’s doing that. They could have just picked usernames. But you have a wallet address there. But you could just put anything else, which I think is like was a really smart move for them, because they’ve trained everyone, but so yeah, that’s what I’m really, I’m excited to see kind of what that does, right? What kind of projects are going to be built? How does it look when you know, there’s 500 standalone blockchains that are would probably have launched some sort of token or anything else? You know, it’s like, why doesn’t like when people talk about ape coin, you know, they’re like, oh, they’re gonna be on their own chain. You know, it’s like, it’s not that big of a lift, you know, as it potentially used to be.
Outro
Right. I think those are all really good insights. And I think it’s also a perfect place to wrap up but before I let you go, Joe, where can we find you? Where can we find LunarCrush? Show it away
Joe Vezzani: Yeah, just at LunarCrush on Twitter and at Joe Vezz.
Let’s go.
Joe Vezzani: See me and Adam banter back and forth.
If you dig YouTube, you dig deep enough, you’ll find some old cringy videos but classic videos to say the least. But yeah, man. Thanks for being on. Always welcome on. Until next time.
Mint Season 6 episode 16 welcomes Scott Hansen, AKA Tycho, and Matt Jones, founder, and CEO of Medallion. Throughout the hour, we discuss Scott’s new open source community, the collaboration with Medallion, the similarities and differences between blogging and building a web3 community, bridging fans into web3, finding a balance between documenting and creating, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:16 – Intro
04:51 – How Blogging Helped With Community Building in Web3
06:20 – The TYCHO Open-Source Community
07:28 – The Medallion Passport
09:47 – The Connection Between Fans and Creators on Medallion
13:17 – TYCHO’s Balance Between Documenting and Creating
14:43 – What Does Open-Source Mean in the TYCHO Community?
17:02 – Building the Medallion Experience
23:00 – Interoperability on Medallion
25:07 – The Size Intentions for the New Community
28:35 – Unique Features to Come
35:21 – The Communication Strategy
38:20 – The Next Chapter for TYCHO
43:46 – Outro
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Matt, TYCHO, guys welcome to mint. Longtime coming, part of season six. How are we feeling, how are we doing guys?
TYCHO: Good, good. Thanks for having me.
Matt: Yeah, awesome, man. Great to be here.
Man. Is this your podcast debut?
Matt: It is. You got it, my debut. Dude.
Intro
I’ve done so many debuts for people being there first podcast, so I’m stoked to have you on. I’m really excited to dive in into the Tyco open-source community, everything that you guys are doing on medallion. But before we get into all that, okay, let’s start with really quick intros, just so the audience can kind of get an idea of who you guys are. If they’re not familiar, Scott, we can start with you. And then Matt, take it away.
TYCHO: Yep. My name is Scott Hanson. I’ve been recording music as TYCHO and creating visual art as ISO 50 for about 22 years now. And yeah, just kind of out of blog back in the day and did kind of web two, social media stuff here and there, but I’ve always been pretty engaged in community building. And that’s been a big part of TYCHO, so it’s really cool to be talking about this today. You guys.
Amazing, Matt, how about you?
Matt: Yeah. So been in and around music and technology for close to a couple of decades now. started my career, actually putting on concerts back in England, straight out of high school, I suppose would be the equivalent. And then started a b2b e-com company, helping artists sell tickets directly to fans and then later into Song kick and then ran that company. And yeah, it was a wild ride. And then now CEO of medallion, which we kind of, I suppose, you know, got off the ground in earnest at the beginning of this year. And, you know, yeah, we’re off and running. And it’s, it’s really exciting.
Matt, were you the kid in high school that used to rent out like the warehouses and like, try to like scan people for tickets at the front door? Was that you?
Matt: Yeah, no, not the warehouse, it definitely. It was outside of London. And it was like, old, like billiard room holes, like school churches, and things. It was, like, less glamorous, but still pretty cool. Like, it was like a real interesting generation of artists, like, you know, Mumford, and Dao and balls and glass animals and stuff like that. So, it was like, it was amazing to be around. And so yeah, no, it was a cool experience. So yeah, but quickly, kind of moved into technology after that. But yeah.
I feel like we all had that friend in high school that used to sort of do those kinds of parties. But not to get too much into that. Scott, I’m really excited to have you on the show, and kind of cover all of the new things that you’re doing, and the NFT side of things, but I want to sort of get started with more of the early days of TYCHO because you had this music blog, and you’ve been building communities for so long. I would love for you to sort of talk about what role communities have sort of played in your success, whether it be from the blog side, whether it be from the fandom side, the art side, or maybe all the above?
TYCHO: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s been a huge part. And I think it’s, it was the foundation that this whole thing was built off of, is, you know, the blog, definitely attracted like other creative professionals. And I think the music kind of lends itself to that process. For a lot of people, it’s very useful to listen to while you’re working, coding, you know, doing graphic design, video work, stuff like that. So, I feel like the blog attracted those types of people, a lot of those people in the beginning, and then we all ended up collaborating, or, you know, just became friends or met them at shows, things like that, that really connected me to a wider creative network, which I really didn’t have at the time. And I think, you know, because a lot of those people were, you know, were for either ad agencies, or did you know, video stuff, they would end up doing placements for the music, and I think, or they ran blogs or their own. And so, it’s just this really interesting way to kind of get the music out and in through the creative network. So, a lot of the shows ended up you know, we’d be a chosen, you’d realize, like, a lot of these people were either from the blog or their graphic designers themselves. And so that was just always compelling to me that that the music brought it almost like spoke specifically to these people. Sure. And then, you know, obviously later it, it reached a wider audience. And I think those were kind of the traditional social media years. And just slowly we’ve seen, you know, that the message become a lot more filtered. And I don’t feel like there’s the connection there was in those blog days. So, you know, web three, and particularly this platform that we’ve developed with Medallion is particularly compelling to me because it feels like those days, it feels like you’re speaking directly to real people. And, you know, you’re actually connecting with them, as opposed to just hoping for the best and throwing stuff into some random algorithm.
How Blogging Helped With Community Building in Web3
Can you talk more about the features of the blog that enabled for more sort of interconnectedness between readers and yourself and how that sort of translates into what you’re doing right now, in web three, because it feels like almost like web one, ask, you know, the blogging site. Social media feels like web two and like now issuing NFTs and all these tokens as a way to kind of like bond people with aligning incentives is like the new era of that. I’m curious how you sort of see the distinction between both.
TYCHO: you know, I think there’s a few elements, I think the conversational nature of it, it feels connected, they know that they’re directly connected to you. And I think there’s many expectations that set there that that’s really beneficial. I think, another big thing is kind of the feeling of ownership. I think anytime you have this token, it’s like a, you know, we call it a passport for our community. And I think anytime you have that, and you’re able to give that to a fan, it’s a tangible thing, and they feel connected to the space, and they feel like they belong in this space. And I think there’s something really powerful about that. And I think the portability of it is really cool, too, you know, that this thing can be taken to the discord, this can be taken to other communities, this can be taken, you know, or to other platforms, I think that’s you know, a big part of it, and the ability to gate the access and say, like, these people are invested in this community, and they feel the investment. And so, we’re gonna give them more, and we’re gonna give them more of a connection and more content and be able to collect all that in one space. I think those are all kind of, for me, the really powerful aspects of the community.
The TYCHO Open-Source Community
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s also a great place to sort of introduce the TYCHO open-source community. What’s the quick one liner? Like, what’s the takeaway behind this new community that you’re starting, Scott?
TYCHO: I mean, I like sharing my process, like almost like, in an educational way. Or at least just, you know, coming up, I always like, you know, idolized all these musicians and producers and wanted to like, emulate what they’re doing. And, you know, it’s just like a black box, you’re just listening to this two-track recording and trying to figure out how they did all these things. And I feel like it’s so powerful for young up and coming artists, or just anybody wanting to get into any creative endeavor, to be able to see the process of another artist, I think it’s so educational to say, like, here’s how they did it, here’s the end result, how can I take that and use it in my, my own work. And so, you know, that’s something I’ve wanted to do more of, but I felt kind of limited by the platforms and the way that you share media and the types of media you can share and all those things. So, for me, this presents a really cool opportunity. I’m going, I’m in the process of making the next record. So, I think this is a great opportunity to be able to share that process with people.
The Medallion Passport
So that sort of like introduces a medallion side of things right, Matt? And Scott, you brought up a really interesting keyword passport. Why passport Matt? Like where does passport sort of fit in the greater vision of what you guys are building a medallion? And why is that like the perfect entryway to kind of like lowering the barrier of confusion and threat that web three typically brings to a fan? That’s not I guess, crypto native.
Matt: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think we can take any credit for the word passport. I think that was all Scott and that the you know, the, you know, the crew surrounding Scott, I think is like, perfect word for what it is. I think that, you know, it really feels I don’t know, for those who have not experienced it, it’s a TYCHO dot community. And I think it really does, it feels like you are entering this like very unique, special world that is only about TYCHO. And I think that’s really hard to find nowadays. And like, you know, there’s obviously all these incredible platforms out there that, you know, have, you know, a ton of users and a lot of activity, but like they’re not exactly close-knit communities are very focused on one particular subject matter. And I think that, you know, it really is feels like a special place where you can connect and like, you know, find, you know, one you know, essentially one on one connection with the artists is kind of the primary thing that we’ve created there, I think the things that are going to be really exciting that we’ll explore in the future, is like how to develop like fan the fan connections in that same setting. I think the other thing that you know really grasped me when we did this, is it just like it kind of felt like a bit of a rebirth of like, the artists website in a way like you know, the artists website has become this kind of, I don’t know landing page that goes to all these other places and it felt like a kind of redundant bit of real estate where now it’s like, okay, like I go here because I am interested to engage with the artist, in this case TYCHO and I think, you know, now you get that engaging experience and obviously there’s a lot more to come but like I definitely think passport, to answer your question was like a very accurate, you know, word on what we were trying to create there.
The Connection Between Fans and Creators on Medallion
So, when I created an account on the on the website, I sort of saw the entire flow from a product point of view. And Scott, when you were talking about like bringing back the feel the energy, the vibe of the blog days and make We seen that with web three, and the incentive alignment, the ownership components, it really felt like that, like, I joined the website. And the first post initially was like, felt like a blog post, like it felt like, I was very much like directly communicating and kind of like having a direct line of connection with you as the creator, right? As the artist, right? So, props for you guys for sort of like, kind of like bringing that experience together. I’m trying to think, what does that look like at scale, though, for a fan, for a community member? What does that look like at scale for medallion site?
Matt: Yeah, I’m happy to dig into that. And maybe Scott, I’m sure you’ve got a ton of thoughts on this, too. I think the onboarding is really important. I think that a lot of people get caught up in, you know, web three, and blockchain and it becomes like this really abstract world, that not a lot of people feel comfortable talking about, or really don’t really understand. And I think, you know, it’s just another, you know, way the internet is moving forward, right? And like, you know, it has so many powerful attributes. And what we basically tried to do, is kind of bring it to the masses. And I think that you’ve got a lot of, you know, artists that have these incredible legacies, such as TYCHO that have these very vibrant audiences of all demographics. And like being able to build a product that caters to everyone was really the goal, that we were trying to get to with the platform was just like, hey, you can be crypto native or not, and still be, you know, get the same experience and get the same benefits. I think the other thing that was really important to us was making, you know, and this was definitely something that came from Scott, was like making this community free, right? Like, you don’t need to be one crypto native, but two like, you don’t need to pay to like experiences, sure, there’ll be some paid things at some point. And just the same way you buy music, or you go to shows but like, very base level to engage with the community, you can just dive in, and like get all the benefits. So, you know, for us, like those were like two pretty big pillars that we were trying to make sure that we hit because we felt like that is what musicians and artists are really into and like are really important for their communities. So yeah, I mean, Scott, I don’t know if you’d add anything to that.
TYCHO: Yeah, I mean, I think to speak to your earlier point, too, I think having this kind of cohesive aesthetic, where it’s like this is information and content presented in the way that the artist intended it and has designed. So, you know, combining all the great things about artists websites, but with all these powerful new tools, I think that’s the, you know, a really compelling aspect of this. And I think, generally, just the idea that this is so open, and then there can be so much more to this, I think is something I’m really excited about that just to see this thing build and evolve. Because, you know, we’ve been presented with all these new technologies over the years, you know, I’ve been doing this for 22 years now. And I’ve seen everything from mp3.com, to Facebook, to Instagram, and it’s like, you know, they all show you this thing, and it always feels limited in some basic way. And this, this feels very open ended. And so that’s, you know, I think, it remains to be seen what this will become, but I think it has the potential to kind of become whatever we make it.
TYCHO’s Balance Between Documenting and Creating
Yeah, you know, one thing that I like doing on the podcast is sort of, trying to relate these to other creators, because at the end of the day, like this is meant to scale to some extent, right? This fan to artists connection, it’s not just supposed to end with you, Scott, like the goal is to sort of bring that out to many, many more artists. And I think one thing that you’ve done really well Scott, is sort of find the balance between creating and documenting, and a lot of creators that come into web three, they have a hard time kind of on the community building aspect, because they really get the creatorship right, they either get creating music, creating art, they get that stuff, right. How do you find your balance between documenting and creating?
TYCHO: Well, I mean, that’s always come naturally, me just because, you know, photography is one of my favorite pastimes. And I’m a graphic designer, I was a web developer. So, like, I come from that background of creating and posting, you know, content, framing it in a way. And so, for me that always came naturally. And also like, you know, like I was saying before, I always love like, behind the scenes and like seeing a peek into the artist’s process. So, for me, it’s important to document those things, and to have some reference for that, almost like a scrapbook. So, like that always and I’m sending that stuff out to traditional social media. It’s just it feels so disconnected and disparate. And you have all these different platforms. So, I’ve been looking for a place to collect all that into one space and this definitely feels like it.
What Does Open-Source Mean in the TYCHO Community?
Yeah, you know, open source is a term that’s often using like computer science and applies publicly accessible code, right? That anyone can kind of see modify, distribute as they see fit. And I’m curious, where does this phrase sort of fit into the big picture as it pertains to community building? like in web Three, your moats or your stickiness or your flywheel sort of generated by the community that you’re developed. And it’s hard to fork community, right? In your context, like this idea of open source, right? Like, what does that really mean to you in the grand scheme of things? Is it meant for other people to come in and sort of create their own versions of what you’re sort of documenting, producing? Or how do you sort of see that term open-source fit into your new community?
TYCHO: I think it’s a few things, obviously, these communities, like you’re saying, you know, they’re organic, and they’re kind of self-fulfilling prophecies or whatever, however, you want to say, you know, the community creates itself and it becomes what the community kind of whatever direction it nudges it. And so, you know, you can, you can start with whatever you want, you can create a foundation, but it’s going to grow into to whatever it wants to become, in kind of in an organic way. But I think, you know, the other side of it is opening up the process and showing people this is how this stuff is made. And this is how I go about it. And I’m, you know, hoping that they can take that and apply that maybe to their own process or their own process of learning how to do these things. And then I think finally, like, a good example is just, like, I just put out this Dj Mix, and I was creating the cover for it. And I was on, you know, speaking to the community and kind of saying, like, here’s this version of it, this is where I’m at right now. But I want it to become this, what do you think and like, turned out there some other graphic designers and like, they came out, and we did like a back and forth, almost like a real time critique. And like, those are the kinds of interactions and then that ended up becoming the cover, like, I really learned a lot from that process and seeing, you know, because you lose sight, sometimes as an artist of what, of how people are interacting with your work. And this is one of those grounding moments where you remember, like, okay, these are real people. And they’re taking this in, and they’re internalizing it in these different ways. And to really get that instant, real time feedback was just like a really powerful experience, it again reminded me the old days of web 1.0.
Building the Medallion Experience
Yeah, Matt, when you’re designing a product, like medallion, what are some like design principles, you sort of carry in your soul, essentially, as you sort of built like the ultimate experience for creators to be able to bring their fans together, like, what did that look like? And how has that evolved since the initial idea of medallion?
Matt: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think the first answer is, I definitely didn’t do all of it is a big team behind this. And, you know, I’m just one of many contributors here. So big shout out to the team that’s got us this, you know, to where we are, I actually think that the actual concept for the product is not really varied. Like I think it was really simple in the beginning, it was like, how do we essentially bring an artist closer to fans, and I think we’ve thought that the blockchain presented the best. We thought that the blockchain really represented the best way to do that today, like this idea of like, you know, fans living in these kind of closed ecosystems and not allowing artists to build direct connection or valuable connection or have any kind of, you know, control about how they speak to their audience, in what format and what system and stuff like that, really presented the opportunity of like what if we can move, you know, if we can create fans and identity in like, open source or like, you know, in a decentralized environment, that can kind of open up all these new possibilities. And so, the product was really geared around that idea, I think the second thing that we were really focused on was like, giving fans the ability to essentially participate, own, contribute, in a system that like meant something to the artists, e.g., like, there’s a lot of things around web three and crypto right now that kind of live in their own, you know, isolated areas, like whether it’s projects, or whether it’s, you know, all sorts of different things that there are, we thought it would be really valuable to create a system where all of those things could belong on the one roof for that artists, like so in the TYCHO community, in the open-source community, like, you know, there’s going to be like a, you know, there’s a roadmap of things that we’re building and that we built that, you know, really represent what fandom is in relation to TYCHO. And I think having those all-in-one places really gives fans incentive to wanna, you know, own that stuff and like participate and really like kind of show off like their fandom for the artists and I think that that was really absent like today. So really, for us, it was like those two core things. It was like one like, how do we kind of give artists the ability to you know, have a direct connection, one and two, how do we give fans a reason to want to kind of, you know, demonstrate or showcase their fandom. And how would we do that? So, yeah, that’s kind of what the product is doing right now, I think.
What is the like web three sort of enable for communities and fans that web two fail that from your perspective?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I want to go deeper into that. Okay. And the reason being is because when creators sort of, they hear web three, they hear NFTs tokens, they sort of get skeptical, right? And for one that’s sort of building a platform to use crypto primitives, as a way to bring these two parties closer together. I’m curious, what is the like web three sort of enable for communities and fans that web two fail that from your perspective?
Matt: Yeah, I think it’s kind of back to the two things I said, I think for an artist, it’s like, I think Scott can answer this himself. But I think the way, what I’ve heard, and I think the market feedback we’re getting is that, you know, artists want the ability to have a direct connection and the blockchain, you know, enables that for them, like this idea of understanding what your audience does, and being able to reward them better for the things that they do, or having like, a deeper understanding, or being able to generate loyalty and stuff like that, I think is something that is very tricky today. And like not saying it’s not possible, I’m just saying it’s not that obvious. And it’s kind of tricky. And I think for fans, like, there isn’t really a way that you talk about your fandom for a specific is like, you know, if you’ve been to loads of shows, and like listen to thousands of hours of music, like rarely really talk about that, and what? And to me, it seems very fragmented the way that that is today. And it seems to me as well. And definitely, I think the team that medallion, which is like the best place to bring that all together is the artists website, like everything we’re doing is artists branded, or, you know, essentially customized to the artist. And I think, you know, there is this really nice idea of bringing back, you know, the, you know, the first place that you would discover, hopefully an artist, would you go to the artists website. And, you know, I remember the days of like, that was the first place you go to, and now unfortunately, I think it’s like one of the last places you go to, and I think that, you know, we can definitely, I think change that I mean, maybe I’m sure Scott has probably a better answer than I did. But that’s I think, some of the stuff.
Yeah, Scott, I’m curious if you have anything to add to that?
TYCHO: Yeah, no, I mean, that sums it up pretty nicely, I think, you know, it goes back to like, you know, when I was a kid, when I identified with an artist, or I really internalized what they’re doing, you know, you want it this way, it’s almost became a part of your identity, you know, you wear a shirt, you wear a rush t-shirt to high school, and you’re making a statement. And it’s like, people, I think music fans have lost all these little things, like you get the pin at the show, or whatever, all these things that show like, you’re invested in this artist or these artists mean something to you. And it’s part of you now, because you’ve spent so much time with them. I think we’ve lost that ability as fans over time. And I think, you know, anytime we can find a way for the artist, to give that opportunity back to the fans, I think is really compelling.
Interoperability on Medallion
Yeah, I think also part of that from your side. Scott, as a creator is like also talks about this, I mean, you talk about this concept that I’ve sort of seen online as like now artists sort of own their data, right, and being able to curate experiences by having more control, because the middlemen are in the picture, right. Because when you build an audience on social media, right, on these web two platforms, you are kind of gated and limited by the tools and resources and the abilities that they sort of impose on you. And if you want to bring that community elsewhere, it’s almost as if you have to start from scratch. And for example, like when we saw the era of Tik Tok sort of arise, a lot of the Instagram artists that sort of build their audiences, either even on Twitter or Instagram, whatever it may be, now tried to build audiences on Tik Tok like they lost a lot of their edge because they have to start from scratch, right. And a concept that you sort of talked about is like this element of interoperability, right, being able to take your fans and your community across multiple different experiences. Can you sort of talk more about that?
TYCHO: Yeah, I mean, I think the other big thing about all those platforms is, they were never designed for this purpose. And you’re always using you know, I remember Facebook didn’t even have I think you had to, like set yourself as a public figure or something back in the day, like it wasn’t, they didn’t even really have a mechanism for you know, a band. So, like, none of these things were ever designed for that in the first place. People were just leveraging them because they had large user bases, you know, it’s like, okay, here’s a lot of people I’m sure some fraction of them are fans, let’s use this to get the message out. But it wasn’t particularly designed for it. So yeah, like, obviously, you don’t own the data. You don’t really have any understanding of who these people are beyond like an avatar and whatever name they use. So, like, I think, how do you forge a deep connection with someone who you really don’t even understand who they are, you know, on any basic level. So, I think this tool have been designed from the ground up for artists to communicate with fans, I think is obviously the most powerful aspect of it and it’s something that I think so far you know, we’ve seen it allow through a much more direct connection to the fans. And I think that’s huge for artists in this era.
The Size Intentions for the New Community
So, this is a question for both of you, are you guys designing this new community to sort of fit and tailored towards a million fans or a smaller group of people that are more of like your true, true fans? Like, how do you sort of see that strategy?
TYCHO: Well, I think, you know, from, I think TYCHO has always been a relatively small but very passionate and engaged fan base. So, you know, we’ve been successful and been lucky enough to be where we are now, because of how engaged this fan base has been. It’s not about this massive scale. And so, for me, this fits perfectly, this is like, I think this will be at least at the beginning, a small, obviously, you know, Instagram is just like a billion people or whatever. And, you know, so you have this giant potential audience, but really, you’re not really connecting with many of them. And even the ones who have, quote, followed you, you still aren’t really, you don’t have access to them in the way that you once did. And so, for, for me, I would rather have a smaller, more passionate, more engaged community that I’m speaking directly with, then some massive potential pool, where you’re connecting with a very minuscule fraction of what’s out there.
Yeah, what do you think Matt, do you think artists should be sort of optimizing for building virality in using web three tools? Or should they really be honing down on their, like their true, true, small, small kind of niche group of fans?
Matt: Yeah, I think this is a fascinating topic. And, you know, there’s a lot of studies out there, there’s, you know, the thousand, true fans concepts. I’m actually, like, personally, I think the way that we’re kind of building the product, and the platform is similar to way Scott is describing it, I think that the metric is moving away from like, impressions to like engagement. And I think that, you know, this idea of like, oh, I’ve got this many followers, but like, one, I have no idea who they are, and I can’t really reach them directly. And be like, you know, if I’m asked to post something, or put something out there, I don’t know how wide it goes. I’m, you know, sitting alongside a lot of other content. So, I think what that really points to is like, this platform that’s integrated into an artist website, where they own the keys to all of their communication with their fans, that metric then becomes is like, how engaged are my fans and like what of my open rates like on my email blasts, and like, when I do post something, how many fans are engaging? And like, I actually think the key thing for us is like, how do we build a dimensional profile of every fan? And how do we figure out how to keep that fan engaged, and wanting to come back and consume more and be more in tune with what the artist is doing. So, for us, I think it’s more about, you know, serving that, you know, call it whatever you want, a subset of fans that are looking to come back and engage more content. And I think that is the way that kind of I personally, I think that is a way that a lot of people are choosing to engage now anyway is like, you know, the bigger, you know, more open platforms are a little more tricky to kind of navigate, and people are like, searching out, like more closed and, you know, more, you know, intricate communities. And I think that’s what we can build here. So yeah, for me, it’s like number one metric is definitely around that stickiness and engagement.
Unique Features to Come
So, I think that’s also a great place to introduce, maybe like the roadmap essentially, with this new community that you guys are kind of like building collectively, using medallion as the foundation and Scott you kind of creating all the fun stuff around it for your audience to kind of join along the ride. What are we expecting here? Like, what can we expect? What sort of things are you integrating uniquely, that NFT sort of enable, for example? Or just in general, I’d love to learn more about what you guys have in store.
Matt: Sure. Do you want me to go first, Scott?
TYCHO: Yeah, go ahead.
Matt: So yeah, I mean, I definitely a couple of caveats. I mean, one obviously, like we can’t divulge everything, but we can give you guys, you know, a good view on what’s coming. I think secondly, like, Scott, and Brian, and the whole, you know, the crew have been like, so instrumental in the way that we’ve crafted a lot of these features and the way that we’re bringing a lot of this stuff to market. So huge tip of the hat to everyone involved there. Yeah, so I think the easy way to explain it, is that we are looking to create platform features that sit alongside everything that I found us today. So, like right now they’d like to sign up for email lists or join platforms like we’ve created the onboarding experience. We’ve just created something, you know, with the contribution mechanic where fans can like, choose to, you know, download assets and contribute to artwork or other things, we’re going to see more of that around music and other things like that. I think the other two milestones will be like music releases and how we do that. And then the other one will be around like a live music experience. I think the other stuff around the edges will be like fan-to-fan engagement features that we build, that really kind of, you know, help fans communicate with one another, discover, and like, share experiences together. But I think like the three, the kind of three milestones that I knew, sorry, the three buckets that I put the roadmap in are like one, giving fans access to things in different ways, two giving fans the ability to own things. And the third thing is around participation, giving fans the ability to participate, you know, one on one with the artist, or in a setting with the artist, but also one on one with each other.
Scott, anything to add to that?
TYCHO: I think, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of this, is the ability to tell a cohesive story. And I think, to Matt’s point earlier about creating higher fan engagement and having them follow along, I think, you know, any artists journey, you’re it’s kind of a narrative arc throughout your career, but even down to the granule granular level, like getting ready for a tour or making an entire album, you know, when you try to tell that story on social media, people miss entire pages, or entire chapters, depending on what ends up getting fed to them. And, you know, I’ll talk to people I know are really engaged, and people are paying attention. And they’ll have missed shows in their town, or the fact that I’ve been making a new album, like all these big things, and it’s like to be able to tell that story all in one place in a linear way and have this flow and have it be accessible, all in one place and filtered to the fans. That’s huge for me, especially at a time like this when I’m working on an album. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I want to be a storyteller. And I know the story isn’t just the end result, the album, the story is how did you get there? And who did you become along the way? And what happened, you know, throughout, and I think the ability to tell that story in one place and present it the way you want is huge.
Matt, why do you think fans want to own something? And what does that really mean?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I think for every fan is different. I think, you know, I you know, for some fans, you know, you own something to unlock an experience, like you buy a concert ticket to go to a show, you know, for some fans, they’ll buy, you know, records because will vinyl records because they want to collect every release, some fans never open their records. I never played it, you know, like, I think it’s totally different for everyone. I think just in our head, like I think ownership is just one node of like fandom, right, like participation is another one, like attendance is another one, but like ownership definitely features right. I think, you know, Scott will tell you firsthand, like, you know, we did a you know, there was a preorder recently, you know, that was sold out. And I think, you know, people are always gonna want to buy stuff, right. And I think that, you know, that’s something that I think right now that you don’t, I think it’s really tough and ecommerce to figure out how to reward fans for that stuff, right? Like, you know, I don’t think artists have been given the best tools to figure out, oh, I want to know, you know, how many of my fans have bought every single vinyl release for the last 15 years, or like have been to all of these shows. And I think it’s a shame because I think a lot of us really want to reward fans for that loyalty from the early years. You know, I can’t tell you how many artists we talked to that. They’re just like, that’s one of the number one pain points is like, I want to figure out who was there at the beginning, and like really kind of reward them for being there. You know, and I think probably Scott is probably one of those artists that probably sees a lot of that. And I think for us, like I think web three and blockchain unlocks a lot of those possibilities. I think like the ability to reward people on chain and build loyalty on chain is massive, like unparalleled to what it is in web two. And I think for us, we have, our challenge is going to be able to figure out what that system looks like to make it interesting for fans, because right now is not that interesting, right? And I think that is what we have to figure out. And that will take time, but will also take, it will also mean working with artists that want to push the boundaries of what it is and try and test and, you know, early on in the NFT, you know, adoption cycle, like the environmental impacts was a huge learning curve that a lot of people had to go on. And I think right now we’re at a point where, you know, I think fans are coming back around to like why NFT can feature and why web three is important and like the education issue around the environment is a lot better than it was. And like, I think, you know, some of the L ones have done a really good job of that stuff, especially at polygon, Solana like they’ve done a really great job of like, educating users on why this is, you know, not as bad as everyone thought it was. But do you know what I mean? Like, it takes time to bring this stuff around, as well as kind of trying to say.
The Communication Strategy
Yeah, and I think part of that is developing the right communication strategies to sort of describe what kind of value you’re getting by collecting whatever it is that you’ll be collecting. And I’m curious as to how you guys are approaching that, because, yeah, one of the biggest hurdles is like the second somebody hears NFTs, you know, they get completely zoned out, you know, and Scott, I’d argue your community is actually much different, because you’ve been in the space for a long time, like you were part of the nifty gateway era. You were also I remember us sort of like speaking very publicly about your relationship with Justin Blau and participating in that music festival, the idea that he had very early on, I’m curious how you guys are approaching the communication strategy. And we can, of course, focus on Scott’s community, but also at large, it’s a big problem that sort of faces the entire creator economy?
TYCHO: Well, I think, you know, there’s always going to be, I think, we have a, you know, a pretty tech savvy fan base to begin with, because it’s a lot of creatives and a lot of people in technology, things like that. So, I think a lot of them are much more, you know, accepting of new technologies. But I think, you know, like Matt was saying, the onboarding process is, can be totally pretty traditional down to an email and a log in, and you can, it can be that for you, if you want it to be that simple as a fan, so and that was important to us to keep that open to everyone, and not just people who are crypto native. And I think the beauty of that is that over time, I think everybody’s going to see, anybody who comes in here, tech savvy or not, is going to start to understand the value of this thing as they interact with it, you know, the problem with forcing them to be crypto native out of the gate is that, you know, you’re going to cut out a vast swath of people who probably would be receptive to it if they just experienced it. So, we’re trying to give them this sort of hybrid experience, where you can get in the door, and then you can interact with it as much as you want in the future. And I think most people will see the benefits pretty quickly once they’re in there.
Yeah, I’m curious how you’re sort of integrating your past experience, the past collectors, sort of from like, the nifty gateway area and the and the other NFTs that you sort of issued? Where did those fans come into place?
Matt: Yeah, I think, well, you know, the model that we sort of developed for the discord was to give them access to specific areas of the discord based on holding, you know, token gated spaces. And I think that, you know, that’s gonna be the idea with Medallion is that you’ll have different, they’ll be able to interact in different ways with the community, or they’ll have access to earlier, you know, drops or tickets or merch, things like that. I think that’s all evolving. But the idea is that that will be integrated. And I mean, that’s the beauty of being able to integrate web three here is that there’s portability. So, if you’ve interacted in some way in the past, with us in the web three space that’s going to be portable into this community.
The Next Chapter for TYCHO
Yeah. What questions do you think you guys, you think I’m not asking to you guys, that’s super important to kind of understand this next era for you, this next chapter for TYCHO as a whole.
TYCHO: I mean, for me, the big thing, and we’ve sort of touched on it, but I think it’s worth diving deeper into is just like, from the artists perspective, I think people think of fandom as this artist’s fan relationship, as this one-way street, this artist has a megaphone, and I think that’s been shaped by social media, is this megaphone on top of a hill, just shouting out some message and hoping that someone hears it. And the people who do hear it, maybe they internalize it, but there’s nothing coming back. And like, you have to remember, like, you know, you play these shows in front of all these people. And it can become sort of abstract and you just think like, this is work and this is what we’re doing. But then after the show, you’ll go to the merch booth or you meet somebody, you know, a fan outside the venue, and they have all four vinyl, or they, you know, it’s clear, and they have the shirt and they’re like, I’ve been to so many shows, and it finally hits home like these are people and they’re interacting, this is like, you know, this is affecting their lives and the things that you’re doing have an impact and like you, it’s really easy, at least for me, you know, I’m speaking for myself to forget those things when you’re in a studio almost your whole life and especially with COVID when you didn’t interact with fans that much at all. And so, these are those opportunities to see like, okay, this person is really invested in this and this means a lot to them. Like there’s a reason behind this. I’m not just doing this for a living like this is something I’m so passionate about. It impacts my life in such a positive way, but like it’s also impacting other people in a positive way. And I think to be able to remind artists and have that two-way communication, I think is really important to artists as well. And to our creative vision and to our inspiration. I think that that really helps you kind of like, keep going when sometimes you feel like I don’t know, you know, if you’re falling on deaf ears and who’s even listening to this stuff.
Right. What about you, Matt? Like, what do you think, from like a platform point of view? Like, what am I missing over here? Because this sounds very exciting. You know, this next era, it seems like very multi-dimensional. And from the looks of it, it seems like you guys are actually cracking the code around where fandom meets web three, right. And it really just ties back to me logging into medallion, and like your platform. And based off what you’re telling me, Scott, like you wanted to kind of encapsulate this vision of the first blog era and integrate like web three pruners into that, like, I felt that, you know, like, I really did feel that. But what do you think I’m missing in this entire experience?
Matt: I don’t know if there’s anything you missing. I think one thing I would love to just kind of follow on from an earlier question that you asked, was just around, like the way that NFTs are presented to fans, I think is like a really interesting topic. I think a lot of people have a lot of different opinions. I think that the way that you know, I think to Scott’s earlier point, like the TYCHO community probably skews more towards being more tech savvy, as Scott says. So, like, you know, there’s previous collections and things and like, to your point, nifty drops and stuff like that. But to the more kind of, I suppose, how do I say it, more analog artists, it does present like a really tricky, you know, problem of like, how do you present this new technology, and especially with all the headwinds that it’s had around speculation and you know, the environment, I think that the two things I would want to touch on there, which are really important is, to try and to bring fans into this new era is like, one education on why like, I don’t think that a lot of people take the time to explain why, I think a lot of people talk about like, oh, this community and utility, but I think it kind of ends up being these empty words. And I think a lot of people, a lot of artists in music are confused as to why would I do this? And I think, you know, the why is becoming more apparent when, with what we’ve done with Scott. And what we’re going to do with other artists is like, why would you want to join this as a fan? And why would you want to participate or buy these things? There’s always an answer, I think, and I think if there isn’t an answer, then we shouldn’t do it. And then I think the second thing is about, you know speculation, I think is like I’m not sure that music fans really want to sign up for that, like, you know, this idea of like investing in things or like buying things, because later on it will have, you know, a value, I don’t think those are the kinds of communities that are so actually looking to build. And I think for us, like just nipping it in the bud that this is a safe environment. That’s, you know, not about speculation. It’s about loyalty and rewarding fandom and stuff like that, is another hurdle we have to jump over. And then like you have the environmental thing around the side, which as I said, I think is changing rapidly. But like, I think those are the fundamental two points that I think are really, really pivotal in like this new set of technologies, like rising into the mainstream and like being adopted by, you know, artists, such as Scott, and others.
Outro
Yeah, I think time will tell if we’re taking the right actions to educate people, you know, but definitely, I’m really a fan of how you guys are approaching and I’m really excited for this next step. Before I kind of let you guys go and wrap this up. What are some dates we should keep in mind? What should the community keep in mind? Some final words?
Matt: I think, I don’t think we have any firm dates. But I think towards the end of this month, and early next month is going to be a ton of activity. I would say in general, like there’s been generally activity every week in the open-source community. So, keep your eyes on that.
Any final words from you, Scott?
TYCHO: Oh, yeah. I’m excited to see how people interact with this. And to see how it kind of evolves out of that. It’s, it’s been a great start, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
Amazing. One thing we’ll have to do, again, is a recap in a few months or so to kind of see the actions that you guys took to onboard people and see sort of what the outcomes were. So, until then, I wish you guys well, and yeah, best of luck.
Matt: Thanks so much.
TYCHO: Cool. Thank you. Thanks Adam, we appreciate.
Mint Season 6 episode 15 welcomes Richard Chen, general partner at 1Confirmation and a dune top wizard. For the next half hour we discuss all things venture investing, where data meets the creator economy, music NFTs, building a successful community, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:08 – Intro
02:05 – Crypto Startups at Universities
05:26 – Balancing Data and Privacy
06:29 – How a VC Can Use On-Chain Data For Investments
08:14 – Understanding the Web3 Creator Economy
09:33 – A Crypto-Enabled Music Industry
12:01 – What’s Preventing Music NFTs From Getting to that Next Phase?
13:31 – A Breakthrough Artist in Web3
15:45 – The Overlap Between On-Chain Data and the Creator Economy as a Whole
17:18 – Metrics to Measure the Success of a Community
18:04 – Things to Look For When Collecting an NFT
20:21 – Data Products’ Role in Web3
21:09 – Richard’s Investing History
23:12 – Building a Successful Community
24:36 – Debatable Thoughts in the World of Crypto
26:37 – Thoughts on Web3 Social Applications, New Social Graphs, Etc.
28:10 – Web2 Social Versus Web3 Social
32:25 – Outro
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Richard, welcome to mint. Thank you for being on a part of season six. How are you doing?
Richard Chen: Good. How are you, Adam?
Intro
I’m good. Thank you for making the time, we didn’t get the chance to connect in Berlin. But I did see your magnificent wizardry talk at the dune con. So, props on that. And I have some questions to ask you about that entire ordeal, about your presentation. And I guess also just the general state of on chain data. But before we get into that, I want to know who are you? Let the audience know. And then more specifically, how did you get your start into crypto?
Richard Chen: Cool. Yeah, I’m Richard. I’m a general partner at one conformation and we’re a seed stage crypto venture fund. Some of our big investments include the seed round of open sea back in 2018, DYDX in 2017, super rare, Nexus mutual, a lot of the blue chip defi NFT projects we know today. I guess how he got started in crypto, this was around 2015. And I was doing research in cryptography in like with Dan Monet’s PhDs and that’s how I learned about Bitcoin Ethereum for the first time, then, like, thereafter, co-founded the Stanford blockchain club with a few other folks and really just went down the rabbit hole from there.
So, you actually seem like a community builder at heart, having co-founded the Stanford blockchain club, but also you seem incredibly technical. And, yeah, with a very, like investment sort of mindset, considering the fund that you’re running. I’m curious, how did starting the club lead to where you are today?
Richard Chen: Yeah, so I mean, this is back in 2017. And like, we would be inviting guest speakers. And other thing is like, there weren’t that many people interested in crypto at the time. So, you know, probably like a dozen or so in the club. And maybe like 40, or 50, who attended, like events. But it was a really tight knit community just to find like all the like-minded people on campus. And that really kind of translated well as like I worked full time in crypto and like understand crypto native communities, community building, kind of the ethos and culture.
Interesting. So, I co-founded the blockchain club at USC. I graduated in 19. When did you graduate?
Richard Chen: 18.
Crypto Startups at Universities
18, Okay, so what I feel like our paths have crossed in the past at some point somehow, but that’s really cool. I wouldn’t be here in crypto if it wasn’t for like the university ecosystem. And what’s interesting about where we are today, I’ve yet to see like more university based crypto startups sort of emerge and take charge. I’m curious, how are you seeing the current university landscape in terms of like crypto startups?
Richard Chen: I say the quality is still like a tear below. People who’ve, like been working in the real world for quite a bit. And I think it just takes, it’s more so like a mindset, like maturity and focus. And like, when you’re still a student, you have a lot of optionality. You kind of get distracted, you feel more FOMO and pressure, but you sort of like mature and mellow out the older you get. I think that’s a really important character trait of founders, especially working in web three, because you have these like boom, bust cycles, or crypto crashes 90%. And you need to have the stoicism and the conviction to like stick through a long term.
Yeah. Because three of the like three of the six most valuable companies in the world, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, were all born on college campuses. And the list goes on, like Snapchat was co-founded at Stanford, Reddit was created in a dorm room at the University of Virginia. I’m curious to see what sort of like crypto projects emerge out of that young, ambitious sort of energetic culture that that we have yet to see, like more either on a protocol level and application level, what are some things that you wish existed today? Like, if you had a wand kind of thing, taking inspiration from another podcast that I heard? If you had a wand to sort of kind of like, poof, you have this product that you sort of envisioned? What would that be as an investor, for example.
Richard Chen: I mean, like the list could go on. I mean, there’s still a lot like a big kind of open space in like scalability research. And, you know, right now, like, the big thing is, zero knowledge ZKEVM. But that’s just the very tip of the iceberg. And there’s still a lot of state of the art to be done in like, for example, ZK hardware, that’s kind of one of the bleeding edge research areas of creating custom ASICs, for general generating zero knowledge proofs. There’s a tradeoff space right now between scalability and EVM compatibility and you know, finding the right trade off, there’s a lot of projects working on that and like kind of picking the point on the efficient frontier. So that’s like one area, I guess another area like bleeding edge, I think AMMs is is like one of the top contributions that crypto is like made to like the world and there’s still a lot of research and kind of greenspace. And like the next gen designs of AMMs, like, constant function, market makers, replicating market makers, which basically you can replicate the payoff of a derivative with the spot markets. And so, this is like so much coming out of research. And like, that’s why I’m really excited about, like crypto projects are, like kind of taking this new ideas and research and then turning them into products.
Balancing Data and Privacy
Where do you think data products fall into place with all these new privacy-based primitives? Right, and zero knowledge proofs and all this new tech that’s sort of emerging? Where does data come into place in all this?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I mean, privacy is important. I think the next, the bottleneck of real-world data on chain is privacy is like kind of you look at like, what are the use cases, people want to bring real world data on chain, it’s like, cross margining. So, like using your Trad fi or Coinbase FTX bank accounts as margin, which you probably don’t want people to know your balances. So, like, that’s where privacy comes in. Even things like credit scores, healthcare data, this is like very down the road. Privacy is a is an important attribute that people want to bring their data on chain.
So very much used case dependent, in terms of what these applications will be sort of, like integrated with.
Richard Chen: Yeah, yeah.
How a VC Can Use On-Chain Data For Investments
When you think about as a VC using on chain data to make decisions, investment-based decisions, what is your mental model of sort of using like, let’s say a product like Dune, for example, in finding the right projects to invest in?
Richard Chen: Yeah, so I use dune like, every day, like more than I want to imagine.
You’re the top wizard on there.
Richard Chen: Yeah, I guess. So. Yeah, I just hit 10,000 stars today.
Congrats.
Richard Chen: So pretty big milestone. But so like, I use generally we divide our investments into like pre product and post product. So pre product like Dune, maybe you could get some insights into like the industry trend and like understanding the macro landscape of a specific sector, say some verticalized NFT marketplace, like vertical. But it’s still a lot of intuition and just developing DC like more qualitative, but if it’s post product, then you can use dune. And like really find hidden gems that aren’t really hyped-up Twitter narratives. But there’s real usage there and like getting investing early. So, I talked a little bit about this in my talk at dune con, but a super rare was like the perfect example, where this was during the middle of defi summer, all the DMS on Twitter were raving about yield farming and like they are kind of Too Cool for school kind of attitude with regarding NFTs. But if you look at the data superare was growing, 50% month over month. And that’s where we made the investment until I say like March 2021, when that’s when people did the big sale and suddenly NFTs became mainstream and it finally exploded. But by then it was kind of late to like jump on that bandwagon for NFTs. So that’s were using data like Dune you can really inform your decision making and get into good projects early on.
Understanding the Web3 Creator Economy
What metrics or trends would you look at to understand sort of where we are today as web three, native creater economy sort of exists? Like, how would you sort of measure the growth? What metrics would you look at to determine that?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I think, well, obviously that big KPIs are volume, like monthly volume growth for a lot of these marketplaces. I think one underrated metric is like distribution of collectors. And that’s really with the way you inform, whether or not it’s a organic community or it’s kind of this like narrative. That’s like kind of being forced. So, like, basically, the more equitable the distribution of collectors is like, the lower the Gini Coefficient, then I feel like the community is more organic. And that’s, that was actually one like underrated aspect of super rares community at the very beginning is, it was a very robust community. And there was a buy in from like, tons of collectors, not just a couple of whales that were kind of buying a bunch of stuff in shilling. I think that’s really important when you kind of measure the health of a lot of these early creator economy projects and markets is like, are there a lot of people like collecting and like supporting these artists?
A Crypto-Enabled Music Industry
That makes sense. One of the more interesting sectors that I’ve been, I guess doubling down on as the music NFT sector. I know you’ve made some investments in that category from catalog for example. I’m curious what is your thesis on, I guess like a crypto enabled music industry. What does that look like for you?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I mean, I think music NFTs is kind of the tip of the iceberg for like new search and discovery. Yeah, like music creation is like basically kind of filling the void of like what SoundCloud failed to do. And maybe there’s a future world where musicians are getting started don’t have to sign with record labels and management companies and like, have very onerous terms. Because music NFTs and like web three music gives them alternative business model for starting their careers.
So, when you see the current state of music, NFTs, is it evolving into what you expected when you initially made some of your bets or has it changed?
Richard Chen: So, I guess, volume wise, it’s gone down a lot in this like, kind of mini bear market. So that’s different than what I expected. I think another thing that was different on the flip side is like the growth of kind of on chain music creation and like these tools, like didn’t really exist a year or two ago. So, like our pay is a really good example that we invested in is like building a doll fully on chain. And you know, there are a lot of doll projects, just like in the traditional music world. But having like a crypto native doll is like really interesting when you can tie attribution to like creators of like different layers of the music, like people who create beats, people create like certain like synthesizer tracks, and you can layer them together. And with like NFTs in the blockchain, you can attribute those to the original creators. So, when someone remixes your music, you can kind of have this dependency graph and like down the road, you can tie in interesting business models like royalties where like, say you made a really popular beats and like every remix or who uses it, you get like some share of royalties. So, it’s a really novel zero to one idea that’s kind of just at the very tip of the iceberg. I like to see this experimentation.
What’s Preventing Music NFTs From Getting to that Next Phase?
So, let’s kind of brainstorm for a minute. So, as we continue down this road of experimentation, what other products or services do you think are missing, that are preventing music NFTs from getting to that next phase?
Richard Chen: I think it’s more of just like awareness, more so than mechanical services. And this is also another thesis I have is like, I’m more skeptical of like, big name, like mainstream artists, you know, getting into music NFTs because it’s usually, it tends up turning into a cash grab. And it’s kind of a, you know, innovators dilemma is like they have this really profitable existing business model. So, they could probably care less about web three, if things go south. Because they have a really nice, like, a fallback option to go through. So, like I feel like for music, NFTs like the thing that’s going to catalyze the industry has to be like a web three native artists like someone who became big only because of music NFTs. And you can look at like crypto art as an example where artists like x copy, Hackett Tao, Puck, maybe people and others, like they were not big traditional artists that were selling like millions of dollars at Christie’s and Sotheby’s like they only became big because of crypto. And they really understood the crypto native ethos. So, we’re just kind of waiting for that moment and music NFTs. And I think it’s bound to happen sometime.
A Breakthrough Artist in Web3
Is that measured through primary and secondary sales? Or is that measured using like traditional metrics, like Spotify streams, going on world tours? Like, how do you kind of categorize a breakthrough artist in web three?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I guess it will be sales. And I think like the value the NFTs is like comes from like the NFT appreciating, not like through like adding cash flows to the actually, I think that’s like, a big misconception a lot of people make, is they try to apply this web to business model to music NFTs. But if you look at it, like the amount of value capture is way more from like the NFT appreciating than, like earning some fixed income from whatever concert ticket sales they do, or whatnot.
Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve been collecting a lot of music NF Ts either on catalog, on sound, whatever it may be. And I really enjoy the process of being able to support an artist through patronage and I actually feel a much closer connection to them, right? Because one of these group chats, are giving us updates. And with that, I remember, so I had Reo Cragun on the podcast, he’s dropped a bunch of stuff on catalog across other platforms. And there was this interesting sort of moment where he released a song for us in web three. It’s sold out, it did well, but the secondaries were still kind of lacking. And then when he published it in web two, it did really well on like the charts right. And then he posted this tweet, that his song, I think in the week got like 200,000 listeners, right? 20,000 plays. And I remember like literally an hour later, that sort of got reflected on the secondary sales of the music NFT itself. Right? And it was the first time I saw that sort of, that connection kind of play out in real time. Have you seen that happen regularly? It’s the first example that I’ve sort of come across. But are you kind of like imagining the success of these artists kind of playing in the same realm?
Richard Chen: Potentially, I can’t think of like other examples. I think like, I think web three musicians I follow like, generally sent you stay crypto native and like, are active on Twitter, but like, not so much on like, Spotify and like other mainstream channel.
The Overlap Between On-Chain Data and the Creator Economy as a Whole
Yeah, sure. You know, on top of that, Reo was on the podcast again, and one of the things he talked about, that he could do in web three as an artist, but he couldn’t do and web two is sort of like the data that comes with selling music NFTs and understanding who his audiences right? And something that you’re big about, obviously, is on chain data. I’m curious where you kind of see the overlap between on chain data and the creator economy as a whole. What does that sort of vision look like?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I think growth marketing is a good way to look at it, is like you can become a lot more like analytical and like, be more targeted in how you spend money on like promotion. And like seeing like which channels are working, which channels aren’t and this is not just like creator economy marketing, it also applies to like yield farming and other areas of crypto is, this reminds me of like, web two back in like the late 90s, where like companies would just like spending, like hundreds of millions of dollars is like burning money on like advertising before, like we figure it out. The industry figured out metrics such as like cackleberry, CLV, and others and like basically got a lot more targeted and like better at like customer segmentation, I think a lot of those tools will be important for like growing, for the creator economy and like growing these brands, measuring the effectiveness of each channel affected effectiveness of each platform, and really being able to have like custom tailored marketing campaigns.
Metrics to Measure the Success of a Community
What sort of metrics would you use today to measure the success of your community, right? As a crypto native creator, as your, yeah, kind of like issuing more NFTs, building community? What will that look like?
Richard Chen: I think like community like activeness is like really important. So, like, you can use like monthly active, like people who like post on discord in your like private discord server is like one example. Because like I’ve seen way too many, like token gated discord just kind of turn into ghost towns, like, after a couple of months, that’s a really important metric to track. Yeah, and like there’s a lot building off of that. It’s just how do you measure user retention and activeness?
Things to Look For When Collecting an NFT
Yeah, but I feel like that’s like very much off chain kind of thing, right? Like, yeah, understanding how active the chat is, right? But as someone who builds so many dashboards and analyzes so much data, what do you look at, let’s say before you buy an NFT, for example, as a collector even right? To understand the health of a community?
Richard Chen: Yeah. I usually on chain data, you could probably only look at sales, like sales type data, and distribution. So maybe you could look at like, kind of historical price charts. But that’s kind of a really basic metric. But like, I think like going back to what I said, In the beginning, like collector’s distribution is really important. Because if you have no buy in from a lot of owners then like that’s how you develop a more robust community rather than like a couple of whales who like buy up the supply and basically try to like shale and like pump their bags, which is more of like short term.
Yeah, makes sense. I want to jump back to privacy really quick, because I forgot to ask you a question that, I think is actually super important to note. I remember a while back Vitalik kind of tweeted this new token standard idea of stealth addresses for ERC 721 and as someone who’s the number one dude wizard has 10,000 stars on there is like the creme de la creme of a data analyst, right? How do you kind of feel when you see a post like that?
Richard Chen: I mean, Vitalik poses a lot of like interesting ideas and like on Eth research, like kind of implementing a lot of new cutting-edge cryptography and like there’s one like this one for like stealth transfers of ERC 721 he’s like written a lot about bridges. I had to trust minimized bridges. So, it’s great to see like kind of what I call like more purist ideas like what’s the best way, the most secure way to do bridging, to do like privacy. It’s this kind of question of implementation. Like, are there tradeoffs in implementation such as, like how much like gas efficiency, scalability, runtime, things like that? And also, like, are there any teams that are going to build what Vitalik is building?
Data Products’ Role in Web3
It’s in a world where something like that gets implemented, right? Where everything just becomes super stealth. What role do like data products play for example? In a, yeah, in an environment like that? What do you think?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you wouldn’t be able to track the individual transfers. But maybe it could be kind of like a chain analysis like product, right, where you track the inflows and outflows. So, you can see like how much usage is, but you can’t like necessarily attribute like individual users. That’s like one way to look at it. And also, it’s another way to look at it as like, kind of centralized exchanges. Like there’s a lot of data products that look at exchange inflows and outflows. But you can’t see like what exactly users are trading on binance or other exchanges?
Richard’s Investing History
Yeah, that makes sense. I want to jump into your investment career. Okay. You seem relatively young, you graduated a year before me, you have this huge fund, you’ve made a bunch of bets, you seem like you know, what you’re talking about? What’s your history with investing? Like, how long have you been investing for prior to doing it professionally? What does that look like?
Richard Chen: Well, I was doing like some consulting work for like web to VCs about crypto, like before one confirmation, but like, it’s just like a whole different beast for them. So, like, that’s why it made sense just to focus solely on crypto native, because a lot of the lessons that you learned in like web two, it’s like kind of the opposite, applies in web three. And like, I can, like, go on.
Please. That’d be interesting. Go into that.
Richard Chen: I mean, like, one mistake I see is like a lot of VCs, like, take founders who pitched well, and are good at sales, as like a positive signal. And I think, especially in web three, like ability to pitch VCs is like, not an important skill at all. And the reason is, because like in web three, projects are not operationally intensive. So, it’s not like food delivery, or like ride sharing, where you have to hire a lot of a huge operations team be good at people management, hire executives, do a lot of sales be aggressive, like, like launching a new city. Whereas web to the teams is like really small, like a lot of these defi, blue chip defi protocols are like only 20, 30 people. So, it’s a lot more product, community oriented. founders and founders that are really good at building stuff that users need. And like, they might not speak well to VCs, but they’re just really good at product. And that’s kind of a lot of, the kind of the hidden gems that we found like throughout the years in investing, is like founders like from like Dao, Nexus mutual, others who don’t have the traditional silicon valley polished resume, but just understand their product and users really well and they end up being successful.
Building a Successful Community
Hmm, interesting. Can you elaborate more on what it takes to sort of build a successful community? Coming from someone who started his career in crypto, I guess like building the Stanford crypto club, right? You understand the value of bringing people together and unifying them under a specific theme, for example, right? What do you look for when kind of like measuring and this could be off chain related stuff? Like how do you actually build like a great community in crypto?
Richard Chen: Yeah, it’s like ultimately authenticity and like finding people who are like intrinsically passionate about certain areas, not just join the discord like to like, kind of get alpha leak on like when they can like quickly make money and then leave. So, like, what’s really cool is like, a lot of like, founders were like potential coworkers who like met each other through like these discord chats, because they were interested in particular topic is like, for example, like the XE infinity founders, like met each other through discord because they were interested in gaming and NFT back in 2017. And like these, like people like living like in Vietnam, and versus Norway that’s like on opposite sides of the world that they would have never met otherwise. So that’s the great thing about community, is like finding authenticity, people who are intrinsically motivated about a topic and just like kind of bringing them all together in one place just to like bounce ideas and chat for hours, days.
Debatable Thoughts in the World of Crypto
Yeah. What are some hot takes you have in the world of crypto that you think most people would disagree with you on?
Richard Chen: Well, I gave two of them at the Dune Day and talk. I guess I’ll repeat the first one, which I think, which is like I think aggregators are overrated. Because if you look at the on-chain data, vast majority of volume is still going through the underlying marketplaces. And the reason so it’s because like these marketplaces, it’s still very much a winner take all business or like, winner take most business. So, when did uniswap has 63% market share, when open sea has 93%, when hop has a 73-market percent market share for bridges, users is kind of out of habit, end up using the underlying products rather than going to an aggregator. So that’s a it’s one hot take I have.
Any other ones?
Richard Chen: What’s a new hot take?
Yeah, give me the fresh one.
Richard Chen: Well, I guess this wasn’t, this isn’t really a hot take any more. But I was like, kind of sounding the alarm on Solana like back in January, of a lot of VCs were saying that, like, look at how much talent is going to Solana. And like my response to that was yes, like, it’s a lot of good, people who look good on resume, but are more of like tourists when it comes to crypto. And I was like, betting that a lot of these founders would leave when the crypto bear market happened. And I guess I know more and more anecdotes of like, I won’t name a specific project name, where that’s been the case where founders go back to college, go back to their web two jobs, or they like pivot to building on Aptos and sweet because that’s like the new Solana of the next slide of what is going to be the new slot of next cycle. Just like how Solana were EOs of the previous cycle.
Thoughts on Web3 Social Applications, New Social Graphs, Etc.
Interesting. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Noted. Another question I have for you is because you’ve already made a few bets in the creator economy. And you’re pretty public about sort of like your thesis. I’m curious what you think about this whole uprising web three social applications. And whether it be like new social graphs, etc. What are your general thoughts around that?
Richard Chen: Yeah, so we invested in forecaster that’s like our big bet in that space. And I think web three social has a good wedge in search and discovery for NFTs. And there’s been a lot of these like type of products I’ve seen, like being pitched of like, building a nice, like Spotify, like recommender algorithm for NFTs or kind of aggregating, like social data. And like when artists are announcing drops across like Twitter, and Instagram and all that. So, like, like a good search and discovery, token gated NFTs communities all in like one place is, I think, a good wedge for web three social products. And I think like, it also has to do something different. It can’t be like perfectly skeuomorphic with like what we have in web two. So, I think people have like a lot of social media fatigue. So just, you know, building Instagram, like UI is like not going to cut it. And that was like why Coinbase NFT failed, is like it’s it was like this Instagram like product that was super watered down. And kind of catching the tail end of the NFT hype, but wasn’t a product that people wanted to use.
Web2 Social Versus Web3 Social
How do we build a social network that works in favor of creators, whereas versus like, exploits that which we’ve seen, I guess, across web two, like what is web three needing to do better that web two fail at when it comes to social?
Richard Chen: Yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t think anyone’s cracked, like the decentralized Patreon business model yet, or like that idea yet. Where, you know, I basically like, it’s like the membership NFT model where like, each tier like gives you different access. It’s like kind of a buying like Patreon. So, membership, except this works better for kind of more blue-chip artists. And there’s also like a kind of a secondary market to like value the artists time and their work. And I know there’s a lot of projects like tackling this, but it hasn’t been cracked yet.
Yeah, I know, there’s a bunch of attempts to sort of go after that problem space. I’m not sure what would define it, whether it be membership NFTs, whether it be like new funnels to capture attention. I’m not sure, what do you think people are sort of doing wrong? Because there have been attempts, right, and there are attempts to sort of solve that problem space. What do you think is missing?
Richard Chen: Yeah, this is interesting, because I think it’s a product that actually suits better for existing blue-chip artists rather than like a new and upcoming like web three like crypto native artists. And like mainly, the big pin point is that the largest artists, people like Lady Gaga and like others, like they literally do not know who their top bands are. It’s like, it’s kind of bizarre to think that be given like 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of people like know who they are and listen to their music, but they don’t know who the top bands are. And like they just don’t really get that data from Ticketmaster or whatnot. So that’s like a unique pin point for them. But NFTs is still like this brand new. This brand-new industry that it hasn’t like crossed the chasm yet to these mainstream used cases. So, I think it’ll be like a while before, like these used cases, really like this, like kind of web three Patreon model like really takes off.
Yeah, I feel you, I hear you, I think because you already reference Lady Gaga, something that I bring on the podcast a lot is like, Lady Gaga, in my opinion is like one of the best community builders there are like she builds community without building community. If you go on Facebook, for example, and you search up Lady Gaga on Facebook groups, you’ll see all these communities formed around Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga is not in any of those communities. Right? It’s just her fans sort of congregating because they like the whole monster brand or whatever, whatever she stands for, right? We’ve also yet to see that happen in web three, we’re fans kind of form in a decentralized manner around some type of, I guess, like artists or whatever might be like, NFT artists or crypto artists, or have we? Am I not catching the right one, they need to be on the podcast.
Richard Chen: You could argue Vitalik is actually that type.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true.
Richard Chen: Like he like starting Ethereum and then now you have all these subcommittees within the Ethereum ecosystem that congregate around some like-minded topic, whether that’s like really deep like L one, core dev research, like infra stuff, or it can be like, you know, financial stuff.
That’s true.
Richar Chen: It can be like NFT, like more artists, creators, but like, at the end of the day, they’re all contributing to the network health and growth of Ethereum.
So, you’re saying metallic is web three’s Lady Gaga? Is that what you’re saying?
Richard Chen: He’s like, kind of celebrity figure, everyone loves him because like he’s so artistic and, like, just like it’s like so focused on like, building and like research and like, just doesn’t give a shit about like.
Anything else.
Richard Chen: Like been greedy, like, pretty much every other L one founder. And like, that’s how they get Ethereum ecosystem has like such a good culture is because it comes from the top. It’s not like a mercenary like get rich quick vibes.
Yeah, very true. I think this was great. Richard,
Outro
Before I let you go, where can we find you? Where can we learn more about everything that you’re up to. Show it away?
Richard Chen: Sure. I get emails. Richard at one confirmation.com. I’m Richard Chen 39 on Twitter, R Chen H on Dune and like, pretty much every social.
Cool, man. Cool. Well, thank you for your time. We’ll have to, thank you for your time. We’ll have to do this again soon, Richard. Yeah, till next time.
Mint Season 6 episode 14 welcomes Reo Cragun, the web3-native music artist, multi-talented rapper, singer, producer, and songwriter who shares about his journey in web3 and his vision behind his biggest NFT project to date called Frameworks. We also discuss how Reo uses data to be a smarter creator, his relationship with Nipsey Hussle, the dynamics between artists and labels, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:08 – Intro
09:14 – Current State of Music in Web3
11:41 – Your Connection to Music NFTs
13:59 – Using Data as an Artist
20:44 – The New Sound.xyz Drop
25:35 – Reo’s Creative Process
27:03 – Pre-Web3 Reo Versus Now
30:01 – Creating Experiences for Your Collectors
33:49 – Lessons Learned Along the Way That Helped Perfect this Drop
34:34 – Your Relationship With Nipsey Hussle
39:05 – How Artists Should be Thinking About Label Opportunities
40:19 – The Value of Web3 as an Artist
43:07 – How Labels are Thinking About Music NFTs
45:14 – What’s the Status of Loners Dao?
47:58 – Joining the Music NFT Launchpad
49:44 – The Process Post Launchpad
50:56 – What Do You Look For in an Artist While Collecting?
55:07 – Outro
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Reo Cragun, welcome to the pod man. How’s it going? Thank you for being on.
Reo Cragun: Let’s go. No, I’m excited, man. I’m glad to be here.
Intro
I’m glad to have you part of season six. You have a cool drop coming up with sound and a bunch of other cool things that you’ve been working on in crypto. So, what better time to just highlight them than now. But before we get into all that cool shit that you’re doing, I want to start with a quick introduction. Who are you? For those who aren’t familiar with you but more specifically, how did you get your start into crypto?
Reo Cragun: Yeah. I’m an artist. First and foremost, honestly. Yeah. So, I come from Vancouver, Washington, which is this small city in the top left corner of the United States. It’s right next to Portland, Oregon. And, you know, I was going to school full time, I was on a full ride scholarship to Washington State University. And out of the blue one day, I just decided that school wasn’t for me, and I was just gonna go pursue music. So, I left to Los Angeles with like, pretty much zero money in my pocket and just like did the classic couch surfing move, and just prayed that everything would work out. And that’s really how I got my start in music for like, a year and had a song that just caught and that’s kind of what was the catalyst for my entire music career.
What was the first couch you slept on? Remember? Yeah.
Reo Cragun: It was my managers. Yeah. Okay. So, I had met my manager. And in Portland, Oregon, I was, I used to write like hooks for other artists and whatnot. So, there were these like Portland artists that I was writing some hooks for, super talented dudes. And yeah, and he was managing them at the time or consulting for them. I don’t know, which was the correct answer. He was doing that. And that’s how I ended up meeting him. And yeah, couch surfed on, on his house in Los Angeles.
Okay, so how many couches dd you actually end up surfing? I know, it might be a weird question. But it’s actually quite fascinating to kind of like, just on like, peel the hustle.
Reo Cragun: Quite a bit honestly. Like the two long term stays that I had for sure were with my brother, Jeremy Taylor. He’s like a professional basketball player. I met him super randomly. And, like, we just became really good friends super quick. And he was like, dude, I got a room for you. And yeah, so shout out to Jeremy because definitely changed my life.
Wild. Wow. It’s a it’s like when you look back, like everything just sort of makes sense, when you sort of piece all the dots together. But in the moment when you kind of got to your managers house that first night, on the first couch that you served, right. I wonder what was going through your head at that time? Do you remember like what you were feeling? Like, just move to a new city, all this stuff?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, I was terrified. I was completely terrified. I was like, geez, did I make the right decision? You know, like, I had everything, you know, I had stability, you know, I had a car, I had a nice job. I had a full ride scholarship. And then to kind of give all of that up in the blink of an eye to going towards uncertainty. And just like uncharted territory, because like no one that I had ever known, you know, had like made a successful career off of music or anything like that. So, I was just completely in the dark. And I was terrified for sure.
So, where did that courage and that will sort of come from?
Reo Cragun: I think it came from a place of me just being unhappy and unsatisfied with like, where I was at, at that time in life. I was just, school came really easy to me. And I thought just because something came easy to me, like doesn’t mean that this is my calling. And I always felt like it wasn’t my calling and the direction that I was heading. So yeah, I wanted to be more creative. And, and that’s why I chose music.
What did you actually attempt to major in before he dropped out?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, so I was studying medicine and business. And I was, it was interesting, because my school had this program where I think like a few kids were able to go to college as soon as we turned 16. So, I had already like had two years of college under my belt by the time I turn 18. And when I was 19, then I go to Washington State on this full ride. And you know, pretty much like after three years of school, I was like I’m out of here, even though I only had one year to go.
So, what did your parents think when you dropped out?
Reo Cragun: My mom was concerned for sure. She was just like, mainly concerned if I was eating or not. Yeah, I mean, she was super supportive the whole time. They didn’t know if it was gonna work out or whatever. But they always believed in me, for sure.
I think it’s always that assumption, when I was in college, I had a couple of friends that also dropped out. And it was always one of those things like, okay, whatever you go and attempt to doesn’t work out, you can always go back to school. Like, there’s always that option, but you only have so many opportunities that sort of kind of present themselves to you at a certain given time. And if you don’t take him, you miss him.
Reo Cragun: So true, at such a pivotal point in life too, like that 18, 19, 20. Right. You know, like, you still got a whole bunch of drive and ambition and whatnot. And yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s just so interesting.
Crazy. So, when did crypto come into the picture?
Reo Cragun: So definitely came into the picture during the pandemic.
Okay. Like many people, by the way, a lot of people kind of came into it. Yeah.
Reo Cragun: for sure. I was late to the party, I had a whole friend, I had a whole bunch of friends in it from like, 2016, 2017. That run and, and I was sitting it out, because I was like, in the middle of like, touring cycle and album cycle. So, I didn’t have like a lot of time or bandwidth to do a whole bunch of research on my own. You know, like, they were, you know, making money or whatever at that time. But that doesn’t justify me like putting my money into somewhere. I need to like know what’s going on, I need to understand how things work. And so, during the pandemic, I had a whole bunch of time to just like, do a whole bunch of research and figure out what everything was. And that’s where I like, literally just fell in love with the whole ecosystem.
So, when you jumped into web three, as people like to use the phrase, yeah, what were some of the initial resources you might have kind of like latched on in the beginning, like, did you listen to podcasts? Did you read blogs? Did you talk to friends? Did you open a Metamask right away and try to buy shit? Like, what was your, what were some of the steps you took in the beginning?
Reo Cragun: Yeah. So, the first step was, I guess the conversion from a whole bunch of my friends just being like, yo, you got to check this out. You got to check this out. And so that was the first step. The second was definitely YouTube. I watched so much YouTube, it was ridiculous. Like 1000 hours, probably in like the course of a few months. And yeah, that was mainly it. And then after that is when I really got heavily into seeing what was going on Twitter. And so, I realized that content comes super streamlined fast on Twitter for like, crypto related writings. And so that’s where I was at a lot of the time as well.
Yeah, there’s a reason why they call it crypto Twitter, like everything lives on Twitter. And if you’re not in Twitter, are you even in crypto? Right. That’s how I like to think about it. And it’s funny that you said that you came in late. Do you still think you came in late despite all the sort of like exposure, you’ve gotten the drops? You’ve had the collectors you’ve built like are you still in that that, not regretful mindset but like the belief that you came in super late?
Reo Cragun: No, I honestly, I don’t I think that it’s still extremely early personally. I think that I came in late like to, when it comes to like, even though I want like a blockchain is pretty much like that is, that’s where I feel like I was late. As far as like the knowledge. I think that the ecosystem is still early. We’re there’s still like, the beginning stages in some of these protocols and whatnot. And just like the possibilities where things can go with the technology, for sure.
Current State of Music in Web3
How would you explain the current state of where we are in music today and where music intersects with crypto?
Reo Cragun: Oh, geez, man, this is extremely still at the beginning.
Why is that?
Reo Cragun: So okay, so last year, I’d say probably around this time last year, and like September, I saw everything that was, I had been paying attention to everything that was going on and NFTs and whatnot and the PFP culture, and I was like, oh, shit, this is kind of wild. This is cool seeing everyone rallying and whatnot. And it’s like, everyone’s excited. And I was just a little confused. I was like, where does the music exists in this, because there’s like definitely a used case for it. And so, during that time, I was like seeking out people who were releasing on chain. And just like seeing people who were experimenting and from, you know, trying to connect the dots is where I initially linked with David Greenstein from sound, one of the cofounders of sound. And he told me about this idea that he was, you know, like going to launch and whatnot, and how he sees like, the future of music. And I was like, this is so sick, this is everything that I’ve been looking for, you know, and like. And so yeah. And so that was like the inception of sound. And then, for the next few months, you know, there was a few artists like in these calls, like trying to, you know, just like offer. It was like the UX experience, you know, like, yeah, and I got, like a bird’s eye view into that. Really cool opportunity. But yeah, but that, to go back to why I think it’s still early. That was like, I think sound had launched probably in November of last year. And we were like, oh, shit, I wonder where it’s going to be in six months and like to see all the growth that’s happened, right? This such amount of like, short amount of time, is just so insane, that’s why I think it’s extremely early on the music side. Like, you know, who knows, the ecosystem could be completely different a year from now.
Your Connection to Music NFTs
I collect a bunch of music NFTs. And admittedly, when David came and approached me with sound, I was an artist, right? I have a drum set behind me. So, I’m a drummer. And I’ve never really experienced the artist to fan relationship. Right. I always just played immaturely in the concept; I saw like people do music NFTs. And when David came to me and told me about sound, I thought it was a really cool concept. But I had to like see it like visually to understand, right? Whereas you, you are like you just told me you’re like, wow, this is everything that I’ve been looking for. I’m curious, like what initially resonated because it extends beyond just minting, right? Like, these platforms they allow the artists and the fan to come closer together. Right? Is that what resonated with you or what sort of stuck with you around this whole entire ethos, ethos around music NFTs?
Reo Cragun: Completely. Yeah. So, for example, generally, like, traditional music has been like, artists, and then top down. So, like, for example, if I put out music on Spotify, and it streams very well, and there’s listenership all around the world. The bummer is, I don’t own any of that data. I don’t, it’s not mine, even though like, it’s my music and I put it out, I have no idea in relation, like really where these people are listening or who are my biggest supporters? Like, I can’t pick out Henry from New Jersey, you know, and, you know, send them a poster or anything as like a token of my appreciation, or, like, take somebody out to lunch, you know, but yeah, so that’s like, that was always like a problem for me. And the thesis that, you know, instead of top down, it’s like, artists center, and then spread out this way to where you can have a more direct connection with listeners, collectors, supporters, you know, of all kinds and whatnot. That was really what resonated with me. And I guess, like the future of how things could be for sure. Yeah.
Using Data as an Artist
It’s cool that you bring up the data component. And you also bring up the sort of like, the horizontal approach to kind of like growing a fan base and growing a community. Because that’s like, what web three is good at, like, there, there are no borders, and web three in crypto when you when you mint, a token on chain, and somebody collects that token, like Ethereum will never shadow ban you, right? You have all that information. And when products get kind of like created, they build around the creators, right? They build around the artists, whereas in in traditional social media or traditional platforms, it’s very much like creators building audiences on the platform, right? And you’re also very limited with the type of information and value you can kind of capture on those platforms, whereas in web three, right, you sort of own quote, unquote, your community. And that’s sort of measured by the tokens that they hold and the experiences that you can kind of cultivate with that. I’m also like, I’m also fascinated that you brought up data because I’m curious, how do you use data in like web two sense like, so you couldn’t get Henry from New Jersey, right? But how would you typically use data as an artist, either on Spotify on Instagram or whatever other platforms you sort of build an audience on?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, so one of the easiest ways to use data is like, I know that I have 30,000, you know, fans in Australia that stream my music every single month, you know. So, I know that I can go, you know, play a headline show out in Sydney, I can go play a headline show out in Melbourne, in Perth, and I can go to Los Angeles, and that data tells me pretty much like, it gives me a rough estimate of ticket sales as well, like how much we could probably do. That’s like one of the general used cases of like, the data. But, you know, that’s for, like selling tickets, you know, and like things that like generate revenue and things of that nature. It’s not like, like I said, like, personable though. It’s like, I wish I had more information because, like, there are a lot of instances where I would love to, like, you know, figure out a way to give back or else like, go, if I see a whole bunch of people live in like a community that like, listen to my music, I can go through a pizza party or something like that, do a meet and greet, and like, you know, hang out with people. So, yeah, for sure. I would like more ways of connecting with people in that fashion, rather than just going to, you know, knowing that I could go play.
Right. So, on that same thought, I’m curious if you figured out how web three changes that and how issuing NFTs and building a collector base change that, have you sort of untapped and like uncovered that secret? Any insights over there?
Reo Cragun: Because it’s so early, no. I have like an idea of like, where it can get to. But all of that needs like we need scalability for sure. In order to get to those points. And I think as it scales, for sure, I think it will be much easier. Yeah.
Okay. So, walk me through more of your drop history in crypto, because you’re a part of the first cohort of sound. I remember that vividly. I think I also collected, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know if it was, was it at the time? I can’t remember. I think it was at the time. Because didn’t you also have, the song that you minted on sound, you then later released on traditional platforms, right?
Reo Cragun: Right.
Or was it the other way around?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, it was my second song that I had minted it on sound. I ended up releasing traditionally.
That’s right. And I remember vividly, actually, because I referenced this example on the podcast a few times, where that sound dropped didn’t sell out fully. But the second you announced that, or no, it did sell out fully. But it had a lower secondary floor. And the second you announced that it got like hundreds of thousands of listeners, the floor automatically bumped up. And I remember I saw that tweet. Yeah, I remember I saw that tweet. And it was like a minute, posted a minute ago. And I was like, alright, I’m buying. You know, like, Yeah, this is an experiment. I bought it in the floor jumped. Right. Yeah. And I thought that was such a cool, like, interesting sort of taken seeing how web two kind of created the virality. But you’re able to capture the value in web three. Right? What walk me through that moment. Am I getting this correctly?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, you’re getting it. Yeah. Extremely correctly. Yeah, that was wild. So, I had, that was the second song that I minted on sound. We put it up, it was 50 editions at point one Eth. So, and it sold out, like instantly. So, it was like, I think, five Eth and primary value. And it did like some secondary numbers. But I just loved the song so much that I was like, yo, I’m releasing an album, I want this to be one of the singles. And then I got my homie Kid Ink on it. And we ended up putting it out. And it did really well. And so, I was like, I made that tweet. And then just like, yeah, like you said, secondary just started going crazy. And I was like, that was not my goal. Like I was just trying to be like crazy. Look at like the power of like, you know, web three pretty much. And like we kind of all did this together. And then yeah, just started going crazy, which was unexpected Definitely, like I said, not my goal.
And what a cool example to sort of reference, when you talk about how both worlds connect, right? And seeing how artists are building communities and using crypto primitives, but also still relying on traditional means of distribution through Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Like there’s a world for both right and they actually maybe even work in tandem somehow. Right? And I think as more listeners become collectors, that bridge is going to kind of like tighten right, and it’s gonna become stronger. But right now, it’s a little bit dispersed because not every listener is a collector, but every collector is a listener.
Reo Cragun: So true. So true. Yeah, I think, you know, it just, it takes time. You know, like, in a lot of traditional fans just still don’t understand the concept of music NFTs, currently, or just digital collectibles in general. And, yeah, I think that just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of education. But yeah.
The New Sound.xyz Drop
Soon, soon, soon, TBD. on that note, because we’re already talking about drops, we’re talking about sound, you have a new drop coming out, right? Walk me through it. Because it’s, it was, also at the same time where sound analysis protocol, and ended up being one of the largest drops next to Daniel Allen that I saw kind of like come out during the bear market, too. Right. Yep. So, walk me through it, what are you doing? What’s so unique about it? And yeah, curious to learn more?
Reo Cragun: Yes, sound protocol, it’s the first project that’s going to be incorporating the use of sound protocol, which I’m super excited about. You know, from the beginning, I’m an artist who makes a whole bunch of music, and like, I just, I crank out music. And I kind of always have, and because of that, like, I like putting projects out. It’s really fun to put singles out, don’t get me wrong. But the cool thing about web three is like I have a new way to express like my creativity. And so doing a project, you can express a little bit more of like the creative side. And so, with this project, that’s exactly what we’re doing. It’s called frameworks, like we worked on the pieces for like, months. My, a friend of mine created like these 2d digital assets, and then everlasting who like I work closely with, like, turn them into 3d digital assets, which is so sick. And then we spent a lot of time on this music, and we wanted to put it out in a really meaningful way. And yeah, and I’m super excited about it. We think.
That’s wild. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Reo Cragun: Yeah. I’m calling it frameworks, because I think this is like the frameworks of like, how I’m going to be moving forward. This is like the building block of like, kind of the next era. And it’s the first project on sound protocol. So, it’s like, okay, cool. This is square one. This is how we are moving from here on out.
And what’s cool about this drop is that it’s five songs in one, right? And it’s, but it’s not the first time you’ve dropped five tracks at a time. I remember there was a previous release, maybe I think, was a year or so back in fill in the gaps of where I’m blanking out. But you sort of had this model where you dropped five songs, you did this entire, like PR thing around it. And this is sort of the second time you are kind of releasing with this numeric kind of like, I guess, a theme and but this time in web three.
Reo Cragun: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, I’m super stoked because it’s like, I wanted to do so many more songs. Just because like, man, I just get ahead of myself a lot. But five felt just correct. You know. So that’s where we landed on the five. And then there’s threes. So, like there’s 333 total additions, and.
Oh, wow.
Reo Cragun: It’s three by three by three. The reason why is because it’s like, it’s a cube. It’s like.
Okay, oh, that’s part of the whole art. Okay. Okay, cool. So, five songs, three by three by three. So how does that actually work on a like a drop mechanic, they’re all editions, obviously. But are they back-to-back to back? Are they separated across a couple of days? Because this is the first time, I’m seeing a one drop bundle a few songs, right? I’ve seen artists by the way. I’ve seen artists combined like EP and mint, a one on one on a catalog, for example, right? But this is the first time I see it in this sort of format. Help me understand a little bit better.
Reo Cragun: So, this is why sound protocol. I’m extremely excited about it. It’s making, it’s an easy way for an artist to release a long form project, in a pretty easily digestible way. So, the, really what’s happening is like, say, for this project, I have five songs, you’re not going to know which song that you mint. It’s going to be like randomized. And there’s not the same amount of editions for each song. Yeah, so there’s like, you know, rarity baked into it into which song that you get for sure.
And in what are the songs that are dropping?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, so we have a song called, actually got a pull up list, of a song called Zoom with Daniel Allen, I have toxic, which I’m super stoked about. That’s what’s bloody wide, I have a song called a combo with production out from clear eyes and Terra Lago, whose sub made the beat and then bulk which is like the squad song, with all these, that’s like Pluto, Deegan and black honey.
Reo’s Creative Process
Yeah, okay, cool. So, I feel like each song will have its own kind of like looking fields vibe, I’m curious what is your creative process sort of look like? Especially in in putting together this project?
Reo Cragun: Yeah. So, the creative process kind of varies with me, because I like to switch things up otherwise, like, if I am writing in the same manner, for like, too long, a lot of the music will start to blend and feel like I was making it and like a specific, you know, era, I guess. So, sometimes I start with, you know, making a beat. Because I’m a producer as well. Other times, like, I’ll just, like, get outside production from some of my friends, and just do the vocals and the melody. And, yeah, other times, I’ll completely make a whole song, scrap all the production and just send it off to one of the homies for them to like, build totally upon. Yeah. But yeah. And then as far as putting the music together. This was all kind of like, made during the same time. So, it all felt like, you know, like, it should all be in a home. Right? And so, yeah, so, I was super excited when we were narrowing down the songs and whatnot. And, yeah.
Pre-Web3 Reo Versus Now
Cool. Okay. So, you know, earlier in the conversation, you sort of talked about how you got into crypto because COVID kicked in, you could no longer tour, which a lot of your money was coming from that your income. And then it just kind of like cold turkey stopped, like out of nowhere. And then you spent all this time in web three, and now your curating projects that are crypto native, right, and you’re building a collector base, and I feel like you’re making a good, I don’t want to say good amount, like that’s up for you to decide. But you’re making money online, right? By doing the things that you love, without having to go on a world tour. But where does the tour fit in still, right? So, if you’re creating drops, specifically for like, a web three native audience, it’s still relatively small, I think it was like less than even 10,000 Music NFT collectors as a whole. Right, how do you now think about what you used to do? Right, which is touring traditional music producing, publishing, etc, to what you’re doing now? Like, where do the two sorts of mix and match?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, no, that’s a good question. It’s interesting right now, because I took time off of touring in the last year. So that way, I can build on this side of things. And then also just like, crank out a whole bunch of music, I just wanted to be extremely creative in this last year, which I’m so grateful that I did. Because like, at the end of the day, like, I love making music in my bedroom more than anything. You know, like, that’s what gives me extreme joy, and coming up with ideas and whatnot. And being in kind of my element. Touring sometimes it’s really difficult on like, my mind, and like my body and whatnot, which is just rough, but it’s like the truth, and it’s the fact of the matter. But I love touring though, don’t get me wrong, I love it. And I love being in front of like, in front of everyone and performing the songs live. So, when COVID happened, I had just got off of like, I think Harley and I were like on like a seven-month run or eight months run or something like that. So, I was on towards Flume. And we had gone all around the world and whatnot. And when I came back, I was just so confused, because the world pretty much shut down, after we got off tour, you know, it’s like, and I had other shows lined up and I was like, well, I feel weird. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
Going back to school.
Reo Cragun: And I was like, dude, what’s going on? So, thank goodness, I found, you know, like web three and in crypto and whatnot, because, you know, I just, I found something that I became extremely passionate about and that I loved just like I love music, you know, and so it was easy to want to learn and just to soak up a whole a bunch of, right?
Creating Experiences for Your Collectors
Yeah, where do you think crypto fits in, like the touring model and the live performance model? So, when you do a show now, you have all these collectors. I guarantee you they’re global, right? From all over, I think they’re global. And now you’re going to be performing for your existing fan base, that was there prior to all these collectors. Maybe there’s an overlap. You know, as you sort of maybe plan your next tour, you have all these collectors, you have these original fans. How do you mix and match the experience to cater to those who have NFTs, those who don’t have NFTs? What are your thoughts on that?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, so I’m still piecing that together. The interesting thing is, I remember like, the first moment that I spoke publicly about, you know, like, oh, yeah, I want to experiment with music NFTs. Man. My traditional fan base was like, you’re killing it. I was like, oh, geez, I didn’t realize like, yeah, I mean, which, definitely.
You’re like, shit. I didn’t know that was the case. Now, they can’t say that. we’ve transitioned to steak.
Reo Cragun: Proof of steak now for sure. Yeah and I. So yeah, that was very interesting to see. Like, all like the pushback. So, like I said, I think it’s still just, we just still need a little bit more time and like education for certain groups, and whatnot. So, we’ll see. I don’t know how it translates, because I do have two completely separate groups of like, supporters, you know. And I’m trying to find a way to bridge the gap. I want to get a music NFT in everyone’s wallet, you know what I mean? And so that’s like, that’s definitely a main goal of mine, for sure.
I wonder how that could work on a live performance basis. And if you have like LED screens, everybody sort of scans a QR code. And they all get Airdropped an NFT of yours, right?
Reo Cragun: Like, I know, Justin like Blau.
Yep, exactly.
Reo Cragun: He’s done some really cool stuff like that, I know like, the common answer is like, you know, the ticketing system or else like the festival wristband becomes like, you know, an NFT that, you know, concert goers can keep forever, you know, have it, be a novelty item after the show’s done. Yeah, I don’t know, where it actually fits currently though, beyond that, because it’s like, like I said, you know, one day something’s going on. And then the next like, there’s so much quick evolution. So, it’s cool, like, you know, so I’m sure it will, NFTs will be all over music, you know, like in the next like year, year and a half right, in ways that I’m definitely you know, like, not capable, probably of even thinking about right now.
Yeah. I’m curious, this is going to be drop number one in your history. What drop number is this? Yeah. Fifth drop, sixth drop?
Reo Cragun: I’ve done a lot of singular drops. Right. I have a lot of releases across catalog. I have a lot of releases across sound. I was part of Daniel Allen’s glass house drop.
That’s right.
Reo Cragun: Yeah. And so, this is going to be, this is my biggest drop as Reo Cragun, by myself like to date, for sure.
Lessons Learned Along the Way That Helped Perfect this Drop
So, across all the other experiences and drops you’ve had, what are some things you’ve learned along the way that you’re applying to this drop?
Reo Cragun: That’s a good question. I think we’re scaling it. It’s way more in depth. Sound protocol, being, like a main part of this drop as well. And just like continuing to experimentation, like I said, like, the main goal was to like, release a long form project in a meaningful way and like a really cool way. And I think we’re, you know, we’re gonna do a great job at delivering that. Yeah, for sure. And then also, what’s different is generally in like a sound drop. There’s only one golden egg. So, in this there’s five separates.
Your Relationship With Nipsey Hussle
Got it, Oh, wow, five, five golden eggs. Kind of like crammed within 333 editions. It’s gonna be a war zone my guys. That’s crazy. That’s wild. So, I want to jump into Twitter for Second, and I think yesterday we tweeted, hosting you tomorrow on mint, what should we talk about? And one gentleman that goes by the name of Cooper, listed a couple things, okay. He wants us to talk about Nipsey. He’s proud to pay culture, how to treat label opportunities, and early Hip Hop stories. And what I learned behind the scenes, is that you actually had a relationship with Nipsey Hussle. And he kind of like, mentored you to an extent as well, right? Can you talk about that?
Reo Cragun: Yeah. So really, what it was, is Nipsey was one of the first like, artists of like that caliber, like, just like larger artists to believe in my music. Back when I you know, barely had any music out. And when I was getting no looks, and just like, head down, grinding, you know, what I mean? And, yeah, my manager had introduced me to him, and yeah, he just really schooled me and told me about, you know, the power of, of ownership in the music business and why he went the independent route and how that could be beneficial. And, yeah, and so, that’s how I met Nick. It was just crazy, man.
Crazy. Can you can you talk about also behind the scenes, we were telling me how he started selling hip hop beats, right. And tapes, essentially for a certain price.
Reo Cragun: Yeah. So, he was a, made a whole bunch of mixtapes, right. So, he came up with this concept of proud to pay, which is, which was pretty much like, you know, like music NFTs and web three, four, it existed, it was like the ethos of it, where you should look after your core fans and offer exclusive experiences and, and whatnot. So, he started out with dropping a project at $100 each, which initially was like, brand new, you know, it was like a, it was insane concept. And he sold out all of the copies of the mixtape. And then a couple years later went on to release mailbox money. And I believe he sold that at $1,000 per unit. Yeah, for sure.
Crazy. How is your relationship sort of, yeah, kind of like paved your career as an artist? What were some of the biggest things you kind of took away from him? You can either apply to and like music traditionally, or even in like dropping music NFTs.
Reo Cragun: I mean, I went independent, because, you know, the early conversations that I was having with Nick and whatnot. So originally, I was signed to Capitol Records. So, I’m sorry, Virgin. It’s in the Capitol building. And that’s where I put out my first album. It did really well. And I put out another project, but I was losing creative control. I can just feel it, you know, like, it was more suggestions of you should make music like this. You should hire this person to do a video. You should, you know, start. Here’s a stylist for this. And it was like, yo, why is it like, this isn’t me. And so, I opted to leave. And so, we ended up getting out of it pretty smoothly. And it was pretty solid experience of getting out because I’ve heard some horror stories of like artists that have deals. And yeah, we ended up running an independent and again, just like moving to Los Angeles, and I was terrified. That was another defining moment where I was terrified as an artist. I was like, geez, can I do it without the label? You know what I mean? And thank goodness, yeah, I ended up completely doing so much better. Yeah.
How Artists Should be Thinking About Label Opportunities
How do you think artists should be treating label opportunities today?
Reo Cragun: I’m not against labels. No, I’m not like a contrary to popular belief. I think what needs to happen is, I would love to see more artist friendly deals. That’s what I would love. Because, you know, my first deal was not artist friendly. I mean, I can openly say that my first deal was an 80/20 split. I actually even got, I think I only had 16 points on the royalty, so it was 80416
Crazy.
Reo Cragun: Yeah, and I didn’t know the masters. Yeah, so pretty much I don’t see anything off of that project, even though went on to do like, really good numbers. But that’s kind of like how new artists like are. Those are the deals that you know you can get offered. I think that there needs to be a new take on, you know, partnerships. Because that’s what they should be. It should be partnerships. It shouldn’t be like, here’s this loan where you know, like, you get pretty much nothing in return. Yeah, for sure.
The Value of Web3 as an Artist
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So, in the context of crypto, in the context of music NFTs, what role do you think labels play? Where do they come in? Because you can now raise money. If you build an audience independently across social media, that is your distribution platform, right? You can be scrappy enough as well to kind of even get like your own organic press, if you’re doing something. Right? Now, candidly, many people don’t do things right. And they don’t kind of like break through the noise. But if you kind of experiment and you’re open minded enough, you can actually make noise in crypto. I’m curious, like, what sort of value do you think they provide now as, as you are kind of like, even more becoming a web three native music artist?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that, you know, ears are still everything, you know, like, every artist still wants their music to be heard by a lot of people. And for good reason you know, like, this is how we scale things. This is how you, you acquire new fans, how people have good experiences and whatnot. And, yeah, so I think that, you know, distribution is still very much needed for artists, because it’s one thing for you to be successful in music NFTs, like as far as, like volume or whatever. But, you know, you still want that to translate to like, a greater audience as well. Because that way everyone’s happy. You know, like, if you have, if your songs do a lot better theoretically, the, you know, the music NFTs should have music, more value and vice versa. Yeah, for sure.
That makes sense. That makes sense.
Reo Cragun: I think labels can play a role in all of this. I just, I feel like, I feel like new forms of probably, partnerships can be formed throughout all of this now. Because, you know, like you said, artists are making a little bit more money, they have a new revenue stream. And, you know, a lot of people don’t necessarily need the labels funds. So maybe there can be like these types of deals where an artist doesn’t need an advance and can, you know, retain a lot more ownership, while still having the distribution services of the labels.
Have we seen anybody execute, that the right way yet, like any artists comes to mind?
Reo Cragun: That’s a good question. I know, certain deals, or certain artists have like really favorable deals like for example. I mean, I’m sure that Drake’s deal, like they’re not taking 80%.
Sure. I guess, I’m talking more in the context of like us in crypto, for example, right?
Reo Cragun: I don’t think that exists yet now.
How Labels are Thinking About Music NFTs
Okay. Interesting. Because we’re seeing more labels, kind of a start these web three music labels, right, like the crypto native music labels. And none of them have really like made serious noise just yet. They just got the attention because it shows this, this legacy brand is now entering crypto and sort of validates maybe everything that we’ve been kind of like, paying for right, so maybe they’re gonna buy our bags, who knows? Right? But we have yet to see, like a big label do it, right? Publicly, yeah. And maybe it’s intention, maybe it’s just like part of their R&D fund. Maybe they’re just experimentating. Wow, just as much as we are, you know, do you have any insight on that as to how labels feel about these NFTs? How they feel about crypto native music artists? What are your thoughts, any insights?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, I mean, I know everyone’s excited about it. I think that really, I think that they’re trying to figure out like, correct and solid entry points, you know what I mean? Because I think like, a lot of the consensus in like, the music NFT like, ecosystem is kind of just like, no one’s really fucking with the labels type stuff. You know, it’s like, there’s so many horror stories, you know, like, me having 16 points royalties, you know, like, I know that a whole bunch of other artists in the space have had disgusting, you know, relationships with the label system and whatnot, and it’s just unfortunate, but, so, I think that, you know, probably they’re just like trying to figure out a solid entry point because they have to start being the good guy, right? More favorable artists deal honestly is like how that, I think how everything comes full circle. Yes, like probably a new take on like what it means to be in the music business, you know, yeah.
What’s the Status of LNRZ DAO?
I think, you bring a really cool perspective into the space because you’re not just an artist, you dropped out of college like you’re very much an entrepreneur yourself right, in many respects, whether it extends on the music front, right? Whether it extends to you couch surfing and just continuously doubling down on yourself or even starting a project and web three, or I don’t know if it’s like necessarily a web native project but this like creative incubator that you have called loaners Dao, right? Yep. So, I guess it is, I guess it is a web three if it has the Dao at the end. Talk me more through that. Because I remember when the mirror campaign came out, and you’re doing a crowd fund for loner’s Dao. What’s the status of loner’s Dao? Like, what have you been doing with that? Because I know you’re also in the in the music NFT incubator. A Cooper started right. So, is there collaboration? I have so many questions. I’ll let you kick it off. Yeah.
Reo Cragun: Yeah. No, there’s no collaboration right now. A lot of my focus has been geared towards, especially in the last like six months, has been geared towards onboarding more talent into the space. And just like educating people on, you know, the music NFT side of things. I think, you know, as the space continues to grow, the space will just continue to get better. There will be more creative drops, there will be you know, like, a lot of music, probably really good music that interests, the space and whatnot. And it’s just gonna push things forward. And so that’s been my whole, you know, thought process for like, quite some time now. And yeah, I’m on the board of Cooper’s Launchpad, which I’m super stoked about. I think there’s so much talent in this first group of artists. It’s just so insane. We just had a space the other day, where everyone was talking about their experience. And I was just like, dang, man, like, this is really cool. I feel like I’m part of something like, great. And loner Dao, you know, is a creative incubator. Also, like we on boarded. I think like half of the talent on loner’s Dao web to three, which was really cool. And then a couple of the artists were already in this space.
Got it.
Reo Cragun: And really, what we’ve been doing is, we’ve been working on a long form project, and then we’ve been working on a generative project for loner’s Dao.
Got it. When can we expect to see some public stuff from this projects that you’re working on?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, pretty soon, within the next couple of months, for sure.
Okay, maybe we’ll have to run another episode around that time.
Reo Cragun: Yeah, we would have to run another for sure. Yeah.
Joining the Music NFT Launchpad
Talk to me more through the music NFT Launchpad. You’re on the curation board. From what I’ve seen from Cooper, when he was on, I think, a couple, a few episodes back. Every single person on the board had sort of one pick to bet on, right? And then artists to bring up on board. What did the curriculum sort of look like? And what sort of value did these artists get once they joined the launchpad?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, it was, a lot of the curriculum was, it was broad, right? Because it was great curriculum. By the way, Cooper crushed it, Cooper kind of like did all of this and spearheaded it. He’s just an animal, honestly. Yeah. So, it was kind of broad because, you know, like, it’s, I think the concept was, how do you educate somewhat so like, it was like, okay, here’s how you download the meta mask, was like the early classes, let’s get everyone’s ENS domains. And then like, how to be in like the discord and telegrams and like on Twitter, how to go about creating in drafting up ideas for music NFT launch. other creators in the space. It was like, it was really cool. So, it started out broad and then it got a little bit more focused and whatnot, which was really cool. Yeah.
And what is the, oh, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
Reo Cragun: Yeah, and then everyone’s like been drafting up like, their initial thoughts on like, what they are planning on doing for their first drop and whatnot, which has been cool
The Process Post Launchpad
Okay. So now when these artists drop, are you guys playing like a major role in sort of finding them the right PR, finding them the right kind of like letting other collectors know like, what happens post Launchpad when they are ready to drop? What sort of, I guess like coaching or consulting or whatever they get do they get from you guys?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, so a lot of it, the one on one with Coop, for sure. And then, you know, like, I’ve talked directly to probably like four of the artists in the launchpad. Well, I’ve talked directly to a lot of them, but on a consistent basis have probably talked to four of the artists. And so yeah, I mean, for sure, yeah, I mean, I’m a music collector myself, I have close to like 100, music NFTs, from other creators in the space. And just like friends and stuff like that, so yeah, I’m gonna be pressing the men button for sure on a lot of these artists, and then yeah, of course, introducing them to other collectors in the space and just putting them on people’s radar. Because there’s a lot of talent in this in this group. It’s just mind blowing.
What Do You Look For in an Artist While Collecting?
Cool. So, you’ve collected about 100 music and excuse yourself? What do you look for as a collector when you sort of spend your Eth on an artist?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s interesting. I like, people who are like, hard working in this space, and who are pretty vocal. I also like good music as well. So, like, I’m looking kind of like for all those criteria. And people, you know, who are showing up for sure. That’s like, that’s my main.
How do you advise people to consistently show up? That’s something that I also advise artists and creators that want to come into crypto, you just consistently show up? How do you define consistently showing up? Like, what does that look like on an action base level?
Reo Cragun: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. I think really being active on Twitter, being active on certain telegrams, you know, joining certain Daos to, you know, be part of community calls and get more education, things of that nature, and then constantly releasing music NFTs as well, not like taking three months off before you’re doing your next drop and whatnot. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, especially people who are like boundary pushing, trying to do things outside of what their peers are doing, is always a really cool thing for sure.
Yeah. That makes sense. I guess, before we wrap up Reo, anything you think that I’m missing? Because I find your background really cool. I find, you obviously have a lot of experience, you’ve toured also, from what I understand with Billy Eilish, Flume, Lil Yachty, like all these really big heads. And you’re obviously making now a name for yourself in crypto too, what am I missing here? What do you think?
Reo Cragun: Man, I mean, nothing really, I do just want to say that I’m just like, really excited for the future. And I think that, you know, we’re just really on the surface of this, I think that it turns into an animal, just like gets legs. And I think that it’s really going to impact music as a whole. And the way that people think about, you know, releasing music, for sure, I know that my personal releases have gotten extremely creative, since like, you know, I started making music NFTs. And it’s become way more artistic. You know, I feel like the music has, you know, I’ve always worked extremely hard on the music, and I always want it to be like, top notch. But it’s really cool that I don’t just make cover art anymore. You know what I mean? Like, it’s like, you spend all this time on the music all this time, you know, sometimes a year on the music, and then on the artistic side, like you spend like a week on it, and then over, you know what I mean? It’s like, now it’s like, okay, cool. Like, I can also spend, you know, some blood sweat and tears and a little love on the digital side of the art and whatnot, which is really cool. Because I feel like, you know, you can make the music into an experience now. Yeah. And, you know, some people are even using it as you know, like content for their live shows. Yeah.
Do you do you ever imagine playing concert just for your collectors? Like a room of like, 300 people?
Reao Cragun: For sure. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Yeah, I think that would be really cool. I think it would be amazing, honestly. Like, you got to think to like, this stuff existed before just in a different medium. You know, it’s like Jay Cole playing shows for his fans only for $1 because you got $1 and a dream. You know? Like that’s like really similar thing and it’s like, yeah, I would love to do that. You know what I mean? Throw free show for collectors. That will be so sick.
Alright, so I’m gonna keep collecting then.
Reo: Cragun: Let’s go.
Outro
Before I let you go. Where can we find you? Where can we stay in touch? Show it away.
Reo Cragun: Yeah, of course. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, anywhere. My handle is the same. It’s at Reo Cragun. And on sound XYZ and catalog, I guess.
Amazing. So, Tuesday, this is when this episode’s gonna come out as well, on Tuesday. That’s when the drop is. I’m excited to be listening to the drop in the five tracks that you have called framework, with all these different artists collabs and honestly, your biggest project to date. So best of luck. I’m stoked for you. And yeah, we’ll have to do this again soon.
Mint Season 6 episode 13 welcomes Black Dave, the web3-native music artist, creative thinker, and self-proclaimed genius. From dropping free NFTs to setting records across crypto Twitter, I wish I had him on the podcast sooner. We had an awesome conversation on all things music NFTs, the early days of Clubhouse, building communities, designing experiences for collectors and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:13 – Intro
11:05 – Getting Started With Music NFTs
17:00 – The History of Black Dave
23:09 – Why Community Ownership is So Important
29:03 – Rent-Based NFTs
32:19 – Creating Experiences Around Drops
34:56 – Snoop Dogg’s NFT Drop
39:30 – Any Collaborations On Your Wish List?
43:00 – Free NFTs
58:26 – The Balance Between Documenting Processes and Creating Music
01:03:20 – How Do You Build a Legacy On Chain?
01:07:58 – New Things On Your Radar
01:15:29 – Outro
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Intro
Black Dave, the one and only, welcome to mint. What’s going on man?
Black Dave: Hey man, I’m about my girlfriend’s house. She’s watching industry and I’m chilling. How are you?
I’m feeling good. I’m doing well. It’s Wednesday, September 21, it’s the first episode we’re recording together. I feel like it’s long overdue. I’m a collector of yours across the different music NFTs that you’ve issued, and sort of just been like watching what you’ve been doing. So, I think a good place to start like Dave is who are you, man? What does a world need to know about you? And more specifically, how’d you get your start into web three?
Black Dave: So, I normally say my name is Dave, Black Dave in the streets. I got; I’ve been making music in varying forms for the last 20 years. Nothing crazy. I don’t have some like I went on tour with this person kind of story. But I’ve been making music just with my friends in Charleston where I live. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina. I got started in web three at the end of 2020. My story’s similar to a lot of people that just happened earlier. I was on clubhouse, someone was showing people how to make NFTs, it was Seer Sue, in case you know Seer Sue and he was doing a five-day course with, there’re like a few o G’s in there, Shawn, sometimes Sophie, his girlfriend was in there. There weren’t a lot of people. There’s like six or seven of us learning how to make NFTs at this time. And I started minting NFTs then, my first maybe 15 or so NFTs weren’t actually music. They were all images. And I started minting music in March of 2021. And then from there, I went full steam on music.
But you’ve been you’ve been a music artist for a minute now, right?
Black Dave: Yes, yes, I started out playing bass in pumping hardcore bands, which is why my music has like screaming and why music has guitars is because like, I’ve been trying to think a lot more about how to fuse all of my interests into one thing. And so that’s like what my musical goal and constant chases.
How would you explain, like your creative side to someone who’s not familiar with your work? Because I would consider you, not all over the place, but like artistically all over the place, which I really appreciate. How would you sort of explain it to someone, that isn’t maybe familiar with your work?
Black Dave: I tell people my goal like is like Virgil Abloh was a rapper who watched anime. My whole thing is that, I don’t want to be limited to a specific media, I really just want to be known for like my tastes and like the quality of work and the quality of ideas. So normally, I tell people that like I’m an all-around creative person, or I’ll say a lot of times, and I’m a creative director. But I like to just say, I’m a creative person, working out the intersection of anime, streetwear, rap music, sneakers, and fashion.
Walk me through more of like the early days of clubhouse. Because I think that was like an iconic moment for a lot of people who kind of came across NFTs in that era and clubhouse set the tone for a lot of new projects, a lot of like icons that maybe have set the tone for, yeah, like the standards of how to do drops, how to design websites, etc. And I remember all these like clubhouse spaces sort of activated that and considering you came into crypto through clubhouse, and you didn’t start with music, you started with images. I think that’s super interesting. Can you talk more about that?
Black Dave: Yes. So, in 2019, I had quit my job and decided that I was going to try to find a way to be a creative person for money, as opposed to working for somebody else for money. And so, when 2020 had started, I decided I was going to make more music. And so, I was making a three song EP every month and I was making a beat every day and uploading it and like putting it on my beat store. And so, when it got time to get into like crypto, web three, etc. I was already into crypto, I bought my first crypto and like 2017, with everybody else. And one of my friends early in the year was trying to get me into NFTs. He was like you could totally do this. And I was like, oh, I don’t do 3d art and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. And so, at the end of it. At the end of the year, I was going through the course and I minted a cover that I did use for one of my EPS is my first NFT. It was like December 19 or 20th. Right before Christmas, and it was a small clubhouse room. You know, Lady Phoenix, I think like, it was one of the big oh geez, who was on clubhouse at the time. Sirsi was a super old shrine, Israel. There was Cashmere, there like a handful of folks. And at that time.
There’s a ton. Yeah.
Black Dave: But at that time, there were a lot. I think, the early, early, earliest conversations I remember were all led by black people, which was kind of funny to think about now, just because of like, so much of the different race related things that happened throughout the space, but like, that was really interesting. And I just met lady Phoenix in New York. At NFT NYC, she’s amazing. I’ve met Seer Sue, before that, something I don’t know which one, somewhere, I’ve met all the people I named but I had minted an image, I didn’t sell it for about a month and a half. So, what happened was through that, I ended up teaching other people about NFTs, I joined the like, clubhouse crew NFTs dot tips, if you remember that, if you were around for that. So, I joined that crew a little bit after they started. And we would just onboard people for like 18 hours a day like literally like I would sit probably for like six- or seven-hours in time and when onboard people and we would just rotate like the like core team quote unquote and from there we just onboard so many people, you think about like the like the team for like Oni force like all of them were like pretty much on boarded by NF T’s tips like the OG team. I know they’re like, going through it as a project but like that team windboard APR club minted, it was still clubhouse time. So, all the rooms are happening on their, part of the reason that super Yeti is such like a meme is because that was clubhouse time. Just a bunch of stuff from that era. And then like something that I think is a little bit different now that was not, that was like, that was that, it was it’s different now but was really, I think important then was like the power of a crypto punk and owning a crypto punk. And like early 2021. Alan henna was like the only person we all knew who had a crypto punk at the time. And he was one of the people who was helping onboard tons and tons of folks and like, I would spend a lot of time like CO hosting rooms with Alan, which I think really informed like a lot of how I view the space because like, he’s such a deep thinker in general and was already working in crypto and like was already an engineer and all that stuff. So, hearing him describe the space versus hearing somebody who’s natively an artist described the space, I think really informed how I moved and thought.
How would you sort of explain to someone who wasn’t around the early like clubhouse days, the influence that black culture had on mainstream adoption? How would you sort of explain that narrative and kind of even reference examples?
Black Dave: I think the easiest example, especially for like clubhouse in particular, was clubhouse really took off when Atlanta rap music showed up on the app. So, I got on clubhouse in November of 2020, which was still far before a lot of people and I got one of my friends on before me because he like he made more, he was further along in the music journey than I am. And so, I was like, yo, you should get on clubhouse. I know your manager lives in Atlanta. Let’s see if you can get somebody to get you on. And so, he ended up getting on like a month and a half before me. And Neezy who’s 21 savage’s managers had like a really booming club on there. Sonny digital had a really booming club on there. And then what happened was clubhouse sort of, I remember tweeting, like, where all the white people on clubhouse at a point. And obviously, they’re all there. But this space, it was just such a different like space and territory. I think once like web three was kind of that thing that I think allowed race like to sort of be obfuscated a little bit and then all sorts of people started joining. But I think when people started joining, they also started creating and looking for communities like within their identity.
So, like when I had joined there was a cohort called one off and they had crypto voxels show that was all black NFTs like NFTs by black art. As the NFTs weren’t black, but yeah and so that was like kind of one of my early entrances into it. And so, through that, and then through float, which is like a music based collective, or music-based project, founder of that black, lady Phoenix, of course. You know, Alan, and then black NFT art, the community, that community whom a diamond etc., etc., popped up around that time. And so, there were a lot of like, I think the first spaces that really catered towards certain demographics of people were all the black spaces, and then and then you started to see the women and NFTs, then you started to see, you know, people in Asia, especially in NFTs, and even at that point in time, we were like, through NFTs tips, people were like translating for other people. And so, we were teaching people about NFTs in another language, even through clubhouse. So, I think, I want to say like Japan had started onboarding maybe. And so that that kind of happened.
Getting Started With Music NFTs
Okay, so at what point did you sort of get involved on the music NFT front? Because you started with more of like, digital art, right? Yeah, I’m curious around the time, like the year, right, so was it like 2020, 2019, or more of like, 2021?
Black Dave: it was 2021, for sure. I saw my very first collection. So, I had done a whole collection before I’d done music. The collection was called flips. It’s like, if you just search flips on open sea, you’ll find it. But they were all logo flips of just popular brands. And they would just say like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, etc. And what happened was I did that. And then I remember someone being like, oh, these are just like cheerio cards. And then I was like, shit. And then I like I still do; I still do them. But like I do them far less just because I know that there’s like a project that kind of already pushed the logo flip narrative for me. I ran a brand in Charleston, or I ran a brand in Charleston, called Charleston hype, which essentially did the exact same thing. But I would flip logos of companies and they would say Charleston instead. So, like, I had a Nike T for instance. And people it said Charleston and like in big cities, Nike does collaboration shirts, like are they do city shirts, but people would go to the Nike store and be like, I saw a Charleston Nike T, can I get that? And people would be like, oh, no, that’s not here. And like, the idea was that like, it was like tourists’ tees for locals. And, and I kind of felt the same way about the project. The flips project was it was like tourists’ tees for locals or tourists designs for locals. Were like, if you knew about the cryptocurrencies, you would get it. But if you knew about the brands, you would also want to get it because of the brands associated. So, like it was a nod to my streetwear. And then in March, I think I mentioned my first music project. And what I did with that, I think is kind of unique, even still is, I had minted a collection of 2d artworks, a collection of 3d artworks. And then just like the straight up audio file, like with the cover art, and I did that. And every, all the unlockable content was a download link to the song. So, it’s just an IPFS link, hash, I guess I should say, to the song. And that was like my first NFT drop. And because I was doing so much onboarding and stuff through NFTs tips, I decided to do like a, you know, clubhouse drop room. And I think I sold out, like that night of that whole project, which was really sick.
You know, it’s cool, just hearing you’d say this story in, like walking me through your process and the details that went into sort of creating the drop using IPFS to sort of figuring out what the dynamic would be between doing, like minting the audio file separately and whatnot. Like, it seems so complex on the surface, it also seems like you know exactly what you’re doing. And what’s interesting is that a lot of creators that you talk to, they’re just like sort of focused on just like minting the music NFT, but that’s also why you’re here today. Like, why I wanted to feature you is because like, I feel like you think so critically and so in depth on how you’re going to construct the drop and you also know some of the tech stack and infrastructure that’s related to kind of minting and bringing these pieces to life.
Black Dave: You know, so I think lazy minting on open sea might have happened December 29. So, like my very first NFT was on wearable, I paid full gas, it might have been like $4 at the time and I know like right now, you know Ethereum is low, transactions are low. So, gas is low as well but like that, it was so cheap to do and I already had crypto from buying in 2017 that I just it was like a no brainer for me. But then like, you know, I said earlier like the whole like Virgil Abloh kind of reference, I feel like when you design something, and when you create something, the details are what really matters. I like to say that luxury is in the details. Like one of my recent cars, I go through cars like hotcakes, I guess. I had a BMW 323; it was a 2001. It’s like last year, they did the 323 series. And I remember when I got it, I would crank the car, and the radio wouldn’t turn off, while the car crank. So, you’d like most cars, when you crank the car, the radio turns off, and then it turns back on when your car cranks up all the way. My BMW didn’t do that. And I was like, wow. And like that sort of clicked to me that like, all the best parts of things are in the details. Even like more BMW stuff, like, under my passenger seat, there was a whole first aid kit, you know, and so it’s just like, just like little things that would make it better. You know, when you switch lanes, it would automatically turn the signal light off. And like in 2001, that was crazy. You know, like, just little stuff like that is really what makes things special. And so like, I always wanted to have attention to detail. And I always wanted to like, create stuff that like resonated with me because even like that first song was all anime themed, I use a sample from anime, my pet tag is anime. A lot of the images I was using were anime. But then like, trying to make it more like, considered, I guess, I think considered is probably the best word to explain. Like, I wanted to do things. And so, and then, like you said on the tech stack end, right. Like, I think my number one question this whole time has always been, why does this need to be an NFT? And why can’t this exist in a traditional sense? And so that’s what I’m always like, pushing for through every project I do.
The History of Black Dave
So that ended up being the first music NFT, what was the next one? Like walk me through the history like Dave, and sort of how you curated your drops shortly after.
Black Dave: So, the next NF T. One thing that’s crazy about the first NFT drop that I failed at, I was learning unreal Engine at the time, when I was trying to build a little Metaverse, that was an art gallery, and then upload it to my website, I failed. I didn’t sleep for a lot of days, I had burnout. And then in July, was in July, maybe June, the end of June, I had minted my second collection of works. And this time I’m into two songs, and that I mentioned a bunch of 2d artworks, some 3d artworks, and then the cover arts. What I did this time was, I created a special edition cover for the songs. And this is my second drop. I did a special edition cover for the songs, everybody who had my first song got that for free. So, I was already like doing versions of airdropping. And then the 25 editions of each song I had available as NFTs. And the special thing about this drop was, I had a token that was called the Black Dave verse token. And what that token was, is whoever owned that token, can get a rap verse for me, whenever they want.
I remember like thinking about like another like, why NFTs, why web three and thinking about like, when I’m like one of the biggest artists in the world. And it’s really hard to get a rap first from me, somebody who bought this token really early, still has access to me through that token. And like I was thinking about this idea of like a service based NFT, so the person who want it, was the only person who bid on it. And he was like, I bid on it to start the auction but I thought this was a genius idea and that it would sell for a lot of money. And so, they paid point three Ethereum which was around $1,000 at the time and I think that’s going to be a great deal in the future. But I think like more than anything it opened up the idea of like services rendered by NFT ownership, so like, I had I had a discord back then but I don’t think my Discord was token gated, my Discord still not token gated. But I’ve token gated like channels, but it’s like open to all and but like even that, like is a service, right? Discord access as a service. And so, like just thinking about all the different services I could do. So, I did two songs, I had Airdropped all my previous collectors, a special edition version of the song. And then I had released two new songs and did the verse token. So that was my second music NFT drop and that was still on open sea like everything I did so far up to this point was on open sea, except my very first NFT which was on rare able and it was mostly because lazy minting came to be and I was like all right, cool. Let’s just run that. So that was my second drop.
Right. And then and then sound that XYZ comes into the picture? Yep.
Black Dave: Sound catalog. I minted on catalog first, before sound. And I minted on catalog in November of 2021. And I minted a song called sharp. And I feel like every story has like some obnoxious like, this is what NFTs can do thing to it. But like, I minted that song sharp and it was priced at three Ethereum, party bid was like a big thing at the time, especially for people making rap music, we were all, not we were all, a lot of people were like minting music videos and selling that for one Ethereum or two Ethereum. But getting the whole community to buy in on it, community ownership is like, definitely one of those things that I think web three enables really well. So, what I did was sharp was three Ethereum priced NFT. And I set it up as a party bid, 42 people got in on it. And from there, I gave governing power of the song to the collectors. So, everyone who bought in a fraction of the NFT, I gave him governing ability, the NFT didn’t sell in total for about two months, I was going on this crazy like run of like Twitter threads, Twitter spaces, clubhouse rooms, like, just like explaining the gospel of like, why this NFT matters, why I matter. Like making like NFT like music NFT hot takes, which is still like a thing that I do. And an NFT sold in January.
So, like, I think at the beginning of January, it sold the same day, I’d gotten on the 22 artists to watch in 2022 lists by NFT now, so I got on that list the same day, the NFT sold, I was doing a space called why isn’t your NFT selling, where people would come in and talk to me about why their NFTs weren’t selling and we would just talk about it. And at the end of the space, somebody pretty much like paid the whole like last one Eth that was remaining. So, I was at like 2.1 out of three. And at the end of the space. Eric Spivak was like, Yo, I just ran up the last point nine NFTs done. And I was like, oh shit, and so 42 people in total, it was a crazy like, because he was like, did you notice you got on this list? And I was like No, not until after the room. And then the guy who collected the verse token, he hits me up every so often with like different ideas about like, what he could do, where he just wants to talk about, whatever. And he was like, he was like, did this sell because you got on the list. And I was like no, the list came out after I sold. And so, it’s like crazy timing. Because maybe if that didn’t happen, it would have ended up selling through like me getting that notoriety of being on the NFT analysis, which I also made it on the NFT 10 in 2021, which was sick or 2022, I guess.
Why Community Ownership is So Important
Wild. You know, earlier in the story, you sort of talked about this concept of community ownership. I’m curious why you decided to use that keyword and what that sort of means in the grand scheme of things, as you’re building communities and building like a fan base, the collector base in crypto, like why is community ownership so important?
Black Dave: I think like, the thing about communities owning things is, in a lot of ways communities haven’t really had an opportunity to own something together. This is going to be like a probably reach of a metaphor. But I live in Charleston, and I live on land that’s owned by my family. And my aunt is my neighbor. And I live with my mom and my great aunt’s my neighbor and I live with my mom and my aunt, her sister, and my grandma is going to build a house in front of us and my sister might build a house beside us and I might build a house somewhere. And like the idea that like my family is the community has this opportunity to own land provides a lot of new opportunities for us, but also allows us to create things we couldn’t create before. I think with web three, when community’s own thing, communities can benefit from owning a thing. So, like even with sharp, the whole idea of this project was that, we would do governing things around the song, so like stuff like the music video treatment, stuff like marketing, stuff like you know the budget for the song, stuff like you know, whatever and like when the song ended up going crazy in whatever form it did, we could sell the NFT in the community that supported me, now got a return on their support. And I think that’s something that’s really special about communities owning thing is that, if we all own something, we all can benefit from the ownership, either through participating and whatever the thing is that we get by owning it, or participating in the sale of that thing. And because we’re all owners, we all get to benefit from the sale of that thing.
That makes sense. I think a lot of creators still don’t understand the beauty and the value behind ownership, let alone like majority of people that exist on this planet. I think NFTs might have maybe educated people on what the value of ownership really means and what you can do once you own something. But I think it kind of comes down to like being financially literate, to an extent, right, or just being literate in general of why it’s better to own versus rent. Would you agree? Would you disagree? What do you think about that?
Black Dave: I think it depends, right? Like there are massively rich people who say don’t own things, because as soon as you own something, it’s worth less. And they’re like, you just lost money, because like driving a car off the lot, you know, depreciates the price of the car by a bunch of students, you get off the lot. I think that this is different. I think digital assets don’t depreciate and then a lot of ways only appreciate, especially when you factor in the blockchain, and like provenance, and like trackable ownership. Things really, in a lot of cases can only go up in value if shepherded the right way. When I was talking about the first token, and I made the comment about being the greatest artist in the world, and you know, what I’m doing being worth a bunch of money. If a community had owned that token, a community could benefit from the sale of that token, to a record label, to a rapper, or the community could benefit from, you know, getting one of their friends a song with me, and maybe it’s the same thing as getting a Drake verse, you know, in 2022.
I think like, you know, owning things, and not only owning things, but understanding that there’s power to ownership, and that, especially using this tech, you can enable special things for that ownership is the thing. You know, I know, we’re like going through my journey, but one of the most recent NFTs that I dropped, I had split the sale of that NFT with all of my collectors, it’s like the, I want to say, it is the and I hate using superlatives like this, but the largest on chain split for an NFT sale, it’s 159 wallets. And all 159 people are wallets involved in this, get a percentage of the sale of this NFT and varying amounts. And so just by being an owner, and something that like, you know, links back to me, you receive benefit through ownership, I think digital ownership is so different. I was on a call today, and someone used the phrase digital supply chain. And I thought that that was really interesting. And I think that there are all these like digital forms of things that are natively physical, that we’re coming to terms with. And because they’re digital, they have different properties. And we really need to be aware of what those properties are and what those properties mean. And so, I think owning is far more important. I do think that digital renting, you know, we’ve been doing that with like renting movies, you know, through like Apple TV and stuff like that. I think that that is useful. Because in a lot of ways that utility, right? Like the utility of owning the token that represents that you rented this movie is that you can watch the movie. And once you start the movie, you have 24 hours to finish the movie. I think that that’s really sick and so digital ownership through, digital ownership, I think matters most when utility is applied or used case or experience or whatever, I try not to use the word utility. I like to use the word experience.
Rent-Based NFTs
Okay, let’s talk about more rent based NFTs for the music sector. What do you think are some interesting experiences that can be created around renting NFTs?
Black Dave: I think on the music sense, a lot of its going to be tied to things like access to, I think a lot about seasons. And I know like seasons isn’t normally like a fashion or television thing. But I think a lot about seasons of music, especially as we move or we have moved more into a single driven economy for music and a lot less of an album driven economy for music, especially for independent and smaller artists. You know, every single is a chance at that in a sense. I think being able to be involved in different seasons of artists is really interesting. I know that’s not quite a rental. But if you think about something being seasonal, then it runs out something that’s been on mind a lot, is creating work in seasons and allowing people access to my work for that season. And then if you didn’t participate in that season, then the only thing that exists for you to do is get it on the secondary market. It’s to me a lot like street wear, you know, when supreme drops, and you don’t get the supreme item, you gotta go on stock X or eBay or Grail to get it. And I think this is kind of the same thing, where you have an NFT, the NFT is usable for a period of time, which would be the season, you can collect work from that artists or you receive work from the artist during that season, and then the season ends and all the work that you’ve received during that season. Is that’s just the work. And then you need to get a new token for the next season. I think something similar is like, I wish I could remember the name, when Moon birds does their artists, series drops where like, if you own a moon bird in that time, then you can get the artwork that drops in that time period. And yeah, that’s, I think rental is interesting.
And I think more so, I think NFTs that are consumable might be better, right? Where, you know, with kudos, which I know is another project that I haven’t talked about that I did, with Matt Monday, we made a physical digital NFT and the commonly used case for a physical digital NFT is you get the NFT, you burn the NFT, you receive the item, what we did was you get the NFT, you go through a claim process and the metadata on the NF T changes. And the metadata represents the status of shipping. And if you think about changing metadata to make something consumable, in the same way that you think about like an HP bar, that you could put onto an NFT that becomes consumable if you put it into a game, for instance, then that becomes really interesting used case for NFTs, where something’s not rentable, but it’s consumable. And I don’t quite know, you know, what platform needs to exist to create that or how that could work. But I think thinking about the different ways to consume NFTs. And renting could be time, could be the thing that changes the status of the NFT, just as much as metadata itself.
Creating Experiences Around Drops
I think you do a good job of sort of like really thinking about not utility, but you’d like to use the word experiences. Okay, so let’s continue on that path. So, sort of creating experiences around. Yeah, collecting something and what sort of gets unlocked once you enter the black data ecosystem. How do you get your ideas for sort of creating experiences around your drops? That was one of the questions that somebody asked on Twitter?
Black Dave: For me, it’s funny, because I was reading the questions to my girlfriend the other day, and she was like, how do you, like I read it and she was like, what’s the answer? And I was like, I don’t know. I just think, I guess. And it feels like, I think what happens is, and this is another virtual vibe, you’ll hear me hit a lot of vibes like that reference other people. And I think there are lots of vibes in art, that are the same thing is this. Looking at things that you think are sick, and then trying to execute that with your own version is really important to me. When I think about like fan clubs, and when I think about, especially video games, I think a lot about, I remember explaining NFTs to my mom, and saying, okay, you know what fortnight is? And there’s a skin in fortnight, and what if you could sell that skin to somebody else, but only that the person who owns the, like digital skin could use it in the game. And she was like, oh, okay, I get it. And so like, for me, it’s always been like trying to find different used cases. But really challenging the idea of what an NFT could be. I actually, like, I’ve had a few like, I don’t want to say like confrontations but like conversations, I’ll say, now I feel like, yeah, and about, like the type of work I make and then it’s all anime referential. And they’re like, aren’t you just stealing other people’s ideas? And I’m like, sometimes, but I’m also like, I think that context matters. And especially like, art, right? Like, when you think about art, putting you know, putting a basketball in the middle of a museum versus putting a basketball on the basketball court. They have completely different values. And you would do completely different things to each of those basketballs, even if they’re the exact same ball. And so, I think that is, it’s kind of my energy going into this space is just like, a ton of reference and a ton of ideas, stuff like that.
Snoop Dogg’s NFT Drop
So that’s actually pretty interesting and I think experience can maybe extend beyond unlockable content, right? Or like Token gate, I think the experience can sort of extend into the art itself. And something that you did that was very experience based, was sort of record a song and mint a song with Snoop Dogg, amongst other independent artists on sound, which, that was an iconic drop within itself, hands down. And the fact that you got to participate in that was also even cooler. Can you talk about that entire experience? Because I remember when that came out, we were all just like, yo, like, that’s legit. Like we’re certified like everybody that’s been dumping money on NFTs like Snoop Dogg came in like, and he’s bringing up all these independent artists with him as well to sort of make this track. Like, I just remember it being like a very iconic moment. And you got to be a part of it. Can you talk to me more about that story and share how that came together?
Black Dave: You know, yes. So, what’s crazy about that specific drop was, that was Snoop second drop on sound. His first drop was a mix, and the second drop was a mix. And today, actually, they announced Snoops, third drop on sound, which is actually a free mint, which is crazy. But so, when Snoop dropped the first mix, I heavily critiqued it publicly on Twitter. I, you know, I remember the first song on the first Snoop mix, had Cray Shawn on it, who I love. I’m obsessed with Cray Shawn; I think she’s amazing. And she was on it. And I was looking at it. And I was like, man, like, I don’t know how the splits are working for this. But knowing like Cray Shawn label situation, she had that song Gucci, Gucci that was really popular in like, 2012. She got pregnant, got dropped from the label, but still owes them a ton of money Gucci, Gucci went viral again, and 2021. And she was like, hey, guys, like thank you. But I still owe my label $100,000. So, I get none of that money. And I was thinking about how the blockchain could enable an opportunity for someone like her to be able to get money for her work. And I didn’t see any of the splits on chain. They weren’t really trackable. And then I complained about that. And then I complained about, I won’t say complaint, I had recognized an opportunity with that. And I had also said something about, well, why doesn’t Snoop Dogg add web three artists, like he came into web three, and he’s not going to work with us. And David from sound actually called me and was like, he was like, you make some good points, blah, blah.
And so, when it came time for Snoop to do a second drop, they pretty much threw the idea at him and was like, yo, you should add some web three artists. And, and I was at my girlfriend’s house, it was like, had to be like, midnight, 12:30, I might have been just leaving her house. And Iman calls me and it’s like, yo, Snoop is going to add a few of our songs to the mix. Can you send me a song? And I was like, I’m in my car. I don’t have any of my files. But as soon as I get home, and I sent two songs over. And he picked one, and threw it on the mix. And so like, and then I think what was even better was like, he took the criticism. And then like, did everything I said, right. So, he did the mix, added web three native artists to the mix. It was myself Maroof, Heno, and Iman, and then gave us a percent of the sales. And so, it’s like, you listen to me on like, all fronts. And like, I think from that moment, I had like a really, like, a new respect for Snoop in web three, my previous Snoop experiences weren’t as great. You know, his first drop was with crypto.com. And that drop was a mess. It sold a lot, I think Snoop had made like, like $20 million, or something obnoxious through it. And but what happened was, it was such a mess. The customer service was bad. No one understood the blockchain it was on, et cetera, et cetera. And so, I kinda was like, another rapper coming in and make money and he kept going. And so, when he did that drop on sound, I was like, oh, Snoops, like, really doing this. And I know he was already doing like, I don’t know, is it, I guess he, I don’t know if he was or wasn’t Cosmo, Dima de chi, but like that whole thing. And then like collecting a lot of works and talking about NFTs and stuff like that, and really digging in. The sound drops really like I think was the cherry on top of my respect for Snoop in web three.
Any Collaborations On Your Wish List?
That’s actually crazy, because I remember when that got announced, it was like it was a big moment for the space. And it’s so funny how you like you publicly critique him, despite doing a drop with him. And I think you being so vocal and being so honest on your feelings, and not sort of keeping that in, is sort of what maybe got you or at least kind of contributed to you getting that opportunity. I’m curious as to, is there are there any more collaborations that are going to be happening between you and him or any other, I guess more mainstream type of artists that are going to be coming into web three? And if not, are there any artists that you sort of like have on your maybe like, I guess, like wish list?
Black Dave: I don’t have anything planned. My main focus right now and I do want to work with more big artists and I definitely have like a bucket list. Someone who’s collected NFTs, that I really want to work with is Jaden Smith. He’s collected a couple of sound NFTs, he’s picked up a few other NFTs. So, he’s like in the space, I don’t quite know his wallet address, or I’m tracking him. But I’ve heard people say that he’s collected their stuff before. That’s somebody that I’m super interested in working with. I just think he’s like my favorite rapper in general. But I think Childish Gambino, as well, as somebody that I really want to work with, Donald Glover, he, there was a clip of him talking about like NFTs and he was talking about, like, just the things that blockchain can enable from like, an authentication standpoint, so he understands it from the tech perspective. It’s really tough, I think, to get mainstream artists to enter the space because they have a lot on the line, like they have a lot at stake, when they drop in the space, you know, I think the merge is going to help a lot of people on that front, when we can start to educate people on the enhancements to the environmental impact, that’s through proof of stake.
So, I’m super pumped for that to happen. And artists who fan bases were complaining about the environment saying, hey, look like I think it said, the stat said that in in a one-year period Ethereum will use 126 of what Pay Pal uses. And so, I’m really excited for that to come to be, I do want to work with more large artists, I think, an ultimate cheat code. And I don’t know how many industry people listen to your podcast to like steal ideas, but an industry cheat code is exactly what Snoop Dogg did. Call one of us on the ground in web three, and do a song with us. And let’s put it out. And you will be like it’s the easy stamp. I think for like, a mainstream artist entering web three, and it’s probably a lot less paperwork. So yeah, like, you know, it’s like, and that was my whole thing was Snoop was like, meet us where we are, don’t hover over us, you know, don’t celebrity yourself in. And I think he’s done a really great job of that. And I think any, literally any artist who wants to enter web three, call us, I’ll do a record like, you know, I know a lot of people would do records with a lot of artists that they look up to. So, it’s about finding the artists and then doing collaboration with them. And I think that’s like the perfect way for almost anyone to enter the web three space.
Free NFTs
I completely agree like 1,000%, I think too many mainstream artists overthink it. And I think the best way, like you said to get a stamp of approval, is to sort of lock arms with those who are already doing really well on the space. Because just like web two streaming is a completely different beast. The same thing applies to web three music, right? Like, there’s people who are doing really well in web three music that might not see the light of day, and like across streaming platforms, for example, right. But they built this like brand, they built this virality, they built a collector base. And they’ve generated like hundreds of 1000s of primary and secondary sales combined, that someone new entering the space, that maybe has clout in the streaming side of things, might need to sort of latch on to kind of fit in with the quote unquote, cool kids of the web three music scene. Right. And I think you’re absolutely right. And we have yet to see another mainstream artist’s sort of latch on to that strategy. I think mainly because there’s ego involved. There’s pride involved. But I guess what people don’t understand that in crypto, it’s like a level playing field. Like, there are no rules like everybody’s new here, right? And if you bring your cloud and you try to use your cloud, it will only get you so far in the traditional world, if you try to apply it in crypto, right and at some point, like authenticity is going to kind of like prevail and people are gonna see like whether you’re here for like the short term or the long term, despite what happened with crypto.com And in your opinion around that like Snoop continuously showed up over and over and over again right and came through with consistency and even now, introduced his third drop and he’s probably as mainstream as it can come right and now, he’s a legend Yacht Club. And the whole Yeah, he killed it. He killed it and he continues to kill it. He continues to reinvent himself which is really, really impressive to see. Especially as you kind of like join more and more industries, whether it be from like brand deals to acting to now, crypto to music to all these different sectors. Yeah, we can go all day. I want to talk to you about free NFTs because you brought that up during Snoops drop. And I think it’s a great segue. Because you sort of experimented with your NFTs. It’s something that I’m very vocal about. I’ve written a lot about; I’ve been talking a lot about on the podcast. I’d love to get your perspective because I know you did a free NFT drop. You were the first artist, if I recall correctly, to do a free NFT drop on sound that XYZ, it did really well. And the secondaries are actually like, really, really popping and even like generated maybe like, I don’t know, if more, more value than they would have in the primary sale. But yeah, I’ll just shut up. What are your thoughts on free NFTs? Talk to me about that first drop that you did? And we can just start there?
Black Dave: Yeah, so the free mint meta had just started. And David of sound does a really good job of like, hitting me up and asking me about like trends in the space. I remember, at the time, he was like, what do you think about them? He was like, I think he could work for music. And I was like, I’m interested to see because, you know, you lose out on the primary. And I think one of my actual complaints about music NFTs, and especially music NFT pricing is that we price at the max that people are willing to pay. And that kind of flattens the music secondary market. So, if you think about like, the secondary market of music outside of sound, there isn’t one, right. But the secondary market of art, there is and I think that artists aren’t pricing at the very edge of what people are willing to pay for something and that’s why. And so, you know, I was just like, okay, let’s try it. I was like, I got a song. Let’s try it. Like that was literally the conversation. And, and I was fine being the guinea pig. And as I thought about it more and more, I thought, okay, cool. This is an opportunity for community to happen. This is an opportunity for people who couldn’t get in, especially on sound because of price. Because that was still when NFTs were all point one Ethereum on sound, then they have an opportunity here. I think it went super well, one special story about that drop in specific is, the person who won the golden egg, he was in NFTs for about two months, he won my golden egg and sold the golden egg point7.
So, he got it for free, sold it .75. Shout out to Cooper. And that point 75 Ethereum was the money for him to fly from Germany to NFT NYC. I think it was his first time in America. He met me at the wave world event. And he was like, it was crazy. He met me at wave road. And he was like, dude, you’re the whole reason I’m here. And I was like, oh, dude, I’m pumped. You came to see me, you know, like, oh, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t realize that. That’s what happened. And he was like, yeah, I sold your NFT that I had. And I was like, dude, I’m super pumped that you’re able to make money from my work. And, and he was like, yeah, and so I’m here and I was like, well, you can’t see me since you sold my NFT. So, I got him and all his friends NFTs. And they saw my wave world set. And I didn’t realize until like right before my set that he sold it to fly to America. And so like, that story sits with me forever. It’s definitely one of my like top web three stories. One of the greatest things that this happened to me like as an artist in general, and so like, that made me believe in free mints. Because what happened was someone who didn’t have the point one Eth to buy my NFT. Got to create this really special experience, not only for him, but for me, like utility aside, like, this is a truly special experience that two real people experience together. I even said like one thing that’s funny about me is like I’ve never smoked weed in my life. I’ve long dreadlocks, everyone thinks they smoke weed, but I’ve never smoked in my life. And I told him I was like, look, if I ever go on tour in Germany, I’ll come smoke weed with you. And he’s like, super pumped and like, I’ll probably end up smoking. Because like, he’ll remember. It’s like, I’ll be like, okay, like, this is my first time, so just laugh at me. I guess so. Yeah.
That’s hilarious. And it’s not if you toured Germany, it’s when you tour Germany, I’m a big believer in manifesting things into reality. I think like you sort of nailed it, like, the whole point of my opinion. Okay. Maybe a hot take. But I think the whole point or at least a big part of sort of having these mechanics and being like, being open to kind of like publicly selling your work and having secondary markets is so that collectors who support you, can have the opportunity to make a buck, right, and make some type of financial sort of yeah, I guess like, profit and benefit that extends beyond just kind of enjoying you as a collector, or as a creator, excuse me. Now I know people have controversial opinions and like maybe some platform founders don’t even want there to be secondary volume around music NFTs because their whole bed is like this thing is designed to kind of reconnect fans and bring them closer together and sort of like bridge the gap of, of your biggest, most passionate listeners. But I think a lot of the fun comes when you’re able to share and have experiences like that. And your fans are able to sort of like profit, right and gain value beyond just like the music that they enjoy from you specifically, right? So, I think you nailed the head, like, like being very cognizant of how you price your things, and allowing the secondary market to kick in, and it’s sort of like consume some of that value as well. And enjoy that value will just like play, like so much in your benefit, right, long term. So, I love your perspective on that. And I couldn’t agree agree more.
Black Dave: I appreciate it, you know, to that effect, I dropped into NFT that is an open edition, that’s available until the end of the year. And the price is point 01 Ethereum. And the idea is that, of course, I’ll deliver some sort of experience down the line. But anyone who wants to get in, can get in and price is not the thing that restricts you, you know, it’s mostly just your ability to get Ethereum and get on the blockchain, I think, you know, people are so caught up in making money, that they aren’t caught up in making communities. And what’s happening is people are saying they’re creating community, but they’re just creating customers. And I really want to find more and more ways to create communities. Because I think at the end of the day, those are going to be the people and the experiences that we have together individually through my work, are going to be the things that keep me around and keep me alive and keep me paid forever. But also keep them satisfied. Like here’s something that I always talk about is like, you know, a ticket to a concert could be 100 bucks. But people when they go to the concert, they don’t want to try to resell the ticket, you know, they got 100 bucks worth of experience. And I think as long as you’re delivering an experience that’s worth, whatever the person paid for the thing, they’re not even going to have a desire to resell it.
It’s like keeping a ticket stub from a movie, right? Like, if you know, if I think about the first date, I had was my girlfriend, another Virgil Abloh reference, I went to go see figures or speech in Atlanta. And keeping the ticket from that has value to me, I got the money out of it, whether it’s through the day with my girlfriend or through seeing the work. And so, I really don’t want to sell the ticket because the value, I already captured the value but having the thing like continues to hold that value for me, no matter how much other people want for it. And I think it’s going to be the same thing with music, where if you have this token, you’re able to get the experience, you’re going to want to keep it as a as a memory of that experience. But I think that music NFTs especially, and I noticed this in the music NFT but especially popups, I believe popups are going to be the tour t shirt of NFTs, like in the in the music use case. Because if I’m only making popups at my shows, then you have the shirt that only has the date of that show, theoretically, and it’s tradable. And it never deteriorates in quality. And it has you know, it can possibly have its own utility that comes with having it, I used to always make this comment about like if Travis Scott’s AstroWorld tour, if every date had its own popups, but then you had to have seven popups in order to get a limited-edition t shirt, then what happens is the popup has a secondary value. And it was the NFT that you got for free just by being there. And I don’t think that it has to be like that. But I think that it’s really cool. And there gonna be people who want, who are going to say, I don’t want to get rid of my poll app, because I want other people to know that I was at the concert, and they’re going to people that are gonna say, I don’t care if other people know that I’m at the concert, I want the money. And I think both options are fine. And just thinking about, continuing to think about experience, delivering experiences is the real thing. And in trying to figure that out at a price point, that allows your common fans to be involved and allows people who are willing to spend a bunch of money to be involved, is worth it as well.
You know, I, it makes me so happy to hear how you sort of talk about your strategy and how you use sort of like create your own mental models and understanding like different ways to create values or value in general for your collectors and kind of recognizing that there is a market for both while, I think it may scare a lot of creators, right that sort of enter web three. They see the secondary market and they maybe feel pressured that they need to have like high primary and secondary sales to be seen as a success. While partially true, right? You’re just like, you’re just so open, I can tell it like, you’re just like, you’re like, have a bucket mentality. You know, like, if something sounds like something sounds cool to explore, maybe worth experimenting, like, you’ll double down, you’ll give it a shot. And you’ll see what happens, right. And I think that that energy, that mentality will obviously take you a long way. Another thing that’s really cool that you brought up earlier, is having something for anybody to collect. At any point in time, you have an NFT, whose timestamp kind of like expires at the end of the year. And for whatever reason, in case you go viral, right, or you have a spur of Twitter followers, or we have a new type, you have a new level of engagement, a song goes viral, whatever it may be, you will have some type of collectible to capture value. The second you are kind of like, hit that mark, like you’re ready, like you’re here loaded, you lock, you’re locked and loaded. And I love that. And you’re the first person that I’ve sort of seen approach that and think that far in advance. And I really appreciate that. I commend you on that. That’s really cool.
Black Dave: Thank you. I agree. I think that’s the goal is, like, I always want people to have some sort of access. I think scarcity matters. But I think openness matters, right? Like, we don’t need to hide songs from people. But I also think that a song that only one person can hear, is cool. For me, I want to make sure that people who are getting involved or people who want to get involved have an opportunity. The scarcity of assets model that we’ve been running on, is great, but it’s not sustainable for something that needs to play Madison Square Garden, for something that needs to perform at Coachella, you know, like, I need as many people as possible there. If I want to be on the stage at Coachella, I don’t want to say like, you know, only if you hold insert NFT, can you show up to my set, because then I’m limiting myself. And I just really want to be as open as possible. And like, you know, I talked earlier about seasonal NFTs, when this time period runs out. That’s it, you know, my goal for this drop is 100, I’m at about 55, 60. Right now, my goal is 100. If I get to 100, by the end of the year, I’ll be happy. And what happens is those 100 people, when next season’s drop happens, and I have a fan base, or collector base of 1000 or 500 or 200 or 300, people are going to want to have that previous season because you better believe, I’m going to say if you have season one and season two, you get something because I think like you’re able to play this game of thank you for supporting me early. Or if you want to look like you support me early, you got to pay and then offering experiences those people the same way that I was able to with the free mint, the same way that I was able to with the special edition cover of my second music NFT, the same way that I’ll be able to do with, you know, sharp whenever that song goes crazy. I just want to like people who support me early, they’re always going to be the biggest winner. So, I think, you know, crypto rewards you being early. And I want myself to be a reflection of that.
The Balance Between Documenting Processes and Creating Music
Yeah, I think another way you sort of build community is through content. And you’re very active when it comes to writing mirror posts. And like blog posts, just sharing your thoughts and also like tweet threads that you sort of compose every so often. Which is not something to sort of take for granted because I think a lot of creators lack the ability to sort of document their process, as they’re experimenting, as they’re creating. Right? Can you walk me through how you find the balance between documenting your process and sharing your thoughts versus like creating music, dropping NFTs in sort of like yeah, thinking about the whole, I guess monetization side of using these crypto primitives as a creator.
Black Dave: Something that Gary Vee once said, he says that a lot. Because he says everything, he says a lot. That’s what he does. But like, he says, I can tell you everything that I do every day and 95% of you aren’t going to do it. So why not share it right? If there’s a benefit for me being giving of my information and my knowledge. Why not? Most of you aren’t going to use it anyway. And I’m not competing with you anyway, right? The only person that I’m really competing with this myself, I say that right now, but I literally compare myself to people all the time. But I’m like, that’s the whole idea behind it. I think. You know, I’ve given away enough ideas in Twitter spaces, in clubhouse rooms, in threads on podcasts, et cetera, et cetera. That could probably build people really profitable businesses, which I’m cool with. Because I know that I can keep coming up with ideas, and I can keep doing things. And there’s always new information to be gotten. And I just want to be like a beacon of that information. And then I think, on top of that, something that I’ve learned about, you know, web three and NFTs, I’m trying to stop saying space, the space. I haven’t figured out a proper word yet. But something I’ve learned about being in this in this world is like, people resonate with, like, you being for real, and you’re not trying to sell me on stuff. And so, me just coming in and saying, hey, I’m Dave, these are the things that I’m doing. These are the hardships I’m facing. These are the positives I’m having. This is what I’m thinking about. This is how I’m thinking about, I tweeted earlier, before this space, before this space, before this podcast. I said, you know, reminder, genius isn’t what you know, but it’s how you think about things. It’s how you think through things.
And I really think that that’s the thing, and I like, I almost turned that into a thread because like, I always make this joke to my friends that I’m a genius. And then I took the test to be a genius. And when I was in, like elementary school, especially, I had moved a bunch of times, but I was always in like those special student programs. And all of those tests that you take, have nothing to do with knowledge, right? They hand you a bunch of shapes, and say build this thing. They show you something and say, move this from here to here, following these rules, do this do that, if I have this, how do I get to that? And taking that test, and then being like, oh, you know, Dave’s mom, I think your son’s a genius, like, made me realize that genius isn’t what you know, genius is how you think. And if I can share that with other people, and hopefully inspire genius within them, knowing that genius isn’t what you know, but it’s how you think, then that’s really sick. And one of my biggest goals as an individual and as a creative, is to inspire other people. So, like, if someone ever comes to me and says, like, Dave, you inspired me, like that’s the day I can go to sleep like right then. So yeah.
Would you would you consider yourself a genius?
Black Dave: I like to say I am. But I try not to say I am like with a serious tone. So, like, my friends, like you guys know I’m a genius. I took the test. But I didn’t take the test, I really took the test. So, I don’t know if genius is the right thing. I definitely, I have an appreciation for how I think about things. And I think that the way that I think about things, is going to allow me to create great things and be remembered as a great person. I’m like, another like, blockchain thing is like legacy. And I think that, like what I’ll leave to the world, even if it is just through art is going to be really, really important. In the same way that I think what Virgil Abloh left behind, in terms of what inspires me, is really important.
How Do You Build a Legacy On Chain?
How do you think you build legacy on chain? So, in the reason I emphasize on chain is because we are so consumed in crypto culture, but there’s going to be a wave and a generation of users that sort of haven’t experienced the moments in a time that we’re sort of living through, right. But there still needs to be a way to sort of like prove provenance, right? History, legacy, etc. How would you measure legacy on chain? What does that look like, exactly?
Black Dave: Something, another tweet, Dave tweets, this episode of Dave’s tweets, like, I tweeted, a lot of people, so I guess for context, mint songs, the platform is going through its sort of shutdown phase, and they closed their minting. And they’re just no shutting down. They migrate all their NFTs, et cetera, et cetera. I said people who migrated their NFTs off of mint songs have ruined the provenance of the NFT and have such ruin the value because there’s no longer proof that you minted on a defunct platform. I think what’s going to happen and a lot of artists, I think, in response to this tweet, a lot of artists don’t understand what provenance is right? They don’t understand that the trail of who collected, who held for how long and when, really matters. I think one way that I was explaining it to someone is that the Ultra Rich, they buy art as a status symbol, as a flex, the same way that We buy NFTs, right? People want to own art because of Rockefeller previously owned that art. People want to own art because an institution previously owned that art. There’s something to be said about the impact of who owned something, for how long, how much they paid for it, and how much you paid for it. And I think that, in the long term, especially as the chain becomes easier to read and easier to translate, they’re going to be a lot of people who are going to be able to quickly look at something and be like, hey, did you see that, Dave sold this NFT, as a fraction of 42 people in this was that song. And then they sold it after the song blew up. And that story is the legacy or people will say, did you know that that person got it for free, and that person is now this person. And when they sell it, it’s going to be worth money or because it’s an addition piece, then everyone who owns that automatically has an inherent increased value, because the cool person also owns that, it’s kind of like when celebrities wear a certain clothing brand, and that clothing brand pops off. I think, you know, when you look at the long-term history of that brand.
I think here’s a great example, black scale the clothing brand. When mega the guy who founded black scale talks about the brand, he says there’s pre-ASAP Rocky in this post ASAP Rocky, and he uses that as a reference point for the brand. And so, the legacy of black scale has ASAP Rocky included, the legacy of ASAP Rocky has black scale included. And they both are like huge pivot points. And really important. And I think that ASAP Rocky’s involvement in black scale, will always contribute to the value of black scale. And then if you’re in street wear first, then the value of ASAP Rocky will always be valuable because he was involved with black scale, something that you place a lot of value in. So, I think Providence is the thing that we won’t think anything about for a long, long time. Because it doesn’t actually matter for a long, long time. We do it in small amounts, right? Like when prank C bought 1200 board apes, which I think was the actual catalyst to board API clips selling out. Like when he bought 1200 apes, there are what we call prank C apes out there. And so, owning an ape that prank C owned has a value to it, whether that’s why you positive or negative, it has a value to it, and prank C legacy is going to be tied to 1200 apes and the legacy of born ape Yacht Club is always going to be tied to prank C, if you believe the theory that I believe that prank C buying, you know, one 1/8 of the supply of board API club, is what pushed them to sell out in the last few days. Yeah, so provenance matters, people just don’t see it yet.
New Things On Your Radar
Wow. That’s really well put. That’s really, really well put, I haven’t thought about that. I guess, when I, sometimes when I collect stuff, I sort of look at who else bought it. But I’ve never went back in time to kind of further analyze and peel through the layers of seeing who has bought this from the gecko. Right? Like I’ve never, when I collected something, I never sort of thought like, this is a blockchain Brett NFT or this is a cooper music NFT right. Assuming these guys never sell their music NFTs but it actually makes a lot of sense. What you kind of use the analogies comparing it to, the fashion brand and ASAP Rocky, and how they sort of uplift each other’s legacies, as they kind of evolve over time. I think that’s a really, really interesting perspective. I’m curious, before we sort of wrap up like because I feel like we’ve been going like for about like, what, like, an hour in 15 minutes. Now, I think it might be the longest, one of the longest episodes of the season. So what other things are on your radar right now, that you think people should be sort of like paying more attention to, that you’re maybe thinking about, that you haven’t maybe talked about publicly yet? Fill me in on that.
Black Dave: Most immediately on the front of my mind, is enhancing what service base NFTs look like. I’m soon going to be coming out with a platform slash idea that’s specific to me. So, it’s not quite a platform. It’s a platform for me, but I’m thinking about trying to build it maybe as a platform that other people can use called minutes, where you mint NFTs that allow you a certain amount of minutes with someone, whether that’s minutes in consultation, whether that’s minutes in you playing your music for someone, whether that’s minutes in advisement, or anything and you’ll mint an NFT that then granted you token gated access, to schedule meetings on my calendar. That’s something that’s like front of mind for me, because I’m literally building it. I hope to announce it in the next week or so. But consider this the announcement. And so, I am going to be doing that soon. That’s really important.
Let’s go. We got we got Black Dave’s product launch on mint. I love it. All right, yeah.
Black Dave: So, that’s like, that’s really front of mind for me is, how do we continue to enhance the service economy of NFTs. Second to that, something that I have seen. And I think these are the only people doing it, E commerce completely run through smart contracts. The Quantum tech team, they created something called rug supply, it’s rug dot supply, where if you have one of a bunch of different NFT projects, you can get a rug of your NFT. And you pay for it in USDC, you get a soul bound token, that is your receipt and the soul bound token updates with like shipping confirmation, you can actually take a picture of your rug when you get it and put it on the corner of the receipt, which is a soul bound token. I think that that’s really, really cool. I think like, you know, blockchain, and this is what Donald Glover was saying, blockchain is proof of receipt is gonna help with fraud detection. You know, and I think in the same way that you think about Digi mint this from that smart contract, or that smart contract, is the same thing. And so, I think that’s really important. Enhancing the physical to digital experience. I think it’s going to be really important as well, I think burn to claim, should find a way to exit existence. And then I think, lastly, looking at gaming and NFTs, I think a lot, I have a couple of game ideas that I want to try to put into the ether and, and play with.
And then I have one more, curation, I’ve been thinking a lot about curation. Just like for everybody listening, hopefully, in sort of three methods, the idea of curation from like a centralized stance where like, platforms let artists in, and if the platform has that artists are then that sort of like, their sign like that, like we rock with them, thinking about community based, like fully, like community-based curation, where like, I really want to build a platform, where, and I’ve been DMing people about this, but I’m just gonna put it out there. And if someone builds it great, where you can put an NFT up, and then people can rate that NFT and comment on that NFT, whether it’s a song, whether it’s an artwork, whether it’s a collection, whether it’s like let’s say, for instance, you know, as a key, for instance, like if someone could go to the ASCII collection and rate it, and then leave comments on what they think about it, kind of like, like Amazon reviews, but then people can go to specific ASCII NFTs and say, this one has three out of four the same traits as that one.
So, one star, you know, or this one has, this is the only one that has a red shirt, and this hairstyle, five stars, or whatever. I think that that could be really interesting way of curation. Even along the lines of music. This is Dave’s best song, five stars. I think Dave has better songs in this, two stars. I think Dave shouldn’t have used this word. I think the production is great, but the lyrics are weak. I think that that’s going to be a really big thing that allows the mass influencers, to lose power, I think decentralization has an opportunity to give power to people, to individuals. And if individuals can use a tool to empower themselves in mass, then I think that’s really going to change the face of the space. It makes you wonder if your favorite NFT artist is your favorite NFT artist because of the work or because of what an influencer said about it. And if the influencer is the only person who feels that way about it, then you can realize that you’re being gamed by an influencer and have a different feeling on the work or at least approach it from your own individual perspective.
And so, I really want to create some sort of platform that empowers individuals in their opinions and hopefully like we get, you know, true critics right, like real art critic show up and say, you know, I study 3d artwork. I studied generative artwork, and I believe this and then you can go to their profile and see all the generative artwork they’ve reviewed, and really have like people who are becoming influential because of their tastes, because tastes matter so much, another virtual Kanye, like Pat, I think tastes is so important. So those, all of those things are front of mind and then just empowering and enhancing the community for koodos. KOODOS, which is an NFT that I dropped with Matt Monday, that dropped the same week as headless chaos, so it didn’t sell well, but we’re still pushing forward and trying to get that out as far as possible.
Outro
You have really quality ideas. And I’m getting incredibly stimulated just listening to you sort of like think through these problems, and how you could sort of solve them. I’m so upset I haven’t had you on the podcast earlier. I’m really happy we did this episode. We’re gonna have to run it again very soon. But before I let you go Black Dave, where can we find you? Where can we learn more? Where can we stay up to date? Show it away.
Black Dave: I’m at Black Dave on Twitter. I am Black Dave, Black Dave on Instagram. And also, on Tik Tok, I promise I’m going to start using Tik Tok, everyone’s yelling at me. You can head to Black Dave dot XYZ, to check me out, especially on the web three side and then also Black Dave Black Dave.com, to check out some of my music and then I’ll be posting also a lot of my other work because I am a multi-disciplined, creative person. And so, I’ll be showing more of my photo work, more of my video work, more graphic design, etc., etc. So, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I am most active there.
Amazing. Thanks again. We’ll have to do this again soon. But till next time.
Mint Season 6 episode 12 welcomes Jenil Thakker, Founder of Coinvise, an open platform on Ethereum where creators can launch a social & build a tokenized community. For the next half hour we spoke about the launch of the new airdrop tool on coinvise, expectations for the new feature, how the airdrop filter works, and so much more.
I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Time Stamps
00:06 – Intro
01:40 – Membership NFTs
06:00 – The Airdrop Tool
07:21 – Incentivizing Participation
10:04 – Expectations for the Airdrop Feature
13:06 – How the Airdrop Filter Works
14:54 – Thoughts On People Airdrop Hacking
17:11 – The Next Focus for Coinvise
19:14 – ETH Berlin
21:59 – Who Else is Using Sponsorship NFTs?
24:33 – Current State of the Web3 Creator Economy
26:29 – Details for Today’s Announcement
Support Season 6’s NFT Sponsors
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Intro
Jenil, we’re in Berlin. What’s up, man? Welcome to mint, how are you doing? Round three, I think.
Jenil Thakker: Round three.
Yes.
Jenil Thakker: Thank you for having me.
Yes, season one. I think you’re one of the first episodes and then last season we did one on membership NFTs. And then today what are we doing?
Jenil Thakker: Today we’re doing airdrops
Airdrops. Okay.
Jenil Thakker: A new feature on Coinvise is launching, airdrops is our like, most used tool and our oldest tool. When I started Coinvise in about late 2020. Airdrop is the first thing we worked on. It was token creation and Airdrops, but I had about $2,000 in my savings, and we work together to build out Airdrops, I think we worked two weeks, and we shipped a feature out and it was the exact same tool, which we, which we’re upgrading today. It was the claim page. So, anybody could create their own claim page and share it on social media, and you can create like a retroactive Airdrop like platforms can. And now we’ve upgraded Airdrops to three different tools. You can send it to wallet addresses, you can create your own claim page. And you can do NFT Airdrops as well. Yeah.
So, last conversation we had was on membership NFTs and now the focus is on air drops. Why focus on air drops? What opportunity are you seeing?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, I mean, we’re focusing on Airdrops and membership NFTs in conjunction. And we see these two connected in a way where the user can embed Airdrops into membership NFTs. And membership NFTs could be automated with Airdrops as well. And I’m happy to go more deeper into what that looks like. But yeah, those are the two core tools we’re working on today.
Membership NFTs
Okay, cool. So, I remember you guys had a really viral tweet that happened about two months ago, right? When you guys announced membership NFTs, I’m curious sort of how that announcement go like what was the progression since you guys issued membership NFTs and yeah, I guess the next obvious step would be airdrops because once you build a community using membership NFTs, you want to reward, you want to maybe do some marketing, etc. Airdrops are good way to do it. Yeah.
Jenil Thakker: Yeah. So initially, when we did the membership NFT announcement, we wanted to sort of showcase the idea that membership NFT should look like drag and drop sort of utilities that you can plug into sort of like your Patreon tier, which has benefited a series of benefits for, you know, whenever somebody purchases that tier, and they get access to them, what does the web three version of that look like? So, we introduced something called plugins. And those plugins could be access to discord, those plus plugins could be access to events, it could be, you know, you could route some of the funds or revenue to public goods funding, there could be just a number of benefits that you can get, which are all enforced on chain. And one of the benefits or one of the plugins that we designed was Airdrop, because Airdrop is something we’ve been working on for, I don’t know, about a year and a half now. So, we added that as one of the benefits or plugins for membership and NFTs. So, whenever somebody purchases your membership NFT, they automatically get an Airdrop and the same transaction.
And this sort of idea was something that we were trying to communicate with that tweet that it is all like, it’s not like I’m promising something to my community, to my audience. And then there was this missing link that off like sort of accountability, that once I raise a certain amount of Eth, or dollars from a crowd fund, or from selling NFTs, there was no sort of like obligation for me to even add that value six months down the line, two years down the line. And for projects to truly build networks, it was important that a lot of the value was given back to the audience or community on chain and was proven on chain. So, at Coin vise, we decided okay, why don’t we just build use cases and integrate with plugins like that, where you can just give an Airdrop every time somebody purchases an NFT, which is how, which is why that tweet went viral. And obviously now we’re trying to improve Airdrops more than what it is today, which I can obviously.
Yeah, I’m trying to think of like the use cases around why someone wouldn’t, like create an Airdrop right after they claim something. So, like, if you mint NFT, okay, you get that and then you automatically get something sent to your wallet. Right? What are the use cases behind why you would do something that because typically, you just see like phase one of issuing memberships NFTs and then down the line, you see maybe an ERC 20 Get issued as a form of governance, right. As a form of like community currency. Why do them for example, in the same type of transaction or like, like simultaneously?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so a lot of membership NFTs like the word says, they represented access to a community. It was something that wasn’t seen as a mechanism for creating liquidity or using for governance. Maybe they were used for governance, but they were extensively used for access to a private channel in our Discord, or access to a small group of people, right? And Airdrops have community tokens specifically. So, if you have a community and the community ends up having a token, even if you’re a personal creator yourself, you can sort of give those tokens for broader use cases outside of the NFT. So, we saw, before we launched this as a plugin, we saw a lot of people asking us, hey, I want to sort of Airdrop tokens to all the people that invested in us, when we release it, because you sort of want to, like distribute tokens or ownership to people that truly support you. Right? So might as well like sort of create this automation where you having to do it later or even like you having to, like expand use cases to governance, or are you know, like the tokens itself represented as like royalties. Those were made possible with like community tokens are fungible tokens. And this is optional. So, if fungible token is indeed something that comes down the line, and if liquidity is not something you’re thinking about right now, because the community is in its early stages, NFTs memberships alone can be released, and one of the plugins is discord access, which is live right now. You can start creating a discord and automatically people get access when they purchased the NFT.
The Airdrop Tool
Okay, cool. I’m trying to think of like, examples, like in practice, the most iconic Airdrops I think, if you’ve been in the space for long enough is the uniswap Airdrop, right. I remember where I was, when I got that. I think that was like, it was probably the first Airdrop as well, right? 420, uniswap, or spore 20 tokens, I think at some point even got up to like 15k for that, $100, $420 that I got for free. And from that point on, like we had an Airdrop frenzy. That was two summers ago, right. Looking back today, how would you say, cuz you’ve been working on this Airdrop tool for a while now, as you said, how have you seen sort of the evolution of airdrops from like a feature point of view, from a marketing point of view, from a timing point of view, etc.
Jenil Thakker: Yeah. So initially, I mean, like you said, it was uniswap Airdrop, then we saw the ENS Airdrop, and there were a lot of other platforms in between, I think looks rare did an airdrop and a lot of the overarching theme for all these Airdrops was recruitment. There’s a really good article written on speaking about that Airdrops can be used really well for recruitment, whether it’s recruitment of users, for your platform, for community members, for our community, or even recruiting the right people to support your project and become your early community data project.
Incentivizing Participation
Got it. Okay. Got it. So, what does this article actually outline? Because it still doesn’t really create like the initial question was like, how do you create like meaningful connections? Right, right. How do you incentivize long term participation, so that users actually feel like have a voice in whatever system they’re playing in?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah. So, this is the core problem that we are trying to address with Airdrops? version Three, is to date, Airdrops on Coinvise, were similar, very similar to Airdrops, how you’ve seen till today, is you can send tokens to a group of people by creating a claim page or by distributing to wallet addresses. But again, you have to come up with incentives yourself. And you have to like sort of figure out what how you like, give that value back to your community and how value is accrued over a certain period of time. With version three on coin vise, we’ve sort of build templates or plugins. And these plugins are essentially just meaningful forms of contribution or participation. This is the one thing we say in our company a lot, is distribute tokens at the speed of participation. And participation is the core problem. We’re trying to solve with Airdrops because that’s the missing link. And that’s something that you should distribute ownership on, is participate. And that’s how like conditional to participation is how you should distribute tokens.
How would you sort of define participation in an independent creator’s use case?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, I think like it like for independent creators, I think participation is a like some kind of collective effort into a producing media or like helping them produce media or helping expand the network and strengthen that network. Because a lot of times, it’s not, you know, the number of people in the community, they’re more interested in building stronger relationships. So, anything that contributes meaningfully to building that network stronger, or if media is something that you’re producing as an independent creator, if you can sort of crowdsource content in a very high-quality way, you sort of become a really large team that’s collectively building media on the Internet, but a lot of aligned values. And I think that could be really powerful in so many ways, even efficient, with a lot of battery tools that are out there. But Airdrops could be programmed to be distributed to these people that are A, like helping you provide content or helping you filter content and make sure it’s like the right quality or B, helped, like, further strengthen the network. And you can sort of figure out what’s more important to you, but ultimately, what’s always important or what makes somebody hold their token is either the people or the content or the media that you produce.
Right. Yeah, got it, got it. Okay. So right now, we’re in Berlin. It’s basically Berlin blockchain week, Berlin is towards the end of the week. This is the first time we’re meeting. We’ve known each other for over a year.
Jenil Thakker: Over a year.
Expectations for the Airdrop Feature
Over a year. Maybe close to a year and a half. Yeah. You’re the reason one of the main reasons, if not the primary reason why mint got started. I remember you called, or we were talking about doing some type of token project at the time. And you were also looking for people to do marketing, whatever. And I just had left my job at Draper going home to start the podcast. And it’s funny because a lot of why originally quit Draper going home was to start a token-based community for creator and was thinking of using coin vise essentially, as that foundation to sort of launch the token, build a community around it, etc. And I’m curious how you sort of, and that was about a year and a half ago. So how are Airdrops being used then, right? And now with this new feature that you’re introducing, how do you expect them to be used now?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so Airdrops before were used for rewarding soft contributions, and rewarding community specific interactions that were, hey, go retweet this tweet. Hey, help me moderate this discord call or hey, why don’t you sort of help manage our community, and we will sort of give you X amount of returns every month. So, there were sort of community specific actions that were rewarded with tokens. And what we realized is A, Airdrops should be participation first, and because these tokens are valuable, and they often represent ownership in our community, even though they’re utility tokens, so even if they’re non liquid tokens, what are some ways which are meaningful forms of participation that you can scope out, they can sort of be applied to a lot of the creator communities that we work with today. Right? So, we sort of made a list. And some of the used cases that really stood out for airdrops was a, this week’s something we’ve seen with platforms to but vampire attacks, I think vampire attacks, has been like the overarching theme of like, go to market strategy for a lot of individuals, creators, platforms, this is our sushi swap became is because of the vampire deck. And essentially, for people who don’t know vampire attack is essentially when a sushi swap, did Airdrop tokens to people, I think that were uniswap liquidity, LP token holders. And now you if you go to coin vise, you can essentially just fetch any token, so you can put in, let’s say, bankless Dao. And it’ll return all the tokens of a bankless Dao holder, and you can Airdrop them tokens directly to their wallet. So, we’ve sort of built plugins for popup. So, you can get all the people that hold a particular popup, all you have to do is just put in an ID, or you can put, you can get all the people that voted for a snapshot proposal. So, you can just put in the proposal ID, or you can get all any kind of token holder, token NFT or like reward participation on Twitter. And all these tools are like all no code. So, before we saw people, like manually trying to fetch these addresses, and then Airdrop them, but now you can just put in the token, or putting the Popup ID or snapshot ID for governance, and you can Airdrop them tokens for meaningful contribution.
How the Airdrop Filter Works
Got it. So, I like how you sort of segmented the Airdrop tool around either a certain action or a certain sort of filter, right? I’m curious how to what extent this filter sort of go. So, can I find people who were a part of bankless, who also signed signatures, who have about X amount in their wallet, right? And extract that accordingly?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so this is exactly the idea is when you look at the optimism Airdrop, they also had certain conditions on what made you a valuable member to the optimism collective. Right. And one of them was, you should be a good coin grantee, you should have participated in their governance proposals, you should have been, like, you know, participated on the optimism network. So, what makes you valuable as a community member is, a that you’ve participated in any form of their governance, snapshot has been by far the most popular. And even when we did user interviews, the requests for a lot of these like, hey, I want you to automate X and reward Y tokens. Right? They range from like really wide, like really like way things like hey, I want to distribute tokens for them having to do some kind of work. So that was like bounties or D work. All the way to like really specific is like if they read this article on my website, I wanted to distribute them tokens. So, we sort of had to find a middle ground on what was possible and what was like, what is something that we can do on chain at scale for multiple communities. So, popup. I mean, if you think about it for creative communities, hosting events is the best way to build and strengthen relationships. So, we saw most of the events that we attended or even studied. popups were one tool that they used almost every single time.
Thoughts On People Airdrop Hacking
It’s like, go back to the events point of view. Like I haven’t seen too many creators sort of throw events and races from like individual creators, music creators, whatever. Maybe they don’t need to, maybe it’s very much irrelevant to them. But one sort of group that continuously does events that I just like always remember like Ravi like Ave, right? There’s DEF CON happening in Colombia and a few months, they’re doing a Ave. It’s like such a cool way to bring people together. But also meet developers, right? Show them a good time, celebrate, do all these things. And now they can maybe even take it one step further, by kind of like everybody that sort of kind of like attend all Ave events, being able to extract that information in a very seamless way, okay, cool. I’m also trying to think in terms of bots, because all these civil attacks, they’re very real. And there’s certain groups that are sort of dedicated to Airdrops and they built like insane bot communities and yeah, fake profiles and fake addresses, etc. What do you have to say to those people?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, I think it’s a very real problem, which is why we’ve like carefully selected some of the templates we’ve built on how you sort of get those addresses and how you can sort of combine all of these conditions together. So snapshot, it’s very difficult to do a bot attack, even though, even if you could, participating, or like doing a bot attack on a particular proposal and making it sort of go one way or the other. And then once you win. you sort of get air dropped is extremely difficult to do. Same thing with popups if you went to Rave. And if you have the popup, it’s really difficult to acquire that popup, if you were at rate, right. So, we sort of built like, we’re going slow in the sense that we’ve built these considering like bots in the first place, and otherwise, like the previous version of coin vise, was very open ended. So, you could do a lot of these things. And I think that’s when it was like a huge problem. But now, you can sort of choose and you can just select these, and these are, like pre-configured for you right out of the box. So, you can like do multiple conditions, you can say you must have attended Ravi, you must have voted in this proposal, you must hold 75 FWB and you must be like, let’s say a gitcoin grantee. And if you mix those, no, I mean, it’s really difficult to satisfy all of those, right?
The Next Focus for Coinvise
Yeah, cuz like you’d have to actually be a human to do those things. Okay, interesting. So, membership NFTs, Airdrops, what do you imagine being the next focus?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so the idea is to go deeper into Airdrops and membership NFT. The premise of coin vise is to build no code tools. So, building communities is easier. And we want to sort of we’ve mean, over the past 1.5 years, we’ve identified that to be able to build start and just grow networks in general Airdrops and membership NFTs play a crucial role. membership NFTs is a great way to start out. So, if you’re just starting out, you might launch membership NFTs that would attract your early community. You will progressively do Airdrops as in when they participate more. So that’s A, acquisition and B, retention with airdrops, and you continue doing that over a period of time for different meaningful forms of participation. So, that’s exactly what we’re going to do with coin vise, we’re going to add more plugins for memberships. So that right now, you have you can add in an Airdrop add an access to discord as a benefit. And obviously, you can add custom benefits to your tiers. But you could in future, you’d be able to add like you get access to events online and watch in person, you get access to, let’s say, some kind of media or content, because a lot of creators produce content, you just drag and drop that into your tier, and we make sure that you sort of are able to token gate that. Same thing for Airdrops, we want people to be able to do Airdrops similar to how ENS or a lot of these platforms are doing but in a very meaningful way. So, you can add these conditions, like I just mentioned, and we’re going to add more and more of these plugins, you can think of it like similar to Zapier, where we build these integrations, so that it’s easier for you to build a community.
So, it feels like a marketplace, essentially.
Jenil Thakker: Yeah.
Like a plug-in store, essentially.
Jenil Thakker: It’s just a variety of used cases. And we just want to like show our users used cases when they go to our platform because before it was just, they had to come up with use cases. But now they just see all the used cases right in front of them and you just drag and drop like Lego blocks.
ETH Berlin
Yeah, very cool. I like that. That’s like a big focus on like user experience, a big focus on like on product because we lack, I still think we lacked like really good products. In crypto consumer facing products. Yeah, man. This is super cool. Super exciting. What’s on your agenda for Eth Berlin?
Jenil Thakker: So, for Eth Berlin, I mean, this week is really important to us because we’re releasing Airdrops version three. We’re releasing a billion glorious music NFTs. This is one of the first used cases of music NFTs going live on coin vise. He’s going to be doing his sort of Patreon style subscription tiers for access to his content, all via coin vise so you can pay in Eth, and you get access to a lot of his content, as well as a lot of the music albums that he’s going to be producing in future, we’re also doing membership NFTs. And going live with Eth vest Dao, which is an investment Dao based out of LA. And their membership NFTs are now live on coin vise, you can go to Eth members on coin vise and check it out. And then we are doing membership NFTs with rider. And these are like sort of sponsorship. So, they’re hosting an event in the future, which obviously everybody will learn more about. But they’re raising their funds for this, for the event with sponsorships. And all the sponsors can go to coin vise get the NFTs. And for like coined those NFTs, they get a certain amount of benefits, visibility. Sponsorship is also very interesting used case that we see over and over again, because most of these events that you see in crypto are funded via sponsorships, even like content that is produced today. If you’re writing a premium newsletter, a lot of the sort of funds are raised by riders from sponsorships today, believe it or not. So, I think that was also a really interesting avenue for us to explore.
How did you figure out that correlation riders bring in a lot of the sponsorships just like newsletter ads?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, I mean, we saw like a lot of the newsletters that I read or even if like you talk to you or go over a lot of the top 10, top 20 publications, most of the people if you look at them, I think, I forgot the number, but you can actually contact them. And some of them, you know have them on their about page, is you can sort of get featured on their newsletter because they get certain views. And that’s how they, that’s like an additional source of revenue that they have in addition to subscriptions.
Okay, so you see sponsorship NFTs as being a?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, something’s going on. I mean, I just think that this is one of those areas, which is a bit more under explored. And this is one of those early used cases where sponsorship NFTs could be used as a way for creators and communities to get funding or even, like attract people from the outside to work with.
Who Else is Using Sponsorship NFTs?
So, I’ve been using sponsorship NFT since episode one, your first person to collect my first sponsorship NFT. And I think I’ve given it like over 15 today across six seasons or something, which is crazy to think about. And a really cool concept because all revenue for me has been on chain, since like day zero. And I haven’t really seen anybody really explore like sponsorship based NFTs like NFT that unlocks a certain level of utility, if collected. For me, though, I kind of see it as the as like my sort of steppingstones to building some type of on chain community in the future. And these brands playing a role beyond just sending me money, right? And me just like promoting the brand kind of thing, like they have something to collect for them to see that they were part of the community, for the community to see who else is collecting alongside them. Right? Yeah, super, super cool. Have you seen any other communities sort of mingle and like mess around with the sponsorship NFTs?
Jenil Thakker: Of course.
So, is it, but is it just from the point of view of just like sending money on chain to then receive utility or do they get an NFT in return?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so this is perfect segue. We just did FWB fest. And coin vise was one of the sponsors in FWB fest. And that was a perfect example of what sponsorship NFTs could look like. Being like one of the partners of FWB fest, we got to Airdrop NFT’s to people that attended the fest and even attended some of the sessions. As well as like, it was a great way for us to get utility because we were physically at the event, we hosted a workshop, we sort of got access to a wider community of artists, that we’re all there in person. And we could do like a session on what coin vise has to offer. So as a brand, and as somebody working with FWB I think it was a great opportunity for us to explore like what sponsorship NFTs could look like. And once we started like seeing more of those examples with like, I started radar, which is going live this week, and a few other communities’ refraction is one of them, refraction as an events community. There’s so many other Daos, even pizza Dao, a lot of these communities, if you like sort of scope out and see where does the Treasury come from? Sponsorship NFTs is like, are just sponsorship or advertisement revenue that creators do for brands is like huge portion of it. And I think that could be an interesting used case of membership NFTs themselves. Because when you’re sort of working with a brand, you’re like, that’s your acquisition costs. That’s your community building cost. So, I think like that’s something that could unlock a lot more potential. So, I’m interested in seeing what it’s got.
Current State of the Web3 Creator Economy
Yeah, really, really cool. I still think sponsorship based NFTs are super early. Yeah. Let alone NFTs in general of course. Yeah, I’m curious for you to also like to also hear your point of view of, you’ve been in the creative economy space building web three for a minute. What have you seen sort of the vibe is right now? Considering we’re in a bear market, in terms of like creators doing new projects, funding all these other cool things that are happening in and around like creators?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, I think like, if you look, ask anybody, it’s like one of the ones difficult times for funding But I think like, some of the, I guess gaps are wide, if you look at just scope out for projects, and web three, one of them is like messaging. Messaging has been the weakest link in web three for a really long time. So, I think we’re starting to see like better UX and better UI, but also, that should be in conjunction with real used cases. So, seeing a lot of used cases evolve is something that I’m really interested in seeing. And one of them that I’m seeing is with yield XYZ, they’re doing membership management. And that was, it was one of those first platforms that showed us that, if you show people use cases in a templatized way, where everything comes out of the box, and you can sort of create unique things out of it, I think that was like something very powerful. And that showed the message. So, I think more of that, where you don’t work against, but you sort of work with a lot of the platforms that are complementary to you. And that was a great article, like it goes way back in the 90s, on how dungeons and dragons evolved. And Joel Spolsky wrote an article on commoditize your compliment, which is very popular, is essentially saying every platform that are or every tool that plays complementary to do, you sort of commoditize that, and what ends up leaving is sort of the core value that you end up adding. And that’s the best way to build a community, which is how dungeons and dragons became one of the biggest games in history.
Details for Today’s Announcement
Got it. Super exciting stuff. Really, really cool. I’m excited to see how people sort of integrate their membership NFT on coin vise, now with Airdrops and sort of like what the evolution is from here, I guess before we wrap this up and go into our time at Eth, Berlin, any last words? What sort of details do we need to know for this announcement that’s dropping today?
Jenil Thakker: Yeah, so, Ardrops version three, the biggest part, our biggest change for Airdrops for claim page and sending tokens to multiple wallet addresses. I guess for multiple wallet addresses. If you’re sending them tokens directly to their wallet. Now you have the option to essentially just type in the token, and it’ll send you all the token holders. And it works for tokens, it works for NFT. So, you can say, give me all the people that hold crypto punks. And also give me all the people that hold more than 75 FWB and you can pick and choose multiple of these options and snapshot popup. And you can sort of curate what kind of audience you’re trying to reach out to and then distribute tokens and you can do it progressively in a continuous way because token distributions are meant to be done again and again. Like I said, distribute tokens at the speed of participation. So, I think that’s something that keep an eye out for if you’re going to coin vise, try to just play around with it and see like what makes sense for your community. Maybe try to curate and send tokens people that actually add value and then even for claim pages you can say you must hold this NFT to claim this Airdrop, you must hold these popups, you can add as many conditions as you want. So, I guess check it out. All these conditions and ways to get these addresses are live. It’s all no code. And now you can create your Airdrop in seconds.
Amazing. Congratulations with the drop. Congratulations and the announcement. This was fun as always, third episode. Can’t wait for the fourth one. But yeah, man, thanks for being on.
Mint Season 6 episode 11 welcomes Rantum – The blockchain data wizard whose work can be seen across Art Blocks, Uniswap Grants, and writer at the Our Network newsletter.
Our theme for the next half hour revolves around on-chain data; specifically, how creators can use on-chain data to build stronger communities. We outline various metrics you should consider tracking, Rantums mental model for analyzing dashboards, and so much more.
Time Stamps
00:37 – Intro
03:41 – On-chain Data Tool Set
05:12 – Interoperability in Web3
08:07 – Key Dashboards for Web3 Communities
11:08 – How Many Communities Actively Use On-chain Data?
13:22 – Rantum’s Analytics Structure
16:04 – Using Data vs. Trusting Your Gut
21:17 – Anonymous NFT Ownership and Zero-Knowledge Technology
24:55 – Trends in the Web3 Creator Economy
26:38 – Metrics Web3 Communities Should Measure
29:14 – How Can Creators Become More Data-Informed?
31:22 – Outro
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Rantum, welcome to mint podcast. Thank you for being on, special guests of season six, all things on chain data. How are you doing, man?
Rantum: I’m doing great. Very excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
I feel like an idiot. I’ll tell you why I feel like an idiot. Because when I was planning season six, I was like, okay, I want to do an on-chain data type of topic. And I should have looked at the wizards on dune. And then I came across the wizards of dune after I announced the season, and there you were in the top five created too many dashboards, you can count. So, I’m seriously stoked to have you on. I think a good place to start here.
Rantum: Say that you looked at that.
Intro
You got it. All right. A good place to start is, who are your Rantum? What does the world need to know about you? And I’m specifically interested, like, how did you get your start into crypto?
Rantum: All right, so let’s see, I’ve been working in crypto in data, crypto data analytics for about a year and a half now, get started early 2021, had been, you know, interested in crypto, held crypto assets before but hadn’t really been actively participating in it other than, you know, I mean, I had different tokens, you know, held them but not much more than that. Started getting interested more in NFTs actually, and that’s what kind of drew me in initially, with some top shot over their initial summer when they were first out before a crazy, before it got crazy. And then got into sort of like the art side of NFTs. Before I was working in crypto, I was working in E commerce, consulting with other many companies, working in marketing, with web marketing with data analytics in that area, and saw an opportunity to kind of transition some of those skills over to blockchain data. So started making some dashboards on doing analytics and kept making them and some of them have gotten me a lot of stars and moved me up those ranks and help some people to find me once in a while.
I also know you’re like a collector, I checked out your open sea profile is from what’s public. And you’ve got a ton of NFTs as well. So, I guess kind of seeing your interest from the top shot days, and then kind of seeing all these things that you’ve collected. And now being actually an active contributor, I consider your contributions as like, you’re like a participant in a Dao. And I think Daos and communities have different levels of participation. And being able to create dashboards is just like another one of those elements of participation that I would sort of argue is super important. I’m curious, though, of everything to kind of get involved in, why the data side of things? Because you seem to spend a lot of your energy on that side.
Rantum: Yeah, I mean, part of it was that I was already interested in that side of it. And then the other part is that once you start looking into this, there’s just endless amounts of data to keep looking at, I wasn’t used to looking at, to work with data from individual companies. And you know, it’s very siloed data, you could maybe get some metrics of what other companies were doing. But it really was an open data that anybody could use. And obviously, we have a very different case with blockchain data that anybody can go and access this data, anybody can use it. Very different case that we have here. And I found that really interesting. You know, you can look at all of these different things, both from whether, you know, whether it’s a collector perspective, we are looking at tokens, but we are also as a creator looking at all this information is such a different world that we lived in with siloed web two data.
On-chain Data Tool Set
So, when you look at the current, like tooling landscape for data applications, and you sort of think about the different tools that are available for people to sort of either understand their communities, to either build communities, to understand certain metrics, what does your tool stack look like right now, beyond dune?
Rantum: So, dunes do is my number one and is still. I use that pretty much daily. And I well, definitely had to work with the open sea, API, quite a bit. I mean, you know.
It’s painful.
Rantum: It’s interesting, because, you know, we do have this, all of this public data, but then we know, we still have a lot of siloed data, and that, you know, open sea data, at least is available via API, but really, that all sorts of different marketplaces out there. And if you’re trying to look at that off chain data, in NFT, specific you’d be looking at listings. Could be hitting listings are the big thing that you’re looking for NFTs and they can be all over the place with different marketplaces popping up. So, you know, trying to come to kind of wrangle that data in you know, different cloud databases for them, although, it seems there our new tools coming or new options coming or features coming to dune that make that easier to access right in their platform.
Interoperability in Web3
Got it. Okay. So, I want to talk to you about, like a lot of this conversation on where like data meets the creator economy in web three, and how creators should sort of be thinking about data. And I think a big trend that we’re sort of seeing recently is this concept of community interoperability, building identity, credentialing, all these sorts of keywords that I guess we didn’t really see a couple of years back, especially when NFTs weren’t at the sort of like premieres type of spotlight in crypto as they are today. How do you sort of understand the concept of community interoperability audience, interoperability in web three? What does that really mean? you can also take it from a point of view of either user being the platform, and they don’t really need to rely on sort of like creating value on platforms like they are the platform in crypto, right? It can also be taken from the point of view of understanding like you can take your audience, wherever you go, sort of in platforms are building around this interoperable, this open transparent ledger that possesses all this information. You know, what I mean? How do you see it?
Rantum: Yeah, I mean, so I guess I do see, I see that audiences can move around, you will see that, you know, for artists, you will see them produce on many different platforms. But there are artists are following them around. You know, when I’m looking at artists, specifically, if I look at someone like Kody, one of my favorite artists, he might produce on nifty gateway, on his own contract, super rare. And it’s different. It may be different audiences at some degree, but it’s really, it’s the same base audience that’s kind of following him from platform to platform, and it’s less, you know, there’s some importance on the platform, but less importance on the specific platform to bring, to go find that community rather than just bringing that community with him to that, to these other platforms, and even enabling people to maybe use what they’ve already collected in the past to get access. And I think that’s something that we’re really seeing, too, that you can, you can use what the audiences have already collected, what they’ve done in the past, actions that you could see on the blockchain and allow more when you move forward with another collection, it doesn’t even have to be on that same platform.
Key Dashboards for Web3 Communities
Yeah, that makes sense. As an analyst, and someone who spends a lot of time creating dashboards, either for your own interests, or for sort of to help communities. What are some of the first few sorts of dashboards you create, to help the community understand who their users are?
Rantum: So I tried to give tools that, I really tried to make data more accessible in general, I mean, that’s one of things that I like to do with these, with my dashboards is build them as tools that others can use, be able to plug contracts and plug contract addresses in or plug different wallet addresses, and be able to build something that people can then look into more, when trying to give insight to an audience for NFTs specifically, looking at what other collections they might hold, what else they have in their wallet. And trying to look at that from a collection wide standpoint, you know, get ideas of what is this collector base interested in, what other things are trying to find the overlap? You know, that’s definitely something that I look at.
Got it. Okay. And when you sort of create these dashboards for communities, what tends to be like the most common metrics that you sort of look at and that you measure across either community like to measure like community’s health, to measure community’s engagement, and things around that nature?
Rantum: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s one we’re still developing a lot, you know, trying to understand how much engagement is there because it’s really different for different communities, you know, how much you want someone to be active, at least on chain. You know, we wouldn’t think that some issues in the NFT world where a lot of a lot of revenue is coming from royalties. And that requires people to be selling, you know, and if people aren’t selling, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the collection. So, you know, still trying to get some of that, you know, where is the engagement? How do you gauge engagement? But I think that looking at, I mean, obviously, looking at the trends over time, price trends, also, how many holders there may be of a particular token or NFT collection? You know, if you see that falling off over time, that’s, you know, generally people are getting less interested. I mean, there are cases where you can see that people are, the existing community members, may be becoming more excited about the project, but usually see that, you can easily pick that out a little bit better. And that’s ultimately knowing who those holders are, are they new to the ecosystem or they existing holders?
How Many Communities Actively Use On-chain Data?
How many communities do you actually see using on chain Data actively? Like, the day-to-day process of building a community, trying to create unique experiences? Or is it very much like the top 1% of communities actually use data, despite all the dashboards that are out there?
Rantum: Good question. For community building, I don’t know that they’re being utilized all that much yet. I think that we’re at a point where there’s, you know, there’s so much opportunity that people are running ahead, right now to try to get somewhere before, you know, before all the competitors do, and that the small, some of the small data differences aren’t quite coming into play yet, I think they’ll become a lot more interesting as people start really taking the time to dig into them. I think there’s a ton there for artists, for creators, especially when you start looking at what people are doing. Otherwise, I know, you’ve talked about it on your podcast, how you’ve used it, use data, and with your own tool to find what your audience was interested in. And I think that’s such a smart thing that many people are not doing yet.
Interesting. Why don’t you think many people are doing that yet? Like what’s missing here?
Rantum: Good question. I think some of it may be, Oh, well, I mean, sort of, was the first point, you know, that I think people are running to stake their claim to different areas, but, you know, areas within this ecosystem, but you know, I think the other side is, it’s still thought of as maybe more difficult than it needs to be, I think there’s this idea that blockchain data must be really difficult to decipher. And, you know, it’s much easier to just use these, you know, look at open sea history or something for NFTs or to, you know, occasionally, you know, go scan, very easy to read things. And, you know, the truth is, I think a lot of these dashboards, a lot of these tools have made it very accessible, and people should start taking more time to look into this.
Rantum’s Analytics Structure
You know, for me, I see the biggest setback with creators and communities trying to use data is trying to understand what action they can take, by understanding and looking at that data. And my next question to you is, do you yourself have a mental model? It’s one thing to create a dashboard. It’s another thing to understand what to do with that information. Do you have a mental model yourself as to how you analyze information, whether it be a pie chart, whether it be a bar graph, whether it be a light, whatever the media may be? Do you have a specific structure as to how you approach things?
Rantum: Yeah, I think one of the reasons that my NFT dashboard specifically have become so popular is because I am active as an NFT trader, and I look at them much, trying to use it for my own purposes. And I think by looking at what some of the other dashboards were out there, when I first started creating them, they weren’t, it seemed like they weren’t getting into some of the details that traders would need. And it’s much more about kind of volumes and total transaction numbers, but that doesn’t really mean a lot to, when you’re making an individual sale, I think a lot of these like a lot of metrics out there are giving you total volume numbers and I don’t know that that means a lot, especially when you’re not looking at, it just some of the more detailed metrics that are happening looking at things like how many, I mean, how many sales is that really? How many, what’s the collection size? And how much what’s the liquidity in a particular project? I mean, you know, I think a lot of times these big numbers, whether it’s Eth, or dollar, or you know, whatever other numbers are used kind of as a, you know, this big shock number, and it doesn’t always mean a whole lot, you know, for praises is definitely something that you can look at more, NFTs that’s used often. And I think there’s even more than that, you know, when we see that there’s little volume over at all. And he just said that don’t use volume, but trying to see volume or turnover over time inventory turnover, how fast is a collection moving? Trying to get a better idea and some of the details of a particular collection?
Using Data vs. Trusting Your Gut
Sure. I think also another element to that is like, going back to the question of, there’s a lot of data out there, but why communities? Maybe not why, but maybe the argument is like a lot of communities maybe aren’t tapping into that data on a regular basis. I want to pick your brain, another tangent of that is like, how do you find the balance between using data to make a decision versus sort of following your gut? What does that balance, that trade off look like?
Rantum: Yeah, man, I wish I had a very good answer for that, because I think it is really hard right now. You know, somewhat, there is so much data, and I think you can use it to inform decisions. It doesn’t, you know, I don’t rely 100% on data. You know, I don’t think that’s even possible. So, you know, trying to weigh those other, I don’t know, because those metrics that can’t be measured as well. And is definitely tougher in this industry, especially when, you know, I think you probably know, how much sentiment plays a factor NFTs and crypto in general. You know, I think, you know, I do actually try to keep an idea of that, you know, what is the center, what is the market sentiment overall, and try to keep an idea, you know, my falling into something when I’m making a decision, am I trying to confirm something that I’m hearing out there or my final, you know, trying to look at this objectively?
Another thing I want to know about you, Rantum is like, what is a day in your sort of life look like? Because I see you’ve created so many dashboards, you’re obviously living on dune, you study data consistently. When you sort of create these dashboards and you’re like, you’re waking up in the morning, like, it’s the first thing that you’re doing sort of like building a dashboard, or trying to find something new to create?
Rantum: I think I get what you’re asking there. I mean, I looked at a lot of my dashboards, I tried to build dashboards that mean something to me, when I do look at them in the morning trying to get an idea of what’s been going on, you know, both in crypto and prices, token prices, you know, as you know, there’s often surprises when you wake up, so like to know what’s going on a bit and build those dashboards. You know, there’s a lot of maintenance in dashboards and whether it’s because of you know, whether it’s a dune, whether it’s dune updates or upgrades, upgrades still require some work. But also, open sea changes, different NFT marketplaces coming up. And as much as there’s, as much as I’d like to rely on, on chain data, there’s still a lot of manual data that needs to be put into dune right now. A lot of collection names need to be put in there. So, you know, update a lot of those things on my own. So, I also work, do some work for art block right now. So, make a few internal dashboards for them, less collector, focused and more internal for them when they’re trying to reconcile royalties and things like that. So those are always fun getting little different and find those but, you know, I like trying to build these dashboards that can be used over and over again, and no matter what, there’s always maintenance that needs to happen. And then, you know, when thing, when new protocols, everyone new collections come out, definitely try to dig into that a little bit more and see what’s going on.
Anonymous NFT Ownership and Zero-Knowledge Technology
Right. I also want to talk to you about, like, new technology that’s emerging in the ecosystem. I remember if Vitalik recently proposed, like a stealth address for anonymous NFT ownership. I’m curious if you have any thoughts around sort of that area, and also like with the introduction of like, zero knowledge technology, how that would influence future usage and analysis of on chain data?
Rantum: Yeah, I thought about that, you know, and then one of things that has attracted me, like I said, it is interesting is the openness of data. But I also think that there is some need for some privacy. I know that there’s times where I don’t necessarily want anybody that’s paying me to see every single transaction that I’ve done. You know, it’s a little hard once the wallets public and you know, I think that there will become, there will be, solutions will become more easy to access and not having to go through OFAC. Yeah, things against their terms anyway. But you know, so I think that summons will change. And I do wonder how much it changes once people, once kind of the blockchain park gets pushed a little bit more to the back end, I think right now people have a pretty good understanding of what it means to have your wallet public and people that are in it, it’s a pretty small number of people, it takes a lot of steps. And you almost have to interact with some of the underlying tech. And it makes you a little bit more aware of this. So, I do wonder what happens when this becomes pushed kind of to the, where people can’t see it, when you’re just opening an app on your phone, and it’s running on the blockchain. You don’t think about this. I do wonder how people, what people will expect for data privacy at that point? You know, so I think that will, we’ll see some shifts here, we may get to a point where we’re seeing more, you know, we’ll see a lot of maybe, you know, the second layer two type of activity rolled up, that you can’t see quite as well, can’t see individually as well, as you can some of the big transactions on the Ethereum network.
So, what happens when that happens? Like what what do you do, as someone who spend so much time on doing, someone who analyzes data and uses these tools as a way to kind of find your contribution in the space?
Rantum: You know, I think, I think one thing to keep in mind is, if we can, if we do have good privacy solutions, that there’s still going to be standardized. And it won’t be quite as much as you know, build a website, and now you’ve got to go figure out all your analytics, and all your data is going to look different, it’s still going to be, going to be standardized. And, you know, maybe it won’t be public, but it’s still there for companies, that companies, creators, whatever that are ready to, use that data. It’s a little bit more, you know, probably a little more. And I wouldn’t say it’s web two, because I think you’re getting user data, but you’re not getting at that point, you wouldn’t be you wouldn’t know the individual person. So, it provides a lot more privacy for individuals, but I think there’s still a lot of data that you can work with publicly and be able to take steps to improve your audience.
Trends in the Web3 Creator Economy
Yeah. The next thing I want to talk to you about is, I guess like the current state of where we are in the creator economy, you obviously spent a lot of time collecting stuff yourself. You spent a lot of time analyzing communities. What are some interesting trends, insights, notable things that have sort of sparked your curiosity or attention that you’ve discovered by being on chain data analyst?
Rantum: Let’s see. So, in real life events, I think are really big for blockchain communities. I think that those, that’s somebody that’s really helped, I’ve helped a lot of communities that I’ve seen, grow more and even grow together a little bit further than you could online I think, you know, these online communities are great for bringing people together. But also, people want to get together in real life. And I’ve seen that in many different communities that mentioned that I do some work for our blocks, they do. They do event of they’re doing a big event in Marfa, Texas, but they’ve done some other events. More with bright moments as another company, I’ve worked with a gallery down in, based in Venice Beach, but they’ve, been going around to New York, or Berlin, London, next month in Mexico City coming up, art block as well. And I see that that brings a lot more people out. And you see people from different cities and different kind of coming out from the crypto communities that are there. And I think that’s, I mean, I got into a lot of this when we were all standing inside and you know, like many of us, and you know, I definitely appreciate getting together with people.
Metrics Web3 Communities Should Measure
Right. Interesting. That’s another like, okay, now it’s about to spark a side tangent. All right, what metrics do you look at to sort of measure community togetherness, and how different wallet addresses are interacting within one another amongst one another? Right? And I guess I asked that question, because when you’re looking at on chain data, or when you’re looking to understand how your community is performing primary sales, secondary sales, total volume look like these things can only say so much. But if you’re trying to build longevity, right, you want to see how your community sort of interacting amongst themselves, right? Are there any metrics or anything that you’ve sort of seen or worked on that indicate kind of like the strengthening of a community?
Rantum: You know, I don’t think I have, it’s a good question. I think those are some good metrics to start measuring. You know, I think right now we’re, when we’re looking at these, we’re looking at things like vote, you know, people are participating in votes. And governance. You can see that on chain, I wouldn’t say that that’s a, you know, great indicator of people coming together. Although I do think that participation in votes is a sign of at least people paying attention as it usually doesn’t take all that much to sign the transaction and do that. I think that is, that’s something I’ve worked on, actually, with the uniswap team, we’ve looked at a lot of issues around the governance there and how much participation there is because there are cases. I mean, they had an issue where there was nearly an improvement proposal passed, that was not there, very favorable to the community. And that was one where there just weren’t very, very many people voting at a certain point. So, I think that is something that is important. And it’s nice to see, I think we’re still coming up with more, we need to come up with more ways to gauge how communities are evolving over time. I do. I think we’re probably; it seems like we kind of need to have off chain data linked with on chain in some way. I mean, when we’re looking at, when we’ve got most of the activity for these communities happening in discord and more Twitter, you gotta start looking at those, when you’re looking at community activity that more than just on chain activity.
How Can Creators Become More Data-Informed?
Got it. Okay, the last question that I have for you, before we wrap up is, in the beginning, we talked about how communities they’re using data, but maybe not as frequent as they should, right? And for it could be for many different reasons. My question to you is, how can one become a more data informed creator, more data informed founder, more data informed community builder? What do you think about that?
Rantum: So, I think every creator, every artist should have some kind of dashboard of their own. When I’m thinking about an NFT artists. You know, I’m thinking about artists that are all over the place on different platforms. I think that having a dashboard for, can give so much insight both to the creator and to the audience, you can see, when we’re talking about all these different blockchain assets, you can see where they all are, where they’re trading. And, yeah, it may not all be about trading, but it’s nice to know where they are and what people are doing with them. And, you know, I think when you certainly get that, as a creator, you can start understanding who the people are, who are they, what else are they doing on chain? What other collections might they have? What other tokens do they have? Are they new wallets? Are they, you know, is there a long history there? And, you know, I think it’s even worth just reaching out directly to some of them. I think, in many cases, when you see that, you know, if someone has a lot of assets that you’ve put out, you know, definitely worth reaching out and seeing what brought them to you. And you can find more of that. I think right now, you know, like you said, there’s a little bit of a problem, what do you do with some of this data? And I think we are, you know, we’re at the point that it’s a little bit of you got to get creative with it. Figure out what to go do with it. But I think really understanding it kind of digging into it and understanding it will kind of spark ideas if you’re in that mindset anyway.
Outro
That’s super interesting. Rantum, before I let you go, where can we find you? Where can we find your work? I know you’re also a contributor to our network, as well. I saw that in your bio. Yeah, show it away, where can we learn more and stay in touch?
Rantum: Yeah, I’m Rantum bits on Twitter. And you can find me also Rantum dot XYZ is my site. And yeah, reach out, if you have any questions about data analytics.
Mint Season 6 episode 10 welcomes Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa who rejoins Mint to debut his new venture Coop Records backed by a $10 million funding round to double on his love for supporting music artists and early-stage crypto startups. I feel like we’re gonna look back at this episode as an iconic moment in his career as he sets the example for what he calls an Artist Seed Round.
Time Stamps
00:43 – Introducing Coop Records
03:57 – Angel Investing
07:41 – Cooper’s Investment Thesis
09:21 – Early DeFi Days and Shit Coin Trading
14:10 – How Do You Evaluate Which Creators to Bet On?
19:45 – What Are You Excited to Invest In That Doesn’t Exist in Today’s Market?
23:40 – The Ideal Artist or Founder to Invest In
25:57 – Cooper”s Vision For the Next 10 Years
28:27 – What is an Artist Seed Round?
33:27 – The Value Of Ownership
36:45 – What is the Average Size Check Artist’s Will Be Getting?
38:31 – How Are You Measuring Success For an Artist?
41:13 – Comparing Coop Records to a Traditional Record Label
45:59 – What is the Current State of Web3 Music?
47:22 – The General Playbook For a New Artist Coming Into the Space Today
49:19 – Thoughts on Free NFTs
56:42 – What is the Music NFT Launchpad?
58:50 – What Does the Curriculum Look Like For New Artists Joining the Cohort?
01:00:45 – How Did You Curate the First Cohort?
01:05:50 – What’s Next For Cooper?
01:10:27 – Outro
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Coop, welcome back to mint. What’s up, bro? How are you doing?
Cooper Turley: I’m doing wonderful, man. Thank you for having me back on.
Of course, man, always welcomed on. I want to start with, what the hell have you been up to since Eth Denver? We recorded an episode at Eth Denver in person. It was one of my first few in person episodes, it was a great episode, got a ton of downloads. But I know you’ve been up to a lot of stuff. And there’s a reason why we’re here today. So, I don’t want to introduce it, you should just go ahead and introduce it. And it’ll be that great moment to just kick off the episode.
Cooper Turley: Yeah, well, I want to start by saying that I’m proud to announce that I’ve raised the $10 million fund to invest in the future in music. It’s called Coop records. And it’s now live in business.
Introducing Coop Records
I wish I had one of those studio audience clapping and whatnot. All right, dude, big moment, big moment, I see the smile on your face. You’re obviously super proud about it. I’m honored for you to release it on the podcast, too. Let’s start with, what the hell is Coop records? What should we expect right now?
Cooper Turley: Coop records is a fund to invest in the next generation of music, what that means is investing in platforms and protocols. It’s investing in artists that’s buying some NFTs. You know, there’s a lot of nuances there. But basically, I’ve been a big collector in this space for a while, I’ve been angel investing in a lot of companies, I wanted to figure out how to really just level up, the way that I was deploying into the web three music space as a whole. And this fund is my way of doing so.
How long have you been building the fund out?
Cooper Turley: About the last six months, I’d say, you know, I’d say that like the inception of it came six to eight months ago. I have a cool story to tell about that one a little bit later on. But you know, a lot of paperwork behind the scenes on the legal front, a lot of just infrastructure setup, then raising the fund for about the last two months. And then, you know, very recently closed it and by the time you’re listening to this episode, you will have seen that it is now live to the world.
Crazy, dude $10 million. That’s serious, that’s legit, that’s a lot of money to a lot of people, what is 10 million mean to you?
Cooper Turley: It’s a way for me to sort of level up my career, my profession and sort of the allocations I’m making into the space, you know, 10 mil from a venture fund is actually a very small fund, relatively speaking, it’s about the smallest fund that I could raise to make sense for myself. But something that I feel like allows me to really put myself on the line, you know, show that I have high conviction in this space, you know, show that other people have trusted me enough to give me money to deploy into the space. You know, it’s really just a steppingstone, I’d say, to really making this whole music NFT, web three music movement, something more serious. And I’m really excited to be working with the next chapter founder and artists that are making it a reality.
Amazing, dude, I think I first heard about it, we were at sea club, they were doing a happy hour, you’re sitting on a couch, I was sitting on a chair, a couple of others were around us, you know, like yo, Adam, starting this fund. It’s gonna be super exclusive, 25 LPS only, but it’s gonna be it’s gonna be propagating the future of music and web three. And I’m super excited about it, I was like, damn cool. Honestly, don’t expect anything less. That’s super exciting. And a lot has happened. Since you’ve dropped you. You’ve helped to sort of propagate many artists too, you’ve dropped some collections yourself. Can you talk about the last six months, at least since February? That’s when the last time you were on the podcast. Give me Give me a quick recap.
Cooper Turley: I would say in February, there was very early traction around music NFTs, you know, catalog and sound had come up, I started to collect pretty actively on there. You know, I was working with some of the more formative what the artists and kind of helping them develop their drops, you know, some that I’ll call out would be Daniel Allen and his glasshouse dropped that launch pretty recently, I was involved as a project manager and help to connect some dots there. The rookie project, which I’ve been super involved in as a project manager, and then behind the scenes just helping a lot of artists think through how to actually release their music NFTs, I started a newsletter called this week in music NFTs, that’s published every Monday to stay up with the space. And then more recently launched a cohort called the music NFT launchpad to bring 10 new artists into web three.
Angel Investing
It’s almost as if you’re tripling down on the space, just so happens. I think that’s super exciting. I think it’s a great way to also kick off the episode, as well, because there’s a few things I want to talk to you about the next hour or so. Okay, I want to talk to you about sort of your early days in crypto, how he got started with Angel investing, I want to talk to you about like, the history of music and why it’s been so difficult to invest in music in general? Of course, your fun thesis, what you’re looking for in artists and just all the things sort of in and out of that. Okay, so I think a good place to start coop is out there. How did you get into angel investing? What was the first sort of startup you’ve cut a check to, what did that look like?
Cooper Turley: Basically, defi summer, I’d say 2019, 2020, people were doing pretty well for themselves, just trading these different tokens, you know, doing yield farming, etc. I joined a syndicate group called freak out that was basically a bunch of different operators and investors in the space. We were getting to see private deals and at the time, I was writing $1,000 angel checks. So just about the worst thing I could do. Even if the company 100x says I make 100 grand, which is terrible for investing, I want to go on record saying, but I just was fascinated by the idea of getting to invest in companies in their private rounds. Some of the earlier companies that I invested in were my close friend Brian Flynn, his company, rabbit hole, Alex Masmej, his company, Showtime, a couple early defi protocols like ribbon finance, Fe protocol, etc. And at that point in time, you know, creator economy wasn’t really a thing. It was primarily like, you know, early defi protocols. And then some, like Dao tooling companies. And basically, my early entry into angel investing was saying, you know, I feel like I’ve established a brand for myself, I want to start working with founders more so than just being a consultant or a sort of like an advisor, and angel investing was my way to have more serious ownership stakes in the companies that I was really, really stoked on.
So, between rabbit hole between Showtime, those were sort of like your earliest bets on the creator economy, right? From what I understand. And that sort of just spiral like just a wave of you just like cutting checks left and right, from all the defi earnings that you’re sort of racking up or what am I missing?
Cooper Turley: No. I mean, I think you’re right, it was very much a spray and pray mentality. If I had to think of some other companies off the top of my head, I would say Zora was one that I was really, really lucky to be a part of, I think that what Jacobs building over there was incredible, like, his thesis on hyper structures is fascinating. And that was one that early on, I was just like, this makes perfect sense. And his credit, you know, he was very kind to reach out to me and say, like, hey, I would love to have you involved in that, you know, just kind of looking at some companies on the list here. You know, fractional and what Andy is was building was really, really exciting to me. I think, in total, I ended up doing close to 40 to 50 deals over the course of like the last year and a half. And these were all basically 10 to 25k checks. And so for me, it was really just a conversation of like, how do I get myself on that tweet storm when people announce around to say, like, hey, like we’ve been backed by leading investors and strategic angels, including x y & z, you know, I never really saw angel investing as a way to make a lot of money, although I’m optimistic that the investments will turn into something, it was really just a way to start building credibility in the space. And that’s actually what led to the venture partnership that I had with variant which was something that was extremely helpful and constructive in my career as an investor, general partners, Jesse Walden, Legion, Spencer, they’re all phenomenal. And a lot of the early ideation around Coop records came through that relationship, you know, me thinking more formally, though, why am I investing what I’m investing in? Not necessarily doing it for the sake of investing, but actually developing conviction and strategy around what I’m investing in. And it was through that process that I started to really think about this idea of Coop records, developing a thesis around music, and, you know, Jesse Waltons credit, he was very much like an early advocate for saying, like, I think this is a really good idea, I think you would learn a lot from it. And, you know, here we are today, six months later doing the damn thing.
Cooper’s Investment Thesis
So, the first few investments that you make, did you have any sort of like, north star that you were following? I know, you mentioned it was a spray and pray mentality, but even between cutting a check into rabbit hole, try Showtime, Zora, they all have somewhat something in common. Right. And I’m trying to understand like your thesis as an angel investor, because I feel like that also trickles to the things that you collect, right on like a hobbyist basis too, talk to me more about sort of, like your thesis early on, and how has it evolved to where we are today?
Cooper Turley: Yeah, I would say broadly, projects that help people understand web three is, you know, whether it’s using a product to be able to find new opportunities to contribute on chain, you know, whether it’s something that allows you to buy an NFT, whether it’s something that allows you to join a Dao and get to meet new people, you know, even defi protocols, I was always investing with a thesis of like, okay, this is going to be helpful for people getting into the space. And I think across the board, I started to realize that there’s a vast number of ways that people can get involved in web three. At that point in time, you know, it was really no different from how I was doing shit coin trading, or NFT trading, where it’s just kind of like, I have a real, I really liked this founder, I think this project is great. You know, I see a lot of other good people that are involved in this round, like I’m gonna come into, it was really just like a vibe thing. And I think that’s something that I try and carry with all my investments is like, do I just really back this founder? And do I really like what they’re working on and what their vision is? You know, I didn’t really have too much of a strategy around like, okay, what are projected earnings? Like, what are they? Going to be valued at as a food delivery company or anything like that, it was just kind of like, me getting in the weeds with founders doing a couple calls. And if I liked what they’re working on, I would put in 10k, and then share it with, you know, 10 people on my network that I thought were good strategics and most of the time, those people would come on board as well. Yeah.
Early DeFi Days and Shit Coin Trading
I’m also curious, like, you’re just back to the early days of angel investing. Obviously, there’s a big culture in web three around investing. And a lot of Twitter characters end up investing, everybody makes their money in all sorts of ways. Talk to me more about your defi early days, and you’d like your shit coin trading. I want to just get like up close and personal like the best trade that you’ve made that sort of like set your trajectory of where you are as an angel investor today and being able to back so many creators and change so many lives.
Cooper Turley: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to recall what the best one was. I would say that the turning point here is in 2018. I started writing a blog called This Week in Defi. I was covering projects every single week. It’s actually the exact format that I’m using for that this week in music NFTs, where I would cover projects every single week, I’ll be finding out about new project launches, new collaborations, new funding opportunities. And so, I was very active as launching governance participant early on for projects like Ave compound, synthetics, Khyber, shout out to my friend Lucas, we actually ran a newsletter called token Tuesdays where we would cover a token and talk about why we liked it. You know, if we liked it a lot, we’d buy some of it, you know, some of those early defi tokens end up doing extremely well, you know, like before Ave was called Ave, it was called lend protocol. And so had a pretty good position in lend that I’d accumulated over time, bought a lot of like synthetics token around like 10 cents and end up going up to like $6. I don’t want to like list off plays here, because I don’t like talking in this way. But basically, it was just like, finding these projects early on, having conviction in them when they were like low cap coins, let’s call it worth like 20 or $30 million. And then defi happens and all of a sudden, these tokens are trading at like 500 mil fully diluted valuations. And you know, for those people that were just paying attention, frankly, it’s not even like you needed to be an investor in the private rounds, there was a lot of upside opportunities for just being active and knowing how to use uniswap, essentially.
Yeah, I think back in the early days, during defi, summer, it was all just gray area, and there were opportunities flying left and right. And it’s cool to see, I have a friend that has capitalized on it and was able to like to make something of it right. And also, to see it sort of like evolve over time, and how you use that money that you made in a smart format. And rather than just like going and splurging, right, which of course you splurge, but doing it in a strategic way where you reinvest back into the ecosystem, carry on your thesis and just like consistently learn and evolve as you go.
Cooper Turley: Yeah, it was fantastic. I mean, that was when Eth started to really see a lot of upsides. At the time, when I was buying a lot of my Eth, I’d say it was like 80 or $100. You know, it was just like me every week investing the money I got from reading my newsletter into buying Eth and buying other tokens, I think what really started to change for me is, you know, not only was I participating in public markets, but I was also providing services for a lot of these early defi projects, and a lot of these creator economy projects. So, I would come on board to help them write their tweet storms, help them write their white paper to be active in governance on these different forums. You know, just to basically like give them a vibe check on what the community thought about their project. You know, a lot of times the founders are so heads down that they don’t really know what the perception of them is like, in the public. And so like, a lot of the times me and my colleagues would be brought in just to be like, yo, people really don’t like the way that you’re doing this or like this is not being well received. Right? Don’t think that this is going to go well. And thankfully, that end up landing me some token allocations and projects very early on, that I ended up doing super well. You know, like a fun example, this is I started eSports style called meta clan, and probably 2019. This was me, my friend, James, my friend, Piers, and Alex. And we’re just messing around, we’re like, what’s the eSports style sounds great. Let’s go ahead and do like an x infinity breeding tournament. This was before access token it ever launched before.
So, we’re playing the game, we’re giving people you know, rewards for winning the tournament, and then access token launches, and it’s trading at like, six cents, let’s call it or something. Obviously, we’d all been familiar with Axi for a very long time. And so, I picked up a couple $1,000 worth. And then Axi token ends up peaking in the last bull market at like $100 a token. And like that was simply just being active and early in these communities. What I’m trying to get across here is I wasn’t some like wizard who was like, getting like secrets or like, you know, like all this unparalleled advantage, it was just like being on the ground floor and being like, really tapped into what was happening, like very actively participating in these communities where I was, like, helping to shine a light on them and like figuring out like the ins and outs of these different governance systems, but no, I’m extremely thankful because I think, for many people, COVID was the worst year of their life. And I feel really terrible for those people. And I’m really sorry that they went through what they did. But for me, COVID was staying inside every single day, it was being on the computer for 13 hours a day, it was the peak of defi summer, it’s when all this crazy activity happened in crypto. And, frankly, during COVID, I was working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life. And I think that that period of time when most people were really struggling to find meaning and purpose actually ended up being like my kind of launch point. And I think that that’s what gave me a foundation to do a lot of the stuff that I’m doing today.
How Do You Evaluate Which Creators to Bet On?
Yeah, let’s transition into Coop records, why we’re here today. Okay. So, this is a fund that’s sort of invested or sort of focused on investing on projects, right, continuously angel investing, but also betting on creators, right. Can you talk more about that, like, what does that mean to actually bet on a creator? And more specifically, in the article that you sort of lay out, you have a specific model as to how you evaluate these creators, like web three has enabled a new business model for sort of understanding the value of what music artists create. Right. Can you talk more about that?
Cooper Turley: Yeah, absolutely. I think that people selling NFTs is really formative because prior to that, it’s been very difficult to value creators cash flow on chain, you know, like we have streaming, we have to run we have merchandise, all these things that have existed in the past. I think that NFTs are a net new revenue stream. And so, for a lot of these the early web three artists, instead of looking at their monthly listeners, the way to gauge the income that they’re making, we’re now looking at primary and secondary sales, we’re looking at things like membership passes, we’re looking at secondary royalties. And I think that that net new revenue stream combined with all of the existing revenue streams of streaming merchandise, touring, ticketing, etc, it creates this really exciting opportunity to start thinking about creators in terms of artists economies, so it’s no longer just about like, what song came out on Friday. It’s like, what is the whole picture look like here? Like, what does this look like if we stack up their NFT sales with their streaming, with their publishing, with their merchandise, with their ticketing, and that landscape, I think paints a very clear picture of like an artist value, I don’t think historically, we’ve ever had a chance to, like ask that question about, like, what is this artist worth? You know, I think that’s basically what labels are asking every time they enter into a deal with someone. But with web three, I think we have new ways to value culture, you know, like, there was a really big wave around social tokens, co-founder of a Dao called FWB, that I think really clearly highlights this. And in many ways, you don’t necessarily need to have specific on chain cash flows or specific revenue statements or something to have value. You know, obviously, that adds a lot to it. But what I see as the big opportunity with web three is to basically stack all of those different income streams together, you know, structure them into one master holding company, which represents an artist brand, essentially, and then basically sell off portions of that brand to the community, and allow that community to collectively participate in the upside of that artists, but do it in a way that feels really collaborative, and truly like in the spirit of web three, in the same way that we’ve seen a lot of these governance tokens launched in the past.
So, is it in many ways sort of scaling what you did with overstimulated or what you sort of partook in with overstimulated?
Cooper Turley: I’d say it’s a fusion of what we did with overstimulated, combined with some of the token launches that I’ve done for teams like audience Gitcoin, Superare, Ens, you know, Rockpool, Optimism, etc. But to really break this down in crypto, most companies raise funding from private investors early on in the company, you know, they build a product, they build a service, they get some product market fit for it, they start getting a lot of people to use it. And then at a certain point in time, they launch a token. And typically, what you see as a user of these platforms is a really big Airdrop, where you’re ending up getting, you know, $1,000 worth of tokens, because you traded five times on uniswap. Like that’s an Airdrop. But what’s happening behind the scenes is that all the investors that invested in uniswap, much earlier on in the lifecycle of the projects are getting their equity converted to tokens, or they’re getting pro rata claim of tokens. And so, what I think’s going to happen with creators, is we’re going to start to see more investors investing in artists early on, basically buying equity in the artist brand. And then over a longer time horizon, I think it’s likely that artists will start to launch tokens that are no longer just social tokens that have like no underlying claim on them. You’re basically buying tokens which represent governance and equity over an artist’s brand that’s very collaborative with that artist itself.
Yeah, I think what’s also interesting is the timing of it. Music web three is like, it’s the category within itself is like, still relatively small, right? We’re like, we’re still growing, I think, what was it? There’s only about like, 5000 music artists based off the water music report, I’m probably butchering the number, but it’s either 5000 or less than 5000 music artists that are wiped through native in the space. And, like thousands upon thousands of songs get published every single day on Spotify. And I’m curious, like, why now like, why now is a perfect opportunity to sort of double down on this niche and release Coop records as a way to help kind of proliferate division and help creators in the process.
Cooper Turley: Yeah, and really, just to highlight that, there are 85,000 songs a week released on Spotify, there’s 8 million artists on Spotify. And I agree with you that there’s less than 5000 artists doing music NFTs right now, there’s probably less than 10,000 music NFTs collectors in the world right now. And so, I think that delta is the opportunity, the fact that there are the possibility of 8 million artists being able to use web three one day and the fact that they aren’t currently. That’s what I see as related to design space here. And I want to go out and say that not every artist is well suited for web three, not every artist is well suited to launch a token. This takes a very specific type of artists, but for the ones that are highly engaged with their community, they’re thinking through new revenue streams and mechanisms like selling music NFTs, I think there’s a really new chapter of music that’s happening right now. And when I look at this fun, it’s basically saying, hey, we had Napster. And then we had SoundCloud. And then we had Spotify. And next we have web three. And in terms of what web threes winners look like, I think it’s way too early to tell, you know, we’re seeing really strong really signals of that, you know, hats off to sound XYZ for what they’re doing, to royal, to catalog, the people that we all talk about on this podcast a lot. But we are very early in that conversation. You know, if we zoom out over a long enough time horizon, I think there’s going to be incredible opportunities to invest in the next generation of music. And this fund is really my way of saying, hey, I think there’s something here, I’m going to raise a small fund $10 million to invest in pre seed and seed stage startups to help figure out what this landscape looks like over the next 10 years.
What Are You Excited to Invest In That Doesn’t Exist in Today’s Market?
So, what are you actually excited to invest in that doesn’t currently exist in the market?
Cooper Turley: I think it’s less about what doesn’t exist in the market. I think it’s just about helping founders get to that point, one at a time, you know, and so the vast majority of the fund is being invested in platforms and protocols. So, think of this of companies like sound XYZ, royal, catalog, but kind of like the next generation of that. And I think that for a lot of these projects today, there’s more culture happening that just didn’t exist previous to that, you know, like, I think there’s a really big shift around like collectives and these kind of like cologne, record labels and cooperatives and whatnot, very synonymous with what we’re seeing on kinda like the Dao side of things. That mentality, I think, lends very well to music. And so being able to play a formative role in setting up, you know, the next transformative record labels in the world, the next transformative collectives in the world, having ownership stakes, and then by purchasing a percentage of equity, and being really involved with the founder, I’m really stoked about that. You know, as we alluded to earlier, I’ve been acting as a project manager across a lot of different artists projects, when they’re doing something bigger than just like a typical music NFT drop. And so, me being able to actually partner with them to build product around their brand, invest into the brand directly, and then bring a portfolio company on board to help like really level that up, I kind of see this as almost like a very composable mash, where ideally, the coop records portfolio is a series of companies that can all work with one another to help any artists really further themselves in web three. And then make sure for those artists that were invested in through the fund, we can be really hands on and helping to connect the dots and make their artists economy as valuable as possible.
Yeah, I think another interesting component of this is, there’s there’s multiple parts, it’s not just a fun because you invest yourself, you also started this new incubator called the music NFT Launchpad. And now you have sort of the capital to support the artists not only coming out of it, of course, but other artists sort of collectively around it. But it’s like you’ve built this vehicle where it’s like, it’s multidisciplinary. And they each support one another, right? Am I getting this correctly? Or what am I missing here?
Cooper Turley: No, you’re exactly right. I think the thing that I want to like highlight here is that the fun is not going to be writing 10k checks into buying everyone’s music NFTs. Like that’s just the design of the Sonics, it is gonna get like an influx of new capital from Coop records, sweeping floors left and right. You know, it’s very, it’s very consolidated. And what we highlighted earlier is that when I was doing angel investing, I was very much taking a spray and pray mentality, right? You know, this fund is a very convicted way to bet on select artists and select platforms, I think that it will benefit the space as a whole. But I just want to put that out there that Coop records is not buying, your music NFTs because I have a new source of capital here, but rather, you know, when there’s something that’s working and working well, being able to add leverage, I think that’s something that does not exist in the sector currently, is that when an artist starts to break out, when a platform starts to break out, there’s so few people paying attention this that it’s hard for them to really scale, you know, let’s think about hiring, let’s think about marketing campaigns ways to kind of get these brands out there. That’s what this fund is for us to really like add leverage to something that’s already working. And then behind the scenes, I’m going to still be collecting music NF T’s all the time, I’m gonna be supporting a lot of artists, but I see this fund as a way to really just help amplify what the space is doing as a whole and take more convicted baths in the people who are winning the space gradually.
Damn, so I thought you’re gonna be buying everybody’s bags now. But I was like, damn, I’m about to eat well, tonight. Yeah. No. Okay. All right. More serious note, I also see it as like a funnel approach, okay, I see you as an individual sort of betting your own money, buying and doing a spray and pray mentality. And basically, using that as keeping tabs on everybody that you find interesting. And using this new capital as a way to sort of like double down, triple down on the individuals that actually want to take to the next level, right? Because of course, just like there’s a bunch of artists dropping songs on Spotify, Apple Music cetera, there’s gonna be a bunch of artists minting songs. And while in the beginning, it was very novel and unique, over time, it’s not really going to become that novel and unique. The artists that are gonna stand out are the ones that are sort of taking it to the next level. And that’s where coop records come in.
Cooper Turley: That’s exactly right.
The Ideal Artist or Founder to Invest In
Yes, I fucking nailed it. All right. So, I want you to paint me the ideal profile of an artist that you would sort of double down on, what does that look like in today’s world. And from there, do it for the same thing as a founder, like what is the ideal founder, the ideal project or protocol sort of look like that you want to sort of kind of tag along to?
Cooper Turley: I’m going to flip that, because the vast majority of the funds being allocated into platforms and protocols. And so I’d say that starting from the founder profile, I think is a little bit better to start with. But ideal founder is someone who really understands the culture of what’s happening, you know, I don’t have to explain to them why music NFTs are valuable, I don’t have to explain to them who the leading artists are, you know, they already have pretty much a good sense of what’s happening. You know, they’re very formative and recognizing that web three will be a net new playbook, you know, they’re not really super concerned with like, bridging over the old world into the new like, I think that there’s value in that. But I’d say that the fund is more focused on like, what’s new that hasn’t existed before, what’s uniquely unlocked by web three that didn’t exist previously. And then more than that, just sort of like who is the founder that’s capable of building a team around them? Like if there’s one scrappy developer who could just like goes out and wings it on the weekends and build tools? Love that. Do I think that they’re necessarily going to be able to build a billion-dollar company? Maybe not, you know.
And so, I kind of look at like the mesh between co-founders, you know, do these founders have kind of the connective tissue where someone’s really focused on development, someone’s really tapped into the community. Someone is really able to grow a discord community. And across that I think the line here is that all the companies that we’ll be investing in have a very good understanding of culture, you know, specifically with relation to web three. And as that translate to the artists themselves, once an artist has been able to demonstrate that they can check all the boxes of doing what’s expected of them, so let’s say like minting NFTs on catalog, selling out there drops on sound, you know, maybe doing a release on royal, they start to go a little bit further than that, right? They start to do drops on their own website, they start to think about, like, what are creative ways that I can distribute my album or bring other artists on board? And at that point in time, you start to recognize that there’s like a launch off point, you know, where they’re basically going bigger than what already exists. And I think at that point in time, that’s where we want to start getting involved to say like, hey, if you want to sell 10,000 music NFTs and have there be like a really formative moment around that. How can we help you hire developers and build a team around you, so that when you want to go and do that drop, it’s not you in a silo, you actually have a team of three to five people around here that are fully on staff to be able to go and make that a reality.
Cooper’s Vision For the Next 10 Years
Yeah, I mean, there’s only one person that sort of comes to mind that fits that profile, currently, maybe two, three, but like one that obviously fits that profile, and not to go too in depth, right. But I think over time, this individual sort of set the model, right? For what’s, maybe not what’s expected, but what’s possible, and there’s gonna be other people that may be taken from different directions. And it’s actually, I believe they’re going to be excellent place to sort of double down on and play like a long-term bet on. So yeah, man, that’s really exciting. That’s really big. And I don’t like you minimizing it, you say like, it’s $10 million in the grand scheme of things. Like it’s no big deal, but it’s a big deal. And don’t minimize it, because it’s legit as fuck. Alright, let’s talk about big picture. Okay. What is the vision here, Cooper, like 10 years from now? Are these like 10-years bets? Are these like five-year bets? Are these three-year bets? Like, what’s the big picture over here?
Cooper Turley: They’re 10-year bets. Yeah, I believe in 10 years from now we’re going to be able to invest in our favorite creators, I think exactly how that’s going to take form is a big question mark. But I think you’re going to be able to buy individual songs, like you’re going to be able to buy into individual artists projects, and I think you’re gonna be able to buy into platforms. And so right now, there’s not really liquidity for any of those events. And you kind of have audience token, which is publicly tradable. But basically, the only thing that you can really buy to get exposure to like web three music right now from an ERC 20 token perspective, you have these individual songs being minted on sound, catalog, royal, which are all really interesting at a very granular level. But I don’t think it’s telling the full picture of like, how do I invest into an artist collectively, beyond one song that they’re doing, but over across their entire project. And then over time, I think just like better connective tissue between all the different pieces of it, you know, there was an entire generation of artists on Spotify and SoundCloud, who ended up creating tremendous amount of value for that company, and they don’t have equity in that, you know, and I think if web three has showed anything, I always come back to the word ownership, you know, I would highlight the early variant piece ownership economy, which is very transformative in how I thought about the space. And I think that needs to apply more to music. Or if you’re an artist who’s creating value for these platforms are able to capture that value in the form of either equity or tokens. You know, if you’re an artist who’s creating a lot of value for their fans, that fan being able to capture value in the form of either NFTs, tokens or equity, you know, I think there’s just going to be a lot more connective tissue between the experience of listening and consuming music. And I’m hoping that over a 10-year horizon, we can unlock a lot more of those opportunities, so that people who are really passionate about this space can have more deeper ways to get involved.
What is an Artist Seed Round?
Yeah, and also in your blog posts, you sort of titled this concept as artists seed rounds. This is very typical in startup culture. But for those creators that are listening right now, what is a seed round? How does it differ from pre seed round? I guess a pre seed round would maybe be you just buying something off sound, right? Would that be considered a pre seed round? Or how do you think about it exactly.
Cooper Turley: I would consider a round basically the first time that you’re selling equity to investors with the hope of building something bigger than yourself. And so, in the concept of artists seed round, if I want to hire employees to work for me full time, I need capital to do that. I don’t think that it’s smart to be living paycheck to paycheck or using your NFT proceeds to be able to hire those people, instead, being able to bring on long term partners that can purchase equity stakes in your brand in exchange for you having the capital to go higher and build a team around you. That’s basically what we’re talking about here. So instead of just doing a drop, you know, making a couple Eth off sound and then going in like spending that on a one-off project. It’s like what if you had a developer working for you full time? What if you had a community manager working for you full time? What if your manager didn’t have to have five different clients on their roster, they’re taking commission off of, but they could represent you full time. And I think what I’ve started to notice across the industry is that when these artists get to be the biggest in the game, you know, they typically have three to five people around them that are working for them full time. But up until that point, there’s never been economic opportunities to have that be a reality. You know, like a manager needs to commission off of five artists because they’re one artist doesn’t make enough money for them to survive off of but if they have a capital pool that was provided by investors to say, hey, here’s a salary and an equity option that you can have long term ownership and get paid on a monthly basis for working for me, I think there’s some really exciting things that come out of that, I’ll be the first to say there’s a ton of complications here. The ways that you structure this is extremely complicated. The way that you help other players understand this that are typically operating on a commission model that maybe might defer some of their commission in the future is extremely complicated. But at its source, it’s just saying, like, hey, we want to formalize this vehicle more, you know, artists can act as CEOs, I don’t think that all artists are CEOs, but I think they have the ability to if they choose to, and if you’re a CEO, taking on some funding to go ahead and build your company into something bigger than yourself. I think it’s a really exciting opportunity.
Yeah, it feels like artists are now becoming startups. That’s sort of how I see it. And it’s a concept we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast, how artists are like creators are going to start very, like operating very nimbly, right, like a very nimble fashion, where they’re gonna focus on creating, but they’re gonna have other people on their team that sort of focus on other things. And it’s going to be living in this sort of, I guess, like vehicle, it’s very similar to how an early, early company sort of operates, right? I also see it from the point of view of, there’s going to be option pools, right? For these artists, employees, right, whatever, whatever you want to call them. And treating yourself as a startup and having external capital to help sort of fund your creative endeavors is really, really powerful. We’re seeing this sort of form through web three through very public markets, people sort of supporting artists through patronage, royalty compensation, whatever it may be. And now it’s kind of coming to the next level with Coop records. Do you imagine this model sort of being replicated? Or do you think it’s actually quite risky, what you’re doing?
Cooper Turley: I think it is extremely risky. And I hope that it gets replicated. I think that over time, it will become less risky, because there’s more standards around it for the early iterations of this, we’re taking our best guess at it, you know, we’re operating off of assumptions that we think are logical but have not been proven out yet. You know, I said, it’s really going to take time. And I think it’s really going to take a select type of artists for these things to work. You know, like I highlighted before, not every artist is well suited for this, I don’t think that every artist should try and do a seed round, I don’t think that every artist should try and hire employees. Most artists just want to make music. And I think that’s perfectly fine. And I encourage that, you know, I collect a lot of music NFTs from artists that just want to make beats, and I absolutely love that. But I think there are a select demographic of artists, let’s call out Kanye, Jay Z, etc. These artists that have built something bigger than themselves, that show that they’re capable of doing something beyond the music itself, I think the music becomes like the bedrock of what all this is around.
But for artists that are building these brands and doing things that are bigger than them, having formal structures in place that you can bring on partners, and long term investors, having it so that if your manager works for you for 10 years, then they get fired, they just lose their income stream now, because there’s no agreement in place such that they can have like early ownership, you know, there’s very small things in the way that the music industry is designed, where if I was your manager for the first four years of your career, and you became a superstar, and you now need a bigger manager, and you fire me, I don’t think that’s fair that that early person who worked in the first four years has no exposure to the project anymore. No, I think that equity and options pool exist such that if you created value for something early on its lifecycle, you got to own that, you know, and that doesn’t mean it’s just given to you on a silver platter on day one, here’s 5% of my company. But these all works with tech startups, you know, you get an options plan over the course of 2, 3, 4 years. If you stick with that company for four years, you fully invest, and you can go do whatever you want. But I don’t think that those models really exist with relation to music right now. And so, I’m hoping that these structures can be very early examples and the way that that might work.
The Value Of Ownership
Let’s also not forget that majority of creators don’t understand the value of ownership. The jobs that they typically work to support the creative endeavors, pays him by the hour, or it’s probably by salary. Tech culture is like the only sort of culture that’s propagated that allows people to get ownership, a stake in the time that they commit to creating value, right. And I think for a lot of creators entering web three, it’s a very new concept, like this whole idea of owning something, let alone digitally, like what does that mean, in the grand scheme of things? I don’t think we’ve sort of seen that proliferate in real time just yet, I think more and more creators understanding it. I think some of that you did back in the day where, I think you tweeted, like, I’m only working for ownership, like you had this entire campaign that you sort of like pushed out or like you had this mirror post, blah, blah, blah, sort of explain the value of ownership and what that means. I think that’s sort of like dented a little bit. But there’s a lot more homework, a lot more work for all of us to do to sort of understand and educate creators what it means to work for ownership. But what that means in the grand scheme of things, how do we get there? How do we teach more creators about the value of ownership, either on a playful level on a forceful level? Like, what does that really look like from your point of view?
Cooper Turley: It’s a really great question. I wish I had one, you know, succinct answer for that. Just to quickly highlight that blog post was called full time, Dallas, and thank you for highlighting that because the thesis of it was basically, I don’t want to get paid dollars, I want to get paid and ownership. So, I want to take payment and equity and tokens, whatever that might look like. And my thesis was that no salary is ever going to amount to the amount of value you’re gonna get from having ownership and things that work out really well in the future. And so, what that looks like tangibly today, I think we owe it to a lot of the early platforms and protocols that exist to be able to allow their creators to have ownership stakes and what they’re building. You know, it’s a conscious decision to say like, hey, at some point in time, we will launch a token and do an Airdrop to our early artists or give some tokens to collectors. I think we owe it a lot to the early artists in the space that are being very forward thinking how they share their brand. You know, I’ve talked to a lot of creators here in LA that don’t really know what a cap table is, they don’t really know the concept of equity, they get really scared about giving anything to anyone because they’ve just been treated poorly for so long. What you start to recognize is that when you have a collective pie, you are being the only owner of that collective pie isn’t important. If it’s not a valuable thing in the first place, you know, like to make it more valuable, you need to bring more people into the picture. And the only way to get them fully bought in is to actually give them part of that pie in the first place.
And so, what I think this looks like is very slowly introducing models where, hey, if you’re a manager taking a 15% commission, maybe you take a 5% commission, and instead you take a base, and then a small amount of equity. Or if you’re an artist that has a superfan showing up to your discord every day, maybe you give them $5,000 a month and a little bit of equity to start working on your brand. If you’re a platform that’s doing your next venture round, instead of only raising from VCs, going out and saying, hey, I want to bring this artist on board and give them a 10k Angel allocation in this company. There’re very small things that happened like in isolation, but I think making this culture around investing and financial literacy and sort of the mentality around like wealth creation, it gets very dystopian and actually get a lot of pushbacks on this because people think I just want to make money. But it’s actually, I don’t really care about that that much. I just care more about like creators being free to pursue their craft and having like, their value actually owned by them. But I would say yeah, like in isolation, I would say, just figure out new ways to give ownership back to the people that are supporting you and figure out ways to capture ownership from the different platforms that you’re giving value to yourself.
What is the Average Size Check Artist’s Will Be Getting?
Yeah, I think it’s also like, the point is, you don’t know what you don’t know. And until maybe you eat enough shit, it’s like, alright, there must be another way. And maybe it doesn’t have to be that way either. But I think with the model that you’re introducing; it’s actually making investing cool. In my opinion, like, it’s like you’re betting on culture, like that’s what it comes down to, right? And I want to highlight like this next point, and sort of talk about the average check size that artists are going to be getting. And with that check, what does the post value check look like? Post check value. Excuse me, that’s the term. What does that look like after you invest?
Cooper Turley: Yeah, so um, who’s going to be a very, very select few artists who are actually being invested in from the fund. So again, I want to caveat this, I’m not invested in a ton of artists, I’m not doing super small checks into a lot of artists, the ideal investment for Coop records is a 250k check. And so that’s typically me taking either a co-lead or a lead position in a very early round, let’s say that someone’s raising anywhere from 500k to a million dollars, anywhere from a 5 to 10 mil post money valuation, Coop records is coming in is sort of the anchor of that, we’re giving you 250k. And we’re acting as a long term partner to help think through your web three strategy, to think about how you’re setting up your corporation, to structure all your companies in such a way that it feels very synergistic, to help you hire your early employees, create a cap table, do all the things that are very, you know, common with tech companies that I just don’t think I’ve ever really been tried to be done with artists before, if they have in very small iterations. And I’m doing that with a very, very select few artists for this first one, I’m hoping that if it does go well, and we can talk about what that looks like, there’ll be opportunities to raise other vehicles that are entirely allocated to this type of work. But for right now, it’s just going to be working with a very select few artists to help, just try it out and see if it really works. And you know, really applaud the people that are taking the initiative to try this today.
How Are You Measuring Success For an Artist?
So, what does success actually look like? Let’s talk about that. How are you measuring success?
Cooper Turley: Success is twofold. I’d say one, are you able to create a community of fans who constantly support you and everything that you do? You know, like, do you have an artist project that’s reputable becomes a household name, are you playing shows that you’re selling out stadiums, etc? The obvious stuff. Like what does success look like in eyes of being an artist today? I don’t think I need to explain that very much. But more from like an investment perspective. Are you able to raise future rounds at a higher valuation? Are you able to bring people in who weren’t there from the beginning to understand why owning a piece of your company is valuable? Are you able to launch a token and give that back to your collectors? Now, if I had to extremely oversimplify this, I would say that the success metric looks like 100 axing and artists, you know, basically like investing in the early stage of their development, you know, giving them capital at their earliest form, they then launch a token, and that token ends up performing extremely well for early investors, for collectors, for fans, I as a fan of an artist can just go buy $5 worth of my favorite creator, I never have to worry about buying a music NFT, there’s a very easy way for me to participate in these artists economies. And I think that over a long enough time horizon across a lot of creators, I think that that opens up a really exciting new playing field and that’s kind of what I’m hoping to be doing with this fund is helping to create those early examples of that chapter.
Yeah, I think something that’s also interesting about your journey Coop is, you’ve always very much focused on building your own personal brand, but you always part take in other communities. Why do this independently versus joining forces with an existing group that already has capital and just contributing additional value to that? Like, why branch off and do your own thing?
Cooper Turley: It’s a really good question. And you know, to be honest with you, I was definitely a bit a little bit hesitant to do it in this way, at first, for that exact reason. You know, I think like going off in an island can be like, kind of scary and like a little bit isolating. But to be frank, I don’t think there’s many people as much conviction in web three music as I do, you know, I could probably name on one hand, the amount of people that are willing to write 250k checks into like early music companies. This is my identity in my life. You know, if you’ve spent time with me here in LA, all I do is focus on music. It’s all I talk about. I don’t think there’s many other companies in the space that are designed to zoom in this deeply on this one specific pocket and sector. I think it’s really important for people to see that I’m not just like, talking the game or like just tweeting music, NFTs with nothing behind it. Like this is very serious for me, like this is literally my life’s work. And I think that this is the first way to highlight that I don’t need a crutch or to lean off someone else’s reputation or prior success to sort of make this successful. Like I want to take the risk of running it myself. And if it fails, it fails. But if it does, well, I think that it’s going to be difficult to attribute that to anyone else outside of myself.
Comparing Coop Records to a Traditional Record Label
Yeah. Let’s also talk about comparing Coop records to a traditional record label. Okay, well, I think like 85% is going to be spent on investing in like founders’ protocols, projects, there’s still a percentage is going to be invested in artists. What makes you different than a record label?
Cooper Turley: It’s a really good question. I wrote a post called web three labels; I would highly recommend that you read it, if you haven’t already. Basically, when an artist answers into a label agreement, they are selling the rights to their future songs. And so, they’re selling three projects, let’s call it three albums, they’re taking an advance against that, and they’re selling 80% of the rights to it, that advances recoupable, which means that the label has to make back their money first before the artists gets paid. The difference here is that Coop records is not buying masters, we are buying equity, that has a claim on those masters. The difference is that these investments are not recoupable, which means that we don’t get paid out before the artist gets paid out. We are partners, which means that we’re all making money collectively. And in fact, there’s not an expectation of dividends being issued. Because when you run an early company, you recognize that giving dollars back to investors is not the most productive way to spend that money, it’s actually more valuable to hire more people and build additional staff and product around you. And then stated plainly, we work with a lot less artists, you know, like most labels are working with anywhere from 10 to 50 artists at a time, you know, I would expect Coop records as a vehicle to be investing in roughly four to five artists out of this first fund. And so, we’re going to be taking a lot more convicted vets and working a lot more closely with those partners, we’re going to do things very unconventionally, but I think for now, those that are willing to take the journey and take the ride. I’m very excited about what this has to offer.
And I’m excited for you. I think this is going to be really, really exciting. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you see more, more record labels sort of pursue a model like this as well. And maybe there’s already some. Well, I know there are some already like pursuing like buying web three assets as a way to like experiment, right? But nobody’s really doing it publicly yet. Everybody’s just being super hush hush about it, because they don’t want to make a mistake, right? They don’t want to like to seem like they were wrong about a bet. But you’re like, you’re going balls deep, like you’re going all out. Like I raise 10 million bucks. Like this is what I’m doing. This is what we’re about. And I think that says that says a lot.
Cooper Turley: I want to add to that last point.
Yeah, please, please.
Cooper Turley: I also want to highlight some of the things that Coop records does not offer that labels do. Because I think it’s important to recognize that like, Coop records isn’t this shiny new thing that’s perfect and record labels suck like, you know, burn them out of the ground. It’s me, I’m an individual, I don’t know how to break your song on Spotify, I’m probably not going to get you on editorial playlists, I’m probably not going to book you for a headline tour. I could name like 5 or 10. Other things that I’m not able to do that a record label can definitely help out with. But I’d say like, the biggest thing to highlight here is that most artists today look to labels as a bank, you know, like they want an advance. They basically want money to make records, we can provide that they need resources. And while we can’t directly place those resources every time, you know, I think that the network I’ve developed is strong enough that we can start to think through, who are people that are going to be willing to work for you full time? And I’m optimistic that there’s a world where Coop records invest in artists who then signs a major label deal. I don’t think that these are mutually exclusive. But what I want to highlight is that these entities will represent the artists share of proceeds and whatever they work on. And so, if an artist signs a major label deal, and they own 20% of the records, that means that the entity owns 20% of those records, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t enter a label deal. And what I think is exciting here is that when you do go to the table to negotiate with a major, it’s no longer saying hey, I need a million dollars to make records. You can say hey, I have this money tucked away from my partners that back me in the past. I need resources, I need to get on playlists, I need to get on radio. I need you to get me pressed and find a talent agent, whatever it might be. And if you’re able to come to the table with very specific ask and not really need to rely on the capital. I think that these deals can be structured a little bit more favorably. And I’m excited to welcome a world where Coop records is working with an artist that’s also signed to a major label.
Okay, interesting. So, do you plan to hire people yourself under coop records? Or is it just gonna be like a solopreneur kind of endeavor?
Cooper Turley: Yeah, definitely plan to hire out, I want to give a shout out to my assistant, Robert, who’s been running all the backend operations on the fund, he’s been doing a phenomenal job. That’s the first hire that I’ve ever made personally, some of the things that I’m excited to bring on-board would-be development talent to help resource all the early portfolio companies, we have analysts to be able to scout out new projects and new investment opportunities, A&R to be able to find new artists to invest in and new songs to be able to take ownership stakes. And so, it’s very early, you know, a $10 million fund is not structured in such a way that I can hire a big team around me, but you know, myself at the center of this, basically scouting deals, some people on the back end to help make sure that everything’s functioning properly. And then some residual pieces around that to help really add value to portfolio companies. I think it makes for a pretty compelling narrative.
What is the Current State of Web3 Music?
Yeah. Coop, what would you say is the current state of web three music? Where are we today?
Cooper Turley: Misunderstood. That’d be my reaction there.
Okay. Yeah, elaborate, what does that mean?
Cooper Turley: I’d say that most people think that there’s like some really crazy weird casino game happening over here that only applies like five random artists. But what do you do, man? What’s really supporting emerging artists trying to take a new path with their music. I don’t think that it’s well suited for major artists yet. I think that most of the artists playing with web three music are emerging artists who haven’t really had a chance to succeed on a platform like Spotify before. I think that there’s a lot of early players, that’s a little bit overwhelming. You know, my music NFT landscape graphic, there’s probably close to 100 companies and from someone on the outside that doesn’t like music or understand what’s going on. You look at 1000 companies on a page and you start to think, Okay, this is like a Cardano map, where it’s like, who knows what’s happening here. But like, when you zoom in under the hood there, I think when you come out to these community events, you start to really feel the culture of it. You know, what’s happening, answer your question directly is there’s a very select handful of artists that are really leaning into this new chapter of music. Now, they’re really focusing on building relationships with their collectors, which may be fans but don’t have to be fans think that’s very important. And I think they’re thinking through new models on how to build their artists projects, and basically connect, you know, the lane that they have on Spotify and touring with this entirely new ecosystem that is web three music.
The General Playbook For a New Artist Coming Into the Space Today
So now that we’ve seen like, thousands, we can confidently say now thousands of artists in web three music, what tends to be the playbook, the standard, the general playbook? Of course, everybody does their own thing, uniquely experiments, whatever. But what tends to be the general playbook as a new artist coming into the space now that we have more experienced than we had in February, when we recorded that one episode,
Cooper Turley: love that. If you’re an artist getting started today that has no prior connections, you basically go and you sell music NFT on Zora, you know, you release 10, 15, 20 copies of that either for free or for a very cheap price, you’re able to prove that you can get some collectors in the door, you do that once or twice, and then you’re able to release on hopefully a curated platform like catalog or sound where it has a little bit more credibility behind it, you do this for maybe three to five songs, we are selling anywhere from 25 to 50 editions, being consistent with it getting a little bit of buzz. And when you put out songs on Spotify, the day before you dropped them, you’re actually selling collectible versions as music, NFT’s. And so, there’s this very clear relationship between my artist project and what people are seeing publicly and what’s happening in web three. And then it starts to kind of leapfrog, which is interesting, where there’s more songs that are released in web three that are currently out on Spotify. And so, you almost have this reverse incentive, or artists have an album that was released as music NFTs, that’s going to be released on Spotify in a month from now. And at that point in time, once you have a couple of wins under your belt, you start to get a little bit experimental. You go okay, what is my artist site look like? What is artists dot XYZ look like? What does it look like for me to do more than one song? What does it look like for me to do more than just sell a song with the cover art and instead start to introduce some different rarity traits? What does it look like for me to have a collector group across all my collections on telegram or discord? And then if you zoom out far enough, you start to introduce things like what does it look like for me to hire developer? What does it look like for me to hire a community manager? You know, a lot of what we were alluding to earlier, but that’s where we’re at. I don’t think many people have gotten like further along that but hopefully this leads to like a full-fledged sustainable artists ecosystem.
And then you believe the artists seed rounds is where we’re going?
Cooper Turley: Correct.
Thoughts on Free NFTs
Okay, so I want to double down for a second on the free NFT stuff because I’m a big fan of free NFTs, I’m very vocal about them. I’m so happy that I’m seeing more artists sort of issue free NFTs as a top-level funnel to build like a wide net of collectors. So, then kind of like create more unique experiences. What are your thoughts on the whole free NFT movement? I know in the beginning we were selling music NFTs for point one Eth, point five Eth now they’re like the new point one is like point 05, right? So far. Yeah, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. And now we’re seeing free NFTs. I love it. I’m a big, big fan. What do you make of all this noise of all this experimentation?
Cooper Turley: I completely agree with you. I think that if you’re just getting started, getting people to collect your work is more important than how much you raise off of selling that work. And so, if you’re able to go and release some music NFT for free and get 50 people to buy it, it’s a lot harder than you think, you know, just getting people to press that button and actually buy the free NF T is a lot more challenging than it might seem. To your point, I think just kind of getting familiar with minting, getting familiar with people like collecting these things, hopefully encouraging people to have a secondary market because you’ve released it in such a way that there’s excess demand. One mistake that I see people make a lot early on as they try and overcomplicate it, you know, they they’re trying shoot for the stars and do 1000 music NFTs they try, and do you know 20 different songs that have some small variation with them. They try and like do this giant six-month project that either is going to like flop or fail on Friday at two PST. And what I’d say now is like if you’re getting started, when people uploaded to SoundCloud in 2013, they didn’t upload like expecting there to be a sell out in the first day they didn’t upload expecting you to get like major repost right away, there was a very free culture around like music discovery and curation, I think that’s where we’re starting to get back to with web three is like maybe instead of scheduling a six month release strategy on Spotify, just upload a song every Friday, and then sell 25 music NFTs for free, and see what happens. And like that sounds really scary to people, because every manager in the game would tell you not to do that because it goes against the status quo. But I’m collecting free music NFTs all the time, you know, like I’m looking at these jobs every week, I think that I’m one of many collectors that are like actively seeking out new and emerging talent. And I think there’s actually something to be said for not scheduling your drops, you know, and instead just kind of uploading it in real time and seeing who’s paying attention. And the absence of you marketing it, you really start to figure out like, who’s here to support me when I’m not posting a big campaign around it. And I think that that’s how you start to build really deep relationships with facts.
So, talking more on the free NFT stuff. Also just talking about building an audience, a music audience and web three, how is that different than sort of building a listenership? or building a bunch of listeners in web two? Like, is the value the same? Is it different? How do you sort of see those two models?
Cooper Turley: I think that they’re two very different things right now. And I think it’s important to highlight that because everyone always says, how do we get fans to buy music NFTs? And well, I think that might happen. I want to highlight that that’s not required for music NFTs to be successful. You know, the current demographic of collectors or music fans, for sure, like most of the people that you go to the sound leaderboards of collectors, and you look at the top 20 profiles, all those people love music, but I would say more so than them like worrying about getting new music or getting like VIP tickets to shows or something. They just want to kind of feel more involved in that process. And so, what that looks like is simply putting people into a telegram chat and having ton of your collectors like say GM to one another saying, hey, guys, I have a draft coming out on sound next week, should I do 50 or 75 editions? And what price should I do with that? Part of having Adam Levy come in and say use my new tool bellow to price your drops. Allow me to release. But yeah, I’d say like broadly, collectors are not, you know, like your average fan. They’re much more sophisticated, in most case scenarios, you know, like, they’re aware of the fact that this is a new emerging medium, we’re not expecting you to get a million streams on Spotify, they’re not expecting you to have like a 10x return over one day. They’re like advanced patrons and a lot of ways right now, where they’re like recognizing that you’re leaning into something early. They applaud you for being consistent. They’re excited when you give back more than just like selling NFT. But I don’t think it’s required. You know, I think like the whole PFP roadmap game really like set us back because there’s this whole, like, expectation of a 6-to-12-month roadmap, but I don’t expect that from artists, you know what I mean? Like, I’ll talk to them when they’re putting out their next song and like help them move along the playbook. But I’m not expecting you to have your next two years figured out, you know, and especially when you’re selling these in batches of 25 or 50, like I said, the simplest thing that I’m hoping for from any artists, if you’re putting out a song on Spotify on Friday, salsa music NFTs on Thursday, there’s NFTs gonna have no ownership they can have no access, they can have no utility, no t-shirts, no VIP tickets, no discord group, whatever it might be. If you do that, at the very, very least, I’m going to be very excited about that. And I think once we have that as sort of the standard playbook, which we don’t currently, then you start to see really exciting games around curation, around discovery around blog culture reemerging because at that point in time, then there’s now opportunities for you to be active and the discovery experience. And I think that we’ve gotten really far away from that and music, and I’m really excited to see that start to make its way back. Thanks to web three.
Can we talk about one of my favorite examples recently? A whole lot of nothing by DlG featuring. I’m going to butcher his last name of Peter Saputo; did I pronounce that correctly? Right. Okay. First of all, fire track, amazing track, released it first in web three, then in web two, and then it got editorial placement on Spotify. And you know, it’s funny, it’s like slow like, they took it really slowly. It didn’t sell out instantly. But I feel like as soon as they kind of went public that the editorial feature made it and then sold out. Like I don’t know why I thought like the timing was just like on par. And I think that’s super cool. Like, I was able to sort of like collect that, like there’s this meme in the music NFT community where it’s like, they don’t know, I own this song, you know that, that I own the version of the song. And I think there’s just it’s something as a collector, it’s so interesting. It’s so fascinating, because I feel like I was a part of that journey. I feel like I have like, even though it was just a small contribution, for whatever reason, I feel a much closer, sentimental value. And I actually appreciate it so much more when an artist released a song in web three. And then they released in web two, it’s like us, we get like the first look, it’s like we’re the coolest bunch before the mainstream gets to see it. Are you thinking about it the same way? Or am I just like, in my own head here?
Cooper Turley: No, that was the first thing that really clicked for me with music NFTs you know, it was Mike Shinoda doing that on Zora and probably 2019, before he put out a song with EMDR. And like, he sold NFTs a week in advance, and then he put it out. And it was the top song of my release radar. And I immediately had this connection with it in a way that I’ve never had with music before. And that was before any of this stuff like before, catalog existed, before sound existed. And, you know, to your point, I think that that is what a lot of people are looking for. It’s just to have a deeper relationship with the song. I think what’s exciting is that over the next two years, most of the artists that are releasing today are kind of like in the middle of their career, you know, they’ve released a couple of songs on Spotify before, maybe it didn’t work out. Now they’re leaning more into web three, maybe I’m a bigger artist that has an existing song that I’m now tokenizing, I think where this gets really exciting is artists who have never released a song before releasing music, NFTs with their first song ever. And so, from the origin of their story, you have the ability to collect their first song and be involved from the very, very insights of their career. I think when that starts, which just takes time, you know, I’d say it’s gonna start to happen over the next two years, when more of those examples start to happen. That’s when I think this stuff is gonna get really, really serious.
Are some of the artists that you curated for the first cohort of the music NFT Launchpad, do they fall in that category?
Cooper Turley: Yes.
What is the Music NFT Launchpad?
Okay, cool. Can you talk more about the launchpad? What is it exactly? I know we talked about like the triangle of you being a collector, Coop capital and a launchpad. Focus on the launchpad really quick. What is that? Why should people care?
Cooper Turley: There’s a lot of artists that are excited about the idea of web three, but just don’t really have the proper guidance on how to get started. You know, these are artists that have incredible music, you know, they’ve heard me talk their ear off about getting in the space for a long time. But they just didn’t really know how, you know, frankly, there just wasn’t a playbook for them. What I found is, the best way to get started is to really just meet other people that are also getting started and having like a collective to be able to share ideas with and just talk through very basic questions. And so, this Launchpad was really a way just to highlight emerging artists, people new to the space now underrepresented creators that might not be on a platform like cataloger sound yet, but that have the talent and potential to get there one day, and then taking them through a very simple four-week course, that’s saying, hey, here’s how you set up with meta mask. Here’s what gases, here’s how you set up your ENS name. Here’s some people to follow on Twitter, here’s some etiquette around why you shouldn’t use hashtags. Here’s some different players to keep an eye on. And here’s some different artists to go and support. And when you give someone those resources, obviously can’t do any work for them. But I think it increases their likelihood of success. I think it brings them in in a way that feels a lot more, you know, connected. And it feels like you have more of a purpose in the space. And I want to really give a shout out here to seed club because seed club was a very early inspiration for this, you know, the way that seed club brings in different web three projects to space, the way that they spend time with their founders help connect them to other founders and talk through different strategies. I went through one of those early programs as a mentor. And I was like, this is fantastic. You know, I think that every industry could benefit from this. I don’t think that we’ve done the best job of doing that with web three music yet. But you know, now that we have these different programs like the launchpad, the program that Hi Fi Labs is doing, what Nifty socks is doing, what a number of other artists people are doing, there’s going to be easier ways to get involved. And I think that the people that are willing to put in the time and effort to learning the space, when they want to get started with web three, hopefully have more resources than what already existed today.
What Does the Curriculum Look Like For New Artists Joining the Cohort?
What does the curriculum specifically look like for new artists joining the cohort? How do you guys’ sort of break down the scary keywords, is the first thing that you do like open up a meta mask, you send them their first Eth, like go collect something or go mint something? Or do you approach it more thoughtfully and strategically? How do you sort of approach it?
Cooper Turley: No, it was open your Metamask, let me send you Eth instead of going to click something go and set up your ENS domain. That was the homework assignment for week one, actually.
Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah, interesting.
Cooper Turley: And so, we’ll start with the basics, we start with understanding like how does all this stuff work under the hood? You know, like what is gas? What is transaction nonce? What is ENS domain? What’s the difference between Ethereum and Solana? Very basic questions like that. This week, we’re planning on getting more into like the music NFT Launchpad so just or the landscape, excuse me, so like, who are the different players that are on the table? What’s the difference between a marketplace versus a collector Dao versus you know, a social club, etc, etc. Then we get into some more of the nuance on like do’s and don’ts so like, hey, if I want to go and apply to be part of these communities, like what are some ones that I should start tapping into, you know, what is the song camp heartbeat called? What streams never die called? What is the music? What are the differences between these? And then the last week it’s just sort of like Let’s go on into music NFT. And so, when you do that, what are the questions that you ask yourself? How do I price this? Where do I release it? Who do I talk to in advance? How do I actually market this properly. And then I think the connective tissue of all that, again, it’s a four-week program. But we’re talking in the telegram every day leading up to that, I’m making time to go and meet with these artists outside of the one-on-one courses we’re doing, the weekly courses, excuse me, and I don’t know, by the end of it, I’m hopeful that all those artists will be able to mint their first music NFT. I’m hopeful that that will happen across different platforms. You know, today, we just got announced as one of the first curators on catalog for their new curation campaign, which I’m very excited about. And I’m hoping we can just give these creators a chance to shine in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to without the launchpad. And then from there, you know, use that framework to hopefully inspire many future cohorts to come.
How Did You Curate the First Cohort?
Interesting. How did you sort of put the first cohort together? I know you have a curation board, but it had to start with you like, I’m sure you sort of like you’re the, the engine behind the vehicle that sort of like organized everything. So, talk to me about putting together the curation board to then sort of picking the first cohort, that is what it is today.
Cooper Turley: Yeah, so I want to give a big shout out here to Charles Taylor, who’s one of the people that’s on the board with me, we were just talking through, like how to highlight underrepresented creators and ways for me to give back to the space that felt very, you know, like ethical and forward thinking, and, frankly, this cohort was the best way to do that, you know, I was thinking through like, how do I spotlight emerging creators? How do I show that I’m not just only tapping into the biggest artists on sound, and this design for a cohort really just came to fruition over the course of many months, you know, at that point in time, music NFTs were pretty early, just kind of sat on the back burner for a little bit. And then as I saw the space progressing, I was like, we need to do this launchpad, you know, like, there’s so many artists that want to get in the space now, you know, frankly, it’s kind of hard to get on to these new platforms unless you have an existing plug in. You know, as I do with most of my projects, I was like, let’s just go for it, you know, like put together a mirror post, like draft up some different curriculums where I got a bunch of feedback from different people in my network. Before I announced that I was very intentional to go to, everyone that’s on that board if you look at them, they’ve all either been really involved in different communities in web three or had like a very formative role in discovering emerging talent. And so, someone like Rio was the loners Dao, someone like CeCe who’s on the team at catalog and has been working actively with Zora topia and Charm, running a lot of her rehabilitation workshops and doing a lot of stuff on the ground in New Orleans. You know, Bihar, who’s super connected here in LA with a lot of different curators, Austin, who was formerly at Venice music, doing a fantastic job there, and just like very plugged into the space, you know, I wanted the board to really help me identify pockets that I wasn’t following myself. And then, you know, in total, we had probably, like 200 plus applications. And the way we did it was, every board member got broken up into a section where you reviewed, like, let’s call it roughly 30 to 40 artists, you got one pick who was kind of like your artists that you were willing to champion and say like, hey, like, I really think this person is gonna do well, I’m gonna vouch for them and put my reputation on it. And then we all basically aggregated some quote unquote, honorable mentions. And then we just voted, you know, everyone got three stars, everyone put those three stars next to the artists that they thought would be a good fit for the program. And then in total, we ended up with, it ended up being 12 artists instead of 10. But 12 artists for the first batch, and I think that that process was really good, because it wasn’t just me, it was kind of the collective whole of everyone. And I think through that we ended up with a really amazing, you know, rounded out lineup of the first cohort.
Yeah, I think the next component to this is, this week in music NFTs. So actually, the triangle is now diamond. From, from our visualizing this. So, you started this week in music NFTs not too long ago, you already racked up a few 1000 subscribers, high open rates, it sort of picks up on your defi days, which you mentioned earlier, but how does that sort of play into everything that you’re doing?
Cooper Turley: It’s a free resource, you know, like, I can’t tweet enough about everything that I’m seeing, I can’t like talk to enough people on a given day, what I can do is spend a couple hours on a weekend rounding up everything I saw from the past week and giving it away to people for free. And so, if there’s someone getting into the space that wants to get started, but I might not be free or available to sit down with them, I can send them the newsletter and say, hey, take 10 minutes a week and read this. And if you read this for four weeks in a row, and then you’re going to start to get a pretty clear picture for what’s going on here. You know, as I alluded to earlier, this week in defi, was extremely transformative in my early career, I learned so much from it, I was able to connect with so many new people, it was a huge, huge role in the way that I developed my own personal career. And so being able to use it as a way just to kind of shine a light on the space more broadly. You know, it’s not about any one individual platform. It’s not about any one individual artist, it’s the collective whole of it and this is just me.
So, this is just my point of view. You know, people will roast me and be like, oh, you never talked about us. You don’t care about the community. I’m like, it’s just me out here. You know what I mean? Like, I promise you, I’ll try to do what I can, but you know, I think tying it all back to coop records when you think about the way that I want to work with companies. I’m a very big believer in value added investors. You know, I’m a very big believer that investors should be on the ground floors with their projects and with their communities. You know, me and my friend Brett we through an event called the music NFT movement, and NFT NYC, spotlighted five emerging artists in the space through a great event together, completely free, the newsletters completely free. You know, when I work with founders, I want them to see that I’m not just talking the game, you know, I’m not saying that I’m not here collecting, and I’m not or I’m not saying that I’m like, tapping in with people behind the scenes and it’s hard to see it’s like, no, like, you want to see the work that I do for the community, go and read the newsletter, you know, like, go and look at the launch track, go come to one of our music nit movement events. And I think that ability to really highlight that this community participation is very serious and active, I get a ton of enjoyment out of I think that it helps a lot of people out. And so, I’m gonna be doing it for a long time to come.
I think when you texted me, when you were starting it, you’re like, This is gonna be the biggest publication on mirror one day. I’m excited to see that. And I started collecting yours as well. So hopefully they play some value capture in that at some point.
Cooper Turley: Not many people know that you can collect them on a mirror, to be honest with you.
What’s Next For Cooper?
Yeah. Bunch of alpha, bunch of alpha, a bunch of alpha. Okay. The next thing that I want to talk to you about coop is coop records is out 10 million bucks, doubling down on some investments, investing in new projects, betting on your beliefs. What’s next, like, what’s next for you, as someone, a character on Twitter, as a collector across all these sound platforms, or these music platforms? As someone who’s investing? What’s next for you? Like, what can we expect?
Cooper Turley: Just taking more consistent shots on goals, you know, like supporting early companies, I think you’re gonna start to see a couple rounds announced that I’m participating in as the fund, a couple of new projects springing up that I think are very exciting, you know, new mechanisms for doing drops together. So other jobs that I’m being active on as a project manager, artist seed rounds, as we alluded to earlier, so announcing a couple of those, and really just creating more of like a mesh around like this movement as a whole, you know, what’s gonna change my Twitter, not much, frankly, I mean, I’m still probably gonna tweet music NFTs every week, so we’re gonna, you know, piss people off, because it’s all that I talked about. But frankly, man, I’ve never been in like a more peaceful state, like with like, how I’ve kind of structured my life, you know, like, I love music. And I’ve loved it for such a long time. Like, I always live this double life. And I talked about this in some of our last episodes, but I like love music on the side, and then like use crypto to pay the bills. And I’ve somehow been lucky enough to kind of connect the two together, I’m well aware that there’s a very vibrant world of stuff happening in web three outside of just music, and I do my best to keep up with it. But the flip side of that is that I can kind of just be in this small little niche that not many people care about, just vibing out, collecting music NFTs. And it’s like, yeah, it’s this fun over here. Like, frankly, like, I don’t have to tell you this. But like, you know, you come spend sometimes at these events, you go to these concerts, you’re on the sound Twitter spaces and whatnot. Like, we’re having a good time. And so, I feel like in a very blessed state right now, you know, I’m super thankful for all the investors who took a chance on me to do something with this fund. I’m very thankful for the network I’ve developed here in LA, I’m extremely thankful for the web three network I’ve developed online. We’re super early. I’m 27. You know, I have a very long career ahead of me. And I’m excited to use this as the next vehicle to really help amplify this space as a whole.
Did you know what else we need to talk about? The whole Kobe debates. That guy has yet to come on. He publicly said, sure. He’s not answering DMS anymore. What’s up with that? I think it’s net positive overall, it’s more exposure. Haters are gonna hate and it’s just better publicity. But how do we get Kobe on? What’s the message Cooper?
Cooper Turley: I think we got Kobe on by doing more impressive work and showing that this is something more than just a meme. You know, I think that for someone of his stature and caliber, it’s not worth his time, frankly, to talk about this stuff yet. I think it’s like a fun thought piece. But he’s got bigger things, bigger fish to fry, let’s call it and I think the reality is that him coming on this podcast was a lot more for us than it does for him. Like I said, in text with you and David, I am hopeful that this happens. But realistically, I’m not expecting it anytime soon. And frankly, for most people that are on Twitter, music NFTs are a joke. You know, like, no one cares about them. No one’s paying attention, whatever all the people say. But we’re having fun in our little pocket over here. You know, if you want to come and learn more about it, I think it goes deeper than just buying all kinds of songs. But you know, it’s across the board. And I’m excited to hopefully use this fund as another way to share this is a very serious space worth paying attention to.
Coop, before I let you go, what am I missing over here? What do we need to talk about? What did I not highlight about Coop records? Tell me like what are we missing here?
Cooper Turley: I think you’ve covered basically everything I could think of, the one section that I’ll talk about a little bit just quickly is that many artists relation with web three, if you’re an established artist is either you just buying JPEGs for fun and just flipping it for profit. It’s maybe you are doing like a drop once or twice here and there and not really fully leaning into it. I’m hoping this fund can be a vehicle to like really allow artists to think more thoroughly about investing. You know, like, let’s take the other side of this. Let’s say that you’ve actually done really well for yourself as an artist, you know, you’re selling out stadiums, you have a number one hit on Spotify. Allocating money to different investment opportunities is super important. And I think that a lot of the times investing just becomes not very fun because you talk about like getting savings rates or like a PRs that are just like fixed rate returns and whatnot. And that’s all great. Don’t get me wrong, but I think that investing culture is extremely exciting. And so, one thing that I’m really stoked on is just bringing in a couple high profile artists who have done well for themselves, you know, like educating them on the culture around investing, sharing investment opportunities, bringing them into early seed rounds. I’m really excited for different artists to start thinking more deeply about how they’re managing their capital. And I think on the flip side of doing an artist seed round, artists becoming investors themselves is also extremely exciting. And one thing that I think Coop records is going to do is show that there’s opportunities for artists of all shapes and sizes and we’re here happy to help out however we can’t.
Outro
I love it dude, before I let you go Coop, where can we find you? Where can we tune in? Show it away.
Cooper Turley: Best place to stay up with me would be at our newly launched website which is live at the time of this podcast going live, Cube records dot XYZ, you can follow me on Twitter at Coopa Troopa. This week in music NFTs is the name of the newsletter and then yeah, just keep an eye out for more announcements coming from my personal account. You know, I don’t know whether or not there’ll be a Coop records Twitter account for the time that this is live but I’m just me at the end of the day, so I’m excited to see what happens.
Amazing, dude, congratulations, and we’ll have to do this again soon.
Cooper Turley: Cheers, man. Appreciate you always.
