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All things blockchain, real value creation, Pylons + Oraichain
Recorded: July 8, 2023 Duration: 1:22:22Space Recording
Full Transcription
Just getting to go.
How was your breakfast?
I just got a quick breakfast in.
Oh, man.
I just had some.
What's up, Chad?
Yeah, I just had that my granola ball, you know, feeling good.
Nice.
I made some.
I'm trying to go a little bit lighter these days.
I'm trying to lose some weight.
I'm feeling a little bit overweight these days.
You know what you got to do?
It's kind of my thing.
What I do is I get corn tortillas and put them on a skillet, and then I just do, like, good eggs after that, and then just sprinkle a little bit of, like, queso on top of it.
And then I sometimes do salsa.
My wife does salsa, but they're real good.
They're healthy.
That's, you know, not a bunch of carbs in the morning, and so it tastes really good every once in a while.
You know what I want?
I want an AI model that's just going to tell me how to eat vegan and healthy without abandoning my sense of flavor, right?
Like, I want to eat the same type of food, the same flavor profile, but I just don't want it to be so fatty and garbage-y.
Like, I've been really good about, like, cutting out all of the, all the, like, junk food, junk food stuff, but I still, I'm still sneaking in some fried chicken sandwiches.
I got to cut that out.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you on that.
Man, if you're thinking, yo, interested in losing weight, I got some bad news about granola.
Go ahead.
Share your bad news with granola.
Oh, man, that is 100% carbohydrates, just, like, a pure sugar.
Might as well be eating frots and flakes situation.
Yeah.
Even if it's homemade?
Oh, my God.
Yeah, I try to, I've been cutting back, I've been trying to cut back on the carbs.
Like, if I do have carbs, it's, like, just, like, tortilla chips.
That's it.
I don't mess around with, like, all that other crap.
I try to cut back on the bread, but when I was in the best shape of my life about three years ago, so I'm 37 now, I don't want to say the best shape of my life, but I was pretty much in the best shape of my life.
Even considering what I looked like when I was actually playing ball, I was healthier because I weighed less, and it was because I just wasn't really eating bread, honestly.
I mean, I was working out all that, but I cut out the bread.
Like, the bread is what, like, it's just, like, goop.
It stays in you, and you can never process it.
That's the thing, is the bread.
And all I do is eat bread all day long, and it's a problem.
The bread is it.
I start with a bagel in the morning.
I have, like, a cold-cut sandwich in the afternoon.
Yeah.
I'm, like, I'm bread, bread, bread all day.
I read something, like, two months ago that was, like, the difference, like, the reason Americans are fatter is sandwiches.
It's, like, we eat bread, like, by accident, you know?
A sandwich is, like, it's, like, a meal plus, like, a bunch of extra bread you didn't even, like, that, like, you think doesn't count.
But, like, actually, it's, like, it's that.
It's, like, it's just, like, eating bread with everything is, like, why we're fat.
It totally is, though.
Which is ironic, because the Subway diet is, like, eat a sandwich in the afternoon, eat a sandwich at dinner, and lose 200 pounds.
I mean, you know, look, yeah, if you are really, really careful, you don't need anything else, and then, you know, you cut the middle out.
Yeah, you're basically starving yourself, actually.
Yeah, you know, like, you know, when I lost, like, when I lost a bunch of weight during the pandemic, it was, like, breakfast was, like, scrambled eggs,
and you, like, scramble eggs, and you put in, like, cottage cheese and chives, and it's, like, pretty good, and it's, like, all protein.
And then, like, and, like, asparagus and something, like, and then, like, that's pretty good.
And then you just, like, eat, you just eat, like, like, you know, sliced turkey wrapped around, like, a piece of cucumber for, like, snacks.
And, like, that's it, that'll do it.
It's not the most fun thing in the world, but it did work.
I'm impressed, Michael.
I think you may have been the only human being that actually lost weight during COVID.
Oh, it was, like, it was, yeah.
No, my girlfriend and I just, like, rented a little house in Connecticut and bought two kayaks
and, like, started eating, like, crazy protein diets and paddling at least twice a week on the lake.
Nice.
And, you know, and, like, never eating out.
Where in Connecticut were you?
We were in Danbury.
Oh, okay.
The very north end of Danbury on Candlewood Lake.
Nice, yeah.
I went to school in Connecticut.
Everything ends in Bury out there.
Waterbury, Dan's Bury, West Bury.
There's all these Dan Berries, you know, or town.
You know, I was really, really hyped at one point.
I was, like, I found a house in Saybrook, like, right by the coast, and I was, like,
and it was so cheap, and I was, like, I'm going to buy this fucking house.
But it was so cheap, and I just, I love it up there, like, especially northern Connecticut,
right on the border of Rhode Island there.
It can be really beautiful.
All right.
So did you buy the house?
No, I still live in Rockaway Beach, New York.
It's, you know.
So I've got things to say about New York, but let me skip all that right now, and let's
go back to this food conversation for a minute, because my wife is a vegan chef, okay?
And I should eat better than I do.
And she's really just fantastic about making sure that, like, we always have great stuff.
About eight months ago, I was like, you need to come up with a, and she's literally bringing
me a grilled cheese right now.
Let's talk about bread, guys.
Grilled cheese is a zero protein food.
Yeah, this is, I mean, but God, is it so delicious.
So delicious.
Yeah, I'm convinced, I was going to say, I'm also convinced that we're not supposed to have
dairy.
I'm convinced.
Well, my grilled cheese is not grilled cheese.
It's definitely cashew cheese.
So it's got some protein in it.
The reason why, I know everyone's body is different, but like, I can be completely fine.
Like, everything's good.
And then once I start eating dairy, like anything dairy, my stomach starts to hurt.
Like, I can't digest it.
And the same thing with bread, too.
Like, I'm Italian.
So like, I used to always eat pasta all the time.
I love pasta.
I haven't ate pasta in years because I just was always miserable.
My stomach always hurt.
Like, I'm like, and I just always felt bloated.
I'm just like, nah.
So I stopped that.
And I mean, I eat bread from time to time.
But I try to cut it out.
Like, you know, when I was real strict on my diet, like I wasn't eating bread at all.
Like, no matter what, I didn't have bread.
And then every once in a while, I'd cheat and have some, like a couple of slices of pizza
just to keep my sanity.
But yeah, I lost so much weight from that.
I was working out.
But like, I went from 215 down to like 170 in I don't even know how many months.
Like, I was doing P90X.
Don't get me wrong.
It's a hard workout.
But I stopped with the bread bullshit.
And I lost so much weight.
Like, I was, I felt amazing.
Like, I felt like I was 10 years younger.
Like, my body didn't hurt.
Like, I felt like I could fall off a roof and been fine, you know?
Then COVID happened.
I got back into the bread and the pizza bullshit.
Then I was like, tweaking my knee, getting up.
I'm like, yeah, I got to cut this shit out.
Like, I feel so old sometimes.
And I feel good now.
I lost like another 15 pounds.
I'm down to like 190.
I got back up to like up in the low 200.
So I'm like, I want to lose like another 7 to 8 to 10 pounds around there.
And I feel like I'll feel really good again.
Like, my body won't hurt.
And I won't feel like I'm 37.
You know what I mean?
So this is what I was going to say, though, is that my, so my wife has got like, she's
got cookbooks.
She's a cookbook author, right?
And so she's got all of these recipes.
And I was like, what you need to do is jump in and create an AI model that is letting
people put the things they like to eat and then creating new things for them that are
like unique recipes for themselves that they can like mint and test and review and like
have their own like recipes based on like your super like healthy database of things that you can eat.
And I feel like something like that is like, those are the use cases that don't happen in
crypto right now.
But like, those are the things that like millions of people will pick up and use, right?
If you had an app that was like, actually adding value to your life, making you healthier and
stuff like that's something people want probably more than they care about, like sitting around
and, you know, doing DeFi, you know, nonstop claiming rewards and stuff.
Yeah, well, I think DeFi is going to have a very hard year next year.
Yeah, actually, so let's go, let's go around the table real quick.
I got yelled at at George last week for not introducing ourselves.
So I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself.
I'm Tyree Robinson, head of business development for Rideshare Labs US.
On the call right now, I've got Cosmos Haas.
Haas, I'd like to introduce yourself.
Yeah, so Cosmos Haas, goodbye Haas, real name's Jay.
Anyways, I am recently starting June, became the community manager slash liaison slash BD,
help soldier of a ride chain.
Basically been in this space since shortly after COVID.
Got into Cosmos right when around shortly after Osmosis launched in June of 21.
And just kind of found my home in Cosmos.
I like, I love everything about it.
Yeah, there's some little things that I don't like, but that's just, nothing's ever going to be perfect.
Anyways, long story short, I really believe in Cosmos, the app chain thesis.
And just seeing the, basically the trajectory of, since I began to what it is now, it's like day and night.
And I'm just fascinated to see, you know, like what this looks like in a year from now, two years from now, five years from now.
And long story short, let me have Mike Nucci real quick, Michael.
Long story short, I, yeah, I just want to be doing this the rest of my life.
I could really enjoy crypto and the community and just like all the ups and downs.
And I'm a little bit older and more experienced than most, I guess, because I have a business background and I'm not in a rush.
Like I think a lot of times people are in a rush and look at the short term too much in this space.
And we're super early.
Like I can't say, I've been saying that since I got into this space, how early we are, but we're still early.
Like it's just, we're not there yet.
And I want to be a part of that to, you know, be that old guy one day.
Oh, when I was a kid, you know, we used to do this in crypto.
So that's my long intro.
Nice to see you guys.
Happy Saturday.
And I'll pass it over to Mike, Michael.
Yo, what's up, everybody?
My name is Michael.
I'm a, I'm a crypto OG.
I started a Bitcoin exchange in 2013 and learned about, learned all sorts of interesting lessons about the banking system at that time.
And now I got into Cosmos in 2016 when I did the, when I sort of led the pre-fund for the, for the, for the ICO.
And then now I run a chain called Pylons and Pylons does, among other things, it does point of sale for blockchain.
So it lets people onboard into the blockchain ecosystem through our extremely nice-to-use mobile app without ever engaging with tokens.
So we have an SEC-proof way of onboarding people into your ecosystem and letting people buy your stuff without taking any regulatory risk.
So that's, that's what Pylons is doing right now.
And yeah, that's me.
I live in New York, so I'm sorry about the noise.
As we're like walking through the streets to pick up some day-old bread from our day-old bread app.
Okay, that's my intro.
So, Michael, I, I, I have so many questions to ask you, but like, explain to me like a typical use case on Pylon chain that, that, like you, that you're anticipating or you're currently experiencing.
Like, what types of people or projects would, would be most sort of likely to build on Pylon?
Yeah, so, okay, so right now the use case that's working is the use case of art sales, which, you know, sort of what people call NFTs, although I personally don't use that term because I think it's bad.
But digital art sales, so you can mint digital art onto the chain and then you can price it in U.S. dollars with your Stripe account and people can buy it with a credit card and the chain recognizes the credit card purchase and issues the item.
So, it allows you to use real money, well, I mean real money, like government money, that's stuff that most people in the world actually prefer to use to buy this digital art and sort of bring digital art on mobile to, like, a much broader audience.
So, that's working.
We haven't marketed it very hard right now, but we're working on figuring out a strategy for that.
And then the next thing that's coming up is I'm working with Shane from Stargaze to do U.S. dollar purchasing of NFTs on Stargaze natively in the Pylons app.
So, instead of needing to do the, like, seven-step process of getting stars, you can just, like, buy something for money or dollars directly in the Pylons app and have your item.
So, like, that's the next step and we're going to go from there into sort of being, like, anything you want to spend money on that's not, like, a token, that's not, like, an investment item, that's, like, more like digital goods, we can find a way to work with you and make it, like, super, super smooth and just buy it on mobile with money.
So, I absolutely love this idea, right?
And I helped with a project a few years ago that was working on the chargeback issue.
So, maybe you can give us, like, a little bit of a rundown on sort of your outlook in terms of, like, the risks associated with not having immutable payments on chain in exchange for goods and how you're mitigating those risks, specifically around chargebacks.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, I think the risks are lower when you're not doing these, like, highly fungible money-like items.
So, you know, that's the main thing.
The second thing is, like, you know, basically the tradeoff here is sort of the same tradeoff as any merchant that's, like, doing this kind of stuff, which is, like, some percentage, you know, you're out there, you're the merchant of record, you sell an edition of, like, 300 items, and if, like, 40 of them, you know, try to do a chargeback.
So, first of all, like, you know, Stripe is not that excited about letting people do chargebacks, right?
So, you know, you can contest them, and then if there's some breakage, it kind of doesn't matter that much.
You're just, like, you know, it's just sort of, like, overhead, right?
Like, it's more, like, because you have basically zero marginal, right?
Zero marginal cost.
You're not selling – you're selling stuff that you created, and so it sucks, but it's not, like, existential if, like, some percentage – you know, you're not, like – you don't have, like, a 10%, like, loss on your balance sheet if, like, 10% of your, you know, charges get charged back.
Well, I think that that's true for centralized businesses in the space, and I think that there is, you know, a percentage of a breakage that's to be expected in any business that you operate.
But, you know, the bigger question for me, though, is sort of individual secondary market sales of digital art.
At that point, you're talking about – I don't know if this is something you offer or facilitate right now, but it becomes an issue because if I – this is, like, the old eBay issue, right?
It's, like, okay, I put something on eBay, I sell it, somebody has used a fake credit card to purchase it, it hits a charge back, but I've already sent out my baseball card collection, and they now have that.
And now they're reselling it, right?
And I have nothing I can do about that.
So, you know, what's your sort of opinion around that issue?
Is there – are you enabling sort of secondary market, you know, sales of digital art and collectibles right now?
Yeah, and you – yes, so that's enabled.
People can do it.
If you want to – if you're worried about it, right, as a seller, you don't have to accept credit cards.
So we have in-app purchasing as well as credit cards.
And for in-app purchasing, what, you know, what you get paid with is, like, these sort of, like, these points on the network that are – that sort of represent gift card points that, like, pylons will cash out for you.
So you don't have to accept credit cards.
You can only take in-app purchasing.
You can also choose to only accept crypto.
So, you know, this is a UI feature, which we haven't enabled.
Like, there's no UX for it because, like, nobody has asked us, hey, can I sell this for Atom?
But, like, all of the technology is built to do a secondary market in Atom or in, you know, anything that's bridged over on the pylons chain.
So, you know, it's sort of up to the seller, like, what modalities you want to accept and, like, what risks you want to take based on that and what prices you want to pay.
Because if you accept in-app purchasing, you know, that's another 15% that Apple's going to take, right?
Right, and that was actually going to be my next question.
So right now you guys are – it sounds like you're mobile first and you're also – I assume you also have, you know, a web app.
Now, does using Stripe as your payment processor allow you to circumvent the in-app purchase sort of requirements that Apple imposes on app developers?
So, no.
I mean, we would never circumvent a requirement of Apple's.
That would be inappropriate for an app to pull it on the App Store, obviously.
So it's pretty subtle how it works.
iPhone users, you know, under Apple's rules are not permitted to buy digital items with anything other than, you know, except for using in-app purchasing.
So if an iPhone user wants to use their iPhone to buy your item, the only thing they're allowed to use is these pylons points, which, you know, get purchased through in-app purchasing.
So, you know, there's – that's not great.
They only have – if you've sold something for pylons points, Apple doesn't take a second cut, right?
So, like, Apple takes their cut when their points are created in the first place.
So if – as they start to circulate more and more, I think that becomes less of a problem.
But, yeah, that's what happens if someone's buying it on an iPhone.
I think, like, the reality of the world we live in is that, like, most of the money – like, a huge chunk of the, like, money in the world for digital items that is paid is paid over – is paid on iPhones, right?
Like, like – and people pay their 15% and they're happy because, like, that's where actually all of the market is.
So that's the situation.
For people on Android, they can buy with credit cards, and that is – you know, that works.
And then for anything that has, like, a physical component – so we're launching an event ticketing app hopefully in the next couple months.
And so for that, since there's a physical event you're attending and you get, like, you know, you get, like, a drink, then Apple – you know, it doesn't apply, right?
That rule doesn't apply, and you can use credit cards for that as well.
So, you know, we're obviously completely complying with Apple's rules.
We're not interested in, like, you know, getting kicked off the App Store.
But, you know, I think that's probably fine.
And then tell me a little bit about settlement on the – for the seller side.
You know, obviously people are paying in cash.
Are you settling in native currency, or are you distributing cash to the merchants?
So, yeah, we'll distribute – for cashing out of the in-app purchasing, our plan is to distribute cash directly to the merchants, you know, with a check.
Well, whatever, why are you money?
Because that's a gift card, right?
That's, like, you know, that's a gift card purchase on our platform.
For Stripe, the person selling is the merchant of record on Stripe.
You have to have your own Stripe account.
And, you know, we're using Stripe Connect, but we sort of, like, you know, we sort of push the money to you on the Stripe platform as you make your sale,
and then you withdraw it from Stripe yourself.
Yeah, it's so interesting because this is – it's a use case.
So, it's a use case that sits, like, right in between, you know – I always talk about sort of progressive onboarding, right?
Like, you can't, like, expect everybody to, like, pick up a wallet and figure out how to fund it and, like, do all of these steps to get them using your product just to, like, get you to the marketplace where now you can actually transact.
So, it really, you know, limits some of those steps, and I really like that.
I do see some of these challenges as being material.
Like, I do worry about the prevalence of chargebacks.
It might not be a major issue for you right at this moment, but as you guys inevitably reach a million or two million users
and you become a go-to platform for, you know, digital goods in this space, obviously, that's going to tick up, right?
And there's going to be more instances and more mitigation that's needed.
Now, in terms of sort of assets that are minted on your chain, I heard you say that you're planning on, you know, integrating with Stargaze.
Can any chain integrate with your, with Pylon now?
Is that possible to call me Cosmo?
It's, yeah, so, you know, it's much easier for an IBC-enabled chain to integrate.
For a non-IBC-enabled chain, you know, you need to call me and we need to figure out how to do it.
Now, I am very interested in making the Pylons app the, like, primary consumer on-ramp slash wallet for the crypto space, right?
And I believe that basically every single mobile wallet that currently exists is focused on people who want to trade tokens.
There isn't really a mobile wallet for consumers that's focused on, like, digital goods and, like, games and, like, you know, normal kind of consumer behavior.
Everything is for investor behavior.
So my goal is to be that, the digital wallet mobile app for consumer behavior.
And I want to do that for every chain.
So anybody who wants to work with me, you know, get some good user experience on your chain, get some nice, clean, safe, compliant on-ramping onto your chain.
Like, you know, we'll figure out what it takes and we'll do it.
You know, what's really interesting about this is that there are, while you're, I understand the focus is on consumers.
It also actually scratches an itch for institutions that don't want to hold crypto on their balance sheet, but might still want to participate in certain offerings, right?
So, for instance, you know, Arigine recently launched our data marketplace, you know, and right now, those data sets, you know, they're not just sort of Web3 data sets, right?
They're Web2 use cases.
They're, you know, they're, the people, the target audience for those, again, they're going to have to go through a number of steps, setting up a wallet, set up an account, funding that wallet, all of these different things, just to be able to get to a point where they can purchase that data set.
So, I actually think that there's an incredible use case there that removes that barrier for the data.
I love that.
So, look, the primary thing we're not doing is, like, you know, I'm not going to let you use this platform to sell securities if I can possibly help it.
But I don't think, you know, I don't think data sets, you know, are securities.
So, you know, we're not here to sort of, like, enable people to buy tokens for number go up purposes, right?
And I'm going to avoid that to the extent that I have that ability.
But, yeah, I mean, I'd be super happy to help sell anything that's, like, real goods, whether it's sort of, whether the consumer is a human or whether the consumer is an institution, right?
As long as they're not, like, buying it for, like, investment contract purposes, I am, like, stoked to make it happen.
Yeah, that's super awesome.
I love that.
And this is something that we're definitely going to follow up about because I think that it can be just an incredible value.
Again, when we look at, like, how we can remove the barriers in onboarding to bring people more quickly into the ecosystem to get the value that they want rather than sort of, you know, focusing always on this, you know, capital markets, you know, outlook.
I think that that is really where the next step of adoption goes.
And I agree with that.
And, like, you know, it's a little bit, like, I feel a little bit bad about, like, how sort of, like, intensely I feel in this moment because, like, I have been building this, like, not, like, doesn't touch securities, consumer on-ramp, like, blockchain point of sale thing for years.
And everyone has laughed at me and been, like, this isn't what blockchain is about.
And now that SEC is coming down, I'm, like, oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So I'm, like, trying not to be, like, you know.
Well, this is something that I, when I first, so when I first came into Arai chain back in 2021, I was working on a project called AI Right, which is our NFT marketplace.
And one of the things that I said very early on is that we had to approach NFTs from an artwork and collectible standpoint.
And subsequently, we had to find a good way to integrate a fiat on-ramp.
And we weren't able to, at the time, figure out a good way to use Stripe to enable those sales.
And subsequently, what we ended up doing is kind of putting it on the side.
And now we have a fiat on-ramp, but it doesn't bring the consumer directly to the product they want to buy at that moment.
So I love your solution.
I vibe with it.
That's something that I've definitely wanted in the past.
So I love to see somebody out there, you know, attacking that and getting it done.
Hell, yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I'm looking forward to talking after this and talking integration.
Yeah, absolutely.
And this is the other angle that I'm thinking about right now is that, you know, one of the big things, you go on OpenSea, you know, I talk about this all the time.
But 80% of OpenSea is like fraud, you know, or it's like repeat scammers that are selling you whatever.
They're selling you projects that they rug or whatever it might be.
There needs to be better consumer protection measures in the digital asset space in general, right?
You go to, you know, any e-commerce website and you can see ratings and reviews about that seller or that merchant.
Or sometimes you go to something and you just you can tell that it's a scam.
There's a phishing alert or whatever it might be.
And so I think that there is a sort of use case for AI here where you can actually be able to take reputation, on-chain reputation of whoever is creating that digital good or that IP that's being sold or whatever.
And be able to prove ownership and also provide some kind of report that can allow for consumers to very quickly identify what is real and what is fake and what is worth buying and what's not.
And I feel like that could be a really great place to collaborate, too.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds really fun.
You know, I think reputation systems are super, super hard.
You know, so I always want to see when someone has a new angle on a reputation to technology, like, you know, does it like does it work?
Does it stand up to the sort of highly adversarial environment that reputation systems have to operate in?
But, yeah, I mean, you know, what's what's interesting when you look at it in terms of content authenticity, this has been something we've been experimenting with for more than two years.
And the way that we approached it was saying, OK, we have all of these NFTs on chain that have a lot of repeat artwork being sort of fraudulently minted across chain.
Let's put them all in a database and get them all properly, properly labeled up where people can actually when you mint an NFT, a report is generated that is showing you any similarities, very objectively showing you similarities.
So not making any sort of overhauling or, you know, broad assessment about the reliability of that individual mentor, but looking at the actual content itself and sort of doing a reverse image search on it and saying, does it exist anywhere else?
You know, you know, and then providing that for the consumer to make their own decision rather than sort of saying this person has a five star reliability rating or something like that.
Just give them the evidence that they need.
That that was the perspective that we've taken so far, you know, and we've also sort of played around with the idea of of looking at, you know, wash trading and different things like that.
But that really becomes a very complicated issue. And I think that that goes more into sort of the the credit scoring or reputation that you're talking about.
It's like, how do we actually build, you know, a knowledge graph based system that is reliable and able to, you know, map out all these wallets and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know, or within some margin of error that whoever is actually doing these transactions are doing them fraudulently.
And that's that's that's extremely difficult. And, you know, I don't know that it's 100 percent possible right now.
Yeah, content authenticity standpoint, I think that it is 100 percent doable.
Just a sort of visual similarity thing that just like pops up, you know, how derivative is this?
And then it kind of it kind of dovetails with sort of like my sort of weekly held personal opinion about this, which is that like that like PFP projects are like potentially not the way and that like, you know, it's going to be much more digital art.
It's going to be much more artists doing work and less this sort of like like hype community thing that like sort of Bored Apes kind of started where it's like, OK, like, you know, we're all going to buy these things and we're going to become a community and we're all going to show them together.
And like, that's how we're all going to make it like cool.
But I don't know, that doesn't seem sustainable to me.
But I think like selling art is sustainable.
So that's that's sort of I totally agree with you.
A friend of mine, a friend of mine worked for an artist called named Daniel Arsham, who did some really amazing NFT.
He's a he's a fine artist.
You know, he does sculpture.
He does real world artwork.
But he bridged into NFTs, did really well in the beginning.
And that hype kind of fell off because everybody went down the PFP rabbit hole and decided that that's where the value was, not in sort of the actual real art and fractionalized real world art sort of vein.
Obviously, fractionalized is security.
So you guys wouldn't touch that.
But, you know, I do think that the real world art is a big thing.
But then what you still need to do is have a database of off chain real world IP that is really extensive.
Right. You need every museum.
You need all of Getty images.
You need like everything ever in this database to be able to actually say, OK, this person is providing a good that is either original or derivative within the bounds of existing copyright laws.
You know, you know, because that, you know, it really is a challenge.
And it's a it's been a very interesting challenge to sort of see play out with with generative A.I. especially.
Yeah, I think that's a really, you know, I mean, I hear you saying that.
I'm like, that sounds amazing.
It also sounds just like a huge amount of work.
Like that is, you know, that's off to you.
Well, yeah, you know, right now, I'm talking to I'm talking to an institution in Texas that is one of the top 20 institutions in the world by volume of collection.
I think they have somewhere in the range of 30,000 individual artworks in their collection spanning thousands of years.
Right. You're talking about like sculptures from, you know, ancient times all the way up until modern art.
And they're like, you know, they're they're frustrated right now that that the existing licensing models, they work with Getty Images, the existing licensing models are not fair for generative A.I. model developers.
And so the result is because people can't pay, you know, four hundred dollars an image for to access something that's being sort of licensed through licensed through Getty Images royalty free, where they're taking 50 percent plus of the revenue off it.
Right. They can't afford that.
And so they just scrape it from the Internet and then they use it in their generative A.I. model anyway.
So there's like a real problem there that that needs to be solved.
And it's starting to tick up.
You know, there was a about three weeks ago, there was an IP and A.I.
conversation that happened in Congress and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
There's another one that's coming, I think, this Wednesday.
It's going to be a follow up.
The first one was talked a lot about, you know, sort of inventorship in the age of A.I.
And and looking at who the resulting IP generated from A.I. models should belong to.
And I don't think that they answered the question very well.
And there are much better solutions, especially if you consider blockchain as part of the solution.
But, you know, ultimately, you know, the real question is, you know, who who should be entitled to the profits?
And training data is a major part of of the equation that's being ignored right now.
And, you know, so in the same sort of respect that we're talking about in terms of, you know, pure one for one digital goods,
I think that there's also, you know, attention that needs to be paid with specific, you know, focus on on generative A.I.
to clean up sort of data provenance in custody there and also creating an inclusive economy around around data ownership.
I mean, yeah, for sure.
All of that stuff is like, you know, the big questions of like the next 10 years.
Yeah, man.
So, Michael, I'm I'm hyped.
I'm super hyped on what you're working on.
Haas, please connect us.
Let's all jump in a group and and let's hash some things out.
I feel like there's I feel like there's a lot of synergy here.
You know, onboarding in this space is where everybody needs to focus right now.
There's plenty of DeFi going on.
There's plenty of layer ones going on.
If we don't get more users in this space, organic users in this space, then it doesn't matter what's what's being built.
Right.
It's yeah.
It ends up being the same market over and over again.
Negative sum economy.
Yeah.
What I like to say is, like, you know, think about, like, what percentage of the people engaging with blockchain are engaging with it with the intention of putting in money and receiving value, non-monetary value and being happy.
Right.
Like, what percentage is that?
Or at least, you know, in terms of, like, a data set, like, that counts, too.
It is sort of monetary, but it's not, like, token value that you intend to extract back out.
Right.
Like, what percentage of people are putting in money, receiving something out and being like, cool, I'm done.
I spent money on a thing.
Right.
And right now, that percentage is, like, I can't even imagine it's a tenth of a percent.
It might be a hundredth of a percent of, like, the usage of blockchain is people who are, like, happy to walk away with less cash because they bought something.
Right.
And in that situation, the whole space is just a Ponzi scheme.
That's, like, there's just nothing else there.
So we have to.
What's interesting about this to me is that, like, what we're missing in this space, you know, we're all about decentralization.
And I love that touchy-feely, you know what I mean, kumbaya stuff.
But, you know, at the end of the day, there's no, like, we're really lacking in the grander scheme of the Web3 space.
We're really lacking goods and services.
And I think that we're missing a major – by not addressing e-commerce directly, we're missing a major opportunity to be able to tap into the global economy and bring fresh capital into the space that's based on work and effort and quality rather – and sort of that value that you deliver to the customer.
But also, like, services, like, you know, there aren't – we don't see as many people coming into the space right now and saying, I want to offer my whatever, therapy services, or I don't want to – I want to offer my, you know, tax advisory services or whatever their thing might be, right?
There's nobody in this space really taking that head on and doing that, or there's very few, I should say.
And I feel like they're – in order to really unlock the value of Web3, you have to put real businesses in Web3.
And that, in turn, results into a healthier DeFi.
I believe that, and I feel that so hard.
And it's so frustrating because Web3 is so hostile to anything other than DeFi right now, and we just have to fix that.
You know, I had this experience two days ago where, you know, my friend who's sort of organizing the Burning Man camp I'm going to go to sent me a PayPal request, right?
She wanted $500 camp dues.
So I put in my credit card because I don't have a PayPal account because I hate those guys.
And I put in my credit card, and it charged her $15 as a credit card proficiency to accept that money, right?
And that's kind of a lot.
That's kind of a lot.
We can do so much better.
And we aren't, right?
Like, the idea that somebody who's doing, like, a real-world thing, like, organizing a Burning Man camp or, like, selling ice cream would accept cryptocurrency payments is, like, laughable because the space is just so hostile to anything but DeFi.
And, you know, no one's building tools for, like, regular human interaction, and I just think that's a tragedy.
But, you know, I also think that –
It's a total disaster, actually.
Like, it's – you know, and this is based on, you know, the – I've said this before.
I'm going to say it over and over again probably for the next 10 years until we fix the problem.
But the user graph of crypto is awful right now.
And I'm sorry to anybody in the audience that takes offense to this.
But I assume that if you're in this call that you are interested in some way organically in this space and the value of this space and this technology long term.
And that's great, and I'm glad that you're here.
A lot of people are gamblers in this space.
And a lot of people are scammers in this space.
And a lot of people are just day traders looking for a quick buck.
And those people do not create an economy.
Gamblers, they feed the casino cash.
That's what they do, right?
Like, that's what's going on here.
And, like, this is not sustainable, right?
It's like go home with nothing in your pocket.
The longer you play the game, the more likely it is you lose.
That's what the ecosystem is right now.
And so in order to actually fix the problem, we have to fix the user graph.
And that means going to the source of economic activity and fixing that first and then allowing that to attract the people that are actually coming to the space for that value, that service, that good that's going to make their life better.
And then and only then can we actually fix Web3 to be sustainable.
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
And, you know, my experience as a founder of a project that's out there saying, like, how do we how do we build a sustainable business on Web3 where users receive value has been that after I finish a pitch to an investor, the investor says to me, OK, but where is the casino?
Because what I do is I invest in casinos.
And, you know, that's that's a frustrating moment for me that has happened many times.
And, you know, I think it sucks.
I'm hoping that we like can, you know, it it it distorts what I here's here's what I'll say.
It distorts the capital market in a really painful way.
It's very hard to find resources, whether like whether like real in terms of like builders and marketers or financial for anything that isn't a casino because of how profitable blockchain casinos have been.
And, you know, and, you know, like I said earlier in the call, like I feel bad about this, but I'm like kind of happy about the SEC coming in and hopefully making that a harder place to make money, like making that a harder business to pitch and run.
Because I think it like hopefully like actually helps us like refocus our efforts on stuff that can that can really deliver for people.
So, you know, I know that's that I know that's a very heretical thing to say in a block.
No, I think that you're I think that you're right.
And, you know, one of the big things that people forget about the difference between the stock market and the crypto market is that the crypto market doesn't have cash flow.
It doesn't have dividends that are paying based on revenue coming in.
Right.
The dividends come in the Web3 space, either from transaction fees from trading through liquidity mining or from inflation in a lot of cases.
Neither of those are sources of revenue that are sustainable.
There's one more source, which is private equity pumping money into the system to generate attention.
And yeah, and that and that I mean, that's like the antithesis of everything that this space should.
Be about.
Yeah, look at when we look at sort of what, you know, Bitcoin could have enabled, you know, in a world where it didn't immediately go to, you know, when it went where it didn't immediately go from like Silk Road to Binance.
Right.
Because that was that was the experiences that we had, like doing business, which created value for Bitcoin because people were actually transacting in Bitcoin.
Even if it was totally awful and shady and they were doing the worst things in the world, it got value because there was legitimate economic demand for the token.
Right.
Rather than sort of building on that, that transactional need to be able to have a permissionless peer to peer way to do e-commerce together.
It went all the way to sort of, oh, Bitcoin is pumping.
And so we need more exchanges and we all need to capitalize.
Yeah.
Were you in crypto in 2017?
I was.
That was actually when I first got into crypto.
Yeah.
So, you know, I was I was CTO of a blockchain hedge fund in 2017 and I saw this happen.
This was like, you know, this was the story of 2017.
And when I write Bitcoin the musical, this would be a key part of the story, which is that the basically Roger Verr argued very, in my opinion, very persuasively that the block size of Bitcoin had to be increased.
Because the blocks were going to fill up and the transaction fees were going to go up and then people were not going to be able to get transactions through.
And Bitcoin was here to be useful.
It was here to be peer to peer money.
And, you know, and if we let the if we let the transaction fees go up and the blocks fill up, it won't be peer to peer money.
And then, you know, other people, basically what is now Bitcoin Core was like, well, we want Bitcoin to be this like store of value.
Which, in my in my personal opinion, as an aside, is not actually a real thing.
We want Bitcoin to be a store of value.
So in our opinion, like full blocks is better.
And they were like, well, like increasing the block size would be an experimental thing and very risky.
And Roger was like, look, I'm not technical.
But like from a technical perspective, bigger block size is experimental.
From an economic perspective, full blocks is incredibly experimentally risky.
That's a that's a that's a that's a huge, terrible thing.
And so he like fought this huge war, couldn't convince people and then was like, OK, well, I'm going to fork Bitcoin because I believe so strongly that like we need to do this.
And then he wanted to call it, you know, he wanted to do like a real aggressive fork and just call it Bitcoin.
And basically, the exchanges all got together and decided that like Roger's version of Bitcoin was going to lose and, you know, was not going to be allowed to be called Bitcoin.
They weren't going to call it Bitcoin on the exchanges.
The miners all wanted to do this full blocks because more transaction fees is more mining revenue.
And so fundamentally, it's like these big players that were making money off of Bitcoin kind of rugged the like actual Satoshi project and turned it into what it is now, which is this sort of like institutional insurance policy, which is like, OK, fine.
But, you know, the process of like Roger, like then starting Bitcoin cash and like pushing it as hard as he could to try to make it work and then, you know, basically just like getting rolled over because there wasn't really demand for Bitcoin payments at that scale.
To me, it's really sad, actually.
Like it's like it's kind of a tragic moment for the space.
It's like it's almost this like it's almost this like bellwether of like what's going to happen to everything in crypto when when like, you know, Roger's plea for like utility and like value is just like rolled over by this like, you know, financialization store of value mob.
And then like that kind of leaves everything hollow.
OK, I talked a lot.
No, no, no.
And now we see that essentially the thesis from BlackRock directly aligns with the current Bitcoin core's, you know, vision of what it is.
Right.
And that is problematic as well.
This is I you know, I don't I don't have a particular opinion about Bitcoin cash now.
I don't think that Bitcoin cash is going to be mass adopted because it didn't already.
No, you lost.
I mean, he lost.
Yeah, he lost.
I really wanted him to win.
And I think he was right, but he didn't win.
Yeah.
And it's I mean, it's yeah.
I mean, it's a bummer.
Right.
As a result, we we have an ecosystem that has boomed and everybody has created their own solutions.
You're out here doing fiat in because literally because somebody couldn't solve the peer to peer digital permissionless cash problem.
Right.
Like you wouldn't be doing what you're doing if this were already solved.
You know, I mean, I think we still need this.
I mean, I think we're a long way from like Bitcoin as like global M1.
And I think fundamentally like I think fundamentally communities like nations probably want to have their own currencies.
These stable nations really benefit from the ability to sort of like help structure the like economic direction of their populace by having a currency that they control.
I think like, you know, these sort of like uncontrollable fixed currencies are more are more valuable in a place where the will of the people can't actually reach the like monetary control authorities, which like.
It's not the case in the United States, I know a lot of people feel that the monetary control authorities are doing the wrong things, but they mostly are doing what everybody wants.
And people just don't agree with what the rest of the country wants.
But like, you know, I think so I think that like people want regular money, people want to onboard on people want regular money, they want government money and they want digital art.
So that my on ramp, I think would be necessary even if Bitcoin had like gone a better route.
But I think that there's like, you know, we would be having so much less chaos and so, so much less of this like, you know, fighting for like who's going to be the like source of like, I don't know, credibility and truth in the space.
It's if like Bitcoin had been allowed to be user focused instead of like institution focused.
Yeah, absolutely.
I totally I totally agree with that, you know, and actually one of the things that people as you're sitting here talking about sovereign sort of sovereign economies being able to sort of set their own monetary policy and and dictate the direction of their economy.
I think that this is something that people miss in general in the Web3 space, maybe even particularly in Cosmos.
Tokenomics are like handed down, right?
The whoever the founder of the project is comes up and says, this is what this project is.
And then everybody becomes a part of that governance.
And nobody takes action on the monetary policy or in very few cases, people take action on the monetary policy.
And that, you know, we see runaway inflation, a lot of chains where people are like, well, this is the emission schedule and this is what we expect.
And so we have to meet these emissions in order to get to this arbitrary goal of having all tokens released by whatever date it is and all these things.
And it's not paying attention to the fundamental health of the economy itself.
Yeah.
People actually need to do things like you're doing and say, look, we we need commerce.
We need business in order to have a healthy economy.
There needs to be stimulus and incentive to bring those businesses in that bring those customers in and create economic activity organically.
Right.
We can't, we can't, we can't, we're not just trading.
But even, even in the like, you know, closed hermetic world of like, of like, just like chain inflation, I think that having an emission schedule that scales back automatically based on the price of the token,
because it like caps the fiat value of what's emitted every month would be like a huge improvement.
So that you don't get these like moments where like the chain token pumps and then like the developers are getting paid like $15 million a month or some like stupid amount of money that just sort of like, I don't know, in my opinion, just like makes everything kind of like weird.
I feel like that's a great use for AI too, because here we are, you know, you take you, because you don't, you don't only want to look only at the monetary value of, or the fiat value of your token.
You want to be able to look at input from the rest of the market and predict trends and be able to take all of those things and then decide inflation based on a number of factors as if it's the Fed, right?
Like, you know, the Fed is saying, this is what we see in the next three years.
This is what we're anticipating.
And we're going to implement these measures systematically over the next few months and continue to reevaluate.
And in Web3, this is a great use case for AI to actually come in and provide a tool that gives you that suggestion, right?
And maybe it's something that's a super sweet, super sweet app change.
It's just like, you pay me, like, you know, however many atom per week, and I will, like, give you the most correct inflation parameters for this week.
And you could, like, there's like every chain in the whole ecosystem needs that service.
So anybody in the Arai chain ecosystem that's out there and listening, you know, we got a community pool of $750,000 worth of Arai token waiting for you to solve this problem.
And it's a problem, as Michael just said, that every single chain can use.
So get on it, guys.
Get on it.
Mike.
Yeah, like Osmo just.
Go ahead.
Osmosis just had a governance thing, what was it, like, three weeks ago, where they were talking about slashing emissions.
And it becomes, like, a really complicated negotiation, right?
Like, you know, because obviously everyone has incentives in that moment.
And so being able to be, like, instead of saying, like, hey, like, you know, I'm going to throw something up on the governance hub with some new numbers, and, like, you're going to vote yes or no, right?
You can be, like, all right, well, let's adopt, like, you know, Arai inflate, you know, emissions scheduling.
And then, like, everyone who's, like, kind of upset at how much money, like, you know, the various sort of, like, you know, people from three years ago are taking home can be, like, yeah, like, this is fair.
And then the people who are, you know, everyone can be, like, okay, well, at least this is, I don't know, this is, like, I'm not, like, I'm a tech guy.
I've only done sort of, like, a certain amount of business.
But one thing that, like, stuck with me is that, like, in negotiations, it can really, really help to have, to negotiate not about numbers but about processes and about, like, ways to reach numbers, like calculation frameworks.
And so I think it could be much easier in a governance proposal to come to an agreement to use a particular third-party inflation calculator that can be viewed as objective, right?
And isn't all that interested in you, right?
And so isn't, like, trying to game their numbers to, like, help any particular stakeholder of your chain?
I think it's a lot easier to sort of, like, negotiate that than it is to sort of negotiate a new emission schedule, like, during the, like, super high drama moment, like, in osmosis, where, like, the token price is, like, you know, whatever it is, whatever it's down, like, 15x down from top and, like, everyone's stressed.
Emotionally driven, you know, solutions are always the worst, right?
And, you know, ultimately, people are misled, right?
This is a fundamental problem in Web3 as well is that you look at an APR number, an APOI number, and you say, I'm doing great right now.
But that number is not informed by the inflation and the impacts on the economy, right?
It's a number on a page.
It says 27%.
You're hyped on it.
Oh, I'm getting such great rewards.
It's going to have some kind of future value because I anticipate that later the chain is going to boom or something when there's a wave of adoption.
All of these things are based in speculation, not in analysis.
And I think that there are even – this doesn't have to be, like, a fully automated process either.
It could be something that on a weekly basis is doing an analysis and printing a proposal, putting up a proposal that's saying the inflation rate should be adjusted to this degree.
And then, you know, then everybody votes on it on a weekly basis.
And then you activate your validators to actually go in and participate on those different things and look at the evidence, right?
And I feel like it's just such a fantastic use case for AI in this space.
It would be really cool.
I like it.
It's got absolutely nothing to do with anything I'm working on, but I really like it.
I think someone should do it.
So we've been going for an hour.
This is dope.
I do want to touch on just a couple quick things for the community.
If you guys see in the pinned posts up at the top here, we recently – or yesterday, I released the first Orion Chain newsletter.
This is really dope for anybody that wants to be able to, like, get up to speed on everything that's going on both in our ecosystem and the broader AI world, learn about some new projects.
I'm not going to make this just another pure announcement channel where, you know, you're getting the same repetitive information from another channel.
I'm going to be putting a lot of interesting content, looking to have people like Pylon, like Andromeda, like Galactica come in and do interviews and talk about their projects where you guys can hear more about some other interesting and awesome things going on in the space that are really exciting to us.
And hopefully it helps you understand perspective a little bit of our team, of me personally, of other builders in the space, because we need you as community members to look at more than your yield.
We need you to start thinking about this entire space globally and thinking about what it needs to – what needs to happen with blockchain in general in order for real adoption to happen and how all of these individual builders are contributing to that ultimate vision.
I don't see a lot of conflict between very many, you know, sovereign chains in this space.
There are maybe some people that are building similar apps on different chains, but everybody can mesh together here.
And this is one of the beautiful things of Cosmos is that with interchain accounts, we can actually do that.
We can actually be able to use bits and pieces from Agoric and use some pieces from Defund and Osmosis and have all of that available in whatever your preferred chain is, right?
And that, I think, is going to be really powerful.
So take a look at my chain newsletter.
And then obviously we've got pylons pinned up there.
If you guys loved, like I did, what Michael has been talking about today, Mike, we have to absolutely get together.
I'm in New York.
I'm in Rockaway Beach.
Sweet.
You're not that far.
I think that we should –
I am in Soho.
I am right near the Canal Street stop.
So, you know, any train you get on takes you to my hood.
Yeah, buddy.
Yeah, I got the A train.
It's only about 20 blocks away from me here.
And I usually take the ferry into the city of South Street Seaport.
But let's make a time.
Let's get together and chill.
And I guess other big highlights this week, we – Babylon Chain integrated with Arai Chain this past week.
What does that mean?
It means that Arai Chain now has shared security with Bitcoin.
And I highly recommend – there's an article about it in the newsletter that everybody jump into that, take a look, learn more about Babylon Chain, check out Babylon Scan, and see the testnet transactions getting Bitcoin timestamps in real time through their really unique checkpoint aggregator.
I think that that is – that's super hype and really excited about that.
We also have Orchai, which is an ecosystem project that's a part of our accelerator program.
They are releasing their Combinator in the coming weeks.
And so what that is actually doing is using AI to be able to help you bundle transactions or different actions together and be able to create your own DeFi recipes and strategies with a very user-friendly interface.
It will be on Testnet on July 13th.
Again, article is up in the newsletter.
So have a quick peek at that.
And make sure you all follow Orchai underscore protocol.
You'll – if you go to our channel, you'll see lots of – lots of retweets about those guys.
Really excited about what they're doing in their – in their next phase.
Yeah, it's pinned up top now.
And then, I guess, on a final note, OpenAI announced this week that they are launching what they're calling their Super Alignment Committee.
And essentially what they're doing is trying to create a committee to help them develop solutions to make sure that AI systems continue to be human-centric,
which I think is great in theory.
But, you know, ultimately what they've already done is pretty damaging and controversial.
They've gone and scraped the world's knowledge and put it into a generative AI model and then kept all the wealth for themselves.
So, for me –
Yeah, I – you know, fuck those guys.
I can't say it.
I can't say it here.
We don't need – we do not need them.
Like, we do not need – they, like – these guys were like, oh, like, you know, we need to, like, be the first so that we can, like, make sure everything evolves in an ethical way.
And then they did nothing ethically whatsoever.
They, like, sprinted to try to get to the front of the thing, did nothing ethically whatsoever, you know.
And now they're like, oh, wow, like, this is so dangerous.
I'm like, bros, like, you didn't have to do that.
All sorts of people were telling you don't do that.
And then you did.
And now you're telling us you shouldn't have done it?
Like, get out of here.
Well, what was really a pain to me was when they got in front of that Senate – I think Blumenthal, you know, was leading one of the Senate hearings.
And Sam got up there and said, oh, you know, what we need to do is require AI companies like OpenAI to have a license.
I was like, you're the last person that deserves a license.
You've exploited so much proprietary and personal data to be able to create your product.
You're the least trustworthy right now of any of these major companies.
And I'm sorry, anybody from OpenAI that's listening, I know you're not.
But if you are, you can go tell him, right?
If you wanted to do this right, you would look at how you completely overhaul the privacy policies in the United States first and respect the privacy policies of individuals and countries abroad.
And then after you do those things and find ways to ensure that individuals do not lose their sovereignty and don't twist fair use policies for corporate gain, then you can start discussing building things ethically.
But right now, that product is built from the ground up, as you're saying, completely unethically.
And I think that it's – I think that they need to get aligned with, like, general, you know, decency standards before they can, you know, deal with super alignment.
They got access to so much data by telling institutions, like universities, that they were a nonprofit.
It's, like, disgusting.
It's, you know, the best thing we could do for AI ethics is nuke that organization into dust with vines.
That's a hot take.
I'm going to quote that.
I'm going to get that one tattooed in myself.
I've been looking for a new tattoo.
My last one says live free or die, which is why I'm in the crypto space.
So, all right.
I'm going to wrap it up because there we go.
That was – you literally cannot end on a better note.
So, for all you guys listening, thank you for joining.
I see validators.
I see ambassadors in the audience today.
I see Chad sitting there.
Chad, you got to jump up at some point and tell everybody about all this stable diffusion stuff you're working on because that's sick.
And, Michael, it's been a real pleasure having this conversation with you today.
I'm looking forward to grabbing a coffee in the near time in the future or a tea or whatever, a smoothie, whatever you do.
Awesome.
Likewise.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Michael's.
I haven't talked to you in a while, man.
It's been nice.
I didn't really talk today.
I was just chilling and listening.
I should have went and made some popcorn and just chilled out, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, yeah, we were just – this has definitely been a pretty – I don't know.
I've had a great time.
I hope that there aren't too many people who wanted to ask questions and didn't get a chance to ask questions.
We maybe monopolized a little bit.
I didn't even get to rant about the SEC very much.
Like, what a day.
Thank you both.
Yeah, man.
I'm here for event sessions.
You know what I mean?
I'm glad you stopped by.
It was a great conversation.
I think there was a lot to it.
I think you're right about that there needs to be more models where people buy things and they don't expect some sort of tokenization value capture afterwards.
But it's just to buy stuff.
I mean, that's what humans do.
We buy stuff.
We've always bought stuff.
We've always collected stuff.
I mean, shit.
I got a pair of – I have a bunch of Jordan shoes.
I used to be a sneakerhead.
My brother's more of a sneakerhead.
But the reality is people buy shit.
There's Pokemon cards that are worth, like, millions of dollars.
There's baseball cards.
There's jerseys.
There's all kind of collectibles where people buy things.
And maybe not necessarily they thought they were going to get some sort of value, like, U.S. dollar value out of it.
But people like to collect shit, you know?
And, like, they want to buy stuff and not expect some sort of, like, tokenomics part of it.
And I think you're completely right about that.
There's not enough people in this space that are trying to build things that actually get value that way for people.
And, you know, most people that get into this space, like gamers and stuff, they just want to buy stuff.
They don't want to, like, do stuff.
They don't want to be, like, okay, well, I need to do 17 transactions just to get to the playing field, so to speak.
And I always commend people that are, like, working on onboarding new users.
And the problem that this space typically has, from my experience, is that it's, like, battling over the preexistent people.
And we're such a small collective group.
I don't know the numbers on it.
But I swear there can't be that many people in crypto right now during the bear market.
And it seems like everyone's just positioned themselves to fight over those preexistent people.
And, you know, most people that are in this space kind of have their mind set in a certain location where they're at.
And they're pretty good there.
And they don't really want to go venture off.
Maybe they do.
Maybe they don't.
But that's such a small collective unit.
We need to work on building things that are useful, especially with actual businesses.
You know, like, I try to look at things in that perspective.
Like, we kind of put the cart before the horse in this space.
And we're just fighting over the smallest user base.
But we need to really get actual businesses to get into the space for whatever reasons.
Legal reasons.
Document reasons.
You know, any sort of reason to get them in the space.
Because that's how this space is going to move forward.
And I think what you guys said about the AI model for inflation models is, like, super cool.
And, like, that would be amazing and useful to, like, yeah.
Because, like, you put this model out, right, for, like, inflation tokenomics.
And then it could be good for the short term.
And then, like, everything changes.
Like, the economic change, the macros, everything changes.
So, you can't be set still at some sort of, like, model that you have.
And then it's, like, people go, shit, we need to go to, you know, Osmo 2.0 or Atom 2.0 or this 2.0.
Why can't we just do that continuously, always checking the data?
And, you know, it can just evolve over time, you know.
So, like, I like that.
I think that's an actual really good use case.
You know, there's something that's interesting about this, too, in Cosmos is because you have these really long unbonding times.
You know, it's not like you're going to change the inflation rate and the next day everybody's going to unbond.
And then the inflation rate changes the next week and everybody bonds again, right?
Like, there's some sort of baked instability here.
This is definitely something that needs, like, a lot of thought and consideration.
I just think that it's so brilliant and works best in Cosmos in general.
It's something that Cosmos needs, especially with a lot of these chains that have heavy inflation, you know, to sort of keep people active on their chain.
But it's going to weed out a lot of folks.
A lot of people are going to say, look, I don't want to do this.
I'm here for the yields.
I want to bounce.
I don't care about the network security.
I don't participate in governance.
So, like, why do I care about being on that chain?
And, you know, frankly, you know, no offense to anybody, but maybe you don't belong on that chain.
Maybe you need to go find something you're passionate about and do that.
And that's something that I really do believe, you know, my core.
And, Michael, actually, one last question here.
Like, will pylons be able to be used for real-world goods eventually?
So, yeah, like, my answer is I hope not.
Like, I personally believe that blockchain is sort of best in direct proportion to how imaginary the thing it's selling is.
Right?
Like, blockchain works for money because money is imaginary.
And it works for art because art is imaginary.
And, like, real-world stuff is already, like, the source of truth for real-world goods is the courts.
Right?
And there's no getting around that.
And if your blockchain disagrees with the judge, like, it kind of doesn't matter what your blockchain says.
So, I don't know.
I don't really, like, that's, I think that's the last place we should take blockchain personally.
You know, I don't know.
So, like, what you could do, you could have vouchers, right?
Like, again, like, a deed to property is imaginary.
Land is real.
Right?
So, like, you can have a blockchain that transfers deeds.
But you can't have a blockchain that transfers land.
Only the police can transfer land.
Right?
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
I love that.
That's such a good analogy.
I mean, you know, and actually, it's just the fundamental truth.
Like, especially we're talking a lot about real-world assets in the space right now.
There's more projects getting into that.
You know, whatever you have on team can never be more than a reflection of that real-world asset.
And right now, the reflection of that asset is an ERC-20 token.
And that stinks.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And, like, cool.
I mean, it's a token.
It is what it is, right?
But, like, you know, real-world assets are controlled through proof of weapons.
Right?
Like, that's sort of the reality of things.
Like, I don't know.
Proof of weapons meaning that the courts are a weapon.
Meaning that the cops have guns.
Like, that's the people who decide who gets to live where is, like, the organization of, like, people with guns that wander around our cities keeping order.
Right?
Through threat of violence.
Like, that's how our society works in, like, a physical way.
And, like, the blockchain just, like, isn't going to be able to move the will of, like, that community.
And so, it's kind of, like...
So, wait, Mike, where were you during Occupy Wall Street?
Where was I during Occupy Wall Street?
I think I was in San Francisco.
Were you out there?
Were you out there on the streets?
Because...
Oh, man.
I wish I had been.
I wish I had been.
This entire space is a manifestation of Occupy Wall Street that has been invaded with, like, Occupy Wall Street was with the banks.
Right?
It's, like, the same process.
We get out there.
You know, I was there for most of Occupy Wall Street.
And, you know, we get out there.
We vote on what we're going to do that day.
Everybody gets their voice heard.
We all like it.
And then people are just there for the free food.
And then all of a sudden we're being funded by the banks and being paid for to leave.
And we find out that the leaders just sold out, right?
And that's what happens, you know?
It's hard.
I think, like, people underestimate...
And I'm, like, look, I'm, like, a little bit of a radical leftist on this particular topic.
But, like, people underestimate the, like, power and magic of, like, representative democracy and the way that it, like, creates nonviolence fundamentally in, like, a large...
Among a large group of people.
It's kind of just, like, magical that we all live together without killing each other basically ever.
And, like, you know, we have this system and it, like, kind of keeps us alive and we can go buy tacos.
And it's just, like, I think it's just, like, a miracle that that's how we live and that we, like, have a stable thing where you can, like, go buy tacos and not get shot.
And, like, it's just, like, you got to put a lot of...
You got to understand how amazing that is.
Like, how much effort, human effort and ingenuity and time went into constructing something that, like, can do that for us.
And, like, have some respect.
And there's, you know, in this space, it's also, like, what you're talking about are these, like, layers of trust that are built up, you know, from thousands of years.
Right?
Like, you know, how do we relate with each other?
How do we relate with the...
So we basically tried to reinvent that in the blockchain space in the course of a decade and skipped all of the stuff that established trust and said, well, trust is now permissionless and we're trustless and assume that all of these things are true.
And I actually don't believe that that's the truth.
I think that we still...
And we just get rugged over and over.
And, like, the probability that blockchain governance will rug you is so much higher than the probability that the courts will rug you in some, like, commercial dispute.
Like, the judges are not there to take $10,000 from a party to, like, you know...
That's not a thing.
It doesn't happen in this country.
Whereas, like, it absolutely happens in on-chain governance.
Yeah, absolutely.
Man, this has been a fire conversation.
I'm going to cut it short.
I'm going to...
Okay, I want to...
I want to make one last plea.
So if this is, like, totally unrelated to...
Like, only partially written to what we talked about.
But if you are a mobile game developer and you want to build a blockchain-powered mobile game, like, call me.
Because I need to find, like, a game dev that wants to, like, do really, really cool things.
Okay.
That's my last...
That's my last plea.
So we actually have a game on our network that is building currently and is going to...
I think that they currently are testing their alpha of their mobile game now.
But I want to connect you with that team.
They're called Hawaii Islands.
But I feel like they are...
They're a perfect candidate.
Like, their lab was Imba Game Studios.
They were originally developing games in the App Store.
They got, like, millions of users.
And then came into the Web3 space and found that, like, those things didn't automatically translate.
Their success as a game studio in Web2 did not, like, bring in their audience from the outside or anything.
That they had to develop their own audience in Web3, right?
And it was going to be very separate.
And so now, sort of reverse engineering that, they've got this mobile app coming that's going to make it super easy for anybody to come.
But I think that your, you know, your entire vision definitely is in align with where they're now heading.
So I'm going to connect you with them.
Yeah, the Pylons Wallet app is designed to be, like, to, like, power other mobile apps to do blockchain stuff.
And it has an SDK for signing on behalf of other apps.
And, you know, it's a cross-chain Cosmos wallet.
So, like, that would be a really cool connection.
I'd love to talk to them.
I love it.
Hoss, connect us on Telegram and let's chat.
Yeah, definitely, man.
Yeah, I've seen the synergies, man.
I've been on a couple calls with Michael.
He used to hop on when I used to do the Cosmo potlucks on Sundays.
He always does good takes, a little controversial takes, which I like because it's not always stale.
You know, sometimes the conversations get stale over and over and have him come in and he throws his hot takes in.
And he thinks of things in a different perspective.
And I always like his perspective.
And that's why I'm a big fan of what he says and what he does.
I might not necessarily agree with everything, but I think he does come from a good place, a good heart, and has a lot of experience in this space.
So, you know, like some of the things he's talked about with Bitcoin, I didn't even know that, you know.
And I thought that was very relevant and it's actually a good point of emphasis.
So people should probably re-listen to that earlier take about what Bitcoin did and how it was forked and like the thought process of the exchanges and how they kind of kind of rugged it, you know, for his vision.
And maybe he did have the right vision and things of that nature because I think of things with Bitcoin in the future, too.
And, you know, I'm a big advocate of Bitcoin because it does, in my opinion, kind of represent freedom in a sense.
And it's more than just technology, in my opinion.
It's more of a movement.
So I kind of get down with that part of it.
But, no, like I definitely will get you guys together.
I think that application, the mobile app, and that to me is the future anyways, is mobile gaming and stuff like that.
Because being in this space, I have like this centric view of Americans and, you know, having a PC and a laptop.
But most people don't have that.
They have a mobile.
So, like, mobile is like the number one – it should be the number one thought process in this space.
And it really does get overlooked in everything, whether it's mobile wallet development, just blockchain development, games, everything.
So I'm all for it.
So I'll get you guys together.
And I appreciate the conversation.
It was a really good Saturday morning just tuning in for the most part.
But I appreciate you guys.
I appreciate everyone that tuned in and the rest of the, you know, people that tune into the recordings
because most of our audience is all over the place.
So thank you, everyone.
Appreciate it.
Hope you guys have a great rest of your Saturday and weekend.
Take care.
Take care.
See you guys.
Thanks, Toss.
Appreciate it.
See you soon.
See you soon.
