Hey, hey GM welcome back to our new AMA that arbitrary today
today we have a very exciting AMA with Colobland and Telefrenz.
Yeah, our friends, James and Angelie are with us.
So yeah, super excited to be hosting this AMA.
By the way, my name is Anna,
Community Manager at the Arbitrum Foundation.
And yeah, maybe we can start with brief introductions
James, Angelie, can you share more about yourselves?
Like maybe share about your role
and what do you do at Colobland and Telefrenz?
Can we start with you, Angelie?
For one thing, GM, Anna, so happy to finally be talking to you
since we've just been communicating and being async.
So I'm so happy to be here.
Thank you so much for Arbitrum
and for everyone that's listening.
I really appreciate being here this morning
and getting to tell you about Colobland and Telefrenz.
I am the co-founder and chief community officer
for Abridged, Inc. that is our corporation.
And we have a Colorado co-op called Colobland,
which hopefully many of you know about.
We are a token management system on Discord, Telegram
and on web apps and token-gated websites.
And we just launched a special new social-fi app
slash trading bot with Arbitrum and on Telegram.
So we're here to talk about that too.
So that's us and that's me.
And great to meet you, Anna.
And yeah, just happy to be here.
I am James Young, the CEO of Abridged
and also wanted to really express our gratitude
to Arbitrum Foundation for the grant that we received.
And we are applying that grant
to launch Telefrenz on Arbitrum.
And as Angelie mentioned,
it's our social-fi meets trading bot
where you can actually meet and buy and sell
what we're calling passes.
And we can talk about that a bit more
along with the trading features
without ever having to leave Telegram.
And so we think that this has the next iteration
leveraging our experience of doing Colobland
for almost four years now.
Of course, yeah, that's super huge for sure.
Congratulations, I've seen what you've been building
Like to be honest, I have to say that
when I first joined the Webtree ecosystem,
like when I started contributing 2,000 stuff
back in the days, I got to know Colobland.
So yeah, it's super exciting to see you now here
building a new product like Telefrenz
and for sure being part of the Arbitrum ecosystem.
And yeah, you were part of my path in those early days.
So yeah, very exciting to be talking with you today.
And I would like to ask you like,
why do you think is this spaces special to Arbitrum?
I already mentioned why it was special for me,
but yeah, what else do you think about this AMA?
Yeah, I mean, really Arbitrum is our partner here.
We vetted a lot of different chains.
There was a lot of different interests
for something like what we're doing,
which is a social fight app
that includes trading bot features.
One of the things that we learned through Colobland
is that people want to be able to transact
within their communities.
And so working with Arbitrum and we have for years now,
they were actually one of our very first chains
that we supported with Colobland.
And now we support 30 chains on Colobland.
And we have a deep long relationship with Arbitrum,
But also knowing that Arbitrum has our back,
that they are also supporting our initiative
with a substantial grant is extremely special and important.
And we are committed to helping ease friction
for the Arbitrum holders and for the Arbitrum community
and get more people to be interested in Arbitrum
and making Arbitrum as successful as it can be
and feel excited to be in this partnership in that.
We feel that same support from Arbitrum
and it's incredibly special.
So really, why is it special?
I will say because there's a deep relationship here
in that we also want to support
and feel this mutual support.
So Arbitrum holders out there,
Arbonauts like you're called,
we welcome you to participate in our ecosystem as well,
even more so if you already are like Anna has for years.
If there's more, please reach out
and we're excited because we're on this together.
Yeah, and I just want to add here
as well as Anju was saying,
on Colobland, we service over 30 chains.
And when we look, especially launching a new product here
that's focused on group trading,
You know, when you take a look at the stats
when it comes to trading.
Another subtle point that I want to just talk about
when it comes to the Arbitrum organization, the foundation.
And again, we've worked with over 30 chains
and you know, we've gotten grants as well
from other chains for different things over the years.
and I must applaud Arbitrum and the foundation
in terms of the professionalism that the organization has.
And I know, you know, when it comes to Web3,
we all talk about decentralization.
And with that, a lot of times
there comes this coordination issue.
But what we found, what I found,
and I will personally say, you know,
the organization at the Arbitrum Foundation is top-notch.
And I think we don't give enough credit
in terms of how well structured
because I think there's a tendency in Web3
to talk about everything being decentralized,
but also there is this excellence in execution
and organization as we decentralize.
So decentralization isn't an excuse to be sloppy
or to pass the buck or point fingers.
And what I've seen is just excellence
in orchestration, coordination.
And having come up and been part of Dallas for many years,
one of the issues is that coordination failure.
And so I just wanna say that, you know, why Arbitrum?
Well, it is a chain in terms of trading on L2s
And also it's just been a pleasure
working with the Arbitrum Foundation.
And as we partner and we're in it for the long haul,
we do wanna make sure that we are executing
And we have that confidence with Arbitrum.
For sharing those and yeah, for sure.
We are super excited to have you in the Arbitrum ecosystem
as part of the Arbitrum fam.
So yeah, very, very good to see this.
And yeah, wondering like, when did Collabland start?
And yeah, how everything started and also...
Yeah, I'll take that one, James.
Collabland was a opportunity for us
to demonstrate our no-co tooling.
You know, we talk a little bit about this
but Collabland was really not expected to be the big product.
It was just one of our little experiments
that we had created using our no-code tooling.
And it really started taking on a life of its own.
And this started in May of 2020.
So this May, it'll be four years of Collabland,
which we're so excited about
and really goes to show what a twisty windy journey
web three and crypto can be.
But we started off as a DAO tooling
to have people who are members of a DAO
to be able to join an online group together
which kind of brings us back to our roots
on why we started Telefriends on Telegram as well.
But Collabland also started on Telegram.
And the way it started was as a DAO tooling.
So you can get people who all held the same token
And you could verify that the person that was in the chat
was someone that qualified to be a member of your group.
So it was really the initial use case
for token gated communities.
And now we take it for granted,
but back then it was still a very unique concept.
And it was one that, like I said, was an experiment.
We didn't even know if it was gonna work.
Like at the end, like people,
this is super helpful for the people
that are already working together in this community.
And yeah, it's making the process easier.
And how do you feel has been the growth
like and the impact that you've been having here?
Yeah, so just to give you some quick stats.
At the, about October 2021,
we had registered about a million
different wallet connections.
And now we have, now it's the top of 2024, January 2024.
We have over 12 million connected wallets.
And we serve over 53,000 tokenized communities right now.
And this January of 2024 saw our largest
three consecutive day growth.
So we'll have spikes of a day or two
because there'll be like huge campaign
for maybe one or two communities.
But we've seen our largest growth in January 2024.
And this is compared to Last Cycle's peak.
So, we're still growing with collab land.
We see it as a public good.
And we're really excited that we can be a useful utility
Yeah, and that, like what James says,
when he says we had the biggest three day growth
I mean, that's comparing to 2021 Bullcycle,
If anyone out there is tracking,
this is a bigger number than anything in the last bull.
And so what we're seeing is not only are people
that have been here staying,
but even compensating for the people
that dropped off during the bear,
we're seeing a greater growth right now.
So it is, we're, I mean, not financial advice,
This is something people should think about.
People are joining communities in larger numbers
So, there's definitely more people here.
Yeah, those stats are awesome, guys.
And for sure, I totally agree with you.
With the power of the communities is real.
Like people want to make connections to work together.
And at the end, it's as well like a need for the human being.
So to feel part of a community,
to feel recognized, et cetera.
So yeah, very cool to see you grow
and yeah, being part of the ecosystem too.
And what are the things that you saw and learned from?
Like what are those challenges that creators
and communities face in the ecosystem?
Yeah, I mean, during the last bear,
the most significant impact came from the loss of royalties.
And when communities and creators no longer are able
to participate in the upside or really the sells
and the buys of their tokens for their community,
it becomes very difficult to manage and maintain.
And that includes tools that you may need
And we did a lot of user interviews during the bear market
and learned a lot about what our admins in our communities
And also being able to put on different events,
being able to just grow their brand
and supporting their communities.
Once you lose royalties, that was a really big blow.
And I'm hoping for a future now
that we see some more movement in the marketplace space.
And then we'll talk a little bit about telefans in a minute
and how Collabland is trying to solve that problem.
One thing we did last year is we created
a royalty detection rule.
So admins out there, you can use Collabland
and give special roles to people who paid royalties.
So that's one thing we could do with Collabland,
So that's one of the main things that were a big challenge
that we're hoping to try to help resolve
or be part of the solution with telefans.
But also scammers and imposters.
So I cannot leave any space without reminding people
about scammers and imposters.
When the bull market is back,
you see scammers and imposters coming back with a vengeance.
I'm talking about a hundred times.
Truly don't want to scare anybody,
but I also want you to all remain vigilant.
100 times the number of scammers and imposters
that we saw in the bear market, we see in the bull market.
So just be keenly aware of that.
This isn't necessarily for creators,
but it's for communities.
And one of the ways communities can help
is that when you're thinking about doing something,
thinking about claiming some new airdrop
or minting some new token or clicking on some website,
Just be like, hey, has anyone heard of this?
I do that all the time with a group that I'm in.
When people DM me, I always check like,
hey, is this the correct Twitter account
It's very difficult to know.
So that just a little bit of vigilance there.
Keep in mind that there's a hundred X,
a hundred X, keep that number in your head,
the number of imposters and scammers.
So one tip, one challenge for creators
and one challenge for communities.
Well, yeah, I cannot agree more.
Like those are the things that we always,
we need to be aware always.
And yeah, as you say, to double check and verify
all the things you find that you saw on X
or even in your own community,
because sometimes are just imposters sharing stuff.
So yeah, it's very to double verify.
And yeah, well, now that you share about your background,
about how did you start and your amazing highlights
and things and achievements,
I would like to ask you more about teleference.
Like, yeah, you've been building Colobland
and now teleference is here as well.
So I want to ask you like, what is it
and what is bringing for the community?
Yeah, I'd love to answer that question
and set the table here in the context.
As Anjali was talking about the challenges
that creators and communities face,
is this royalties going away.
And around the time of like friend.tech,
and we saw that they were building chat,
we're like, hey, we can do that.
But more importantly, and we have been doing that
for almost four years now,
is this wanting to help empower creators and communities.
And what the innovation that we really saw
in this kind of first wave of SocialFi
was the ability for royalties to never be taken away.
And that was really the impetus for this.
And we also wanted to, with Colobland, go beyond the gate.
And so if we can go beyond the gate
and also make sure that these creators and communities
can ensure that their royalties or secondary revenues
that is something that really is speaking to us.
And as Anjali was mentioning,
we also started Colobland on Telegram.
So we thought, let's come up with something
that makes sure that royalties can never be taken away.
And let's do this on a platform
where we can focus on web three
in terms of the technologies.
And I wanna talk about not only token gating,
but new technologies that we've come up with
with Telefriends in a minute.
But that was our main impetus for Telefriends.
And it's a real group chat.
You're using Telegram as a group chat
and we wanted it to be crypto forward.
So there's no leaving Telegram
to be able to have these group chats.
And now you can also do trading.
So we want to not only help with coordination
so with Telefriends we have passes,
but also we can now lead some innovation
when it comes to group trading.
And I can talk a bit about that
if we have time for the Telefriends roadmap
and we're really excited by that.
And we started on Telegram
because if you're in crypto,
you're probably in a few of these
like Telegram alpha groups.
And really what we're doing with Telefriends
is organizing that and so that people can get paid
for being in these alpha groups.
And this is why in Telefriends,
it's buying and selling of passes
and also being able to get trading fees
based off of what you're doing
in terms of trading with Telefriends
without ever having to leave Telegram.
And there's this big innovation
that we think the whole ecosystem is moving to
and that's account abstraction.
So if you're a bit more on the technical side,
there are these Ethereum Improvement Proposals or EIPs.
So if you look up EIP 4337,
it has this idea of not having a wallet
that you're used to in terms of like a MetaMask
where you have to sign every transaction,
but having a smart account.
And so with Telefriends, we have this seamless onboarding
where you can actually do trades
without having to leave Telegram in a non-custodial way
through our implementation of account abstraction
And then I'll kick it over to Anjali
to talk about a little bit more
in terms of Telefriends and the benefits.
Thanks James, that was actually pretty helpful.
I wasn't thinking we're gonna get into account abstraction,
but it's such a huge part of the innovation
that is happening with Telefriends
along with pretty much expanding Collabland, right?
Like one of the ways that Collabland is more niche
is that we manage the token gating part.
We verify when you enter, we run ongoing balance checks
and we provide all different types of community
expanding tools in our command center
through our Miniat Marketplace.
So we've got all that, but what's the one thing we don't do
is we do not manage the buying and selling
So if you think of an NFT as a membership token
or a fungible token if you're in Pepe or if you're in Turbo,
like if you're buying a fungible token
and you're using that as a membership token
that's the one part that Collabland
didn't have dominion over.
Like I said, we support 30 different blockchains
and so it's really you bring your own token to the table
and we help you once you get in.
However, with Telefriends, we're also managing for people
who don't wanna create their own token
because through our passes, that's really what it is.
that we are also taking control of that.
So it's a full community management system
all the way from token creation to balance checking
only having those members who hold your token
or in this case your pass to be a member of your group
and then removing them once they sell.
So that's one of the kind of more inclusive ways
we've moved from Collabland to Telefriends
which is like trying to make it as easy and seamless
like you said as possible for brand new people.
Simple for the newbies and having convenience
for everyone else that's been here.
So that's one part of it.
Royalties, again, royalties, you get 5% on your buy
and your sell of your membership passes.
So that's always gonna be true no matter what.
It's never gonna be taken away.
So you're getting within your community.
And so being able to now, if you have a ARB token,
and you want to share that link with others,
then when others execute on that link,
So this is a way where we're really focusing
on the sustainability, a sustainable future
for online creators and for traders and for D-gen.
And so really that's the guiding light here
is a way for all of us to win together,
not leaving creators behind,
not just taking a fee ourselves,
but always making sure that our creators are getting a fee.
And one way we're doing that is taking this all in-house
rather than working with third parties in that way.
So if you're working with a third party DEX
or a third party centralized exchange
or a third party marketplace, NFT marketplace,
then really you don't know
what are the other parties involved going to be doing
and you can be cut out at any spot.
But with Collabland, the way we're doing it now
is making it like an all-in-one inclusive system.
So we can tell you that we're guaranteeing you
that the royalties that you'll make
and the fees that you'll earn based on trading
and on the passes itself, you'll be able to get back to you.
Amazing, this is a very great opportunity for creators.
And yeah, as you said, like, to be honest,
this is like what the web tree is really bringing
like a sharing value with others
with the ones that are creating value too.
And I would like to know like what's,
like let's say if someone wants to start using telephones,
what's the best way for them to do it?
Go and follow your X accounts,
then what's the best process?
Yeah, I would say that absolutely.
Telefriends is just telefriends,
but if you go to Collabland,
which is at collab underscore land underscore,
you can check out our link tree.
There's links to telefriends everywhere.
I think our comms manager, Candy,
probably put through and up there on the spaces.
But telefriends.com is where you get started
if you're already in telegram, it's telefriends bot.
So you can just seek out telefriends bot
and start a relationship with the bot.
And then it'll give you a link to get started.
You're going to collect your first pass for free.
And that will start your bonding curve for your group.
You're gonna create a telegram group.
If you want a telegram group, really it's optional.
And right on your profile page,
there is a link there to create a link.
And if you can just start trading
arbitrum tokens right now,
where you can create a trading link,
you can put your favorite token in it,
and then you can start sharing that trading link
And when anyone executes on that trade,
you're gonna get 1% of the trade.
So we're here for creators, we're here for you.
If you have alpha, if you've got content
and you wanna be able to share it,
and we should all get paid for our work.
So this is an opportunity for us
to make sure that you get paid for your contribution
and you get paid for your work online.
Cause that's really what we're here to do.
Online life and having a global economy together,
working together all over the world,
means being able to be compensated for what you do online.
These are the moments of our life
and collab land and tell friends,
that's what we're here for.
Amazing, Adelie, I really loved your speech here.
And yeah, this is super exciting to see, to be honest.
And yes, RBNards as you hear it,
if you want to learn more about it,
just go into their X accounts.
And yeah, the process then is super straightforward.
You can find all the links in their link tree
and then start using telefriends in your telegram
Yeah, there is a lot of value here
and Adelie and James shared is a value that can be shared.
Thank you so much to Arbortram.
You've been really great partners with us.
Starting back with Nina, shout out to Nina Rong.
She was my first connection at Arbortram
and has remained a friend
and has someone that I can always go to
when I have any kind of issue with Arbortram.
And I do knock on that door often.
So, and I just wanted to tell Nina
that I'm thinking of you Nina, thanks so much.
She's been incredibly helpful.
And we look forward to a long future with Arbortram.
We are staunch believers in what they're doing
and just really appreciate their support.
Of course, I will, sorry James.
Oh, I just wanted to say thank you for hosting today
and allowing us to participate.
And yeah, just wanna really show our appreciation
and gratefulness for everything that Arbortram is doing
in this shared vision collectively
that we all have in web three.
And it takes the whole ecosystem to work together.
So we're in it for the long haul.
We have a lot of more items and features on the roadmap,
not only with telefriends, but with collab land as well.
And just super excited and appreciative
when there are ups and downs
to be able to have partners like Arbortram
go a very long way and love the professionalism
and the execution and the long-term thinking
And I think with this alignment,
I'm just super excited about the future
and the vision of web three that we all have.
Likewise, to be honest, I really wanna thank you too
for joining us today to share more
about telefriends, collab land
and all your insights and learnings from it
and also sharing these valuable projects to the community.
And yeah, of course, I'm gonna say this to Nina as well,
Angelique, I'm going to write to her after this AMA.
And yeah, looking forward to see you growing more and more
and helping more communities and builders
and yeah, content creators to receive value
as well as they are creating value to other people too.
So yeah, very exciting for this.
See you in a new AMA soon, hopefully.
And yeah, let's keep building
and thank you for building Arbortram together.
Thank you for building the ecosystem together.
Thanks everyone in the audience.
And GM everyone, have a great week.
Have a great weekend GM too.