I hear you, girl. I can hear now again.
Oh, awesome. Yeah, I can.
not sure not sure what happened Twitter rugged everybody at Elon right now right
that's what we're talking about as per usual yep
yeah we're gonna have to put some some hold music back on I guess we're trying
to get Dan back on on stage hey yeah I see I thought it was me but no I see
yeah you might have to kick him off and and have him rejoin I think he requested
yeah I'm going to request and to rejoin again because his request is weird so
we'll ask him to rejoin X and then rejoin this space too awesome in the
interim do I need to sing for the music or what's the
yeah well as I don't know what happened I think like it this this am I didn't
finish so I think only Dan lost connection at or I really don't know
what happened but I'm going to play some music from X here
let's see if it works I think I think Dan's back although so be and I are not
hey Dan kitten can hear us yeah seems like Dan is here I'm going to invite to
I think so he's back also if you wanna or is I if you want to invite them
okay seems like Dan is having issues let me see
well I guess I'll run it then I just I'm chatting with Dan I think he's having a
hard time getting connected so I can go ahead and kick off if we want I've got a
list of questions if we want to jump into them with that I guess I'm the new
host so I think the next question that'd be really interesting is or to talk
about is the the GCP combines budget for publishers independent builders and
infrastructure why why bundle it all together and I have my answers for this
but in the in the spirit of pretending to be a host here you want to kick it
off girl yeah and actually I mean it's it's funny because you know I was co
authoring this with lift and so man maybe starting off with a bit of context
before we jump into answering that question and I can loop in from the
publisher side but part of this GCP and we talked about a lot of the rationale
I mean this first half of the AMA was focused on you know why gaming why is
this important and hopefully we've convinced you all that it's it's really
important and and so bringing it to this gaming catalyst program that we've you
know we're hoping to put out onto the the Dow forum soon is effectively an ask
to the Dow to earmark between a hundred to two hundred million arb over a one
year period to bolster gaming on arbitrary and really for us is to use
this as a catalyst you know it's not meant to be a fulsome you know
comprehensive multi-year program but it's really about you know attracting
supporting high quality builders setting you know the groundwork for this and
there's a very very long 16 page document and proposal plus maybe 27
more pages of like appendix and you know why we're doing this what's important
what the landscape looks like across all all of the other web 3 chains and
networks out there and as Lucas said you know it's it's kind of structured
across like two main programs one is builder onboarding and growth and then
two is around infrastructure and bounties and stuff like that so there is
a component that is slated towards publishers and then others you know
independent game builders to be able to support them in coming and building upon
arbitrary and this is separate and isolated from the prior programs that
have been done within arbitrary relating to incentives that were focused
on like short-term incentive program so the step and then the one that is
currently ongoing right now which is the long-term incentive pilot program so
this is strictly focused on gaming it's setting the stage for really carving out
a way to catalyze gaming here on arbitrary and so feeding into I guess
this question of why give publishers the ability to ask for grants instead of
giving grants directly to studios so part of why you know so be was up here
while we're here as treasurer is thinking about what can the dal do and
what can't it do and if we think about the know-how and expertise of you know
being in you know that the trenches from a gaming perspective there is a
lot that you know is involved grant giving is you know it's it's it's a lot
of work and you kind of need people who can properly assess and and also really
drive the attraction and development of you know games coming into the mix and
going out to the market when you look at a team like immutable you know they have
like 300 person team they have dozens of people who are focused strictly on BD
they have a presence at many of the events and it's something that as
arbitrum and as like a community driven decentralized ecosystem you need help
from people who sort of understand the space to be able to do it right and so
there is something that you know as we think about really equipping and
bringing teams to do this together with arbitrum and together with the
community as part of that sleeve on top of you know being able to not just get
in front of games but also be able to work with them be able to like support
them and get them up and running so a lot of the stuff that we've been doing
anyway you know since we started at arbitrum has really been to this effort
of you know without any really you know unlock of capital or support from kind
of arbitrum Dow as a whole beyond you know us being able to work together with
the foundation and with Optane Labs you know we've been incentivizing and
bringing over teams regardless right and so it's taking that to another level and
being able to concentrate that support and and also open it up so that there
are other publishers and other ecosystems who are really able to make
this like a truly bottom-up activity but you also have people in the driver
seat who you know can can really do this at scale right and so it's it's really
focused on on that side of things part of this gaming proposal is also to stand
up a council and this is what we're hoping to be you know a you know a
council comprising a ton of people who are also very familiar with gaming who
are sitting outside of these publishers who are able to assess and support
studios as well so it's not like you know if you're not building on treasure
or if you're not building on xi or you know high chain or you know others who
might come along there should still be a path of funding for you as a studio
anyway right and so it's being able to stand up this this council that can
support that pathway you know if you're building on arbitrum one or Nova or
spinning up an l3 as like a game specific chain so it's having a program
that is pretty multi-layered that can support all of the different
stakeholders and game builders who you know may have and want to tap into
oh there we go I thought I got run for a second just mic button no I think yeah I
think that's a great answer and I mean I obviously you helped build a lot of this
I think one thing to add to it that I think is just um important to note is
that like I don't think doing this without that broader approach is even
really viable or sustainable it's like the gaming is a community at least from
the perspective of arbitrum and building something that is sustainable and
creates enough content creates enough value for it to be worth that investment
requires having kind of all of those participants from the publisher level
independent builders and then also on the infrastructure side which you know
Helica tends to fall on is like it's how do we build it you know shared
learnings across the ecosystem and make sure that the next builder and the next
opportunity is better because that's better for everybody so love that and I
agree with like literally everything you said to a tee nailed it yeah I think one
of the the high-level things that I wanted to share about the GCP is that
number one we're trying to make it known that arbitrum Dow and the wider
arbitrum ecosystem is here to support you as a studio and builder on arbitrum
with all the different mechanics that we can it is a grants program but the fact
that publishers are leading the charge on a large sum of the budget means that
you're gonna have access to a ton of experts in different areas across
marketing to funding the building and the bounty program that's also going to
be attached to this proposal specifically focused for infrastructure
is just going to help build a better network capability so this could include
better analytics this could include better just rails for payment
connections between you know web 2 web 3 systems that we haven't seen before or
aren't immature enough like it's a comprehensive kind of approach to this
first step into a grants program for gaming and it is meant to be aggressive
it is meant to be really broad but the end goal and this is gonna segue into
Lucas some a question on your side about KPIs the end goal here is not to just
generate sequencer fees for example day one the long tail investment of gaming
is going to eventually result in direct revenue and direct value for the Dow but
this gaming catalyst program is meant to aggressively encourage builders to
select arbitrum as the premier place to build and I think if we can get there
for 2024 the next years we'll see some crazy value come back and I'm not even
like building a game right I'm in defy but I see the value as if we can on
board users and keep them there inevitably they're gonna discover other
things on the chain which might mean vella might mean another ecosystem
within arbitrum but the stickiness is massive and we have to invest now so I'll
pass it back to you Lucas yeah I mean I think focusing on KPIs I think the first
part to answer is that it's important to have KPIs like we're watching a ton of
progress programs across different chains that seem almost like you know
they've got an aim but there is no metrics they're evaluating against I
think there's something that's happening in general web 32 is like the ethos of
building they will come I mean I think that's true but you have to build the
right thing and I think being able to quantify what's working and what's not
is absolutely crucial from a game developer standpoint a product developer
standpoint but also from this chains like GCP idea it's like it these games
have to be evaluated in a way that actually is indicative of their future
opportunity because we are assigning some value today with like different
investments and so I think a good way of looking at this is just making sure that
you build a culture around this program of transparency and data and real
understanding so like diving into what's working what's not how do we measure
incremental improvement over game development lifecycles over actual go to
market strategies in the investment around user acquisition all the way down
to the specifics of like is this game even built to be scalable so like do
they have the idea the notion of strong live ops inside the platform inside
their game are they thinking about proper AB testing to decide what works
and what doesn't are they built for multi-configs like variant experiences
for users taking that approach with like a data first like we need to check the
boxes on each of these to continue investment or to keep investing in the
space I think is like honestly probably the deciding factor on what works and
what doesn't and to be honest I don't think anybody across any of the chains
has taken a an approach to that that has like the gaming knowledge and the web
3 knowledge and the analytics knowledge that we're trying to put into this
version of this and so from my perspective I think it's going to be
crucial and I think it's really clear what needs to be measured how we'll keep
tabs on incremental improvements and progress and I think aligning with that
and aligning some of the incentives for the studios transparently and the people
taking the funding around this will be really important for making sure that
they're not the only ones benefiting but so is Arbitrum and the broader ecosystem
around Arbitrum what were the so helica ran some general analysis on what a
hundred mill to two hundred mill our budget could bring to the Arbitrum
ecosystem and I got super excited seeing the possibilities now it's a thesis
right we have to prove it out but Lucas do you remember how many builders you
think we could onboard I'll be honest I don't have the decorate in front of me
but what we talked about is that there's obviously different tiers of builders I
think there's honestly like it'll be somewhere between 40 and 80 builders
that I think like teens they can come through this program and it could be
more could be less depending on the size of the investments taken and the
the the products being built the crazy thing about that is there's like a game
game publisher or even a gaming fund that considers being able to disperse
across that many types of teams like a really good way to create the
opportunity for outside because the the whole idea of indexing the gaming
category is you really need like one winner if you get more than one winner
you're crushing it if you get one winner it's still a great investment and
so I think the nice thing here is is like being able to spread across that
many studios and builders means they were getting enough exposure and
aligning these investments and the people were working with around like the
right framework of thinking about game development and web 3 development that
we're constantly increasing our odds and the beauty of it is is like a decent
game has hundreds of thousands of daily active users and so if the idea is to
bring more people to the chain to can engage being able to get 40 to 80 great
builders with cork APIs and targets that we're all aligned on is probably the
best way to deploy that capital for all of Arbitrum by the way we only have like
two minutes left real quick the GCP gaming catalyst proposal will go up on
the forum likely this week we would love everybody here to take a look on the
Arbitrum forums if you have not gone to the forums before I highly suggest you
do as a builder as a user there's a ton of great stuff going on there for
discussions and it may benefit you just to understand what's going on the last
item is I think about like as a defy protocol right like it is interesting to
see the amount of potential that gaming could bring to me when I look at like the
ninety-five percent of the activity going to defy and the five percent going
to other categories including gaming that actually excites me right because
that tells me maybe defies a little saturated right now right maybe we've
grabbed lion's share of the users that we can at this moment until like the
entire web three ecosystem scales but I really don't think we've been kind of
drip of what web three gaming could bring to Arbitrum and even an initial
investment with the size that we're proposing we could see some massive
results like I like when I think about 40 to 80 builders Lucas like that that
could result in some crazy activity across defi for us so any other closing
statements corral or Lucas before we jump off I think for my side I just
want to say thanks for letting me come on here I think it's great to get to
chat with this and like I think it's important that people are taking this
seriously and really thinking about what the impact and just getting back to what
you just said Dan is I think like getting 40 to 80 builders is huge
getting 40 to 80 builders into a system that like we've we're really trying to
focus on building great content and like tracking milestones and getting things
aligned is honestly at this point just like unfathomable like there isn't
anybody that's built the program this tailored or focus and so I'm super
excited to see what comes of this and I think it's gonna be massive for gaming
in web 3 it's gonna be massive for Arbitrum as a whole and I think what's
cool is all the industries will benefit from this kind of activity because all
these new web 3 players can become just web 3 users in a broad scheme thousand
percent agreed with Lucas I think the the 40 to 80 builders if anything is
it's a starting point right and and there is a natural flywheel that comes
out of there who you know as we think about folks and developers who will come
and build here anyway you know and and having successes that you see come out
of the Arbitrum ecosystem like just it like success begets success and you will
see that with players being here any developer worth their salt will want to
be you know building on Arbitrum when they see all of this happening and the
fact that you know it's it's really just growing that pie that to date has been
very indexed towards DeFi and opening that up to other parts of the market
that right now is underrepresented and you know we're doing our part at
Treasure but I think there's so much more opportunity for for things to grow
from from here so we're excited and you know I think this is this is the only
place that you you would see this sort of thing happening where this entire
movement and program is being incubated like literally from the from the bottom
up you know it's it's being built with the community with all of the developers
I think literally all of treasures like game builders are in this space and you
know I think would love to see everybody just continue to weigh into defining and
building out this this program so it actually serves the needs of the game
builders and you know I think that is another just beautiful thing that is
part of the Arbitrum DNA that that you don't have anywhere else love it well
with that we are going to be closing the spaces I saw a lot of familiar faces
a lot of builders and the gaming system kind of jumping in and listening thank
you so much guys thank you Arbitrum for hosting and we will be back with more
this week remember we're going to be posting the GCP proposal live on the
forums will love everybody to take a look thank you thanks so much take care