Welcome everybody. This is your host, Rand speaking today. Thank you for swinging on by to listen to this special space that we have today with the Mandala team. And we're just going to give it another minute or so. So everyone's here. It's a more user's glowing. How are you today? Mandala.
Hey, it's been dollar here. Hi. Pretty good. Pretty good. We're trying to get Bruce on. He's having some Twitter issues. So that worries as a as a quick reminder.
the phone. Hopefully he's using the phone because that's the one. He is. Yeah. No, it's more, you know, I don't know, Twitter does weird things occasionally, but it's log in and all that. He's working on it. No, are you still going sometime?
In the meantime, I'll tell our listeners that this face is being recorded. We're going to have some transcripts put together in different languages afterwards. Again, I'd like to welcome the Monday
team. So I have the pleasure of talking with Kevin and John. Yeah, we're both here. Hey everybody. Hey, Ram. Hey, everybody. Perfect. Perfect.
Oh, here's Bruce right here. All right, we go. Great. Good. Awesome.
I think I'm in for good here now.
Oh, you're just jinxed it. I'm hearing nothing. It's good. Don't do that. Nice talking to you. I'm sure listeners got a lot of info. Thanks again. Okay, well, let's get it started. Thanks again, Jen.
for being here today. I would love to introduce myself to the audience right here for those that don't know me. I'm Rans, the community growth lead here at Ask Our Network. I help lead the team into new and unshattered territories, just kidding. I just do some talking here and there, basically.
I like that. I like that. Keep going. Keep going. That was awesome. All right. Let me give it another shot. No, I'm just kidding. I'm the only team. But really, the tonight we have the Vendella team. And I want you all to introduce yourselves. It's a pretty good deduction of who you are. And, and then I yeah, just like my head. Take it away.
>> Cool. That's Kevin. I guess I'll go first. Kevin Fox, I only go into charted territory. I don't ever mess around with uncharted territory. But if anybody who does know anything about me knows that is absolutely not true at all. So yeah, I've been, you know, I work in mostly I've worked
in film, television, well internet, web, and I've been around for a while, started in film, then got into television and have done everything you can imagine in those fields, from writing, producing,
location managing, directed some, I mean acted way way back in the day, I mean I've kind of done a lot of things. But what interests me and has always interested me is the intersection of where technology and tools are used for storytelling. And so I was always
ahead of the curve. I worked in New York for a long time and introduced a lot of people to non-linear editing and we were testing out new machines and computers for doing that. Then we started to use different cameras and digital. I was always on the cutting edge of that, bringing tech and how to use it to tell a story.
just tell a story because it's not just a tool, it's the medium and not only just for distribution but within which how you make and tell your story. And that really interests me. How do you make the thing you're using interactive with the story and maybe even a piece of the story and make sure that the audience
understands that they're getting the story on that device or through that medium or with technology. Anyway, I'll go on for a while as you can tell, but I'll also just really quick add that. So that for me culminated in the late 90s when I did the Blair Witch project. We really messed around with not just storytelling and what
what's real and what's believable and what's truth and what's not true. But also the technology was a huge piece of it, right? We were now shooting video, we were using the internet, and we were screening the film on 35 millimeter film at Sunday.
So for me, it was just it was Nirvana and really kind of a fun fun experience because we also played with the concept of you know, what's a story right we know once upon a time or in a galaxy far far away and the audience comes in sits down and has to believe that they're now in that world but they're fully sitting in the theater
So, you know, how do you do this? How do you get people to take the ride along with you and doing it so deeply that they just don't even know what's real anymore or what's happening on screen and how does it affect you? And Blair was that for me, you know, we really had a blast with playing with the concept of this is real even though we never said it was.
We said once upon a time in the woods of Maryland and yet everybody still thought these kids died and this footage was real and they paid $8 or $6 back in the day with a and $12 for popcorn and still thought it was real and I thought that was fantastic.
I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm a little triggered right now because I still think it's real. Well, I won't mess with that. It is real. It was real. It was real to many. Let's put it that way. And then I just kind of got very involved in the internet after that and tech and making sure we could, well, one of the things
things we couldn't do at that time was and I'm sorry to go on here but I think it's fun to talk about and I think the audience likes it is that we couldn't distribute the content like we wanted to. I dreamed that that would be the when you can distribute content in a meaningful way and not have to rely on studios or pre-existing distribution infrastructure.
That's where the real sort of money is, but also where the real control and power and creating your own stuff is. But we couldn't do it then. So I then after Blair Witch, I kind of got very involved in the internet and working on compression and video streaming and a lot of the tech behind a lot of that. So that's another thing, like I said, I like
to get you know, roll up my sleeves, get involved with early tech, which is what we're doing now with Web 3 and decentralized ledgers and blockchain and crypto and I could go on and on AI. And you know, we've got to build these foundational pieces so that we can do the things we hope to do when we tell that story.
when the time comes. So that's, and that's my story everybody. Thank you, thank you Kevin that talk about uncharted territories at the time with the shaky camera and hope walking around the forest at nighttime. That was really new and novel to me for sure at that age. And it's
There was a female protagonist, right? There was this concept of the footage that was found on high-eight tapes buried under a house, you know. So there was a lot of really interesting fun stuff just about how, like you said, uncharted territory kind of. So yeah, thanks. That was
It was awesome. Yes, and all about the story, right? And here we are again, sort of creating our own story, us in the space, which is still small, still niche, I think, in my opinion. So it's great to hear that you're jumping in from a sort of a relatable position as well as in going into inventoring into new
technologies. Thanks again, Kevin. John or Bruce, take it away. Hi, my name is Bruce Zizek and I've done everything Kevin has done, but only in the first couple of years and then I went on to do like 10, 20 times more things. So, I think
Kevin, yeah, yeah, what have you done lately? But other than that, I would say that I like to draw. That's kind of my thing I like to draw. And I've been drawing way too long and working, starting in Saturday morning.
morning animation when they were Saturday morning cartoons on the network TV and ended up working for Disney and DreamWorks and Pixar and Blue Sky as a concept artist, art director, splash, visual development kind of guy.
And I drew penciled Thor for Marvel for about a year. And I've been producing comic books for Dark Horse more recently. I write and illustrate and produce books like the Zone Continuum and Primordial.
And this funny little book called "Mondala," which we can talk about more later. But I also write screenplays and have sold some movie projects to different studios that never got made and ended up in a filing cabinet somewhere and warehouse 51.
So that's part of it in a nutshell. I love these spaces Bruce because I had no I don't I don't think I knew this that you did Saturday morning cartoons. So this is awesome. Find these things out. Yeah, back back when they had them. They don't really have many more, but I worked on such famous shows as
little step further because I feel like there's so much that you have drawn and contributed to artistically. I'm going to name some just from your IMBD which everyone could find. So maybe you forgot some of these, the Iron Giant, right? Yeah, that one. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
the Lion King, right? Just a small one. Yeah. Book of Hodges, the tick, which is one of the twenty-sixth. Some working Batman as well, the animated series. Yeah, yeah, that one. Tiny tune adventures. So I'm heading out of demographic, the age demographic, and some of that might be, you know, stroking some.
some some some tears right now because of these old cartoons. I also saw some ghost fusters. Oh yeah, yeah, I was our director on that one. Yeah, the reengrance. Oh yeah, I could keep going. Your record, your list is quite fantastic. I
even see for all the Barbie fans out there. Well, I don't go into details on it because it makes me feel so tired to think about all of the drugs I've worked on and how many pieces of paper I've drawn pictures on. It's just there's forests of trees that don't
exist now because of me. That's really funny. Thank you. Thank you Bruce. Thank you. If anyone was interested, please type in Bruce Zek is the ICK and check out the IMBD. It's quite quite amazing. It brings back memories for sure.
Oh yeah, there we go. And for some of the most recent projects, Bruce, if you don't mind sharing, I think I see inside out and one particular film that came out in China specifically. Can you touch upon that for a bit for a second? Yeah, I've been actually more recently working for
movies for Mexico, Vietnam, and China. And I was a production designer about three years ago on a this Chinese movie, which was kind of a marriage of Western writers, directors, and artists. And then the production was done in China.
Unfortunately, this small problem came along before the movie came out. This little thing called COVID. And it shut down most of the movie theater going audience in China. And to this day, we're still waiting to
release the movie when the people start going out again. So it's kind of a sad thing because I really worked my heart out on this movie and as I do on everything, but this was really a pretty amazing project and I can't wait for it to come out.
So thank you Bruce for sharing too and I'm looking forward to it too. Now that we're talking to your live with these creative geniuses and now we get to the John talk about what who has done something recently John I think you're you're running for Prime Minister of one of these countries right?
Absolutely not. I'll just say briefly about myself. They tell me I'm the CEO of the company and I'm one of the creators of Mandela and have the good fortune to meet people like
like Bruce and Kevin, veterans in their fields and have done amazing, huge things. My background, I went to Harvard, I studied comparative religion with another one of our founders who went on to do his PhD in the same studies.
And I also went on to study with a lot of the people in these different meditation or different spiritual systems as he did as well and his own right are our partner and co-creator Albion butters. And so yeah, when we met at college, we were still quite young and had had an
understanding of these different paths as sharing something in common, although they were different and unique, and that struck us as important. And so we started thinking of, could you create a game to enlightenment that would mirror in a microcosm what we felt was
already happening in life itself and that gave the idea to an Enlightenment simulator, which is what Mondella really is, which is using entertainment and a story to bring to the culture different pathways to changing ourselves and changing the world.
short and sweet but big obviously and I we're going to jump into some of the more of the entertainment and some of these industries that already existed and sort of transitioning how how do we see the transition happening right now as we speak in
into this new world that we're approaching. So I would love if you speak more about that. So let's jump into Web 3 because that's what we're here for. And that's what our listeners also are here for. Curious about, we'll ask our being a blockchain company and a platform.
a smart contract platform. Obviously that's our first priority. So just a general question for Kevin, John, or even Bruce going into what attracts you more or what attracted you to Web 3? Like how did you get into the space to begin with?
Yeah, I'll just Kevin. I'll jump by that one because for me this is you know I've been in the industry a very very long time and like I said it's the entertainment industry so I've done a lot of different things and for me you know Web 3 is really It's kind of coming to this conclusion
These are all things we dreamed of. And I touched on one earlier, right? Distribution. This is what these are the kind of things we're building in Web 3 that we all as creators were hoping could exist. But we always have to work with these gatekeepers or the students.
or a very centralized industry is the only way I could put it. And we would all watch as certain people just kept getting jobs and were allowed to do things while others couldn't. And look, I've been involved with many pieces of it from festivals to festivals.
independent film and big studio projects. So for me, Web 3, you know, and I'll get into how we got involved in just a sec, but I just, I see what everybody's trying to do and I think it's answering a lot of the problems that we all encountered as we were trying to create things on our own and create
things that didn't need somebody to approve, right? That was always the biggest issue. And I'm even seeing it now with a lot of the content and just that word content. We never used that word before until the past I'd say 10 years it suddenly became content, which is nuts to me that we're just, we used to be making things, you know, whether it was art or
or creations or stories and now it's content. Anyway, so we got involved because the story that we were out creating, we were stuck in the studio system. So we, you know, I between John and myself and other people involved, we
We brought over a Warner Brothers and they were very interested so we kind of parked it there for a little while and we were within the studio system trying to get this thing made and we were just seeing how frustrating it was, how many different people needed to approve things and we were very different because we weren't just a film or a TV
TV show. This was going to be a game, a TV show, a mobile social component that was also part of the game. There was comics involved, which we published on Dark Horse comics. And obviously that bruised it. But so it was really tricky. And within a studio, those were all different
different silos, right? Everybody had to have an approval for each thing and they would check with each other and see no one's ever done it, but talk about uncharted. They were like no one's done this before. You know, they had Game of Thrones on TV for, I don't even know, seven seasons, eight seasons, nine seasons, I can't remember now. But they didn't even have a game, which is
to Chris to me. You should add a game in season two. And so we were struggling with trying to get that through. But we did. We talked to studio into and each division into going, yes, we would get behind this. We would like to do this and let's get going. And luckily, I think for us in a great way is that AT&T
was coming into by Warner Brothers and we got a heads up from some people we know who are advisors to us and we went okay that might be the perfect time to get out because I had been involved with a bunch of studios at the time that I was around when Sony came in and bought Columbia TriStar and that was really bad for everybody and I thought okay this is not going
to be good, let's get out of here. And we had been talking about who would, you know, studios tend to want to own the IP. And that's always a huge problem with Blair Witch. We sold the intellectual property. So none of the creators who actually created it could go on and make anything Blair Witch related because the studio now owns that intellectual property.
And that was a big lesson for me. So we didn't want Warner Bros. to own the intellectual property. We wanted to either at least co-own it, if not outright own it ourselves, because we created it. Anyway, the long story short is we did. We got out of Warner Bros. and AT&T came in and took over. And I think anybody who follows the industry can tell you
what happened there. It's not looking so great right now for Warner Brothers and the industry, the way they carve things up and aggregate and carve up and aggregate again. And that's where we didn't want to be in that process. So anyway, we were trying to figure out how could we go do this independently, which is a way that I like to work almost
always. And it was right at the time when sort of blockchain was sort of just, you know, like sprouting out of the ground. And we, John and I went to a big event that was Cardano based. And we saw so many great opportunities of what decentralization could do.
and how the audience can participate in certain ways and benefit and storytelling can benefit by engaging the audience in unique and different ways. And I just saw Nirvana. You know, this was exactly everything, like I said at the beginning, everything we'd been dreaming of is a way to engage the audience like never before. And I'll end
with this, you know, I watch Marvel now where they're literally just squeezing all the juice they can out of Marvel and they just keep extracting from the audience. They never really have a way to give back. It's create a new thing and buy a new thing and then go on to the next. And that to me is not a really sustainable way
to have a evergreen IP. So that's what we're hoping to create with this. And we're in the throes of like I said, building the foundational pieces and moving forward in a way that the audience, the, and I don't even like to call them the audience because they're co creators in some ways, you know, with us.
Just as the marble audience is a co-creator when you think about it with the properties, right? So, you know, anyway, I'll wrap up with that and just that's where that's what we see is Web 3 and what it can bring to the audience and to us and to creation. And it's very different. It's a whole new studio model.
Totally agree, especially that co-creator line right there really touched me because the time I spent in this space I could see that being that we're so clear and true. I think we all co-created together to bring about the news of Web 3 blockchain what it could do and sort of this ownership aspect then
Thank you. We're alluding to it a little bit too with when you're talking about the studios, you know, having ownership and IP and it's just learned that there. No one day haven't seen anything about Blair Witch because they probably put it in a little cabinet somewhere. Well, I will say they did try, you know, they resurrected it and they've tried that what they made Blair Witch
to which we were slightly involved with, but it got to a point where that's a long story I wouldn't even go into, but it was absolutely my issue with studios. They wanted to make something else. We wanted to make something really cool and ended up being the other thing. And that was kind of the end of Blair Witch for us, but they've remade it
You know, they they've added an additional thing not too long ago. There's talk of a TV series coming out, but this is Lionsgate who now owns it the original studio doesn't even own it and that's the other piece so it went into somebody's library It was called artisan that was the studio an artist and decided to go You know, I don't know what happened, but they went belly up. Let's
and Lionsgate bought the library. So now another studio owns that title. And this is past hands without any sort of, you know, not even like, hey guys, it's changing a studio or with no, you know, there's no interaction with the creators at all. And that's insane to me.
And I don't want to think co-creation is this, you know, choose your own adventure or that the audience votes on what's next. I don't think that's really the answer either. It's the co-creation alongside an audience, seeing what they like, what they're doing, how they're participating, what's engaging, what's not engaging. And that's the way we're going to do this.
T's play into this and there's a whole lot more that plays into it and we're playing with a lot of these concepts and ideas with Web3. Thanks Kevin and I wanted to ask you you know for some of our listeners who are not US born or living living here there's this comic book English
that exist and it looks different everywhere else especially for our Japanese audience and Asian audience over there they have Manga's and IP's and that IP can be divided into many other IP's and so we're seeing these creators not jumping into Web 3 2 and taking their IP's portion they own of their IP's and
sort of, you know, experimenting with. Bruce, if you don't mind, if you can give our listeners just a little bit of background or some of your experience with Dark Horse Comics, what it is and how it's different than what already is some of the other comic book industries, I would appreciate it. Well, I have to warn you first
First of all, I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to Web 3 and crypto. I'm sort of the guy that John plucked from another world to immerse myself into this world that we're now in.
of barely hanging on trying to understand it all. So I can give you a certain context to my experiences, but in terms of how it relates to Web 3, I may not really grasp fully how to answer that. Maybe you could just momentarily
material expand on it and then I'll run with it. As we know, the Darkverse comics is, I'm living in Portland, Oregon myself right now and it's a pride point because of the ownership that the creator has. They sort of the liberty that they have. And so I wanted to sort of think your mind about your experience.
with the comic book industry and Dark Horse comics specifically and how it differentiates from other types of ownership when it comes to the comic books. Well, I do think Dark Horse was sort of a pioneer in the comic industry when it first
entered the scene and it was almost I think they almost succeeded just by accident they didn't really think they were going to make much impact and then suddenly they were this darling of the independent comic industry and of course before then there was an
much independence in it. I worked for Marvel for a couple years as a pencilor and I was so unhappy because I had no control over what I was doing. I was doing Thor which was a dream come true.
for me at the time until they put an anchor on my work that just drove me over the edge almost because I felt like my work was being ruined. I didn't care much for the stories that were sort of thorgon mad.
And he he tries to murder somebody every month. It just wasn't my Thor that I grew up on and and so in that atmosphere You know dark horse comes along and and I met them at San Diego Convention I showed him some my artwork at that time of
was in animation, which I think made a big impression on them. And they said, "Yeah, let's do some work together." And so from there, that led to my very first independently-owned dark horse series called "The Argusy," which appeared
and Dark Horse presents back then. I just built a really good relationship with Mike Richardson who is the owner of Dark Horse. That went on to my second Dark Horse series, which was a terminal point. I went from some
who had no control over my content to suddenly be in 100% in control. And what was kind of weird about it to me with dark horses, they really wanted the creator to have a complete say over their work, even
to the detriment of the creator's worst instincts. And I've always thought that even the best creators can use good editorial assistance to make sure what they're doing is hitting the target of the intention. And so for better for
I produced a lot of books with Dark Horse that in retrospect, I kind of wish I had had a little help making it the story is better. But even to this day, I'm still doing books with Dark Horse and they're still letting me
do whatever I want to do. And fortunately, over the course of decades of doing it, I'm starting to finally figure out how to do it right. And my last book, I think, was my most successful book because it just took me a long time to learn on my own how to do how to write
stories, how to illustrate them, and make them entertaining to reach people. So of course, it wasn't long into working with Dark Horse where image was coming into the scene and now there are so many independent
to publishers, letting creators do their own work. And I'm just, you know, happy to have had the experience ultimately of being in charge of and learning as I go along. So it's been a great for right for me and I'm kind of looking forward to now
that I figured out how to do it to do my next round of books. Thanks Bruce. I see a lot of parallels to what Web3 means to some of us here in the space from this little ownership to full ownership and some of those bits you were talking about where the
creator themselves are learning that I can completely relate to especially within this space that is so new and just so uncharted right right right rules as we go even as creators or the editors of web 3 you could say are also sort of our training and our forming and molding
the what it is to become. But it's so expansive. I think we're too early even to jump into conclusions on what it is and how to use it or even teach about it. But thanks Chris. And that leads me to, we're at the halfway point of today's space and I want
to invite the users to leave any questions or any comments in the underneath the post of this Twitter space. The team, I'm sure, can look over it after the space or while we're talking right now to go ahead and answer even write out the answer if you want. But if you have any questions,
feel free to post them underneath the space and we'll get to them later on. So Kevin, John and Bruce, we're talking about legacy industries and systems and what we've been used to and what we've seen, how in a sense we found an escape or at least a different road with this new technology. And
What kind of opportunities do you see with the creator's economy, you know, that being the theme with blockchain? So what have you seen? What are you looking forward to? And maybe some of the how you're going to touch upon it too using the Mandala, you know, the foundation that you're building right now.
Yeah, I'll jump in there. You know, I can't nail something that is spot on, which is that and I've been through a couple iterations of, you know, Web 1, Web 2, Web 3. It's pretty early still to know what things are, but by playing with
the things that exist and knowing what we would like to sort of change, fix, correct or innovate on. That's what we're learning right now. We're in that phase of what is this thing? How is it going to work? How is it different from the previous thing?
And I think more importantly, I think I was around, I was actually very heavily involved when Web 1 was becoming Web 2 and these are all silly numbers, but I guess we need these epochs or biomarkers. But when Web 1 was around, it was like, oh, the
democratic and this is wide open and everything's going to be awesome and you know and then quickly the corporations came in and just clamped down right and turned it back into your sort of instead of three channels on your television it was now you know eight channels on your computer and Web 3 is
arrived and said, no, we're going to have a decentralized ledger and we're going to be able to have not just this time it involved currency, which was very useful, but it also is this way of distribution, right? There's this really cool system built that has its
We're seeing corporations already start to step in again and go, well, let's clamp that down and make it bad and then use the media to tell people it's bad until we can control it again. They don't like the idea of decentralization at all. So the more decentralized we can be, the happier we are and creators
certainly having a dollar, we are firm believers in decentralization. And decentralization to me means that you have an open network and you have access to things. And there's, it's not just why open and crazy because there is consensus, right? And that's a huge piece of this.
So, as a creator, I look at and go, "How is storytelling going to change? How is the audience going to interact in unique ways?" And NFTs is a great example. At first, it was these things you buy, they go up in value, they go down in value, and everybody used them like they were sort of, I don't even know, like Pokemon cards or stuff.
But that's not what these things are. They have a lot more value and a lot more embedded architecture in them if we start to think that way. There are passports, there are tickets, there are, you know, they can deliver things to people. I have access to an audience in ways I never did before. People would go to a movie, pay six bucks and go home.
I didn't know who they were and I didn't know how to ever get in touch with them ever again. I didn't know if they liked the movie. I didn't know if they hated the movie, right? Unless I sat in every theater in the back row, which is impossible. So now we've got a whole new way to sort of build an audience, build a community and let them participate in very interesting
unique ways. And I don't even know if we know yet how that's going to work because it is very different. It is very new. I'll give a correlation back to Blair Witch when we started and we were sort of using this bulletin board online to talk to each other because we were in different places. Florida, Maryland, New York.
And people, you know, back in the day, you could kind of get on these bulletin boards. And I guess you would just search and find some weird thing and go, let me see what's going on there. And so our audience started to pop into our own sort of personal communication channel. And they were asking really great questions and really cool things and asking like, what's going on?
is this like who are these kids should we help find them and it turned into a really interesting fun game and we kind of did we played with it we we turned it into what I would call an alternate alternate reality game where it was online and there was this thing happening and people were interacting and it was ongoing it wasn't a one-off
And so with mandala we're kind of playing with a lot of that same stuff. I think this time we're doing it a little differently because there's different tool sets and different pieces your NFT is going to do things. You might have already seen if you already own some NFTs and you'll own some more on on polka dot very soon and a star. And you'll see there's little things hidden embedded in those NFTs that are going to
open up into other things eventually. And so like I said, that's just one aspect of it. And we're going to play with some innovative things on that piece as well. But the story itself, we're going to play a lot with what is real, what is reality, what is it when you tell a story, what's the experience you're trying to evoke for the audience.
and we've chosen one that is to, you know, sort of find a better path in your life and better yourself, wake up to your true or self. And that's really interesting and compelling to me because then that leads into where else can I explore to go do those things. And we're hoping to provide not only our
pathways to that, but the audience can now jump in and go, "Well, how about this pathway? How about that pathway? I'm a knowledge holder in this. Come check this out." And that's really interesting to me. That's a whole other layer that didn't even exist before. And I'll stop there because I can go on forever. Thank you, Kevin. So many topics we could discuss.
really and they're all wonderful in itself, especially the topic of community. And I wanted to then the exploration part to it. And I think we're reaching a certain time now where they were multi-chain or multiverse or you name it multiple aspects of whatever are now being used in our
So I wanted to sort of transition a little bit more there too, especially with the community, but I wanted to also comment on how going back in the day, jumping into forums or chat rooms back when there was a thing, we would find these communities ourselves. We would jump into a topic, find our
our brethren who shared the same interest, whether it's let's go raid on world of work craft together, we have this sort of mini community spread out. Now with this era of NFTs, that's a whole conversation itself where we now have a community plus something tangible we could attach it to. And I think that's really a powerful
movement in itself and sort of informing these new sort of this era of communities or at least what the definition is. So and going back to your exploration comment, I do want to jump into now the sort of exploration that you have been doing as a team at the Monday
dollar team and across different blockchains. So a simple question, like, what do you make of so many blockchains? These L ones and L2s that exist. And what do you think the future will look like considering all of these? This is John, I'll jump in on that. I mean, I think, you know,
So any front here where there's a new technology and the possibility of doing something better, you're going to get pioneers. And I think a lot of people showed up that saw the limitations of how centralized power created these monopolies and said it was free.
but it wasn't free because you're actually the product and you know all these things that we've woken up to together as you know humans and I think you know for us as storytellers and you know creative people so to speak to see the the the the coders and the developers and the technologists that
that saw the problems and set out to fix it, we take our hat off to all of them and to you. The more the better and the sense that diversity really does create creativity, right, it fosters creativity. So we're not coming in on
a layer one time where people had to carve out their own destiny and rightly so feel strongly about the ecosystem that they helped build and grew up in. Our message is much more on a cultural level. We're looking at unity and diversity, which is inspiring a recognition of that
which makes us very similar, which is the foundation of consciousness itself, and what a recognition of that would bring to not making everybody the same, but actually accentuate the diversity that we are as individuals. You know, we as individuals have an opportunity to
Individual in our lifetime and paint a masterpiece on the canvas of our life and that's what mandala is seeking to do is to bring to the diverse communities of the blockchain To these pioneers that have rolled their sleeves up and coded what is a parallel and new system for a better world for everybody?
instead of a few, you know, we're here rooting for everybody in that regard. And as long as it's decentralized and not re-centralizing and co-opting what the technology is built to do and built to last, we want to see this technology create a world that's for the next seven generations. We want to
help build with those people that are making that change. We naturally were attracted to the three environments of the three founders of Ethereum, which is Ethereum, Polkadot and Cardano. That's just an example for us as a way of showing diversity and unity.
John, your words deserve to be painted on a canvas. That was beautifully put. I definitely could touch what touched me, especially at the diversity spewing creativity. And so I also agree that all these L1s and L2s sort of are on the same track.
they're not co-opted, right? Like you were saying for different reasons, but this union and diversity, it's such a powerful message. And I believe that the current tribalism or what was of it is slowly starting to decrease. But then again, I come from, I'm in my own little bubble here as well too, so I think it
It's important for myself and for others to just begin exploring other communities, other L1s, other L2s because I think that that basis, that consciousness piece that you're mentioning, that base at our base, we all have that, that's really relatable amongst all of us. So thanks, John.
Any other comments about this interoperability or this diversity that you want to bring about? I know that for myself, I would say I'm naive because I haven't explored all these other chains, but what else is Mandala doing to sort of explore this or bring it to the forefront?
Yeah, yeah, I'll just elaborate a little further on that. For Mandala, you know, we have clans in our story, which are 12 different pathways to affecting consciousness and real change. And we use animal totems to represent those different archetypes. So a turtle clan, a sustainability and spider clan is technology.
and all around the circle like that. And it's a way for the community to self-organize, to self-identify, and to self-organize. And it's also a way for the narrative to take shape and to take form. So in terms of how it's unifying in the blockchain space,
The way we see it is, there's a rebel alliance that we need to come together and make sure that the centralizing forces don't do what they did last time with this new technology. If you really get into the deeper narratives of the past and the mythologies of the
human archive across cultures, we've seen this repeat itself over time and we have an opportunity to come out the other side of this one where you know the people are really empowered and it's from the bottom up and it pushes the power to the edge and that's what attracted us to the blockchain and to the web3 community is
that the story that we're trying to tell is about the expression and the building of what we call the critical mass, which is how many people, as a nukeless, it would take to really shift things in a positive direction. And that's what the story is all about is people of different
and different cultures and different ways of life, sharing knowledge and that knowledge sharing and the knowledge holding really be the basis of what we call the Enlightenment Simulator which is a game, a AAA game, you know that's entertainment first but serves as how would
part of it is unity and diversity and so that mounts on the blockchain and decentralization and sovereignty in a perfect, you know, in a perfect marriage, alchemical marriage, I would say. This is Kevin. I'll add a little to that, which is that, you know, the diversity part is
crucial right now and I'm going to encourage all these different, you know, chains, coins, tokens, the, you know, platforms because some will go corporate. And last time when that happened, the corporate kind of just gobbled everything up and there was no independent movement left really.
And this time the more diverse, I mean, here's the thing, they can't gobble everything up. And this time I do feel like the rebel alliance, I laugh every time we say it because it's such a fun thing to think that we're all doing this. But there's, we do have a chance here. And the more options, the more that's
going on. We tend to want to think, "Oh no, we got a streamline at all back into this top three or top five again. No, we don't. We need diversity." That will stop these corporations from moving in. Let them have the ones they want. Go have fun with the ones you guys want to take. That's great corporate America, corporate world.
actually it's a global corporations, but there's going to be because blockchain is built the way it is, there will always still be this alternative. And that was the difference last time. We were all left with no alternative. And this time we are. And another thing I'll add really quickly is the story.
I think about story and technology a lot. Where do they merge? How does it work? And how does one affect the other? And this time we're able to tell our story. And I mean our meeting everybody's. It's a really unique opportunity to allow people to start telling stories. We've all heard about
fan fiction and things like that. This is a different take on that. We're going to see outside of our sort of main thread of our story and of our, you know, how else can I put it? Of the things we're creating, there's going to be people outside in these other smaller circles creating side by side.
and spin off and that's all cool. That's great. Go for it, especially with the clans, like, you know, self-organize, start sharing knowledge, start telling stories, start offering services to one another. There's a whole ecosystem around like Star Wars is a great example. Think about if that were open. Boy, could that have created
created an unbelievably huge ecosystem and environment and, you know, let's say businesses for people. But no, Disney owns it and they have to clamp down. Every time somebody says the word before store stormtrooper or, you know, that's nuts to me. Like, that's insanity. So anyway.
Oh well, but it just reminded me of a the Star Wars comment with reminded me of this artist, Yoshi Takarimano, who launched their candy grime on Astar. He drew a dark vapor in his style. It was a request from George Lucas back in the day and he drew the
you could find this online as well, the rendering of his version of Darth Vader. Well, Disney came in and said, "Hey, sorry, Yoshi Takah, Amano, you can't be selling that. That's our property." And boom, he didn't want to fight it at the time. He said, "Okay, I won't do anymore." And there are so many
limited amount of prints and that was it. And that's sort of sad. Who knows where it could have got it. Well that's kind of that's kind of yeah that's what I'm getting at and that's where I come from which is you know when you sit and tell so you know if you sit around a campfire and tell a story and then you're traveling across country
country and you hear somebody telling that story again at a different campfire, you don't stand up and go, "Hey, that's my story." You sit back and go, "Shit, it made it all the way here," and they embellished it that way. That's really awesome. And Star Wars, do you think about it? Star Wars, I mean, I get it, they own it, and that's how they make their money.#
right? And I'm going to tell you, I don't think George Lucas sent that letter, somebody else sent that letter. You should really feel amazing that somebody else has taken and iterated on your creation, because that's Star Wars as an iteration of somebody else's creation, but legally they found ways to make
sure it was defined in a way that it can't be. Okay, I guess so. But that's what we got to do here. You know, we're all telling stories. We all have lives. They all enter twine. And we need to be able to share these stories with each other to grow and learn and become better humans. Totally agree. That's what's amazing really. And I think there's a lot
of things that Mandala team, just knowing personally what you're all doing and hence why we need more than one part to converse about this because there's a lot. And just for some, some of the listeners, listening in right now, there is a lot to this whole enter the Mandala and Mandala team and some of the technology
aspects, the nodes, you're looking at the problem and providing a solution. That's something beautiful and I hope to speak more about the technology that's going to be used and incorporated and how that's providing a solution, even living, breathing, what the blockchain
ethos and polka dot ethos really is which is decentralization right and that's what's exciting to me so if um if the team could kind of put into teasers let's make some trailers right now for this part two what are we what else could we talk about some of the topics that mandala has
in store. I'm glad you put it that way because I was going to say let's not do that tonight. Let's save it for another space because there is a lot of tech to talk about. We are on three different chains and it's really interesting because while there are a lot of similarities to these chains, you know, they all came out of that same room creating a theorem, right?
right, the ones we've chosen for now. But yet there's a lot of differences as well. And as we've gone cross-chain, we've seen big numbers of people within each chain look at the other chains and go, wow, that's really interesting. That's something we might want to start looking at or incorporating.
And so that's if we're going to do one thing, that's one thing I hope we do. We introduce people to new concepts and new ideas and they can, you know, some may say, hey, I don't really like that part and we don't want to have that in our chain, but this thing works. Okay, cool. You know, staking is a very interesting thing. Ethereum just converted over to staking in a very interesting and unique#
The way Cardano does it is incredibly interesting and awesome. It's very mission driven, it's very proactive in people staking their ADA, which is not actually taken out of your wallet, but it also as it accumulates its wealth or interest or whatever you want to call it, it's then given to
certain missions that people have or for altruistic values that they're trying to change in the world and that's awesome. And then I think about what you know what polka dot is doing. We first of all meeting Astar and hearing what they're doing and what they did and what they're going to do just fit so nicely into a lot of things
we've been thinking about as you said with nodes and the way Polkadot works and I believe Polkadot is incredibly decentralized in its inherent build and that's going to only get better and better. So, yep. Oh, sorry. You asked for a trailer and teaser of what's coming next. You know, I think Bruce would be a great teaser because he
could talk to a lot of people about just creating and drawing and art and how to do it, but also how to do it as he said. After learning from so many years, how to do it in a way that tells a story, how to do it in a way that reaches an audience, how to do it in a way that moves people. There's a lot of things we can talk about. I mean,
itself has we didn't even scratch the surface of the layers that we could get into about what we could talk about. So yes, there's so much more coming. So many more awesome cool things. Yes, yes, I'm excited for it. Bruce too. I'm excited to learn more about your experience and how you're developing in this new frontier because it's new for all of us.
to. It's a telling story, drawing the story, you know, or visualizing it. It's going to be fun for sure. And if any of the listeners are curious to feel free to jump into Enter the Mandala, the Twitter page, the Twitter, sorry, Twitter channel. And look at their link tree.
So you can see all the wonderful things they're doing. The art is astonishing. Bruce, I'm excited. Thank you. Thank you. Before we give away anything else, let's leave it for part two, for sure. Kevin, John, Bruce, any last words for our listeners? As we now round up now.
All I can say is that you ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, there are so many exciting things on the drawing board right now and it's especially wonderful for me to be on the inside seeing what John and Kevin are cooking up and what they're gold and
dreams and plans are and I'm so happy to be a part of it and all I can tell you is hold on to your hat because this thing is really going to explode. It's got stories to tell artwork to create and it's going to be amazing.
I have a huge smile on my face. I love it, especially from the creator point of view. Also, any questions from the audience for a few of the posts? I don't think we'll have time. But if you do join the Discord, we can jump in there, lovely community as well, really nice and approachable people.
and enter the Modala Discord and follow the Twitter to keep getting those updates. Kevin John in the last words. Thanks again so much for joining. Yeah, just thanks for having us Rams and to the ASTAR team and just it's really good to meet the Polkadot community through this space.
and we look forward to meeting people and connecting and we're just happy to be here. We're like I said earlier, we take our hats off to the builders and we really appreciate the community that we've met with the various companies including Astar that we've met in Polkadot. The values seem strong with the decentralization and
sovereignty and yeah, we're just happy to make everybody's acquaintance now. Yeah, we didn't even get to talk about a trailer. There's a whole piece on sovereignty that we have to talk about and who you will be in the metaverse and how to be, you know, be you and not be owned by, you know,
all these corporate entities and controlled by them. That's a whole another thing we can talk about. And I just want to say, we met, you know, we met Polka. A few years ago, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry to you guys that it's taken us this long to get there, but here we are and we are really, really happy and asked our made a huge shift and change.
So this has been great. Thank you. Thank you too. And the journey has just been done. Gentlemen, and I'm excited for the future and part two. So we'll let the community know when part two is out. When we're going to do the Twitter space. We'll call it episode two. Episode two, even better. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, John. Thank you so much, Bruce, again.
Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Okay. Bye everyone. Thank you community for showing up too. Feel free to check back on this recorded space if you want to listen back.