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Beyond The Hype 🎙️ | @MadLadsNFT & @armaniferrante
Recorded: May 12, 2023 Duration: 1:19:19Space Recording
Full Transcription
What's up, guys?
How's everyone doing today on this?
For me, it's a Thursday night might be a Friday morning.
I hope everyone's having a wonderful night wonderful day wherever you guys are.
Thank you guys for joining in beyond the hype.
As you guys know, we used to be called something else.
We did do a name change.
I'm loving beyond the hype a lot today.
We have mad lads and Armani super stoked about that.
As you guys see, I'm rocking a mad lads.
PFP love mad lads always have.
But yeah, it's going to be a great space.
Thank you guys for joining in.
We have Jordan and Levi's co-host.
We also have Gio up here.
You know, and we're also going to have anybody else who wants to come up.
It's going to be a great space.
We're just going to chill, ask questions, and yeah.
Anyone else want to introduce themselves?
Hell yeah, brother.
First off, I just want to say I hope everybody has had a great Thursday.
A titty.
It's always lovely hearing your voice.
Levi with the banger song, dude, that actually had me going.
I wish there was better emojis for that song, but man, I was feeling it.
I'm feeling it.
It's like getting late.
I'm tired, but that got me.
That got me alive.
But man, it's going to be a great space.
We got the legend Armani up here.
Thank you for being here, brother.
I got some questions for you that maybe they're personal questions, but you know,
I'm really excited to just sort of like, you know, just dig into your brain a little bit
and just overall have a good time here.
But welcome, man.
Let's go.
Jordan, a titty.
Fucking some of the best people in the space.
If you don't know who they are, then get to know them.
But yeah, no, we have beyond the hype going on today.
We got Armani over here from Mad Lads.
It's been a good day.
And Jordan, honestly, that song is what I played soccer in high school and in college.
And I listened to that song before every single fucking game.
So it got me hyped and it was like my good luck thing.
I'm a little superstitious, so I always had to play it.
So it's going to be a good space.
And we got a fire guest up here and someone that's made waves just from launching not too
long ago.
Fucking Mad Lads.
I mean, you got a titty to change his profile picture from a D God to a Mad Lad.
I mean, that's that's a fucking achievement in itself.
I think Armani, how are we doing?
Yo, what's up, guys?
What's up, guys?
I am doing fucking great.
I'm super happy to be here.
I might sound like a zombie for the first like five, ten minutes because I'm nursing
a coffee here in Taipei.
I just woke up.
It's the morning.
But I've been looking forward to this all week.
So it's awesome to be here.
What's up, guys?
Thanks so much for coming and for having me.
Let's fucking go, bro.
Yeah.
When they told me you were out in Asia, I was honestly super shocked.
I was like, holy shit.
That's honestly amazing, bro.
Happy for you.
How's the experience out there?
Yeah, it's been crazy.
I've been hopping around all over the place, doing all sorts of things, mainly trying to
figure out like what is going to be our like Asia plan of attack.
We've got a couple of big things in the pipeline cooking.
So I've been doing a lot of BD work over here.
Stopped by Hong Kong.
Met with a bunch of folks.
Met with some Solana Foundation folks.
Ended up going to Shanghai for a bit.
Apparently, there's a big Web3 startup scene that's cooking over there.
So I was in Shanghai for about a day.
I went to a Solana event.
And then now I'm over here in Taipei at the Hacker House.
Again, an awesome crypto scene.
A lot of awesome stuff.
A lot of builders here, honestly.
It's pretty surprising.
Mainly because I've just never been here in Taiwan.
And it's been an awesome trip so far.
So super excited to be here.
Armani, bro, it sounds like you're living the absolute Web3 dream life.
I guess I want to start off with that question.
How is it?
How does it feel?
How does it feel to travel and meet all these people just due to like the success of what you built?
Man, it's funny.
You would think that it would feel like a relief or like, oh, yeah, you know, everything's been successful.
But honestly, our heads are just like down, just like doing work.
It kind of just feels like, you know, we have so much, you know, we have so much ahead of us and so much to do.
And so I don't know.
There hasn't been a lot of time to reflect and mostly just been a lot of time to just like do the next thing.
For sure, dude.
You're building on such a large scale.
You're talking to so many bigger people with the success of Mad Lads.
And, you know, I wish nothing but the best.
And I hope that you're also having fun doing it, man.
I know that this Web3 stuff is pretty stressful and and, you know, coming from even smaller projects.
It's kind of wild.
I couldn't imagine something of your scale.
So, dude, that's amazing.
I cannot wait to see what you're doing.
But yeah, Levi, if you got questions, go for it, brother.
Or Titty.
No, I just wanted to say real quick, I heard he was out in Shanghai, you know, doing meetings and stuff.
Is it something regarding, you know, because I'm a big fan of Mad Lads.
I wish I got into the skulls early.
Too bad.
I was out at a hibachi restaurant.
So that was that.
Here's the thing.
All right.
The hibachi was great.
Wasn't worth it, though.
Missing out on the skulls.
I got a galaxy.
Happy about that.
Got a female.
But no.
So I was going to ask, is it something like regarding something coming out soon?
Or is it just like, you know, you're out there trying to spread Mad Lads at the new Solana.
You said there's a new Solana Foundation out there or?
Yeah.
So I'm going to be really lame and not give all the details.
But basically, we have some really big projects about Q3, Q4, maybe like a maximum six months out.
But honestly, it's going to be a lot sooner than that.
And there's basically, yeah, there's some big things that we have cooking up.
And so mainly my main trip to Hong Kong was me was mainly a Mad Lad trip.
There was like, again, I'm going to suck.
But, you know, how do I say this without saying it?
There was a team I was trying to recruit to do something to do a partnership with us, which will be like kind of the first step on this like kind of Q3, Q4 kind of timeline journey of this like next like big kind of thing that we're going to do.
So, yeah, I suck. I apologize. I'm going to be that guy.
But, you know, I'm a big fan of like the Apple mantra of like that Christmas morning surprise where you're like, you know, you're opening up your presents, you know, from Santa Claus or whatever.
So we're trying to keep that feeling. So I'm going to suck.
But I think it's worthwhile and I think it's what will keep the project exciting.
But yeah, Hong Kong was all about it was all about Mad Lads. Shanghai was kind of like a pleasant mistake where I had met with some folks in Hong Kong and they said, you know, there's going to be a salon of foundation event in Shanghai.
And so I was in the area and just kind of stopped by for a day. And that was kind of like the motivation there met with some some Chinese investors and that was some entrepreneurs and engineers.
That was mostly just like, you know, quote unquote networking thing.
And then Taipei is just Solana Foundation, Hacker House, that whole kind of gig around the world.
So, you know, all three have been a lot of fun. But yeah, that's kind of what's cooking.
Let's fucking go. I mean, here's the thing. I don't want you spilling, you know, too much.
You know, my job is just to try to get as much as I can out of you.
But no, I really do appreciate it, bro. I'm happy that the experience was great out there.
You know, like I said, I love Mad Lads. I want to see you guys succeed.
So it's great to hear you guys, you know, going out and going to different continents and things like that.
Just trying to spend Mad Lads as best as you can.
And, you know, thank you for that.
You know, a lot of founders don't really sometimes they just sit behind the computer and expect things to come to them.
You know, and you guys are out there and I saw Tristan as well.
I think you posted it on Mad Lads or Tristan might have posted it.
It was an amazing video. I was watching it the way you guys edit it as well.
Great presentation.
So it's just a great team, you know, behind Mad Lads itself.
So I'm super stoked for that.
And I also just want to say thank you for coming on the space.
It's super great to have you, by the way.
Go ahead, Levi.
I didn't know if Armani was going to accept those flowers or not.
But yeah, no, we do really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to come over here.
Talk about some new stuff that you're doing and just kind of Mad Lads in general.
Before we get over to kind of getting more into the project and everybody who has maybe living under a rock that doesn't know anything about Mad Lads.
I want to pass it over to Gio because we haven't said hi to Gio yet.
And I don't know this guy.
So Gio, how are we doing?
I'm doing awesome, man.
Happy to be here.
I missed last week's because I decided to have a heart attack and spend the day in the ER and in the hospital.
But I'm good now.
But I'm glad to be here.
Glad Armani's taking time out of his day to come hang out with us.
Glad everybody joined up in here.
And I'm just waiting for the opportune moment to tactfully pry and see if I can get some more information out of Armani over here.
100%.
We all have to.
I know I tried pre-Mint.
I actually host the Smith spaces, Armani.
So I don't know if you remember me.
I hosted that space whenever I was trying to pry all that shit out of you.
And your PR training, I think I gave it props before.
But it is top tier.
So the way that you tiptoe around these questions, I know that you're trained, but we still gotta try.
We still gotta try to get all the alpha out of you.
And you can't dog on us for trying.
But that's ultimately what we're here to do.
If you guys haven't already liked and retweet out the space, go ahead.
Get her done.
Because we're gonna get into some Mad Lads information.
Armani, like I said, if anybody's living under a rock, doesn't know what Mad Lads is, can you give us a little TLDR?
Hopefully that little spiel gave you some time to get down some of that coffee.
And we'll get right into it.
Yeah, so first just want to say, throw all the questions at me.
There's nowhere else I'd rather be right now this morning.
So, you know, I love it guys.
Keep them coming.
I might tiptoe around them.
But it'll be fun.
TLDR, Mad Lads.
Dope shit.
Dope people.
It's that simple.
Hey, yo.
This is gonna be a quick one.
Yeah, man.
There's that PR training.
I love that answer.
Expand on that for me.
Tell me what Mad Lads is to you without telling me.
And pretend I've never been to a Web3 space before in my life.
Yeah.
So, you know, if I'm gonna be for real right now.
So I think Mad Lads is, there's a bunch of different ways to look at it.
There's a product point of view.
There is a strategic point of view.
There's a community marketing point of view.
From the product point of view, I think the easiest way to think about it is it's the first example of a new piece of technology that we built.
So normally, it's basically a new way to build NFTs.
So normally when you click on your NFT inside your Phantom or inside of your Soul Flayer or MetaMask, you see an image.
With Mad Lads and with Backpack, which is like the main flagship consumer application that we're building.
When you click on your NFT, it's an app.
And so you have this token gated experience where your NFT community is like your portal into whatever world that that creator wants to provide for you.
So with Mad Lads, we're using it as like a test bed for building product for all these token gated experiences.
So it's like the technology product point of view.
You can think of it as like kind of WeChat for Web3.
WeChat, I don't know if you're familiar with it.
You know, it's like your portal into kind of a lot of, you know, Mandarin speaking kind of countries, China, mainland China, namely.
I mean, from the community marketing point of view, these are kind of our 1,000 people or 4,000 people or 10,000 people that we wake up every day and we think, how do we build for these people?
These are like our core community for building everything that we're building.
So, you know, Backpack, XNFTs, a lot of the developer tooling that we worked on for Solana over the past two and a half years.
And Mad Lads are basically kind of the heart and soul of all that stuff.
And when you put these two things together, you get this really interesting kind of strategic perspective, which I think we might be one of the first teams that are actually very intentionally trying this, where what we're trying to do at the end of the day is, okay, we're trying to build a standalone brand, whatever that means.
We're trying to build an example of this new XNFT technology, whatever that means.
We're trying to have community marketing, whatever that means.
But ultimately, there's a single purpose for all of this.
It's to get a critical mass of people.
It's to grow and grow and grow the Mad Lads until we can bootstrap a network effect where we have consumers in demand on one side, right?
Everybody using Twitter, everybody using Telegram, Discord, Phantom, MetaMask, etc.
And then we have protocols, L1s, application and XNFT developers on the other side that want to take advantage of that demand and that attention.
Whether it's building amazing applications for them, whether it's taking advantage of that distribution and that attention, or whether it's simply other Mad Lads interacting with other Mad Lads.
And if we can do all these things, and we can bootstrap this network effect, then we can build this next level, next generation, incredible consumer Web3 application experience.
And that's where Backpack comes in.
And that's how this all ties together.
It's about building this platform for these incredible people all around the world.
And it's about building a system that grows and grows and grows until that system becomes one of the most compelling Web3 experiences in the world.
And that's like the short story long.
So I love it. I love it.
And the more you talk about it, the more the more real this becomes for me, because sorry, if you hear my daughter, I got a three year old roaming around.
But yeah, the XNFT thing resonates with me because I come from a computer science background.
And that's like taking a photo painting, whatever you want to call it, that's hanging on your wall and turn it into that digital photo frame that you can interact with.
XNFTs are something that that kind of breaks the frame that we used to see behind an NFT for years past.
It takes it from from something that, yeah, we can look at to something that's tangible, something that we can do something with.
You're really taking the pieces that everybody brings to the table and building a real product from from my perspective, whereas a lot of a lot of NFT projects bring a single piece of the pie.
You're bringing the whole thing.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
It's like when you get this piece of artwork, right, it we've had this incredible like, you know, two years or so where we've had all these incredible communities rallying around this digital form of digital identity.
But the actual experience or the actual digital community, the actual thing that you're rallying around, it's always been separated.
Right. Whether it's on a separate website or whether it's like, you know, nonexistent at all, or maybe it's just on a marketplace.
But you have distribution, right, for creators, you have all these 10,000 NFTs in people's wallets.
And let's take advantage of that. Right.
Let's actually build real digital kind of portals into these communities.
And that's kind of like the motivation behind xNFTs.
It's like an entirely new way of building these communities that I think will be really exciting and like a fundamental improvement to the token gated experience.
I'm not going to lie.
When it came to the snapshot, that had me dying.
But it also just showed like the power that you guys have behind that.
You know what I mean?
The fact that just one click away, you guys are able to open up a whole new realm of experiences.
And honestly, it's just a way to immerse, you know, the buyers in different things.
And like I said, it's a new experience in NFTs itself.
So I think it's fucking dope.
Yeah, the fact that you Rick rolled an entire community is kind of on another level.
I mean, I kind of want to know the thought process that went behind all of that, because I feel like you guys maximize just everything going on to just like the social presence just skyrocketed after that.
So can you walk us through like kind of how that came through your head?
And were you just kind of like, okay, let's fuck around a little bit.
And because like they've already found out that we've made a product and now we're going to fuck around and then like gain social presence.
What was the, yeah, what was the thought process?
Yeah, so the thought process, I don't know if people, I don't know if the lawyers are gonna be upset at me about this.
The thought process was basically a combination of things.
So basically, we had launched Mad Lads and we had all this inbound from all these people that are like, yo, like, you know, the AMMs are fucking up Mad Lads.
Like, you know, the floor is like at a ceiling, like you got to do something, you got to do something.
And we kept having all this inbound from very well-intentioned people.
I love you all.
A lot of them are my friends, but a lot of well-intentioned people that were really, really caught up in the short-term price action, which is totally understandable,
especially for like folks that aren't kind of used to trading NFTs all the time.
It's a very human mistake.
And so we're thinking, all right, like we entertain the idea.
We're like, all right, well, how do we, how do we solve this problem?
Right. What do we do here?
Right.
Do you introduce staking?
Do we lock up?
Do we delist the NFTs?
Do we increase or decrease royalties?
Do we make an announcement?
And then we're like, all right, let's just fuck around and have some fun here.
I think there's like a lot of people, we're like trying to, at least it's my view that like the first one to three months of a community is not really about price action at all.
It's all about culture.
It's more or less the same thing as building a company.
It's building a decentralized group of folks that like all care about the same thing.
And, you know, we're thinking about how to create a foundation for long-term success.
And so what we really want are people that are long-term aligned with the project, right?
People that aren't going to be thinking about value creation on the order of days and weeks, people that are going to be thinking about it on the order of quarters and years.
And so the question is, well, like, how do we do this?
And so all this stuff was happening and we're like, all right, let's have some fun.
Let's maybe, you know, create some drama.
I'm a big fan of the whole idea of like, you know, attention gathering and this like emotional rollercoaster.
That's like the metaphor I always kind of talk with the team about.
If you went through the Mint experience, you experience this.
Like the whole Mint was an emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs and peaks and troughs.
Some people might have been scarred for life and hate us forever.
Some people love us and thought it was the best experience ever.
But whether you love us or hate us, you remember us.
And that's kind of the working kind of, you know, thought process behind a lot of the stuff that we do.
And so all this kind of came together to kind of have some lighthearted comedic relief to demonstrate, I think, our capabilities to demonstrate.
And a very small example.
I think a lot of the power of what we built without taking it too seriously.
I think a lot of people took the snapshot as like this really, really, you know, important thing.
It's like, you know, we'd spent this better part of a year building all this technology, building this next level wallets, building this community with all these people in Discord.
You know, hand crafting this whitelist, building all these games for this whitelist, building this like insane Mint experience that nobody else had.
Basically, everybody else has launch pads.
We kind of built this thing from scratch, fighting all these bots.
We've done all this stuff.
And then the next week, we're like, oh, yeah, we're also doing a snapshot, guys.
And to me, that was just funny.
Because, you know, it was like, yeah, guys, like, you know, we've spent a lot of time doing a lot of hard work.
We're going to do this again, but it's going to take time and it's going to be a lot of hard work and it's not going to take a week.
And so I think to me, all these kind of things came together to just provide some culture setting and some fun and some entertainment for the community.
And a lot of the folks that have been with us, I guess, for the better part of a year and our core community members now loved it.
They kind of know our personalities.
They know it was fun and it kind of just spooked and probably scared, scared, scared away some of the folks that were new and don't know us and don't know who we are and don't know what we're about.
So that was kind of the thought process.
It wasn't like this insane master plan, but it was it was intentional and it was some good fun.
Yeah.
Armani, to add on, add on top of that, like me personally, I'm like an outside forward thinker type thing.
I see a founder like yourself sort of, you know, not treating it like a corporate thing, more or less treating like like you're actually a part of the community.
You're involved in the ecosystem and you have fun with it.
That to me is more of like a that's just a better thing in general.
Right. If you're treating your, you know, the quote unquote people that minted Mad Lads more or less like, you know, something for a corporate entity.
You know, it would sort of turn people away and people have done that before.
And I think that's the best part about the Mad Lads team and yourself as you treat.
We know that you're there's a human behind your PFP. Right.
And we know that you're you're awesome.
So good on you. Good marketing. I loved it.
I'm unfortunately a bozo.
I had a year or so to download a backpack wallet and, you know, too little too late missed out.
But I did capitalize on the engagement.
You know, if you can't beat them, join them one way or another.
I helped push even without an NFT.
And that that is how, you know, you did it right.
But I actually, Armani, I did win.
I did win a Mad Lad last week, actually.
So that's nice.
Yes. So I'm in.
Bro, I'm actually fucking dying.
So, you know, Jordan actually says he's a he's an amazing trader, you know, which is actually fucking hilarious because he missed out on one of the biggest mints.
But no, actually, the craziest part is the fact that Armani did say it was they created their basically own launchpad within a fucking wallet.
So you just you got to imagine that, like I said, all the new experiences that they were able to create just within backpack.
And this is like just the beginning.
You know what I mean?
It's not like a product where they're basically just like, here you go, take this and we're done.
Or, you know, it's not a project where they just say they're doing something, but they never put it out.
Or when they do put it out, it's half ass.
You know, this is actually something that they spent time creating.
And it's actually bullish that, you know, they came on Solana.
They were building on Solana.
I give them props for that.
The fact that they were super early bullish on Solana from the beginning, you know, that that really does mean a lot as well.
You know, and that just shows the how Armani is as a founder and the team as well.
You know, they're early.
They like to, you know, innovate things and change it up.
So I'm super stoked for that.
And also, Armani, I was just wondering as well.
Sorry about that.
I know you were talking about, you know, how you scare people off, things like that.
Just want to say you're the goat.
That was that was actually fucking hilarious.
Like Levi said, or I believe it was Jordan talking about how you don't treat it like a corporate thing.
You just like to have fun with it.
You know, things like that.
That brings the community together because we were all degents in Solana right now.
It's fucking shit coin season.
You know what I mean?
And we're all fucking having fun.
So something like that is just hilarious.
And like I said, it just shows, you know, yourself as a founder, you know, how you go about things.
And I honestly think it's dope.
And I was just wondering as well, like, you know, besides, you know, backpack and anything like that.
Are you guys, you know, I don't want to push it too far.
But are you guys like working on, you know, anything for MadLads itself or, you know, just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the answer, the short answer is yes.
The big thing that we are working on is the is the next iteration of the XNFT, which will be more or less the final kind of iteration for the whole MadLads system that we're building.
So, yeah, the answer to that question is like, that's like the it's like mobile is the one is the one big thing.
And the MadLads XNFT.
So we have different sets of people working on those things.
But that is kind of more or less the top of the priority list at the moment.
What?
Fucking go.
Armani, you dropped you dropped 10 bits of alpha.
And I like it.
It's like fucking breadcrumbs that we have to follow.
So I'm fucking down for it.
And I think I'm the only one up here without a MadLad.
So I'm sad.
You're a sad lad?
Very sad lad.
Crying currently.
And I'm I've honestly been like thinking like, hey, yo, what the fuck am I going to buy?
Because I think NFTs are going to go on a discount.
So Armani, if you want to drop some more of that alpha, then you may you may give me some more.
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah, yeah, I'll drop.
I just want to say one thing.
So like implicit in that question, which is very understandable, is that like, oh, like, what do you guys do in Armani?
Like, are you guys working on MadLad stuff?
I find it a bit funny because, yeah, it's like, of course, we're fucking all we're like all in on this thing.
We're not just going to have the top NFT project and then just like let it sit idle.
So, yeah, we are we are building a fuckload of stuff for it right now.
But they're they're they're it's not they're not things that happen overnight, but it's pretty they're pretty cool.
But we're pushing on all cylinders.
We're pushing on the on the engineering side.
We're pushing on the on the BD side.
We're looking to do some some sweet partnerships as well.
And it all kind of will kind of come together, I think, to create like a pretty, pretty dope experience.
No, I love it.
I just wanted to give you like a broad question.
You know, I didn't want I didn't want to go too far into details.
I just want to be able to get as much alpha as I could without, you know, going too far into it.
But I see task is up here.
What's up, task?
How are you doing, bro?
What's up, fam?
I'm sitting out here.
I'm having a little a little brewski.
I just wanted to come by and support the fam.
Obviously, Jordan, Levi, Teddy.
Love you all very much.
I wanted to make sure to come by with the Mad Lad space.
Obviously been rocking it for a hot minute now.
And I love what the team is doing.
And if you don't mind, I do have one question that I think is like it's a general question,
but I think it's like an important question to kind of ask.
So I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to rip it because I got a heart from Levi.
And I think that means go.
I have no idea.
It wasn't green.
So we're just guessing at this point.
But Armani, I wanted to ask you specifically.
Obviously, you found a lot of success in the things that you've currently done.
What are some of the challenges that you found in the space in crypto Twitter leading up to kind of the events that unfolded regarding the success that Mad Lads has had?
So that's a really that's really hard question.
There's definitely been a lot of challenges.
I think I wouldn't say like crypto Twitter, though, was the source of the challenges.
I mean, I think there's like the standard stuff, right?
There's five people talking shit online.
That's all standard Internet stuff.
Honestly, I don't take any of it too personally.
I think it's not really unique to to NFTs.
I mean, maybe it's probably dialed up to 11 once you're like take an entity project public or not.
Maybe I shouldn't say that.
Maybe maybe once you launch an entity collection.
But leading up to the leading up to the launch, I wouldn't.
Yeah, I don't really have a good answer.
I don't I didn't.
There's nothing I can really point to that.
I thought crypto Twitter was the source of X, Y and Z.
I think in the in the in the heat of the moment, I think there was a lot of challenges on like the week of the mint.
Right. There was a somebody trying to extort us.
And by botting us, there was, you know, the failed mint on that Thursday.
Right. We had the whitelist on a Wednesday, the public phase on a Thursday.
And we had kicked back the public phase from Thursday to Friday in that 24 hour kind of layover.
There was definitely a lot of a lot of very good criticism.
Right. A lot of that where people were saying, oh, yeah, if Madlads don't mint on Friday, it's like over or something like that.
And that was like maybe the the peak of the the challenges as it comes from crypto Twitter.
But I'd say beyond that, I think crypto Twitter is mostly, you know, crypto Twitter.
And I don't take it too seriously.
Thank you for the answer. I appreciate it.
I'll hand it back to the hosts.
Thank you, Task.
I just want to say real quick, I do see Sam's hand.
His hand is up.
I just repeated myself. Don't know why.
But yeah, no, I just wanted to say real quick.
Yeah, that was crazy hearing that that dude was trying to extort you guys.
And then the fact that you guys were getting DDoS.
It was crazy.
The fact that during mint, it just kept doubling by, I think, well, like every 20 minutes.
I was in the spaces listening to it the whole time.
And it was just crazy hearing that.
And the fact that you guys were able to persevere over that and, you know, just keep it pushing.
And, you know, there's always going to be fought, especially when you guys are literally the hype meant of the of the year.
I don't know why I can't speak right now.
My bad about that.
I did eat a couple of edibles.
I think they're probably kicking in, but I completely sorry about that.
Yeah, no, I just wanted to say that was that was honestly super crazy that you guys were able to do that.
And the fact that, you know, public mint, it lasted, what, 20 seconds, you know, and it wasn't botted at all.
And the fact that you guys honey potted, you know, the botter, you know, even though you did honey pot a few people, doesn't matter.
You guys still refunded the money and just proved your point, you know, that you guys can't be botted and doesn't fucking matter.
If you have to take two days, you guys are still going to sell out.
And, you know, that's that's just how it is.
So just want to say that real quick.
Sorry about that.
What's up, Sam?
How are you doing?
You know today?
Hope you're good.
Um, I'm Ronnie.
I just wanted to.
I mean, obviously, one of the I mean, it's got to be one of the first minutes to ever get DDoS like day before.
What was it like internally in the team during those 48 hours when you guys couldn't get mint up and everything was going going south when it came to to the mint site?
I would say, you know, we were surprisingly kept our cool.
I think there is definitely tension and stress, like a healthy amount of tension and stress.
Right.
The amount of tension and stress like puts you on your on your a game.
Uh, but beyond that, I think it was it was pretty calm.
We were pretty calm and collected.
Um, and just really focused on on delivering.
I mean, it wasn't.
It wasn't like total chaos, but it also wasn't total peace and quiet.
Um, it was just everybody was more or less locked in and like hyper focused for that, you know, 48 hour period.
No, thank you.
I mean, that's that's gotta be to be expected, though, because you're you got somebody rogue trying to extort you for money and trying to damage what you spent years building.
So, I mean, that can only be natural.
I wonder when I completely I was gonna say I wonder how that guy felt knowing that you outsmarted, you know, the fuck out of him.
Honestly, he probably felt real bad once he lost all that money.
And then, you know, unfortunately, you know, the butter got no he got it back.
Um, and I'm wonder, I just really wonder how he's doing right now.
Armani, do you know?
I have no idea.
I mean, I think these are our businesses that service, you know, customers all around the world.
And I suspect that they're just carrying on with what they're doing before.
Um, I think.
Yeah, I don't know.
I have no idea.
I think your brother, but I know that he was probably hurting when he lost all that money at the time, and he probably had a little bit of a panic attack.
But, uh, definitely for sure task brother go ahead.
Yeah, I got another question if we're up for it.
Uh, this one's more geared towards like community curation.
And kind of how you've.
Pushed.
The, the project forward kind of on the back of the community that you've currently kind of curated in the space.
What are some of the tactics you've used?
I've, I've done a plenty of community building.
There's, there's multiple people up here that have done plenty of community building.
I think community building is like an art in its own way.
What are some of the tactics that you kind of use to curate the current community base that you have from the very beginning?
Uh, because obviously everyone is very bullish, uh, from a certain point.
But like before that, there was still some form of community building going on.
What did that look like?
Oh yeah, this is a great question.
So maybe for folks listening that don't have this context, we've been building this community for the better part of the year now.
Um, I think I can go back on Twitter and like, you know, pick up a bunch of all those tweets, uh, where we're like basically telling people that like, we're starting this now.
And like, you know, don't go, don't go begging me in like a year when you're trying to get on the white list.
It's funny because that's exactly what happened.
Um, but I think, I think it was, it was, it was very intentional.
It was a lot of work.
It wasn't something that happened overnight.
And if I had to like describe exactly what we did from like the beginning and like excruciating detail, it would be like something as follows.
Like, I think foundationally communities aren't really random.
Foundationally communities are rallying behind things.
Um, there has to be a purpose for them.
Like, I think people like to be friendly.
I think people want to make friends online.
I think that's super important, but it's not the core of it.
Um, but the core of it is like something that inspires people.
There's like a reason why we all get together on this space, right?
We're all interested in Solana.
We're all interested in NFTs.
We're all interested in Mad Lads.
Like, I think every, all the, all the speakers and co-hosts on the stage are awesome people.
People like go like get a beer with, but that's not the core of why we're here.
Right.
We're, we're, we're here because we're all rallying around Solana NFTs and around Mad Lads.
Right.
I think that's the first question that you have to answer.
Right.
It's like, what's the purpose of this community?
What, why do we all care?
Because there's a, there's so much like attention.
So many people fighting for attention.
Right.
Um, there's so, there, there's so much, so many amazing things happening.
And that's like really the first question you have to answer.
And I think we did that.
Um, well, first there was like this foundational layer of like, you know, we, we've been in
Solana since the beginning.
We were able to bootstrap a lot more easily than other teams for that reason.
Maybe for folks that don't have this context, we've been on Solana, I guess, like more or
less since like close to the beginning of mainnet, we've built a lot of like the foundational
infrastructure, a lot of the stuff that people use till this day.
Um, basically, you know, all candy machine auction house, all these things were built.
And like the, what the smart contract framework that I built, um, a lot of the early like
protocols, um, and, and consumer applications on the network or like derivatives from a lot
of the code and open source code that we built.
And so this was like the, how we bootstrapped, right.
It's like people, it didn't matter what we were doing.
People were behind us because we had been successful before.
And then on top of this, we kind of had this nucleus of a soul, which was, we're rallying
around this kind of new protocol, XNFTs.
We're rallying around backpack and we're rallying around this concept of like, all right, we conquered
the smart contract layer.
Now let's conquer the UI layer, um, and build a community around pushing the Solana ecosystem
forward through, through this like new technology.
Right.
Um, and then on top of this, right, we've spent the better part of a year trying to find people,
right in the discord every day, hanging out, getting to know people, hopping on voice chat,
going on spaces.
Um, and not only that, but we also built a lot of stuff to like curate the community.
So like for, for, we built the white list for a very long time.
And there, there was a very intentional kind of strategy with the white list where we started
with like open opportunity where it didn't matter if you're an influencer, if it didn't
matter how many followers you had on Twitter, it didn't matter where you were in the world.
It didn't matter who you are.
In the beginning, we simply created merit based challenges or games for anybody to get.
So if, if folks are an audience listening to this, you might remember, we built a bunch
of like meritorious games.
So like the first one was like AI generated images where you had to generate the prompt.
So when like Dolly first came out, um, we like immediately created this game where you would
see this image and you'd have to guess, well, what were the set of words that generated that
image?
And this would give you invite coats and a backpack, which would implicitly be a white list
of the mad lads or what became the mad lads.
People didn't know at the time there wasn't any hype.
We weren't the number one in empty onsalata.
And we did a couple of things, right?
We did AI generated images.
We did animal noises.
So you would hear like a baby cow mooing or something or crying and you'd have to guess
that it's a baby cow.
Um, and we did, you know, a third one, which was, uh, it was like this, we took a Minecraft
3d model and we embedded a bunch of invite codes into it and then put that into backpack
into the waiting room.
And that was like the third type of game.
Right.
So we built these, we built these three types of games in the beginning.
Um, and, and then as time went on, kind of, we built some more, we did like a moon game
competition.
We did like a bunch of meme competitions online, creating content, creating, you know, whatever
it is, right.
You can juggle and play music.
Um, you can dance.
Um, we, we, we wrote a song lads and lightning and then, you know, people made content about
We did all these events.
Right.
And the intention was to find the people in the community that cared.
Right.
Um, and it was, it was some form of grinding.
Um, but, but as time went on, the intention was to, you know, we had in the beginning, we had
to be merit based.
And as time went on, we would make it harder and harder and harder to get in.
And the closer we got to the mint, the more we leaned not towards these merit based kind
of, you know, entrances into the community or into the whitelist, but towards like the
more traditional, like, who are you?
How many, you know, what have you done?
What's your influence on the world?
Um, what are you elite at?
Right.
Because on the one hand, you want it to be fair and open access, but on the other hand,
you want the community to be fucking badass.
Right.
You want it to be full of leaders.
You want it to be exclusive.
You want people to get a lot of value from the network.
Um, and I think, you know, having this balance is really challenging, but I think if you can
strike this balance really well, I think that's how you can make like a really special community.
Um, especially because I think there's so much talent, so much energy, so much excitement
around the world.
That's in the first category and not in second.
And if you can harness that, it's like an incredible thing.
So I think that was the, the moral framework and, and the kind of, um, path that we took
to build the community for the better part of the year.
And it was a lot of work.
Um, it wasn't something that happened overnight.
Uh, but it was something that we, we cared a lot about from the beginning and that we
were very intentional about.
That's, that's an awesome, that's an awesome take there.
Um, I still remember winning my invite code.
Uh, and I remember it very distinctly because it was fairly early on.
And one of those, those games, um, and, and I, uh, I didn't claim it for like two or three
days.
And by the time I claimed it, it had expired.
And I was thinking I got, uh, I got hosed because of my negligence and wasting time.
Uh, and I still remember pinging, um, mad monkey and having him DM me a new code, um, like
three or four days after that.
So we're talking like a week after I had won.
And, and that's, that's what sold me.
And I hear a lot of people up here talking about being good traders and, and, and trading
NFTs.
I I'm a broken type.
I'm of the broken type.
I don't trade NFTs.
I buy the ones that I like.
I buy them all and I hold them forever.
And that's the end of it.
One day I'll find the maximum number of NFTs you can fit in the wallet.
But today has not been the day.
Gio, that was so funny.
Uh, I do agree.
I, I am also a part of that broken type.
Um, I just bet on teams ultimately.
And Armani, I'm not going to lie.
Listening to you is getting me more and more bullish every time.
And then seeing these PFPs.
Um, so I, I've just logged into Coinbase.
Um, and I currently sent over some money to my wallet and I'm not even capping right
now.
So that's what I've been doing for the past, like five minutes while you've been
talking.
Um, so who knows?
So something may be picked up off the floor in a second.
We'll fucking go from there.
But Armani, what I wanted to know, your content, as we know, content is king.
And especially in web three, it's starting to ramp up a little bit now.
Um, you've been creating good content and kind of documenting everything that you're
doing with backpack, with mad lads over in Asia, all of your travels and everything that
you're kind of going with it to push it more.
Uh, do you have a content creation team following you around to like help you out with all of
this stuff or how does that go?
No, we don't, we don't have like a formal content creations team.
I don't have like a, a, a video, a videographer or anything like, you know, following me around
Taipei.
Uh, we have, um, our in-house meme Lord, I think much might be the closest thing.
I think he's in the audience on audience.
Mad monkey also goes by monkey.soul, um, on the internet.
Um, he is, he's the closest thing to that.
And he is, he just does a bunch of all, basically all of the incredible memes and content that
we do basically goes through him.
Um, I think it's a, it's a, it's a big challenge that I, that I challenge with, uh, or it's a big
problem that I, that I kind of struggle with, which is on the one hand I agree and want to
go all in on content.
I think content is king, especially in crypto and NFTs.
Um, but on the other hand, like the, the traditional kind of engineer and then like kind of, you
know, startup founder in me thinks that like, oh, well, if you don't want to go too much on
that side because you actually need to focus on, on, on solving hard problems and that requires
like focus.
Um, and so I bow, I go between these two worlds.
Um, and so I think we, the way we do content is somewhere in the middle.
Um, where we, we, we basically express ourselves and care a lot about the community, but we're
also trying to stay really focused on, on shipping really impactful product that scales
to like the entire world.
So I think we're somewhere in the middle, but yeah, I I'm a big fan of content.
I love memes.
I love to kind of make tech talk videos all day, but you know, it's a, that's been our
approach so far.
Yeah.
Building more than tech talk videos.
I'm, I'm not going to lie for me.
It's a lot more bullish than you like doing crazy dances that I would probably make fun
of you for, um, online.
Um, so our money, I'm glad you're kind of going with that route and I'm very glad that,
I mean, just your marketing, everything that you kind of put together in general, it just
like it fucking hits every time.
I think it's because you guys have that attention right now.
Um, so I just wanted to give you flowers, say big ups to all that and just keep it fucking
pushing.
Let's go.
Yeah.
If I can be, if I can jump in and if I can be like real right now, if we're up to me,
the whole team would be doing dances on Tik TOK, but they're not having any of it.
The engagement would go wild.
I'm, I'm not going to lie.
The engagement go for, um, but that would be hilarious, bro.
Bro.
I was just about to say that you have Tik Tokers and on all these other bullshit influencers
selling out NFT projects on Ethereum.
Like, come on, bro.
Like imagine the marketing and the engagements they would get.
Like that would be insane.
It would go so hard.
It would go so hard.
I mean, people think I'm joking, but I'm like dead serious about this mad monkey for
listening to this.
Consider it.
Let's do some, let's do a tester.
Just at least one tester, Tik Tok video, see how it does.
Um, and then, you know, from there on you can decide.
Hold on.
I want, I want Jordan to be your Tik Tok dancer.
I want Jordan to be your Tik Tok dancer.
Can we please get him on the team to just do Tik Toks for you?
Jordan and I will do it together.
Jordan and I will do it together.
We'll get together in the city.
We live like 15 minutes from each other.
We'll literally just get together and we'll just dance.
We need, we need something better than the worm though.
We can't be doing shit like that.
All right.
Um, we're going to doing a pyramid.
That'll work.
That could work.
No, just like, imagine that, like, instead of like getting Rick rolled on the snapshot,
it was just like the whole team dancing.
Um, I would have fucking loved that.
But, uh, what's up, Sav?
I see Sav with his hand up, bro.
Happy to see you.
What's up, legends?
What's up?
Uh, awesome spaces, dude.
Super, super rad to hear more about backpack.
Big, big W's all around.
Absolute legend.
Armani.
How's it doing?
I wanted to ask, um, just because you, you brought it up and you know how serious you
are about doing like the, the tick tock, the tick tock dancers.
They've seen some content that you've been done.
You've, you've done of like you playing games and like fucking putting a shoe in your head
and shit.
Um, and the Rick roll Rick rolling and stuff.
And what I'm getting at and what I'm thinking, the reasoning behind why you want to do this
to me if I'm wrong.
And if this is maybe the similar thought is that like the target market market for a lot
of this technology and specifically web three, which is kind of, you know, a mixture of technology,
art and memes, um, which is crazy and cool and fun.
Um, is that the younger generations are kind of the, the market that we want to be targeting.
We like, you know, people always want to try and like, you know, target these 35 year olds
or older or whatnot.
Not that those people aren't going to get engaged, but there's just a few of them where younger
people, maybe teens, you know, early twenties.
Um, they a little bit more susceptible to this technology and, and, and, and how it can
be used.
Um, is that, is that kind of in the thought process there?
Hey, wait, wait, before you answer that, I, I resemble that remark.
I fit into that 35 year old category.
So watch your tone.
I'm fucking dying right now.
I mean, I gotta say, I just turned, I just turned 31 today.
And so I don't know if I'm out.
I don't know if I'm too old to tick tock or actually happy birthday.
I'm the first one on here.
You definitely are.
You're spending your birthday on here talking to us.
So I'm a total moron.
I'm losing track of my birthday, dude.
No, yesterday was Tristan's birthday.
No, my birthday was like a week before or something.
I'm losing it.
Um, what was I saying?
Oh yeah.
So answering the question.
So if you're 35 or however you'll, however old you are geo, you can dance.
But no, to answer the question.
I mean, it's a combination of like, yes, it's super valuable.
I recognize it.
Um, but on the other hand, like, I'm also just like a consumer, a lot of this content,
like specifically Twitch.
I love Twitch.
Um, I've spent a lot of times like in the audience on streams, watching gamers and stuff.
So I I'm just a fan of it.
And like a lot of the motivation behind like a lot of that stuff is like, it's a Sunday.
People aren't too productive on a Sunday.
I just like, I just want to hang out with like, you know, people and, and, and share
what we're building.
And there's not like too much like premeditated planning behind it.
But other than like content is cool.
Let's play around with it.
Let's explore it.
Uh, let's have some fun.
Um, not be too serious.
Those streams are like totally not planned at all.
They're not like high production.
It's mostly just like authentic kind of just like in real time, hanging out on a Sunday
morning, sipping some coffee, um, trying to build some real human connection.
But yeah, I think content is super important.
I don't think a lot of people have really tapped into it.
Um, I think crypto content is like on a much lower level than normal content and would
love to be one of those teams that elevate to actually get to that, like kind of higher,
higher level and be like, you know, I think Mr. Beast.
Mr. Beast.
And like, you know, these kind of top tier kind of web two influencers are like maybe
the, the Holy Grails of like kind of who are the elite content creators, but they're definitely
like kind of, uh, you know, goals and people to aspire to.
Dude, I was going to say last thing, Gio, uh, I'm nearly, nearly 29, dude.
So though I'm not a young buck myself, but, uh, you know, I just, I think that's, that's
a great point.
And I just, it's something that I've recognized.
And I think, you know, again, not dependent on age, but just content is king.
Um, and any way you can kind of create that content and rally a community around it and
make them feel good, positive, positive feelings above anything else.
Um, and just having fun while you're doing something really cool is, is valuable.
So epic work, bro.
Keep killing it.
Much love guys.
Thanks for having me out.
Thank you, Seb.
We fucking love you.
You and that cute goddamn mustache.
Uh, we wouldn't want to, we wouldn't want to not have you here.
So I'm going to say that.
Let's go.
Levi, you're the only one that's allowed to dance.
Uh, I don't know how old a titty is, but, uh, you're the only one that I think is of
appropriate age.
Um, based on what we've said here on the panel to dance.
So good luck.
Hey task.
Um, I do like those Latinas that we always talk about.
Um, but I did not get my dancing gene whenever I've been, you know, dating them, um, to put
it respectfully.
Um, so I, I, I did not learn anything from them.
If, if you get what I'm putting down.
Yeah, I get what you're putting down.
Uh, I wish you the best because once again, you're still the youngest.
Good luck.
No, I'm dying.
Uh, I've seen Gio dance at, uh, New York city.
Uh, I thought it was hilarious.
Uh, no, our.
Stop it.
Come on, bro.
I know.
I know you remember it.
It was right when we got out of the Uber, you know, uh, you saw a pretzel on the ground.
You got happy.
You picked it up.
Uh, you did a little happy dance.
Stop it.
No, I'm joking.
No, that's all shits and giggles.
Uh, but no, Armani, I was actually going to ask you, uh, were you actually in NYC?
Uh, and if you were, how was your experience?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was in NYC for a bit.
Um, my experience is awesome, man.
Um, I love New York.
Went to, uh, I think you're referring to NFT NYC.
Um, you know, it was at the okay bears event and get, it gave a quick talk.
Uh, mainly just kind of met up with a lot of the folks on the ecosystem, but yeah, it was
a great trip.
Damn, bro.
I'm actually upset that I missed you.
Uh, which, uh, I know both of the trips are completely different.
Uh, but I've never been to Asia to be completely honest.
I've been in New York city a bunch of times.
I'm from the East coast.
Uh, I was like, I know I already asked you about your experience in Asia, but which one
would you say it's better?
Uh, even though, you know, like I said, they're two completely different things.
Yeah.
You can, you can't really compare them.
I think like they're both awesome for, for different reasons.
I mean, Asia is just like a totally different world.
Um, I think, yeah, I wouldn't say one is necessarily better than the other.
I think the Asia, I mean, I, I, I'm a, I'm a U S uh, I'm a U S citizen.
I was born in the U S I love the U S I'll probably live in the U S for the rest of my
life.
But like every time I come over to Asia, I'm always just reminded how awesome the cities
are here.
They're just like literally on another level.
Just like, like literally just so convenient.
Um, it just, it's like, everything's connected by malls.
The subways are fast.
Uh, it's everything's convenient.
Restaurants are open.
Uh, there's different user habits.
Like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's super interesting over here.
Um, so just a lot, a lot of kind of just like stuff for me to learn and, and people to meet
and, and just get exposed to.
Um, but I think, you know, the, uh, my Asia trip has been much more intentionally like
business oriented and the New York trip was much more like, yeah, I wouldn't give a talk,
but it was much more just, you know, um, hanging with the salon community.
No, that's amazing.
Um, speaking about traveling, uh, around and, you know, just trying to get the Mad Lines name
out there.
And also just speaking about different continents and things like that.
I'm actually, uh, Egyptian myself and things like, uh, and you know, I, myself, I'm from
America.
Love it.
Uh, you know, and you know, things in Egypt are completely different.
Uh, and I was just going to ask you, uh, have you ever thought of, you know, going somewhere
in the middle East, maybe like Dubai, anything like that?
Uh, you know, and just trying to spread Mad Lines out there because I know you're big on trying
to onboard new users, which is why you created, uh, Mad Lads and XNFT and things like that.
Um, you know, which is, which is also why you create all these amazing experiences.
Um, but I was just wondering, is this something that you ever thought of doing?
Uh, or is it just like something you're not really, uh, looking forward to do?
If that makes sense?
No, no.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's something on the top of mind.
It's like something we're actively, actively, actively doing.
Um, UAE, Dubai, these are kind of, this is like the next stop.
Basically.
Um, we are in a very active, um, like, uh, we, we have a very active discussion.
So like kind of expand over there.
Um, there's a bunch of reasons for this, um, maybe for people that aren't super familiar
with like, um, international crypto regulatory kind of the climate, the climate, um, UAE
is just in Dubai is like one of the most promising, um, jurisdictions for crypto startups right now.
From a regulatory perspective, they have a, you know, um, regulatory body.
That's like very interested in, in creating, you know, a hotbed for crypto startups.
They're very, being very clear, um, and progressive with laying out laws, um, for, for teams to,
to come and, and really push kind of crypto forward.
So honestly, Dubai is like one of the cities, uh, on the top of my list of places to visit
and places to expand to.
Um, I think you saw like Brian Armstrong tweet about this kind of this week, actually, he's
in the UAE meeting with a lot of the folks over there.
Um, and it's for this reason.
And so, yeah, no, I'm super, super excited about it.
Um, and I think, I mean, close by to UAE as well, it's also, it's also India.
I don't need a, I don't need to rehash India.
I think Solana, the Solana developer community in particular has, has been quite big in India,
but that's another kind of country region.
That's, that's super exciting to me in terms of like international, um, exposure and, and, you know,
hotbeds of talent and excitement and energy of people that can come in to the Solana ecosystem
to make a big difference.
So yeah, love the question.
The answer is like, yes, yes, yes.
No, I love it.
Uh, before I pass the mic to anyone else, I just want to say, if you're ever in Dubai
or anywhere in the Middle East and you need a translator, uh, you know, I won't, I wouldn't
mind flying out there and helping, helping you out.
Uh, no, um, yeah, uh, honestly, uh, I'll be honest.
I, I just love everything you guys are doing.
Uh, I also just love the traits.
Uh, I've been trying to change my PFP for a while.
Not going to lie.
Love, love D gods, love what they're doing as well.
Uh, I don't try to, you know, hate on another project or anything like that.
Uh, I love every project in Solana.
I wish everyone the best.
Uh, but no love mad lads.
Love what you guys did.
Uh, especially with like the females trying to make things rare.
Uh, you know, a lot of projects tend to fail with that.
They try to make the females, you know, equal or maybe a little too much of the projects,
but you guys did it right.
Especially with, uh, you know, just, just the females galaxy skulls.
Uh, I think there was what, like 30 or something skulls.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Uh, but the way you guys did it was, was just wonderful.
Honestly.
Yeah.
There's, there's 99 skulls in total.
Wait, what the fuck is there?
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What the fuck?
Damn, bro.
Now I'm actually even more hurt that I missed out on them.
Uh, but no, whoever has the skulls, congrats to you guys.
Those are honestly so fucking sick.
I love them.
Uh, the one, especially with, uh, the desert Eagle, I completely forgot what that trait's
called.
That one's fucking sick, bro.
Uh, and Armani, I was actually going to ask you, I know you repping a mad lads PFP prior
to the mint.
Did you, were you able to buy that PFP or did anyone offer it to you?
Or did you just say, no, no, I, I mean, I tweeted about it.
I was trying to find the buyer.
Um, but no, I, I, I, I wasn't able to get it.
I didn't pre mint it for myself.
Uh, I just kind of was, did the whitelist and the public base like everyone else.
Armani, I got one more question for you before you go.
Um, it's about the art.
How long did it take and where did the inspiration come from for it?
Because I, I love it.
Um, and you guys did a fantastic job on the female, um, the female portion of the collection.
Um, yeah, the, um, the artwork took a long time, honestly.
Um, it was like our kind of first kind of endeavor into this type of project.
And we went through like a bunch of different iterations of, of the base models.
Like, like we originally actually started with like 3d models, more similar to like Degen Apes.
Um, and, and kind of rendering it all kind of, you know, in like a, in 3d.
And I think he was like, oh yeah, we can import these assets in the games and stuff.
And kind of nerd sniped ourselves a bit.
Um, but I think we eventually landed on, um, the current artwork and it was this kind
of very progressive experience.
Uh, folks probably have heard me kind of tell the story before, but the foundational constraint,
I think for a lot of it was that it just had to be different.
Um, if you consider like the space of all NFT projects and like the emotional connection
you feel, or like the vibe that they give off, right.
There's like a bunch of similar projects, right.
There's like a million monkey projects, um, that, that all kind of look like they're stoned.
Um, there's like a million, you know, um, you know, animals of very different forms.
Um, you know, a bunch of D gods copies.
Um, and so our first constraint was like, all right, how do we do something different?
Um, and I think the starting point for that was, was really the 1930s kind of, kind of
era, right.
Everything was formal 19, uh, American gangsters, British gangsters, or just like a dope kind
of, kind of, you know, uh, you know, style that was kind of like appeals to everybody.
Even today, it kind of says just like stayed relevant over time.
Tommy guns are just sick.
Um, and so, you know, there's lots of awesome kind of movies and content around this.
And so I think that was like the starting point.
And, you know, we basically went through a bunch of iterations of the artwork and, you
know, thought that the art was like objectively really good, but we didn't think that there
was a strong brand.
Um, if folks recall, like originally the collection was called one, we didn't have really good
reason behind it other than like, I don't know, being number one, you know, a lot of
artists like to suffix their names with one, like Armani one, that type of thing.
And, but we weren't really excited about it.
And it wasn't really until we did a bunch of other stuff at the exact same time as actually
creating the art that the concept and the brand really came to life.
And the two kind of big unlocks for us was in addition to having some base layers of art,
some, some base models, we kind of sat in the office one day and enumerated through all
the names and eventually landed on Mad Lads.
We didn't know why Mad Lads was the right name.
It just felt right.
Right.
Like the vibe just felt like the energy, the emotional, like connection that we had to
it just like really felt good.
Um, and, but it wasn't, that wasn't enough.
And it wasn't really until, um, Monkey, our in-house meme Lord, meme Lord is in the audience
right now, um, created this like 30 second clip of a bunch of Quentin Tarantino films kind
of stitched together up with like the Kill Bill siren song in the background.
And with the words, with the letters M-A-D mad overlaid on top of the entire video that
the brand really just like became obvious to us.
Like what, what Mad Lads became and it is today was the result of like these three things.
Okay.
And it wasn't like any one of them in isolation.
It was all three of them kind of coming together.
And it was this like really interesting process of like discovery rather than first principles
thinking that allowed us to like figure out the artwork.
Um, and then there's some like layers on top of this, right?
Like another big unlock for us was like the expressions.
So if you take a look at the artwork, right?
Um, you could see all these expressions like a titty in mind.
We both have the joy expression.
Um, and, but there's, there's, you know, there's bamboozled.
There's, there's, there's mad and angry.
Um, there's like pouty, there's pouts.
Um, and there's different, this entire range of human emotions.
And that is very much inspired from like the brand is very much inspired from the mad,
the mad lads or, or the definition of mad, right.
Cause you can be mad as in, um, angry, you can be mad, joyful, mad, sad.
It's like this entire spectrum of human emotions.
And I think that is really the entire kind of arc of like, uh, of artwork discovery.
Um, and then I would think I would, I would be, you know, um, irresponsible for me not to,
to mention the anime portion of this.
And that really came from the fact that, you know, um, Tristan who, who's really driving
a lot of the artwork, um, with the artists was, is just like the biggest like anime weeb
you've ever met, uh, before.
And so that's kind of like a lot of the foundational kind of style is like rooted in that.
And so that's kind of like how I would describe it.
Um, and I think we landed in a really cool, really unique spot.
Um, and I think we have a collection that's, you know, stands on its own pretty unique relative
to anything else that's been done before.
Dude, that's absolutely amazing.
You answered my question in, in between that, which was, how did you come up with the name?
Um, and, uh, yeah, you answered that in there.
Beck, I see your hand up.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
What's up?
What's up?
Um, firstly, yeah, I got to say like the, the art is fantastic.
I'm still shopping around.
I needed mad lassie, but I'm too indecisive.
So every time I kept trying to buy one, the floor just kept like absolutely ripping.
So, uh, the floor's calming down a bit.
So I'm definitely, it's on my shopping list and I got to get back in there.
But, um, I did just want to ask a quick question.
So sorry, sorry if this was asked cause I just joined, but I'm just curious Armani, like how
much do you see the Solana mobile phone playing into like the lore of mad lads?
Well, that's a great question.
I think, so I think the context on the Solana mobile phone for folks that might not be paying
attention to it.
It's like mobile is like probably the most important problem in the crypto space.
I think it's the one thing that precedents us from building incredible crypto native experiences.
And so I don't know if like Solana mobile is the answer, but it's definitely the right problem.
And so it's a really exciting product and piece of technology from, from that perspective.
But to answer your question, is it going to be like a core part of the lore?
I think, you know, we're excited to weave it into the lore.
I don't, I think it's going to be more tangential than it is core in terms of like the storytelling.
It's going to be like one of many platforms, right?
And that's just because all of the mad lads aren't going to have Solana sagas, right?
I think it'll be a small percentage of them.
Uh, but we are excited to do stuff with them, right?
X NFTs are coming to Saga.
We have laser inscriptions coming to Saga.
You can get your mad lad inscribed on your phone.
You'll be able to actually mint.
There's 50 mad lads that have been allocated to, to the phone.
And so those are going to be kind of the side quests that we're going to be sharing through the phone.
Yep.
But they're very much side quests.
Wait, wait, what's, what's alpha there?
You got to drop more on that.
What do you mean by like allocated to the zone?
So we had 10,000 or we had 10,000 NFTs.
Um, of that 10,000, you know, 300 went to a scholarship program, 50, which, which is a whole separate thing.
Um, and 50 went to, um, the sauna mobile team.
Um, and yeah, that's basically, and that basically there'll be distributed through there.
So we're going to have like, um, a backpack event where basically you'll be able to, if you have a Saga and you have a backpack on a Saga, you'll be able to mint one of the mad lads.
You'll have an opportunity to mint one of the mad lads.
There'll be 50 of them.
All right.
I'm, I'm going to sweep Solana sagas right now.
I'm getting 50 of them.
So what you're saying is I have to open this Saga phone that I have.
Great.
Yeah, that's right.
You'll have to open it and, uh, install backpack and you'll get a chance to mint the mad lads.
What's funny is I've got, I've got one sitting here and, and I was undecided on whether or not I was going to open it and just, or just keep it on a shelf for, for a memento.
And just know that I had one of the first ones and it's never been opened, but now I'm going to have to open it.
So thanks for that.
Or maybe I'll just buy another one.
I think three more.
Why not?
Yeah.
Buy them out.
We, we already gambled pretty hard here in Solana.
I don't think buying three phones or four phones is really out of question at this point.
Um, it's, it's definitely not because I, I buy a new phone almost every year as it is.
And I have stacks of phones.
So let's just add more to the pile.
Well, okay.
I need context.
Why the fuck do you have stacks of phones?
Yeah.
I don't get rid of those.
So no.
So bro, he has stacks of fucking laptops too.
And iPads and AirPods.
I'm horrible.
I'm horrible.
So I don't get rid of anything.
So it's like NFTs.
If I buy something, if I like it and I'll buy two because if one is good, two must be better.
Um, and I don't get rid of anything.
So when I buy a new phone, the old phone goes in the old phone box.
So if I ever break my new phone, I have an old phone until my new, new phone shows up.
Uh, same with laptops, same with iPads, same with pretty much everything I use on a daily basis.
Like I was joking with the titty.
I wanted, uh, I wanted a set of AirPods maxes and I bought a set and I ended up leaving that
set on an airplane.
So I went into the Apple store in the Denver airport and bought three more pairs because
I had one to use and I have two in case I lose or break the other one.
And then I have a backup of the backup.
Gio.
I don't know if anybody told you this, but you never buy electronics in an airport.
Like they're up like 30% at least.
You're not leaving.
You know what?
When you're, when you're traveling, it doesn't really matter.
I needed them.
I wanted them.
I walked through the store.
I asked them how many pairs they had.
The lady kind of goes, well, we have three left.
And I said, I'll take them all.
And she looked at me like, are you kidding?
Gio, you needed one of them needed, need the word.
Yeah.
But what if I left that pair on the plane too?
That's amazing.
Hey, I need, um, one of those places.
If you could send it over.
Exactly.
Yeah.
DM me your address.
I've got, uh, I've got two unopened boxes right here on the, on the shelf in my office.
All right.
So quick DM.
Armani hit it.
Yo guys, I suck, but I've just been told that I am, I have a call with a bunch of lawyers
that are waiting for me right now and are costing me a lot of money.
So I could take one more question and then I'm going to head out.
Yeah.
It's because of the information you shared earlier.
Yeah.
I was going to say that I heard the spaces.
Hey, yo, Matt, our body, we appreciate you fucking coming out here.
And I want to, I just want to like point out that I wasn't capping.
I was literally in my Coinbase account buying Solana.
So I could buy a mad lead.
Like I posted it up top.
I wasn't fucking with you guys.
Like it just, it was long overdue and I'm sorry it took me so long, but Hey boys, I'm
here.
Let's fucking go.
I know.
I know you're on the blocksmith team, but you know, if you're ever looking to change
the PFP, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.
But no, the next question, I honestly just want to ask, bro, congratulations on the Mad
Lads validator.
I see you guys are, you know, fucking ripping it on the volume right now.
I just wanted to ask, you know, is there anything else that you guys are looking to do
within, I know it's, you might get hit with your, your lawyers or anything like that.
Uh, you know, but you got the, the saga, you got everything you guys are doing with XNFTs,
the validator.
What else are you guys looking to do?
Cause it just seems like you guys keep expanding.
Yeah, we've got a bunch of, we've got a bunch of stuff we're trying to do.
Um, I think I'm, I think I'm going to leave that for a, for a surprise.
I think there's a bunch of stuff that's in the pipeline.
We've got an entire team working on this stuff all day, every day, but yeah, it's the
It's not stopping at the validator.
It's not stopping at saga.
It's not stopping at backpack.
Uh, check back in, in a couple of weeks should be fun.
I, you know, shooters, you got to shoot, but I got it for real.
I got to go, but you know, thank you so much for having me guys.
This has been awesome.
I would love to do it again.
Uh, this is honestly such a rad space.
So thank you so much.
And thanks for listening everyone.
Of course.
Of course.
Thanks for being here.
Armani bro.
You're a legend.
I really, uh, fucking go.
Yes, sir.
Just want to say thank you again, Armani.
Everyone else who joined in to listen to Armani.
Uh, you know, he definitely got ripped by his lawyers.
Someone was definitely saying in here being the fed, uh, you know, but it happens.
It's whatever it's web three.
Uh, but no, I really do want to say he's a legend.
Everything that they're doing in the spaces is fucking amazing.
Uh, you know, they're trying to revolutionize the space in a different way.
Uh, you know, Armani and the team have a different vision than anyone else.
Uh, and you can see it, you know, they're building products.
They're not just saying it, they're actually doing it.
Uh, and it's different than a lot of these projects out here.
Uh, and they're, they're creating a dope experience.
So shout out to them.
Uh, and yeah, that's honestly all I have to say for today.
I thought it was a great spaces.
I honestly thought it was amazing that we were even able to get Armani with how busy
he is.
Uh, and thank you everyone else for joining in.
Uh, I'm just going to pass the mic to Jordan and Levi.
I know they got things they want to say Gio as well back a task.
You guys can take it from here.
Yeah.
Um, I'll just throw in like, thank you everybody for coming through.
Um, honestly, this, this is our third installment of, you know, our spaces and this was an amazing
one.
And I want to thank everybody in the audience that joined in the panel.
That's up here.
Everyone that came up to speak and ask questions.
Um, it was super smooth.
It was seamless.
And it just makes me more bullish on a beyond the hype Twitter spaces every Thursday of the
month.
So hell yeah guys.
Thank you for being here.
Levi.
Go ahead, brother.
Hey, you know, like everyone else said, it was a fucking pleasure.
I really appreciate you guys all coming out.
Thank you guys for supporting mad lad supporting us.
Mia, Teddy, Jordan, Tass.
Thank you for showing up.
You're the fucking homie back.
I haven't met you yet, but I know web three frat.
Um, we're fucking out here.
You're making a shit ton of content and I'm really enjoying it.
And I want to know when the fuck are you going to fund someone else and get on their
team?
Because that was the most iconic thing that I've ever seen anybody do.
Thanks, Levi.
I appreciate the support.
I did just buy a Smith.
So hopefully a Smith video will be coming through soon.
Oh, let's go.
We're fucking ripping from here boys.
Let's get it to ask anything else that you want to say.
I appreciate you for coming out.
Then we'll pass it over to Gio and then we'll run it out with the rest of that fire song
that I played at the beginning.
No, I wish I, I wish I would have come in sooner, but, uh, you can probably hear it.
I got the basketball games on in the background.
So that's the priority the past couple of weeks, but glad I snuck in at the end here
and definitely will, uh, pop by to another one soon.
Thank you for the support.
We hope to see you.
Usually it's at 2 PM Eastern.
Just if you want to mark it on your calendar every Thursday, not even of the month of the
year.
Uh, but yeah, let's fucking get it.
I think we have Zulp coming by next week.
Um, which should be a good space too, because I haven't heard much out of them lately.
And I know that they're cooking, but task, I'll pass it over to you.
Dude, I'm not cooking anything.
I'm here.
I'm happy.
I got some questions answered.
I'm a couple of beers deep.
I'm feeling good.
I would 100% Jordan.
You come over to my house.
I'm going to kiss you on the mouth.
Uh, we're going to have a good time.
Uh, that's basically where we're at.
I love you all very much.
Thank you for joining us here on beyond the hype.
Mad lads, Armani showed up.
I'm looking forward to the next episode.
Let's fucking rip baby.
Let's get it.
Not even a page shield.
Tash just does it because he's the homie.
Gio, anything else that you want to say?
Um, with your 18 phones that you have sitting by your desk.
Nah, man, there's only six within reach.
It's all good.
Uh, thank you all for being here.
I loved it.
It was wonderful.
It was great.
A lot of good information here.
I can't wait for the next one.
Um, everybody have a wonderful evening.
I'm about to take my kids to swimming and it is time.
Let's go.
Yes, sir.
So I'm just going to wrap it up here.
Uh, you know, don't want to sound like a broken record.
Thank you guys again for joining the spaces.
We usually run this every two, every Thursdays at 2 PM.
Eastern changed it up because Armani's in Asia.
Uh, but we're going to be bringing it back to the same time.
We do have Zulp verse next week.
Uh, you know, we just keep getting these fire projects back to back to back.
We try to make things interesting over here.
So I really do appreciate it again.
Uh, and I hope everyone has a wonderful night, day, wherever you guys are at.
And, uh, see you guys in the next spaces.
Let's fucking go!
Stay true.
That's all me.
No help.
That's all me.
All me.
For real.
I touched down in 86.
Knew I was a man by the age of six.
I ain't the fucking girl that used to babysit.
But that was years later on.
Some crazy shit.
I heard your new shit.
Nigga hated it.
Damon Wayans told me don't play that shit.
I get paid a lot.
You get paid a bit in my latest shit.
It's like a greatest hits.
Got that.
Ain't no wishing over on this side.
Y'all don't fuck with us.
Then we don't fuck with y'all.
It's no different over on this side.
I got that.
