Bigger Picture

Recorded: March 19, 2023 Duration: 0:36:39

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I'm not sure what happened. By Twitter crashed and wouldn't let me back in the app, but I guess we're back. So it was on the road. The old spaces rug. The new space is alive. So where he goes? So where he goes out here. But Jack, how you doing, my man? How are things going for you today?
I'm good. I'm good. I'm just a little bit disappointed that Cosmic Crews have here to join us and talk about their project, but it's all right. The days went pretty good. I think it weekly popped off. It was a great space.
Oh, I rug myself. Stink your weekly was amazing. It was great space.
Yeah, brother. Yeah, I'm glad you're doing all right. It is a little bit, you know, not the idea, but it is what it is. We can continue to check about Cosmic Crew. I don't have all of the details, you know, I can't speak for the project themselves and what they got going on and so on and so forth.
but from what I do understand our friends over at Cosmic Crew are a team recruitment, kind of like professional recruitment style platform along the lines of LinkedIn. Is there a name for these kind of platforms? What is it called? Just like LinkedIn and Sandbar.
It's not really like LinkedIn. It's a freelancer marketplace. It's more like five or an upwork. Okay, I got it backwards. That's my bad. But yeah, you know, I'm glad to be able to look him over. Okay, so here's Cost and crew. The building out a
a tech called W3 Crew. It's pretty funny they're using a 3 in their name like CypherDead, which is another type of freelance marketplace as well. But W3 Crew connects project owners and freelancers and a trusted user friendly platform. No more DMs, no more time wasted. Finding a crew
for your project has never been easier. It's pretty cool. And then it says W3 Crew makes it easy for project owners to find freelancers working in the Web 3 space. Freelancers can upload their profiles and find interesting projects to work on. All transactions are secured thanks to an S-Grow service. The beta is now live.
So that's Cosmic Crew. That's Cosmic Crew. That's their main utility. I'm on their website right now and I guess, you know, they're not here. So we speak
are no prisoners. I have a lot of concerns with this project. But before I move on, you want to add anything to the description of what I just told you about with the building.
Yeah, I think, I mean from a broad sense, I think this problem has been approached by several different people. I mean you have CN bar that's doing it, that's a new man just like these guys. So full who's doing something similar. And then I know
I think I sure from cats. Yeah, Cypher and then there's just there's just been a handful of them and honestly like to me I There's also like we thinkable on other projects like that, but to me it's like I don't see the you know the job
market here being that lucrative. I don't really see the future or a bright future for a lot of these different projects but yeah I mean I'm totally down to learn more but do you agree with it? Do you have anything you know you just want to move on from here? Yeah we can move on but oh hello did you just cut out?
I'll piggyback off what you said of the market here. A big thing with NFT projects, how I see them, especially tech-based NFT projects. You know, these are essentially high tech startups, high growth startups, are using NFTs as an investment vehicle
as a fundraising vehicle to get everything off the ground. But for me to confidently invest into something like this, I need to know that the opportunity here is great, great enough that these guys can make money and then eventually fill my bags with some sort of a revshare
or some sort of incredible market dominance where we just see them everywhere. Now the problem is, my main problem is adoption. So we look back at Sulfil, the first major one to do it. What happened to Sulfil? No users. Cypher, backed by Pablo.
at the time one of the most influential people in the whole salon and empty space. Backed by the humongous kits on crack royalty treasury, probably a few like you know, it's at least six figures upwards of seven figures right there. Huge IP, huge brand, lots of people to market and chill it. And then
You see sandbar as well. So, but the first two soulful and cypher, why did soulful and cypher not take off? Is it because they did something poorly? Was it because they didn't have money? No, it was because the market for this type of thing is not big enough. Like, think about it. Web 3 as a whole, especially
And the whole Salonis space of active participants is maybe 80,000 members on a somewhat weekly basis. Right? And out of that 80,000, you're carving the niche of Web 3 career professionals. How many people are truly
So you're tackling a high for small market which not only has adoption issues but a bunch of legal issues. You're going to have an international audience using a platform like where's your business
How are you doing your tax structure? How are you going to pay these people out? Five earn upwards issue they issue 1099 for everyone making $600 or above in the US. Now how are you going to issue 1099 to all these people if they're not KYC? How are you going to issue tax forms for everyone overseas?
That's the problem with this. There's a lot of issues, but adoption and legal are my main two concerns. But that's my little preach about concerns. I do agree though, that the project, something like this, it could be useful, but I don't know. I don't know. I'm just skeptical. It's too early.
In my opinion on the idea of escrow payments is I don't think it's very I think the only reason people are approaching that issue is because the you know the people who do get robbed for stuff like
this. We don't get paid out for their jobs or whatever. I think there are actually fewer and farther between than we think. And the only reason we hear about them is because that tends to do well on Twitter, but it tends to magnify itself.
Sorry, I had to mute real quick.
But yeah, you know, I think it's definitely an interesting problem to solve. Do I think we need seven people to, you know, do the tackle the same issue? No, but it's likely that these guys started around the same time several months ago and didn't know each other were working on the platform. I mean, Syndicate was very similar whenever we started working
on sending it. We are originally going to be a white list solution. But, and then being a lot of different people about the same way, right, there's stuff like summer, summer ended up winning. Now there's like Atlas and there's a couple other runs as well. But, you know, we, we, we understood
that that was becoming quickly saturated and pivoted. For me, I think with something like this, it kind of looks like the thing is, no one really truly has market dominance here, right? Or at least it's not apparent enough that I would know. That's true. I agree. Yeah. Okay. Good point. Yeah.
I think they could, if they have a killer platform and it works out, it could work out well. But I think the problem with this is how does this scale? The only thing you can scale too is just escrow payment contracting. I guess as a whole. But then you're betting that contractors want crypto.
But why would I do that when I can just go to fiber right like at the time being I think I don't think it's very You know mainstream oriented and it won't be for a long time And I think if I'm gonna buy an NFT, you know, I'd rather invest in something else But I do think when it comes to the art. I think the artist fantastic
from like a stylistic level, but I do not think I think the direction kind of went the wrong way. I think, you know, if it's not a quarter facing right, PFB, it's kind of out of touch in my opinion, but Jericho, what are your thoughts on there? So yes, I
I mean to be honest my true opinions of this, it just seems as if they took good art in their life. We need utility guys. What can we pull? What seems interesting? What seems like we can sell our collection using our utility? And they chose this.
I mean looking at their white paper and roadmap and everything, everything just doesn't seem to well thought out from a technical standpoint and from a business standpoint, you know, these big way that these these mark freelance marketplaces make a lot of money is the
use of them. Right. And you need a ton of bodies on here. Right. Because let's say they take 100% of the market. They take 100%. Now, you know, how is Web 3 hiring done? And will it change? Well, Web 3 high or not Web
Because this system crypto itself may be trustless, but the hiring process is based on trust You know, I need to know where they've been I need to know who I need to get a referral from them like I need to get referred to this guy is amazing. I do this guy right I I am skeptical of a
website that tells me if someone's good or not because you know I haven't seen it in action, I haven't gone over for all to them. So yeah it just goes against the grain. And like you said it's not web too friendly. The only place I can see this working is if it expanded into a larger base of people
Definitely if they expanded to a theorem, for example. But I just can't, I don't, I wish they're here so I can ask them, what are you going to do differently from cipher, from cats, and so forth? How are you going to be better than them? Because if they couldn't do it, how can you do it?
Especially if Cypher couldn't do it.
Well, I think, well, I'm looking into the founders and the team right now. And it looks like the core founders, it's Kremlin B, so two of them. And then there's quite a few other team members, including moderators and things like that. But Krem's
bio is very alpha hunter oriented, alpha trader oriented. And I think what's interesting about that perspective is I think he's seeing it from being a collab manager in the pain point or alpha hunter or whatever that might be.
understand the pain points there, right? Because when you are an alpha hunter, you know, or a cloud manager or whatever along those lines, it is kind of a pain to reach out to these servers and find opportunities for you to be hired. And thanks a long nose line.
Is the true me time sorry
I think they've kind of killed the brand again. I love their graphics. I don't agree with the actual depiction and the traits and stuff like that. But in terms of execution, well done, extremely well done. I'm not a big fan of the U.S.
on the website itself, I think you could definitely use some improvement. It looks a little, I don't know, clunky to me. Maybe it's the font. I think maybe it's the font or I'm not too sure. There's a few issues here for sure on the new X perspective. Yeah.
Yeah, but I think they did a pretty killer job on the NFT branding in particular like the white paper has some videos embedded into it and they're actually pretty banging like the one on the utility page is like actually pretty banging So I mean like choose shots you guys for being able to put that together and kind of make that happen
But it looks like they've been working on this since July 2022, which is around the time we started working on Syndicate. It's actually a little bit later than us. Definitely interesting. I think I would probably have to use the platform myself to really understand how to
is important or whatever. One thing I do want to mention, or touch on that you mention, is the importance of volume. To capture, to really make money, they charge a 5% fee, and you need volume for that to even matter. If the bear market here or people aren't spending money, it's
higher or whatever, like you're going to have a hard time making money that way. And I think one thing to understand about Web 3 is probably one of the most human-centric industries in terms of just doing things. Marketing, for example, is very human-oriented. You have to go to influencers, you have to go to space host, you have to talk, right? But one ends up happening in
a lot of people just hire out of their network. Like why would I not, I would rather hire somebody I know than someone I don't know. Yes. Right and I think that's going to be a battle for for weak crew and cosmic crew. But go ahead, Jericho. So like you said, with the volume thing, right? Let's say the the space right now, their people are spent
spending $100,000 a month on overhead costs with humans, with people, right? But the thing is the problem is who are the people getting hired? They're not old teams, develop teams, degenerate, de-gaz,
G.S.G., famous Fox, even Syndicate. We have, you know, all, like all these people have already established teams, right? So it's only... - You got this hiring jerker. - Well, I'm just saying, like, generally, where, where is most of the new hire is coming from? It's all new teams. All new projects, all new, those are the people who need people like
a really wide range of people it's a big end. So that's huge. You're dealing with that aspect, which is it's a subset of the market that you have to carve out. And another thing, volume is big, right? How much are these people can pay? Where are the hiring regions for
and these traditional roles are there going to be actual developers on this. Because that's where the money will be, that's where the money volume will come from. But the normal roles of Alpha Hunter, Whiteless Man, all this stuff, they're usually coming from lower pay regions of the world.
So that's another big roadblock and success like You might have a bunch of them, but you're gonna be able to monetize any of that right and For a platform for this to do really well you kind of have to be a household name like matrica or suburb right but the difference between this and and
Subber, whitelist process. Whitelist distribution was literally the worst thing ever for the longest time, like making a million channels doing all that shit. That also requires training. You have to like, if they don't know how to do it, then you need to train them to do it too. It's so logistical nightmare and it looks ugly on servers, so that was huge.
And now this hiring hiring is absolutely necessary. Every team needs to hire, but you hire from your network, man, you just hire your friends, right? Like, and if you're creating a project, you're probably, you probably have a network already. And you probably have, and if you're completely green, if you're completely green and making a project,
Then you would you may be used to website, but what is the chances of you succeeding if you're a completely green person with no network, you know with no people to hire so I Don't know man. I'm super bearish on all these type of market freelance, you know, these marketplaces. I just I just don't see it. I don't see it
I think it's valid, but I do think like I do something goes in need, right? Like I still, especially if you're someone new, or coming into space and you don't have a network, because everyone doesn't have a network, right? Like I don't think we should just assume, I mean, I think a lot of people, especially established projects that do have money are going to be hiring that way, but I also think there's going to#
have that in your network. But stuff like moderators and community managers, I don't know, the first platform that I could think them succeeding on. But I do think if they can create a way to sign up and manage my job listings and job postings easily, I'm bullish.
Because I think my biggest problem, sorry, I'm coughing a lot. I don't know why.
But I think my biggest problem is that this platform bets on someone else coming to an external platform that's not discord that's not Twitter and actively managing this. I think if they can set up, I don't know, I get a discord DM whenever I
get a content thing or I get I don't know I can make my profile from discord or I can make it from Twitter or somehow some way I think that would help a lot and I think I'm gonna make it a lot more interesting and something worth doing because if there's any you know if there's any project that does
I think it's really important to have a good time.
it's just not right. Once the mark is right, every thinkable is probably best in the best position for sure to dominate. Their Discord strategy is just really smart. UX UI really clean. Great team. So yeah, they have lots of things going for them.
Yeah, so I think that's probably my biggest issue is right. It's not super accessible. I have to go to this other platform. I mean, I could also be understanding this wrong. Right? I mean, I don't know to be honest, but I mean, you know, I think I think this are pretty fair. And it's something they could definitely think about and learn from and maybe improve upon.
But I do like in terms of strengths like I just want to bring it back to kind of their strengths and what I do think they're getting right I think their branding is top notch like I think it's really well done I think the art is really cool. I think the name is is I mean it's it's all right
I think it's pretty neat too. I think they're doing a good job making that happen. Go ahead, Jerker. I just want to say the largest talent network for specifically Web 3 people. It's called Brain Trust. I totally forgot what these guys call Brain Trust.
These guys are stacked. They have lots of users, lots of people. Basically, if you want to get hired onto a big crypto company, like a really rapid one and get paid real wages, really good wages, you use brain trust. So, yeah, these guys are fighting
in the realm of NFT world. And if they were to expand into a greater market, especially a way more liquid market with much more specialized jobs such as development, they're going to need to fight against the established players right now in that space, such as brain trust. So
That's another problem. But yeah, I can also, you know, I'll talk about, you know, their strengths as well. I think the art is pretty cool. They're branding. I think it's okay. I think
I think it's not as great as you're mentioning it is, but I think it's not bad. Like for example, when I'm making my profile to register, it's kind of like I don't really understand what I'm registering for.
It asks me for a username, email and password, and that's it. But it doesn't really explain to me what is going on. I can't move on in the process as well. Like it says, "Detail skills and experience. Why can't I just skip to these and just so I can see?" It says, "What shall we call you?"
You know, it's like, it's like kind of unprofessional. I guess, I guess like I'm going off on a more negative tangent. But I do think the art is not bad. I think, you know,
The the team they they seem like. All right, they're they're good people. I mean, this guy worked at Mercedes Skype Google Nike. Um,
But you know we've seen web 2 doesn't necessarily translate like really prestigious web 2 resume doesn't translate to a successful web 3 career. We've seen a lot with people we've even like advise I Think yeah, I think the the art
It's good. It's good. Yeah, in terms of things I think can be improved. I'm just thinking around, I don't think there are enough artifacts in the Cosmic Crew, you know, Discord or in the white paper. As you know, I don't think there's enough, you know, to really build that community.
established that right like they have stuff like you know events announcements and good on them for those events I think this is awesome for event community engagement But I also think they could have like I don't know manifesto or you know values or things you care about and things along those lines Because I'm not I'm not finding too much there
So definitely something I think can be improved and I also wish their white paper was a little bit more flesh down Yeah, I think I think you know the white paper to me definitely feels a little bit, you know needs to need some more TLC Because I think it's very apparent especially from the art perspective like
I'm kind of nerding out about the sorghum. I think this white people are going to use some more love. We can have some more documentation about how they are stronger community and showing their vision. There's not a lot of vision being conveyed here. To me, it's just like
That's it and I feel like I'm missing a lot more and I just wish there was more for for me to understand and you know try to be a part of and I think a lot of these guys You know at the end of the day whenever you're doing an entertainment Not only is it a capital race? It's a community building event man, right? And it's also a marketing event for you
And you should be leveraging us. You should think of ways to incorporate your visions and your values into what you're doing as a community. And you know, that can, you know, do it. I'm tripping over my own words here, bro, but it can make your growth go exponential, right? If you just have this strong community that cares about what you're doing,
doing right and become stakeholders. And yeah, it's just I wish, you know, there's a little bit more diligence or deliberation have there. We should definitely pin a cosmic crew tweets of people even know what while we're talking. Let me let me pin their pinch we up here so we can see. But
That's the collection right there. But yes, yeah, for rooms of improvement, the white paper, your tech product, you're trying to say that you're going to do this humongous feat of being the premier freelance marketplace. But you give me a white paper with five pages with barely any text and understand
planning of the business model and no legal disclaimers or nothing like that. Like, are you kidding me? And then we have a super bare bones of roadmap that's really art-centric and nothing to do with development really. And the roadmap, no inclusion of legal. Where are the legals, man?
This is a huge illegal catastrophe.
down road map, not too much in the white paper, and the whole benefits, they include three. Utility with W3 crew, community and art. Community, no one cares. You have to build a community. Communities are not utility. You have to have a curate community for it to be utility. Art is utility.
If the R is extraordinary, the R is pretty good. So that's good. And then
There's like in the website utility, you get less fees, cool badges, visibility, stuff like that. Again, you're making the assumption that your platform will be of value to your
where is the adoption? Where is it in this roadmap at all that speaks about using this NFT fundraising event as a marketing opportunity for the platform where there's nothing no mention of that. Like, yeah, why paper needs to be improved? There needs to be more stuff
for sure. UX, the website. You're trying to be Fiverrman. It's not there, it's not quite there. It needs to be improved in my opinion. The art, like you mentioned, it's unique, but I would like it to be a little bit more traditional just because it's
historically for the last like three years, the traditional type of NFTs have always been, you know, pretty, and we're not all not in the sense of like literally every NFT project, but the traditional NFT archsaus is just common for most people. And
Yeah, yeah, I just think. And also legal. I mean, yes, we need some legal documents on this. So, yeah, there's a few things. I also want to mention, I think an improvement that should be made is when
whenever I go to the WeTrue website, I should be able to see the listings. I shouldn't have to look into it. Absolutely. What? How does this make any sense? Huge UX problem. You're a freelance marketplace, but you're expecting me.
to create an account first before I can even see the job listings. If there are any, how does that make any sense? How does that make any sense? You go on Upwork, you go on Fiber, you go on any of these places, they show you. You're looking for adoption. It's pretty
difficult when the first thing you see is press join the crew and then immediately ask you for an email password. Do you think in the space of crypto and web3 people are comfortable even signing up with your platform? Using an email. Remember when we tried to collect emails when we did whitelist way back then?
Yeah, that was, dude, I was like a year ago. That was a long time ago. Yes, people do not. Everyone was like, oh, gotta pull out my proton mail. You are not gonna get people's emails like this. It's just not gonna work. And I can just see, like, there's just such a huge disconnect between like, like,
You know What the reality of life three I just I don't have an empty space I just I can just see the disconnect that just doesn't make sense to me like this space is hiring is built on trust if I trust the platform I want to see listings I want to see the membership. I want to see it being used
You know, it says we're in beta free Lancers register now, right? Where can I get some documentation as a freelancer? You know can I see some of that before I sign up before I get in bad with you guys? So yeah another gripe of mine
I just think like, you know, I think this could still be work, right? I think it's still working progress. Of course, you know, their product is in beta right now. And of course, you know, I think it's going to be a good thing to have a good time.
be transparent and open about these kind of things and allow these projects to improve because if we don't have these kind of conversations, they're just going to, you know, not do anything. They're going to be complacent and then not grow, right, not be any better, not improve. And that's what we need a ball ball else in this space. So I
I think we can start to wrap it up here on Cosmic Crew. I think largely, I wish we could talk to them so I could evaluate where they stand, where their vision is, things along those lines. We can only infer. What's the documentation we have? There's no inferring to
you have. I definitely think we need some more artifacts from you guys. From Cosmic Crew, please, if you guys could put together Vision Sheet or a mission statement or anything like that, that would be awesome. I could just be missing it. I don't think I am, but I could be. But yeah, I mean, I
I think it will be interesting to see where these guys go. As it stands, my verdict on these guys is I'm not minting. So I'm not very confident in the vision. I'm not very confident where they're going. Jericho, I'm curious on your perspective here. Damn, sorry, I thought we weren't even supposed to say that.
Okay, well they're not here right I mean if they're here I think it'd be a little bit different but because they're not here I think it's better to just give them legit feedback right like legit what we're thinking right and I mean the what I'm thinking about all else is just I'm not minting this so yeah give me a second okay so yeah I mean this is what
happens when you don't show up to a bigger picture, we're going to dissect the project from what we see as an investor. And that's really important too, because sitting down with the founder and them explaining it to you like the project division, you might as well be spoon fed candy. I mean you're going to
People like to dream big, people like to hear right new ideas from the person making it, and it's really easy to believe a narrative or be fad and narrative and think something is good when it's being literally spoken to from the founder of the dam project. But most and almost nearly all projects
I'm going to go into the right paper, I'm going to look through the discord, I'm going to look through the links and I'm going to see, okay, is this project really cool? And then from
That documentation, that is what you're presenting to your audience. That is really important. The white paper is the holy grail. The white paper is one of the most important things for a tech product that let alone any NFT product. Every good NFT project has a solid white paper.
You can probably click on any project. They have something solved. Even like the super simple ones, you know, with our like a few pages, it's concise and it's just good. This is just not it. So also my verdict is I would not meant to add.
I think this is a red flag popping up for me. I think they definitely need to work on some things, especially a general type of feedback which you can apply
to every area of the project is improving a project to user trust, project to community trust. This is something that I see is kind of lacking. White paper being one of them is, you know, not of information. It's kind of like not transparent. But, you know,
This can be fit into web design. This can be fit into your marketing and the stuff you say in your announcement and your slogans and your manifesto and your vision. This can be fit everywhere. I think the trust part is lacking. I think that's really big too for me.
Yeah, I'm definitely some room to improve, but yeah, those are our kind of honest takes on the project would love to have them on maybe you could have been a miscommunication on our end, but it is what it is. Thank you guys for being here. I appreciate you dropping by the big
picture where we talk more about the projects of Solana and why they're here and why they're doing what they are doing. If you enjoyed the show, definitely drop a follow. We'd love to see you more often in bigger picture. We do host this show.
every week, Sunday, 7pm EST, where we talked to projects and learned more about what they got going on. So thank you guys for being here once again, and I hope you guys have a fantastic rest of your day. Bye-bye.