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cooltimes w/ Rumble Kong League, Figuregot, Meet Nippy, etc
Recorded: Jan. 9, 2023 Duration: 1:58:09Space Recording
Full Transcription
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
You should own what you label.
Yeah.
You never stayed in Kalua.
Why?
I push it down on my shoulder.
Flooded my chain and it goes, yeah.
I don't want that girl shit moldy.
I'm basically saying I'm cooler.
Get D.R. discounts for my cool guy.
Back in the sixth grade, I got the bad grades.
I was in love with my tutor.
See, musically, look who's you trapping, man.
Most of you rappers be actors, man.
Go M.I.A. when I find little Madison.
Stay at the risk.
Yeah, we got a crazy show for you guys.
Make sure to hit that blue button in the bottom right corner.
Let's react to this space.
Let's get some more people in here.
The more we share this thing, the bigger we go.
Yes, I, on my whip.
Up on shoes so you won't trip.
Say she kind of fine and she got some hips.
Mama say, let me see the witch.
Boy, you know, light and dark don't mix.
Mix it up, boy, bad luck.
Sick to my stomach with them beyond guts.
Higher than Elon Musk.
So high stars eat on dust.
And I got a colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Dark energy we don't touch.
Our jewelry's beyond tut.
And they give a nigga colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Higher than Elon Musk.
So high stars eat our dust.
And I got a colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Dark energy's we don't touch.
Our jewelry's beyond tut.
And I got a colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Yeah, bam, Perrello Mars with my fellow star.
I'm like lightning striking in a metal rod.
I say hello, God, in the double bar.
So damn it, MX, I got a yellow card.
Yellow card, yellow card.
Damn, P, I need a yellow card.
I am from the root like where the pedals start.
I had to push like a pedal started.
Way after but ahead of y'all.
New crib, got a better yard.
Two years, I got hella cards.
It's the eighth grade, I had hella broads.
Hella broads, hella broads.
Yellow band, where they fellow broads?
Shit came from cars.
Polly March.
Slip my hair back like I'm Chico DeBarge.
I got some lice on my chest.
Don't confuse it with a heart.
Heard things ain't looking too good for you.
Had to pull some strings like I played a heart.
I get these billions alone.
They've been there way from the start.
Smoking good, kush my cologne.
Got neon guts cause I can't see in the dark.
Higher than Elon Musk.
So high stars eat on dust.
And I got a colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Dark energy we don't touch.
Our jewelry's beyond tut.
And they give a nigga colorful aura.
Like I got neon guts.
Let's go.
Yo, it's cool times.
Gang gang to my cats.
Sup, Tom.
My dex.
It's your boy, the American Sniper, aka the Bradley Cooper of NFTs.
I know what you guys are thinking.
You saw me tweet out last week that I ran out of Twitter spaces guests.
And you thought I did that because I was engagement farming.
I went through every reply.
And I reached out to all those projects.
And yeah, we picked the best ones for today.
I mean, we got a stack lineup here.
We got Hoppers.
We got Rumble Kong League.
We got Meet Nippy.
We got Animee Lab.
We can go on and on.
Some really great projects you guys suggested.
So we're going to get into it.
Again, if you guys can click that blue button in the bottom right corner.
We can get a bunch more people in here if we just share this space.
Let people know we're having fun in here.
We're giving out Alpha.
We're giving out free vibes.
Yeah.
Thanks to everyone for joining in.
We got a lot of the OGs in the crowd.
Shout out Groovy T.
Shout out Super Gremlin.
Shout out Kuya Mark.
What's up, LD?
Appreciate you, LD.
0% listed.
Yeah, we got a lot of the homies in here.
A lot of new faces in here too, which is great.
We're going to bring some communities together.
But let's get right into it.
We're going to talk some Animee Labs with my guy, Zach.
Zach James in the building.
What's up, man?
Hey, dude.
Thank you for having me here.
And excuse me for a moment as I am still waking up a little bit.
Still on that holiday schedule from the sleeping perspective.
But no, it feels good to be here.
Hey, man.
It sounds like you're Howard Stern.
The voice is ready to go.
I'm ready to go.
We're primed to do a great interview here.
We're talking about Animee Labs.
Wait, what is Animee Labs?
Can you tell us real quick?
Yeah, I think the best way to kind of contextualize it is to, well, let me kind of give you a little quick backstory.
For the last 11 years, we've actually been a viral animation brand across YouTube, Instagram, and all the other platforms.
What we do is we make a bunch of fuck you style cartoons.
You know, how can we, you know, take breaking bag and mash it up with frozen term?
Do you want to build a snowman?
And do you want to build a meth lab?
And with Animee Labs, it was a way for us to, you know, anytime we do something, we ask ourselves, what does the next 10 years look like for us?
And so going into this new decade, one of my advisors, who was a former creative producer at Disney on the technology side of things, blockchain more specifically, he pushed me into Web3.
He's like, hey, man, you really got to get into this.
This is perfect.
And for us, Animee Labs is a way to not only reconnect with our multi-generational fan base that some of them actually pivoted into Web3, but it's a way for us to inject some extra fire into our cartoons.
So not only we still make these viral cartoons with a bunch of independent animators from across the world, but we're also working with, and I'm excited to announce some new partnerships soon.
We're actually working with some established Web3 projects to bring their projects to life through animated series.
You know, how do we make something more appealing to a mass audience and not turn it into a Web3 circle jerk?
So for us, it's all about cartoons.
And when it comes to our holders, they basically get to dive in with us from the behind the scenes, get the cartoons first from premiering perspectives.
And we actually have some really cool stuff in the works like producer royalties for our holders.
But the way we do it, it's a little bit different.
You know, we kind of drop our collection stages as a way to pivot, adapt, adjust to new metas.
But to also, you know, make sure that we can grow our community over time and not seem like a one and done type of thing, if that makes any sense.
Absolutely makes sense.
And yeah, building a meth lab, you know, I watched Breaking Bad is so much more fun than building a snowman.
Frozen, you know what?
Stay, stay over in Web2 Frozen.
But you're talking about thinking about the next 10 years.
I think that's a that's a great outlook.
You guys launched, I think, a couple of months ago.
You know, as you're looking at the next 10 years, can you kind of reflect on the past couple of months?
What are you most proud of in the community that you guys have kind of built or, you know, what are you most proud of in the last couple of months with anime labs in the community you've built?
Well, I think what I'm most proud of is our core community.
You know, like I said, we we dropped this collection in stages and we've only just begun with our genesis or alpha, you know, past or you want to call it.
I mean, we call it DNA.
We were able to establish a good core community through that whole interview process system.
And then with our first collection, first stage of our first collection that we call Michelle out of the sciences collection, we're able to establish a stronger core community.
And I think what we're most proud of is probably the stuff that we haven't been able to announce yet.
Just over the weekend, I had the little alpha, the founder of God Hates NFTs reach out to me.
He's like, hey, man, I'm a big fan of your animation.
I want to work with you guys.
I have this idea I want to bring to life.
So having those conversations with founders of established projects, I would say, is both humbling and exciting.
And the things that I'm most proud of are the stuff that we barely begun to tell people about.
A lot of people's antennas just went up.
I know we have a lot of fans of God Hates NFTs in here.
So really cool to hear that Sir Peter's reached out to you.
What does that kind of look like?
Not even in the context of God Hates NFTs, but I'm agreeing with you on the fact that like, or I can understand why a project or founder would reach out to you because, you know, even Punk6529 has been saying forever, sees the memes of production.
And that's what Web3 is all about.
We're kind of commodifying these memes that we all love so much.
What does a collaboration with you and another project look like?
Because, you know, you guys are great at kind of cooking up these viral animations.
What does that all look like?
Well, the biggest thing that I think about is how do we make something appealing to everybody, right?
Not just people on Web3, but the general people that may have heard about Web3, but don't want to really get into it just yet.
Because we look at things like, you know, no shame or, you know, talking shit.
But the reality is that Red 8 family project, the animation project, really put a bad taste in a lot of animators' mouths.
And they're like, if this is what Web3 is going to do with animation, that's really bad.
And it's like, when we sit down with a founder, we want to best understand their story, the world, and their goals.
And we try to work with them creatively from the ground up.
You know, we're not here to just go, all right, you have a cartoon idea.
We're just going to animate it.
We go, oh, okay, what is the character?
What is the world?
And how do we make that appealing to everybody?
And, you know, truth be told, when we start to talk about budgets, which we try to do relatively soon, you know, with animation, there's so many different things that you can do with it.
It really does come down to budget.
And a lot of times, and there's no problem with this, a lot of times somebody will reach out to me and be like, hey, I want this animation done.
Here's the idea.
I want it done in 10 days.
I'm like, okay, tight turnaround time, but we can do it.
What's your budget?
And they go, well, I can give you free mints.
And right there, that's telling me, okay, you're not quite serious.
You don't quite have your stuff together.
So at the very beginning, we have to kind of weed out those conversations.
And when we start to really get down into it and someone has the budget to do something, that's where we go, okay, this is somebody that's serious.
They have their financials in order.
They fully understand the process.
And from there, we try to take them into a script perspective.
We go back and forth with ideas.
We do character designs.
We do log lines, which is basic one-sentence, two-sentence idea.
And then we kind of basically put together a production pipeline.
Depending on the quality of the project, we either pull in people from projects like HBO Max and Netflix or Adult Swim on the higher-end stuff.
On the slightly, I don't want to say lower-end stuff, but the more budget-friendly stuff, that's where we try to bring in our more independent YouTube animators and bring in their own style.
So, yeah, I mean, it's really about the conversation and making sure that they have the money for a good quality product.
Yeah, I think tapping into your community for, you know, creative is really important.
And I'm always surprised how many creative people are actually in Web3.
You know, when you think of, you know, kind of the bubble that is Hollywood, a lot of undocked people who work on a lot of cool shows and animation shows, all very much involved in Web3.
And that's kind of my background as well.
I worked in Hollywood for several years, and, I mean, it's everything I love.
It's the intersection of pop culture and art and gaming and fashion and all these things that we kind of grew up on.
So I'm curious.
I'm actually going to try to pry some alpha out of you, Zach.
You mentioned, you know, you guys do some more drops.
What's the alpha on some upcoming drops?
Is there one in the pipeline right now?
What does the next couple of months look like?
Yeah, so funny enough, we do.
The way we're kind of looking at it is we have four stages.
We just went through the first stage last quarter.
This quarter, we have our second stage.
So I guess the alpha on this is we plan on dropping what we call Frank Wave 2 in mid-February of next month.
And sure enough, about 30 minutes ago, I ended up having a meeting with Magic Eden.
And they had to reach out to me over the weekend, and they want to partner up with us on this drop.
You know, obviously, mint on their website, but they want to give us that homepage exposure and marketing support.
So, yeah, that's kind of where we're at.
And truth be told, with each drop, we get to experiment.
You know, the last one we did was a small collection, and it was a paid mint.
With this one, it would be a larger part of the collection, so more units, bigger supply, but it will be a free mint.
And the reason we wanted to do the free mint was we want to grow our community.
You know, the thing is, at the end of the day, we have the money to make the content we want to make.
I think, for us, about growing the community at this point.
Talk a little bit about the community right now.
We did just kind of go through a bear market.
What were the vibes?
What do you think kept you guys going and strong when there was some wavering when it comes to it?
I feel like we're in a good place right now.
I feel like the right projects are moving.
The right conversations are being had.
Look, we're in the spaces right now.
How did you kind of navigate those testy waters there?
Well, you know, I'm going to say something a little bit left field, but it will make sense in a second.
So I'm technically on the spectrum.
I have autism.
But the good thing about that is, you know, typically people with autism are extremely hyper-focused.
So when we have something in mind, we really stick to it.
So when we had this idea developing, oh, wow, about a year ago, and then we came public back in late April, early May, you know, we had a lot of excitement because people grew up watching our cartoons.
And they're like, shit, you know, I'm really into this.
And so I've also come from the background of, hey, I've been around on YouTube for 13 years.
I was one of the first YouTubers to make a big living off of YouTube.
And I went through the good times and the bad times.
I mean, we have days where our views or videos get millions of views.
And then YouTube's algorithm or some sort of policy will kick in.
And we also had that incident back in 2017 where PewDiePie paid a couple of guys on Fiverr to make a really bad, you know, joke.
And it pulled out a lot of advertisers.
And we lost like 80 percent of our potential revenue overnight, as with most YouTube channels.
But at the end of the day, the good of the bad, I just trucked through it because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.
And for me, going through a bear market is basically it's like just jumping back into the gym again after New Year's.
So it's pretty much familiar territory.
And the way I look at it is you don't build for success today or tomorrow.
You build it for next week or next year or even over the next decade.
And it's focusing on that long-term prospect of what is it that we're trying to achieve, how we're going to achieve it.
And if we can build in a bear market, I think we're going to be pretty good in the bull market.
One cool thing, by the way, if you didn't know, I got my start as a YouTuber as well, kind of one of the early first NFT YouTubers.
And that was good to hear that.
I haven't posted a video in like, I don't know, two weeks.
And, you know, I think that's probably good to just keep trucking forward.
One thing that I think is great for a community and for just bringing people on and, you know, onboarding people to a community is doing free mints.
And I think that's going to be, we'll see a lot of people start to market that way as we've seen really unique type of free mints.
And I'm not talking about the quote-unquote degen free mints, but in your opinion with, you know, Wave 2 coming up, which is going to be a free mint for Animem Labs, why is that the way to go?
Why are free mints kind of the future, in your opinion?
I'm not sure if free mints are necessarily the quote-unquote future, but this is a possible route.
Again, for us, doing this in Waves allows us to experiment and explore what works best for us over time.
And the reason we want to do a free mint is, one, grow the community.
You know, for us, that's the biggest thing.
It's like, how do we grow a good, active community and get more people involved?
And two, always try new things.
You know, even if it's something that you don't want to necessarily explore a few months ago, it's worth exploring later.
You know, never become the villain in your own mind.
Never stop yourself from doing something.
Never put limitations on yourself.
And three, you know, the reality is, the moment you do a free mint, you don't have to sit here and deal with a bunch of people bitching at you if something goes below mint price.
So there is a little bit of pressure that's released and taken off your shoulders from that perspective.
But overall, it's about experimenting and exploring and growing the community.
Yeah, I think you guys are going to do a great job of that.
Wave 2 coming up, free mint, animation studio, bullish on studios, bullish on people who are trying to find new fun ways to onboard people to Web 3 and not just the same recycled kind of group of people.
Truly bring on new people and then allowing them to be creative.
Zach, I've never checked out your YouTube, man, but I'm going to be binging some content later.
It sounds like I got a lot to catch up on, but an honor to be on with the YouTube OG as somebody who, you know, started his YouTube career not too long ago.
Thanks so much for coming on my space, man.
Yeah, no problem.
And I guess to give it a little plug, if you want to learn more about the project, you can obviously check it out via the bio and my Twitter profile and all that jazz.
And yeah, no, thank you so much for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Doesn't this guy have the best YouTube voice?
It makes like, it totally clicks for me.
It's the classic.
He doesn't even need like the fancy sure mic.
He's just, or maybe you're on the sure mic right now, but it's just crystal clear.
It feels like my dad is talking to me, even though we might be the same age.
Shout out to Zach.
Shout out to Anna Meme Labs.
Really glad a lot of people recommended this project to me.
And Zach even hopped in my mentions, which is bullish.
You know, when founders are willing to, you know, respond to a tweet, stick their neck out.
I think that's, that's cool.
That's what it's all about.
Thanks again to Zach and shout out to Anna Meme Labs.
Okay.
We're going to, we're going to switch gears right now to a project.
I go way back with speaking of my early YouTube days.
One of my first YouTube interviews was with Rumble Kong League for good reason.
These dudes build cool shit.
Rumble Kong League.
What's up?
Hey, what's going on?
Hey, appreciate you jumping on.
I know it's late in Europe where you guys are stationed, but, um, wanted to talk some Rumble Kong League.
Um, curious, you know, we did, we talked, um, more than a year ago, I think.
I think it was maybe like November, 2021, November, 2021.
Yeah.
I think it was, it was the end of 2021, which is essentially like five years ago in the space.
And I know it's a long, long time ago.
A lot has happened since.
What did I miss?
What, what has happened that you're most proud of?
Where, what did I miss over the last year, uh, in 2022 with Rumble Kong League?
If you just look down, like, uh, even if I just look back one month, there's a lot that happened.
Like, let me start at the, at the beginning for everyone that might not know what we are
about and what the Rumble Kong League actually is for like the OGs.
You might've, uh, came across us with a project that, um, went live in the summer of 2021.
It's really the NFT summer days.
And, um, what we're doing is we're building a, um, a sports brand that is all around basketball,
the greatest sport of the world.
And the center for us right now is the, is the building of a, um, 3v3 ability-based basketball game
where anyone can unleash their inner champion.
And, uh, in connection to this, uh, very strong suit of us is the partnerships and the people
that we're working with, um, working with the likes of CAA, uh, like some basketball players
that you might've heard about called Steph Curry, Paul George, a couple of others, um,
they're all involved in the project and we are, um, building like we're in the trenches.
We're building a 3v3 basketball game.
And just looking back over the last six months, there's a lot that happened.
I think, or maybe, maybe a bit more than six, like we had, we were at NFT NYC.
We announced some cool partnerships that are coming up.
And over the last few months, actually, we started giving out the product to our community,
getting feedback.
And one thing that we're really proud of is that we consider ourselves when it comes to
game development, one of the most transparent products out there.
So our community is a, uh, is a, is a very strong one, very vocal one, and we involve them
along game development.
So it's, uh, we know that game development is, can be easy, but to do a good game, it's not
easy.
It's very, it's, it's very, very hard.
And if you go on our Twitter profile, after you left us a follow, you can also see that,
uh, we're very transparent about what we're building and to re-involve our communities,
our holders, everyone really in every step along the way.
One of the most impressive things for me as, as a basketball junkie, um, you know, I went
to a Clippers game just a week ago, saw Paul George play.
Uh, the thing that, that I really appreciate is those strategic partnerships.
We know how massive CAA is.
CAA, of course, you know, they, they, they bought the UFC, uh, or I'm sorry.
Uh, CA has been involved with a lot of big sports, uh, companies and, um, want to talk to you
about how big these strategic partnerships.
I just saw, uh, Paul George literally do an interview on boardroom, which is run by Kevin
Durant about Rumble Kong league.
So how important have some of these strategic partnerships, whether it's CAA, which is a
huge Hollywood agency or some of our favorite basketball players.
So it's very, it's very important for us that whatever we're doing, um, first and for most,
we all are, we are around sports.
We are on competitive play and, uh, gaming.
And we want to bring this to web three, want to build the most accessible web three sports
game that is currently available.
That is really like real time action ability based game.
And when it comes to partnerships for us, the key part is that they are endemic to what
we're doing.
So you won't, uh, you probably won't see us partnering with a brand that is very much
out there, but for us, it's important to talk to, uh, to talk to brands, to talk to
athletes, to talk to community members that are really in it for the same reasons that
we are, which is first and foremost, like just doing cool shit and for the love of the
sport, which is why, um, the, like for us, it's great to see people like PG talking on
boardroom about, about the project, about his involvement.
But if you read the article, you will also see that there's a lot of things that we
get together, like building with him.
And he's like, we, we see him as a, like really as a partner that we can run ideas by.
And we were talking to actually several NBA athletes on a regular basis, just to get the
input, because for us, it's important that what we're building is authentic.
It's not just a, like a, like a game that calls themselves a web three game.
So it's a mini game where you just throw some hoops, but actually there's a meta game
behind this, uh, there's clubs involved.
There's a complete grassroots brand building, um, involved, like from, from bottom to, from
top to bottom.
And, uh, just the likes of, of, of, for George, Steph Curry, there are people that we are very
working very closely with and, uh, that we want to involve the community.
And we also want to build the bridge between them and communities.
So if you are a member of the Rumble Kong League, being it through a, like a Kong or like a
rookie, which is a more, like a, like a smaller collection, um, we want to bring your clothes
and all of a sudden you have the opportunity to play in the same team as, uh, as a Paul
George, as an NBA player, as, uh, as musicians, as really anyone that is involved in the web
three space, because this is what it's, it's all about for us.
It's just the building, this bridge between, between web three, between web two and anyone
coming together because they love sport, they love competitive game, and they love some
friendly banter.
And that's the end of the day, what we're building day in, day out.
Another thing gamers and basketball fans alike love is, you know, like NBA 2K and the thing
that people like about 2K or sometimes hate art, either the lack of, or the updates.
And you guys have been churning out updates just as recently as this past week.
Updated UI, added in some, some cool new wrinkles and, you know, sprinting shooters,
refined rebounding, flashy floaters, you know, this basketball game, uh, constantly getting
updates, um, which goes to the fact that you guys have been building out in the open for
your community, constantly seeking feedback.
Um, so wanted to ask you guys for, for the people listening right now, um, what are some
of the updates and things that you feel like you've perfected with the game that's going
to take it to the next level?
One thing that we are, that we're really seeing is working is the transparency.
It's, uh, you can, you can say you are a Web3 game, like it's built in the open, it's
decentralized.
But if you look around, a lot of the projects are not, and we, we don't consider ourselves
like a decentralized game because we are, we have a very experienced and centralized development
team.
And in the team, we have people that worked at Activision Blizzard, at King, at the Sandbox
before, and we are coming together because we want to build something that is, that has
a long-term vision and is there over the next five, 10, 15 years.
So, um, when it comes to the type of content that we're doing and what works, it's really,
it's, uh, we have to give a shout out to 8Antics, who's also in the spaces here, who's just a
machine.
Like he's a wizard when it comes to content creation and every video that you see, it's,
uh, like he's out there, he's grinding, he's putting, like he learned unity just to do
cool videos and, um, it's really part of our mantra.
It's this, uh, show don't tell.
And when it comes to web three and the game development, it's, it's important for us that
we do this out in the open because from day one, like from mint day, we said, we're going
to build a game.
We're going to build a three-week basketball game and we're going to do this together.
And for us, it's important that it's, uh, not just a saying, but it's something that
we're actually doing.
And it shows as well, because if you, if you join our discord, if you follow us on the
socials, like hop in the comments and we react to it.
Like we, we make sure that every, every voice is heard and that people are involved
and that this community that is building together, of course, this is like, this is
what web three is all about for us.
And a lot of the changes that you see in our weekly content updates are requested from
the community because we're building with them together.
And it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, of course a lot of pressure because we're
building out in the open, but at the same time, we're very transparent about our, like
our faults, about our challenges, what's working, what's not.
And it also showed last month, for example, for the first time, we, we did some focus
testing where we involved, like we invited some community members to play the game, give
us the feedback, do a survey afterwards, like all the traditional web two stuff, because
it's, uh, it's important for us as well that we, we do things in a modern way and in the,
in a reactive way and getting out there in the, like in the trenches, but also applying
our, like our skillset that we've, uh, that in the team, we, we work in the gaming
industry for 10, 10, 15 more years so that we also apply what we've learned from working
with major publishers and, uh, finding the sweet spot between the both and just building
a game that at the, at the core of it is fun because there's a lot of projects out there
that call themselves the web three projects, but you get bored very quickly or it's just
the DeFi protocol with a fancy skin or all of this and it's working and there's an audience
for it, but it's, it's not for us.
Like we want to build a game that has a, that has a long-term vision that is mass market
friendly and that anyone can jump in, but that we, from a, from our core, know we started
this from web three, um, with a completely new mindset and it's working because we're
building it together.
Yeah.
I think oddly the biggest challenge for web three games are making them fun to play.
Um, and it's great to hear that you guys have, you know, 10 plus years of experience and I've
done this and this is why I've been bullish on rumble con lead, but it seems like some
other gaming projects, but I don't know that they have much experience other than they
released the trailer and that's all we ever, ever see of the gameplay.
But I want to ask you a pretty obtuse macro question here, because I think we can all agree
that web three gaming at some point, and it might even be this year is going to explode.
I've seen people like, and I'm not the only one to say, I've seen people like easy eats
bodega mentioned this on the Solana side of things, plenty of people talking on Ethereum
side of things.
Web three gaming will be a thing for the people listening right now who maybe don't have the
time to the, you know, the sweat equity to get involved in five different web three games.
Why should they be hyper aware of what's going on with rumble con league?
If they want to be more involved in web three gaming and its future.
So first of all, it's a very good question.
And we completely agree that there's going to be in a point where it's just flipping.
And the only thing that's missing is a product that is fun and that has this build for the
mass market and that doesn't, that doesn't, how do you say it, that understands how difficult
it is to onboard users into the web three space, like explains what is a wallet?
How does this work?
And actually put this on the sideline and focus completely on the product and on the
core loop and build a fun game.
And this is what, what we're doing and anyone that's, that's wondering and that wants to
get involved or wants to learn more.
First of all, really just, I recommend jump on our discord, follow us and learn more about
If you like sports games, if you like competitive games or something that is more casual without
like taking away some of the depth, like we are this product and we're building it
and we're building it very transparently out there.
And we are, we having the cards on the table, but we know as well that we don't want to,
like we know that we are not for everyone.
There's people that just don't like sport games.
There's people that prefer other type of that, prefer shooters, that prefer space games, all
of this.
We know that, but we also don't see this as a competition because all of us, we're so
early and we're just building in this space together.
And for us, it's like, we are very close to a lot of the other gaming projects out there.
We have a close relationship to them because we know that it's in the space where it's,
there's so much room left to grow.
And for us, it's just talking about like, Hey, we're doing, we're doing it this way.
Like, have you run something like this before?
How's like, what is your experience in this type of approach?
Because end of the day, we all just want to build something that is fun that anyone can
get into.
And if, if we are not the project for this, for you, then, then so be it.
We're going to continue building our vision.
We're going to continue building the best basketball game that is out there.
And that is built from the web three ground up.
But it's, I agree that this year, maybe it's not going to be this year, maybe it's going
to be next year.
But anyway, the project that it's, that is gonna flip everything upside down when it comes
to web three gaming is being built right now.
And that's the only thing missing.
That's the missing puzzle piece when it comes to web three going mainstream.
And it's going to happen like it's inevitable and we're just doing our part to make this
happen.
Yep.
Couldn't agree more.
Same page.
There will be a web three game and likely more than a, more than one that really capture
a lot of people's attention.
And whether that happens this year or next year or sometime in the future, it feels like
a matter of when and not if.
And my belief, um, personally is that Rumble Kong league is one of those, one of those
projects that definitely is a viable option.
And so if you're somebody who's interested in web three gaming or just interested in gaming,
I don't know anyone who's in this space.
He's probably not a gamer.
I mean, I got, I have a book.
I have both a PS two and a PS five.
Cause I love nostalgic gaming.
I like new types of gaming.
I'm a gamer.
Um, and that's why I like Rumble Kong league.
Again, I've interviewed them.
This is, yeah, I interviewed them in 2021.
I've interviewed them now in 2023.
They're going to be around for a while.
Um, thanks for coming on the stage.
Rumble Kong league.
Make sure to go follow them guys.
I'm telling you, it's, this isn't even one of those things.
Oh, you know, shame, you know, a pity fall.
Like, no, if you actually want to be informed about web three gaming and follow a good project
and kind of the standard, uh, it's Rumble Kong league.
So, uh, really appreciate you guys hopping on the space today.
Thank you for having us.
All right.
Rumble Kong league.
Like I said, I was, I was at the Clippers game last week.
I saw my guy, Paul George balling out.
Um, and I'm not going to lie.
I'm kind of balling out on these Twitter spaces.
I think we all are.
We got 150 people in here.
This is impressive.
A really big shout out to these communities.
Again, this is, uh, this is really cool.
I sent out a tweet last week.
I was like, we need to get more projects involved and boom, I got so many great recommendations.
So shout out to all you guys.
Shout out to all you MFers.
Um, yeah, let me check my schedule.
I think we got a pretty big one coming up here next.
I think, are, are we ready?
Yeah, I think we're ready on chain birds.
This is a project that when I did send that tweet out last week, they rated it.
They also rated this Twitter space.
Really excited to hear what's going on with on chain birds.
We got big wise up here.
Big wise.
What's good.
Okay.
Cool times.
How's it going?
Um, I noticed that you've got all corners of a globe covered with, uh, different accents
as well.
So a big good day from Sydney.
Oh, hell yeah.
We got my Australian peeps in the house.
Yeah.
I guess, you know, people are, people want to be on the Twitter space, whether it's, you
know, nighttime, early, whatever, uh, we're going to get the alpha out there.
Um, so I want you to correct me.
Okay.
We're going to play a little game to start off here.
I want you to correct.
I'm going to say something that's either true or false and just correct me.
Okay.
I'm not saying I believe it just correct me on chain.
Birds don't really matter because moon birds eventually went to in chain.
Correct me.
Yes.
Uh, that, that could be said to be true.
Yes.
But, uh, you must have some inside information because if the on chain birds no longer matter
because moon birds finally made it on chain, then you must know.
Did you know that we're evolving into our own identity?
Did someone leak that to you?
No, I didn't, but it seems like everyone is in on it except me.
So I'm selfishly going to use this time to get some alpha for myself.
Tell me about on chain birds because the community is insane.
No worries.
So, um, thank you for having me up today.
And actually, before I start, I just wanted to say what a coincidence it is for me to, uh,
be led in by, uh, anime labs because my background is actually Japanese.
So animation or anime in particular from Japan is very dear to my heart.
And the second part, Rumble Kong league, I'm a massive, massive basketball fan and a long
suffering Timberwolves fan who once traveled America for three months by myself watching
NBA and college games.
And I actually made it to the Timberwolves front office and I said, Hey, I've come all
the way from Sydney.
I've been supporting you since the Kevin Garnett days.
It's the middle of winter.
I got no idea what I'm doing.
It's so cold, but I'm here to watch you guys.
Cause I love your team.
And they gave me a private tour of the stadium.
They let me shoot on their court and I have a video of me hitting an NBA.
Yeah, I've got it.
I'm going to send it to you later.
No, the thing is, the thing is they, because they're the worst team in the NBA for so long,
they couldn't believe that someone had turned up from Sydney to come and watch them.
So they actually believe me.
Like imagine if I went to the Cavs and I said, Oh, I've been a long time fan.
Well, not now, but back when LeBron was there, that would be like, yeah, we hear that every
day from 10 different people, whatever.
But anyway, so that was an amazing moment.
I'm one from one on NBA threes.
Fact.
Anyway, so, um.
The Timberwolves did not need to give up four first round picks for Rudy Gobert.
Oh God.
We'll let that one slide.
We'll let that one slide.
We'll let that another time.
We should talk about the birds.
All right.
So the birds.
So if you look through our listener, the listener list today, you might find some PFPs that look
like moonbirds, but no, they are actually on chain birds.
So the whole project, we're the baby of the group probably today.
It began not too long ago, back in September last year, when our founder and developer,
Ren, he decided to challenge himself and write a smart contract that would contain every single
moonbirds trait because they were a CCO public domain.
And then build into the same smart contract, the largest probability tree ever seen inside
of a single contract.
And then allow people to mint brand new birds for 0.003 ETH.
That's like $4 back there.
And during the minting process, write the metadata and the resulting image directly on chain.
And this is like very different to a typical NFT mint.
You may or may not know that most projects, they pre-generate their images off chain.
So typically on a computer using a script, then they manually review the collection and they'll
redo anything that looks like errors or like bad combinations.
And then finally, they upload all images and metadata files to a server somewhere and the
NFT token itself would point to the servers to fetch that information to display.
And actually, there are a couple of issues with this method.
And firstly, the person or people that are part of this process, they actually know exactly
which IDs are the rare NFTs.
So what can happen is that this information can get leaked pre-reveal and people who know
we'll go and buy all the good ones from the marketplace at the pre-reveal stage.
The most recent example I can think of was with the crypto.com land sale last month for their
Loaded Lions project where some people, they found the testnet contract and they saw the
metadata URL.
So then they went and bought up all of the rare unrevealed lands of the marketplace.
Once this was discovered, someone tweeted about it, crypto.com, they re-rolled everyone's
metadata, which meant that some people who didn't do anything wrong, right?
And they originally had legendary lands, they ended up with commons, which resulted in like
a big blow up on Twitter.
And, you know, I don't think anyone would be happy to have something they bought in good
faith change without their permission.
So, and this like sort of leads me to a second issue, which is that both the images and metadata
are not on-chain.
And if people listening, if you're not familiar with the term on-chain, it just refers to having
all of the assets of an NFT written directly onto the blockchain.
So as I mentioned earlier, most projects have their metadata hosted externally.
And what that means is like, they become external dependencies that can break at any time.
So they could be rewritten by a hacker, replaced by an angry founder, deactivated for not paying
bills.
And these are events that actually can't be prevented even by holding the NFT inside a best
practice wallet.
You know, this happened like a week ago with Magic Eden, right?
That somebody was able to go in and they changed the image on a really popular Solana collection,
Claynosaurs, really family-friendly dinosaurs.
And some of the metadata was changed and people looked at their NFT and saw porn.
Oh, that is, yeah, that's not cool.
Like, yeah, that's not a good thing to wake up to.
Like, you know, your wallet's full of, depends how much you paid for it.
Like, if you paid a lot of money for an NFT and then you woke up the next day and the image
was completely different, you'd be, you'd be in a panic.
I didn't know about that.
And all it took was a Magic Eden, a little glitch, like a little hack.
People had apparently been exploiting this to like make themselves the creator of an NFT.
And they were just listing NFTs quietly for the past several months on Magic Eden using
an exploit.
And people were just listing new images onto Magic Eden, having those sell.
And then this got mass exploited this past week.
So you guys are actually solving a problem that we face like this year, 2023.
Yeah, and like last year we saw like a lot of hacking activity, like DeFi protocols were
getting hacked and people losing billions of dollars.
NFT collections were getting hacked.
And like between the community, like the good people that have gathered here, like we could
probably agree that in order to onboard new people into the space, they shouldn't have
to go through these fields with landmines.
It should be a safe space where they can come and have full trust in purchasing an NFT without
the risk of losing their money.
Because it's like when you learn to ride a bike, right?
Like you fall over, most people fall over.
That's part of the process.
But all you end up with is like a little bit of a sore knee, hopefully.
But in this world of NFTs, it almost seems like it's part of the induction to lose money.
Like you haven't really experienced NFTs until you get rugged.
And me personally, I think that's wrong.
Like you shouldn't have to lose hard-earned money to make it into NFT.
Yeah, finally, you've been rugged.
Okay, welcome.
You're in.
Like especially with this space being global, maybe $50 might not be much to lose for someone.
But to someone else in another location, they may have saved up a week, two weeks to get
that money.
And for them to have that experience of losing it due to a scam, that's just going to leave
such a bad taste in their mouths.
And they're going to have a negative sentiment on the Web3 space in general.
They're going to tell their friends, don't do it.
NFTs are a scam.
So I think this kind of technology being on chain at least provides that extra layer of
security.
That's how we feel in our project.
So I love it.
Provably fair mint.
Cool.
It happened.
What are the problems you're looking to solve going forward?
So with this on-chain bird, which of course will be evolving, by nesting this bird, you're
able to claim rewards.
And the whole project is revolved around on-chain art.
So when we look at like art pieces, the most expensive pieces in the real world, they're
pieces that have lasted hundreds of years.
And if the same thing is to happen in the digital world, and it will happen because we've seen
music used to be physical CDs, now they're digital.
Film, DVD is the same thing.
And now they're coming onto the blockchain as well.
So when art becomes very expensive, and some pieces have sold for ridiculous amounts already,
it's very important that they are permanent on-chain.
Otherwise, like, would you be willing to spend $2 million on a one-of-one piece by the greatest
digital artist ever if you knew that it was externally hosted?
Because immediately, you're probably going to be a target for hackers that want to play
funny games with you, try and gain control of the host where the image is stored, try
and gain control of the contract, maybe hack into the owner's wallet address, transfer the
ownership, and then demand ransom from you and say, hey, I'm about to change your image
into, like you mentioned from the Solana one, a porno image.
How about you send me this money through to this address?
So the on-chain art side is our main realm, and the holders of the birds were able to claim
this box, this enigmatic box.
And if you don't mind, do I have permission to pin a tweet to the space?
Yes, you do.
Absolutely fantastic.
So with this box, we're doing something even more amazing.
So this is the first advanced loot box on-chain.
So by holding this box, you're able to open this at any time you want.
So there's no reveal process where everything gets revealed at once, and then everyone goes
crazy on the marketplace, refresh, refresh, refresh, and try and snipe rares.
These ones are randomly generated inside of the smart contract or the transaction when you
decide.
So you can keep it for 10 years and leave it unopened.
And the beauty about this is the probability of getting a rare piece of fine art, which
is by a German artist called Lennart Menkhaus.
He's actually on the space.
So shout out to him.
And the image that you see on the left of the pinned tweet is a piece that he did for
our community to celebrate the new year, to good things ahead.
And this is actually available in an open edition manifold mint.
I can link you that later.
But it's a piece of fine art done by him.
It's fully on-chain.
And the boxes have different T's from 1 to 10.
And you can upgrade the boxes to improve your chances of getting a rare piece by using the
nesting levels of your on-chain birds.
So they're like connected together.
Could you imagine if the actual moonbirds had this tech and didn't just give away like
fucking fanny packs?
I don't know.
Sorry.
We're not fighting moonbirds.
Moonbirds are great.
But I want to come back to the tech because you guys are totally on the money with a lot
of these developments.
But if we could just talk about the community for a second because it's really strong.
Shout out to all the birds in here right now.
They're here.
They're here.
The flock is here.
What the flock is going on with the community?
It's super strong.
How'd that happen?
Yeah.
So, you know, like I think Zach mentioned earlier about a free mint attracting a lot
of new users.
So our mint was very cheap.
And when I say ours, like I'm actually not even part of the team.
So I stumbled upon this project when it was minting maybe 20% of the way through.
So I got very lucky.
And because it was so cheap, like a lot of people were able to get involved.
And over time, they've come in to learn.
So the biggest thing about our community is that they are really keen learners.
And it really helps because our founders are actually very generous with their time.
And not just with our community, but he's been advising other communities that have reached
out to us wanting to know how can we get our project on chain?
For example, like Genuine Undead, who have done 9,000 Ethereum trading volume.
They've come to us and said, oh, we just want to know a little bit about how this is all
done.
So he's been talking to them offline.
And then once our community gets educated themselves, then they're the ones that are
spreading the message.
They're the ones that are looking after new members that come in asking questions.
So it makes like my job very easy.
And I'm very thankful for that.
And the people in the community, they're like gifting new people.
If someone comes in and says like, oh, I probably shouldn't say this because I'm making an influx
of people, but for the right people that come in and they haven't quite got like a box, maybe
they bought a bird, but they didn't have a box.
Then some of our members have been like, hey, don't worry about it.
I'll look after you.
You know, I'll send you a box.
So an amazing group of people that are all wanting to progress this space together.
Yeah, I was already going to ask about like people like different communities hitting
up the dev team about the tech.
I'm wondering if that is that a value add at all for like you mentioned some of these
projects.
Is that a value add at all for holders?
Are you getting, you know, spots maybe for upcoming projects?
Are you getting any type of share in some of the tech?
Because that seems like, you know, it could definitely be something that holders can benefit
from is all the collaboration with these projects.
Yeah, you're definitely a smart businessman.
I can see because we're such a young project for now.
I think the main goal for the founder is to try and build his reputation.
And he is like a gun developer.
So I've been working in IT for 20 years and NFTs for four years.
And like when I see talent, like I know, and I've only met in my lifetime, a handful of
people that fit this criteria where I think to myself, all right, this guy's got potential.
And all it comes down to is that, you know, the work ethic and not getting burnt out, right?
Because in this space, everything moves so quickly that people run the risk, founders,
they run the risk of getting burnt out.
So if they surround themselves with good people, and that includes team members as well as the
community, then it makes it a lot easier for them to be able to really put in those hard
hours, but still have the energy for that longevity.
So somebody in here just learned about on-chain birds, I'm assuming, and they're curious.
They're looking at, you know, Blur.
They're looking at OpenSea right now.
What is like, why would somebody join that?
Why should somebody join this community right now?
Because I can attest, the community is insane.
Like I've seen the communities, you know, on Twitter showing.
And that's fun.
What's kind of your, why do you love being in this community so much?
So right now, like we're at a really interesting stage because these boxes that I spoke to you
about earlier, they're almost ready to be open.
So what's happening is the art that's been converted into this on-chain format is being
worked on.
And once that's finished, we're going to have this massive reveal party live stream.
And I've actually got a bag of boxes.
Like we've prepared two ETH worth of boxes.
It's like 30 something boxes to give away.
And we're also collecting more to give away.
And they're actually all coming from our community members.
So none from the team.
Hopefully they'll chip in.
But so far, it's from like my wallet and other people's wallets.
And, um, yeah, so the opening stream, we're going to do these giveaways where you'll enter
a raffle and then on live on stream, you would know cool times, like a box break, right?
Like, like for NBA cards where we announce.
I love boxes.
I'm completely one over.
I like a box.
You don't, it's sealed.
You have no idea.
You talked about the loot boxes earlier on, Shane.
I like boxes.
We saw that with Ranga.
People like boxes.
They like manual reveal and shit.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
And then the box, these boxes, like provably fair randomness inside.
So we're going to have this giveaway stream and say, yep, this next box is the winner
is, uh, the winner is so-and-so.
And then we're going to open it on your behalf so that everyone can see what you get.
Right.
And, um, I actually want to invite all of the communities here today to come and be a part
of these giveaways.
And also if you're interested in on-chain artwork, on-chain technology, how it could benefit
your project to provide greater security and peace of mind for holders, along with the
permanence on the Ethereum blockchain.
Uh, yeah.
Send me a DM.
Hop in our Discord.
We'll welcome you with open arms.
And right now the, the OpenSea or the marketplaces, they have the birds as one collection and the
boxes as another collection.
If you buy the box, you'll be able to participate in this, uh, opening, um, party.
If you buy a bird, what that does is it won't give you a box because that claim's already
done, but it gives you access to all the future art projects similar to what we've done with
these boxes that we're going to deliver in the future.
So it's like a lifetime pass.
So it's up to you like chicken or the egg.
Do you like eggs?
Then get the box.
Or would you rather keep a chicken that keeps laying eggs?
Then buy the bird.
I had eggs for breakfast.
Yeah.
Uh, love it.
Love the box.
If you need someone to help post out some of these streams, I might know a guy and that
guy might be me.
Um, definitely would love to see some cross pollination here.
Um, saw a stat from a Twitter user here.
92% or 91%.
Shout out my guy, Ted's in the crowd.
Uh, 91% of on-chain birds are nested.
Gotta love that.
Uh, definitely a lot more we could talk about, but, uh, big wise.
Thanks for jumping on, man.
Appreciate you talking birds.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Um, and it is 8am here.
I have to go and take my pet kangaroo for his morning hop.
So thank you for having me and see you later.
And good luck with the timber wolves because.
Stop that.
Whatever, your kangaroo is doing better than Rudy Gobert is right now.
So, sorry.
Truth.
Yeah.
It's a tough truth.
Tough pill to swallow.
Um, all right.
We're going to move on now.
I think you guys are ready for what we like to call alpha.
All right.
We're going to do figure got here.
Um, figure got.
I've always wanted to be like figure go, like, you know, like escargo.
I've always been like, it's figure go.
No, it's figure got.
Right.
It's so funny because I live in France and a lot of French people think that I'm like,
baby.
no, that's, I'm like, this is, yeah.
If it's coming from Winnie, I'm like, figure go.
By the way, Winnie, I wanted to make sure you came up here because I wanted at least
a sliver of the banter between you and Ollie, who I'm assuming is behind the figure got account.
And so I was just like hoping to be like, unfortunately, some organic banter.
Yeah.
There you go.
Boom.
Some banter.
Um, this is not going to get down to the nitty gritty guys.
Figure God's been in my life for what seems like a long time.
Um, talk, talk to us about where this all came.
Give us, give us the origin story.
Let's, let's go back to, you know, the old Testament of figure God.
Give us, how did this whole thing start?
Yo, what's up?
Um, yo, first of all, first of all, I just, I just want to say,
what an honor it is to be on my favorite influencers, Twitter space.
What seems like finally, um, you know, we've interviewed together, we've partied together.
Um, we've definitely learned a lot about web three through each other.
Um, and you know, if you're with cool time, it's going to be a cool time.
So just happy to be here.
Um, and we can, you know, we can dive right in.
So I guess we can take this back about 10, 10 years or so.
Um, when our co-founders, Jess and Callum, who are also siblings, um, you know, they were
like 10 years old.
They came up with this idea called figure God, um, you know, just watching cartoons on TV,
whether it was Pokemon, it was big hero six.
Um, you know, all the things you're watching as a kid.
Um, and they, they thought, you know, why not make our own trading cards?
Why not make our own characters instead of just going out and buying these Pokemon cards.
So they started making these, these trading cards between themselves and they landed on
this character that they kept, they kept, you know, repeating.
Um, and they ended up calling it a figure God.
Now, fast forward 10 years later, um, Jess has obviously, you know, been through this
whole journey as an artist working with some very prominent brands and artists.
Um, and she, she finally decides being in the NFT space, this is her chance to, you know,
bring, bring back this, this childhood character and really focus on herself as an artist rather
than just focusing on clients, which she'd been doing for all these years.
Um, and that's how figure God came to be.
She, she hit me up.
Um, I'm Ali, by the way, I'm running this account right now.
Um, and you know, I, I was happy to join the team.
It was actually kind of insane that she even thought about me, but we, we'd gotten pretty
close to the cool cats community.
Don't interrupt.
I'm talking.
Um, and you know, uh, yeah, I, I hit up Winnie cause Winnie and I were,
becoming closer friends at the time, thinking about doing our own thing.
And we got Winnie on board and everything's kind of in history ever since.
It's been a long year.
Yeah.
That really did go back farther than I thought.
I wasn't kind of joking.
And you're like, yeah, no, that actually did start 10 years ago.
Oh shit.
Okay.
Um, let me, let me do intros for you guys.
Okay.
So we talked a little bit about, you know, the, the artists we talk about Jess.
And, and so if you guys haven't already checked out the figure got art, you know, go onto
the Twitter right now, you know, they've been producing a bunch of cool shit, whether
it's just concept art or actual fucking clothes that are, that I need to be dripped out in
like immediately.
I'm not sure why I'm not wearing it right now in my bedroom, but whatever.
We'll talk about that later.
Um, let me get some intros.
All right.
So the reason why I love figure God is the team.
Um, and obviously the art speaks for itself, but the team, let me speak for them.
Uh, so Ali is my favorite influencer.
So when I got into the NFT space, I, you know, got a cool cat.
I got some cool cats.
I was having fun, trading those, making money.
Ali is somebody who predates me in NFT space.
I think I go back a while.
Ali is somebody that I was following when I first got into space as a newbie.
And so this guy knows people in this space.
He's, he, he's well-connected.
He understands the space.
And so I think he is a Swiss army man when it comes to doing a lot of different things
in the web three space.
Now let's go on to Winnie.
Winnie is like the international woman of mystery.
She's been involved with a lot of big successful launches.
She's a fashionista.
She's a web three fashion icon, just a web three icon.
In my opinion, and she's legendary and whether it's been, you know, helping out with Dow
or Dar.
So, I mean, you could, you could go into some of that, the resume stuff, but these are two
people who are very much at the intersection of web three.
So I actually want to bring Winnie in for this next question.
I was super impressed.
You guys were at complex con like that scene was super up figure God's alley.
Cause when I think of figure God, I'm like hip, trendy, cool fashion.
Well, what was complex con like?
I mean, I guess we just like fucked around and found out really.
And I mean that in the most literal way possible.
Uh, we got our booth together with no money and about a week's worth of time.
So the, everything that we did, I think we ordered most of our stuff about four days before
it was in, yeah, in collaboration with, with Coinbase, which was, which was super cool.
We got, uh, intro to them by, through one of our partners who are in the fashion, a silent
partner, I would say that were in the, in the main, in like the main fashion streetwear
kind of space, which was really amazing.
And yeah, we put it all together in about a week with absolutely none of the team being
in LA.
I mean, I'm in Paris, Jess and Cal are in the UK and Ali is, I don't really care, but
so it was really difficult to kind of put this all together.
And I arrived 12 hours flight or whatever, completely jet lagged.
And I think I spent about 14 hours the first day putting up an entire wall and I was bruised
to hell it, but it was, it was very fun.
It was like a team building exercise where you put four people who are not very good
with actually building physical things.
I mean, I wear long acrylic nails and I was getting down and dirty with a screwdriver and
that's not my forte.
And I will tell you that right now, but I guess it was, it was pretty fun.
We did our first panel together with, uh, like Stapleverse and Ema and Polycade and the
Coinbase team, which was, that was incredible to be honest, just to sit there as a team and
talk about our vision.
And yeah, we just met some incredible people.
It was a really great opportunity to meet some of our community as well, because a lot
of them are LA based.
So we did a little giveaway of tickets that we gave to our community and it was, it was
incredible really.
And our little booth, it was super fun.
If you've seen pictures of it, it was like a little workshop.
And then in the middle, we had this table where we had these tote bags that Jess had designed
with loads of fabric pens and everyone could just come and color in these tote bags.
And it was just the most, I cried at one point because there were like kids doing it.
And then you'd see like the coolest guys come up, like, oh God, these guys are so dripped
out.
I'm so intimidated by them.
They're so cool.
And I'm like, can we color?
And I'm like, fuck yeah, come color.
Um, it was just this little melting pot of people from all different sides of streetwear
of culture, just coming together to just color in tote bags.
And I think that was super beautiful because it just shows that everyone has like this hidden
child.
And that's why I fell in love with it originally was because I was like, wow, this is really
what made me excited about the NFT space.
Like, you know, it just brings out the inner child.
And then when I saw Jess's first video, when Ali first sent it to me, that had like that
reminiscence of Toy Story, I was like, holy shit, I want to be part of this project and
I want to share this.
And then at ComplexCon, getting to see everyone interact with it, not even as an NFT thing,
but just as a project, like literally like toys for adults.
And everyone just got so involved and was so happy.
And it was just a really beautiful time.
So yeah, it was great for the team to build together, like physically build, spend time
together, almost too much time.
And just see everyone react to it in like a very human way.
Yeah, a lot of people say they build, but they're just like at Starbucks on a laptop.
You were actually building a wall.
So yeah, no, I love that because even if, you know, some of my favorite, like Kryptoon
goons was also at ComplexCon, that's really cool.
They're a project they launched, you know, over a year ago and they were at ComplexCon.
That's a great look for them.
That's a lot of different eyeballs than just the Twitter vacuum eyeballs, you know.
Um, and as a reminder, the figure got from the NFT side of things that haven't even launched
yet.
And so I am bullish on teams that want to build out a brand, create some runway before
they even launched this motherfucker.
And they built a runway at ComplexCon.
Ollie, let's, let's just, let's tackle this head on.
People are wondering what's going on with figure got.
When are we finally going to be able to mint some of these beautiful entities?
Are we ever going to be able to?
Are we, um, that's, that's an interesting question.
That's something we've been talking about, um, for, for a few weeks now, um, if not months,
because, you know, we initially announced the project, um, last March and, you know, we
generated all this attention.
Um, we had, you know, whatever, whatever it is a project looks for, right.
We had the followers, we had the numbers, people were excited.
Um, and ultimately it was a hard decision for us to be like, you know, maybe it's not the
right time for us to mint.
Um, we maybe just need to take a step back, see if the team, you know, can actually work
together as a team, um, and give people an idea of what they're getting themselves into
before.
No, no, this sounds way too responsible.
No, I have to, I have to approach this as a politician.
Um, that's what Winnie's PR training does to you, but I get the, the short answer is I
think we've reached a point where we're comfortable working as a team.
We're comfortable with the vision we have for figure got.
Um, and I think the community after a year of just kind of waiting for us to drop this
NFT collection, um, I think we're ready and we're in a place.
Um, and this space could not have come at a better time because we were supposed to drop
some amazing news today, but we fell into some technical difficulties, which made us push
it back a little bit.
Um, but I am here to tell you, um, fear got NFT is coming soon, hopefully sooner than you
guys might think.
Um, and you're, you're the first one to hear this.
Um, I don't know if I want to say anymore, right?
Yeah, this is like, you know, you come to cool times, you, you get the alpha of your
Oh my God.
I, I, I, I'm like struggling.
I'm like frantically trying to get like horn and like alarm noises to play in the background.
Like I want to be one of those DJs so bad, like, um, but yeah, I, I actually audibly
screamed.
Um, fuck.
Yeah.
I mean, figure got has been building in public for almost over a year.
We love the team.
We love the artists.
We love everything about what they did at complex con.
They've done things IRL, the collaborate, they've been on panels with, you know, they
mentioned moon pay.
I know you guys are tight with cameo as well.
Holy shit.
Um, okay, cool.
Like I'm, I'm just going to ask what everyone wants to know.
Like, how do we get involved?
Like how, cause I know like there were some, maybe some whitelist spots given out at some
point, but how to like, you know, we got 150 people in here who probably like, okay, like
gib, gib, gib.
There you go.
There we go.
How do people get involved?
Um, yeah, uh, we'll be putting out more information very soon after we make the, I guess the official
announcement.
Um, but I think the best first step you can take is probably, you know, follow us on Twitter,
get into the discord.
We've got a pretty active community, um, that we're very grateful for.
Um, and that's probably the best thing you can do at the moment.
Just come hang out, just vibe with us.
Um, and as more information and opportunities become available, then, you know, we'll start
sharing that alpha and, you know, cool times, you have done such a phenomenal job in this
space.
You know, we'll take care of you.
You're the homie.
We'll take care of your community.
Um, so make sure if you're not following cool times, always, sir.
Like bake me some cookies and wrap me up in a blanket.
Say less.
I am the mother of the group, so that is my response.
Oh, do you bake?
Oh, no, I'm more of a cook.
I'm more of like a, I do like to pipe it.
She gets baked.
Um, I don't know if I can say that.
I don't get baked.
I am a responsible adult.
No, this is a family-friendly adult.
My bad.
Um, really family-friendly space.
And, uh, you know what, Ollie?
I'm sorry.
That was out of pocket.
No, hey.
Make sure you follow cool times.
Yeah, come on, bro.
Come on.
Go follow figure God.
But seriously, the community is already really solid.
Like, all the people I like in this space are the people who are like, hit me up in the
last week and were like, yo, are you going to get, like, Kuya Mark, uh, Flow?
Like, people were hitting me up.
They were like, yo, like, are you going to get figure God?
And I was like, I mean, yeah.
Like, I didn't know that was, like, an option.
And so, the people that I look to for, like, if they're interested in this project, I'm
interested.
Those type of people are involved in the community.
So, you know, guys, there's no, this isn't, you know, January, 2020.
There's January, 2020.
No grinding.
Just go vibe with some really cool people.
Like, there are some awesome people in the figure God community.
And they're here in the crowd.
Again, I'm going to shout them out.
Kuya Mark, Flow, love you guys.
There's other people that I'm forgetting right now.
But just go and vibe and hang out.
And you're going to maybe see some banter between Winnie and Ollie and meet some cool people.
And there's going to be some amazing art at the end of it all.
What else, Ollie?
Any other big things people should know before we wrap up?
I think we've dropped all the alpha we can today.
It was too hard.
It was a lot.
It was.
I agree.
But, you know, if we're coming on a cool time space, this is like a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity.
We had to come in strong.
We had to share what we could.
And I think we're all just happy we got to do it on here.
Before we go, Winnie, best part of working with Ollie.
Sorry.
I thought this was a serious space.
The best part about working with Ollie is that because we're in different time zones,
I can do so much work before he's even awake.
So I don't have to deal with him.
Also, you can just tell him to wake up.
Which is always, it's always like, everyone, you can make someone just feel lazy if you're
at a different time zone.
Like, I reach out to my friends and I'm like, wake up.
Like, what are you doing?
And they're like, bro, it's 6 a.m.
There is one screenshot of me just going, texting Ollie, saying, wake the fuck up.
That does the rounds every once in a while.
The good night likes to, likes to bring that one out.
Yeah.
I think I'm actually, I think that was Inception.
I think I remember that.
And yeah.
Wake up, Ollie.
Come on.
Just, just show, show some life.
All right, guys.
Yeah, we'll try.
Yeah.
I mean, follow figure God and just vibe, you know, again, it's January, 2023, guys.
Let's just, let's calm down.
Let's be practical.
We don't need a bum rush.
We don't need to freak them out.
Let's be, let's get in a single file line and mint this NFT.
Okay.
That's all I'm at.
We do not.
We just, we need this to happen.
No, on a serious note, thanks to Winnie and Ollie.
These are two big Web3 thought leaders.
Appreciate them both hopping on.
And I don't know when I'm going to see you guys again.
We hung out in Miami last, like a couple months ago.
Or God, that was actually longer than a couple months.
When, when are we seeing each other again?
I'm to NFC Paris.
When are we getting the band back together?
Yeah, I actually am going.
Wait, you're coming to NFC Paris?
Oh, wait, are you?
Yeah.
We're all going to be there.
All right.
We'll, we'll be there.
Okay.
Well, cool.
There you go.
I expect more excitement.
Come on.
Um, yeah, sure.
Um, I was good.
I was good.
I kind of assumed you guys would be there or at least Winnie would be there.
But yeah, you know, I, you know, create an LLC.
I'm just going to business expense that motherfucker.
I'm going to Paris for like a couple of weeks and I'm just going to business expense that
in the name of NFTs, in the name of cool times.
Yeah.
So hell yeah.
Well, yeah, we, we do not want to take any more time on this stage.
Um, cause we could go forever.
Um, but thanks again for having us on.
We'll hang out.
We're all on the discord.
If you want to come vibe with us, we're all about vibes and banter.
Um, so we'll see you there and make sure if you're not following cool times, follow cool
times right now.
He's the best.
I love, I love how hard you're feeling me on my own space.
I love that.
Um, all right.
I, again, I can really do the banter with these two forever or just hear them banter,
but, uh, maybe some IRL content next month with them.
Thanks again, guys.
Um, okay.
Look, I got to check.
I really get lost in just the fun of it all.
Um, yeah, we, we got to go meet Nippy.
I'm sorry, Nippy.
I told you we were going to go much earlier, but you know, it happens.
No worries.
Can you hear me?
This is, this is, yeah, I can hear you.
This is my time and for all of us to meet Nippy.
That's right.
No, I appreciate you.
I appreciate you giving us the opportunity.
Um, I'm Steve.
I'm the, I'm the founder of meet Nippy.
Um, I'm one of three, uh, founders of the project.
Uh, I'm going to read, uh, it's a kind of intro.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to open up this like six inch by nine inch hardcover children's book here.
Uh, that's available in, uh, on our website and wall, Walmart.
Hell yeah.
Um, and on the last page says, uh, did you know, uh, Nippy magnet for Mischief is the largest tokenized children's book NFT collection of its kind.
A total of 3,222 NFTs showcasing Nippy and her friends sold out in only 27 days.
Holders of the NFTs not only become a deeper part of our community, but have the chance to own the books together.
Um, so essentially, uh, that's what we sought out to do, uh, September 1st.
Um, we minted our project, uh, around, um, you know, 0.02, 0.03, depending on, you know, what list you were on.
Uh, I think the current floor price is like 0.48 or something of that nature.
Uh, you know, 227 ETH and, or no, it's 267 ETH and in secondary volume demand in the last three months.
Um, you know, I think we're a different breed in terms of our collection.
I myself, uh, have been involved in NFT since like October of last year of 21.
I can't say last year anymore.
Uh, everyone wants to forget last year, but, uh, I'm involved in crypto since like 2013.
Um, I had an idea to basically build a children's brand, you know, as, as, as,
as, uh, you know, you mentioned cool cats and other entities that we all have seen.
Um, you know, I've always looked at it and, and, and, and, you know, from my in real life
experience, I'm much older, I'm a bet in the space.
Um, I've always looked at it and said, Hey, like I can productize this.
I can package this really well.
Uh, and I said to my, you know, the hypothesis is, uh, what you, when you look at what happened
during the bear market and a lot of the NFT collections where, you know, they're trying to
figure out outside of royalties, how do we create revenue?
Uh, you know, we really start to have really strong competitive advantage.
So what we've done in the last three months, since our mint, um, we've come out with, uh,
eight, uh, children's books.
Um, three or three are coming out this month.
Uh, there'll be an Amazon and Walmart, as well as our own, uh, our own website.
I'll, I'll pin as well.
Um, we have shorts coming out that we're extending the, the, the NFTs and, you know, essentially
the model is, is that we give 80% of our profits, uh, as a business, you know, back to holders.
Um, so December 31st, you know, we, uh, did our first distribution.
Um, we opened up, you know, the ability to buy product December 7th.
Within those first 22 days, we did about like 22, a little bit more than $22,000 in revenue.
And we distributed the act 10,188, you know, USDC, uh, back to holders.
Um, and, you know, proving out this ecosystem that, you know, you could drive web two revenue
into a web three ecosystem where, uh, you know, and reward those holders that initially
invested you in the first place.
Um, yeah, so it's kind of a high level overview.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I, that's a, a first time we've had somebody read a children's book, which why don't we
make that up the thing that we, you have to come on and read a children's book.
Um, yeah, I mean, you guys have had a snowball of success.
I feel like recently I actually, um, found out about meet Nippy through like one of these
high level group chats I got added to, where it's like all these big, like, you know, board
ape whales and they're like meet Nippy, meet Nippy.
And I was like, okay, wait, this isn't usually what gets sent through here.
This is like amazing art.
Um, tell us a little bit about like, like how, how blown away have you been?
You mentioned the 200 whatever ETH, I mean, but how blown away have you actually been by
the response, because if you guys haven't realized meet Nippy, like is a comic right
now.
So how blown away have you been about the community and just everything that's happened
recently?
Um, it's blown my expectations to be, you know, you know, to, to be honest, I remember
I wrote like, you know, one of those like huge, could be a medium article, but you know,
it was a discard, a discord post, um, before we minted, because at that time, nothing was
minting out, even like really, really hype projects.
Um, everyone was cutting supply and I basically said to the community that, uh, you know,
if we don't mint out, uh, we're not going to cut supply cause three, 3,222, you know,
is equal to nine and there's nine lives for cats.
So that's symbolic.
And I don't want to ruin that.
We're just going to work harder, you know, to bring in holders.
Um, and so, you know, as you know, we had to grind for 27 days, you know, uh, the community
has been generated just basically my own involvement in the space.
So, uh, you know, the discord officially opened up like April 25th, um, 2022, but probably
for about three, four months, we, I, you know, the way to strategize, to learn how to be a
founder in the space, what it was, um, I became a heavy collector in a variety of kind of small
to mid cap, uh, NFTs.
Um, and you know, went, went deep, like, you know, whale heavy.
Uh, I think one, one of space riders, uh, you know, at one time I was number one holder.
I held like 120 of these, um, you know, like small bros, uh, killer bears, uh, plenty, plenty
of collections that, um, a lot of the faces that you see here and kind of curated that
community, start sharing ideas early in April.
Um, you know, me being able to become, uh, an established member in the community allowed
me to get to founders, allowed me to get to, you know, conversations amongst that level.
And so, uh, our community is very curated from that perspective, um, you know, mature
from that perspective, because, uh, my conversations in those communities were with other whales.
Right.
And, you know, what do you guys think about this idea?
Uh, we did some collaborations.
Um, and we have an interesting strategy that, you know, combines the effort of, it's called
Web2 community.
Um, and what does it mean like, you know, if you want to start a business in the Web2 space,
it's just three guys in a garage, uh, you know, with, with me, it feels like we're, we're
in a startup already with, you know, 550, you know, employees.
Right.
Um, and so it's just kind of different breeds, different animal and, you know, I've had success
in Web2 and know, know what it takes to start a business.
And so I'm very, very excited about what Web3 is offering just because, um, there's accountability
every single day, you know, you wake up and, you know, read the, you know, read the discord,
read, read, read Twitter and you have your holders and everyone's excited and that gets
you excited.
So, uh, it's very inspiring.
I'm very, you know, 2023 is going to be great.
You know, we have, um, 40 titles that are going to come out, you know, throughout 2023,
uh, a handful, you know, like, uh, like I tweeted, uh, 12, 12 high quality episodes.
You can see an example of that animation.
Um, and that talent, you know, when you think about the history of the team, um, we come from
advertising agencies, digital agencies, um, management consultants.
And so, um, we kind of, you know, we know people, we, we, we, we know how to get creative
done.
We know how to get product done.
Um, and so like the talent that's producing our animations come from like Disney and Pixar.
And, uh, ultimately, you know, you look at our brand and you think like Blippi, Cocomelon,
those that are parents may know these brands.
Um, but you know, Moonbug Entertainment is a $3 billion enterprise that, that owns these,
these, this children's IP.
Uh, and you take a step back and you're like, well, what if that was, you know, fractionalized?
So if that was, you know, tokenized in terms of a holders owning a piece of that, uh, wait,
could, could you actually dispel something for me?
Because interestingly enough, like this past year, like storytelling kind of NFTs have been
way more polarizing than I ever thought they'd be.
I think people love lore, but when people are like the main thing about NFT is following
a story, some people either love that or some people don't like that at all.
Why should, there's somebody in here who's like, I don't, why do I need the NFT to watch
a series or to just follow along as, you know, my character changes or having like, make the
case for projects that utilize strong IP storytelling and creativity.
Well, to me, it's, um, like that little excerpt that I read, you know, this book is going to
be in 1600 hands of children.
Um, we're going to be putting this book in Montessori schools, private schools, museums,
uh, you know, when you think about, uh, you know, brand exposure, it's not, we're not, we're
not a brand that is a web three brand that is saturating their web three audience.
We're a brand that is a web three brand that is building a web two audience that is going
to buy product, you know, produce, generate, and collaborate it out of that web three community.
Right.
Um, and so our storytelling aspect, our lore and our project, you know, it's kind of
interesting question because we don't have like, you know, we don't have like your goblins
lore or, you know, some of these projects that have extremely, have done that extremely
well, really strong copywriting efforts.
Uh, what we do, our lore is actually our transparency.
So, so we treat it like a business, um, uh, you know, sharing pretty much.
So would you say it's, I'm sorry.
So would you, it's probably more fair to like compare Nippy, we were doing a meat Nippy
to like, like what pudgy penguins have kind of done with Luca Nets.
Now we haven't seen this fully actualized yet, but it seems like they're very focused
on web three education, physical toys, really onboarding, you know, there, I think there
is a pudgy penguins, you know, they're trying to get on some cereal boxes.
This is less about like, let's tell a story and, you know, have funky little spaces and
more about, Hey, we're trying to touch as many people as possible and get into as many
homes as possible.
And if we can kind of, you know, pill these people into web three, that's, that's what
we're aiming.
So it's more of like a pudgy penguins type of, uh, we're trying to reach a lot of different
people.
Right.
Of course.
Right.
Like, uh, we're trying to be, you know, we're a children's entertainment company bringing
together the worlds of like publishing online content and web three.
Right.
So it's not, um, you know, you can almost look at it.
Like we leverage the web three technology and platform to like, we could have done it.
It technically built this brand, you know, doing it on Kickstarter differences.
If I went on Kickstarter and said, I want to write children's book, I would get maybe
max a thousand dollars.
Um, if I, you know, we, we, we met with Scholastic, Harper Collins, you know, one of these big, big
four publishers, max advanced, they'll give you is $10,000.
Um, we were able to raise $120,000 with our mint.
Right.
And, and all those funds, because we're, we're not, uh, you know, we're not, we're not
leveraging those funds, obviously for our own personal gains.
All those funds went back into the, obviously the product development, um, to, to build the
actual brand out.
Right.
And to, and while we're building that brand and building that audience, yes, we, you know,
80, 20 rule, maybe 20% of our eyeballs that we touch all of a sudden go a little bit deeper
into the brand.
Like, okay, what's this web three aspect?
And, you know, they, oh, and they start falling into the discord or coming into NFT Twitter,
maybe, you know, pushing demand on the, uh, the collection itself.
Um, so it's kind of a, you know, cycle as, if you will, you know, uh, as, as, as the
customer goes from web two and then slowly kind of gets fed into web three.
It's funny you mentioned, uh, you know, and, and really respect Winnie.
Uh, I was actually, uh, a pretty big holder of door to sales.
Uh, you know, he great, um, from New York city.
So I knew him from an artist.
And, um, uh, the first idea for this project actually came out of me being a holder there
is, uh, it was right around Easter.
And I was like, I want to write a children's book, you know, and, and, and use the door
sales, you know, almost like this Easter egg, almost like where's Waldo and like do a book
that you have to find the Easter eggs.
Um, and that's kind of where it all clicked in and said, Hey, like, I think that could work.
Right.
Um, cause, uh, yeah, no, I'm rambling now, but that's kind of, uh, that makes sense.
That's kind of like.
Um, yeah, yeah.
I want to switch to something really quickly, uh, clarification on doing some research on
meet and if you, I saw, uh, somebody make a post and I just want to dig a little deeper.
Um, they said over 10 K 10,000 and royalty distribution paid to token holders.
How is that possible?
So we have, um, each one of these books, I'm going to open the book again.
Um, you know, where you normally see dedicated to my niece, right?
Like as an author, ours says dedicated to our holders, uh, and it has a picture of 30 tokens.
So of the 3,222, um, we've tokenized it by mapping 30 tokens to each book.
Um, so what these distributions are, are for those 30 seats, um, for, for holders of books
one, two, and three, you know, which were available in our first drop from December 7th.
Um, I love that because we've heard that promise before.
It's like, Oh, these characters might be licensed out for our, you know, TV show or something like
that.
And, you know, we haven't really seen that done successfully, but, um, that's great.
Yeah.
Over, you know, 30, uh, nippy, uh, meet nippy characters are, you know, featured in the book.
And I think that's, that's cool.
That's what people want to see.
They want to see art and they want to see, you know, their art, uh, featured in a book.
And they get a little kickback too.
That's awesome.
Um, for the people who are still getting baptized with meet nippy and everything that they should
do, what do you recommend going to the discord, following on Twitter, plug, plug what people
should be doing right now?
Yeah.
I mean, the discord is the best place to get the, like, it's always active.
Um, you know, it's best place to get the most up to date and clear information.
Or if you just want the cliff notes, the community is amazing.
They'll definitely deliver it to you.
Um, the last three months, we've been really focused on the product development.
Um, so over the next kind of few weeks, uh, you know, there'll definitely be updates on
our website, um, where, uh, a lot of this information will be available, but the discord
is definitely the best spot.
Our Twitter is pretty up to date.
You kind of just run through the feed and kind of get a good feel for what's going on.
Um, you know, in terms of upcoming alpha, you know, we, we have books one, two, and three,
obviously ready, published, printed, um, four, four, six, seven, eight are done.
And, um, what we've done that's interesting to kind of bring, you know, tie the web to
the web three is every fit book.
So book five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, uh, those are going to be collaborating books with, with
other NFT projects.
And so Thursday we announced our collaboration with our, uh, for, for the book five, um,
which I think, you know, I'm really excited by it's a, it's a very well known collection.
It's been around, um, and, uh, I can't, I can't really say who it is, but, uh, it's
been around, it's really exciting.
And then we'll do a space with them on Friday.
So a lot of developments that we're doing, um, you know, every, every new product that
we put, put together, like book six, uh, it's a story about, uh, Sam, Sam and Diane,
the cats who can, it's, uh, it's a book about, um, two cats that are trying to play professional
golf.
Uh, and, uh, you know, we just have to do different things.
So, you know, having someone, you know, do an actual book reading, you know, on video that
might be, you know, an ESPN sportscaster, for example, um, cause it's a play on the book
to drive demand for the actual web two product, do the overall awareness of the space and slowly
onboard people, more people into the web three.
One of the things that makes me bullish on me and if he is when I posted last week, I
needed, you know, more projects to interview.
Uh, my guy, Jace was, was in my DMS ready to go.
And I just bullish on, you know, even if he wins over only five people in this space, I
I'm really bullish on founders who are willing to come in to a space like this, no matter the
size and just talk about a project.
I think that's, that's what you look for in a leader.
I'm talking to Jace, right?
Well, yes, but Jace, that's my, uh, that's the, uh, the name.
My name is actually Steve.
Jace is my son.
Um, when I first created my youth wallet, it was about generational wealth.
So I actually built it for him.
Um, and then slowly became a contract.
That's very sweet.
Well, one of the things I wanted to say was, um, it says here in your, your personal buy,
if you guys were like, eh, I don't know about this guy.
He seems a little corporate-y.
I don't know if he's really web three.
I don't know if he's really a degen.
His body is, dude's got 120 space riders.
He's got 50 small bros, killer bears, quirkies, lazy line.
I mean, this dude's a degen.
So shout out to you for immersing yourself in web three before, you know, getting this
whole ball rolling.
Cause it usually is the opposite.
People do a project and then, then they're like, Oh, web three.
Um, so that's off to you, man.
Keep doing what you do and let's talk.
Thank you for the forum.
My pleasure.
We're, we're behind schedule guys.
And it's because I'm having a lot of fun.
Okay.
I don't want to be penalized for having fun.
Um, all right.
Yeah.
Let's talk to my guy, Shaka.
Let's bring shop a Shaka.
Shaka.
What's up, bro?
Yo, what's up guys.
Thank you for, uh, for having me.
Of course.
We're here to talk about HP.
I'm fucking with you.
Hopper.
Last time they're like, they're like HPPRS.
And I'm like, ah, I'm like, bro, bro.
I've been like on hoppers for like fucking forever.
I mean, I did a YouTube video late 2021.
I mean, come on, bro.
I'm like, I was there pre mint.
You were there for dude.
I was actually this whole time.
This has been going on.
I'm like, dude, when the hell did I first talk to you?
I thought I just couldn't remember.
But yeah, it was the YouTube video.
Yeah, I was like, holy shit.
Cause, and I might misremember some stuff here, but, uh, from my memory, um, the thing I loved
about hoppers was that you Shaka, of course, are like this fucking transformational artist
and you had done your own gen, uh, Genesis collection, which was super popping on open
C and had like real collectors, real people excited about on Twitter.
And so I was like, he's already done it.
The proof of concept is there.
He has collectors.
The art is spectacular and detailed.
And now he's going to do hoppers, which is the generative, you know, the bigger collection.
Um, and I was like, I remember my YouTube video being like, fuck yeah.
Um, and that was a long time ago, bro, but it's, it's 2023.
And I, again, I posted this tweet last week about who, who I should interview and hoppers
were like, they hopped in and they're like, let's fucking go.
And I'm like, you know what?
I've been slacking on this one.
Can, can you give us your version of the origin story?
That I just did.
And then, no, I, I mean, honestly, what happened?
You surprisingly did it really well.
It's actually fucking crazy.
We did, we did drop on open C if you look, it says December, 2021, but yeah, like I, I
started growing this like IP and brand, like probably May of 2021.
And I saw like all these people are doing the rare book, like collection drops and all
that kind of stuff, like handmade.
So I just started building out this character.
I mean, like the character has kind of morphed and changed and gotten higher quality as like
my three, you got better and better as the year went years went on.
But yeah, man, the, the generator was, was great.
Like sold out, more people had a bunch of my hopper brand and art and it was just the
best.
And I guess now we're here, but you got, you're in the trenches, bro.
Like you're almost like your own influencer, you know, like I, I'm really, I hate these
projects and I'm not going to start naming names.
It's okay.
Maybe I will, but there are projects that these founders, they launched this great project.
People get so excited.
And then they're like, they haven't jumped on a space.
They don't talk about it at all.
I mean, I feel like when I see you and I've been following you for a minute, you're like
in the trenches with your community.
Talk about 2022.
Cause you know, December, 2021 is when hoppers minted out.
So about 2022, what are, what are some of the key highlights from, from the trenches of,
you know, building with hoppers?
Oh shit.
I was muted.
Uh, yeah, we, uh, we dropped in 2021.
We didn't actually sell out for like a month.
So like, you know, at the time it was like the most terrifying thing.
Um, and now it's bullish.
Now it's bullish.
But before you, you know, you get the whole, like, uh, you know, cut the supply, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
But in that month we gained a bunch of followers that were so diehard.
They just stuck with the project, even though it wasn't, uh, sold out.
But then once it sold out, we just had like a solidified community that I honestly didn't
put any effort into to make it that way.
It just became that.
Um, I don't know if you guys know, like Mark, the BB or a lot of those other people in those
other projects, their communities are super tight knit.
And I was super nervous dropping the project.
So I was like, how do I get them to be like that?
Um, you know, we all know different projects.
I'm not going to say where their communities becomes like a little toxic or they're not
really inviting to like other people.
And that kind of shit just kind of worked out for me super early.
Um, and a lot of them are still here, you know, a year later.
Wait, but how'd you do that?
Cause you're right.
I mean, like the people who are in hoppers fucking love it.
Did you poison them or how did that happen?
Oh no, I gave him the red Kool-Aid and that usually works.
No, I'm kidding.
Uh, I think it's, this is going to sound like tooting my horn, but like I am, I am way
too connected to the community.
I mean, there's not really a person between me and the average person that owns one hopper.
Even the person that doesn't even have a hopper that joined the discord, they can directly
talk to me.
Like I'm so direct with everybody.
Um, I tend to sometimes give up too much information cause I can't hold secrets and I'm like
impatient, but I think that's kind of foreign to community.
To treat me like a person and they're not really getting that like undoxed PFB person
that's not really around, doesn't answer questions.
So I've been pretty good at being human and like people kind of treat me that way.
So the people that come, you're not an NPC, you're not an NPC.
I am not a Skyrim NPC with an arrow in the knee.
I promise.
Let's talk about you as an artist.
Cause if you guys haven't already checked out shock is work, go, go on his Twitter profile.
I mean, I think another thing I was bullish on when I first discovered your work, um, you
know, big, big, super rare art.
Like you've been doing the digital art game for a little bit.
Give us a little bio about shock of blood, uh, before we even get to hoppers.
Yeah, dude, absolutely.
So I'm an industrial management and technology outside person outside of art.
And I went to college for that, but I was just making photo manipulation stuff back in
the day and doing all this design stuff.
And then I started getting 3d into my, into my wheelhouse.
And I started working for like the EDM world and making artwork for them.
They're always like, yo, give me some crazy robotic squid with laser beam coming out of
its ass.
And like, I had to do stuff like that so much to where my 3d started to get better.
I started to model more often.
Um, and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Like I just started doing this full time while working at a, uh, design agency here in Baltimore.
And I finally quit in 2021 and I was like, fuck it, let's do this full time, which everyone
thought was insane, but it ended up working out.
But yeah, that's pretty much it.
I mean, any artist knows in this space, like you skip 10 years of experience, just like
one year in the NFCC, you're kind of, it's very competitive.
You got to get better.
You can't just keep putting the same quality out.
How do you get better?
Like if you look at shock, his profile, but like I go, go click his profile and looking
at the, like the detail, like how does somebody become a great artist?
Like how does that even happen?
How do you keep improving?
Dude, my, I'm going to be, this is going to sound super depressing.
Like for me, it's just like the anxiety of seeing people pass you or seeing things, seeing
amazing work out there makes you want to do better.
I know figure gods up here.
And when it comes to 3d, I've seen images where I'm like, is that's, that can't be a
photo.
Is that a render?
Even for me, I can, I can see that kind of stuff super easily.
It's, it's hard.
You just appreciate the pathway that other artists take in the scene.
And especially when it comes to generative projects too.
Like when I started doing this project, I wanted it to be just as good as my handmade
collection.
So like the 3d, everything's rendered one by one, like lighting and reflections bounce off
each other.
I didn't want anything cut out into PNGs.
There was just like this whole thing going on where quality is super important to me.
So yeah, I mean, we can kind of talk about the hopper thing, but the, I think people love
the art so much that they latched onto me very aggressively in a good way.
And it's just, I've kind of just cultivated that kind of community for so long.
And it's rock solid.
What does 2023 look like for hoppers?
Yes, I'm actually so happy you said this because I was trying to figure out where to kind of
start.
So we had a, a dev team that worked with us for the first half of 2022 and they're fantastic.
But I think, you know, the stuff we wanted plus workload, things took a long time to get
done, you know, like, so we kind of felt cornered when it came to moving forward and doing different
things.
We actually just recently like got our whole new website redone.
We had a new dev.
We're making a carrot marketplace, which is kind of like alien friends.
If you know how they have their friend marketplace, just by holding a hopper or any of the other
collections, you get like a off chain token and you could buy NFTs and stuff off it.
So we're working on that.
Like I said, I got the website made.
We're doing a massive drop called the Packer Drones, which I was hoping I could talk about
at the end, but it's pretty much going to be a one-to-one faction against the hoppers
as rivals.
And that drops January 28th and you can either burn a hopper for a drone or you can mint it.
But that's going to be a new introduction to our lore and our story and really just like
building out the IP more.
I'm a, I'm a, like I said, I worked at a design agency, so branding and logos and all
that is just something I really love and building out this IP for hoppers has been just so much
fun.
I mean, like, yeah, everything.
So, and then trying to think, yeah, I think we're doing 3D files like CloneX did this year
as well for the hoppers and then 3D files for the drones as well.
So that's kind of what's in the close.
Do we, do we know what the, forgive me, do we know what the drones look like yet?
Yes, yes.
I put a, can we pin that?
Can we take a look at that?
Can you have a preview?
Joey has the hoppers thing.
If you want to, Joey's my CMO.
Come on, Joey.
Fantastic.
Look a lot, Joey.
But yeah, I put on a bunch of stuff.
Another thing with the, the, the degenerative, I love art.
So I like hit up all my friends to do one of ones.
We got like Kabatsu Mecha made one, Aphoria.
We got Mechaverse to make an official drone.
Atomo.
You collab with Mechaverse?
Yes.
That's so epic.
They're going to drop theirs.
There are three, I mean, say what you want to say about Mechaverse.
The 3D art is like phenomenal.
Nah, Mechaverse, no fun at all.
Honestly, Mechaverse is solid.
They're, they're amazing.
And dude, working with Matty was like, he was so enthusiastic to work with us.
I was like, oh, fuck yeah.
Again, the 3D art to 3D artist thing is, is always a good bond.
Um, and then, yeah, we got a bunch.
Oh, Terrell Jones, um, which you guys know is like an amazing fucking artist.
He's actually making one as well.
But yeah, we have 12, uh, collaborators on there making drones that'll be mixed with the
supply.
So, um, yeah, I'm, I'm just super excited.
Very excited.
All right, cool.
Um, shit.
Uh, still don't have the drones.
I guess, uh.
Oh, let me get it.
Let me get it out.
Let me get it.
Yeah, Joey's sleeping at the wheel here.
Cool.
Um, here's a, here's a one, one of one.
It's a, it's called.
Yeah, let's see what this shit looks like.
Cause if it's going up against the hopper.
All right.
That looks like a solid foil to a hopper.
I'm still going to say a hopper beats its ass, but it looks formidable.
Uh, we did a, we did a, um, you know, I just put, put up three.
Uh, we did like a, I did a, we got to make it interfaces tribute for it.
That's the other thing.
And I added a lot of tributes from projects that I love that, um, that I don't know.
I just, you know, I've been in the space for so fucking long and I've accumulated so many
friends and other founders and projects that like, I just wanted to make something that
kind of immortalized everything.
Um, but yeah, that's the drones.
I'm, uh, it's coming out January 28th.
So if you want to get into it, go buy a hopper.
Bro, this is a tribute to WGMI interface.
You're really bringing me a Mechaverse, WGMI interface.
The collabs are insane as far as like,
Pete Polron like, projects.
That's funny.
All right.
Um, definitely go follow Shaka, follow Hoppers, one-to-one, upcoming mint, uh, tons of cool
shit, great community, great artists.
I'm going to tell a story real quick though.
Can I, can you indulge me in a second while I tell a story about you?
Go for it, go for it.
All right.
So what do we got?
We got a hundred people in here.
Some people in here might know that I'm working on a project, upcoming project.
It's called something's fishing.
Some of you might not know that, whatever, go check it out.
Link in my bio, whatever.
Um, this project doesn't happen without Shaka blood.
I know that sounds, you're probably like, wait, what I, for the life of me, for
as long as I've been in a web three, I've always wanted a fish tank NFT.
Like literally just let me fucking get a digital fish tank.
Let me take care of my fish.
Let me, let me get a fish tank NFT because I grew up with fish tanks.
I don't have the time to, to maintain my saltwater tanks anymore.
Just give me a digital fish tank.
And I searched for a long time for a great artist and I couldn't find one.
I, I, I pitched a lot of different people, this idea, like this goes back to early 2021,
me talking about like, I'm looking for this artist and I couldn't arrive at one until I
actually just randomly sent a DM to my guy, Shaka blood.
Cause I knew Shaka was like tapped in super rare artists.
Oh gee, like one-on-one, like, you know, on top of this shit and immediately linked me
with the guy that I'm working, working on the project with.
And, um, yeah, so that's a cool little, little, uh, footnote that some people might not know
that the project I'm working on right now is largely, he's an, he was a, I was with him
at, uh, um, Art Basel and he was showing me the, the renders and I was blown, blew my mind.
Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm happy that that worked out.
Like, that's just, that's just amazing.
Hey bro, at some point early off, at some point there probably will be a hopper.
Something's fishy.
We'll probably do something.
I know you only want to work with projects that came out like people run like
or whatever, but we might do something.
We might get you, bro.
You were probably resistant right now.
We're going to get you.
No, hoppers, hoppers, love it.
A hundred percent.
All right.
Well, there you guys go.
Maybe some early alpha go follow Shaka.
Thank you guys.
And, um, of course.
Yeah.
And, and go give hoppers a follow.
There's some cool shit coming out in 2023.
Thanks bro.
Thank you guys.
Holy fuck.
All right.
We're behind schedule, but it's because we're just vibing.
We're a hundred NFT M efforts is vibing.
And one thing you can say about me is you can't say I changed.
Okay.
I'm still rocking with the same projects I came up with.
We had Ali on earlier.
We, I've been rocking with Ali since 2021.
I've been rocking with Shaka since 2021.
Okay.
Did the YouTube video.
I've been rocking with them.
Okay.
Now we're going to bring up goop dudes.
You can never say I changed or switched or went Hollywood.
Okay.
I'm still riding with goop dudes.
Let's go.
Goop dudes.
What's up?
Yo, what's up everybody.
And really quick while Shaka is still, um, on the stage, man, it's so, um, it's so nice
to hear that you're working with a Terrell, man.
He is an amazing artist.
My girlfriend's a pretty talented 3d artist and, um, he actually collected her work and
I got to meet him and talk to him, um, during art Basel a few weeks ago and man, he
is on the come up.
So that is super awesome to hear.
Absolutely, man.
He's the best.
Yeah.
So, um, I see Andy just got on stage, Toronto person.
So for those of you that haven't heard of goop or Andy, um, we are a art centered project.
Andy is the artist and founder, Toronto person.
He's a Toronto based artist and he's been working on the goop dude brand and character
since circa 2015.
He has thousands, probably, uh, original drawings, physical pieces, skate decks, um, figures.
He's done, um, murals at collective arts brewery.
He's done collabs with them on cans.
So goop is his passion project and it has been before NFTs.
He was approached by some devs in a team, um, 2021.
I forget exactly when, cause I joined the team recently, but yeah, they approached them.
They love the art and they just wanted to bring it to the blockchain.
So Andy is constantly learning the ways of web three.
He's not the most blockchain savvy, but that's where I come in and I just lend a hand however
I can.
So Andy, you want to say anything?
Oh yeah.
Uh, first of all, just, uh, thanks to cool times for having us, uh, up here.
Um, it's, it's, uh, it's awesome.
It's really great.
I've been listening to everybody's conversation and it's really nice to hear like everybody
engaged in, in each other's projects and, uh, and, uh, just, yeah, just hearing more
about the world of what's going on all over the world.
Kind of wait, Toronto person.
Can you just confirm that I didn't go Hollywood?
Uh, no, no, no, no, no, not at all.
All right.
I just wanted to clarify.
Cause it sounds like the person on the Goop dudes account might've been like, eh, I don't
know.
He might've went Hollywood.
Like if I was on American Idol, they wouldn't be like you're going to, they would be like,
you're not because you're going to stay true to your roots.
Um, you know, Toronto person, we've actually, we've been on a couple of spaces together,
bro.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love what you guys have been, you know, the, the Goop community is just, it's about
vibes.
Like I love it so much.
And when I, I put out that tweet last week, um, I was like, hell yeah, the Goop, the Goop
community is still here.
Talk about 2022 for the Goop dudes.
I mean, what, what sticks out to you, man?
What are some of the highlights?
Dude, it was just, um, uh, it was just a crazy year.
Like, um, yeah.
So I had some, some people reach out to me like late, um, 2021 and we were just like,
you know, having back and forth on DMS and stuff.
And I was like, you know what, like, I'm going to say yes.
And I'm going to do this, uh, do this project and, and, uh, 2022 rolls around and we launch
it like in February or March or something.
And it just, uh, it, it just skyrocketed.
And so I, I was working in advertising and I still am here and there, but you know, I
left, I left my full-time job, uh, to do like more freelance stuff and then focus on my
art.
Uh, and it afforded me the opportunity to do that.
And then, you know, um, I was able to go to, um, uh, Los Angeles for the NFT event there.
Um, and it was just remarkable.
Like I, I'd never seen, you know, in Toronto there's, there's not a big presence of web
three or NFT stuff.
And it's, it's always like, you know, people, when they talk about it, like it's very like
disparaging and, um, it's just one of those things, like people don't understand what it
is and it's easy to scoff at, but you know, um, a lot more difficult to understand.
And, um, uh, so yeah, that, that blew me away.
And then, you know, just trying to keep up with that kind of stuff and, uh, me understanding
it and, you know, trying to be as president in the, in the web three space is, it's great.
And I've just been focusing on art for the last little while and doing some, uh, uh,
like Robert was saying, like some, some murals here and there and doing commissions and, you
know, everything.
So it's just been, uh, uh, it's great.
Like a web three and NFT has afforded me this like kind of opportunity to continue doing
like art as a main thing.
Um, and so, you know, uh, I don't know, I don't know what else to say.
Like, uh, how do you, how do you play the long game here?
Because at one point there was like every influencer and their mom was like, goop, goop.
I mean, remember there were, there was like a, uh, Newsweek did like a, uh, an article
about it.
It was like, and it, it kind of seemed like the only reason that they wrote about it too.
It was like, goop is trending on Twitter.
Uh, but it's not Gwyneth Paltrow.
And then I was like, Oh shit.
Okay.
Um, yeah, they just wanted to write that line.
It is exactly joke.
That's exactly what it was.
Yeah.
It was totally just throwing shade at Gwyneth Paltrow.
Um, but how do you, that it was so hype at one point and every project has to endure
a bear market the way you just did.
I think we're actually on the, we see the sunlight right now.
How do you kind of navigate the long game though, when it comes to running a community
and yeah.
Well, here's the thing though, too, is that like my, the two developers that initially
reached out, like we had a partnership and that's been absolved.
Uh, so I'm like in complete control of, of the whole project.
And other than Robert, myself and some other community members that have like kind of reached
out, like it's kind of just touch and go and grassroots right now.
Like, um, like all I'm doing is just, uh, uh, trying to build this, uh, brand, but it's
like multiple things at once, like, uh, doing gallery stuff and, and, um, I've been writing,
uh, uh, some graphic novel stuff and, um, all of that and everything.
But, uh, uh, I was thinking about this today and it's funny that you asked that is just like
longevity and see where it goes and stuff is as long as like there's longevity in,
and NFTs.
Um, I'm not going to go anywhere and I'm always going to be creating art and, and do it like
writing my story and stuff.
So, um, as long as NFTs are around, I'll be around.
So it's, I don't think that there's any concern on my end of, of, you know, um, backing out
of this space or, or, or not, you know, fulfilling anything.
As long as people realize that it's just like me doing it.
Um, and then again, like what I said, hearkening back to how community members and people have
reached out about like how we can like, like go forward and stuff within the web three space.
I'm very, very receptive and open to like any idea.
So it's something that I don't really understand.
So I need to other people to help guide me through that stuff.
So really quick, so 2023, our main focus, which, um, I guess the original team, they were
just so caught up in the Goop NFT project itself.
And like you said, the influencers and just the floor price going up so high and so fast,
they were just focused on like the Goop project, the 7,700, whatever tokens on the blockchain.
But this year, what we're really focused on is the originality of what made Goops so appealing
in the first place.
And it's the art and it's Andy's art style.
So we're, Andy has so much art.
It's just laying around.
So we want to give our holders a chance to own it.
So we've, um, we have a lot of art plan just as free claims for Goop holders.
We want Goops basically to act as a lifetime pass to access to Andy's art.
We're going to have him get on a foundation account and start minting a lot of his one
of ones that he makes specifically for these drops.
Also maybe some old school legacy pieces.
But at the end of the day, Andy is an artist.
And this project was to share his art with the world.
The roadmap was always, it's just art.
So that's what we really want to touch this year with our community.
It's still so receptive to everything we've done.
I'm so thankful for our community.
We just want to give back with Andy's art.
So we're going to have him, whether it's once a month, once every two weeks, we're going
to be doing something with manifold claims.
And we're just going to be giving back to the community, just giving back their art.
And behind the scenes without Web3, Andy is constantly working on Goop.
I just saw today on a video call, a graphic novel.
He's wrapping that up, not in the very near future, but it's a graphic novel.
It obviously takes a little time, but he's going to look towards getting that published.
So the Goop brand is forever being built on and expanding.
But for now, we just want to give our holders something tangible and Web3-centric that they
can have in their wallets to be like, look, we're here.
We're Gooping.
We're never going to stop Gooping.
Well said, my friend.
Yeah.
Sorry, I forgot that I was connected, too.
But yeah, I know.
I appreciate that.
And I don't know.
Also, cool times.
How's everything going with you?
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Am I right?
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