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Cosmos Club with BackBone Labs
Recorded: Sept. 14, 2023 Duration: 0:54:49Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hello everyone and welcome to the club.
I can see the backbone lapses here.
I'll just accept your request to speak in just a moment and then we'll get right into it.
Fuck the SEC.
I like this.
GM, GM, how are you doing, brother?
I'm great.
How are you?
Welcome to the club, man.
I'm good.
I'm really good.
Today's been a full day.
Thursdays is definitely like the spaces day for sure.
Is this like your fifth today or?
It's my fourth.
Damn.
It's 12 noon for me in Los Angeles.
So we're going on four spaces there.
Wow.
You've been doing nothing but spaces then since you woke up.
Hey, but you know what?
This is the time to community build.
Markets are down.
This is when we rally.
This is when we build.
This is what we do preparing for the next cycle, right?
So it's all part of the game.
Amen to that, man.
Amen to that.
All right.
But I can see people are starting to tune in.
So I guess let's not leave people in suspense.
So welcome everyone to the Cosmos Club where we talk all things Cosmos.
We tweet daily about what's going on.
And then we invite interesting, fascinating, hardworking builders of the Cosmos ecosystem to spaces like these.
And today we have Backbone Labs for the first time joining the club.
Welcome, guys.
Thank you for having us.
Appreciate it.
Good opportunity.
So let's just first have a little bit of a personal touch, as some of you might know that we'd like to take here in the beginning at least.
Because people in crypto, they come really from all walks of life.
Some people are highly technical, of course, building, as you say.
Some people are more financial or come with an economics background.
Some people are more creative with a focus on NFTs, typically.
So yeah, all walks of life.
The other day I spoke to a chemical engineer.
That was the first time.
So yeah, let's hear your story.
How did you end up here today and building in Backbone Labs?
Okay, let's see.
So I've been in this space now since 2018.
Like really?
Kind of like more than like the average Joe, right?
Like not just like, you know, shopping on Robinhood or like whatever, right?
So that path took me, you know, down like mining first.
And I always did a bunch of like Bitcoin mining and like, you know, Litecoin mining and Doge mining, all that stuff.
And then, you know, it didn't take long to get into NFTs.
I did very well on sandbox land.
And I, you know, once I sold a bunch of those lands for profit and I had a really good friend.
And he was like, hey, have you heard of Tara?
And I'm like, not really.
And then, so he kind of tricked me into putting $50,000 into Anchor.
And then I started looping it.
And I didn't really even know what I was getting myself into at first.
But when you figure out the system, when you figure out the system, it was an amazing catalyst for wealth generation.
And like that kind of like was the hook for me, right?
Like I was like, oh my God, I really see a path for financial freedom, for money working for you instead of you working for money.
And like that was what totally was, made it all in for me at that point.
You know, we, I'm an original minter of the SkeletonPunks Terra NFT project.
I became a team member just from participation on that project.
After the mint, the founder rugged us.
And as a community, we all rallied together and we tracked them down.
And we presented the blockchain evidence to Random Earth and Nowhere and at the time.
And they were like, yeah, this guy is totally stole from you.
And if you guys want to give us community wallets, we'll let you submit wallets for royalties.
And so we were able to essentially take the project from the person who stole from us, which to me is, you know, the power of like community and crypto.
It's kind of like the heart and soul is that we come together and do something united, right?
So we were able to rally back from that.
Unfortunately, we all crashed together.
And then the six of us from the community, originally six of us, we were able to, with time and resources of our own, migrate the collection to Terra.
Terra. Today, if we fast forward, the Skeleton Punks is the number one Terra NFT project on Terra 2.
And that brings us to Backbone Labs because, you know, Backbone Labs was created from that, from the need to like making an NFT have relevance from trying to generate community earning and unwrecking your community.
This is like kind of like what the heart and soul of Backbone Labs is.
And we can talk about what that is, too, obviously.
That's an awesome story, man.
And I just want to, before we dive into what Backbone Labs is and what you guys are building, maybe just tell us why you got attracted to Skeleton NFTs originally.
Like what was, what stood out to you back then and eventually made you so passionate after getting rocked that you had to take on this project, Boa, not just as a community member, but even as a builder.
So, you know, I am always kind of a fan of the underdog, kind of a fan of like the little guy, and I always want to level the playing field and, and the Skeleton Punks, you know, these, these, their original roadmap was a community like yield from anchor protocol.
And that's a very rudimentary version of what we've ended up rolling out for the project, but being able to be a part of a group that was earning like minded to me that was a very attractive.
Like byline, right?
Like that was very attractive to be a part of.
And so we've taken it a step further and, you know, we've, we've created a DeFi platform, which actually is managed and by the Skeleton Punks.
And at a certain point, if you're a three plus staker, you can unlock revenue sharing from the platform, right?
So this way, the community, like, I would like to say we're community owned, you know, that's, that's kind of where we're going to.
And we'll touch more on that, like with the soul token and stuff like that.
I don't want to give too much away in this first like little segment.
That's fair. That's fair.
But let's dive in then on what you guys are building and what, what Backbone Labs is, because I think for a lot of people, at least you are flying a little bit under the radar.
Perhaps you, I mean, you come from a Terra ecosystem predominantly.
So a lot of projects maybe not died, but they, they definitely need to be reincarnated from Terra, the Terra crash.
I think Kujira is a good example, right, of, you know, showing that it can be done.
Showing that you can come back stronger.
So, yeah, tell us about Backbone Labs, what you guys are building and where you guys are heading, basically, with what you're building.
Okay, so what we've done after the crash, you know, we saw the power of what you could do when you leverage assets, right?
And that was, that is a privilege normally reserved for the extremely wealthy.
You know, somebody has a lot of stock, they go to the bank, they say, let me borrow X amount of dollars against the stock.
They buy another asset that's paying dividends.
They pay off the first loan.
And then before you know it, they're able to generate wealth from an original asset, right?
So when this all crashed, in my mind, I was like, we got to get that, that utility back to the, to like the regular people.
This is what was so attractive the first time.
And so we decided to, you know, after trying to resurrect the NFT community, we're like, how do we create a utility?
And so at first it was just trying to make partnerships with logos and branding in the NFT collection.
But before we knew it, we'd made so many partners with validators and we were like looking at this group and we're like, man, doesn't this kind of look like stator labs?
And my partner, Thomas, he was like, hey, you know what?
He goes, he goes, I think that those contracts are open source.
And I'm like, get out of town.
He's like, no, I think so.
And, you know, it was, there's been so many instances of like, where there's these moments where like the direction and quality of what we could do is drastically changed.
And like, this was one of those moments, like we were able to meet PFC validator, who is, you know, in my opinion, like an IBC legend.
He's always helping out, always coming to the rescue from like all these different chains.
And it so happened that, you know, Larry XO, he wrote this original liquid stake platform and he gave it to PFC to manage and care for.
When Larry decided to go do some other things.
And so we, you know, pairing with PFC, he was like, hey, I have these contracts, you know, the model that you're trying to implement has more user retention.
Let's try that.
Right.
And so we were able to create the Grave Digger, which is our version of an auto compounder.
We like to be cheeky and we named our asset B Luna because there's more brand.
What's more, what's a better name?
Everybody knows what B Luna is for.
Are you supposed to borrow against it?
You know?
So now we created this auto compounder and in our mind, we're like, okay, how do we make the NFT collection stay relevant?
So we gave them the managing capabilities.
They get to dictate like what validators are in the set.
That's like, that's all still kind of coming together.
But that's the end goal is that the NFT communities will, they are.
So if a validator does something that someone in the NFT community really doesn't like,
or if they're not pulling their weight and you're a Skeleton Punk holder, you could put a prop on Enterprise and say, hey, we want to remove this guy from the Grave Digger set.
If it gets enough traction, it will be removed or vice versa.
If validator wants to come into the set, they're like, hey, we validate on Terra or whatever chain you have a Grave Digger on.
We would like to build this for you or we're going to bring this for the community.
Would you guys add us to your set?
They could then be voted in as well.
But so this community, the Skeleton Punks, they're also, you know, they earn 30% of all fees generated by the Grave Digger.
And the Grave Digger actually is a 100% fee pass-through system.
We don't take anything.
And we all fees that are used in our system are redistributed to stimulate economic growth and stimulate activity.
And, you know, a big part of this mission for us is to make sure L1s retain their identity and their on-chain activity.
I'm not a fan.
Look, Stride, they're shippers and, you know, they're probably really good guys.
But I'm just not a fan of pulling that activity off the L1.
It's too big of a metric to lose.
And so now we've got this thing called NFT5, right?
Because we have an NFT community that is directly managing a DeFi platform.
They're responsible for it.
They, at a certain level, they can unlock the utility of revenue sharing with it.
And NFT communities, we see, like, even when they're going to zero, they're still hanging out, talking shit in discords, having fun.
Whereas token communities that are going to zero get real negative real quick.
So, you know, this is definitely, you know, it is an experiment.
There's no other way to put it.
I don't think another group has merged NFT communities so powerfully with the DeFi protocol.
And we, you know, we were fortunate enough, White Whale and the Migaloo chain, they saw the vision and they were like, hey, do you want to try to expand on it and go cross-chain?
And, like, that's another one of these inception points I'm talking about where what is possible greatly altered, right?
All of a sudden, we're like, oh, my God, we could go cross-chain.
We could do these things.
And so that's what we're doing.
And so now we're even building, you know, we built a marketplace.
You know, random earth went down.
It's a ghost town.
You know where it goes down, right?
So we were like, well, we can't leave the community high and dry.
We built a marketplace.
You know, the grant from Migaloo gave us the life to be able to not only deliver a marketplace, a better marketplace for Kara, but to be able to build a marketplace for Migaloo.
And, you know, they funded the Gravedigger.
Chihuahua chain has funded a Gravedigger.
We tried to get Juno to fund a Gravedigger.
I think that we're having a lot of fun here, and I really wish Juno would have taken our hand on that one.
I think it would have been a good ride.
But I see Tank, too.
But we're going to keep pushing through Juno anyway.
I think that's the plan, right, Tank?
Are we going to still do it anyway and just bootstrap ourselves?
We can.
But, yeah, it's kind of a lot to unpack.
Do you have any questions?
Yeah, of course.
And let me know, by the way, if I need to invite Tank as a speaker.
But, yeah, I mean, you guys have been keeping busy, that's for sure.
For anyone who hasn't been paying close attention, the catchphrase that you guys put out, at least, is the Multi-Chain DeFi Collateral NFT Hub.
That's a big pill to swallow.
It's a mouthful.
But you guys have shipped a lot of things that is there to back it up, I think.
Everything from an NFT marketplace, like you mentioned before, called Necropolis, to an incubator, to an NFT launchpad.
There's a bunch of stuff there.
So, perhaps just elaborate to those unaware or uninitiated, perhaps, to Backbone Labs.
What you guys are building and sort of, you know, all these different products and how they fit together into the Multi-Chain Hub that you guys are executing on here.
Okay.
So, I mean, I think the overall vision, right, is that we need a place where community and DeFi can really meet in the middle, right?
Like I said, it's been my experience, at least in the last cycle, that these two communities were extremely divided.
And there is no more room for divide with what is coming out in government regulation.
We all need to be extremely unified, and we all need to build bridges into other places so we can always have good on-ramps and off-ramps, right?
So, for Backbone Labs, you know, utility is king, in my opinion, on NFTs.
Many people love art.
I love art, too.
But at the end of the day, NFT for me is like, what can I do with it?
What kind of privilege does it give me?
What does it unlock?
Can I revenue share?
What action or activity does this allow me to do, right?
That, to me, is one of the major value drivers.
And so, now we find ourselves in this unique position where we're producing a liquid-staking derivative.
You know, we have partnerships that are actively ready to allow people to borrow and leverage against this asset.
We now have an Apex NFT community on Terra.
We're about to have an Apex NFT community on Megaloo that will manage and revenue share with these DeFi platforms.
And, you know, one of the plans is to actually fuel the marketplace with the B assets, not the regular L1.
And if you're bullish on your L1 and you're bullish on your NFTs, there's no reason for you to be trading in and out of just an L1 and not be auto-compounding and earning interest.
If you're going to be holding that token anyway because, like, you're a DJ, then you might as well hold an LSD and get a higher APY and just broker your deal with your LSD.
It's just smarter.
And you're securing the network, right?
So, we're about to introduce, like, a real utility, like, for commerce with the B asset where before, you know, there's nothing really anchoring.
That's why we like to call ourselves backbone.
We want to provide a structure and a backbone for culture and for DeFi.
We feel that with White Whale powering us in this endeavor that the cross-pollinization within the cosmos is a very powerful narrative.
And, you know, imagine 10 Grave Diggers on 10 different chains, every one of those Grave Diggers having an NFT managing community, right?
And then we're about to launch the soul token, which I don't want to give away too much, but this is kind of, like, we'll tie it all together.
And then if you have these 10 different Apex communities, Managed Grave Diggers, and they're all selling on Necropolis, where are other collections going to want to launch?
Where is the liquidity going to be coming?
Like, we can tie all of this together if we do it very, I mean, I've kind of done it backwards, but I think it's kind of helped us by going in the reverse direction.
Like, this is a very unconventional route to try to achieve this.
I almost feel like people didn't see it coming fully.
And now we're getting to a point where I don't know, I don't think I could stop it if I wanted to at this point, to be honest.
Amen to that, man. Amen to that.
Talk to us a little bit about the space that you guys are in, because I think you mentioned a few times you're in an NFT community, but at the same time you're a hub with all these different products where you can do stuff.
I think anyone in Cosmos, most people obviously following Cosmos Club, is passionate about Cosmos.
And most people, when they think about NFTs, they think about Stargaze.
So, yeah, talk to us a little bit about the space that you're in and how you guys see yourself in that space and perhaps differentiate from others, such as Stargaze, such as Omniflix, perhaps, that we had on also recently, and all these other players, at least in Cosmos.
Yeah, you know, I love both of those projects.
I have a lot of stars and a lot of Omniflix.
Those guys are definitely shipping.
Okay, so what can we do?
So, right now, there's four Grave Diggers currently live.
There's one on Terra, there's one on Megaloo, and there's one on Chihuahua, and there's one on Juno that we still need to do a little bit of pushing for, right?
But they're all live.
So, you can go get B assets on all those chains.
Now, on Terra, you could take your B asset and you can already borrow against it on Cavern Protocol.
So, like, just like Anchor was back in the day, you can go take your B Luna, you can deposit it, and you can borrow AXUSDC.
They also have, you can also use them as a bank.
They have, like, almost 15% APY on stables, which is pretty slick.
And that's, like, a real 15% APY, not an inflated one that crashed, right?
So, that's pretty awesome.
We're about to convert the marketplace, the NFT marketplace, to be, final sales will be done in the B asset.
So, B Luna and B Whale will be their respective token of sale on the platform.
Let's see.
I mean, now we're going to be able to, you know, there's already Enterprise DAO.
So, you can stake your Skeleton Punks on Enterprise DAO, the Skeleton Punk DAO.
You can already claim rewards from the B Luna Grave Digger.
You know, you're claiming B Luna.
You can take that B Luna you're claiming from your Skeleton Punks, and you can go over an Alliance stake, get a Mewu chain, and earn more yield on top of yield on top of yield.
Like, the games are just starting to open, and the infrastructure needed to, like, really get the next layer of, like, really clever stuff.
It's just not there yet.
We're close.
We're really, really close.
But there's definitely a little more infrastructure that has to occur.
And there needs to be a little better, like, bridging and, like, integration between chains.
Speaking of bridging, I think that's an interesting question, right now, at least.
How do you see new sort of players coming in, like Noble bringing native USDC to Cosmos?
Is that going to help or alleviate the bridging problem, in your opinion?
So I definitely think that that will bring a new rush of liquidity into the cosmos.
I mean, it has to, right?
I am of, I mean, I'm happy with it, but I'm not really happy until we have, like, an algo stable coin or some variation of a decentralized peg coin.
I'm not really interested in using MetaMask, and I'm not really interested in using USDC.
I use it when I have to cash out to my bank, and, like, that's it.
And I only send USDC to Coinbase, so I don't trigger a transaction later.
You know what I mean?
Like, I really do everything I can in, like, off of those type of places.
Makes sense.
This is a bit left field also, but I think when we talk about staples in general, and particularly with your background from Terra, what do you think of USK?
Just, again, out of curiosity, it's a bit left field, but I can't help but ask.
No, not left field at all.
You know, I think USK is fantastic.
It would be nice if there was more of it being exited into other parts of the ecosystems.
Like, I don't know how comfortable they are with that.
Look, there's definitely a safety net.
Them having USK thriving and doing well on Kojira, that is a great driver of value, and it's safe, right?
But the rest of us also need to be able to have a stable that does that, too, right?
Will they allow USK to be minted with other assets?
Now we're talking.
If that's happening, then I'm definitely listening, right?
I don't want to just be pinned into one, though.
Yeah, exactly.
I can't remember exactly how many assets you can use to mint USK, but I think it's, like, eight, nine.
Maybe at this point, Adam, of course, ETH, B2C, even liquid-staked Adam at this point.
So there's a bunch of different...
Interesting enough, they don't use or allow Kojira yet in order to mint USK.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time, but it's interesting that they decided to have, I don't know,
eight, nine, ten assets available to mint their own stablecoin before their native token.
But I guess that's the trauma from the Terra crash.
It's not that far-fetched.
It's like, why risk our coin if this goes sideways?
If you guys want to try to make this token out of a different asset, you're more than welcome, right?
Like, it's definitely...
Look, man, from Kojira's point of view, it's a smart play, right?
But I just need to have that availability open.
But now, are they bridging it out?
Are they letting it go into other blockchains?
I don't think it's actually having too much outflow at this point.
Indeed.
I want to shift the attention back to Backbone and you guys.
This was a bit off track.
Sorry about that, guys.
But talk to me a little bit about partnerships.
You mentioned a few players already, like Miguelou, a few times.
How are you guys approaching...
Because you're not competing, in a sense, with other L1s or app chains in Cosmos, it seems.
You have the approach of more like partnering with others, it seems.
So talk to me a little bit about that.
So, you know, we're definitely of the win-win mentality.
After trying to rebuild this from nothing, it's made us very appreciative of not wanting to, you know, injure other people.
And together, we're able to actually create more.
That's the truth of it.
When we are together, we're stronger.
That was the secret sauce in the last Bull Run for Terror.
They had teams on top of teams on top of teams building utility for one another.
And that is right there.
That is the most valuable factor in these communities.
We, you know, I'm going to look at, you know, the example that I have now is, you know,
Miguelou and White Whale has kind of collected a group of us that all share the same feeling.
You know, us, Raccoon, Ginkgoo, you know, us four and White Whale,
we have kind of come together and we all offer this completely different part of the puzzle.
But at the same time, we will, you know, now we're like starting to think, okay, we have the products up.
They're almost deployed.
How do we start to now build things for each other?
Like, now our communities are like hyperlinked, right?
And then other people want to start to do this too.
Like, you know, now we have partnerships with people happening on the Classic.
We have, you know, especially for us with these Grave Diggers,
if I could have my dream come true, the dream is that we're placing Grave Diggers
and then we're making partnerships with already strong pre-existing NFT communities
who understand diversification and they want to launch a sub-collection in the cosmos.
Say we start going fishing on some of these big communities in ETH and Polygonis Lana
and they understand how slick the tech is over here.
And they're like, dude, having, you know, revenue managing collection on a Grave Digger,
this utility far outstrips anything else that's happening in any NFT community.
We need to get in that too, right?
So all of a sudden now we're able to bring new people and we're reaching just completely
different heights.
That would be the ultimate goal, right?
Of these Grave Diggers.
Now we have this thing, I'm telling you, man, when we drop the tokenomics for the soul token,
I think it's going to go nuts, right?
Because there's another layer of how do we tie this together and like really build value.
And it's a go 100% airdrop token, pretty much.
It'll all be in circulation from day one.
We're not, there's no inflation, right?
So like things are just about to get exciting.
We just got to get up to this last little bit of depression, FUD, whatever you want to call it,
is they're exhausted.
Even the FUDders are tired.
That's when you know the bull's going to start.
Like when people are even tired of talking shit.
It's been a long bear market also.
So I can understand why they're getting tired and the bears, they've been added for two years
now, something like that, if not more.
But yeah, you mentioned the soul token, not to be confused, by the way, with the Solana token
S-O-L, but it's S-O-L, S-O-U-L, for those people who might be confused about that.
Talk to us about that.
Talk to us about why you need a token in the first place, perhaps.
And of course, I have to ask you, people are suckers for airdrops.
I have to ask you if there's an airdrop.
If you can't say, of course, don't mention it or just ignore the question.
But I will get a lot of flag from the community if I don't ask you when I have the chance to.
So yeah, talk to us about the Sol token.
Sure.
Okay.
So if you go to Backbone Labs, our pinned message actually has the teaser of the Sol token.
And it will discuss airdrop and community participation about airdrop.
I'll give you a little bit of the TVLR.
It's a set supply of 10 million.
It'll never be bigger than 10 million.
50% of the supply will be airdropped to the participating communities.
Like I said, for us, the biggest thing is participation.
We want to really reward those people who are showing up to these spaces, who are using
these products, who are really pushing the bounds and sticking it out with us.
And the rest of the split of the tokenomics is on that little...
We wrote a medium article.
So if you check out Backbone Labs and you see the pinned message, you can actually get
the fuller scope of what we're doing with it.
But now, we have not released a tokenomics yet.
So I don't want to actually get into that part.
So you're going to have to wait on that one.
That's still in the work.
Makes sense.
But yeah, why need a token in the first place?
Is there...
Because you're not building an app chain, from what I can gather at least, the research
that I've done.
You're building it on Mikalu, or Whale, most people would know.
I can see them also here in the space.
So shout out to the Mikalu guys.
Yeah.
Perhaps talk to us about why you need a token and why build on Mikalu, perhaps also.
Sure.
So I'm just going to touch on the token.
This is a little bit more than I wanted to say.
Is that for us, it's always about sharing the money that's generated back with the community.
And this sole token at a limited supply like that is going to have properties,
where people will be earning assets from every L1 that the gravediggers are on, right?
So if there's 10 gravediggers, the sole token, just like Kujira, you stake your Kujira and
you earn your trading pairs, the sole token, you'll be able to stake your sole token and
earn yield from every gravedigger, all L1s right now.
So we're going to get into that in a little bit.
But so to us, it's all about just how do we stimulate economic activity?
How do we stimulate growth, right?
And so the best way to stimulate growth is just to, you know, not just to pay people,
but we want their participation.
So we share everything.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
It makes sense.
It makes a ton of sense.
And generally being able to generate yields across different products is, it seems more
and more to me, at least where I'm sitting, like a winning strategy.
I mean, Kujira, you mentioned, it's a good example of this, but there's many.
I mean, look at the Ethereum ecosystem and you see a lot of focus on real yields, quote
unquote.
So yeah, that seems to be a strategy that's going to win for the long term, at least in
the next cycle.
Let's see.
Let's see how this plays out.
So with the sole token, with all these products that you have already built, but with the
sole token, obviously a fundraise and perhaps even more activity that you can, things that
you can't do now, but you can do.
Yeah, no fundraising, no fundraising.
This is like a real fair token launch, 100%, right?
We're not selling any.
This is not a mechanism to raise more money.
This is a mechanism to reward the people who've been here with us this entire time.
Perfect.
Makes sense.
Good to clear that up, by the way.
But how does the roadmap look like then?
So there will be a token.
People can go out, buy it, stake it, and then earn yield.
So obviously the next question that most people are going to ask is, great, what are the products
that I can expect then?
So we talked about already the NFT marketplace.
We talked about the incubator, the launchpad.
But yeah, if people listening or re-listening to this afterwards as a podcast episode, if
they are hooked and interested in the sole token and just waiting for it to come out, what
can they look forward to on the roadmap?
So I would say that before even the sole token is going, let's just go with what's happening
immediately, right?
So we have a soft launch date for the Migaloo marketplace and the mint of the Migaloo whales
collection, which are managing partners for the whale gravedigger in the system that
we just discussed on the 21st.
And I say soft because we're literally working 24-7 to try to finish this in time.
But after that, end of the month, we have another SOC launch date for the Luna Classic
chain.
They want to mint their new collection over there, which will be the seeding collection
for the classic gravedigger.
After that, maybe tanks got some art done and we're doing the same thing on Juno, maybe
the end of the next month too, right?
Who knows?
But after that is when the sole token will probably be coming into play.
Like it's definitely not something that's going to just be like tomorrow.
I think we're still, it's A, the market is not the right market to do it in.
And B, we need to lay a couple more pieces of the puzzle.
You know, more gravediggers, more NFT communities, the stronger the sole token is, right?
So right now what we're doing is we're putting up gravediggers.
We're deploying marketplaces, we're deploying NFT collections to manage them.
And then we will have utility on the marketplace, which transacts in the B asset.
And then at that point is when we will do the token.
Awesome.
And I really like the approach that you guys are taking.
And I see more and more teams doing this, that you're not trying to stuff down a token
in everybody's throat.
I think that seems to be a strategy that works for a lot of people in the last cycle, but
not anymore.
We got smarter since then.
And instead, people are now building, they are showing traction, they are showing that
this is, you know, whatever they're building has legs.
And then they issue a token, which has, in your case, utility with real yield and all these
things.
So it's great to see that the entire industry, at least in Cosmos, has matured.
This is a step forward, if you ask me.
But let me ask you this, what do you see as the endgame, if there is an endgame?
There probably isn't.
But I like to use these spaces also to dream a little bit, because we tend to have very
short-term sort of approaches to things in crypto.
Like we tend to think in like one month from now, a quarter from now, half a year from now,
maximum a year from now, right?
But if you were to force yourself to think about, okay, five years from now, ten years
from now, 15 years from now, even, and sort of, you know, put yourself there 10 years
from now and look back at what Backbone Labs has become or has built, what would Backbone
Labs look like then?
What are the products that's going to be used?
If you sit there and say, that's exactly what we hoped to achieve with what we set out
to build today, basically.
And, you know, I got to say, that's such a difficult question.
You know, 10 years out from now, you know, it would be like 100 years in crypto or maybe
longer, you know.
So right now, right, I mean, like right now, Backbone Labs is not, let's just be clear,
we're not a company.
We are a group of validators and people who met in the skeleton punk community, and we
decided to form a group.
We called it Backbone Labs.
You know, our partner, you know, who handles our gravediggers, PFC, he's another one.
He's just been doing this because he likes what we're doing, right?
Like, we're, so it would be very hard for me to say, like, what it will be in 10 years.
But, you know, I guess the dream would be is that Backbone Labs is able to, you know,
unite people in a way that, look, for me, the mission is literally we need to get more
eyes on the space because we need to make sure that decentralized infrastructure is strong,
right?
I know for a fact that these CBDCs, they are a choke point.
They are a method of control.
And, like, that is a really scary thing.
I don't want to think about what life will be like in 20 years if we don't have other off
and on ramps and other activities besides ones with CBDCs, right?
That's happening.
So 10 years from now, I guess the dream would be that Backbone Labs, like, left its mark
on the world and, like, secured decentralized exchange for people.
Like, that would be the dream, right?
That would be the dream.
So we're not here to, like, don't get me wrong.
We're all here to obviously have some financial freedom and to not be slaves.
Like, I don't have any aspirations to be a billionaire.
I could care less about that.
But, you know, definitely would be nice to, you know, wake up in the morning and you're
not really worrying about the day-to-day stuff, right?
But, and that's a possibility in the world and the future that we're coming to, you know,
with AI, with all these things.
If it's done right, like, we could be coming into, like, an age of, like, super abundance.
But we can't let it be dominated by the select few anymore.
So this is, you know, a battle for freedom.
And, like, you know, we're trying to rally the troops for another go, like, before it's too late.
This is interesting.
And I took note of the word abundance because I think there's a big thing going on on a global scale.
This is going way beyond Cosmos, by the way.
But it seems like we have these, like, two versions of the world which we can move towards.
Either we're just going to inflate the hell out of everything and typically what happens
is that when you inflate things, money or whatever, you know, the value tends to trickle down
to those that already have assets or value.
So it will be the 1% or whatever, the half percent or, you know, fewer, fewer people essentially
is going to capture all that value.
Or we will stop doing that and start distributing value, becoming an abundant society where things
don't have to increase in price and, you know, the progress that we've seen, the technological
progress and progress in general in society is going to be spread out.
And I think crypto very much, this is obviously the point of Bitcoin originally, but crypto has
distribution or the potential for distribution.
We all know the problems that Bitcoin face in terms of distribution, but crypto very much
can deliver on that promise.
I don't know if you would agree with that, but I just took note of the word abundance there
because I think it's an interesting topic in general to have.
I couldn't agree more.
You get the nail on the head, brother.
You know, right on the head.
So how do we, as a community, obviously us being a humble club, the Cosmos Club, how does
Cosmos Club or the Cosmos community, how do we help each other?
How do we help you achieve this, the big dream that you guys have?
Yeah.
How can we give back?
Basically, we love people building in Cosmos.
This is what it takes to stay relevant and to move the needle.
So how can we help as a community?
You know, as a community, you know, what you're doing right now is the sharing of information
in this market.
That's the first step.
Like re-education is the second step.
We need to educate the next layer of users who are coming into the space on safety and
on the dangers of what this technology offers also, right?
Because it can be used nefariously as well, right?
So if, as a community, the more people that we have using and participating in these platforms,
I mean, that's where it's at, right?
That's literally, with a stage we're at today is we need users to see the technology, to
see the ease of use.
We need people to have fun, save fun.
We need people to, you know, make yield, you know, earn money.
And then, I mean, look, once I got into Cosmos, even in the bear market, I think the Cosmos is
a stickier ecosystem than any other one.
You know, after the crash, I looked around and I was literally like, yeah, I'm just going
to build on Terra.
Like, everything else was just not, I don't know.
You know what I mean?
And that's what it started, too.
And now we're building throughout the entire Cosmos.
And it's nice.
Cosmos, what I like about the Cosmos is that because it's so inner fluid, it's like, even
though, like, yeah, like you're building on a different chain, like you're still the
same, you're still doing the same stuff.
Like, our smart contracts most likely work over there.
You don't need to re-audit everything, right?
But really, I think what you're doing right now, you're educating people, you're getting
word out.
To me, that's like the number one thing right now.
And what we need is just we need more people participating.
Let me ask you this.
Where do you see Cosmos going as a community and as a technology?
Like, a lot of people are speculating now that more and more ecosystems are going to
integrate or adopt IBC.
Yeah, I'm just curious.
But where do you see Cosmos moving from here?
So, look, I might be a little biased because, you know, I'm definitely not of like, you
know, I hate saying it like this.
Okay, you know, the old Cosmos guard or whatever, right?
Like the old guard, right?
So, but, you know, one of the things, the IBC technology is definitely an inviting
playground and I think many, many, many organizations are going to come in.
Now, you're talking about Cosmos itself.
Like, I think there's a lot of politics that definitely need to be somehow ironed out.
I'm not a fan of a lot of this certain behavior that happens.
But besides that, you know, we don't even have to deal with that.
If you build something really amazing and beautiful, you can deploy it.
We now have access to feather chains coming out.
We now have access.
It's so easy now to start your own blockchain.
So, if you really don't want to deal with a lot of that, you don't, I guess you don't
have to, too, now.
So, that's also changing, right?
Yeah, definitely.
What do you think about the Atom token and its place in Cosmos, I guess, mainly?
Is it going to be the sort of collateral asset, as people are calling it, or the liquid asset,
across the entire ecosystem?
Or is it mainly just going to be used for the hub and to, obviously, earn juicy APIs?
There's still inflation, but still juicy APIs, as well as rewards from the consumer chains
that adopt ICS.
What's your take on the Atom token?
I know I'm getting a bit off.
No, you're not.
This is good.
This is good.
This is good.
Don't worry about it.
You can ask whatever you want.
So, look, I am biased, right?
Because I definitely was a lunatic.
I'm a lunatic.
So, like, I'm not really into the ICS module.
I don't see the need to buy the security if you've done it right.
And I think that there's better ways to stimulate economy.
And I think that's kind of more what we need right now.
So, I'm more of the alliance module group.
But, you know, and here's the other thing.
You know, you can't build smart contracts on Atom.
Like, you got to use, what is it, Babylon now?
Or Noble?
I mean, I don't even remember.
Like, there's a whole other, like, thing that you can't, you can't, it's not a smart
contract language.
It's not a gas token.
It doesn't have a utility.
So, I mean, you can rent security.
And that's an interesting paradigm.
But then if you, so, like, let's look, like, Stride's now renting security.
Does that make the Stride token sort of obsolete?
Like, why would you hold it anymore?
Like, I don't even know.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't know.
Maybe I don't have enough information.
Let me say that.
Let me preface it with that.
No, I think there's definitely pros and cons basically there.
And it's heavily debated in the ecosystem, which is also why I ask you.
Because I think the more voices we hear, the more informed decision community members
can make and proposals can be formulated.
So, yeah, I think just out of curiosity, really.
But let's circle back to Backbone.
Sorry about going off a bit off there.
But how can people get involved?
So, you guys are obviously on Twitter.
You mentioned the pinned tweet where we can see more about the token.
So, yeah, obviously, I encourage people to go on Twitter, find Backbone Labs and go follow.
But, yeah, how can people get involved with you guys?
You know, we do spaces every single Thursday with White Whale.
You'll catch us there every single Thursday, usually at 8 a.m.
My time.
So, I don't know what time it has in the world, but my time.
And we're getting ready to do our first inaugural mint on Igloo as well, hopefully next Thursday.
And if you guys want to participate in that, just go to the website, go to the Discord, go to the Skeleton Punk Discord.
Just get involved.
Ask questions.
My DMs are pretty much open.
I'm super reachable.
Yeah.
You know, we're just trying to get everyone back together again, because once that happens, then the next iteration of things begin, right?
That's really where we're at.
Just to go full circle, for those people out there that might not know, how can they check out Skeleton Punks?
Where can they find them?
Is it on Stargate?
So, where should people go if they're interested?
The Skeleton Punk Collection is the top Luna NFT collection to date, since the relaunch of Terra.
You can buy these at necropolisnft.io.
You can find that link in backbonelabs.io.
A lot of people like to shop on TFM because you can aggregate a bunch of stuff.
That's another place people shop Skeleton Punks, and they aggregate a bunch of chains.
So, they might be familiar with that buying interface.
But, yeah.
Perfect.
Yeah, brother.
Just want to make sure that people have all the information when they want to check out things after listening to this or re-listening on the podcast.
This has been awesome, man.
Thank you so much for joining.
Is there anything that we left out?
Anything that we should leave the community with today?
Just get ready for the Migaloo Whales Mint.
Be careful on strange links that you see in Discord.
And, yeah.
Stay safe out there.
If you're going to mint a collection that you don't know, please use a burner wallet.
Please.
Right?
Amen to that, brother.
Again, thank you so much for coming on.
And, well, okay.
I can see Zen has requested to speak.
I'll just...
Bring him up.
Bring him up.
Exactly.
I'm approving now.
He always has some interesting things to contribute with.
So, yeah.
I approve your request to speak.
You should be able to speak.
Yeah.
I see the mute icon.
So, if you unmute yourself.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
How are you guys doing?
Evening.
Welcome back.
Oh, thank you.
First of all, thanks for, you know, getting me up on stage.
It's always very nice to hear your soothing voice, Mr. Cosmos Club.
And, also, glad to speak to you again, JG.
You know, it's been a while.
Like, two hours.
So, very nice.
Just wanted to say that if you're new to, you know, the Backbone Labs ecosystem, it's
worth checking out.
They're, you know, about to really push forward the state of the art.
You know, they're the first cross-chain NFT marketplace.
You know, it doesn't matter which chain you're on.
You can just buy NFTs, launch collections.
It's just the next step, the next evolution, you know.
After, you know, app chains, you know, people will want to have cross-chain protocols where
you can access everything from everywhere.
And they're building this.
So, with a combination with DeFi, you know, this, you know, yield-bearing NFTs.
And we have a couple of people building on Migalu that have, you know, that have some
special ideas for Backbone Labs, for example, leveraged or lending against your NFTs.
So, a lot of cool things coming up.
But there's also a lot of cool things already existing.
So, lots to play around with and lots to be excited for.
Well said.
Maybe I can ask you, Sen, now that you're here.
How did you guys end up building together and working together?
You want to answer that?
Or do you want me to answer that?
I mean, we can both from our own perspectives.
So, I remember, you know, it's a small world.
So, builders know each other.
And, you know, we were busy, you know, licking our wounds and, you know, rebuilding our, you
know, and reinventing ourselves and, you know, building this Migalu chain.
And I think Backbone Labs as well.
So, one day when we started, you know, we always knew each other.
So, it wasn't like a cold call or something.
But when we finally launched our chain and built our token, we thought, you know, it just
makes sense to work together.
Because at that time, you know, there was also a lot of, and there still is a lot of,
you know, uncertainty around Terra.
I mean, now with Chris, you know, leading the pack, there's some certainty again and some
structure.
But still, you know, with Do Kwon gone and no, you know, release or any news in sight, we,
you know, we came together, you know, and started working together.
So, I just see, picture like a therapy group where you all meet on a space or virtually
somewhere after the crash.
It's like, man, guys, this is fucking nuts and there's no information coming.
What are we going to do going forward?
And you just sit there and say, you know what?
We just need to build, man.
That's what we need to do.
Exactly.
But this.
I mean, so many teams, you know, they took the money and ran away.
A lot of teams, you know, did some slow rucks, you know, both very sad.
But yeah, that's exactly what we've been doing, you know, almost, you know, one and a half
years now since the crash.
You know, let's just build something cool.
Nothing has changed.
This is the way.
All right.
Passing on the mic to you also from, yeah, to Backbone Labs, basically.
What's your story?
How did you end up connecting with Megaloo?
So, you know, for us, you know, we've always look, we never had a handout.
We tried to always do it from nothing.
You know, there wasn't much to work with.
So we've always felt like we fight.
We fought tooth and nail.
And, you know, I used White Whale Protocol when they were doing the Arbing of the UST and
defending the peg.
I was using White Whale back then.
And so, you know, I knew of Sebastian through the community.
And, you know, let's fast forward six months after the peg.
We've already now moved this forward.
And we've come up with this idea of Backbone Labs.
And it's an NFT5 model.
And I get a message from Sebastian.
He was like, hey, do you have time for a talk?
And I'm like, yeah, sure.
And when he proposed, when he said, like, hey, we're making our own chain and we're looking
to onboard two LSDs, you know, there's one other person besides you, but we'd like you
guys to, you know, kind of be one of our main pieces.
I was like, oh, my God, this is like another, like, leveler of the playing field, right?
Like, how does the little guys like us get to compete with, like, the Delphi's or, like,
these big groups that have never-ending money, right?
But this was one of these gateway moments.
And so we were like, yeah, this is – and especially with what they're trying to do
with the solving of the fractured liquidity, like, it just fits so perfectly, these pieces
of the puzzle, that I was like, yeah, we're in, right?
So at that point, then they gave us a grant, and now we're – fast forward today, and
now we're, like, getting ready to go into the next mode.
But I feel like we're just about to downshift into the next gear.
Like, it's about to happen.
Awesome, man.
I can see there's a community member that's requesting to speak.
I hope it's okay with you guys to take a community question.
I believe it's from the community.
So I just invited Consuelo to speak.
You're on mute right now, but if you unmute yourself, you can ask a question.
And by the way, thank you, Sebastian, for pitching in.
That's Zencom.
Yeah, Sebastian is the founder.
He sometimes lays low a little bit, but I'm just a guy.
Zencom.
Yes.
All right.
I don't know if Consuelo is actually coming on stage here.
Still on mute.
Hello.
How's everybody?
I just came in.
Hello.
Yeah, I just came in.
There's a lot of music in the background, but we can hear you.
I had my TV on.
I'm sorry.
No, I'm doing fine.
Just hanging out.
Just decided to step in.
See what you're all talking about.
Yeah, that's cool.
Do you have any questions or just chipping in?
Just chipping in.
That's it.
All right.
No worries.
Well, if there's no further questions from the community, then I'll leave it to that.
So thank you so much again, guys, for coming on.
I'm sure this is not the last time that we speak about all the great things coming out
of Backbone Labs.
Zencom, thank you also for coming on.
It's great to see you again.
Guys.
Wait, wait one second.
We forgot.
We have a giveaway.
So anybody who will like or retweet this space, we're giving away two Skeleton Punks
and we're giving away five whitelist spots to the new Mint coming up.
So please like, retweet this space.
If you could, Cosmos Club, would you maybe repost your own space with the contest rules?
Because then we'll pick the Twitter.
We'll use a Twitter picker.
Definitely.
Yeah, we can use a Twitter picker.
Two Skeleton Punks and five whitelist spots.
You're crazy, man.
Bro, we got to go hard now.
And you know what?
I really like what these guys are doing.
So it's worth it.
I will retweet it now.
Our own announcement.
Yes, you are absolutely right.
Sorry for forgetting.
Because we need people to get involved here.
And that's what's happening.
People need to engage in order to get rewarded.
With the Skeleton Punk or Mikalu White.
Yeah, guys.
Thank you for reminding, by the way.
So, great.
This has been awesome.
Thank you so much again for coming on.
And I look forward to speak soon.
Thank you again.
Have a great day.
Take care, guys.
Take care, guys.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
Ciao.
