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DeSci Rising x MetaFlora | ep 7
Recorded: May 1, 2025 Duration: 1:11:39Space Recording
Short Summary
Metaflora is set to launch a major update in two weeks, coinciding with their Token Generation Event, which will enhance their blockchain ecosystem in the cannabis industry. The project is forging strategic partnerships and embracing trends towards transparency and scientific validation, positioning itself for significant growth.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Greg.
Hey, how we doing?
We're doing good, sir.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Doing well.
It's great to have you up here, man.
It's good to hear your voice.
So the way that we usually structure this is, I mean, you sound great, so that's great.
I take it you've done spaces before?
Yes, of course.
Pretty sure I've heard you on a couple other spaces.
So usually I wait a couple minutes to let people kind of come in, but then we'll just kick it off.
We have a little bit of a little intro that we do here, and then it's straight into getting to learn about you, the platform, and getting hopefully into real good discussions about cannabis and other applications.
I see that you guys are cannabis-focused, but there's actually a lot of translatable um infrastructure here that can
be used for different things as well so i'm looking to learn definitely learn about the scope
um but yeah it's relaxed conversation we got about an hour it'll be a showcase of all the
cool stuff that you guys are doing cool well yeah looking forward to it yeah man so we'll just
wait a little bit i'll throw some things up on the Jumbotron
and then we'll kick it off soon. Cool. Cool. Thank you. We've got some people coming in.
Hey, Ed, it's been a while.
I haven't seen you or heard from you in a bit.
I'm sure you'll be, love to hear you jump on here if you have any questions.
And really to everybody in the audience, open platform, right?
Like just if you have anything you want to say you want to
interrupt you want to ask a question you want to make a comment related to the topic that we're
talking about feel free to just jump up on stage i'll bring you up it'll be a great um leaning
into decentralization and pluralism here um we're all here to learn about fantastic projects um so
we'll kick it off now um so hello everybody my name is Jelani if you don't know and welcome
to season two episode seven of the DCI Rising series put on by DCI World where our goal here
is always to provide an opportunity for the many wonderful projects on our growing DCI World
dashboard to just formally introduce themselves update their progress highlight their achievements
and just generally engage with both the DCI world, but also the wider DSI community.
There has been a lot of churn and change in what DSI has looked at over the past four years.
And I think we're starting to really reach a point where we have projects that are maturing
and kind of branching out of the Web3 space or being solely active in the Web3 space and starting
to touch the, what I like to call the meat space and like the actual space where things get done. So
it's been a wonderful ride and I'm glad to showcase more of these projects that are kind
of hitting that maturity inflection like Metaflor. And so the idea behind all this,
as always at DCI World, is that we very much believe that more than the tech, more than the
funding, it really is the community that is going to be leveraging all of these tools and assets
that are ultimately going to be the ones to usher in all of the changes that we're looking for
to really bring to the various legacy STEM industries.
Now, on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Greg Ciguni.
And Greg, I hope I'm pronouncing your last name well, but please feel free to correct me.
Who is the founder and CEO of Metaflora.
You will have definitely heard about him.
He's been on a number of podcasts over the last couple of months.
The one that I heard or that I listened to was your podcast with Giovanni and Circular and that partnership.
And love to go into some details there.
But what Metaflora is, is effectively a blockchain powered ecosystem, transforming
the cannabis industry with web three.
And I'm sure a number of other things offering transparency, traceability and
data-driven innovation.
And so with all that being said, Greg, thank you for taking the time out of what
I'm sure is a very busy schedule to just help us learn more about what you guys
are doing, umaflora,
but also about the team behind Metaflora and kind of what your history has been.
Yeah, excellent.
Yeah, I'm Greg Sigonis.
I'm the founder of Metaflora.
We've been doing quite a bit recently.
This is probably the most exciting time in the history of what we've been building.
We have a huge, huge update coming in about, let's say, two weeks' time is when we'll push it live.
Everything's kind of in the testing phase right now.
But we've been building quite a lot.
We launched somewhat about a year ago. This project has been in my mind,
I've built in a business plan for about four and a half years now. I graduated from the
University of New Hampshire. And since then, I've just kind of gotten myself embedded into
the medicinal and recreational cannabis industry and just kind of saw a lot of
the things that were emerging out of this industry that just needed solutions. And I just, you know,
had my calling of knowing this industry inside and out and knowing what steps needed to be taken
in order to bring our industry into this next level.
So I like to compare it a lot to the way that we look at the wine industry,
where we do have this kind of source ship attached to it.
Origintation, the origination, the type of vines, the way that it's grown.
Is it on a hillside? Is it flat land?
What kind of weather it was that year? The things that we pay attention to as far as vintage and also,
you know, verifiability. And this is really something that's lacking in the cannabis industry.
And this industry especially has so many different layers to it, especially when we get into the science of everything. We have grown so much in the past couple of decades. It's absolutely unreal.
And it's getting a lot harder for people to be able to, let's say, learn about these
common allergies that exist within inside the plant, what their medicinal benefits are, and also
combating the stigmas that are attached to it.
We still are battling these stigmas.
And with decentralization and having information at our fingertips on a global scale attached
to transparency and, most importantly, verifiability um this is how we enter into this
new realm this is how we tie blockchain technology decentralized node networks um
decentralized data structures and really move into a new generation of how we validate and be transparent across industries.
So yeah, back to the point at hand was, you know, we started off our database. That's primarily what
we are doing is tracking, tracing genetic lineages and its origin. That's what we do at our foundation.
We have just under 10,000 strains.
We actually have more than 10,000.
They just haven't made it.
They haven't passed all our validation techniques
until they try to get added to our database.
But another 4,000 test results from different laboratories
across the world.
And that's going to be growing in the next two weeks here
where we have certain sort of utility involved on our platform
so these things can get onboarded a lot quicker.
And so we're really excited about this next phase
where we are dropping our total generation event.
And with that comes how do we onboard data?
How do we onboard companies?
How do we onboard laboratories, case studies, and peer reviews moving forward?
So that's something to look forward to in our next build out.
And yeah, I've been in the industry for a very long time.
I've been in crypto for about 10 years now.
We have a blockchain developer that is absolutely top of his game.
He's a lifelong industry member and has developed a lot of things that you might even have in your own home.
So, yeah, we're really looking forward to these next steps here.
We have a lot planned.
We have a lot of strategic partners from LFG Incorporated to Deep Network
that is truly decentralizing our platform all the way up to Circular Protocol,
which is our dual-layer ledger that is going to be supporting us
in validating our information for the healthcare
industry. This is super interesting because you, and I will say this, I've run into a number of
cannabis-focused platforms or projects or entities in the Web3 space, none quite as extensively
scientific-leaning as yours, know with the degeneracy comes some of
these more esoteric applications um and so it kind of it always makes me wonder why there are so many
of them um and it almost seems fragmented right so in in and i'll circle back to to metaphor as a
as a crux here but but in europe in my in your, or my question to you is, are you leaning into any of these
existing communities as sources of either contributors or anecdotal participants in
what you guys are building? Or have you started completely from scratch in your community efforts?
Well, we always have room to grow.
And if there's communities out there that are listening, we would totally want to connect with everybody.
But my network is very vast.
And I've just recently, I've been living in Europe for about a year now.
And so I've been establishing myself on a global layer, you know, attending different conferences.
I have our podcast Beyond the Haze, which has been a great networking tool,
bringing in companies like Pico IV that they actually stretched out the molecules in order for it to fit through a syringe so you can now get iv hooked up uh with these cbd treatments
also thc treatments but the cbd ones are all over the united states uh you can look up these guys
and um you know get some therapy done uh you know almost uh within a 24-hour notice but their
findings and the way that they um the the impact that it's being created is absolutely unreal.
We had them on the show and they became really good friends of ours.
I'm supposed to go out and visit them in Thailand in a couple months here.
And just things like this is, you know, places, connections that I wasn't even looking for, I didn't even know that existed,
are popping up everywhere due to social media
and Metaflora's mission
and people reaching out to us wanting to get involved
because we are solution-based.
That's really what this whole platform was designed for.
And to go back to your question about our community involvement,
this all,
this movement can be possible without the consumer end or the community end
of it. There's a disconnect.
That's what I saw immediately was sure big money is going to come into this.
You know, we,
we do have a majority of the industry controlled by the alcohol industry and
the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the tobacco industry.
And there's been a disconnect to the, their user base, their clientele.
And that's not really what drives this industry.
The industry is driven by its, by its consumers and by its culture.
So we do have like a really big involvement in the arts.
Anything that stems out of inspiration from the cannabis industry.
And it's very vast, right?
We have a medical aspect of things.
So we have the entire medicinal community.
And that's why we're here today on this Desai Rising. But also on a
recreational standpoint where we do have music and artists, we have extreme sports and hiking,
the outdoors. All these things are what stem from its inspiration. And that's the voice.
That's the voice of this entire ledger.
And so we get to bridge that gap.
We get to bring all the information that's being newly created, newly founded, and then link that back down to those who want to know more. And that's why I was stressing in the beginning about this connoisseurship.
connoisseurship. Connoisseurship is just knowledge base, right? So the more that we understand,
Connoisseurship is just knowledge base, right?
the better we can provide more high-end products and innovate in the correct forms and in the right
directions. Because there are a lot of companies out there. There's a lot of businesses out there.
And they are trying to hit markets in the right time in order to be successful.
And in order to do that, I think all eyes need to be on what metaphor is building, because
we are a voice from all angles.
We're a voice for the industry.
We're a voice for the market.
And we're a voice for the connoisseur.
And it all trickles back and forth between all areas and all sectors.
No, I think that's a perfectly point, right?
I mean, you mentioned that you're here on DSiRising for the medical perspective,
but I would argue, and I actively do argue, that DSi,
which is slightly different from open science and some of the other ones,
is a more holistic perspective of how science can be interwoven into social,
can be interwoven into,, can be interwoven into,
or actually is another side of a coin of artistry. Like this is a comprehensive view, a holistic view
of these things that originally were thought to be separate. And the only way to drive the
innovation and to get us to the next leg up of where we have to go, whatever your perspective
is, whether it be finance or actual impact or community development is to weave these things all together. And so, and I've said it
before, I think this series, this year of Desai is really highlighting these projects that are
really branching out and touching upon all these different pillars and weaving them together nicely
to create effectively an operating system that allows you to, to your point, bridge across them and not extract, but allow value to flow
synergistically across these different verticals, but in a way that is compounding.
And so I love it.
I love exactly everything that you just said about what you're doing and how it's being
active or applied in the cannabis industry.
Yeah.
And that's right.
It is more than just that, too.
And as we look into where metaphoric can blossom out from,
we want to do the cannabis industry right.
We're going to have everything down pat, exactly to our vision.
But it doesn't end there, right?
There's also many different forms of herbalism,
and we're mixing these with different recipes
that go into Canvas as well.
So we are looking at onboarding different types
of natural remedies that are also combining
to ingredient lists.
And that way we can kind of expand our database, our community building, and also our knowledge
based on what goes inside of these products. Because a lot of the times we're reading these
things and we're like, okay, so it has this, this, and this in it. I know they're good for me, but I
don't really know what they do. It's like looking at a test result for cannabis.
And, you know, there's all these different lists of terpenes and cannabinols,
and it doesn't relate to your average user.
You know, that's why we had a race to the top for the THC content,
is because that was the only thing that people could identify with.
They knew what it would be.
You know, it was very common knowledge.
And so when you go home,
you have bragging rights about something. You say that it was 34% TEC or something like that,
and you pick it up at the store. But if you're using it for medication or you're using it for
recreational use, we all know that when you find something that fits your lifestyle,
now you're starting to look at different aspects of the plant
and its benefits that go towards you, you know?
And through all this, I mean, me personally, I've created
or I've changed my habits and what I look for in a plant these days.
And it's so much more interesting.
It's so much more fun.
Um, and, and it gets very, very much involved.
So you, I mean, that's, that's the, that's a connoisseur, right?
Somebody who goes, starts somewhere and then ends up delving into effectively
a scientist in truth, uh, delving into what is the more, what is the next,
what is the additional.
And I think it kind of makes me beg the question because this sounds like, and for people who
don't know, my background is I'm a neuroimmunologist, spent a lot of time in the genetic space.
It sounds very similar to the advent of the Human Genome Project, right? Where we had a
cursory understanding of certain key genetic markers, but we didn't really have a comprehensive view or reference with which to look at some of of other things that exist within the system of a cannabis plant
that may also be contributors to whether it be medicine or recreational or what have you
to my knowledge the reference genome there is no reference basis for all the things that exist
within a cannabis plants or an herbal remedy and it sounds to me that and from my cursory
grants thatora is effectively
building out the infrastructure for us or for people to start to build out those actual reference
libraries those reference data sets to actually start to garner that knowledge about what exactly
is in there and the different permutations of how they may interact with one another am i getting
that correctly i mean that's 100 correct um And you're right, we don't know
everything yet. And it's, it's almost like every time somebody
comes to me, and was like, hey, you're, you know, you're the
founder of Metaflor, right? And they're like, check out this test
result. You know, and there's all the all these things that I
haven't seen before that aren't available yet on our website.
You know, there's so many different types of terpene profiles.
It's everything is just kind of blossoming out.
You know, I said it before like that.
And it's so true.
We're learning so much more about what this plant can really do for us.
And our platform, it categorizes all these things and
and every single every single piece of the test result has an information bar and it gives you
an overview of what it's known for and what is a high level you know some of these things are
a fraction of the percentage right right but
but those are still very high values um because most plants don't have it in at all so with this
information we can go to geneticists and say okay so you want you want to be breeding for a purpose
well let's strengthen this this compound further because it has this type of
medicinal benefit so now now our our extraction ratios are going up you know through the roof so
now we have more affordable um extraction methods which relates back to the consumer as a more
affordable medicine um and we're innovating as as we, right? That's fantastic. So let's talk about that. So
let's actually go into Metaflora's ecosystem. So you talk about a database. I see that you guys
leverage, you dropped names of a few different platforms, partners and whatnot, but Metaflora
in and of itself, if I'm coming, if I'm a cannabis enthusiast, if I'm a cannabis researcher, if I'm
just a general consumer, what is it? Where do I
land? What is the thing that I see when I open the doors of Metaflora? So on today's standards,
you're going to be accessing a complete database of around 8,500 trained and 3,500 test results.
and 3,500 test results.
And this is our foundational database on the,
let's just call it the 14th.
It's in about two weeks from now.
You will be able to be writing your own articles.
You'll be able to go to the store
and link more test results into the database,
create new databases, add new strains on there.
If you are a company, you're a cultivator, a geneticist, we have ways for you to onboard
your information of your newly created strains. And as a cultivator, this is extremely important
because if you want to be growing strawberry cough,
okay, where did it come from? And is it truly strawberry cough? Now, if we can pinpoint the
exact representation of who was the geneticist and the chain of command, where it trickled down
through the supply chain, now we can completely verify that it is, in fact, where it's coming from.
And then on a molecular standpoint, we have this ability of onboarding this so we can match
the phenotypes when we go to phenol hunting. Because what's on the cover of high types
is not necessarily, if you get a CPAC, you're not necessarily going to find that phenotype right
away um and you know as we know uh without the science it it takes a long time you know we have
to veg it we have to flower it we have to and then and then we test it but um but now as soon
as they it sprouts one leaf um you know you can have instant results at home even.
The testing is so far advanced now.
And then we pair that there for a match.
So there's incentives involved as well.
We have our Flora token.
And so every time you interact with the platform or somebody interacts with
your article, we have a reward system built in there just to incentivize the work that you've
been doing on the platform, contributing to this, what I call legacy library. It's forever on chain.
it's forever on chain so you know 10 20 30 years from now and you're doing a study um you know
either it's a study about an ailment or a study on a specific genetic you'll always be referenced
right we have ai built in you know who doesn't have ai built in these days but it's always on
a reference and it's always targeted and it's always tracked um so we have not just you being
embedded into the history of cannabis all in one spot but you also get rewarded along the way but i
i would like to go back to that because it's very important that we talk about a a node network and the use of a blockchain and creating a historical database.
This isn't the first historical database that's been done,
but it's the first one that's ever been going on chain at the moment,
especially in the caliber that we're doing.
And I've tried to access other global databases and the links are done.
They're dead, dead links.
And, you know, they didn't pay for the server.
So, I mean, where we're at right now is a huge, huge solution.
And anybody that is even a home grower to a connoisseur,
somebody who, a regular smoker,
or they eat edibles or topicals or whatever,
we wanna hear from everybody.
Everybody's information is completely valid.
And we need it moving forward.
And that's what sets the real foundation.
Like what we have now is,
I'm impressed with what we have,
but it's nothing compared to what we're going to have in a year.
When we start getting everybody's opinions,
when we start onboarding everybody's genetics,
and we start opening up this wholesale market and a retail market,
and everybody knows where things are coming from and contributing to a global
ledger, a historical database that will forever be referenced moving forward. And this is a
solution from anybody, from the labs, the scientists, to the consumer, to the cultivators,
to the geneticists. everybody will benefit from the
content that gets created on the platform. So I absolutely don't disagree. I think that there are,
I mean, infrastructure, right? Effectively, you're an infrastructure developer.
And much like with anything else, the only way, like the fastest way for us to move things around
is through roads. And so in the absence of the, of the, I guess, the hierarchy, the, the canonical Roman road system, like things were just moving really
slowly and it was disjointed. And so you're effectively building the road system for
the cannabis industry. If I can make that, that as bold of a claim, or at least some sub segment
of the cannabis industry for yourself. And that's, that's, it's, it's not a, it's not a new,
it's not a new thought, right? Like you're not reinventing the real, you are applying new technology to something that is like, yes, we need to have better infrastructure so that we can see where everything comes from and then determine where it needs to go. So that's amazing.
incentive framework from the perspective of making sure that, you know, people are rewarded
for their contribution. This is not just a pro bono, even if they would do it still,
you know, there should be a flywheel to make people want to or feel valued in the participation.
The one, two comments and one question. The one comment is curation right if if everybody can can contribute not
all contributions are of the same caliber and sometimes there are contradictory contributions
and so it may be too early at this point for where you guys are but is there a curation
validation something there that can identify people's knowledge? Yes, but maybe understand the skewness of knowledge
or the error proneness of that knowledge
that is being committed.
Yeah, I would say that there's a few different types
of curation tiers.
One, you have your average user base,
then you also have your industry sector,
and then you also have your industry sector um and then you also have your
reputation on the platform so even if you were an average user uh everything that you you click on
you comment uh you onboard this goes and builds into your personal profile if you're a home grower
if you're a commercial cultivator, you have a lot
more information there. And it's almost like a social aspect, right? And so we can create these
different types of hierarchy tiers based on either reputation or based on a company standpoint.
reputation or based on a company standpoint and this is how uh people will be attracted to
different types of knowledge right yeah that makes sense and so in terms of
so you're uploading people are participating they're uploading their knowledge of the cannabis
um but in any consumption based system, you have two, you have two
fold types of data.
You have the cannabis data.
So the actual commodity data, but then you also have the personal data.
And so I actually work with a company that is, that does genomic testing for
cannabis sensitivity from the, from the user perspective.
And is there, is there some of that that that exists within your ecosystem are you
simultaneously looking for i know you're you're recording anecdotal like influence or i'm assuming
the user's experience but from the genomics perspective are you looking at that as well as
people's sustain sensibilities can people upload their genomic reports of you know i'm sensitive
to cannabis based off of this this this, that, and the third?
Are you capturing the human side as well, or are you mostly focused on the actual plant?
No, 100%.
That all is, you know, legitimate variables moving forward.
And we want to be able to onboard all these types of information to be to be actually accurate right that's really cool i
mean i'd love to put you in contact with that with that group that is doing that they they
they have their own internal sequencing they do clinical grade sequencing but also um real world
evidence sequencing on cannabis uh sensitivity for individuals so that may be a great industry
partner for you guys as well i would love love that. Where are they based out of?
So they're based out of Bermuda and they're active throughout the Bermuda, the Caribbean,
and some of Latin America. But I mean, you can sequence from anybody, right? So given enough
of an incentive and enough of a push or a desired demand, they can export that
functionality to whoever. But they're actively doing this with a number of different populations.
Very nice. Yeah, I'd love to get caught that. Yeah, for sure. And so in terms of the actual
incentive frameworks, I'm always slightly skeptical of tokenomics, even though I understand
their place. But I did realize, I did notice that on your decks and of tokenomics, even though I understand their place.
But I did realize, I did notice that on your decks
and of your information, you talk about the token being used
or being able to buy certain other things
or being leveraged as utility for certain other frameworks.
What is it from your perspective, from your ecosystem
that sustains that economic flywheel that is at play here so
that it's not just a race to zero and then there's a lack of sustainability right so i guess that all
stems from us being a layer one um for one transactions um even even small transactions
that you know you'll have to you'll have to utilize a small amount of flora even to to post an article that way we prevent a lot of spamming but our
store we have everything from you know from CBD products will be will be
geo-fencing THC products and there's pretty much what we have done was we focused completely on the tokenomics
aspect. Like I said, I've been around the industry for quite a long time. I've seen a lot of what doesn't work. And it all is about something
that didn't have all the thought put in place
before launching a token.
Correct.
It needs to be able to be utilized
in a real-world scenario.
You have to give it value across your platform.
It needs to be able to be utilized.
So there's quite a bit of different ways that you will be utilizing it around there.
A lot of the items, like I was saying in the beginning,
you are looking for incorporating the inspirations for cannabis.
So if you're on the cannabis platform
and you're receiving like our node owners um they get a um a very large chunk of our token on a
daily basis so they're the ones that are going to be um more or less just receiving a lot every day
uh but but that's not a barrier of entry either, right? Everybody's
first contribution is free on the platform, and then you start earning afterwards.
And so once you start gathering these things, it's like, okay, so what do I use it for?
You know, sure, you can sell it. But we have way more things that are about, like, what are you
going to sell it for? Because we sell it. You know come to our platform and we'll have a full retail environment.
We move towards a wholesale environment also for the businesses.
We have a lot of incentives for holding and keeping your Florida token for longer periods of time.
Different types of locking mechanisms that will earn more,
different types of liquidity pool incentives.
There's AI that you'll be using it for.
And yeah, the list kind of goes on and on.
There's a few things that we're waiting to announce
that's on my list here.
But as we start snowballing the platform out larger and larger
and kind of incorporate a few more of these different types of utilities
but formats of the platform, you'll see that we have integrated it
into every living piece of it.
And it was, yeah, a very strong focus of ours was,
that's why we didn't release the token right away either.
Everything needed to be available
before the token's been released.
We even pushed it back another month
from when we were supposed to launch,
just because we had a few more things
that we were very close to having
and everything kind of needs to be in place from day one in order for us to establish value and hold
value. So I love that. And that question was a little bit of a bait. I already, I had gone
through your documentation, so I had seen everything. But I really wanted you to have
the opportunity to expound on that because that, in truth, is a fantastic piece of information for people who are looking to participate in a platform.
Yes, the utility of the platform itself in terms of the, in this case, the focus of the cannabis, but understanding how the actual economic flywheels are integrated and what was the thought process behind that.
behind that and you said exactly right like utility is king when it comes to designing
And you say it exactly right.
tokenomics but you also have to be very measured in what that actually looks like because tokenomics
it's very they're very hard to change over time and so you effectively or the way that i've seen
it best applied is you establish the foundation of the of the entity of the project of whatever
you're building and then you layer tokenomics on top of that,
not this vice versa traditional way that it's been done where it's launched
token and then scrabble to figure out how we're going to make this all work
out. And then there's deviations, right?
So I think it's, it's very important for people coming into,
and especially in the D size space where weaving in tokenomics or weaving in
token incentives is, can be looked at negatively,
we need to have more of these discussions or at least highlight those projects that understand
where and how to apply and have thought of a measured approach in that application of those
tokens. And I think you said it perfectly and you described it perfectly. So everybody who's
listening, everybody who's going to be listening later, this is the type of conversation that you
should be having or at least assessing when deciding to participate, whether it be
financially or contribution, contributarily to a project of interest of yourself. So you guys are
doing great work. That's fantastic. Thanks. So Ed was here. And yeah, actually, I'm going to bring
Ed back up because one of the other questions that I had in this kind of holistic approach is, you know,
we talked about the plants, you guys have the plants and creating the reference
genomes for that.
And I actually have another question about that, but I'll come back to it.
You have the humans, which we talked about briefly in terms of their
sensitivities and their own genomic makeup in terms of how that operates.
But then there's also the environment with which
the plant is developed in. And so Ed here is a massive proponent of regenerative agriculture,
understanding the holistic framework of actual agriculture, and looking into things that go
beyond the plant, such as the soil, the microbiome of the soil, the nutrient content of the soil,
and all these kinds of things.
Do you also have data verticals that look into that?
You know, what substrate was the plant grown in?
Analysis of that substrate.
So I saw that you guys do geology as well.
I just wanted to know if you could comment
about any of that kind of data
that is being captured in the platform,
or might be captured in the platform in the future? Yes.
I mean, that's, of course, I would have to say, first of all, how's it going, Ed?
We've, we've spoke before and yes, regenerative farming, especially where, where I come from,
we were passing around a lot of really awesome knowledge about how to build up proper soil. And, you know,
it's more predominant in your outdoor growing environments. Once we started moving towards
the shift of, you know, indoor is the most superior, we kind of found a lot more different
types of substrates going involved, different types of growing techniques, a lot more chemis.
And I think that, you know, there's many different layers to that, right?
There's the knowledge base towards the commercial cultivator,
and also the user base should be a lot more knowledgeable
about what's inside of that bag.
How was it grown?
Remember, it's always about the story that's being told.
One day, we're going to be able to put a jar of cannabis
in the middle of a business meeting,
just like we do a bottle of wine.
This bottle of wine costs $10,000.
Now let's talk about this deal.
In five, 10 years from now,
we're going to be putting a jar of cannabis on
there and it's going to tell a story it's going to say you know how how was the how was the soil
created what what was the um you know what was its regiment its feeding its feeding schedules
was it all compost teas top dressings uh fully organic um Or was it utilizing a certain company that's known to boost this or boost that?
I know that there's followers in the salt nutrients.
Is it something for me?
That's my own opinions or my owns on on what i classify as good cannabis
um but i'm not going to go and shame anybody's um growing techniques because we want to see
all of your results on the platform um and and these types of substrate models and also these techniques. I think that's a really big reason why people don't go that route is because it is a little
bit more confusing to somebody new to the industry or new to growing.
The other route is a lot easier. But as a measurable data point, 100%, that's like on the top of my list.
Amazing. Ed, did you want to chime in? I've been speaking over you. Go ahead.
Yeah. As you may, I come from regenerative ag and the technology we're able to use now,
and the technology we're able to use now, especially in the last two or three years,
and some emergent science is just giving us so much more insights.
And, of course, what we're using is now we are introducing third-generation metagenomics.
So we're really in the, from the metabolomics of of food of everything that's grown on a farm
from the animals to all the plants through metabolomics we can really study the metabolites
and what we produce and really get an understanding of the spectrum and densities of all the metabolites.
And then we look at how everything from the seed variety to the,
certainly the soil biome to the metagenomics,
which we're now in third generation, introducing that.
And so we can get really a deep understanding of the of all the microbes involved including
rhizophagy cycling which is a new form a new discovery of how a plant actually eats and mostly
bacteria and so what we're able to then and now we're doing feeding studies too so we can take
something that we grew that has a high nutrient density and
spectrum and something that's slow and see the difference in how it affects people from especially
when you're the old food is medicine and of course with cannabis it's a similar concept that we're
trying to bring into it and so that we can and what we have found through the metabolomics is that to get the
nutrient density and spectrum that we're really expecting out of the genetics of the plant,
the soil biome is the number one factor that puts it in that high percentage category when we look
at the variation. And especially within a variety. You take a variety
and you grow it different ways. You can, you know, with a fruit or a vegetable, you can be down at the
10 to 15 percentile in the potential variation or you could be up at the 80 or 90 and the variation
is huge and when we look at most of agriculture, which is basically more of a hydroponic system, even if it's in the soil, in other words, you're focusing on the liquid nutrients.
regulate the chemistry so that we really have to focus on the microbiome of that soil and how that
enters the plant and understand that and one of the big things we're now focusing on are the seeds
because what we found is because of how we produce our seeds in soil it doesn't have enough biome
and doesn't have proper nutrition and we now can measure the nutrition level too in the plant, especially the minerals.
That's the new discovery of technology.
There's a handheld in the field meter that's going to be available in about a year that
we're going to be able to test the mineral content all the way down to the seed.
the mineral content all the way down to the seed.
And what we found is that it's really not the seed variety in the DNA that's,
you know, we got to keep focusing on.
It's the epigenetics of that.
So adapting that to the soil microbiome over and doing that for many
generations, that's where you start really getting the, as I said,
nutrient density and spectrum, or all the metabolites that we're looking for and that
we really need, because in the food diet, that's been a problem. We just don't have the spectrum.
You eat an orange and you expect to get vitamin C out of it, or a carrot and, you know,
carotene and all the different things that you expect to get out of a plant but when you don't grow them right you find that a lot of these especially micronutrients
and stuff just aren't there because and then you have to discover why and it turns out to be the
biome so now we've realized that we can take seeds and they need to be grown in the proper soil but if not we have inoculants that actually
work now because we realize that a lot of inoculants because most microbes can't be
reproduced in a lab or in a compost pile they can only be reproduced in the presence of living roots
so that change is how you have to develop a seed and then you got to make sure there's enough
minerals in that seed for it to start out well so that it doesn't immediately get affected by
pathogens it'll affect its ability to be a healthy plant and produce the outcome that we're really
expecting so that's where we now have also a mineral inoculant but the best thing to do is to
understand the soil that you're producing your initial seed in um because that's where you
really that's where we get the sustainability and the integrity of seeds so you know all this stuff
and you know i i had i've experienced you know before it was we were really
supposed to be doing it because I've always focused on soil for so long I worked on you know
a little plot of epigenetics and just you know over time how you develop you know the qualities
of it and when I compare that to anything that I can get,
that's grown generally in your sort of a hydroponic system, because it's really not
focused enough on the biome, there's just no comparison. It's the same way we find with
anything we grow. When you do that liquid focus, that's just not the way a plant wants to eat.
It's just like going in the hospital.
You need an IV to stay alive, but that's nothing you could sustain yourself on.
So I think, you know, the cannabis industry, anything we grow, we've got to start using this biome science because that's where we're really finding.
That's the number one issue that we've
had. We just haven't focused
because we couldn't. Now we have
the technology to do that.
Anyway,
that's my initial thought.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
With cannabis
too, every single one
of these strains reacts differently. If you're in a
rainy climate or something really dry, if you're planting in the ground, what's your clay made out
of? Maybe it's forest products or something like this. All of these are variables towards the success of your grow.
And everything will sway when we get down to looking at the different qualities that come out of it or maybe even the success rate.
So, yeah, 100%, all this needs to be recorded as well.
And it's one of the most important things like you're saying that, um,
people should be looking into.
So Greg, I, you know, all of the, like this kind of discourse and discussion,
I mean, it's, it's being captured.
I assume in your, in your community, um, you mentioned an AI, effectively an information distillation matrix.
Do you guys envision creating standards, right?
Effectively being that repository where people can come to and be like,
okay, this is what I'm trying to do, or this is what I'm trying to understand.
This is effectively the library, the Alexandrian library of cannabis.
Will there be efforts from from
metaphor to start to put out these kind of industry reports um and just standard guidelines
to for best practices moving forward with regards to to cannabis you know industry yeah that's 100
And the industry reports are great, and we're on our way towards these features.
But even more so is the industry adopting it as that answer on both sides of the spectrum, right?
We need it on the industry side, consisting of the spectrum.
We need it on the industry side, consisting of all industry, and we also need to be accepted
on the consumer side of things.
And that's how we'll be more recognized.
But as we move towards that type of image of our company too. We plan to unroll some more features within our company
going on to like a commodity standpoint,
utilizing blockchain and that sort of thing
for commercial on a global scale.
That makes sense.
I have, I think, one more question
as we wrap up the space is,
what has been the most difficult part of this journey?
Whether it be regulatory or infrastructure
or community building,
maybe more leaning on the regulatory,
like the actual outward appeal of this. What's been the most difficult part of your journey so far for Metaflora?
Well, to be honest with you, the regulatory side of it has been the easiest that I've encountered.
I, I, you are winning. Yes. Well, I know. Well, I, I, I, I also own a, also own 120 acres out in California.
Okay.
And so I got four cannabis licenses in California,
and that was a very lengthy and difficult process.
Lots of investments and people's hands out that needed to get paid along the way.
What is nice about MetaFlor on a regulatory standpoint is we're dealing with data,
and we get to deal with every pocket of the industry that is operating on a legal level.
on a legal level. We get to interact with companies that are in the THC game, in the CBD game,
in the medicinal atmosphere, people who just do genetics, people that are home growers.
And so to put it in perspective of this regulatory environment, we've actually kind of sidestepped around it and shut the gaps where it was, you know, we're working with people who already went through these processes.
for them to have gotten to the point where they are now
than it was for metaphoric to be able to say,
hey, we're going to blanket this on top
and create that infrastructure and these formalities.
And so what's the most difficult though?
I would, you know, community building,
it's cannabis is a very, it's a very big community.
We can apply to so many different people.
I can't wait for us to grow bigger and bigger and bigger to get a lot more eyes onto the platform.
Maybe that's, maybe that's the most difficult to, you know, I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve, but everything else has really fallen into place.
The shop that's going to be opening up, I've had years of industry experience.
So again, regulatory matters, dealing with the shop has been very easy for us.
And our developer is super, super on point.
He goes above and beyond everything that we're building and just makes it 10 times better.
But, yeah, if we were to pinpoint one thing, it's some rapid growth.
And we're right around the corner from that there's
a lot of things that are happening on the back the back end uh with different types of industry
members um genetic ips and this sort of thing um that's going to be rolling out this summer
uh so with all this news coming out uh things are going to start building a lot, a lot faster.
I actually think that that curse or that trial and tribulation is really a blessing, right?
It's giving you guys the space to really evidentially showcase why people should eventually
be interested in participating. And as a testament to this, just this whole conversation, you have a very clear
head on your shoulders and a level of expertise in the space.
So I have absolutely no doubt that you guys will succeed in the community
building.
I think one of the biggest metrics for that is longevity and sustainability.
And it seems like the platform is robust enough and well thought out enough that
your longevity and sustainability is, if not guaranteed, at least hedged correctly. So again, just super congratulations to what you guys are doing.
Sorry, did you want to jump in there? Yeah, I was going to just say, I couldn't
agree more with you. The community that we have formed is, I couldn't ask for a better group of people um there's they're nothing but awesome um and that
that's part of the benefit of uh growing grassroots yes and um you know when a lot of these crypto
projects uh that drop with a lot of hype uh can get pretty toxic very quickly. And we're very, very blessed, very blessed
to have such an amazing, strong backing of our community.
Always there.
And that's another thing, too.
If you guys are listening,
I really encourage everybody to join our Discord.
The Metaphor team listens to everybody.
We want to have all the answers and we know that
you guys probably have them um and all there's no such thing as a bad idea we work through everything
um and we would love to implement more and more to the platform to our to our map here we have a lot
that's being built there's a lot that's being thought out, documented,
and it's gonna take time to build.
But along that way, we wanna hear from everybody.
We want all the input that we possibly can
because that's how solutions are created.
That's how real solutions are made.
Well said.
Ed, I see your hands up.
Go ahead.
Yeah, one of the issues i'm wondering how you are thinking
about how we can tackle this is i kind of knew that when legalization happened that it was going
to be set up to be basically controlled by sort of the industrial system and so it's so hard you
know it's like you can't really do an artisan you know sort of
local thing you know bring it to the farmer's market and we knew when that doesn't happen
because you know like with food the same thing I mean the stimulation and progress has been because
small growers can grow and use science and create products that are so much
better and so much flavorful and metabolomics and all that sort of stuff but we knew when this
industry happened in the way it costs to get a license and everything else and legalities of
selling it um you know it was going to be able to be controlled industrial. Same as like if you
couldn't have a garden, you know, only the biggest growers could grow your fruits and vegetables. And
we'd have what we have at the supermarket, which is a bunch of cardboard in the produce section.
And I find that's the same problem. You know, there's a few people that are doing it conscientiously and had the money to get a license and can try to advance things a little better in quality.
But, you know, well, the way it is with the system, it's just until we can somehow work on the regulations a bit better.
I just see it's, you know, the market is just dominated with stuff that's just not good.
And so how, how do you think, you know,
what do you see in the future? Are you,
is there any chance that somehow we can get that down to a level where,
especially as maybe we advance our testing abilities or something, that we can it to a consumer so we can start seeing
how the benefits of how we grow it and just have more flexibility in the industry.
Same thing happened, you know, with micro breweries, with beer, specialty coffee, you know,
they were both controlled by an industry and it wasn't until we were able to get it down to a more small level to start with that we were able to produce things that all of a sudden are, wow, you know, especially coffee is a hell of a lot better than the old Maxwell House.
Because the whole supply chain in science, you know, we're able to advance it instead of it just
how can we produce as cheap as possible and market and advertise and sell it to people? I mean,
that's been a bad idea and that's affected our health incredibly. And I see the same thing in
cannabis. If we want it to benefit our health, can't be you know same with a vegetable that's
just as cardboard um same with the cannabis if it's just doesn't have the metabolomics in it
we're really not producing something that's got the benefits that we need to have so
what do you think we can do to sort of open this up a bit? Well, one thing that stands out there is the hardest part of this conversation is the barrier of entry into the recreational and even the medicinal.
But that's the biggest barrier of entry.
There's so much regulations on the land
that you grow it on,
to your licensing costs,
to the taxation.
Right now, to my understanding,
we're forcing out the small farmer.
The larger money corporations
are able to grow a lot more.
They're able to stack licenses all over the state
or multiple states and they operate on a loss.
They're putting people into a position for acquisition.
And I think that that's the number one thing I wouldn't have an answer for.
Because otherwise, like you said about the coffee industry and the craft brew industry,
I was just reading the other day that cannabis has just surpassed or is about to surpass the entire beer industry,
which I've been saying this is going to happen one of these days,
and it's closed in on us so quickly.
We know that this type of demand is already prevalent.
You know,
everybody was drinking
Anheuser-Busch. We had
Maxwell House.
Now, none of that is ever
in my fridge or in my cabinet.
You know?
It's not because, out of principle,
it's because the quality of the
coffee is better. The quality of the
beer is better
um and i know that it came from a small batch um or a small farmer and on the back of that bag
they tell me about all their cultivation techniques where it was grown um this sort
of thing is like you have to tell the story. That's that's number one.
A good cause attached to a brand is always a good thing as well.
But how metaphoric and solve this is it's all about your genetics in the end. I believe that strains are bigger than any company could ever be.
that strains are bigger than any company could ever be.
I do consultation in the industry as well
with large corporations, public companies.
And the answer is always kind of very similar.
They're running the wrong things.
They're spending tons of money on case studies,
on genetics that they don't own,
that they didn't create themselves.
And that's where the small farmer comes into play because they're more conscientious
of their growing techniques. They have principle, they have value involved.
And they also aren't afraid to take risks in the R&D rooms. And they, a lot of them, a lot of the small farmers,
they've been operating for decades.
They have a lot under their belts.
I don't, I'm not going to say that this isn't going to become more and more
popular for industrial farming for cannabis,
but I think that they're going to be breeding for a different reason. think that they're going to go back to yields pest resilience um and mold resilience and
and I think that that's probably going to be more of the case of your your Marlboros out there that
are going to be trying to uh package up pre-rolls but but again, we've seen it in coffee, we've seen it in beer.
Wine is no stranger to it either,
that this is what really people care about.
And so by abling a public and a cool way of presenting it back
from the industry to the consumer,
Metaphor will be able to give a chair up, a boost up to that craft farmer.
And we're not just focused.
I mean, believe me, I'm from the craft industry as well.
A lot of my friends own craft farms, and I am here for them.
friends own Kraft Farms. And I am here for that. But I'm not going to also say, okay, a lot of
this information that the industrial farmers and big pharma and the laboratories that are doing
things for medicinal benefits are out of our wheelhouse. I do have respect to the amount of
research and development that goes into that.
But a lot of the times I think that they need help.
They don't really, they might've hired the best in the business on a different crop.
But I believe there's still a lot to learn. And a lot of those secrets lay in the value of how we treat the plant from seed to sale.
And we get that on a craft level with these micro farms.
And that's going to be prevalent in the end.
But it can exist right now when we're drowning the market with supply.
So much volume that we know that the statistics say that we cannot sell that much
through the storefronts um which which they have a lot smaller overhead they already know that
they're going to operate at a loss and the small farmer can't afford that so that's going to be our
biggest hurdle but in time there's going to be a recouping of that industry in the long run.
It's inevitable.
It's going to happen.
So hopefully those that are in there now are able to find their way through.
Metaflora can help bring extra monetization to your companies through many different forms.
You guys should be able to contact us
and we can give you a consultation
on how we can give you guys a leg up in the industry,
have more exposure and capitalize on your IP.
And that's what this is all about.
That was very well said, Greg.
I appreciate the insight, Ed.
I appreciate the questions.
We've hit time.
This has been a great conversation.
And Greg mentioned it.
You guys have your own podcast.
Make sure for everybody who is interested in furthering the discussion to join them.
I'm sure we'll be hearing from Greg again on DCI Rising.
They've been doing so many things. They're going to be doing so many things. We'll be hearing from Greg again on DCI Rising. They've been doing
so many things. They're going to be doing so many things. We'll need to have you guys back for an
update. But with that, Greg, just give you the floor to just close out the space. Any last minute
call to actions you want to say to the community at large before we head off? 100 join the community join our discord uh links over there in the bio
um and you guys love what you're hearing uh join the decentralization of cannabis our nodes are on
sale right now tge is in about two weeks and you turn it on today and you start earning today, you'll be able to claim that upon TGE.
And we hope to have you guys with us
as a partner in decentralization, a partner in cannabis,
but even more so as a partner in our community.
Amazing.
I know we'll definitely be reaching out.
I think there's opportunities for partnership
with BatoonDESA World, our knowledge network, and the AI infrastructure that you guys are doing.
Definitely want to put you in contact with Kerry Genetics and their cannabis structure.
So I love this.
I love this compounding interoperable frameworks.
How can we build it as a holistic system, as I'd like to put it.
So with that, guys, we're going to be signing off.
Thank you again, Greg, for taking the time to meet with us, for sharing all of your insights.
Everybody follow them. Join the Discord. get the node, wait for TGE,
and let's all have a good time building some really cool shit for the future.
Have a great run to the rest of your day, guys. Thank you so much.
