Hello and welcome, everyone.
We have a great space lined up for you today.
In the next hour, we'll be discussing essentialized social media, music, the metaverse, and more.
Specifically, discussing how Polkadot gaps are making a big impact in these Web3 use cases.
We have the perfect panelists for you here today to discuss these things, and they're
representing teams from MIUI, Beatport, Public Pressure, Cosmize, Bitcountry, and Subsocial.
Before I go any further, I'd just like to ask you all a favor.
Let's get some more listeners in here to support all of the great projects that we're going
If you wouldn't mind sending this out to a friend, retweeting, commenting, DMing it in
your group chat, let's get a few more listeners in here before we get started.
Just remember that nothing mentioned in today's space should be taken as financial advice,
and you should always do your own research.
The format today will be an introduction of the speakers, and then we'll hand it over
to our guest host, who will ask some questions to them, and in the end, if there are some
questions for the panelists, we'll ask them, and they can have a chance to respond to them.
With that, for today's panelists, we have Mark, head of product at MIUI.
MIUI is the largest decentralized social network in the world, and they just recently announced
that they successfully migrated half a million of the 22 million total users on-chain, so
they migrated 500,000 users on-chain recently.
We have Finn, founder of Define Creative, and Bport.io.
Bport.io is a web marketplace in a advanced stream of electronic music and engaged with artists
And if you've been to any of the programs, I doubt you've been to a Bport party, and I
must say they are a lot of fun.
We have Julia, CEO and founder of Public Pressure, which is a web-through media hub that sells
music and digital collectibles, packages, NFTs.
We have Oram, marketing and community partnership manager at Cosmize, the EVM best platform on
Aspar for creative expression and community building.
YoungBeef, he's the content lead and community manager at Sub-Social, where you own your
own content while building through network.
And last but not least, Mr. Bill Odom from the website.
And once active in the Polkadot ecosystem with Bill, he's probably the most well-versed person
on all of the Polkadot out there, and he's the excellent guest host today as the community.
And with that, Bill, I'm going to hand it over to you.
Can you hear me a little bit, Bill?
I was muted by host, and I'm not the host, so can't blame me for that one.
All right, yeah, no problem.
I see a lot of familiar faces already, and hopefully some new people also will be interested
in hearing about what we're going to be talking about today, because I do think it really
Sometimes we get very into the weeds, and we forget that we're here to make people's
lives better and to build things on Polkadot.
And that is what everybody in this space, all the speakers in this space, are doing.
So I think what we're going to do, there was a nice introduction already of all the
speakers, but please, if the host missed something, then please feel free to fill something
I've got a couple of questions for everybody, so I'm thinking that we would start with
some individual questions, and then some more broader topical questions that everyone
can weigh in on, just so you know the basic outline of how this would go.
So I think let's go in the same order, I guess, that Evan has already established.
So let's start with Miwi and Mark, head of product.
So we just heard, yeah, you're onboarding half a million users onto Polkadot, from Web 2
Can you tell us a little bit about that, and maybe what are the benefits of doing so?
And it's been a pretty wild ride, so I've been involved with the project for just over
And the initial part of it was just to first figure out, like, okay, how do we even explain
what we're trying to do to this Web 2 community?
It's been around, actually, for 10 years now.
So it's not like we're a new entity, but it's taken a while to get to where we are today.
So I'll say that the things that we've learned along the way are, of course, the project
will only be successful on the strength of the community.
And so little by little, what we do is just sort of uncover all the different pathways
that we need to account for, and certainly building up from there.
And those can be within the product itself, but also on-platform communications.
And so one theme that I probably will say a lot today is the theme of education.
And we are organizing ourselves, but we've also seen a lot of the communities sort of
take it on as we start to introduce new topics and things like that, because there's so much
And that's both opportunity and a challenge for us.
But the thing is, we're marching in this direction.
We've had a lot of good participation, but we also had a lot of very candid feedback.
And so like a lot of lessons along the way, I'm happy to expand on any of those.
But yeah, it's been pretty fun.
And the project, we've only been onboarding in earnest since what's called September.
So this growth has been pretty rapid for us, but we've gotten pretty good at it along
So is the plan to continue onboarding users until all of them are on Web3?
And also education, you had mentioned, I think is so important in this.
So maybe like, yeah, when we just have the more roundtable discussions, I'd be very curious
to hear, or actually, if you have a moment just to go into like maybe some of the educational
initiatives that you might be working on.
So I think the biggest one is, why should I care?
So overall, people think, we talk to people every day.
And so they'll say, well, everything was going to just come, I come to me, we eat a chitchat
And like, what is all this stuff?
Like, why are you kind of pushing us down this path?
And so when we finally say, well, it's about giving power back to the people, it's about
the current situation we're in, it's about all of these things that have been these infractions,
if you will, that have been committed against us along the way by these larger companies
And so here's this opportunity to use a technology that's a pretty good use case for what we're
And so like that message, it kind of takes a while to kind of get right.
It takes a few iterations.
But once you finally explain it to people, it turns out like it's actually a perfect match
for our members, because we're a privacy-based network to begin with.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
And I do think that explaining the why is sometimes something that gets lost when we
So I'm glad that you're working on that as well.
Thank you very much, Mark.
So next, let's move on to Beatport.
I forget who's here from Beatport.
Looks like he's not up on the stage.
You have to request to be a speaker, Finn.
The anticipation is palpable.
Thanks so much for inviting us.
It's great to be back here with the Polkadot family.
Can you start off by telling us about some of the collaboration that you've done with
Can you start off by telling us about some of the collaboration that you've done with
I mean, first of all, you know, I want to start off by saying that it's been a super
fruitful collaboration and true partnership, you know, on very many levels.
I mean, on the one side, it really helped us a lot with our mission to bring new forms
of creativity to the electronic music industry.
So, on the one hand, there's Polkadot Superior Tech, which is like the interoperability,
sustainability, scalability, and security.
And also, we're building on Aventis, on the Aventis parachain.
So shout out to the Aventis team.
And that's been really helpful to, you know, for easy user onboarding, because obviously
that's a big part, right?
Also to onboard non-web three natives, to make it really easy for them, sign in with
email, and offering both crypto and credit card payments.
So that's kind of like more on the tech side.
But what's equally important for us is actually the aligned vision and yeah, like the
shared values, and we had a really, this is like a great support by the whole Polkadot
team and had some really fun activations, you know, like you mentioned, we've been lucky
enough to, you know, work together on some really cool events and after parties and do
what we do best, which is music and culture.
And so it's been a really great journey.
We started last year at Decoded in Copenhagen, and then, you know, did some really cool activations
throughout the year, Career Blockchain Week in September, and also Web Summit, just to
And yeah, it's been really, really fun, like especially Career Blockchain Week.
To give you an example, we had, you know, we did the opening party for Gateway Career.
And so, and it was just really great to bring everything together, you know, immersive audio,
There was some, you know, amazing leading artists like Beeple or Refic Anadol.
And so just to be there alongside other like very established brands like Christine's
or Adidas was really, really fun.
And then kind of like merging all these, you know, cultures together, we had Cassie playing
at the opening party, and she's a, she's a Birkheim DJ, right, to kind of like bring
that vibe over to Seoul and see the reaction.
All the way up to, you know, we did a really fun panel, also with Birn Wagner from Polkadot
and, you know, Misha, who's one of the artists from from our job, and he's a photographer
and also Birkheim bouncer.
And to bring these worlds together and see how, you know, how that all kind of like
creates this melting pot was really, really inspiring.
So yeah, I hope to see a lot of you guys on the upcoming events in 24.
I personally am very sad that I had to miss Polkadot Decoded this year for the first time
Yeah, and that was the Beatport closing party, which I've heard a lot of good things about.
But maybe it was better that other people out there didn't see my dance moves.
Well, I'll see your dance moves this year.
Can you tell us, you know, what are some of the events that you planned, you know, upcoming
Well, we're, we're aligning currently, right?
So we're, we're, we're looking into, but there will be alongside the big, you know,
And so they're not confirmed.
So I, I, you know, I can't promise them understood.
You will see it here on all socials.
And yeah, and I hope, yeah, we will, we will, we will go on the dance floor together on
That's a, it's a promise.
If you find me, please drag me out.
Let's move on to public pressure.
So I think we have Julia.
So can you tell me, so public pressure, I know that you're very into, you know, supporting
Can you tell me the, what are you doing on that?
So we started in 2017 as a media magazine, like a magazine to talk about emerging artists
and emerging music, and we're based in London.
So we start from a long time ago and we have a huge community, mainly on emerging and
And in 2020, we decide, um, with other, with Sergio Montola, one of the founder Francesca
Versace and Alfredo was the founder of public pressure to build also the web tree marketplace.
So now we are, we, we're bringing all our community that is thousands of emerging to
the web tree space that we feel and we believe is the future for the music and where we are,
and we are here up in them and give a voice to them.
Um, yeah, so that's sort of like the foundations.
Um, I know you've done a lot of, of work and like you've had some like, uh, partnerships
with like diesel and others.
So can you tell us like, what's, uh, what's, uh, in the near future, what do you have anything
So we, we are still like, uh, our main goal is again, giving space to the merge to emerging
But of course, uh, we always in talk with festival and brands to be part of our community.
That's why these are came to us because they want to, uh, have, um, target a different
community that they usually target and, uh, and same with BPM.
So we activate our community to these brands and we are talking with others that I cannot
tell them now, which one are, but in future we have other festival, other brands are
I know, I know how it is.
You can't always say exactly what's coming, uh, in the future, it's kind of hard, but
I think what is difficult for brands and, uh, and, and mainly brands is to talk with the
Gen Z and they don't know how to do it.
I don't, I don't know how to get him communities.
And since we have a large communities of artists that they want to try to talk with them and
also give a voice to them that is really, it's always hard to, for big brands to find
the right artists to work with as, as, as, as emerging.
I can imagine that's, uh, that's very difficult.
You know, I have, uh, yeah, I'm definitely not a Gen Z, uh, but I, I do know like a lot
of times, you know, I'm not familiar with all of the artists, uh, there.
So I'm glad, uh, yeah, that you're working to find ways to, you know, to, to interact
with them and empower them.
So next, uh, on the list, uh, we have a bit country, uh, and we have Chris, a head of
Uh, so Chris, are you here?
Will, thank you so much for the invitation.
I think actually I did a, uh, an AMA a long time ago on bit country, uh, although it's,
Glad to be here again and hopefully I can answer a little bit more of what we, what, what
Can you just start with like, you know, what you've been up to recently?
So most of the people in the, uh, in the ecosystem recently or formerly now beat country
as the main project, uh, and it was the initial intention beat country was supposed to be a
meta versus service platform.
And to be able to accomplish that we build metaverse network, which is over the blockchain
or connected as a parachutes on both and now polka dot, uh, to run the blockchain infrastructure
for the metaversus service platform.
As we finished the development of the beat country app, uh, last year towards the end
of the quarter quarter of the last year, uh, we continue the expansion of the development
and then we realized that it is better to, how do I say, put, put those out as metaversus
network or M net short version of metaversus network.
So we are more recognized as a full layer one ecosystem that is secured by polka dot
of course, offering an additional layer for metaversus social and other interest applications
So yeah, that's kind of the, uh, TLDR what we know what we have been up to.
So, so about an expansion really from the original, yeah, that's right.
People have been telling us, is it a reverent, a rebranding and these not and rebranding
is just an expansion and a shortening of the name from metaversus network to just
M net, which is a bit cooler, shorter than the numbers.
And I see you are currently running a contest to reward a dot stakers.
So can you tell us about this program and why you think it's important to reach the
nominators in the dot ecosystem?
So in order to promote a M and S as a full ecosystem, we recently launched a beta avatar,
which is another application that is part of the M net ecosystem developed by the beat
Actually, I'm not confusing everybody listening, but yeah, the reason we targeted,
especially the dot stickers is well, nominators.
And generally speaking, everybody actively participating in the staking are contributors
to the stability and security of Polkadot.
So as we are approaching the full launch of Continuum or Polkadot Parachain or our
Polkadot, yeah, our Polkadot Parachain Mnet Continuum is secure play Polkadot.
So we want to start a series of campaigns and begin, especially with a dot stickers
because the main target or the main reason was specially recognized and show our
appreciation for their active participation to the whole ecosystem and encourage them
to continue engaging in the staking activities.
I think it's a win-win-win scenario for everybody, the people that are staking the
ecosystem and for us being part of it.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, win-win-win situation, as you mentioned, and as somebody who's
been staking on Polkadot and Kusama for quite a long time.
Yeah, definitely a win from my perspective as well.
All right. Thank you very much, Chris.
So next, let's move on to sub-social and young beef.
Can you hear me all right?
So I personally have been a user of sub-social and Polkaverse since 2020,
since well before it was even a parachain.
And I have to say, I'm always impressed by the development work going on.
It's really made some great strides over the last few years.
So I guess I'm curious, you know, how maybe you can just go over for people that
haven't been using it as much as I am.
Like, I know, you know, like sub-social has a lot of different dApps that work
together, like GrillChat and Polkaverse, sub-ID, you know, maybe you can
explain like some of the major products you've done, like these multiple dApps
and how they interact with each other.
Yeah, so I'll go over the architecture first.
I'll start with an example.
If we look at, let's say, X and Facebook, they each have their own website
and phone application, and they also have their own servers as well.
So if I make a post on X, it goes on to X's servers.
Facebook can't see it, so I can't post on X and then you go on Facebook
and see the same post because they're separate.
But with sub-social, basically the blockchain functions as the servers,
but they're open to anyone.
So you can have a thousand different applications and they can all access
the same content and user base, so I can make a post on Polkaverse
and GrillChat can actually see it and display it if it wants to.
Or another example is I could post a picture of a cute dog on Polkaverse.
And if there was another application built on sub-social that was just for
cute dogs, they can see that and say, hey, we want to show this on our app.
And you might have another application that's just for cool cats
and they can see the dog post, but it's not a cat post.
So they're not going to show it.
So we have this open layer for all of the content, all of the users,
all of your connections, your followers, et cetera.
You take that with you to any application you go to and it's open.
So it really improves the connectivity, but also allows us to get back to
having sort of niche websites like we did in the early 2000s if you want to.
But they're still not cut off from the rest of the social
So Polkaverse is our first application.
It's kind of a mix between Medium and Reddit.
You can also post short form content on there as well, like tweets
if you want and connect videos.
So it's sort of like the, you know, the main social tool in the Polka.
We've just recently released active staking so creators can get sub-rewards
when people like their posts and people also get rewards for liking posts as well.
So it's seen a great increase in activity, helping to curate content
for the network, and we're really excited to see where that goes.
Sub-ID was our second application.
It was originally created because in Polka.
You, in most cases, you have a different wallet address on every
different pair chain, which is very confusing.
And there wasn't a great way to see all of the different wallet addresses.
So Sub-ID was basically a portfolio overview.
So you can see all of your different, all the different chains.
You can see your addresses, how many tokens you have on each chain.
We've really built that up over time.
Now it has cross-chain transfers.
It pulls in profile information from Polkaverse.
So it's kind of more of like a social explorer in some ways, and we're
working on transaction history as well.
GrillChat was released in April.
It's basically an on-chain chat application with the really, the user
experience is basically web too.
So you don't even need a wallet to use it.
You don't have to sign transactions, but it is still all on the blockchain.
So you can donate tokens to people if you want to, that sort of thing.
So we're working on packaging all of these together into an upcoming
application that will really be great for, you know, the creator economy,
really fantastic user experience.
Cause the, the web through UX is a big barrier for onboarding hundreds
of millions of people to web through social networks.
So that's one of our big focuses.
Yeah, you're definitely, I am a huge user of sub, sub ID and you'll recommend
it to anyone who has tokens and lots of different networks, something that I'm,
you've been very impressed with is, you know, and you mentioned this is like
how interconnected everything is that on the sub ID page, for instance, there is a
grill chat, uh, uh, instance, uh, I guess, and all of these work together.
Was it, so I assumed this was the plan from the beginning, right?
That you would have all of these things built on the same, uh, same blockchain.
I mean, that was basically the, the original vision is, uh, there's not
really any reason from a user perspective for X and Facebook being separated.
It's just from a business perspective on their end is that's sort of their, their
moat, so they keep people from leaving, um, they keep you on the platform and
keep you looking at ads, but from a user perspective, it's better for everything
to be open, um, it gives you a lot more freedom and ultimately improves
the experience for the user.
Um, so that's basically why we set out to build sub social is to have this open
layer that we can build all these social applications on top of, and they
don't have to be just social networks.
Um, you can also have sort of, we have a widget for grill chat that, um,
platforms like site guys, they've added to their application.
So you can add social features to your non-social application.
And all of a sudden you have a social application.
It only took you a couple of minutes and all of that social interaction
that's happening in grill chat is present on sub social as well.
So you can use the same account for site guys to end sub social.
Well, yeah, very, very cool.
Thank you very much for covering all of that.
Thank you very much for covering all of that.
So next, uh, the last, uh, I have a, uh, cosmize, uh, also here.
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
If not, please correct me.
And we have rum, uh, from there.
So, so rum first, I guess, can you give us a, you know, a bit of a rundown
on, uh, what, uh, cosmize has been up to.
Thank you very much for inviting us into this space.
And yeah, um, cosmize is a federal associated platform and we develop in
one of the, uh, polka dot by the chain, which is a star.
And we have been developing since, uh, July, 2022.
And currently we are focusing not only on our program, but also growing, uh,
our community-based and collaboration with IPs from Japan and Singapore.
And as star, yeah, amazing platform.
And you know, like Sota Watanabe is, you know, a very impressive founder
and, uh, has done, has done a lot.
I could find the, find the heart emoji I'd also do.
So, um, yeah, so I, I took a look at cosmize.
I see there's a lot of discussion, uh, on the webpage about your customization,
uh, that you enable that you can customize your avatar and your room
and everything in the metaverse.
Uh, so can you explain why do you think this, this customization
is, is so, uh, important for metaverse users?
Um, yeah, uh, you know, I think it started like from three to four years ago
when, uh, everyone is starting to explore, uh, web three cryptocurrency
and blockchain, especially when COVID hits, uh, everyone was so bored
and like, you know, trying to try different things, especially when
they are, you know, uh, in home and cannot, uh, go outside to work
and play and stuff, but yeah, at that time, the term metaverse,
uh, really took a big hit.
You know, everyone was starting to like, uh, developing their own metaverse.
And, uh, at one point it started to become a little bit
And yeah, um, in, I think it was a late 2021 when we started, uh,
on our research on the metaverse, metaverse itself.
And we came to a conclusion that, uh, the metaverse itself is not,
uh, the final product that we want to build.
We want to build an ecosystem where everyone can benefit and everyone
can gain something from it, you know, especially with the, uh, capability
of web three and everything is, uh, still on development.
And like, there is a lot, uh, of opportunities that haven't
been covered in web three.
And yeah, we started developing our, um, our platform and then, uh,
and we think that, uh, the importance of, uh, room customization
and other customization is because, uh, before we create the ecosystem
itself, we need to like, uh, give our user a sense of ownership when
they are using our platform, when they are interacting with each
other, when they're, uh, joining events in our platform, when they
are playing with their friends in our platform, we need to create
their sense of ownership through that, uh, after customization
and the customization that we have.
So, uh, I think that's also one of our highlight, uh, on our
So yeah, I think that's that.
Yeah, that, that makes sense.
You know, to, I mean, that is a big part of web three, right?
You know, with that, Chris Dixon just came out with that book and
read, write own, we always talk about web one being read, uh, then
read, write for web two and read, write own for web three.
And yeah, if you can customize and make something feel like your own,
you have more of that sense of ownership.
And thank you, uh, for coming on.
So I thought now we would move into almost exactly
halfway through the space.
I, I didn't plan that, but I'm, uh, very, uh, uh, pleased by, by how
exact I was, how exact I was here.
Uh, but I'd like to move on to more topical questions and I have,
you know, there are a couple of different topics.
Uh, some of the teams will probably, uh, be more relevant, uh, for some of
these for others or people will have, you know, uh, specific opinions.
So what I'm going to do is throw out a question for the panel and, uh,
just, you know, you wave or make an emoji or something and just, uh, uh,
you know, uh, feel free to, uh, then, uh, speak, uh, after that.
So, um, my, my first question and we have a couple of different social
And when I say social media, I don't just mean, you know, classic social media,
but things like metaverse also is sort of a social media, uh, and even
you're like interacting, um, like we have something like these music, uh,
related teams, but there's a lot of, you know, social interaction in there.
So I would say just, I want to ask, you know, what are the, like the
benefits and maybe the drawbacks of decentralized social media compared
to web two and, you know, this does, again, like when I say this, I'm
speaking very broadly about maybe social interactions might be a better
way, uh, to put this, so like, you know, what are the benefits and
drawbacks, uh, and especially ones, I'd be very curious that you've
seen from, you know, your specific projects, like what have you seen
that you're, you're bringing to the table and maybe, you know, then
like what difficulties, uh, have you had with that, that you're
still trying to overcome?
Hey, yeah, I'm, uh, probably the biggest difficulty we've had is not
necessarily specific to building a decentralized social network, but
just building a network in general is network effects.
You know, if nobody's using it, then nobody's going to use it.
Um, but from the web three side, the, the user experience is definitely
You know, if you spend some time on Twitter, you kind of just scroll
and haphazardly like posts and don't think anything of it.
But if a transaction confirmation pops up every time you do that, or
you can't even use it from a mobile device, um, that's definitely
a enormous barrier, which is why I mentioned we've been focusing so
much on, um, the user experience.
But I do still think that even despite those drawbacks, which are
being worked on, um, the benefits are still very big and you kind of
segue it into the section perfectly.
Actually, we're talking about Chris Dixon's book there about read,
write, and own, which is really the main thing is, you know, on X,
for example, I don't actually own my account.
Elon could make a post for my account if I want to, it's not really
mine, he just lets me use it.
Um, if I make a post, I don't own it anymore.
Twitter owns it, X owns it.
I can go delete it, but I know it's still on their servers.
Um, so, and then, uh, censorship resistance ties into this because
if someone truly owns something, you can't really censor it.
You know, we see financial censorship, but that's always banks where
you put your money in the bank.
It's not really your money anymore.
The bank just kind of owes it to you.
And so if I actually truly own a post, nobody can remove it, um,
versus, you know, web to social networks where you don't really own it.
The platform owns it and they can remove it.
So ownership is pretty much the summary of the benefit is censorship
resistance, people can actually own their stuff and, uh, you know,
have property rights in the digital realm.
Which is, uh, as you mentioned, you were a huge, huge benefit.
So thank you, um, bit country, I think was next.
So following up on what John mentioned, if from our perspective, I think
is two main factors, the first one is giving back power to the creators.
A yeah, it is decentralized.
So you are in full control of the content that you post and your target audience
as well, so freedom of speech, a place, an important factor here.
And it's to be definitely considered if it's decentralized, it means that
it's harder to censor and harder to cancel, especially with today, this
cancel culture that is kind of popping up.
Uh, however, I also want to clarify and mention that freedom of freedom
of speech shouldn't be considered or confused with freedom of harassment
through threats or literally just some lawful conduct.
So yeah, great power comes with great responsibility.
So I will advise everybody to use the tech to do good, because at the
end of the day, we are building all these tools to, to, to change hopefully
the world for the good, for the better.
Uh, the other one is a users consuming the content are no longer the product.
On web two, you are typically the product will know that traditional web
two social media uses algorithms, artificial, artificial intelligence
to understand your behavior.
And then they sell your information to companies so they can target you
with content they believe you want to consume.
So yeah, that's another thing that is worth to mention as for drawback.
Uh, I agree with young beef.
The user experience is the one that gets a little bit more, uh, the
heat here, especially the more complex or the more complete your
app is, uh, sometimes the more complex it becomes for the user.
Yeah, I mean, uh, that, that concept of, you know, the user being, you know,
being, uh, the product and their data being the product is, is such, uh, uh,
a prevalent thing in web, in web two and something that we want to get
away from, uh, just a quick personal anecdote, and then we'll go over to,
uh, to Mark, um, you know, people may know I'm, I'm learning German and
I've actually been very interested in improving my handwriting lately.
And I got an ad for learning German, like old German Fraktor calligraphy.
And I was like, Oh my God, like how, this is the first time I was like,
just shocked by how, how well an ad had targeted me.
Uh, so it's just, I guess, you know, that data is getting out more and more
data about me as getting out there and more as I, you know, Google search
for how to improve my cursive and more and more, uh, you know, AI,
you've seen in just, you know, huge leaps and bounds and that's really
improving data analysis. So yeah, definitely something we need to be wary of.
All right. Uh, Mark from MIUI.
Oh, thanks. Um, you know, uh, we spend pretty much every day swimming upstream
here to explaining this concept to people.
I just have to say it's like, it's hardening to, to, to listen to,
to like minds and, you know, all the ideas that express because we do,
we do talk about these same things internally.
I think we can all agree that intuitively, like things are not right at the
moment, right? But not everybody knows that that there's a problem.
And so this read, write own thing is,
is something that's a really powerful cause it captures it. Right.
And but the, the, the extension of it is like, well, we're so,
we're all like the early adopters here. So, you know, we get it.
We don't understand what ownership means, but like the training that's
required for, you know, your average user to say, Oh yeah, okay.
Now I own this piece of content, but where do I own it?
And how do I actually own it? Oh, okay. Does that, are you like,
are you sure? Like, okay. But what happens if, if like,
this goes away or that goes away?
So there's like all these questions that come up on a daily basis for us.
You know, like we kind of work through it.
We have to like always keep it at the forefront and say like, yeah,
like we're trailblazing here, all of us and on, you know,
on this call and in the industry. And so like, you know, I try to honor that
and keep that, keep that in mind.
The biggest thing for us, I would like to add as well,
is just that the, the, the, the benefit of,
of this technology for us in our context is it allows us to like really
supercharge the, our, the, our main thing, which is communities.
So we have about 700,000 communities that have been created over the years.
And so each one of these, we imagine will be, you know, can,
can be empowered to be its own Dow.
And so if we can get to that point,
then we can also then furthermore construct the Dow of Dow.
So me, we itself becomes a Dow that is powered by all of these
different communities. And so like that will allow us to have like a
really open discussion, because I think the point that was made early
about freedom of speech is a really pointy one, right?
Because it's like, I hear it often where it's like, oh, you value
freedom of speech, freedom of speech.
But like, really, when you dig into it, it gets really ugly, you know,
and luckily, like our head of, of, you know, our head of communities,
he's an ex-Twitter guy who was there from the start.
So he knows that I handle a lot of these situations.
But I will say that, like, you know, if you let people go, like,
sometimes it goes into like really dark places.
And so we have to be mindful of these things.
And even if it doesn't, like, let's go, let's take the conscience
Like, let's just say you inherently like liked something
and it could have like you could have just fat fingered it or like been
scrolling in, you know, and let's say that that gets encoded on the chain.
Well, that could be then furthermore interpreted as like, oh, hey,
Mark did this thing, you know, he's like, oh, he's now associated
with this group that may be like a little bit salacious.
So, you know, there are all these like, you know, like small
considerations that may sound like but they could end up having
ramifications down the line.
So, you know, I think it's like, you know, we are always sort of kind
of balancing the two between like, OK, going full in on this technology.
But on the other side, it's like, well, we there is a kind of a need
to like educate and protect is the right word.
But like you definitely need to like make sure that people know
what they're doing when they get into to these these situations.
Yeah, you know, we have a great power comes great responsibility.
But, you know, it's interesting, you know, you mentioning that, you know,
the discussion and the media part of social media is really a a subset,
right, or maybe a part of developing a community, right.
And that's, you know, what people are here for.
Actually, you know, I've always thought of Dalles and I've thought
I haven't really thought about connecting the two.
But like, you know, having communities that actually, you know,
can communicate better and then achieve group goals using this.
So that's a very interesting and powerful use of decentralized social media.
All right, any any other comments or questions, anything on on this?
All right, so let's move on to the next question I'm going to throw out.
On a different topic, the second in our DSO music and metaverse topic list of music.
So I'm curious, you know, how can you how is technology shaking up the music
industry, like, especially technology like NFTs on the blockchain?
You know, I'll be I'll be honest, you know, but I'm not involved in the music
industry, you know, it's not not my background.
So I'd be very curious to hear, like, you know, how is
your music and, you know, blockchain technology being used together?
How is it changing the ecosystem?
So I'm sorry, Julia, but I saw Finn's hand go up a second before yours,
even though I don't see it now.
So Finn from Beatport, why don't you take the floor?
Yeah, thanks. I'm also happy to share with Julia.
I think we're, you know, we're we're sharing a lot of similar ideas here, I
believe. And also, you know, just to add to the point that you guys just
made about ownership and in a similar way, you know, NFT and
blockchain is really just like a very disruptive technology that brings
the paradigm shift to the music industry.
And, you know, you know, for us, the aim is to create a more fair and
equitable existence for artists and labels and to create a deeper
connection between those artists and their fans.
Right. So for us, the Beatport IO, we're a platform dedicated to exploring
what the future of electronic music could look like and empower those artists.
And that's a really exciting, exciting thing.
And maybe to make it a little bit more tangible for you, you said you don't
know much about the music industry and I'm sure a lot of people here don't.
But to make it like tangible, I think if you think about, you know, what's
now the standard or status quo, right?
Currently, the biggest income stream in the music industry is streaming, right?
So I'm sure you use some kind of streaming service, right?
And then if you think about it, you know, not so long ago, actually, you know,
I think Spotify started this kind of like, you know, you pay 10 bucks for,
you know, your monthly flat rate that was in 2011, you know, that's not that
long ago. And at the time, that was a completely like new paradigm shift
and it disrupted this old model of, you know, downloads and CDs, so on and so
forth. And now it's became the standard.
And I think blockchain and NFTs do have potential.
And we believe that it will bring this next paradigm shift.
And it's, you know, we're in the middle of it.
It's going to take a while, like with streaming.
But, yeah, that's how we see, you know, this is a very basic streams right now.
Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough to remember the prestreaming age.
So, yeah, that was a good analogy.
And also just to add to this real quick, and then also, you know, this whole
layer of obviously, you know, security and transparency.
And, you know, if we move that on chain, that comes on top of it.
You know, so, yeah, Julia, I'm sure you have a lot of things to add there.
Hi. Yeah, I completely agree what you said, Finn.
But also, I think lately we're not talking anymore about NFTs because a lot of
artists don't like the word NFTs to talk about it.
So we talk more about Web 3 and music in a way, because the future is going to be
honestly, the technology behind this blockchain and the benefits that they
having. So what we try to avoid, as also Mark said before, is about this
educational part that is really important, and it's about talking only
about the benefits that are going to happen through using blockchain as a
new technology, but not changing the habits, because at the end, the
musicians, they want to sell the music in any format that can be
downloadable, not downloadable streaming.
So it's about the real benefits that you're going to have to move it from
That's what we target and we try to explain them.
And that is going to be a long journey, as you think you said, but not
I think we're going to see in the next couple of years a big swift to Web 3
All right, that's very interesting.
So I want to go on a very, very quick tangent.
Yeah, just just just a question.
You said a lot of artists don't like the term NFTs.
Is this just because, you know, obviously, there was a lot of froth in
the market a few years ago.
Like if you talk with labels and artists and you talk about NFTs,
like the word NFTs, they're like, no, I'm not sure about it.
But we try lately to avoid this word and we explain to them that they
can sell the music as they do on Bankab, on Beatport, on talking
about Web 2 and go into Web 3.
They can sell the same exact music to a different audience, to different
communities, by giving them extra benefit, benefit, extra perks,
because with blockchain and etc., I don't go deeply because, you
know, everyone knows what's the difference, but because they're
Yeah, because they don't, not everyone knows what is blockchain
and what is Web 3 and the technology behind it.
But they know what is, they're scared about scams.
They're scared about what the general press is talking about,
that there is a kind of negativity around it that is completely
wrong, as anyone, everyone knows, but the common people don't know
what is Web 3 does care about this word, unfortunately.
Yeah, OK, yeah, that makes sense.
I think sometimes I'm in my blockchain bubble here, so I don't always
know what other people are thinking of these terms.
And yeah, I'm sorry, Finn, you had something you wanted to say?
Yeah, I mean, maybe just quickly to that point, I believe it's also
about, you know, because obviously part of this paradigm shift is that
we're currently we're seeing, you know, the landscape change, change
away from these, you know, very, like, you know, high price point
projects where it was really, you know, about kind of like, you
know, where that attracted also flippers and other people that
were, you know, not in it for for the long run or the music.
And and yeah, so I think but that's kind of like, you know, finding
a new yeah, just like finding a new landscape now.
But what I wanted to add was actually the point of ownership also
in terms of, you know, owning the fan artist, fan relationship,
because I think that's actually one of the beauties that, you know,
blockchain enables us that we can empower the artist to actually
own that relationship with their fans and have like a direct link
with the fans and can, you know, airdrop them perks and tickets
or whatever they want. So so that's very exciting. And like
Julia said, that's something we have to, you know, educate
about and, and yeah, just explain what's possible with the
Yeah, I think we're 100% in agreement just in general, in any
field, education, right is absolutely essential and
something I believe in personally. But yeah, especially with
blockchain, you're explaining to people and understanding not
every NFT is just, you know, whatever some some JPEG that
somebody paid 100 each for 2021.
Yeah, all right. Thank you. All right. So my next question to
the last section we had here in DSO music and metaverse is the
metaverse. So I'd be curious, you know, for especially, you
know, the metaverse teams here, but really, like anyone who has
because I noticed, like Julia, you have like an NFT. And I'm
sure you're familiar with some of the other metaverse stuff
happening with with moon Sama based based on that NFT. Like
what are the benefits to building a metaverse on polka dot?
Like, why did you decide to build it in in in polka dot? You
know, whether the technical reasons was a community where
they're interoperability, what are the you know, what made you
decide to build on polka dot and then maybe what are the
benefits and disadvantages of that. So yeah, bit country. I
apologize, I'm calling you by your company's names, they say
bit country. So like, I automatically say bit country
instead of Chris. So sorry, it's fine. No worries. No worries.
Bill. So yeah, answering the question of what are the benefits
to build a metaverse on polka dot. I would like to take one
step back and mentioned the reason we decided to build on
polka dot and offer a metaverse service platform. So as we all
know, or as some of you might not know, you if you build on
polka dot, you don't have to build a let me take another step
back. So first of all, the idea of offering metaverse service was
that you don't have to build everything from scratch. Out of
the bat, you will already have the infrastructure, the
skeleton of everything. And this is literally kind of the
one of the value positions that polka dot offers. So following up
on this, you can easily adapt, modify the things depending on
the needs of your project, let it be the consensus and
governance mechanisms. So, additionally, a other of the
benefits that we thought were important, especially in the
metaverse, and we're definitely a no brainer for us where the
seamless interoperability, the shared security and the
scalability that polka dot offers. So the bit country
superab was technically designed to offer a similar
experience to metaverse enthusiasts. So communities,
projects, or literally anybody looking into launching a metaverse
project, ideally accessible from anywhere in the world, and we
use your browser and no need to have like expensive devices or
expensive computers or VR headsets to access the metaverse,
you will be able to build it. And you will have already the
infrastructure to launch it and without building everything by
yourself. So yeah, building a full infrastructure, as we may
know, it takes time, sometimes you face roadblocks that you
are not expecting to face. But anyway, you just continue
building, find a way to either build on top of those walls that
you face, or find a workaround to get where you want to where
you want to get. So yeah, a, additionally, we to the big
country, to the big country app, we launched an application
called the busy spaces. And we already provide a few
templates. So people can use already to launch a metaverse
likes experience for their communities. So it's just follow
a simple step, you can choose between 2.5 D or 3D. And you are
you're good to go literally how the experience of polka dot goes.
When you decide to launch a product chain, you already have
your skeleton, you already have the infrastructure, you already
have the security and so on. So yeah, you that was the main
goal. And well, you as a metaverse owner can focus on
what matter the most, which is interaction and engagement with
the community and wanting to be part of your project.
Yeah, I mean, as a not so much of a developer myself nowadays, I
do more and more management work. But you know, as a former
developer, I've always appreciated being able to have
like that structure, that framework, you know, to build
on instead of doing everything yourself, you know, that's why
I like Ruby on Rails and, you know, and substrate. So yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. And Cosmize, I know you are
building on a star. So not like a parachain, but still in the
polka dot ecosystem. So I'd definitely be interested in
hearing your perspective on this.
Yeah, sure. Thank you very much. So maybe I would like to take
this perspective from a community side than the
development side, since I'm not I'm also not the developer
myself, but more of a community person. But yeah, in
Aster itself, we have been collaborating a lot with some
communities, the NFT communities, the five communities and
and others. But and like, you know, as also one of the
participants in the polka dot ecosystem, we believe that
building it in polka dot makes a lot of sense, because like, we
have lots of connections in the polka dot ecosystem. I've been in
contact with some communities in Kusama network for a possible
collaboration. And yeah, I think discovering a lot more members
and maybe making Cosmize as a melting pot for that is is
making release. It's making many sense, you know. So like,
Yeah, yeah, it all makes sense. Yeah, thank you very much.
Evan, if you're there, I think you want to get some additional
questions from the from the audience. Do we have any?
Yeah, if anyone would like to come up on stage and ask a
question, don't be shy. There's no reason to be afraid.
You can come up and ask our panelists one, one question. So
just request a speaker, raise your hand with an emoji. If we
don't have any, we'll give it a few seconds here. But no, I just
like to thank all of the panelists, because all of the
answers were very succinct. It was really great to hear what
you're building and what's in store for 2024. And a great
conversation around, you know, owning your content on social
media, which I think is one of the biggest use cases for web
three and blockchain in general. So really great to
hear about that. Also, oh, we have a question here from Houds.
I'm going to bring up on the stage. Go ahead.
Space. One question regarding the user experience, right,
that we've you guys all talked about. There are some
discussion around account abstraction on many of our
chain. And so I wanted to know a little bit more about how will
you guys as well, work with account abstraction in your
Before before any of the people, yeah, let's go in a second.
But you know, account abstraction, if you look on the
polka dot wiki, we have a very nice article on this, it's
something built in to the concept of polka dot and
substrate and the parachains, like at a very fundamental
level, like, you know, you know, on Ethereum, you know, it's
really at a smart contract level. Here, it's built into
the runtime, we've had account abstraction, we've had proxies,
we've had governance staking, all kinds of things. So that's
really something built into the framework that if a team that's
building on polka dot wants to use it, they can. So that's
just speaking very generally, again, polka dot wiki, look up
account abstraction, you find lots of information on how it
works in polka dot. But Bitcountry, please, please go
Thank you, Bill. So account abstraction is definitely
something that we are taking into consideration to apply on
the Bitcountry app. The reason behind this is that instead of
we believe that instead of forcing users to use web tree
technology, to use our application, you need to create
a bridge so they can interact with your application using the
technologies that they are already familiar with. So yeah,
I remember a talk from Dr. Gavin Goode, I think it was three,
four years ago, when he was asked how do we make web tree
de facto technology. And he mentioned something around that
the end goal is that the end user doesn't even feel that he's
interacting with web tree technology. So we implemented on
the Bitcountry app, what we call social login, the technology
behind this is you bind an unconstitutional wallet address
to your social logins, let it be Twitter and email available
now more coming soon as we continue releasing features on
our application. And yeah, as I said, you bind or you create
a new non custodial wallet address to your social login.
So whether you are on the go on a trip or whatever, you don't
have to bring your computer to log into your favorite web
application interact with the app, but you use your social
login, and you can continue interacting with the
application. So far is mainly as a read only you can
interact and then collect rewards, but to move assets or
to move NFTs or to maintain NFTs. In this case, you will
still need to you will still need to connect your wallet
address as you will do it normally with web tree
application. So yeah, that's the main reason we are also
taking into account the account instruction. So we continue
providing the tools that people are already used to use with a
web tree in the background. And yeah, they don't have to
worry about installing something or a technology that they're
afraid to use. So yeah, that's my comments.
And young beef, you had something you wanted to add?
Yeah, we've done a very similar approach. So we have a social
actions proxy. So it can't move tokens at a profile
information or anything important like that, but it can sign for
liking a post or making a post. So originally with grill chat
was when we first implemented it. So that was how you could
use grill chat and chat on chain without needing a wallet
without having to constantly sign transactions. Basically, the
application would do it for you. Now we have also a login
with x where you can connect your main polka dot account if
you want to bring in your identity. But the application is
still the one that's signing it for you. The cool thing with
this though is integrated into something like polka verse, it
kind of gives us a what I like to call a user experience
spectrum. So on one side, you can have the total cypher pump
guy that is fine to sign every transaction transaction by
himself. He doesn't want to have a proxy that the application
controls, maybe he thinks that's a security risk. So he's
doing the totally decentralized approach with the slightly
worse user experience. On the other end, we could have my
grandma who wants a totally easy and therefore centralized
experience. But the important point here is that both of
those people can still be interacting with each other on
the blockchain versus today. My grandma's on Facebook, and
the cypher pump can be on chain. So we can still have
everybody integrated, but everybody can still choose the
user experience and sort of decentralization slash security
level that they're okay with using.
Yeah, thanks. And just a note, I noticed that Filippo, one of
the technical educators here at Web3 Foundation, wrote an
article on Polkiverse today about account and origin
abstraction in Polkadot. So you can check it out using the tools
that young beef was just talking about and read about it.
And speaking of Filippo, I think he's, he's quite active on all
the sub socials products, and he's making some good money from
it, right? Because he gets so many views and engagement. So
if if there are people out there that are creating content
related to the Polkadot ecosystem, or just Web3, you
should go check out some of their products. And you can even
you know, you can be rewarded for your content because you own
it. So I think it's really cool. I think that will probably wrap
us up here. I just want to say thanks to all the panelists for
taking their time on a Friday to come chat and share their
insights with you all. You know, so for all the listeners,
go and support these projects. So you can click onto this
space, or some of the most recent Polkadot tweets to
find their accounts, you can follow them, stay up to date
with all their latest news. That's me, we be port IO, public
pressure, cosmize, big country, sub social. And then Bill,
Bill's just recently launched an office hours. And so first
of all, thank you, Bill, for volunteering your time to be
with us here. As I mentioned, you're sort of a everyone knows
Bill and the Polkadot system all around nice guy. And like I
said, probably one of the most knowledgeable people about
Polkadot. So what tell us about your, your office hours? So
yeah, unfortunately, today, I had to cancel them because I'm
here. But yeah, every every Friday, Friday afternoon at
1430 UTC. So that's 1530. Here in Switzerland, I have office
hours. So just like office hours when you were in school, come
and ask me any question you might have about Polkadot. I
know a lot of questions. It's hard to find the answer to, or
it makes a lot more sense to chat with someone. So please
you'll feel free to come. I make a Twitter space every
Friday afternoon, and just just come by, ask a question or
listen to what questions other people have for me.
Great, thanks very much, Bill. And thanks again to all the
panelists. Thank you to all listeners here today. We'll see
you on the next space, which is to be determined the time and
date, but it'll be sometime late next week. So take care
everyone. Have a nice weekend. Thank you. Bye everyone. Bye