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Grailed Chat w/ The Meebits Team
Recorded: March 27, 2025 Duration: 1:06:10Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent episode of Grail Chat, community leaders discussed the growth and resilience of the MeBits project, highlighting strategic partnerships, upcoming events, and the importance of community engagement in driving the Web3 ecosystem forward.
Full Transcription
The End Thank you. The End The Thank you. The End Oh, my God. The End The Thank you. The End The so gmgm and welcome to episode five of grail chat
and welcome to episode 5 of Grail Chat.
It's amazing to see so many me bits in the audience
as well as the legendary CryptoTat and 10KTF communities.
I see all of you.
What a reminder of how strong our OG communities are.
It's been a blast having this time together to hang out
and learn a few things from the great builders of the space.
Huge shout out to each and every one of you for your commitment to growing Web3 the right way.
And if this is your first time joining us, welcome to the family. We appreciate you tuning in.
This is not an alpha space, but instead a community space. We hope Grail Chat will become a place where all communities can come together, reflect on Web3, and learn a few things from time to time as well.
So if this is your first time joining us, buckle up.
I'm really excited for tonight's show.
You're in for a treat.
We have some amazing builders on stage with us.
Alongside my co-host, Michael Figge, we're thrilled to have on stage some community leaders that refuse to give up on the project they love so dearly.
As a parent project of 10KTF, we're all very familiar with the OG MeBits.
Similar to 10KTF, their journey has had wild twists and turns,
but one thing never left the community.
The people that love their Web3 home so much and refused to stray
are the reason that the Meebits are so strong,
even after facing so much adversity from Larva Labs to Yuga Labs, and now finally
their third home, where they are being led by some of the OG community members that have
been there through the entire journey.
It's my pleasure to welcome on stage the CEO of the MeBits, Sergito and Creative Director
Bailey.
Thanks for joining us on the show.
How are you guys?
Hey, guys. Thank you so Thanks for joining us on the show. How are you guys? Hey, guys.
Thank you so much for having us.
Appreciate you making room for us early in your show history.
Yeah, doing well.
Thank you guys for having us,
and thanks for taking the time to speak with us.
It's a pleasure, man.
We have the journey of the MeeBit is a special one,
and we have a lot of topics to cover, so we won't waste any time.
If you're new to the show, here's a quick agenda for you.
The first 30 to 40 minutes, we'll have a discussion about MeBits and the current NFT space, followed by 15-minute Q&A from you.
So we'd love to have you up towards the end of the conversation to ask follow-up questions or just to join the conversation.
Let's get to it.
Figgy, as always, I look forward to these conversations to hear your insights too.
And since the very first episode of Grail Chat, we've been reminding the community about the Builders Dinner that was coming up in Austin during South by Southwest.
And now it's finally came and passed.
So hopefully some of the regular listeners of Grail Chat were able to join you. But I'd love to start the show by hearing how
it went and any major takeaways that came from getting to meet up with so many Web3 OGs for
evening of conversation. How was it? Yeah, sure. Well, it's good to see everybody again. We did
have our awesome builder dinner right after the last Grail chat, so about two weeks ago.
And, you know, Austin's a cool town. We were able to get people in that were in town from South by Southwest.
It's close to other big cities in Texas, so some folks drove up from Houston.
We had about 40 people that showed up, so pretty good turnout.
And, you know, I think we met up, so pretty good turnout.
And, you know, I think we met a lot of really good folks.
So Tiger is Fine helped co-host and organize all the folks in Austin.
We had Terrencio from the Grailed show up.
He's just around the Austin area.
We've had a bunch of Southwest apes like Reaper and Ehrlichie and Jack Nefty.
And I'm going to forget some names here.
Tropical Virtual was there, Bonds was there, Fox Lightly was there. There's a lot of
really good people and so looking forward to putting on another builder
dinner again soon. I'm probably gonna try a different area, more info at the next
Grail chat. I think the next really big event we're looking at is maybe Token 2049 at the end of April.
I'm also thinking there's a format where we can bring in other hosts, too, because it's pretty exhausting to put together the dinners and bring everybody together and travel to those places and do it every month.
But anyway, overall, Austin Builder Dinner is a really great turnout.
I'm looking forward to the next one.
I just want to say thanks for always putting those on.
I mean, I know there's been two now and many more to come, I'm sure.
Oh, we've had so many.
Three now, actually.
Yeah, I was going to say, you guys did one in Paris, didn't you?
That's right. Yeah, we did.
So we've done LA, Paris, and now Austin, South by.
And it's really easier to latch on to an event that's right yeah we did so we've done la paris and now austin south by and it's really
easier to like latch on to an event that's already there so you can kind of grab everybody that flew
into town anyway and and bring them there together to uh have a more long-form conversation not like
a panel or anything but something where you could really break bread with people and find out who
the people are behind the pfp that's the special thing about this era that we are in with the NFT communities now is like the magic about the Web3 communities
are that we all love the people that we've gotten to know over the years.
It's not new. It's not fresh anymore.
Like a lot of these communities have been through a lot of the ups and downs. And I feel like we've seen the tourists that were here for the quick flips and solely the financial incentives. They've moved on to the next hot thing. Meanwhile, like the projects that still are alive are solely thriving and alive because of the breath of air that the community breathes into them. And no, honestly, no community has shown that more than 10 KTF or the MeBits.
And this is a perfect segue because the MeBits have been a perfect example of that as well,
from the very beginning, even from Larva Labs when it was first introduced. And Sergito, I'd love
for you to begin our chat with just chatting about the Meebits by sharing what it was like to live this journey from the very beginning and from becoming a community member to this point now where you're the CEO of the community that you love so much.
Hey, thanks, John.
Yeah, no, I just actually wanted to say something about what you said about the flippers.
I actually think they play a role. They bring liquidity to the ecosystem and i you know it's such a small
space i don't want to demonize anybody just because you know they buy and sell i think that
if people come in to trade nfts um if they do it in a way which accrues value to to the project
through liquidity i think it's great. But having said that,
I'm a Mivid's fan since the first month,
not the first day, to be honest. I was very distracted
the week that they minted.
My sister was having my second
niece, so I was focused on being
there for her. And it took
me a few weeks to really lock in on the
collection. One night I was in Discord,
on the Punks Discord, talking to Von Mises, a legendary punk collection one night i was in discord um on the punks escort
talking to von meises who's a legendary punk collector and he was telling me about all the
all the different like traits that people were not really appreciating from from the mewits and
um it was then that i fell in love and you know i feel like it's been a it's been like a like a
almost like a romantic romantic relationship of sorts where i don't know you
hear about people you know marrying their best friends from high school um and their best friends
for a few years before they realize they're actually like perfect for each other and you know
maybe they they had other relationships in college but then they reunite you know that kind of like
dramatic airport scene in that rom-com i'm latino so there's a lot of like you know passion and stuff that the way we were raised
um i'm sure i mean see figgy laughing you worked with a couple of them at yuga so you know what
i'm talking about but but that's the way it felt it felt like it was one of those things were almost
meant to be i i didn't expect it to happen.
And I'm just very, very lucky and happy that it did.
And incredibly, incredibly honored that we have three really hardcore OG Mibits on the Mipco team as well,
such as Bailey and the token juggler and Bojago guy.
I agree with you.
I mean, to the point about flippers and people that bring liquidity, it is very important. But as we've seen, without core community and the pillars of a community, the liquidity arbitragers can just run a community up and then right back down into the ground if the community isn't there. And I think every project that doesn't die stays alive because of certain pillars that refuse to leave and refuse to give up on what they love, just like you said, like being married
to this project. And I mean, I think all of us in the audience, anyone that's still here after years
and years in this space feel that way about a couple projects. I think you guys have done an
amazing job just never giving up and being there for the community and growing the community.
And one thing that we chatted about before the show are four different pillars that the MeBits
community has come up with, the reasons why this community continues to stay alive and thrive.
I'd love for you to share the four pillars and how you came up with those being the four
most important things to the heartbeat of the MiBits community.
Yeah, and just to put some separation between the MiBits community and what MIPCO is doing.
MiBits community is every person that loves
and cares about the MeebCo,
not just MeebCo holders,
but also those that like the MeebCo,
maybe don't have the opportunity to collect one,
but participate in the ecosystem.
And we're very grateful to everybody
that plays a role in that.
The four pillars that you're talking about.
So obviously MeebCo was formed to acquire
the MeebCo IP and and the brand as well as the NFT
portfolio the Yuga brand I mean the Yuga Labs helped and and develop it steward it and bring
it into the future and so as we were doing that alongside with our incredible partners at One
Confirmation we came about with you know how are we how are we going to really get this done?
And so these four pillars that we're basing pretty much almost everything we're doing on
are, you know, art and provenance being the first one.
Obviously, Meebits were created by Larva Labs.
Matt and Johns are the ultimate pioneers of the space, creating punks.
ultimate pioneers of the space, creating punks.
Obviously, every PFP collection is inspired, if not a derivative, of punks.
Almost every trait that you see in PFPs today started with punks.
And obviously, they're now in major museums, the Pompidou, the ICA, Toledo.
They have the autoglyphs at the Whitney Museum of American History.
And that list is just
going to continue to grow through time.
So there's that art piece and then the
Providence piece, same thing.
MiBits are digital sculptures.
I think a lot of people confuse MiBits to just
be PFPs, right? Nothing wrong
with 2D PFPs. I think they're great,
but the MiBits
were really put together as
Matt and John's digital sculptures.
And so for us, it's really important.
I think we talk about the Mibits community that's always been around.
I think we've always seen that value of the token as well as just the voxel avatars as really art.
So that's the first pillar.
The second pillar is what we call fund utility. And this is really taking a big page from what our partners at Yugo Labs developed.
Obviously, they changed the world back in early summer 2021 with the development of utility and being able to give back to the community through not just new JPEGs, but also activations, merge, and so on.
So we're bringing it to the call Utility 2.0 or Fun Utility,
where we're going to, obviously after being collectors and participants in the space for years,
we've seen what works, we've seen what doesn't.
So we're going to do our best at delivering a certain
type of experience for MIVIT community members. Again, that is people who hold MIVITs, people
who hold one MIVIT, people who hold a thousand MIVITs, people who might not hold MIVITs,
but care about the MIVITs and like the MIVITs. We consider them a part of our community and
there'll be ways for them to participate in this. And then the third pillar
is just tech innovation. You know, MiBits, again, from their Labelabs provenance, always ahead of
their time. They're interoperable avatars for the metaverse, always pushing the envelope forward.
First, you know, collection that came with 3D models and so on. And we're going to continue
with that tradition. We're working on some really cool initiatives. Obviously, you know, I think everybody would agree MiBITs are perfect bodies for AI
agents, both on-chain and off-chain. So we're going to be pushing in that direction, as well
as some other cool things. And then the last thing, you know, last but not least, is community
first. And just bring it full circle to your opening.
Obviously, MeBit holders and MeBit community members are our main audience.
They're our supporters.
They're the ones that are giving us the feedback.
We're building for them.
And we're going to do a lot of what has not been done before
for MeBits, which is just really help community members
build alongside us, support them, give them air cover where necessary, has not been done before for MeBits, which is just really help community members
build alongside us, support them,
give them air cover where necessary.
One example that comes to mind is Wendell,
a punk and MeBit holder,
created this incredible app called Meep Camp.
And you can all go use it.
It's the address is meep.camp.
And he's just been developing
and adding a lot of really cool features over the last is meet.cam. And he's just been developing and adding a lot of really cool features
over the last few weeks.
And we've done everything we can to support him,
to promote it, to get any resource that he needs.
And we want to do that for the rest of the community as well.
So creating meetups, sponsoring meetups,
all kinds of things that people want to build alongside us
will be there for them to the best
of our abilities. And so that runs up the four pillars of MIPCO as we look at stewarding and
developing the MIPI-Bits brand and IP. One thing that I really love that you mentioned,
and I really believe the way people communicate about brands and vision is important. And one thing that you've constantly done through
even from the beginning from the intro is, is reminding like, even if you don't necessarily own
Amoebits, like you're still part of the community. I love that because I think that's so important
and an important aspect of building out IP. You don't necessarily have to own the IP or own the NFT to feel part of the overwhelming community that's around it.
And I feel like 10KTF in a lot of ways has done that too.
And so I figured I wanted to throw it over to you because I feel like a lot of these pillars are very similar to like the 10KTF,
even in the sense that both 10KTF and MeBits were both owned by Yuga Labs.
So I'm sure that you have, you know, very similar insights about kind of the feeling of going through
and helping the community thrive and wanting to build out that IP to not just the NFT holders,
but a broader audience,
because that's really how you capture new holders anyways.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, I just met with Sergito earlier this week to trade notes on tactics
that are being used to grow and cultivate the communities, right?
And anything that's upcoming that we can align our interests on,
we do. And the thing is, like, yeah, because we own these digital networked objects,
like, our interests are all aligned on making sure that communities, like, when the community wins, the people running the project win. When the community loses, the people running the
project lose. It's very aligned interests. And I think, you know, part of the tricky part is just balancing out, you know,
how do you take care of like the base and the people who own the digital assets, while at the
same time, reaching out and growing channels and extending your reach to a much broader audience.
I think one of the themes that we've been testing
in a couple of these grill chats is like, do you think the space has grown or shrunk in the last
two years? And I think that, like, if we're being honest with ourselves, we aren't at a huge influx,
but we've seen hints of it. You know, like, if you ever look at the volume when retail is here, when the Coinbase app is in
the top 50 at the App Store, or when Phantoms is at the top 50 in the App Store,
the volume on centralized exchanges goes up like 20x. It's a whole different ballgame.
And so you have to kind of like throw the ball to where you think it's going to go.
And I think if you position a brand to have a lot of reach, that's going to be able to, you know, just get your voice heard that much more.
And, you know, one of the tactics that I've been describing in the last few Grail chats,
and I'm curious to hear where your head's at with some of this, Sergito, and even Bailey,
because you're creating some of the content for this, but I've seen a lot more success in growing reach beyond the traditional Twitter and Discord platforms.
We were posting content on 10KTF every week for the better part of a year.
And right now on both Instagram and TikTok, I think we see more growth in a week than
we did in a year on Twitter.
So it's not about where it is today.
It's about where it will scale to in the future.
I'm curious, how are you thinking about growing your reach?
And how is MeBits?
Are you guys looking beyond Twitter and Discord?
Are you mainly focused on, are you looking at Web3 users first
and then kind of getting your message down pat there and then extending to other channels?
Or are other channels even interesting to you?
How do you think about Reach right now?
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
Something that we did a lot of thinking on.
My mental model for NFT communities is professional support teams and their fan bases.
If you think about an nft project you know
the holders are the equivalent of the season ticket holders and even within like season ticket
holders that you know i live here in new york you know at msg you can have courtside seats and
that's probably like your whales the people that bought the grails um and then you have the
nosebleeds and that you know might be my plumber that splits his stick three ways with two cousins from Long Island.
And, you know, but they're all in the same.
And so as an NFT project, you have to put on a good show for them.
Right. It's important. Those are your most loyal fans.
and you have to have some good performance on the court or the field,
And you have to have some good performance on the court or the field, whatever that might be.
whatever that might be.
But, you know, there's no big professional sports team
without an expanded fan base.
And you see it, for example, with the EPL.
Growing up in Mexico, there's only one sport in Mexico,
and that's soccer.
Coming to the States, obviously the MLS has grown a lot here,
but before that, there wasn't really a
lot of like soccer fans and I'm surprised to see so many people cheering for like British teams
teams that you know people that probably will never go to London to go you know watch Arsenal
play or like go to Manchester to watch Manu play but um but they're really big fans and for us
like then as I was saying earlier like community members for Meavits, who might not hold a Meavit themselves, but are interested in the brand, are similar to those fans from abroad or people that just might tune in for the World Series but don't get to watch opening week for baseball, which I think it's this week if I'm reading Twitter correctly here.
And we're using a lot of those parallels i don't think you know i think a lot of nft projects
try to reinvent the wheel um when there's a lot of really good playbooks that have been developed by
you know entertainment franchises a lot of what we're doing just entertaining people giving them
a place to hang out a place to make connections um and i love that garter keeps talking about the
other side that's like the living room of web 3 um in and not that a living room where you go and sit there and just play video
games sort of living room more like a third space right a place where like if you if you watch how
that your mother they always go meet at that bar and that's like the place where people hang out
and and that's kind of like what we're trying to build towards. So we're definitely looking at Web2.
We actually hired an intern.
She's very Gen Z.
Her name is Sasha.
And she's on vacation because she's on spring break.
Otherwise, she would have been here with us.
But if you actually look at our Instagram and TikTok,
and we haven't made a marketing push in the Web3 site for this just yet,
because we want to get more content on there first,
so that when people go over, they can get more of that.
We've been actually putting Web2 Align content on those accounts.
And it's different from the Web3 content that you probably know Bailey's work, because he's obviously one of the best in the space when it comes to the animations and very know very much web 3 forward but on our tiktok for example there's
videos of like what would different me bits of like different astrological science are or like
there's a couple of renders of famous memes such as the guy holding that like cardboard piece
uh but using me bits and and our approach is really just to sell the brand, the IP,
the character themselves without really thinking too much
of whether these people might buy a MiBit one day or not.
As long as they vibe with the look
and they really come in to understand, you know,
kind of the provenance and the art
and everything that we mentioned before,
I think we're going to be able to bring in those types of fans
that while they live in Missouri,
they wake up in the morning on
Sundays to watch the EPL.
And that's kind of like the model that we're following.
A bit of a wordy answer,
but yeah, we're definitely
building for both
our season
ticket holders as well as those
people that might have heard about us and
just start tuning in and want to
continue watching.
I think
something that you mentioned that
just got me thinking is just the
especially with what
Figgy was saying about other channels
is like at the end of the day
memes rule the internet
and memes rule the digital world,
right? And like, I think it's cool to think about how like the web three forward space really
trickles into the broader web ecosystem by kind of capturing that. And I know Bailey as an artist,
that. And I know Bailey as an artist, like, I'm curious what, how you think about that and how
like mimetics plays into like your thought process with art and just like creation with,
with the things that you guys are doing with me bits. Yeah. Thanks, John. I think it's definitely
a very powerful thing. I think we've already kind of embraced it a little bit here and there. And I think it's something that we're going to continue to. I think it's something that's constantly on the timeline and ever evolving. I think there's always little metas, like new metas every week. And I think they typically revolve around that kind of memetic content. So I definitely think we're going to embrace that and cultivate it into our content as well.
Is it difficult as a creator to, like, I imagine one of the hardest things is with the constantly evolving meta to, like, create new art, like, quickly.
I'm curious, with MiBits, with, like, the structure of the 3D models and and the voxels like is it make it a
little easier to like create art on the fly or is it still pretty difficult to like capture that
meta and like create artwork around it yeah it's a funny thing i think you nailed it it's there's
this really short window of um attack you know it's like if you if you get it right on time it's
perfect and if you get it just a little bit late then you kind of feel like the person that's like if you get it right on time, it's perfect. And if you get it just a little bit late, then you kind of feel like the person that's like behind, you know,
or trying to keep up with whatever's relevant.
So in terms of like character animation, like we put out the,
what was it, like the little morning routine meme.
We put that out from the Amoebid account.
I think we attached that pretty quickly.
And in terms of like the ease of it, it's funny because my journey with Amiibits has been totally full circle.
I was introduced by our head of ops down there in the audience, Bojangla, a couple years ago.
I guess he had an elephant PFP, and I just thought it was cool.
And then he kind of onboarded me.
And Amiibits were actually my first step into like
character animation because of the simplicity like I mean when it comes to character animation
fingers and faces are like probably the most complex thing to deal with you have like so much
expression in the face and then so much movement in the fingers to make it not look stiff you know
if you have a model moving around in t-pose and their hand is just like in the high five position it just doesn't look good you know so me bits were like the perfect
um entry character into character animation and i think that's something we're really going to try
to push to like creator empowerment and really try to teach our community how to use these
i love that i know figgy you you were thinking a lot about the IP of MiBits as well.
And I think you had a question because you were thinking about how incorporating and building out that IP
and how they were added as one of the first PFP collections in 10KTF about just the ease of the IP of MiBits.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, look, the background is MiBits.
MiBits was a parent PFP collection in 10KTF,
and it was like a lot of other parent collections.
It's a way that people could build out their world
of their character, right?
So the MiBits character could have its own shoes,
backpack, a full set, all the accessories.
And, you know, looking at it, 10KTF is really like a community of communities.
And one of the things we had to solve for is like, how do we get all these parent collections to feel like they're all of a system?
And MiBits in particular was like, it's one of the most stylized, right?
It's all this cubist, voxel stuff.
But if you want it to match with other stuff, it's like taking the simplicity of that
and wrapping it to something that is more complex.
And so I think it turns out like some of the cleaner,
simpler-to-read PFP images like Mebits,
they actually look really good when you wrap them on objects.
I think that desire to continue like out the worlds of Meebs and to build out IP is something that all projects aspire to. What do you think about the proliferation of IP? Do you embrace the idea that everybody has a capability of building stories with individual characters?
Are you trying to approach Mubits in a more canonical setting?
One of the things that was done at Yugo was Metropolis, for instance.
This is the city where Mibits live. Is that something that you guys embrace and build on?
Or is there a different lore that you're trying to put together?
Or are you just, like, decentralizing the lore?
Like, how do you approach that?
Yeah, no, I think that's a great question.
And I'm really happy you asked because we're really excited about the direction we're taking.
I don't know if you guys have listened to the podcast
that we published with Matt and John from Lara Labs.
It's pinned to our Mibits profile,
but I would highly recommend it,
not because you get to listen to my Mexican accent for an hour,
but because it's freaking Matt and John, right?
It's like the creators of the space pretty much.
And they're very, very just very private
in that they hardly ever make public appearances.
You know, they don't really spend that much time talking about their creations.
And outside of that, you know, when we're talking about MeBits, they mentioned that the traits, the characters, they were all inspired by New York City.
like new york city man and john live in new york have lived in new york new york for many years
Matt and John live in New York, have lived in New York for many years.
and so if you look at the media traits um a lot of them are inspired by new york city streetwear
everything from like the full suit which was the trait that you know kind of like hooked me because
i used to work in a bank uh but stuff like the basketball jersey right you go to west for court
for west for streets you see people playing there uh the
bandanas the different like t-shirts the shoes that everything is new york city inspired and so
for us uh mevets are kind of like new yorkers um and we think new york is a great kind of place to
to put the mevets in because it's such a diverse place. You meet people from all kinds of backgrounds.
There's like 100 and something languages spoken here.
So I think it's really representative of Web3 itself.
And Metropolis plays that role in that just like Gotham for Batman
and other cities that are based in New York City lore,
but play a role in different entertainment ecosystems.
Metropolis will be that New York for us.
And I'll let Bailey talk about what's coming out for UGC that we're working on.
He's spearheading our efforts.
But yeah, I'm just excited to really develop a number of MiBits that we own into Metropolis-based, New York City-based characters
that we're going to be working on, storytelling. But then given there's 20,000 MiBits,
we're also going to encourage people to develop their own stories.
For me, when I came to Web3, even before MiBits dropped, I remember the Smurfs from when I was
little. And the way I would talk about NFTs was like, imagine watching the Smurfs,
and then you're able to own one of the characters that might not make it to the TV show,
but exists in the Smurf universe.
And you can create your stories around it.
And maybe it's up on a TV show one day, or maybe it never does.
But you're owning part of that ecosystem.
And with MeVets,
and especially with kind of like this natural affinity
of pop culture towards New York City-based stories, right?
If you look at all the major franchises
from Avengers and like DC Comics
and then TV shows like How I Met Your Mother,
Friends, Sopranos, I mean, you name it.
It's all very much, you very much New York City heavy.
We're going to play with both.
And with that, I'll pass it over to Bailey to tease a little bit of what he's working on with Miki.
Yeah, thanks, Sergio.
I think Sergio really nailed it.
And I think that it's easier to fall in love with a character more so than a collection of characters.
Like, for example, I liked Pokemon when I was a kid,
and I liked Pikachu.
And I think that if you connect with a certain character,
it can help you fall in love with the overarching collection
of characters, and that's what happened with me.
And I think that's what we want to do in terms of UGC
and really empower the community to create their own stories.
So a couple years back, I created a
tool for Blender. It was called the Me Kit. And essentially what it was, it was a drag and drop
system in Blender that you could build little scenes. And a couple of people still use it
today. And I always get so excited to see it, but it's kind of been buried. And we really think that
it deserves the love to kind of shine again. And so I've been reworking that from the ground up and we're going to try to make it even easier to use because I think that in terms of UGC
there's things like what Gwendolyn has provided the MeadCam is amazing and it's convenient and
like for example another meta is the whole Studio Ghibli chat GPT thing that happened it's very
convenient and I think there's this fine line between convenience and control.
So if you want to get a little further into having control of your own story, we want to provide tools to help you really do that.
I love this.
I love the direction this conversation's heading i just think that um we we heard about this with rita yet last uh last
episode too about like the importance of of user generated content ugc and i think i think when
users are able to create their own stories they create they feel more a part of the lore and i
love what you said too about like how ecosystems you usually fall in love with one character. I know, Figgy, you think a lot about this and the 10KTF team
because obviously every season has been building out like Wagmi-san
and a lot of the 10KTF community is in love with the old man.
And then extrapolating on that, you start to build these side stories.
And I think that it's just like a really
special thing about the ecosystems and what I feel like a lot of builders are thinking about.
Figgy, I wanted to ask you just because I'm curious, I loved that, that Sergita was talking
about like the lore of the, the New York City and the me bits. And I was curious about kind of the the new york city and the me bits and i was curious about kind of the the lore and like
the ideation because i don't know if i've ever heard it from you but like the idea of wag me son
uh is and when when it comes to obviously we know about wag me son and his role but
the idea of like the ugc with a lot of the gra grailed characters that are going to be coming into play and how you
think about UGC with them. Yeah, well, I mean, I think a sense of place is always important because
if you rewind to like all these PFP collections, you know, there was, there was always a lot of
characters, but I think if you deconstruct, you know, like Board API Club, for instance,
there was always a sense of place with the clubhouse.
You go to the website, you could see the clubhouse, you could click on the door, you could go into the clubhouse.
It's very simple, but like that whole world was built out in your head.
And I think, you know, a lot of the projects that went out in 21 and 22, a lot of them were successful when they established a sense of place
for the characters to be in.
And you could see how,
and this is something that was done with Mean Bits too,
where you get to see the surrounding world
that the characters are in,
and the trees are voxelized,
the fireplace is voxelized.
The whole thing is kind of internally congruent.
And so I think that whenever people see that,
even if they can't articulate why they like it,
they go, yeah, it all fits together,
so this is like a high-quality brand, right?
And I think when we looked at the background
for something like Wagmisan and New Tokyo.
I think it was all like,
what would a place look like
if all of the PFPs existed in it at the same time?
If like every borough,
every neighborhood represented a different PFP.
So there'd be like the Mibits area.
There'd be, you know,
the area that was like icy for the Pudgy Penguins.
There'd be the, you know, the World of Women area.
There would be the, you know, like Wolfgang. There'd be the World of Women area. There would be the Wolfgang.
Like there was just an area for everybody, right?
And you had to make each of those boroughs
internally congruent.
And a lot of that logic I think still ladders up to
like more immersive experiences like Other Side, for instance,
where that logic is like fully built out and extended.
But I think there is some economy to establishing a sense of place and for people's imaginations to be the most powerful renderers that exist.
It's really hard to compete with people's imaginations when it comes to connecting the dots between comic book panels.
People's minds can render that better than you ever could.
And so I think establishing a sense of place is always – I think it's often overlooked.
Right?
Like there's a designer named Virgil Abloh, and he says things like, oh, I could design a bag, or I could put the bag in the middle of a room and design the room, and it's easier to design the room.
I think that that really brings the world to life.
But this is all, like, kind of theory, right?
I think it does come down to hard tradeoffs that you have to make as a creator, as a content creator especially. And in the age of AI,
this Ghibli thing has just completely taken over. But it's not just Ghibli. It's like this new
open AI model. Open AI model can do claymation. It could do puppets. It could do anything, right?
And so the marginal advantage of knowing a certain software is definitely eroded, but it does pose the question, if you could snap your fingers and get the content that you want or something close to the content that you want, like, what would you post?
Because I think we're seeing, like, extreme levels of democratization in the execution and the, like, fit and finish of some of these things where like even people that are really untrained
at content creation can put out some pretty high quality stuff like and this is all happening
within the 48 last 48 hours right um i i think it comes down to like as a creator like how do you
how do you value engineer where to spend your time like Bailey, one of the things I wonder all the time is like, okay,
if I have a prompt and I go, I can make something and post it and it's probably going to take
me an hour or two to make the thing and then we can post it. Like, is that the right way
to go down? Or is it like, no, you know what, I'm actually going to like spend two or three
days on like an absolute fire animation that like people are going to love
and it's going to get the same amount of the engagement as if I did you know a Studio Ghibli
uh output prompt right like you have to kind of balance that trade-off right and especially if I
for me it's like you really have to prioritize like what is your goal right now and one of the
real goals of 10k tf and I'm sure it is for me, but it's too, is channel growth.
I think that you need to base your whole content strategy around channel growth and user acquisition
and growing exposure to the brand because that's a foundation that you can stand on whether or not the Fed cut.
That's the thing about Twitter, right?
Like if the FOMC or the Fed
doesn't cut interest rates or something that has nothing to do with our brand, if some weird
financial thing happens, nobody's in a mood on Twitter to be reading about your story or your
brand or your world, but they are on other platforms. So how do you deal with that trade-off
right now? Are you guys optimizing for just trying to get more followers or are you trying to be more judicious? Like that's something that I wrestle with a lot because if you, if you actually like research on TikTok, right? Like there's a lot of brain rotty things that like can grow your brand fast. But like, are you, are you like, yeah, but that's not like a true expression of our brand, but it is a short-term trade-off to be able to get more eyeballs.
And so like we're going to deploy that tactic for now.
And when we have more eyeballs, we're going to start doing the stuff that is like probably less leaning into IP hijacking or something like that and more leaning into things that fundamentally speak to people
about what your brand is.
I'll jump in here because I think one thing
that we haven't mentioned is the fact that
we feel a huge weight on our shoulders
as far as respecting Matt and John's legacy
when it comes to the MiBits being their third project.
Obviously, you know, punks and glyphs, as we said earlier, are in museums.
They are in the canon of art history, and we think MiBits belong there.
So it's not lost in us that, you know, MiBits will outlive us just by their nature.
live us just by their nature.
And we want to make sure that we can develop the IP
and we can develop storytelling and the lore
and the world building,
while at the same time making sure
they can remain as pure as possible
to honor that legacy,
to make sure that when people look back in time at this chat,
I mean, I would love to take my last breath in this world as CEO of me,
it's, you know, hopefully in 50 years or whenever it's my time to go.
And I feel like the team has also said that it feels like, you know,
like a life mission, but we will go when the hand, the Mibits will stay.
And so, you know, for us, it's, it's, it's,
it's not just like a PFfp project we bought or that we
kind of like created in 21 for us it's really taking over the legacy or part of the legacy
of somebody we have a lot of respect for um and somebody who you know really changed the world as
well and so that i think adds a level of complexity um to some of the stuff that we want to do.
And that's why sometimes we try to err on the side of caution because we don't want a decision that might be temporary to really be reflected in that long-dated history and legacy of Larva Labs and Mibits themselves.
and MiBits themselves.
I don't know if that's something
that you guys have considered as well,
but we definitely feel very, very strongly
about making sure everything that we do honors MiBits,
honors Matt and John,
and honors, obviously, our community alignment.
I think there's very, very particular
kind of like the way people see MiBits
and feel about MiBits.
And so, yeah, it's to your point, right? It's easy to try to jump on every meta, but a lot of them
don't really vibe with the value alignment that we have. And so it becomes a little tricky because
you want to be fun and you want to be edgy. But then you think, you know, 50 years down the line,
if people see this about Miivets, what are they going to think we're doing back today?
And definitely, that's why our content that is canon comes from Baby.
He's the best artist here, and we make sure that he has enough time
to develop his vision and the outputs that he needs.
And then everything else is just more complementary. But as you see, as we develop the vision and the outputs that he needs. And then everything else is just more kind of like complimentary.
But as you see, you know,
as we develop the narrative and the lore and the characters,
we're going to try our best to make sure that that's just the best work that we
can do because of that weight that we feel with Mivitz being part of Matt and
Matt and John's legacy.
John's legacy.
Yeah, I can appreciate that for sure.
Yeah, I can appreciate that for sure. I mean,
I mean, I think that when people support a project and there's a thing about that project
that they gravitate to, you definitely feel obligated to maintain that aspect of it.
And I think that's something that drove us a lot on doing three years of Thursday content
back-to-back on Twitter.
And that's a thing that a lot of people really liked.
But when we saw user growth basically plateauing,
even with that tactic,
I think it's almost like you want to stay true to that grammar
on that platform.
And if you're going to do the Thursday thing,
you do it on Twitter.
But you kind of develop augmented identities of the brand, extensions of the brand with different voices
on different platforms. And like, as you accumulate new followers on those platforms,
they understand the brand through that lens. So that's kind of like the nuance that we try to put
on it. But I totally heard that like, there's a i think like the pillar number one that you
talked about was like art and provenance right there's like a historical component to this that
you're trying to um you know be a good steward of so totally appreciate that one thing that came to
mind just like as a community member that doesn't have uh like technical as much technical skills
but i would consider myself like a content creator.
And I think over time, we're going to see,
as the digital era continues to be ushered in,
there's going to just be millions of digital content creators
doing what they love, especially as this era,
especially if this AI utopia era comes in where humanity
is like trying to figure out what they're, what they are supposed to do is like, do things you
enjoy and love. One thing that I think a lot about is like, I would love to put out content,
but I'm not like, like, I have no art skills. And so I think, you know, like the things that we're seeing with AI development and from what it sounds like what you guys are working on with like user generated content, making it easier for users. their own lore and their own narratives and create art content.
It feels like at some point, with the pillar of community first, Sergito, that you have,
and I think 10KTF very much has that as a pillar as well, it almost becomes just like unleashing the community and then being able to share and and like repost the things that they're
doing and the things that they're creating how much do you guys think about that in terms of
like a strategy for content of like unlocking like the on it like especially with these cult
like communities it's like you if you harness the power of that that community it feels like that can like those types of memes
and like the medics uh will start to unlock just because the community is trying to figure out ways
to harness it yeah john i think you nailed it um and i think that's something that we definitely
want to pursue uh i think that so many teams have already done it very, very well. And as a 3D
artist myself, I think any project that has a 3D model, I try to get into it. If it's affordable,
I'll grab it because I just want to play with the models and see how they are and see the potential.
And I think a ton of communities have done this very well. Like Rita in the audience, for example,
goaded artist, one of my favorites, and what he's done with
G's and Dashbow is incredible. And I think that's such a great way to just allow people to make easy
content without having the technical skills to actually create it. And I think that any tool,
about what you mentioned about the whole friction with the difference between easy content and more long-form content.
I think there's definitely a really fine line.
And I think they both have pros and cons for sure.
I think having the ability to make things very quickly
is amazing.
But I don't think you have control.
So I think that, to Sergio's point,
about what kind of content we're
going to be putting out from the mebit account will be cohesive and streamlined and it will be
done in a way that it all feels relatable but we want to encourage people to do things in their own
style no matter their technical ability like on my personal account for example i have my
daily series and i love portraying me bits in tons of different ways. Like I did a realistic BMX one a couple of weeks ago,
and I think today I did a cartoon one.
I think it's amazing just to see MiBits in all different forms.
So I think it's a good way to kind of curate it on our own end,
but then encourage others to do it in whatever style they want,
regardless of their technical ability.
Figgio, I'm curious how you're thinking about that as well just like unlocking
the power of the
community IP to
create content and
that could go viral
totally I think
by taking the brand
and plugging it into projects that
people are building I think that's the best way to kind of create a network effect right now around what the IP is.
I think Rita's tool with Dashbow is, of course, legendary. Shout out, Rita.
That's one of the ingredients of like, okay, cool, like you don't need to know a whole lot to be able to make more of a world around your character.
And not just that, I think that extends to all these AI tools now too.
So 100% in favor of it. Like, you know, on a personal level, I do think that having a central source of truth for a canonical story still kind of like breaks through the noise more than anything else.
Like, I think good stories are engineered for sure.
Like, they're thought out.
They have a focal point.
Like, when you're watching a movie in a movie theater, there isn't somebody making up the content as you go.
The whole thing is completely engineered so that everybody's going to cry when a certain shot happens.
Everybody's going to laugh when a certain shot happens, and they do that around the world to the same movie.
So I do think that to have a powerful canonical story, that have to come from, this is my personal
belief, I think it has to come from a more centralized voice.
But in order to grow a brand, I think it's possible in Web3 to leverage a lot of different
people doing a lot of different things and proliferating the IP.
I love that.
Yeah, and I think you're right.
I think that's what drew so many people into like the lore of Wagme-san,
New Tokyo. And it feels like very much so how you,
how the other side is starting to develop. I mean,
it's funny that you mentioned with the IP of the other side,
like all of these different islands of like New Tokyo and now seeing,
you know, we obviously have Metropolis in the other side.
You're, you're, you know, obviously at the forefront of UGA Labs too,
but I assume you guys are thinking about how these different IPs,
like how you roll them into New Tokyo, because in terms of UGC,
nothing's greater than like, like a live form,
like being able to be in that space and like interacting with others.
So I imagine you guys are constantly thinking about how to create those, like a live form, like being able to be in that space and like interacting with others. So
I imagine you guys are constantly thinking about how to create those, those lores and that identity.
Because in the real time, like that's where we're heading in, I feel like probably in the not so
distant future, where we all have like these digital identities. So it's like creating this lore and the storyline that this community grows
behind, but then having like this environment where they can unleash and like
live in that lore and build it out.
Yep. Definitely thinking about it.
So before we, before we go, go ahead and continue, just wanted be looking forward to in the near future
when it comes to MeBits,
things that you guys are really excited about?
And then we'll start to close up shortly after that.
Yeah, I know.
So we've only been on the seat for a month and a half.
It feels like two years.
Sometimes it feels like two days.
But we're really happy with the program that we made.
I think one of the things that we did a really good job of,
and I mention it every time because I'm really proud of this,
we make sure that the deal did not leak beforehand.
I hate it when that happens in the space.
And it's not the way we wanted to start our stewardship of the MiBits.
And we kept it very, very tight, speaking of us.
That also prevented us from having conversations with potential partners
and infrastructure providers and so on,
until after Valentine's Day, which is when we made it public.
And we've really just done a lot of work
trying to get in front of the people I want to partner with.
And we've kicked off some stuff.
So we have a couple of merch partnerships
lined up for the summer and the fall
that I'm really excited about.
We have an incredible gaming partnership
that we've been talking to the Mewits community about.
We're going to be doing this really cool accessory
and add-on drop for a series of games that we'll announce soon.
But we're actually taking community input.
If anybody from the MiBits community, again, holders or people who like the MiBits
want to help us design some cool jetpacks and different traits for this game,
please do let us know.
We have some room for community initiative there
and we want to see people excited about it.
And then outside of that,
we'll be at NFC Lisbon.
We'll be on stage talking about Mibits.
And then we'll be in New York for NFT NYC
where, like I said,
New York is the home of Mibits.
So we're looking to do some pretty cool activations
that week. Not going to spoil the surprise but you know it's it's it's i've been here in new
york for 15 years so definitely looking to show people a really good time um who come to new york
and are part of the amibits ecosystem so that's that's what we're super excited about
i've got to just say i'm really uh, when the announcement was made that you guys would be taking over,
I just thought it's such a beautiful thing when like the,
like people that are so involved and care so much about the brand are the
ones that like are getting to continue on the legacy. And I, um,
there couldn't be a better people to, to take me bits to the next level.
I'm really excited for you guys and, and, uh, really appreciate you coming on to chat a little bit about the way you're thinking about things.
Figgy, are there anything that you want to add before we start to close out?
No, I mean, thank you, Sergito, and thank you, Bailey, and thank you to the MeBits community for joining.
Like, really stoked to see what you guys are building next.
And thanks to everybody in the Grails who came out to hear the chat today. to the Amoebas community for joining. Really stoked to see what you guys are building next.
Thanks to everybody in the Grails who came out to hear
the chat today. Looking forward to
speaking with you guys again soon.
Well, there you go.
We're coming to the end of our conversation tonight,
but it was a great one. Another
great one. Thank you all for
being here. Thanks for taking the
time out of your night to join us
for another episode of Grail Chat.
Special thanks to my co-host Michael Figge and our guests Sergito and Bailey for taking time out of
their evenings to join us. It's always amazing to connect and join community to have these
conversations and I appreciate each one of you for coming out and listening. You are the pulse
of these communities and the reason we do this. So
we'll see you again in a couple weeks for episode six of Grail Chat. Until then,
the heart of our communities will beat on. Thanks. Have a great night, everyone. The End Thank you. The The End What a show.
What a show.
If you're still here,
thanks for still being here.
Speaking of cult-like communities, CryptoTats have been around a long time,
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