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Somnia Network, Metaverse, Gaming w/ Paul Thomas| Grateful Show #371
Recorded: May 27, 2025 Duration: 1:33:09Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, key insights emerged about Somnia Network's strategic partnerships, innovative gaming mechanics, and the upcoming launch of its testnet, highlighting the growing integration of blockchain technology in gaming and the potential for significant user engagement and growth.
Full Transcription
The End I get up
And nothing gets me down
You got it tough
I see the toughest around
And I know I see the toughest around.
And I know, baby, just how you feel.
You got to roll with the punches to get to Montreal.
I can't just see it standing here. I got my back against the wrecking machine.
I hate the ones that you've seen. I can't you see this day in here, I got my back against the wrecking machine.
I hate the ones that you see.
Can't you see what I mean?
Might as well jump, jump!
Might as well jump!
Go ahead and jump, jump! Go ahead and jump.
Go ahead and jump.
Oh, how you?
Who said that? Baby, how you been?
You say you don't know.
You won't know until you get in.
Can't you see me standing here? Oh let's go legends i'm so hyped about today's episode we are hosting paul thomas the co-founder and ceo of somnia network they are building for open metaverse and gaming for the future so i'm
extremely hyped uh he also worked on msqu square which is the tech behind the other side so
really exciting episode today guys we still have two more minutes of intro so drop a GM if you have
any questions drop them into comments and retweet the space so more people see it and can join let's go You ready?
Let's go.
Yeah.
For those of you that want to know what we're all about.
It's like this, y'all.
This is 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain, and 100% reason to remember the name.
He doesn't need his name up in lights, he just wants to be heard, whether it's the beat
of the mic, he feels so unlike everybody else alone, in spite of the fact that some people
still think that they know him, but fuck him, He knows the code. It's not about the salary.
It's all about reality and making some noise, making a story, making sure his click stays up.
That means when he puts it down, toxic, making it up.
Let's go.
The Hennessy anyway.
He never really talks much.
Never concerned his status, but still even I'm starstruck.
Humble through opportunities, given despite the fact that many misjudge him because he makes a living from writing rats put it together himself now the picture connects never asking for someone's help
but it gives some respect he's only focused on what's wrong his will is beyond reach and now
with all my foes the skill of an artist this is 20% skill 80% fear be 100% clear cause why you
was ill who would have thought he'd be the one that set the west in flames then i heard him Thank you. 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5 Now the record with Shinoda's taking over the globe.
He's got a partner in crime.
His shit is equally dope.
You won't believe the kind of shit that comes out of this kid's throat.
He's not your everyday on the block.
He knows how to work with what he's got.
Let's go, everybody.
This is Grateful Show 371.
GM, GM, guys, another crazy day in Web3 space.
Oh my God, Twitter is bugging so much.
I tried to rename the space.
It locked.
I was like, damn, if I got stuck on this screen,
you have to be listening to my music for like two hours.
But, you know, it got better.
So absolutely crazy. I hope everything will work fine. Tino, how are you doing today? dělali na moje musikovat dvou hrát, ale jste se měl být, takže to je to znamená,
já ho ho všechno všechno. Tino, jak jste dělali dělá? Co to je dobré?
Tak, brá, já jsem dělá dělá. To je hektický děl, všechno je perfektní,
jsem jsem dělá všechno představit o dnes všechno, aby měl děláš
od Paulu a také od těch jako výsledních, and also from you as a head of the the yappers uh of the king of the the leaderboard uh somnia
so uh super excited uh how have how has everything been for you bro yeah all great all great it was
such a coincidence that uh i made it to to somnia leaderboard because i think i started writing
content about somnia when they announced that they have partnership with BAYC and with the club. The partnership is that if you own NFTs like BAYC,
Kodas, Other Deeds, Mutants, you get a huge, huge multiplier for their leaderboard, for their
quest platform. And the multiplier is insane. Basically, it's capped at 25 NFTs from each.
So if you have like 25 other deeds,
I think you get 2,500% multiplier.
It's absolutely crazy.
I'm first there.
I think I have 2.5 times more than the second place
just because of the multiplier.
So if you haven't tried it definitely check it out because
it's pretty TGE I think it's very interesting L1 we're gonna learn more about it from Paul 100%
and yeah the same for Kaido man I was so early so I think that you know that made me to be to be
number one I don't know how that works I don't know how kaito works i just write about somnia a
few times a day something that interests me and it keeps me on the on the first spot so yeah what
excites you most about somnia i was going through some research good looking doing my homework today
what excites you most man the crazy thing is that um we talk about it with Herman back in the day, the CEO of Improbable, that Somnia actually, they had a test run and we're going to be 100% talking about it with Paul. chain like your movement uh where you're looking uh everything right and if you have if you have
games where you play for real money this is basically like you know anti-cheat code that
you can cheat everything is on blockchain and the blockchain is so quick it's insane it can it can do
100 uh 1 million transactions per second so yeah but i want to ask paul a lot of things how he sees the future
what is the future of metaverse we when we hosted gary he said that world is getting more digital
not less right so that's something that i also believe but right now with all the ai stuff and
everything that's happening i cannot imagine the future in five years i you know when iphone came out i i
you know i had idea that we will have apps and we will have you know like gps navigation etc etc
but right now you know thinking about the future it's really crazy you know if we have like
autonomous cars uh robots everywhere i don't know yeah you're 100 correct it's uh i was watching the movie uh blackberry i
don't know if you saw it already on netflix and i not yet but i want to watch it used to be a big
fan of blackberry when it came out i was back in uh in my uh corporate years and and it was amazing
it was a game changer to have email on me everything like all the time with my team. It was so good because it helped me so much.
And then I remember when iPhone came and how much of a game changer it was already.
And it's, again, something that we talk on the show quite often.
You could see it in the movie that if you are you are stuck uh and you are looking only at what's
uh where you are right now where you have been until now and you are kind of not even scared
for uh for outside of uh of people you act you like you're not scared of anything any technology
can stop you but in a way in on the inside you probably are and once you start being a maxi on something
it's usually bad because then you close your eyes for anything else that might be coming
that you might be missing and i think this is a huge huge learning at least for me it has always
been not like no extreme is good basically if you go to the extreme to the
maximalism of anything it's usually uh for some reason not good because you're missing out
somewhere else yeah 100 agree uh that's why i'm also you know learning more about somnia and
about other blockchains and everything that's happening in the space, right? Of course, I'm
100% focused on BAYC
other side and everything that's happening there
but also trying to
check what's going on because
I played the song Jump,
right? It was a soundtrack for
Ready Player One movie
and I definitely don't
want a future like that, that
we are living in terrible worlds and we're trying to escape through the virtual headset, right?
But most people already are.
I know, I know, I know.
But it's also crazy that I talked to one guy, he's like 19 or 20.
And Tino, we are not that young anymore, right?
And we grew up with a world that
we didn't have cell phones we didn't have internet but they they don't remember that world anymore
you know the the young people they don't remember that world and it's so interesting to see even how
people worked back in the day right like you were sitting on you know behind your desk with a phone
and paper like how could you do that
it's impossible right now so it's very interesting how world is evolving especially with ai and
yeah man i i really believe that blockchain will will play a huge role uh in everything that we
are doing because digital ownership makes so much sense it's uh it's absolutely crazy right i want to add one more
thing because i know a lot of people are burned in this space and tired and it's tough right but
i was actually talking to chat gpt about uh about the internet bubble and about every like
technological breakthroughs and it always sucks at the beginning guys trust me like
whenever you see something uh early like web3 and you are really bullish and you believe it's um
it's the future it will take much more time than you expected before you will be able probably to
find a sustainable income or something like that um What I learned with chat GPT and talking about some use cases,
like it sometimes take five to 10 years
to actually be able to monetize
and find really like a sustainable income.
So which is crazy.
And I saved one tweet from Alex Hormozy.
The sooner you accept that it's going to take longer
than you want,
the sooner it happens faster than you expect, right?
That's so true.
This is so true.
We know we will have other side launching in June,
which is very, very soon.
But Garga mentioned in the group chat that we have for other side builders
that, let me quickly find it so I can read it.
But he mentioned something like that,
you will be able to work with your other deeds in the winter.
Like right now in June is going to be more for like,
you'll be able to join,
but you're not going to be able to build on your plot.
So my expectations are not high for June.
I want to enjoy, I want to experience it.
And the best way how to learn stuff is by experiencing it, right? That's why I'm so hyped
to be part of Somnia Network and to trying all the games and everything that's in there,
because you learn and you get a feel how it feels to be there, how it feels to,
you know, have everything on blockchain. The same with other side, right? If you are there as your 3D avatar,
you have different feeling than when you're just reading about it
or watching YouTube videos.
Yeah, 100%.
You need to experience it and do it.
Bro, I just remembered that song,
the grateful song that was created live.
It was something also connected with the uh the m square two right or
where was it what was yeah at one point improbable was doing um i think like test runs uh and yeah
it was so good man uh herman and rob they were coding live there so they were bringing 3d objects into the into the test environment and they made me a
song i'm not sure if i can find it right now i should because they made me a song live during
that test run and it was amazing so yeah that was so dope it was such a banger as well i remember
that you we were we were playing you know the show for a while then 100 yeah that's i i still believe
that if you want to learn and and you are really bullish on this space you should be trying things
you should be active you should be going you know if you want to learn like when we started in web
three it wasn't by reading about web three right it was like swapping eat for something else buying
meme coins buying buying NFTs,
going to Discord, etc., etc.
So I think that's the best approach.
Yeah, learning has been quite expensive for us.
It depends.
It depends.
For me, I don't think so,
because also if you,
like imagine you go to college
and you want to learn about Web3, right?
Like why?
Like, see, now we have Paul here on stage, Like imagine you go to college and you want to learn about Web3, right? Like why?
Like see now we have Paul here on stage, CEO and co-founder of Somnia.
Paul, welcome here.
I'm super happy to have you here today.
Yeah, I'm pretty hyped to be here too.
It's good.
How are you guys doing?
We are doing great. And I can't wait to talk more about Somnia, man, because I've been hyped about Somnia for some time.
And this is amazing that we can chat here together about what you guys are cooking.
Yeah, yeah, it should be good fun.
I just heard you guys talking about the Grateful song.
I remember that event, the M Squared event, a long time ago.
I actually think I've got the MP3 somewhere.
I need to dig it out because that tune was really cool.
I really like that.
That was amazing, man.
I might find it out somewhere.
I'll try to search it because BoardApeGazette,
they actually wrote a, wrote an article about it.
So I might find it.
And if I find it, I'll play it here, guys,
because it was such a great, great experience.
And most of us are really bullish on Web3 and metaverse.
And you guys have been building something for that, right?
But before we get into Somnia, Paul, I know you've been working on M2, right?
M2 powers other side.
That's the tech behind other side that allows you to basically have thousands of players at the same time active in environments like OtherSide, right?
So could you tell us that point that you actually decided to start building your own L1 blockchain?
Like what was that moment that you were like, hey, we need something that is not here yet?
Yeah, so we didn't actually want to build a blockchain.
We tried really, really hard not to
because I think the space has quite a lot of blockchains.
So with M Squared, what we're actually building,
so you see the front end of like the thousands of people.
And what that does is it has activations
across loads of different verticals.
You guys have probably seen the stuff with Major League Baseball
where we do like digital baseball matches. You guys may have seen the stuff with Major League Baseball, where we do digital baseball matches.
You guys may have seen the stuff with music.
We did some stuff with K-pop artists, Universal Music.
And so you had all of these events that were owned by these different brands.
You also have Yuga with OtherSide.
It's still owned by these different companies.
And we were like, how do we enable interoperability between them
so that you as a consumer can go to one of these events,
buy a T-shirt, buy like some clothing, and then go to another event and then use that same
clothing. And so in order to do that, we were like, okay, blockchain is a good solution for this,
because it's kind of like this trustless ledger, which everyone can plug into. It also has compute
capabilities, you can have interoperable compute. So we were like, okay, blockchain is definitely
the right solution. And then we started looking at all of the blockchains that existed in the market at that
point in time. And the problem was fundamentally speed and cost. The issue we have is when you have
tens of thousands of people show up to one of these events, and they want to transact on chain
at the same time, blockchains at that point in time just didn't work and didn't scale.
And from a user experience perspective, you can't have people click buy an item
and then have to wait seconds, if not minutes.
So it just wasn't viable, particularly in the EVM ecosystem,
which I was very like, we have to be on top of the EVM
because it's where all the developers are.
So what we then did was like, okay,
let's start doing first party research
into a high performance blockchain.
And that's what Somnia became.
So really we built Somnia to solve a problem that we had.
And now when we started doing that research
and building out, it's actually gone further
in terms of performance capabilities.
And so really we're now trying to move blockchain
beyond just commerce and also think about
how you use blockchain as a compute platform
for video games, for metaverses, for everything basically.
I also heard an interview with you when you were mentioning that actually the blockchain is so fast that some of the hardware or even wallets like Metamask, they are not built for that and they are too slow. So I think there's another thing. So users, let's just say an average user,
there is some kind of hardware or people want to play it on their or work with it on their phones,
on their slower computers. How do you think about this, like your advanced kind of blockchain and
really super speed technology versus the reality of the hardware and where we are?
versus the reality of the hardware and where we are.
Yeah, it's actually our biggest problem today.
It's the infrastructure around the blockchain
that is our biggest scaling problem now,
which I never thought going into this would be an issue
because most of that tech is Web2 tech, right?
So it doesn't have to run across
hundreds of machines globally.
It doesn't have to have consensus.
And I've been surprised at the issues with the Web2 deck.
And I think it's because people have built it with the assumption that blockchains are slow.
Like the other day, for instance, we were writing something in the VM programming language, which is a new kind of way you can interact with the EVM.
And it has hard code into it, like wait four seconds to query the blockchain again.
And our blockchain has 100 millisecond block time.
So it just doesn't make any sense for our blockchain.
And so I think a lot of these pieces of infrastructure like wallets, like indexes, like libraries,
they've got these inbuilt assumptions about the blockchain being slow.
And now we're sort of working with these people to kind of level them up.
So now thinking about, OK, now these applications can be real time now the blockchains work in this
real time fashion how should the applications infrastructure work in terms of that so yeah
that that's actually probably our biggest problem today um i joke we've gone through a dozen different
block explorers a dozen different indexes wallet, what we're finding is that embedded wallets
like Prevy, like Sequence, like ThirdWeb,
they're much better from a user experience
and efficiency perspective.
Then obviously it's not very good for a three native
to bring in their meta mask.
So we're talking to partners and working out
how can you get the wallet experience
to be much slicker and much faster.
Because now the chains aren't the bottleneck anymore.
So yeah, that is probably our biggest problem today, I'd say.
We have been talking about onboarding people here for years.
And you tweeted that Web3 adoption won't come from better wallets.
It will come from invisible wallets, right?
And how do you think this is going
and when it's going to happen?
Because when I talk to my friends for them,
setting up MetaMask and keeping the seed phrase
and everything, it's very, very tricky, right?
If they want to join games and something like that.
What is the way to actually achieve this?
Yeah, so for me, it is making the onboarding experience seamless
and the wallet creation experience seamless.
So if you think about how you go to a Web2 website,
you just click login, and actually most of the time
you're auth with Google, Twitter, Steam, whatever, basically.
And I think that you have to copy those similar workflows
and then create an
account for a user which behind the scenes happens to be a wallet you see this a lot actually in
games i do know people have played like off the grid for instance when you play off the grid
behind the scenes it is making a wallet for you but you don't know that as an end user and only
if you want to get into the kind of trading world, the web-through world, do you even start to understand that off-the-grid is using blockchain. And I think the whole space has to get to that
place in order to onboard massive sets of consumers. Because ultimately, it's just such a
weird workflow to be like, I want to use this app. Okay, I need to get a wallet. I need to get a C
phrase called I've got a wallet. Now I need to go get a random gas token from an exchange port that
over maybe bridge that into the chain it's just so complicated um it's quite funny I tried to play
I'm not going to name the name of the game actually but one of the pretty on-chain games
a couple days ago and I couldn't get the gas token for the chain it was on I just couldn't
find it anywhere and I was like this is that I can't play this game because I can't find this
gas token um and so I just think it's part of the maturity of the space that we'll get to a place where
users will kind of go into applications what it's we created from behind the scenes they won't even
know or a blockchain at the end of the day i think that's where we need to get to and then
you allow people to kind of like pop the herd realize oh this is on blockchain i want to have
my wallet and kind of go through that journey by option rather than by force we had this question for gary v last time and the question was how far
do you think we are from mass adoption and when the really like mass market products start entering
the the web 3 and and we'll have really masses joining this space
yeah so i think we are closer than people think um i think there are two major verticals which
are going to cause mass adoption one is stable coins um people already have seen this already
know this but stables are getting more and more broadly adopted by businesses because
they're just an easy way to move currencies between different places in the world and but
the thing is that those businesses are not using like what we think of as web 3 like metamask and
all that kind of jazz they're just using stripe and then stripe is doing the stable coins behind
the scenes for them so you'll see mass adoption through kind of traditional Web2 mechanisms.
And then there'll be onboarding and kind of bringing in users.
And again, they won't know they're on chain because they'll be using Stripe at the end of the day.
That's one I see very clearly.
The other is games.
Already today, you've got games like Off the Grid, NFL Rivals.
These are pretty big games in terms of DAU.
You're talking about hundreds of thousands of DAU.
They're on-chain, and users are playing them and don't know they're on-chain.
And I think you're going to see that pattern more and more.
And I think the thing is, like Polymarket as well is like this,
where a lot of people in the kind of Web2 world will use Polymarket.
All those transactions are on-chain.
They're technically onboarded users, but they just don't even know they're on chain and so i think you're already
starting to see the applications that are going to be mass market for me it's going to be stable
coins prediction gambling applications which i don't yeah i don't think my problem is that they
do but ultimately blockchain is a very good solution for that and then the final one is
video games and metaverse type experiences i think those are going to be the three major verticals.
And we're already starting to see it happen today.
Yeah, I love it, Paul.
So my question, because we stepped right in, we started asking you right away about all the technology and everything,
but maybe for the audience that might not be that familiar with Somnia, if we look at this old technology that you just mentioned as a puzzle
and Somnia as a piece of puzzle,
so where it actually belongs, where is it, which puzzle is this,
and maybe some kind of a quick, let's call it an elevator pitch
for people who might not be familiar with what are you solving,
what's the value, etc.
Yep, so high level, Somnia is an EVM-compatible, high performance L1 blockchain. In terms of performance characteristics, it does over a million transactions per second with sub-second
finality, 100 millisecond block times and incredibly cheap gas fees. So that's all the technical
drilling. What that actually means is we're trying to make blockchain what i call invisible infrastructure
so the blockchain is so fast and has so much throughput and is so cheap that a user can use
it without even knowing they're on change similar to when you go to a web 2 website you just go to
the website and have fun we want the same thing to happen in Web3. Now, in terms of that puzzle piece thing,
I kind of think about us as like the base layer.
So if you think about this as a stack of different technologies
with like the apps being on the top,
the blockchain is kind of like the base layer
where everything sits on top of at the end of the day.
So we really see ourselves as kind of like this foundational infrastructure
that we're enabling to be super fast
so that all of these applications can be built on top and when consumers go to them they
don't even know they're on chain at the end of the day um so yeah that's what we're doing that's what
we're doing great question tino because i've been deep into somnia uh trenches so uh i thought that
everything's obvious of course right so great question we hosted
here John Linden from Mythical Games
I think like 2-3 years ago
he talked about
NFL rivals now they
are coming with FIFA rivals
actually so they are doing really well with
games on blockchain that
really the users or players they don't even know
that there is a blockchain part right
so that's amazing yeah yeah i think um those guys for me i talk about a few different games pirate nation
nfl rivals and off the grid and parallels as well um so those games i think are doing incredibly
well in terms of end user traction but pirate nation not so much pirate nation the reason i
talk about it is because it has it's a fully on-chain game the other ones all are kind they have their NFTs on-chain, but they don't necessarily have the game logic on-chain.
But I think they're all doing a really good job at making the user experience super slick.
If you go to any of them, you'll be able to connect to them and use them without just using your social login, basically.
You won't even know necessarily, you're playing a blockchain game.
That's amazing. That's amazing. Guys, I'll quickly refresh the room. If you have any questions for Paul, drop them into the comments. I will go through them and I will ask. Also, I think I found the video and I bookmark it and it's here. So I quickly play the Grateful song here. It's like 20 seconds. and also please retweet the space so more people
can join us and this is it
so good it's so good
so good paul we we touch it a bit but i i want to get into that question right now because
i read some tweets from uh uh from jeff bezos that he basically lives and thinks in the future
and he's building for the future right and many other builders they are they are living there and
we are often stuck in
the present moment thinking what's happening right now but don't think about what's going to happen
in a few years right and we see the huge change with ai that's something that i never expected
that that early and now we have it here so where do you see the future of like metaverse and digital
experiences and everything you know that you've been you've
been building somnia for yeah there's loads of bits to this i think i'll take it in a few different
directions so one i think a massive piece of this digital experience infrastructure will be augmented
reality you guys have probably seen the glasses
from meta obviously everyone saw the apple stuff and i've seen the kind of vr glasses but i think
that is early tech and i think what will happen is you'll end up with wearable glasses which will
augment the real world with digital enhancements and experiences and that's what i think most
consumers will interact with the
metaverse as we kind of think about it so you'll think about digital overlays into the real world
you'll have kind of games that you can play within that real world and that's you'll kind of have a
mix of the real world and the digital world kind of fusing together which i think is going to be
huge um i've actually played with some early prototypes of some of those glasses
and they're they're crazy they're very very scary crazy um and that i think is going to be the future
of that's going to replace the mobile phone become the future computer platform and most of us will
experience the metaverse in or most consumers will and obviously that just gives for me the thing i
always tell people is the world is becoming more and more digital and because of
that the world becomes more digital means digital currencies digital items become more valuable
and if you believe the world is coming digital the web3 industry and the blockchain industry
is an inevitability in my view and so I always I hear people saying like why do we need blockchain
I'm like if you imagine a world where everything is digital,
this becomes a fundamental piece of infrastructure
for people to transfer value.
So that's one piece.
The next piece I see is that VR,
I think is really interesting.
And I keep flip-flopping between this.
I keep at some points thinking it's going to be
a very big compute platform. And then I'm some points thinking it's going to be a very big compute platform,
and then I'm like, no one's going to use it.
I think the issue at the moment is VR is not very social.
And because of that, it feels quite isolating.
So when you play VR games, there are some multiplayer experiences
that are very simplistic.
And I think you really need to increase the fidelity of interaction and I think
technologies like mSquared play a massive part there because if you imagine you're in these kind
of large-scale crowd-like experiences in VR that's going to be so much more immersive and compelling
than just playing like I don't know a solo single player game or a game of ping pong with someone
so I think VR is going to be an also very important platform but i do flip-flop on this
because i think it's quite hard to fix the social element compared to ar which is inherently social
because it's painted onto the real world um and so i kind of see a world uh the other part that i see
very but i think will happen is that ugc will become more and more prevalent, and we all will become creators in some form or fashion.
Already today, when you use AI,
it's almost astounding how much better it gets
every three to six months.
And I just see us being able to make 3D content
so much easier, and us all starting to make UGC.
And then I believe blockchain becomes a really easy way
to monetize that, and therefore we all become UGC creators
we'll create mini experiences that we'll share with each other and then pay for through the
blockchain and so I think UGC will be massive and we're investing a lot of time in tooling there
because I just think it's going to be the future of content creation and we'll become 3D content
creators in some form so yeah those are the three different things I'd say I think AI is also very
interesting because they will end up transacting through the blockchain because if you think about i and ai i need to
create a contract with another ai i'm going to use a blockchain to do that because i understand how
to talk blockchain i can't use the traditional financial system to create those contracts
between ais so i think you're going to see massive blockchain adoption driven through AI agents.
I think the stuff we currently see in the space is very early, but I do see that's going to end up becoming inevitability as well.
So yeah, quite a few things. I think as well, you'll see much broader adoption from brands.
It's already happening now behind the scenes, but they kind of dip their toe into digital experiences a lot more in 2021.
Now they kind of reversed a
little bit but now they're coming back in again and so i think you'll see much higher adoption
from brands over the next few years as well yeah i i believe so i believe so guys we also get into
how actually you can participate in somnia network test net so stay tuned but before we get into it
you you kind of you kind of said that ugcC will be very important, right? And I 100% agree.
That's why I'm in this space, because I want to create experiences.
What would you recommend to current content creators in the space right now?
How to get ready for that moment, right?
Because we're still waiting for those tools.
But is there something that we should do right now to get ready to be
ahead of everyone that's coming to this space so we can build better experiences or have
better call-ups, etc.?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think ultimately, if you wanted to start investing now, it would be learning how to
use a game engine, learning how to do 3Dd creation because ultimately the tools are going to make it
easier for you to initially what the tools will do will make those tools easier to use and then
eventually you won't need those tools anymore but i think that's probably three years away when you
don't need those two tools at all so what i would say if you want to get into it now is learn start
learning the basics of unreal or unity start building content in those
spaces and then also learning some simple 3d authoring tools i think those are kind of key
components because ultimately in the next year ai is not going to replace those tools um in the next
three to five years maybe so then then i would say explore all the different ai tools out there
so things like meshi is a very interesting tool where you can generate 3d content quite easily Then I would say explore all the different AI tools out there.
So things like Meshi is a very interesting tool where you can generate 3D content quite easily.
I'd say play around with that because even today,
it's rudimentary, but it kind of gets you feeling
like what this is going to be like.
So with Meshi, you can say generate me like a Lambo
and it'll go make you a 3D Lambo.
And then it has like a rigging tool where you can make it animate.
And so I think using tools like Meshi
is also another good place to start experimenting with.
And that will actually get you some 3D content,
which you can then use within the game engines.
The other one I'd say is,
this is obviously plugging some of our technology,
but I think it's important.
So there's a language called metaverse markup language,
which is going to be the kind of base language of M squared.
That is a kind of mixture of HTML and JavaScript.
It's quite easy to learn.
And I'd say people should probably take a look at that
if they're interested in making interoperable content
for the metaverse,
because all of the Yuga stuff based on that,
all of the M squared stuff will be based on that, so it will probably
play quite an interesting role.
If I wanted to be more specific, I'd probably go there.
So game engines, 3D authoring tools, AI,
and then also if you want to check out MML,
you'd have to do that as well.
And I know you guys tested that chunk game,
and it was really interesting for me.
It was really interesting to be part of the game. not only that everything was saved probably not everything but you know
most of the stuff was saved on blockchain but also you see how people started farming uh different
resources and basically the the the world's disappeared or changed a lot right are there
some learnings from from those games that you've tried and do you have any experiences
that you see that really worked well in in the metaverse with multiple people yeah so
chunked by the way was fully on chain everything you did there from every time you moved as a
player every block every craft that was that was fully on chain um which i remember when we were building that i
told the team i'm like i don't think you should put the position updates the player on the blockchain
but they decided to do it and it worked okay so that was pretty interesting i think for me
that kind of showed that there is ways that you can enable creativity via the blockchain, which I've never, I have seen before, but I think the fact that that world could live forever and the fact that anyone that made any creation in that game is technically replayable and can be recreated again because it's on blockchain is a very interesting property that you don't have anywhere else in any technology, in any sphere.
The fact that this thing
can live and exist forever um so that i think was really interesting i think from our side the
experiences that have worked best though are the ones that are really social um so if you think
about the music events that i talked about the sporting events i've talked about we have uh one
set of events on m squared at the moment that basically is like meeting greets with famous footballers. So it's a
product called The Residency where you can meet your kind of favourite footballers and kind of
interact with them in the metaverse. I think those social style experiences work really well. And
then I think if you couple that with like a very famous celebrity and then
you can meet that famous celebrity in the digital experience but it's very safe for that celebrity
right they're not going to get mobbed they're not going to have any problems so they can actually
interact with their fans in an immersive fun way which you could never do in real life because they
would just get mobbed and security we'd have to stop it um so i think like we call that intimacy
at scale and i think that works really well in this kind of metaverse digital medium.
And it's very compelling from a consumer perspective because I get to meet my favorite music artists or my favorite football star or whatever.
The other one, I think, is the hyper collaborative experiences.
So Chunked was like a version of that where you just saw people working teams to build like these incredible structures
and incredible things and i was like this is so cool to see the blockchain is just a really good
way for people to collaborate together and i think these collaborative digital experiences we can
create art we can create experiences together are going to be awesome um and so we're going quite
heavily into that direction to enable people to build stuff together because I think it's going to make awesome creations
at the end of the day.
I think that use case
that you meet famous people is incredible.
Do you also think that those football players
or singers or artists,
that they will start building
basically their virtual identities in the metaverse
so you will really recognize them
also by the avatar?
Yeah, totally. I think it's quite interesting, actually, that I don't know. A lot of them
still try and keep their real world face, because that's how they're most recognized. And so there's
tech that they can scan their face, essentially, and turn that into their metaversal self. I think
that's quite important for celebrities, because they want to be recognized, and turn that into their metaversal self. I think that's quite important for celebrities because they want to be recognized,
and their real-world face is the most recognizable thing.
But I actually think there's going to be a set
of almost new celebrities,
which only exist in the metaverse.
You don't know what they look like in the real world.
You already see this on Twitter, right?
If you imagine you look at crypto Twitter,
most people are their PFPs. They're not actually their real life faces and so i see the
same thing happening in the metaverse we all have lots of kind of famous people within these digital
experiences the digital first personas that have avatars that you just don't know what they look
in the real world you've already seen this a bit you see this in two places one is uh youtube so
there are these digital youtubers who you you just don't they just are pure digital creations
um they tend to appeal to children more but there's also some more adult stuff and that i think
is very interesting uh and you have your you're just you're purely your avatar and you don't know
who these people are the other one is in Roblox, where everyone is an avatar
and that is your persona
and that is your identity,
your kind of like blocky character.
I think you'll see that happen more and more and more.
Yeah, I totally see that.
And I see basically a dual world
where famous celebrities from the real world
probably take their real world face
because that's what they're recognized for.
But then there'll be digital first celebrities
who you just don't even know what they look like that was my idea behind this account
when i when i minted this ape and i saw all the madness on the on the timeline people changing
their pfps i was like i was like this is a great opportunity to create virtual identity on twitter
right and metaverse and and 3d avatars are the like next evolution step and I'm really
excited about it where can we push it so excited that you are confirming that that movement it's
it's amazing yeah I think for me Twitter is a is a metaverse actually I think it is it's just not
3d and immersive it's just a 2D version of a metaverse, though,
because ultimately a metaverse is a place where people connect, have shared experiences together
and do stuff together. Twitter is totally that. It's just like a very early version where it's
all just text and 2D images. And then the metaverse will just be an extension to that.
One of the things one of the teams we're working with is called chamber is doing is integrating the 3d experiences directly into discord so you can go to discord to chat with
your friends and then there's a discord plugin where you can go into a 3d immersive environment
with your avatar and you can build that together i think that's really interesting where you're
augmenting these existing metaverses like twitter and Discord, and then adding those 3D experiences as a portal.
I think that's going to be a huge way to acquire users
as a way for people to interact.
So yeah, that, I think.
And then Twitch is another place as well,
which we're looking at quite a lot of stuff quite heavily there as well.
But yeah, it's very interesting.
It's very exciting.
So what has been the reaction from this kind of Web2 scene, Web2 gamers potentially or the builders of the applications?
Good question. So from the Web2 builders in the gaming industry, I'll be very honest with you, are very skeptical of crypto.
they have seen it from the outside and seen a lot of scams and a lot of like bad actors
a lot of developers who in all honesty weren't very good developers and they were like how have
these people got all this money to develop this stuff because they don't know anything about
building video games so they have been very skeptical of the games industry and of the
industry and i've had to convert them and the way i the way i do it is
kind of a fewfold i'm like yes there are bad actors but let me explain why this is interesting
and why you could do something innovative so the key thing i normally push first is the business
model angle so if you look at the games industry there are step changes in terms of consumer adoption, and they come from a few different factors.
One is new platforms. So when new consoles come about, when mobile came about, a mass load of new users came into the space.
New platforms caused mass user adoption and new genres.
So when Battle Royale came around, loads of new people came in.
When MOBAs came around, loads of new people came and played that. Soas came around loads of new people came and played that
so new genres caused mass adoption and then new business models so when free to play happened
uh when box copies and expansion facts happened all this caused loads more players to come in
and so the thing i pitched them is like web 3 has capabilities that web 2 doesn't that means new
business models can be explored and achieved that could cause a huge
amount of adoption i think you saw a little hint of this with axi with play and earn um i don't
think actually quite nailed it with the economics but i think that there is something there which is
really interesting where you can play a video game and ultimately earn money from it in some
form or fashion that i think you could onboard tons of people because Because if you think about, you have two games that are equally good
or nearly as good as each other, but I can earn money from this one
and I can't earn money from this one.
I'm going to play the one that I'm going to earn money from at the end of the day.
So that, I think, is a huge way I convert them.
The other one that I explain about is the community building tools
that Web3 brings and how you can get a very sticky early player base.
So because you're selling NFTs, you have tokens, people that are buying in are normally very
devout fans of your project because they put cash online to get into your project and start
being part of your project. And they will play all of your early playtests and give you feedback
and be very vocal because they have skin in the game and that's so valuable to a game developer
it's the hardest thing especially for multiplayer games is to get your first thousand five thousand
players if you can create that early community that's super sticky it's so valuable for you
building and developing a video game so that's the other part i talk about community building
and then obviously capital raising um in the web 2 games industry at the moment it is very
hard to raise money from traditional vc um it just they don't want to invest in content they have
a massive version to it right now because they've been burnt from previous cycles and so web 3 gives
new ways to raise funds that are new mechanisms to raise funds similar to like kickstarter
um that allows people to actually raise money
for their video game.
So the other one is fundraising,
which they're very interested in too.
I think some of them might pitch this vision
of like fully on-chain games, moddable games,
games that live forever.
Some people buy into that,
but they're a little bit more,
I would say a big chunk are more skeptical of that.
They're much more into the more nuts and bolts stuff that I first talked there um but yeah i i would say web 2 game
developers are still very skeptical of blockchain crypto and web 3 but it's getting better every
single three to six months um especially as people like us are converting them over and then it
becomes like a network effect and inevitability because everyone starts talking and realizing oh wait this is probably a bigger deal than we thought um yeah
that's what i'd say in terms of gamers uh i think it's it's so different depending on the regions
like for instance if you look at the southeast asia region uh like china like indonesia uh vietnam
like Indonesia, like Vietnam,
but pay to win there is so kind of socially accepted.
In fact, in China, it's almost revered
that you have enough money to like buy into a game
and become one of the best characters.
And so Web3 Gaming has worked very effectively
in those regions and people are very, very amenable to it
because socially it works well.
In the West, there is a much bigger aversion to it.
And what I kind of tell game devs,
if they're building a game for a Western audience,
is abstract away the blockchain elements
and make it transparent, as I was talking about before,
so that consumers are playing your game
and it may be on chain,
but they don't necessarily need to know that.
I think a lot of developers get this wrong
where they kind of build their game
around the web three and blockchain mechanisms.
And I'm like, no, build a fun video game
and add blockchain and web three mechanisms
to make it better in some formal fashion
and then sell that into consumers.
So yeah, from a consumer perspective,
West is a bit more skeptical.
Asia's very, very pro.
LATAM is also very, very pro as well.
So yeah, that's why I'm talking about that.
That's quite pro.
It was very interesting.
I think I read about Chunk that because everything's safe on blockchain,
you can also bet, right?
And you can bet how many headshots you make in the game.
And that's really cool.
I can imagine we're playing
game or some experience and we can bet that
Otino will make five headshots
and will be killed like ten times,
right? As always. So
those are new possibilities that are probably not
possible without a blockchain, right?
Yeah, totally. This is...
Usually for this you need a very
high-performance blockchain as well
as why i don't think you've seen this primitive in web 3 yet but we are building out where
for a fully on chain game like chunked you could start having wagering gambling mechanics um they're
actually some spoilers for the alpha for the group chunked 2 may have some of these mechanics um
alpha for the group chunk two may have some of these mechanics um where you can essentially
start to fully verify that this player did this action was at this position and then mine this
block at this point in time and then put gambling start mechanisms around it which i think is going
to be very interesting for video games because ultimately if i can play a game that problem and
now i can add wages on top of that, I think it makes it more fun.
Like in real life,
I personally love to put bets down
on like sporting events and stuff like that
because it just makes it more compelling
and more interesting to watch.
Cause I'm like, oh, I've got money on the line here,
even if it's not much money.
So I think it's going to be huge.
I think the headshot one you talk about
is one that I talk about all the time.
So for that,
where we're basically giving game devs libraries.
They can easily put the metadata of their game on chain.
So every time there's a headshot in a game, every time a player wins a match, every time a player picks up an item, anything, basically, that can be registered as an event on chain.
And then once you have this massive event stream, people can now start building what I call companion applications around it.
So you could build a leaderboard, which shows who's the best player but i think a bigger one which you've
already kind of mentioned are prediction markets around that gaming data so i can place bets saying
i reckon in the next match i'm going to get 10 headshots then if you get those 10 headshots you
get paid out and i think that for me is a new primitive in gaming that they've never had before
it's kind of happened
in like gray markets if you look there's kind of ways you can gamble and counter-spiders and stuff
but it's always been in gray markets i think with blockchain you can actually make those
transparent fair markets which actually work well um and i think crucially the game devs themselves
don't have to build the prediction markets because it's a blockchain.
They can just put their data there and then someone else can build the application that allows people to put wages on stuff.
And that kind of makes sure they're not getting into any regulatory issues as well, which is very important.
So, yeah, I think what I call this financializing gameplay, I think is going to potentially be a huge new primitive that Web3 unlocks for game devs.
That's another thing I pitch quite a lot. And people are very interested because it's very easy to just put that into your game all you
have to do is add a very simple library to your game every time someone does a headshot you've
registered the event on chain and now you've given that new value proposition to the players which
seems huge 100 that makes so much sense uh paul maybe uh i'm always interested because the testnet has been
uh launched for a while with somnia so what uh gets you excited or what are some of the use cases
that makes you really happy that has that you can actually say that is being built that is being
prepared uh can you share some of the stuff that that makes you really happy that is being built on somnia yeah there's loads of
things i think um the first thing i'd say is applications like junked make me very excited
and interested because on-chain gaming has been something that people have talked about in the
space for a long time but has never really been that viable um I mean, now it starts to become a bit viable,
but even today, if you have a successful fully on-chain game,
you have to basically have your own blockchain for it to work,
which is quite expensive for a game developer to manage
and kind of maintain.
And so now with Somnia,
you actually can build a fully on-chain game
and actually have that in-shared infrastructure
enough to spend a load of money yourself and run it all yourself which I think is going to unlock a
load of new on-chain gaming and Chunked is like one of the first versions of that and is really
really interesting in the application space. In general I'm very excited and interested in all of
the games. They all are going to be adding these kind of financializing
gameplay elements where they are allowing people to bet on metadata um at a bare minimum which i
think is going to be very interesting to see how that gets taken up and so the games i think we
picked are i most of them are what i call just a fun video game at their core they're just good
fun video games which you would have fun playing regardless of whether they're on Web3 or not.
When they add Web3 elements like NFTs, like tokens,
and like those gambling mechanisms,
they just make them more fun in my view.
So the games I'm very, very excited about,
I'm very, very interested in.
The other one that's slightly off the beaten track a bit,
it's not really in the metaverse or gaming segment,
but I think it's really cool,
is a couple of teams are building
on-chain limit order books.
So these are basically Hyperliquid clones
where because of the performance characteristic
of Somnia, they can actually build Hyperliquid again,
but now on top of Somnia.
I think this is really interesting
because as a space, what this means is now
that these centralized exchanges can compete
with the centralized
exchanges in terms of performance and experience for an end user, which I think will eventually
start to shift the power balance from those centralized exchanges to more decentralized
venues, which is awesome for the space in general.
I found it weird for so long we have all this decentralized tech, but everything's still
on centralized exchanges.
It has a lot of risks associated with that um so that's another application set that
i'm very very interested in the other one is um ai ai there's a bunch of different stuff that
people are trying out but i think the one i'm most interested in are people that are doing
the kind of generative ai tools so allowing you to kind of write prompts and generate out mini games now,
but eventually it will become full 3D games.
So today is quite simple.
You're like typing a prompt,
say I'm going to make Flappy Bird
and it will generate new Flappy Bird.
And then you say, I want to put this on chain.
It publishes on chain,
adds waging mechanics to it.
So you can kind of bet on outcomes of Flappy Bird.
And that's obviously quite a simple type of experience, but i think it enables more people to create content which is really cool
and then they're going to add more stuff and that's going to expand over time to eventually
include 3d and i think i'm i'm very excited about that because i just think it's really cool and
opens up a whole new set of craters that we've never seen before um and obviously on the meta
vers side m squared are really kind of leading the charge here but they have a load of different applications across lots of different sectors that the sporting one
where i should talk about four where you meet your famous sporting stars there's the uh there's one i
didn't talk about called jitter but this one is they're basically getting web 2 streamers to
basically make mini games with their fans and play them together um which is a really cool experience to see
these kind of large creators playing directly with their fans in these massive metaverse style
environments i think that's a really cool way for you to connect to your fan base and if you're a
famous streamer on twitter and play with people directly um rather than most multiplayer games
you can get 16 people in so it wouldn't work and so yeah i think that those are really cool as well
so there's a bunch of stuff i'm very excited about lots of stuff to do
paul we also see fortnite um and i listened to that interview with uh with the ceo i think it
was in lex friedman podcast right yeah he's i think he's bullish on metaverse he he said he's
not that bullish on that Web3 part,
but I understand also because it's probably also competition.
But do you think that these huge games will also try to utilize blockchain
or it's too risky for them?
And that's also our opportunity to actually build something that's better than them.
Yeah.
My view is no chance in hell.
I think a lot of people in the industry are like,
we need to get these big AAA games to come on the chain.
And I'm just like, you have not...
It's just never going to happen in my view.
Well, not never going to happen, but very unlikely.
The reason is two functions.
One is, as you say, undermines some of their business model if they enable their assets to move out of their ecosystem their economics break down completely so if you think about like
a platform like steam if you put blockchain games on steam and people have nfts they can just off
board and move to other places steam lose their
marketplace fees and that's a massive chunk of their revenues so i don't and fortnight's similar
so i don't think they'll enable it from a business model perspective the other is a risk profile um
you think about big triple a's like ea activision blizzard they have to go to their directors and
shareholders every quarter and be like these are the new games we're going to build.
This is how much money we're going to make.
If they go to their shareholders and go,
we're going to make this really experimental Web3 game
that's never built before, they will get in massive trouble
rather than building Call of Duty 17 or FIFA 21.
So from the AAA game developers developers they won't take the risk until there are some mega
breakout hits that then show them oh actually this is a very interesting industry that we should
take we should capitalize on um they always this has always been the way like it happened in mobile
it happened in free to play they basically as an industry copy and buy rather than innovate themselves
pretty much all the time and so I think it will go the same way and this is what
I tell devs all the time like this is your opportunity because you as an
independent studios a smaller studio you can take this risk you can try new
things you can experiment and then you can become the next supercell basically
this is what happened
with supercell they were one of the first teams that went into mobile very heavy and they created
all of these new game types just for mobile that never been seen before and became massive as a
result of it and i think you'll see the same thing in web3 um we personally are very big on what i
call breakaway studios these are studios that used to work in the AAA games industry
and are making their own game studios
and experimenting with Web3 games.
So we're very interested there,
but it may be a Web3 native team that kind of breaks up.
But I think basically it's the opportunity of the industry
to innovate, push the boundaries and do new things
and then find that new business model,
find that new genre that will then bring on a load of new players oh i agree so much man and i think the opportunity here in web 3 web 3
is so so huge it's insane so that's why we we still hear uh bullish and and building and cooking
and you know having fun because it's absolutely insane the opportunity is incredible uh tim
sweeney in that interview also mentioned one word that it's like a buzzword for the metaverse and that's a interoperability
how do you how do you think about this word what does it actually mean mean to you when you
hear this word yeah so there's there's a couple of things about interoperability. So first of all, I don't buy the use case of interoperability within video games.
So if you consider the metaverse as just digital experiences, video games is a subset of the metaverse.
I don't think interoperability between video games makes a lot of sense.
interoperability between video games makes a lot of sense.
The reason is most games are like these kind of like sealed packages of fun and experience.
And they make sense in and of themselves.
But if you bring in other random assets, they don't make any sense.
So if, for instance, you had a Call of Duty game with guns and you get your favorite gun from there,
and that's an interoperable object you can bring into a game about wizards.
And that makes no sense
because now I have a gun in a wizard game.
The game doesn't make any sense at all.
So I think for video games,
interoperability doesn't make as much sense
unless it's cosmetic.
I can see a world where cosmetics are interoperable
and usable across games.
So say, for instance,
get that special gun
and it gives you a special skin in the wizard game. That I can see working because then interoperable and usable across games. So say, for instance, you get that special gun and it gives you a special skin in the wizard game.
That I could see working because then interoperability
becomes like a prestige thing.
So you can imagine you win a special tournament
in some famous shooter.
That gives you an asset which can use as a cosmetic
across all the experiences on the network.
And that becomes like revered as like,
oh, God, this is the guy who won that special tournament
10 years ago or whatever.
So interoperability in games doesn't make much sense to me.
I think interoperability in social style experiences
makes a whole lot more sense.
So if I'm going to like a music concert
or I'm going to a baseball match,
I'm going to F1 viewing,
it makes sense that I can wear the same items across all
of those and that they are interoperable and usable across those experiences so i think for
me interoperability will play a massive role in the more social style experiences and even simpler
social video games i think it makes sense as well it's just when you're going into these more
action hardcore video games i just don't think it makes any sense at all.
And so for me, that's what interoperability is about, the ability for you as a consumer
to buy an asset in one place and then use it across all the places in the metaverse, which by the way, when I actually think the metaverse is just the next version of the
internet, by the way.
So I just think you can use it across the internet, similar to how you can use your
account, your Google account across the internet today, way so I just think you can use it across the internet similar to how you can use your account your Google account across the
internet today you'll be able to use the items you buy and get from different
experiences across all the different experiences as well so I think that's
really cosmetic interoperability I've talked about quite a lot there the one
that's a lot more challenging is functional interoperability so what I
mean by this is,
say you went to a music concert
and bought a jetpack that allows you to fly
and you can fly around that concert.
How do you enable that jetpack
to make you fly across all of the experiences
within the metaverse?
I think that's much harder
because in some experiences,
flying may break the experience for other people.
In some experiences,
maybe flying is very core to it.
So how does that work?
So I think interoperability of logic is a much harder problem,
not just from a technical perspective, how you enable that.
You can put that all on chain.
But how you then make sure that logic makes sense
in the different environments is quite hard.
We've spoken about creating primitives across all of the world,
like physics. What is the physics of the metaverse? What is the physics of the different experiences?
But it's still quite difficult because some experiences might want very low gravity and
have moon-like gravity. Some experiences might want to have super heavy gravity. So how do
you make sure that's consistent and makes sense across all the experiences is quite, it's very tricky. The other part of interoperability that I think is really important is that you
as a creator cannot be de-platformed.
So what I mean by this is if you create an asset or an experience on like a
platform, like a Roblox, for instance, or a Fortnite,
if they decide to turn off Fortnite,
you still have that experience that you can then still monetize and
use in some form or fashion i think that's really important for the future of the metaverse and
digital economy because we can't be beholden to these kind of like central platform holders which
can just turn off the experience and make all of your work kind of pointless at the end of the day
um so i think interoperability for me also means you can take the content you create
and continue to use it even if the place you originated from disappears.
I think that's really important for creators to have safety in the future.
I see so many collectors in the audience.
I think most of us are interested mainly about flexing our stuff, our digital assets, I believe, in the games.
are interested mainly about flexing our stuff, our digital assets, I believe in the games.
But I really, really love the question, the answer, because it makes so much sense.
And Paul, maybe for the people who are building something, who are developing something, how
can they get involved?
How can they step into Somniania into what you are building tests etc
i'm not sure if i'm rugged but i i don't i don't hear anything right now tino can you
hear anything did you did you hear me yeah but i don't hear paul is paul speaking
hear me yeah but I don't hear Paul is Paul speaking yeah you back you back
okay got it I got it switched to a different microphone for some reason and
yeah so the if you want to get involved as a dev the easiest way is to go to
something but network that's our main website there you can go down that kind
of developer journey you can see how to deploy stuff to the blockchain,
you can see all the different experiences that are currently there.
That's a good place to start.
I'd quickly though get to Discord and join the developer Discord and start asking questions
there.
Ultimately at the end of the day, Somnia is an EDM-credit blockchain, so if you're familiar
with coding, Solidity or anything like that, you'll easily be able to make stuff for it.
And then if you're interested in MML,
there's a website called mml.io.
You can go there,
start learning about that interoperability language.
That will also set you up well for stuff on the other side
if you're interested to learn more about that.
The other place obviously is to follow
Somnia underscore network on Twitter.
They constantly are posting stuff about the ecosystem,
and you'll find stuff for developers there too.
So yeah, those are the different places I'd probably kick off.
The other thing I'd say, if you're a dev,
there's loads of different paths you can take.
And we have a grants program, which we're kind of giving out to people to kind of incentivize them to start
building on the test net and then on the main net what i would say though is the easiest way to get
access to that is to make an application deploy on the test net and then we will help you generate
users if we see stuff that's cool at me at somnium network post it on twitter post it on our discord
we will hope we'll find it and then we'll publicize it and get you a load of users.
And then that's the easiest way to get access to that grant money, because when we see
call apps, we tend to want to help developers already in our ecosystem.
And there's loads of examples of this already. So yeah, that's another thing I'd say as well.
I also got the same question, but from
creator point of view. So of course like you have discord
you have Twitter probably also joining the the questing platform right because you learned a lot
along the way anything else that you would recommend to new people to Somnia how to join
yeah as a kind of creator as an end user I the best place I think to start is the questing platform, where essentially every week there's a bunch of new quests.
They're about following the projects, using the projects,
and so it's a really good way to find new stuff in the ecosystem.
You can also, as an end user, go to the Testnet page.
So go to the website, click the Testnet button, scroll down a bit.
You'll see all the current apps, and you can start exploring all those different apps that are currently live as well
That's another good place to go
and then I actually think as well, I'd say follow and
the people in the team as you follow myself
You can follow Alexa
You can follow mush so he's at Ironside Crypto.
These are all good people to follow
and they'll be posting stuff
and you'll see stuff coming up as well.
So I think that's obviously another good one as well.
And then if you are a kind of Yapper or a creator,
we have a Yapper program with Kaito,
so I definitely get involved there.
You'll see, if you start getting involved involved there you'll see if you start getting
involved there you'll see lots of stuff coming up all the time we also run these programs where we
kind of give Yappers early insights into what's happening next so they can start creating content
that's another place to look at as well how do you or are there any surprises from using Kaido?
Is there anything that you didn't expect
and now you see Yuppers creating crazy content
or anything like that?
Because I think the huge benefit on your side, guys,
is that you have very hands-on team.
Like your team members are really active.
I see Somnia intern here,
like whatever you need, you can DM, they are everywhere.
So any learnings from
using kaito for you as a platform because it's it's it's hyped right now right kaito is everywhere
yeah i think there are loads different things i think there's a couple of things that come to
mind very quickly one thing that i talk to founders about um they feel quite reticent to put down rewards and incentives for kaito
they're kind of like i don't like that so like i'm kind of paying for influence and paying people to
talk about my project and then i asked them do you pay for advertising or do you pay for kols
like yeah we pay for kols pay for advertising i'm like pay for KOLs? And they're like, yeah, we pay for KOLs, pay for advertising.
I'm like, so what's the difference in your mind between putting down incentives here
and paying a broad set of creators
to create content about your project
versus paying individual creators or paying for ads?
And when I explain that to them,
they kind of get it a bit more.
But I think there's an aversion for some founders
to use Kaito as a tool.
And I'm like, guys, it's a really, really good tool
to get a broad set of creators talking about your project
and creating content for your project,
which often builds Mindshare,
which often be good for your project.
I think one thing I'd say in terms of a warning,
and this is just very difficult,
the Kaito algorithm is quite mysterious and changes quite a bit.
And so you have to manage your kind of Yappa community
and ensure you're working very closely with them
and kind of helping them out,
helping answer any questions,
ensuring things are as clear as you can make them.
Because often things will change
in the Kai-Tru leaderboards
that people will get frustrated by.
And you just need to make sure
you're spending those times being hands-on
and helping out the
app as much as possible because they're very important in the ecosystem at the end of the day
yeah there's just a couple things come to mind
yeah that part being active on a project side i think it's crucial and you guys really doing
great job it's um yeah it's great to be part of that. I don't yap about anything else right now. I would be upping about Somnia anyway.
So it's nice benefit
for me. I also got some
NFTs for the 30 day leaderboard,
which is cool.
And I want to mention for all the apes here,
the multiplier for apes and other leads
and quotas and mutants is crazy.
It's insane.
So yeah, that's probably why I'm
first on the leaderboard.
If you haven't joined, definitely check it out because It's it it's insane. So yeah, that's probably why I'm first on the leaderboard and
If you haven't joined definitely check it out because I think it's it's worth it
We have like two more minutes on the schedule Paul So is there anything else that we forgot to ask you or did you like to share?
Anything that you're excited?
So there's nothing that I actually re-emphasize the uh
boost towards all the user assets i think they've been there since season two and if you were early
that was a very good thing to be early let's put it that way um so i would really check out
um all the quest stuff because the incentives and the boost you guys get are really good.
In terms of what I'm excited about,
obviously Mainnet is coming soon.
I can't give people exact dates, but Mainnet is coming soon.
We're kind of gearing up for that and getting ready for that.
That's very exciting for us.
For us, there are kind of a few things that need to be true.
The major one is getting all the games live and making sure we have enough
like all day one content because you don't want to launch a chain with nothing to do.
So we are very focused there and I'm really excited about that.
And then I think the thing I'm most excited about in the kind of medium term
is just all the different applications that I'm seeing developers build
because of Somnia.
I'm just really interested to see what happens
now that you have a blockchain that is fast enough,
that has high enough throughput that you can build applications
that never could be built on-chain before,
that now can be built on-chain.
I think it's going to be really interesting to see all these new apps
coming out over the next six months, a year,
and seeing how devs play around and experiment
with Web3 tech.
Because now, infrastructure is not the limiting
factor, or very soon infrastructure won't be
the limiting factor. It'll be creativity
and imagination, which will be cool.
Yeah, I think
I'm really bullish on the future. I think it's going
to be really exciting for all of you
guys here in this space, because we are
a little bit ahead.
Paul, thank you so much. T tino do you have any any more questions
no i know you have but time flies yeah i learned a lot i i really enjoyed it uh paul it was uh very
insightful from your side and thank you so much maybe one question comes to my mind because we
are all excited about the other side.
And you probably saw the other side also from the other side.
So anything regarding the other side that comes to your mind that you would...
Oh shit, he really tried to get some alpha at the end.
Dude, I can't talk about that.
You know I cannot talk about that.
It's quite funny there's some group chats
where there are prop betting websites about the other side that we're we've seen there's like
people putting down bets on stuff but i'm like we know the answer to these questions we shouldn't
probably put down profits on this stuff but yeah i can't i can't do that you will absolutely murder
me if i do anything with that i understand it that. Even though we have a magic alpha sound
here, we could be trying.
I won't be trying.
You've got to try.
Say it.
Okay.
Probably didn't work today.
It usually works we tried we tried
no thank you so much for it it was amazing all right cheers thanks a lot folks thank you so much
paul big shout out to somnia network team because you guys are killing it i absolutely love that
thank you so much follow paul and follow somnia intern here in the in the audience uh thank you
so much man really really appreciated joining us
today. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys.
Great one.
Have a good one.
And guys, I can't
pick a better song than
the Grateful one. so tino my favorite part was always this hell yeah because i recorded it live right i recorded
it live and when i heard it i was like insane. It's like a wet dream kind of thing.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
It was amazing, man.
As I said, I love testing stuff and it was amazing to join these demos, right?
To experience it.
It was with like a basic avatars.
Like we didn't have our apes or anything.
And I think that's a huge game changer. When you see a 3D ape Phil here or
any Gene, oh it's not
Gene, it's someone else
someone stole his Twitter probably
and some other apes, it's
different feeling, right? So I can't wait for
other side. I'm constantly
thinking about what to build
there, how to bring this
show there
you know, it's really exciting yeah, what do you there, how to bring this show there.
It's really exciting.
What do you think, Tino?
About today's episode? Unfortunately, I haven't had a
possibility to
have this feeling yet because
my mutant has never been
inside the other side, but will be
hopefully very soon.
But regarding the show, and again, you know how I love all these futuristic discussions
and everything about how gaming, how metaverse will play a role in our lives.
And just what comes to my mind was, and I never thought about it was uh the triple a gaming uh studios coming into um
uh into a blockchain and actually it's so true what paul said because uh i was also part of uh
in a corporation and i was working with a lot of like big corporations and the process of getting
something signed off it's it's just crazy it's just massive. And 95% of the people
there, they are comfortable. So they sit on comfortable places and they don't want the
discomfort. And the discomfort of risking trying to convince somebody into something that might be
risky. And I think it's a very, very good sign for the small studio,
for the independent studios.
And I think I saw this exact thing in Web 2,
in between Web 1 and Web 2,
when a lot of stuff was happening with social,
when Facebook started coming
and there were possibilities with
some YouTube advertising etc
there were small studios
that I was working with
around the world like a small
studio in London I remember we
came for a meeting there and they
just put three chairs in
the middle of a room I never
forget that and they're like yeah
we're just kind of small.
And they were in talks with the global Red Bull,
so they were almost shaken.
But they were so good at the technology.
They were so ahead because they were inside
and they were just involved.
And they didn't have the big kind of agency
that needed to sign off everything.
So they were so much ahead of the curve.
And a few years later, fast forward, they were the main agency for YouTube, for their advertising and for so many other things.
They were winning awards all over the world.
And this is exactly, I think this might be happening also in Web3, not only with gaming, but the gaming might be a very good place to start because we talked about it a lot.
It's so hard to build a game.
Yet with AI, with the army of AI helpers and co-creators that are there, I think this is game changing.
I think this is game-changing.
So I really feel this might be something there.
So I really feel this might be something there.
And man, we've talked to so many amazing people here in the show.
And basically, we can agree on most of the stuff that everyone is talking about.
Very similar things that are going to happen, right?
And I think the direction is obvious.
I think we are early.
That's why when you're looking at the internet, everything's obvious. I think we are early. That's, you know, that's why when you're looking at the
internet, everything's obvious because you're looking backwards, right? But now we need to
get to the place and it takes time, effort, energy, people, et cetera, et cetera. And that's
why I'm talking all the time about not quitting because you quit now and you look in five years or maybe even less
you look back and you'll be like damn i was in such a incredible blessed position and i gave up
so that's why we're not giving up and i think the being here is insane opportunity to be part of
these old test runs to be early to the other side, to playing with Somnia network,
to learning about 3D, I think that's 100% the alpha.
We are really blessed that we were able to host
so many incredible guests here and learn from them.
So love it.
By the way, guys, Garga also talking in Other Side Builders chat about Other Side,
that everything, Other Deeds, that I mentioned early before we got a poll here,
is really the winter release.
So our lands will be able to do stuff with them during winter.
Summer is ODK Games and the Central Islands.
Facing stuff in redder
than turning everything on at
once. Start with BB Blitz,
next ODK game,
after, etc.
until we get to full island.
So we still have time.
It's gonna be crazy. I just bought my
24th other deed today.
So I've been buying.
And yeah, man.
I saw it.
That was a beautiful one.
Tino 5 again.
Wow.
Let's go.
Chemical Goo.
That's my place.
But Tino, we have exciting episode on Thursday.
Maybe you should do a little tease about the wall.
And I think then we can wrap it up because it's got to be another banger, guys, especially for you if you want to be part of the
wall. But which wall, right? Which wall? Which wall we were talking about? Guys, if you are
following the show, myself or grateful, you probably know that we built an 8th Street gallery in Prague.
I just pinned it on the top.
Last October, it was crazy because from the idea to the installation, it was only two weeks.
And the wall has been there.
A lot of people go around because the highway is pretty hectic over there also many
many people walk around and so on and yesterday we had a cherry picker with my co-founder dian and
we had to do some restoration because the winter was cruel and many of the apes fell down and we had to
We had to basically put them back in and and do some some glue work and
What we announced is also that we are planning to
expand the
gallery and we have some pretty cool mechanics in in mind
So the first first part was really to get the...
Don't share the mechanics, bro.
No, no, no, I don't.
Yeah, you are right.
And we're going to be talking about all this
on Thursday on Grateful Show.
Yeah, we got to be talking about it on Thursday, guys.
That was just a tease. I also got 40 ApeCoin from Clutch Markets.
So I'm going to bet it live through the show.
And I will send you that NFT.
So I'll be betting NBA.
So we can chat about it live on Space.
We can pick the game, two games.
I'll bet it and I will send you the nft with a bet and if you
win it's yours so i think that's really really cool and yeah tino man the wall looks amazing
everyone who saw it we had a dev alo here with makash they were really amazed how the wall looks
irl and now it's even better so guys if you want to be part of the wall join us on Thursday it's gonna be a banger and I brought Kev here on stage Kev how you
doing hey what's going on everybody hope you can hear me well I just having five
minutes before heading into my barber to get a good shave because that's weeks
ago and so you guys hear someone say hi beef peas are reviewed was curious to
hear your thoughts and
i also wanted to know who's going to be in lisbon because i know you're actually big on that i'm uh
i was very curious to know uh you guys are going to be there this year i'm uh thinking about looking
some tickets and i don't know out there i'm still thinking of going because lisbon is always great
and and june is incredible time to go there so i'm not not hungry. I'm like 50-50 right now.
I'll see.
But guys, in the audience,
if you are going for NFC Lisbon,
give me a sign.
I already saw in few group chats that people are coming.
So yeah, but I don't see signs in the audience,
so I don't know.
But yeah.
How are you doing, man?
Everything revealed.
So what's the next step right now, bro?
Quick alpha.
Quick alpha.
Just truly feeling grateful and, you know, just amazed.
The community is just showing strong.
I've seen so many PFP switches.
I can just retweet something and people are just on it.
Like literally yesterday, I posted in our Discord,
like somebody was wanting to switch their PHP
and we got like 300 comments in literally like an hour time
or two hours time or whatever it was.
So it's just insane to see so many people being so excited.
The sales have been going off the roof.
Like everybody's just buying above the floor, right?
And that's crazy because it shows that people are actually
just buying what they like.
Even today, there's been multiple three and a half EAT sales.
Final Boss got sold for over $23,000.
There was another Final Boss sale over $10,000.
You know, I just got a message of somebody that's looking to buy a Final Boss and is offering 10 EAT.
It's mind-blowing to me to be in this position, but it's absolutely amazing.
It makes me excited to build this IP out because we're not alone.
We've got hundreds of thousands of people with us now.
And so, yeah, just feeling super grateful.
So these next steps, it's all around two things.
One, expanding the IP, launching our Instagram,
starting to expand it into the outer realms of Web2,
showcasing what our IP is about. There's different funnels that we're it into the outer realms of Web 2, showcasing what
our IP is about.
There's different funnels that we're launching into the anime space.
And at the same time for Web 3, the whole licensing part.
I think we're innovating on the licensing model of what I think that the future of
licensing is going to be like.
And so, yeah, we want to get a platform out that a whole book can log into and they can
you know see their lives and things but as well earn their way to more licensing and i think we're
doing something very unique there so uh you know it's uh don't be super excited man i'm just feel
so grateful guys so it's like your name like it's literally what i'm just day and night experiencing
i love to hear that man and i also love when people are buying above the floor and they are buying NFTs that they like.
That's the beauty of NFTs, right?
Like you have traits.
You can pick what you really enjoy.
That's basically what I'm also doing with other sides.
When I'm looking for the other side,
I'm buying what I like usually above the floor.
And that's something that meme coins won't give you, right?
So absolutely love to hear that, man.
Good luck on the journey.
And Tino.
I appreciate you guys, man.
Thanks, guys.
I just wanted to brag, Kevin,
because it doesn't happen to me often,
but I actually pulled a pretty rare one
on OpenSeats as number 11, I think,
or something like that.
And it doesn't usually happen.
It happened to me with Jeeze, and it happened to me now with Final Boss.
And I'm pretty excited about that.
And just looking at the project, what's happening.
And glad that you joined us.
Make sure to join us whenever there is some kind of news
so that we can share with our audience.
Of course, man. You guys got my full support.
I love what you guys stand for.
Great fall.
Let's cook some chocolate sometime.
I'd love to be able to get those in my head
sometime with some designs of final boss.
It would be fucking awesome.
Yeah, I'm going to bounce into the barber guy.
Thanks for letting me speak for a couple minutes.
Love you guys.
See you later.
Thank you, man.
Have fun.
And yeah, Tino, I was basically lucky with my ape,
getting pink ape with an aquamarine background.
Very rare, very beautiful.
It's crazy.
I think it's number one on the rarity chart.
Of course it is.
Also, guys, I forgot and I got DM.
Probably on Thursday, we will have some builders that are building something cool for the other side.
So I think you haven't heard of them.
They are kind of new.
So that's got to be interesting.
I just need to finish a few things with them.
So the date and time works, but it will be interesting.
And then after our show, there is a RedoS,
a huge Ape Chains, Ape Coin Space. So it will be interesting and then after our show there is a Redo's huge Ape Chain's Ape Coins space so
it will be packed Thursday then we have probably other space right so yeah Tino anything else you
would like to share or we go clapping our hands let's clap the hands guys see you on Thursday
can't wait for that and guys really please keep pushing because i i don't know i somehow believe that we
are in the right time at the right place and i know sometimes it looks really bad in the space
right everything's crashing etc etc but man all the all the major builders are saying the same
and i believe it guys like future will be more digital than it is right now.
And we are here.
And it's going to be crazy journey, guys.
It's going to be crazy journey.
So yeah, let's go.
Thank you so much for listening today.
Thank you so much for all the support.
We are also uploading these episodes on your favorite podcast platform.
So if you miss the show and you want to listen to it
you know
in Apple CarPlay or Android
CarPlay or how they call that
you can find us on
Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere
and let's go
this was Grateful Show 370
and now I need to switch on the soundboard
let's go One and now I need to switch
And guys we gotta be clapping cooking something on Somnia, I'm not tired. I'm retired. I'm not one.
And guys, if you're cooking something on Somnia,
Hayley is in the audience.
Probably the biggest death on Somnia Network.
So give her a follow. In the middle of the universe.
Wow.
This is first coming six time rehearsed.
To freestyle.
But I run it like sucks.
Beneath the screen controlled by the bees.
What does it mean? All the shit I'm seeing. You're on the bee and screaming. Let's go, everybody.
Have a great Tuesday.
See you on Thursday. Have fun. And let's fucking go.
