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Using crypto, NFTs as loyalty mechanisms
Recorded: Aug. 24, 2023 Duration: 1:01:58Space Recording
Full Transcription
Doing pretty good.
GM, GM, Humpty and Donnie.
How are we doing, everyone?
Bliss, what's up?
I see the surprise face on Donnie's avatar, and I'm like, uh-oh, here we go.
Am I missing the silent joke here?
What silent joke?
No, I haven't seen you in so long.
Oh, God.
Nice to see both of you.
And what I've done is I've re-strategized my entrance.
So the mobile data, I switched it off.
And so hopefully we're not going to have any technical issues in this conversation.
Oh, yeah.
I like that.
You know, I keep saying this, but I really should buy like a little secondhand.
And I'm always afraid of buying secondhand technology just because I'm afraid of what somebody might have put in there.
But I need to buy an inexpensive phone so that I can log in with my personal account.
You know, because I think that I like the idea of being able to draw more attention to the space.
And I know our personal accounts also tend to have their own audience.
So maybe I'll do that this weekend.
I'll find like a little $100, $200 phone or something.
You know, I was just, I was going to message you before this and offer to host the space, but I didn't know if it was just another message that would be annoying.
Because I did buy a Solana phone, you know, the Saga phone that Solana released.
I bought one of those for the sake of, I think there's a Sybil element to it, and they're working it into future airdrops.
So I'm kind of speculating on that.
But it also came with $5 a month unlimited talk and text with a separate phone number.
And it has its own data plan.
So like I can use that from anywhere.
It's really not a bad idea, but the phone did cost $1,000.
So kind of a wash maybe.
Man, that airdrop better pay off.
So far it's been about $3.50, I think.
I got to mint a Klenosaur, which I'm, you know, it's like a cartoon dinosaur thing.
And I sold it immediately and just, you know, put it somewhere else, I guess.
Okay, can we...
Not that that's the point.
Can we talk about this?
Because actually you're bringing up a really good point.
And here we go.
Thursday Talks, for anybody who's new here...
It happened.
We normally, like, just talk.
You know, Donnie, Polaris, and myself, Humpty, Data Dude.
We talk and we discover topics that are fun and interesting.
And then we, like, dive a little bit more.
You just said something here, Donnie.
I really want to talk about that because this is something that is...
I'm really passionate about.
And for anybody who's following my personal account, Data Dude, you might have seen that
I keep talking about loyalty rewards.
It's this idea of, like, you know, the next evolution of loyalty rewards.
Whereas, you know, in previous, I guess, Web2 current, not previous, because Web2 is still
prevalent.
It's still the standard.
You accumulate these points.
You trade in these points for usually crappy rewards, things that you don't really care
about.
It's very hard to actually get anything of value from these things.
I mean, I'm even saying this as a travel credit card holder and redeeming them for points,
or sorry, airline tickets, et cetera.
I mean, there is value in that.
But for the most part, they're pretty worthless.
So you said something now that I thought was really interesting.
And I wonder if you wouldn't mind deep diving into that, your thoughts on the matter, and
then Polaris will get your thoughts.
And that is, you have this phone, right?
Whether you get an airdrop or not, you know, speculating, whatever, DGEN, you got this, the
ability to mint this NFT, which let's just say you got $300 out of it.
It's a $1,000 phone.
You can consider that a rebate.
You got a $300 rebate that you immediately applied to the cost of your phone.
And now that phone costs $700 instead of $1,000.
But that's pretty cool.
I mean, don't you think?
I mean, I think that's kind of the future of like loyalty rewards.
What do you think, Dottie?
Since you're the one that got that, what do you think about that?
Well, I think that this is, I mean, this phone is just another method of airdrop farming in
a way.
And I think that in the back of my head, I have friends who do, who airdrop farm like
full time.
And I'm dispassionate about it because I don't necessarily fully see the point of it sometimes.
But in this case, it's a phone.
I need a second device.
And here's my justification for this specific instance.
And then I'll talk about what I think about the whole thing, maybe.
But the phone, I needed a second device anyway for secondary storage of Google 2FA info because
I don't want that just on one device.
And I don't want to store the private keys anywhere digitally or write them all down because
it's crazy.
So I just have two phones to do that.
And if I'm going to have two phones, I may as well make one of them a separate platform.
So it's an Android because I like to be diverse.
You know, I'm not on team iPhone or team Android.
I'd like to see what everybody's doing.
And I wanted to see what they were going to do in terms of airdrops.
And in this case, there was that one thing that was claimable that ended up cutting out
about 33% of the cost of the phone.
But to get $5 talk and text unlimited only because of this phone is also a huge benefit.
Um, I don't know, man, it seemed, it seemed like, and I didn't know I was getting this
also, if you share your location data with it, it pays you, I think it's like two bucks
a day.
So by getting the $5 a month data plan, you end up making about 25 more dollars just by
carrying the phone around, which I'm already doing, right?
So like, if I'm already going to be doing these things and someone's offering to pay me
more or at all for doing them, I'm going to do it.
And I like on a fundamental level, I don't really have to think about that.
If I did think more deeply into it and consider what I was giving away to do that, and if
I'm already not giving that away, what I want to start necessarily, I don't know.
And if this was any other way of airdrop farming where you just sort of like use a protocol
and test it and try to break it and, you know, basically provide professional level QA to
a company that they then reward you in their token for, I wouldn't want to do it unless
it was something I really cared about and really wanted the protocol to succeed.
And sometimes I don't have the time to look into it.
So I think that's like everything I think about airdrop farming.
Yeah, I was going to say, I think at this point, airdrops are, have been historically
kind of a degen tool.
I think there's this, I think the premise of airdrops as an onboarding mechanism is great.
And my problem with that is you're kind of, it's just kind of like a blanket airdrop.
You don't really know who's truly cares about your, your product.
Like you said, right?
Like you don't care if the protocol is great.
You don't care if it succeeds.
You just want your tokens to be able to sell them.
And, you know, at the end of the day, that's, that's also kind of not a big deal, I guess,
for a protocol because they're like, Hey, it becomes liquidity.
So it doesn't matter.
Like we went either way, somebody keeps the tokens, they become a part of our ecosystem.
They use our platform.
We win.
They sell it.
It becomes a part of liquidity.
Now we have liquidity in the market.
We win.
Right.
But I think that there's more to it.
Maybe, maybe I'm just way, maybe I'm overthinking it, but I think that there's a lot more to airdrops
as a incentive mechanism.
Plus, what do you think, man?
Um, and, you know, I guess from this lens of loyalty rewards, rebates, whatever you want
to call them using like NFTs, crypto.
I think it's a very interesting, uh, question and a topic, um, um, which is, I think a pretty
major part of the, uh, the crypto ecosystem, especially if you think about how many people
got onboarded in 2017, it was like airdrop mania and ICO mania at that point.
But if we, I mean, there's a lot of different aspects to it.
And I mean, let's, let me try to break those aspects down from my understanding.
So, we've got like, you know, aspects of like, you know, people actually experiencing what,
what that specific blockchain has to offer.
Uh, so that's a good, good way of like, you know, incentivizing individuals who are already
within that ecosystem and we haven't really got that many, um, if you look at the, the
total global population and the, the crypto, uh, users.
So it's a, it's a good way of like using their technological understanding of this specific
industry and, and utilizing that and maybe getting some information out from like, you
know, uh, the feel of what that blockchain can actually do.
Uh, because at the end of the day, it's just a blockchain, like unless, unless, you know,
someone's going to use it.
So that's a good, good aspect that, you know, you're literally getting people in and getting
them to use it, then you mentioned something about liquidity and like, you know, liquidity
is created and then, you know, people, uh, I'm not sure.
The thing is that liquidity is, gets sucked from somewhere else and then it gets like, you
know, uh, shifted from one side to another and, and hence, but then through the passage of
time, like, you know, whichever technology or whichever, uh, blockchain tends to like,
you know, have more users, that's where the liquidity tends to stay.
It's a, it's a good way of testing, like, you know, uh, in, in a, in a wild environment,
like, you know, which would work best for, for the users.
So it kind of like, you know, places the users, uh, but it also damages the current
liquidity, uh, and, and, uh, from the, from the projects, uh, but one can argue that like,
you know, maybe the projects haven't been delivering and because of that delivery, the
liquidity has been sucked out and going to the technologies, which probably could do things.
And that I suppose is innovation.
So, so yeah, um, I just, um, I just thought like, you know, give a more holistic perspective
of it, um, and in terms of like users and then they being incentivized, I mean, that's
been happening, uh, we realized like, especially in the last 20 years or so, uh, I would, I would
say like web two or that era where like, you know, Twitter and all these Instagram and all
these different, um, apps came, uh, before we was using my space.
I think like the next generation of my space, uh, I think at that point, uh, companies and
business schools, because they literally taught me this as well in a business school that they
realized that, that in order to the most difficult part of a business or to like create profit is
to like retain customers and to like, you know, attract customers and, you know, there's
different strategies which are placed to like get them.
So, um, so they literally like, you know, uh, teach like individuals that, and they realize
like that paying the, or, or incentivizing users to, to like, you know, do, uh, marketing
on their behalf or to, um, like, you know, use the product and like, you know, say something
about it, that became, uh, uh, the, the big thing of, for this millennia so far.
And, um, surely like, you know, the blockchain industry can capitalize on, on, on that in return,
they deliver insights, uh, which are very useful for, for the businesses to like make the right
direction.
And what I don't agree with or don't like personally is the, the fact that that information
gets used or gets like, you know, not stored correctly and then ends up getting into the
wrong hands and all of that stuff.
Uh, but yeah, that's my overview on it.
Uh, Hamti.
Yeah.
I mean, okay.
So you, you said a few things and maybe we could just backtrack a little bit.
Um, the first thing is you, you use kind of traditional social media as an example of,
uh, maybe potentially, uh, leveraging airdrops, uh, for onboarding people to use those platforms.
And I want to use specifically the Twitter and threads, uh, recent, I guess, um, news, right.
In terms of like, I guess, threads, vampire attack on Twitter, if you will.
I, in fact, I think I tweeted something like that when it happened.
I was like, if this were web three apps, it would basically read the headline would read
something like threads, vampire attacks, Twitter, right.
Because basically they were scraping their API data, um, to, I guess, if I understood it
correctly to attract, uh, or to, uh, get people from Twitter over to threads.
That was one.
The other thing is you talked about, um, onboarding mechanisms.
So customer acquisition and customer retention, I think I really want to talk about that because
you're right.
I mean, in traditional business, those are two of the hardest and most expensive things
to do is targeting your demographic, understanding who they are, going where they're at, creating
some sort of like value for these, uh, people to join or use your product and then to then
find value from that product and keep using it.
Right.
Um, the third one, and I think I actually, I already forgot the third one.
So let's just go with the first one.
What are your thoughts in terms of like, let's look at it from the lens of like web two social,
right?
So Twitter and threads, what are your thoughts of like how those two products, if they wanted
to introduce a token, um, that they could use that in order to attract people to use
it, um, retain those people, like basically incentivize them to continue using it.
And then to, uh, basically, I don't know, I guess vampire attack, uh, for lack of a better
word, they're competitors users.
Do you guys have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, of course.
It's very interesting.
Uh, Donnie, go for it, bro.
Yeah, mine's really short.
I think Twitter did introduce a token and it's called the US dollar and they pay you now for
impressions.
You can engage in profits here.
And a lot of my friends are making like pretty reasonable salaries off just doing this normal
shitposting that they were doing before, not really even adding much value, just kind
of like churning through asking those questions that get people fired up, you know, and threads
is doing what I would consider to be the opposite, which is taking the super low friction free
method and collecting people, basically doing what Instagram does and allowing you to sign
in through all the things you normally already have to a service.
That's kind of like, uh, Twitter, but it's zucked out a little more.
You know, that's my, that's my take.
I don't even know what threads would need to tokenize or monetize it because it's already
free and they don't need the QA.
They don't need people to test the system out because they're, you know, they're who they
are.
Right.
I like how you just basically shilled your own Twitter thread where you were talking
about like USD as a, as, as, as a, I guess the USD and the government being.
Oh, I'm not making it.
No, you have to apply for this.
You have to get like, you have to get like a million or 15 million, some crazy number of
impressions that I will never get because I don't ask questions to get people fired up
because you have to do that on purpose or be Dwayne Johnson or something like you have
to be someone who just gets that kind of attention.
No, I mean, dollars to Jonas though.
You need to grow your audience.
You need to have a point of view.
And I think Donnie, you're doing both.
So maybe I'll get there someday.
I'm certainly not making any money.
I think.
No, no, no.
But I'm just saying like, I do remember you writing that thread is what I was alluding
to, uh, where you talk about like the U S the U S dollar being like a token.
And now you kind of like full circle that you went full Seinfeld.
Uh, yeah.
So the funny thing is that the other platform we were talking about is called threads.
And I misunderstood what you were saying.
I get it now.
Sorry.
I sometimes do a terrible job of introducing my thoughts too.
So no, Mark Zuckerberg should be sorry.
This isn't you.
You didn't name a company after an action that it's competitor company.
Oh, that's crazy.
I see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Well, you know, I mean that, that obviously was intentional.
Come on now.
Come on.
Like we know threads are synonymous with Twitter with see now it's a Twitter and it's not even
Twitter anymore.
Anyways, it's not tweet.
It's post.
I can't get, I know I'm having a lot of trouble with that.
I'm okay with post.
Actually, I'm, I don't have a problem with post.
I think I, I've used that word before.
Um, but X is just such a stupid name.
I'm sorry.
I know we're on the platform.
So it's kind of ironic that we're shit talking it, but you know, it's a stupid name.
Lars, you were going to say something, man.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
I was just going to say that, like, you know, um, in terms of, I think Donnie answered
it, like, you know, Twitter's already, um, using all of that, uh, you know, they're using
USD to monetize and incentivize their next move, uh, would be like, they've already like,
you know, the X has already got like a huge, uh, user base and it's already got like, it's
a, it's, it's a, it's a machine of, of content creation.
And it's been there for a while now.
It just needs to like, you know, have blockchain integration.
That would be the next step in my opinion.
Uh, and then start like, you know, uh, utilizing the, the security, which blockchain, uh, offers.
Well, apart from that, they've got like pretty much everything, uh, going on for them.
And I can understand the confusion with the threads and, uh, uh, X thing, because I mean,
we're still getting used to like calling Twitter X, but it's, um, it's a hard one, you know,
because it's like an ever changing environment.
We're like, you know, constantly, uh, uh, experiencing different innovations coming through
and, and, and testing, um, but it hasn't really impacted like the users were using X in terms
of the still creating content.
Um, if, if a token was to be created just for the sake of, just for the sake of like incentivizing
creators, uh, that could possibly move in a negative, I don't know.
I mean, why would you create a token when you're already incentivizing them to, to, to use,
um, X and you're paying them in USD, but it would be a bet.
I think, yeah, I think Donnie hit it.
Donnie hit it pretty good.
Basically saying there's no need, right?
In fact, anything they're adding a level of, they're adding risk, which they don't need
to do because they already proved that they're able to capture that value with USD.
If you introduce a crypto token, now you're looking at regulation.
Now you're looking at volatility and speculation.
Like there's a whole bunch of other things that you got to worry about that no longer are
to do with like the main product.
Yeah.
I mean, also, I mean, if, if, if X was to like literally use the, the blockchain aspect, they
would, they would, my recommendation would be to like literally use the tech, tech, tech,
tech aspect of blockchain and like, like, you know, digitize everything on the blockchain
if it's, if it's, if it is possible and, and, and, you know, secure the user content
or, you know, go around those lines instead of like literally creating a token, which, um,
doesn't really like, you know, make any difference, especially like Elon, he's all about like trying
to like help humanity and make this world a better place.
So I'm sure like along, along these lines would be a better, uh, rhetoric for him to
follow.
Well, I think the, the world, and by the world, I mean a very small part of Twitter, but the
world was expecting him to introduce DogeCore because wasn't he such a DogeMaxie?
Like, I think the world was like, well, what happened to Doge?
Isn't that supposed to be introduced into, into X?
I mean, who knows?
Might be in, in the roadmap, but, uh, go ahead, Donnie.
I bet, I would imagine that there are not enough of the influencers.
I mean, crypto Twitter is pretty big, but it's a really small portion of what Twitter,
I'm sorry, X, crypto X is really big, but it's a really small portion of what, um, X
business is.
And if you're trying to get people to spend $11 a month with the hopes of making money,
a lot of those people won't have a crypto wallet or a Doge wallet.
And I think it would be segmenting their, uh, user base a bit more than they ought to.
Also, if I think one of the main benefits of airdrop farming for companies that are startups
and need QA, they need users to try to break their systems.
It's expensive to pay a company to try to break your system.
So it's, this could kind of function like a free pre audit because you're giving people
a token you made.
So it really doesn't cost you anything to get these like massive amounts of people to
utilize your systems.
And that's really not what Twitter is going for.
Twitter is going, it's basically turning Twitter into a casino where like, if you're willing
to pay $11 a month, you might be able to make a lot more than $11 a month, or you might
not, but then you get to use the service.
So, yeah, let's, let's, let's jump back into, yeah, that a little bit more in terms of
like loyalty mechanisms, crypto NFTs and all that.
So let's look at it from the lens now of like decentralized social.
So there's a couple of examples out there.
There are, I guess, some of my favorites like Farcaster, Lens, which these are protocols,
but there's apps that are built on top of it, like Warpcast and Orb.
Then there's like some of the more novel social experiments.
I guess I should call them social experiments instead of decentralized social because they
don't all necessarily fall under the same umbrella.
But I guess one of the more novel social experiments has been Frontech.
Should we expect then that in the future, because we're talking about vampire attacks
and onboarding and retention mechanisms using crypto.
Should we expect that in the future then we will see a ton of different applications that
are constantly like working and each other and, and, and, and vampire attacking one another for
their customers.
Like, is that what the world of like social will look like in Web3?
I don't know if there's enough.
Okay.
So my, my initial thoughts on this, I haven't thought about this before, so this might be
a little bit juvenile, but my initial thoughts are that the Web3 space and the blockchain
space.
Those are my favorite thoughts of yours, by the way.
Well, great.
Maybe this will be something groundbreaking because it's really not super well thought
through.
It's like, it's more of a monkey urge.
Um, we are monkeys after all for the, we are the fourth grade ape hominid.
We, uh, the blockchain space is really young, so it's easy to edge out the competition and
try to gain market share because all you have to do is scrappy and noisy and people will quickly
shift attention and, and everything's like even Bitcoin is a pretty small market cap despite
being the largest, you know, either largest minority or the vast majority of crypto in
general's market cap, right?
So it's pretty easy to edge other people out.
But in the social media space, there are giants and they're pretty well founded and
it's going to take a lot more than a startup that's a bit noisy and, you know, is farming
an airdrop to, to suck any liquidity or, you know, social liquidity out of the preexisting
dominant app, I think.
So I don't, I don't know how this, this plays out 10 years from now.
I think the scene will look a little bit different, but I think one thing of the million things that
started up will just all of a sudden gain market share for some reason by solving a problem
we didn't know we had.
But I don't know if it's going to look the same as the blockchain space because it's older
than that.
Yeah, I guess I'm not necessarily asking like how would web two companies like, you know,
as well-established social companies like, like X and threads and, or I guess meta in
this case, compete in the web three space because that would assume that they adopt the technology.
And I think every paradigm shift, the technology creates new kind of institutions.
Many of the old institutions just die because they're too slow to adopt the technology.
I'm not saying that that's true for all of them, but it tends to replace kind of the previous
status quo.
And I would consider blockchain to be kind of like a paradigm shift in technology where there's
going to be new players that become the institutions, the Amazons, right?
The metas of the, of, of the, the future web.
So my question was more so these, these, what we are, what are now social experiments become
the social institutions of the future.
Are they going to be vampire attacking each other because of these incentive mechanisms
being so easy to spin up and people's attention, I guess, to borrow from some of your words, you
know, kind of being so short where like if you're just loud enough and scrappy enough, you
can get people to buy into whatever it is you're doing.
I guess that's kind of what I was trying to say.
Maybe I said it in the wrong direction.
I think as companies, my monkey brain is way too monkey this morning.
Yeah.
Maybe we're both just different kinds of monkeys today.
I, I think that I'd like to think I'm like an orangutan, but whatever.
Yeah.
I was thinking, what is the one that's a bonobos?
Those are the ones that are closest to us.
I like to think I'm one of those, but you know, wait, no.
Yeah.
Orangutans are apes.
They're not monkeys.
Okay.
Sorry.
That it is up to others to say, it's like calling yourself handsome.
You know, we don't get to decide where we fall in the spectrum.
I think other people get to.
Anyway, when a, when a business sector and its components get bigger and bigger and bigger,
I think it's easy.
It's less easy to vampire attack one another.
So I feel like it's so much easier when market caps are small and businesses are young to
do this to one another because you're all scrapping over the same few pieces, but as
these become larger financial institutions, I don't think they move the same way.
Okay.
That's a fair point.
Because I mean, I would say Juniswap is probably one of the more mature DeFi ecosystems.
Um, and while they themselves were vampire attacked early on, right?
Like the whole SushiSwap, uh, being born of that and then providing the token first to
their community.
I think that that was a good example of like a vampire attack.
Well, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say that Sushi doesn't exist, but it not at the same
level as Uniswap.
Now that is subjective, but I think there's some objectivity to that.
So I like that point where you get to a point of sophistication, uh, and maturity where you
are sufficiently established, where it's a little more difficult to just say, I'm going
to try to steal your users with a new token.
There's something to be said about the security and the, uh, feature set that makes it that
much more difficult to, um, to copy and, and, and replace.
Good point.
Awesome.
Love your monkey, monkey brain thoughts.
Polaris, any, any thoughts on that?
You got a frog brain.
I know.
Bro.
The thing is that you got to let innovation take its course sometimes.
And, um, eventually the best, uh, the best technology, you know, uh, sustains itself.
And you can tell that from the user growth, especially in blockchain, you can tell from
on-chain activity and, you know, all of those things, uh, they tend to like stand as a testament
as well towards, um, the blockchain's, uh, validation because in the end it gets validated
by its users.
And, um, uh, the same approach with like, you know, the way you said vampire attack sushi,
because there was a, there was, there was a space, there was a space or there wasn't
like a, an area which Uniswap didn't cover.
As a result, SushiSwap took the market share from that side.
And yes, you know, they haven't, they're not the same size as Uniswap, but, you know,
it's a big world at the end of the day.
And if they're a player in, in, in this game, uh, and if they keep working towards innovation,
then who knows, uh, literally like last year, 16 months ago, Solana, Avalanche, Luna,
all of these different blockchains were at their maximum, at their peak, who would
have known that like, you know, um, two of them are literally at zero at the moment.
Uh, but even in a non-financial aspect, like, you know, we need to look at like how many
users are using that blockchain for the, for the, for the way it was designed for.
And then I suppose that kind of like shed some light on the, on the question, but the answer
is a, I mean, there's no answer to this.
It's like a long winded understanding of the situation and coming up with a catharsis, which
is an ever so, it's a moving catharsis, you know, it's a crazy, crazy, uh, industry.
Interesting.
Okay.
So are we putting a period on that?
Do we want to explore it any further or anything in the news that we want to cover next?
It feels to me like the, the speculation on where this might go and who can partake in
it is as far as we can go without getting a time machine, you know, in my head anyway.
Um, yeah, next up.
What's going on in the, in the world, Donnie, Lars, what have I missed?
Dude, my world?
I don't know.
It's funny how I just made the world mine.
You should show your, your spaces, man.
Wow.
You're, you're doing great.
Dude, this, these have been such a hoot.
Actually, there's one tonight at 8 PM Eastern.
Um, and I'm really pumped about doing it.
This one's going to be on collectibles.
And the approach that we've taken from, this is going to, it's sort of from the Bitcoin
ecosystems perspective, because the majority of the participants who are on the panels
are in that ecosystem, but it's not about Bitcoin.
It's about digital assets in general, and kind of like anthropologically what we were
doing when we're doing it and how it falls in line with what humans have done and might
do in the future.
So the first episode was an intro.
The last sort of will be a 50,000 foot perspective of where we're at.
And all the 12 in between are labeled things like reputation, identity, collectibles, um,
on off chain, deep diving one subject at a time.
And, um, the last episode is going to be me.
I'm making my wife and mother listen to all of these and take notes on them.
And the last episode is going to be me interviewing two normal people who don't have, um, any seed
phrases stored.
They don't have any wallets that require seed phrases.
My wife has some amount of XRP in Coinbase.
So she's gotten that far.
My mother has, actually, my mother has a Coinbase account too, and she holds a little
bit of Bitcoin, but only because I made her do it.
And I made her do it at the top, just like everybody else.
And, uh, she hasn't looked at it since.
So we get to go back through 15 or 14 episodes of deep diving, what digital assets are to us
and what they might be to us in the future and how we've done the things we're doing now
in the past without digital assets.
Uh, because we're really just redoing everything we've ever done as a civilization or as previous
civilizations, but with new technology and like, it all looks different.
It's reshaped a little bit.
Um, so we get to ask two normal people what they didn't get about it.
And I'm assuming it's going to be a lot, uh, because this is, I always forget how insular
this entire community is.
No one I interact with on a daily basis would have any idea what I'm talking about.
This is like speaking a totally different language.
And I think we forget that.
So my mother specifically is coming up with a glossary of terms that she doesn't understand.
And we're just going to bang through a lot of that stuff.
She's going to send me a list in advance so I can just fly through it, but then we're
going to have like an hour or 90 minute long discussion about what's keeping them out of
And preliminarily, I don't think that this is going to be about why they don't buy NFTs because
that's really not the point.
The point is not to get my mother and my wife to buy NFTs because that's like trying to
get my friends who aren't into magic, the gathering to play magic because there's different kinds
of people and they're going to do different kinds of things, right?
But my mother and my wife both do have bank accounts.
So why do they not want to engage in a monetary system that isn't the major one yet is a big
question that I have.
And I think I already know the answers, but I want to hear what they say because I don't
want to tell them why they're not doing it because from my perspective, it's a very different
thing.
So that's, I mean, that's my short and long shill for the Don't Say NFT podcast.
And it's called Don't Say NFT because of the stigma around NFT or the word NFT.
You know, it was like a political party at the top last time.
If you asked a stranger on the street what they think of NFTs, they would either get super
mad about it or they would be like, yeah, they're cool.
I like monkeys.
You know, everybody had this like, I think it's calmed down a lot.
People just aren't saying NFT anymore.
But like, not only is it a joke about the negative perception of the word NFT, despite
the uneducation or maybe because of the uneducation around it, but also because ordinals, the Bitcoin
versions of NFTs are really not NFTs.
While Satoshis are non-fungible tokens, the packet that contains the inscription or allows
it to be movable is a packet of non-fungible tokens.
So it's like nitpicky, but, you know, it's a funny joke if you're on the inside, kind of
stupid if you're on the outside, I guess.
Well, I mean, one of the reasons why I'm a fan of what you're doing, I mean, there's
a lot of reasons, actually, I should say that I'm a fan of what you're doing.
One, you're taking a very academic approach to the conversations that you have.
I, for one, am not a great writer.
I try to encourage myself to write more every day.
Um, I'm a fantastic reader and I'm a great speaker and I can say that about myself confidently,
both because I've been doing it for a long time, but also because others have said it.
So there.
Um, but I, I love that you have taken it upon yourself to do some level of research, write
it out prior to going into the conversation, the podcast that you're recording and then,
or the space that you're recording and then, and then actually host it and then get new
perspective.
I think that's just really cool.
And so that's one, what I was going to really, what I really wanted to touch on was you're
doing the work that is absolutely crucial, which is you're studying the customer base
that hasn't adopted the technology yet.
Right.
If we talk about the adoption of web three or whatever this ends up being called next, right?
Because I was here when it's being called blockchain, but eventually crypto and then,
you know, uh, on chain and web three, like whatever, it just keeps changing the terminology
but it's the same thing.
Um, we talk about that adoption, but we, it's hard to take that next step because there's
a huge group of people that this is not at all either within their radar or interest.
Uh, and why it's a lot of different reasons, but you're taking up a segment of that marketing.
You're saying, Hey, I am, I have this content.
I have this research.
I want you to read it.
I want you to listen to it.
Then I then want you to come to me with your own thoughts and beliefs as to why this still
doesn't make any sense to you or why this makes more sense to you now.
But what, you know, what your choices to do in the future, I am really excited about collaborating
with you on this because I think that there's an opportunity here to take this and build something
even bigger, which is going to be massively helpful for the entire industry.
And I speak in large terms because, you know, we're, we're way too early for there to be,
uh, these gatekeepers of like information and research.
And I think you're definitely moving the needle forward and I appreciate you for that.
It's all I can do.
You know, like if I'm going to spend so much time thinking about this stuff and have gone
through, uh, dumping all of my time and energy into, you know, not in a negative way, in
a good way into studying what blockchain is and how it can solve problems we have and how
it creates new problems that we didn't think about really out of these problems that we're
solving, you know, like it's sort of, it's sort of a net neutral at the moment where
self-custody also implies no insurance, which is like, which one do I want?
You know, I kind of want both right now.
I don't really want to move fully over to web three stuff.
So if I'm going to spend all this time asking these questions and having conversations about
it and dumping money into NFTs and being in and out of communities and all this stuff,
like it'd be kind of a waste of time.
If I didn't somehow try to spark that conversation for it to move forward, otherwise, what was
it all for?
It was like shouting into a vault that no one else is in, you know, where we don't move
to move forward together that way.
I think the only way that anything moves forward is when people share ideas and team up.
That's actually what the last, no, I think this episode is going to be about.
It's about collective and I'm not trying to show this.
I think this is really relevant, honestly.
This episode is about collectibles and it's not about collectibles, like what you should
buy or shouldn't buy or how you can go about doing that.
It's about why we're inclined to even collect things.
And I actually pinned the article up at the top.
I think it's the second thing in that I pinned, but I can submit it for anybody who doesn't
feel like clicking or reading it.
It's my, I'm here to posit that we collect things to varying degrees.
You know, some people don't collect anything and they think it's stupid and other people
are hoarders and will collect literally anything.
And there's a whole grayscale in between that of all different kinds of people and
the diversity guarantees that any tribe size over the course of our genetic history would
have people who hang on to things just in case we need them.
Also people who travel super light and don't hang on to stuff, but everybody in between
marks themselves by collecting jewelry and tribal tattoos, let's say, couches, art, whatever.
So like we were always inclined, even before we were a sedentary species, we were always
inclined to decorate the things around us.
And I think that not only helps us navigate the things that are the space that's near us,
whether it's a permanent or temporary home, because like when I move from apartment to
apartment, I move my art because it doesn't feel like it's my place unless I bring my things.
You know, I can live there, but that's not enough for me to feel at home.
And I didn't decide that.
That's like somewhere deep inside the back of my brain.
So I think it helps us mark the space around us and mark our bodies for when we go out,
say, hunting or gathering or to a party and there's 250 of us in this tribe.
We know who's in our tribe based on what they're doing because they do similar things to us.
And even more important, we know who's not in our tribe and what space does not belong to us
because it's been marked separately by other people.
So if that's what this is, that's the itch that this is scratching.
It's a primal itch that we can't fight and there's nothing we ought to fight about it.
We should just acknowledge this and move on with good intent, I think.
So that's sort of what the article is about.
And that's what tonight's discussion is going to be about.
Yeah. And do think of me when you do that reputation one, because I think that that is definitely
something that I'm very much interested in and have worked in in the past.
So I've already got you slated on that.
And during tonight's space, I'm going to release the tweet that introduces the who's probably
going to show up for the next one.
I'm going to pin it up at the top so everybody can see it.
And the reputation one, oh, yeah, I want to put out one line of preview for the reputation
one. I came up with a formula for reputation.
And let me see if I can remember it.
It is identity plus perspective times time equals reputation, because reputation is who we are
or continue to be or change into based on a particular viewer's perspective over the course
of some period of time.
And that's what the next article in space is going to be about while you and I hopefully
talk about this.
That's interesting.
I mean, that's an interesting formula.
I wonder if you wouldn't mind just kind of unpacking a little bit what you mean by perspective,
because would you say that reputation is something that you control or something that outside of
it's outside of your control?
I think so.
The episode that was last time was identity and the one that's next time, not today, is
reputation.
And because I explored identity so much, I realized that identity is internal and it's who we want
to be.
It's who we think we're showing ourselves as where reputation is not has nothing to do with
any of that from our perspective.
It's fully from the outside, the observer's perspective and not just the observer's perspective,
but the observer's lens through which they're looking like the difference between being a
bank or a friend.
When you're a friend, you're looking at trust and social capital.
And when you're a bank, you're looking at prudence and reliability.
Those are but you're looking at the same thing.
You're just seeing different things.
So I think reputation is fully based on the observer and from when they start and stop
viewing you, you know, there's like a data set that they have to work with, with their
own set of criteria, too.
It's interesting you say that, right?
Because not to get too deep, because I definitely want to encourage people to go and check that
out.
These are really wonderful conversations.
But seeing as how Ontology is involved with both identity and reputation technology, I
think it's worthwhile just to kind of unpack that a little bit here.
You know, I think one of the things that I recall when we were building Orange Protocol,
and for those of you who don't know, Orange Protocol is built on top of Ontology's identity,
Legos, right?
So OntiD, Oscore, their decentralized identifier standard, and their credentialing, or I guess
get credentialing protocol.
Orange Protocol basically leverages both to generate some sort of like earned reputation
based on activity.
You know, one of the critiques, because I want to say that Orange Protocol was early in
that space.
Certainly, I think we saw a lot of competitors enter the market once we had built our concept.
And then I think we moved much faster than many of them at one point.
There was this critique, though, prior to that, that reputation should be self-owned, that
no one else should be making any claims on you based on, you know, that could affect some
sort of like credit worthiness, if you will.
And that's an interesting position, I guess.
And I'm not saying that it's right or wrong.
I'm just saying that it's interesting when you think of like reputation from that definition,
that it's something about how someone views you from their perspective, that actually is
sure, anchored to your identity, but not within your control, the same way that you can create
a new identity, or identify yourself differently in different communities.
In the article that I wrote about this in advance, which I did already, I explored deeply,
and this is my first time really getting to this point.
When you frequent a restaurant and you become a regular and you begin to get benefits because
the staff knows you, you've earned the reputation with them, and that restaurant burns down,
you have to go to another restaurant and you have to start over, which means you don't get
to take it with you when you want to.
And conversely, when your credit score goes down because you screw up on your bill pay,
you don't get to shed that when it's convenient for you.
So in both situations, you're kind of like negatively impacted by that.
But I think as we enter the digital asset space, we may be able to choose a little bit
more when we hit the reset button and go back to zero.
Like if I go to jail or prison or whatever the proper word is, and I come out better,
am I not now given a chance to be better because everyone thinks I'm going to be bad?
Would it not be beneficial for everybody involved?
Not just the prison, the guy who already served his time.
He did what he was supposed to do for the crimes committed.
Should he not come out with a totally clean record, but it's now a zero?
Because having a zero credit score is similar to having a bad credit score, but it doesn't
carry with it the negative connotations.
It just shows that you haven't yet proven that you were good.
And I think that's sort of what you're referring to.
We're like, it's not that it's fully up to the observer to make your reputation,
because maybe in some ideal world, you get to show them a particular spot of your identity,
whether it's a constrained time or a constrained version.
You know, it doesn't have to be all the data all the time.
And it's not like when I go to a restaurant, I behave differently than I do at a funeral.
But digitally, we don't have that luxury at the moment because we only have one government
ID and we can't detach from it.
So, I mean, there's a lot of moving parts in there, and I don't think that my thoughts
were fully fleshed out in it, but that's what I've gotten to so far.
No, no, no.
I think you hit it.
You hit it pretty well.
I would say the parallel would be the example that you use in terms of like presenting yourself
differently to different groups in the real world.
So when I go eat out at my favorite restaurant, you know, I might be one person, whereas then
when I go to the gym, I might be a different person than when I go to, you know, temple or
church or wherever you go, your place of worship, I might be a different person.
And then eventually when I go out, you know, dancing with my friends, I'm a different person.
It doesn't mean that I'm a different human, right?
And that my core values have changed.
It just means that I'm presenting myself differently.
And in the Web3 space, that would be synonymous to you creating multiple wallets and using
each wallet, obviously never mixing them, because once you mix assets between wallets,
then they're connected.
But if you have these distinct identities, you can, yeah, thanks for the 100s, because
people forget that.
I don't know why.
Come on, you can't have anonymous identities or pseudonymous identities, because there's
no anonymity if you're doing that.
But anyways, if you have these separate identities and actually using one, right, for being a NFT
collector, using another one for being, you know, using DeFi protocols for trading, so
you're a trader and using another one for being a governor in DAOs.
These are all different personas that you've chosen to, you know, present yourself as through
these identities, and they still remain separate.
But it doesn't mean that you as a person using these wallets, these accounts are any
different, but you've been able to separate these identities.
So, yeah, I think that's really rad.
I think you made that point very clear.
Polaris, did you want to add anything?
Frog got your throat?
That joke of the day.
That was a good one, bro.
Perfect timing.
Oh, you know me, man.
I love that you're, like, all frogged out, dude.
Honestly.
You're as frogged out as Donnie is, I don't know, whatever weird heads.
I'm also frogged out, man.
I'm loving frogs.
I wrote a thread about frogs.
Yeah.
Sure.
Did you see that Pepe thread?
I've seen you, like, repping more ordinal stuff, and none of it is bad, by the way.
I love it all.
But I've seen you repping more ordinals.
Like, for me, Polaris is more synonymous to the frogs.
Yeah, I'm still trying to, like, circumvent my direction, you know, because it's been a crazy journey.
So, yeah, I'm all frogged out and waiting for the next step, really.
But in terms of NFTs, and I was really enjoying the conversation, by the way.
And well done, Donnie, like, you know, for starting this school of thought and conversations.
I think they're very important.
And as far as, like, you know, what the industry has in place.
I mean, we're going through a huge restructure, I feel.
It feels like the whole industry, the NFT industry, the DeFi industry, all of it is going through a huge restructure.
I think, like, when the FTX collapsed and before that the whole Luna aspects happened, I think that was a huge restructuring aspect for DeFi.
And then there's a lot of stuff which is happening in the industry, NFT industry currently as well, which would eventually determine in what direction we, you know, we move or, like, what kind of, like, norms for the industry needs.
I think that we're in that developing stage at the moment.
And hence, you see, like, you know, as they say, bloodshed on the streets and it's causing a lot of, but we are here.
We are here.
We're trying to, like, we're still having conversations.
We're still trying to find the logic in what we're doing.
And as far as collectors, collectorship is concerned, you know, I mean, I totally agree with what Donnie is saying in terms of, like, you know, we, deep down inside, have got that yearning to collect and personalize things.
From an NFT collector's perspective, I think that the industry hasn't really truly paid homage to that hunter-gatherer collector, you know.
And there's been, like, a lot of issues which would cause problems.
Like, for example, you know, we still haven't really, like, you know, hit that complete forte of, like, you know, owning a digital asset to an extent that, like, you know, some people question that if you're, like, holding an NFT which is stored on IPFS servers, are you really holding that NFT?
And, like, you know, there's a lot of conversations regarding ownership.
And then once you do own an NFT, like, you know, there's a huge, there's lots of conversation.
I've got friends who are, like, specialists, IP lawyers working on these active issues in LA, actually.
And, yeah, there's a huge element of ambiguity there that what does the intellectual property actually gives the individual?
What can you use it for?
So, and, yeah, and I'm not very pleased with the current status of the way things are going.
So, yeah, let's see how things are, hence me being frogged out, if that makes any sense.
I think that always makes sense.
There's been a lot of talk about the intellectual property rights of assets lately.
And it seems to me if you're going to buy, like, let's say you buy a Mondrian or original Mondrian painting, like one of those color blocks things, would you want to start a business based on that?
And what would you, would you make T-shirts out of it?
Like, how would you, how have we ever used intellectual property rights in the past before digital assets were a thing?
And why is that such a conversation now?
Why does anybody want to start a brand around owning a Bordeaux club?
Like, what if, what if the Yuga team does something not synonymous with your values?
You're leaving so much of your own thing in someone else's, like your own persona in someone else's hand at that point.
And I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I think it's a weird thing that we're focusing on right now that we've never really even questioned before.
Okay, I kind of, man, you dropped this gem, like, with three minutes to go.
And I do mean three minutes to go, because I got to jump exactly at the top of the hour.
But I really want to pull on this thread so fast.
I thought it was 30 minutes left.
Holy moly, how did this happen?
Well, we're having a good time.
We can put a pin in it for next time, too, though.
No, we should, because 100%, that's a great thread to pull on.
Because, well, first of all, I think brand building is always, like, has always been a thing.
And I think if anybody is not thinking about their personal brand, you're, you're, you're in a, you know, prehistoric age.
It's like, everyone needs to build their personal brand.
A lot of that personal brand is about your identity and your reputation, as interesting as that is, right?
Like, the identity that you create around yourself, and, you know, that could be, I am a threader on X.com, or I'm a trader, you know, on Uniswap.
Like, these are your identities and how you share this information, how you wrap that identity, whether that is through threads, through, you know, trades and whatever on social media.
And the reputation that you earn, then, based on that, that, that becomes your brand.
And, you know, again, people will say that brand isn't something that you control.
It's actually what people think of you.
So, I think brand could then, based on that definition earlier, it could be synonymous to your reputation.
I would say, using a PFP as your brand is, could be a great thing.
Like, you know, you can build an identity with it.
But you just kind of threw a bomb there and then walked away casually saying, hey, what if that collection as a whole did something bad?
Is your brand then negatively affected because the image is associated to a whole, or is your image, you know, kind of safe because you've developed something unique and valuable and respected, separate to the other, assuming everything is a 10,000 collection, the other 9,999 PFPs in that collection?
Dude, that just reminds me of that, like, image, that meme of that little girl who's, like, smiling when the house is burning down.
I'm just going to put this here.
So, I'll keep this 10 seconds.
We talked a lot about this a couple of episodes ago on Don't Say NFT.
One person uses their own face.
It's me.
I know me.
I'm specifically accountable for my own actions.
And anything I do, it's my problem.
If I sully my own face, then, whoops, I did it.
But if you have, let's say you have an Azuki PFP, and they do something you disagree with, you can change it, and you can rebrand yourself in minutes.
It's like getting a haircut or putting new clothes on.
It's really not that big of a deal.
But if you're asking questions like IP, are you trying to trademark that as your brand logo that's permanent?
You know, Boeing can't just change its logo every year or six months.
That's crazy, right?
But if you have an Azuki, and it goes through heck and back, and it's high and it's low, and you keep it through all of that, there's a different kind of perception.
That is made from that fortitude that people will see you differently, aside from the project, because it's like you subsisted totally independently from it.
So we had a lot of conversations about this the other day.
And I don't know what the point of any of it was, really, except that now I feel like I have a little bit of a better grasp on how we define ourselves and how people perceive us over time and instances, specifically.
Yeah, the one PFP that comes to mind, and I guess I'll say this and we can close out, but I know there's this character in the CryptoPunks.
Like, he was one of the first apes, before apes existed, that created a brand around that.
It's a beanie ape, and is now synonymous with who he is.
Like, it's almost separate from the entire CryptoPunks community, which, to me, that's actually quite interesting, that something that, I guess, connected to something else can become separate, separated and unique.
So, bravo on that.
Good job, Donny, on bringing that up.
Let's definitely pull on that thread.
But now that we're definitely past the hour, any last words before we hang up?
Just thanks.
Thanks for hosting.
It's been a pleasure.
Yep, it's been a fantastic call.
Thanks, Donny, and thanks.
Take care, guys.
Great.
Well, thank you so much, everyone.
We'll be back next week.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
