Wale Tank #7 - WE GOT RUGGED

Recorded: Feb. 2, 2024 Duration: 1:31:52

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Snippets

You guys, I got rocked, I didn't hear like anything for a few minutes and then, um,
X and in this space. So I hope you can hear me now. I hope I can hear you too. Um,
shift. We're not blaming you. It's, it's, it's Twitter. X we're blaming X. Yeah. It's 100%
on X here. Not on me. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Keepers. I can hear you now. So that's, that's
what it is. Yeah. I heard about 50% of your, of your pitch. So I'm going to rely on, um,
sunshine, shift and jobs and ice here. But yeah, let's get this, get this starting again
for the people in the audience. Please like and retreat the space now that our first space with
um, you can retweet after space, but would be, would be really helpful for, um, for this
space. Sure. Sure. Let me ask for my team as well. Let's go. So we got shift
as co-host. First time on this space, first time on the space and it got rugged. I don't want
it to be like blaming me. I think it's here. It's the first time you read on the first
note to self. Sanjay is no longer allowed to be on a space. Um, we're hosting again.
Appreciate you, Sanjay. But look, if you're tuning in right now, do us a favor. Uh, you could kindly
un-retweet the last space and kindly shift that retweet to this space. A lot of the comments
section, uh, throw up those emojis, get the good vibes setting in again. Um, as we get people
trickling back in, um, from our projects, judges, and attendees. Now, just before whale rugged us
all, uh, Charles was asking a question to give us. So feel free to find us a way, uh, Charles,
whenever you're ready. Sure thing. Sure thing. Yeah. Um, it was listening to the pitch and, and
what stood out to me was this market problem that mobile publishers are having a hard time
battling for attention, that there's tons of people competing for people's mindshare. And
what it sounds like KPR is working on is finding some competitive advantage where people can win
the attention war in mobile publishing, uh, through crypto. And I, and I wanted to understand a little
more tangibly. Like as a player, you arrive on a title that is being supported by you guys.
Like what is that reward or what does that, what does that hook that incentive look like on a very
like visceral kind of tangible level as a, as a player on a tangible level in a practical way.
Basically you're seeing all of the goals that the games, uh, have, and you're trying to achieve
those whenever you achieve those, you are getting credits. Those credits can be later redeemed in
our game shop. And basically you can swap those credits into real world rewards, which might be
gift cards, uh, Amazon, you know, voucher, uh, PayPal credit, uh, PlayStation credit, um,
and these types of rewards. Then we're working with, uh, with circle to introduce you as DC,
which will be universally very clear reward for everyone. Um, then also we have NFT raffles. So
basically you can swap those credits into tickets and you can invest those tickets into raffles.
And there you can win more, uh, valuable NFTs such as like, you know, MAYC, maybe in the future,
BAYC. Um, and yeah, that's, that's, that's the practical approach.
Awesome. Thanks. That's cool. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. Prize-based play
that, uh, users are seeking to, to get it. So that, yeah, exactly. And in the meantime,
the developer is experiencing a player that is playing the game for 30 minutes for an hour. And
he can, uh, he has more time to hook the, the player with his gameplay. Of course,
it's up to the developer for, for the gameplay, but, uh, look at us at blog games as an additional
metal loop to that existing game score loop. So, you know, they're performing whatever they're
doing that in that game. And then blog games is an addition, which helps them with retention.
Fantastic. Now, well, could you hear everyone on stage?
And I see I got his handout, so let's throw it to him next.
Thanks. Well, yeah, I got a question for Kip here. It's regarding, um,
it's regarding the token, uh, that you guys were just discussing right now. So I understand that
this token is going to be backed by a real world assets reward revenue streams. And earlier on
during your pitch, um, you mentioned in-game purchases, which is our, um, which is absolutely
integral to the survival of any kind of platform. But, um, my question for you is, are there going
to be any tertiary revenue streams that you guys have planned down the pipeline that can kind of
sustain that reward system that you were just describing, like the credits for PlayStation
credit cards or gift cards, Amazon and all that stuff? So our business model sustains the reward
system very well, uh, cause our developers, publishers who connect, who are connected to
blog games network, we fetch their, uh, their goals. Uh, and basically we have CPE campaigns
with them cost per engagement. They list out their most desirable goals will it, and we attach,
you know, revenue to those goals. Whenever our traffic hits those goals, let's say we get a
$10 payout and from $10 payout, we're going to allocate from 10 to 20 later on, maybe even 30%
of their revenue towards the player in the form of a credit. So it is backed by, you know, real world
revenue and it's a sustainable approach. Plus, um, this business model is a really lucrative one
as once we have built out all of our live up, live up functionalities within the product,
uh, also improved our attribution mechanisms, uh, then we can really create, uh, uh, basically
a flow where we're transferring people from one game to another game. And basically one player
plays 10 games. Hence we get 10 revenue streams from a single player.
Interesting. So that means, um, based on what you're saying, so if I play one game and I really
liked it over the duration of two to three months and let's say for whatever reason that campaign
ended, or maybe I'm hitting like, um, I'm hitting, I'm hitting like a power peak and I can't really
level up anymore. I can take the assets that I gained from this game, exchange it into tokens
and actually just snowball that experience into another game like on this, on the mobile platform.
Is this correct? So probably that would be a more complex, uh, scenario. And that is something that
we are going to implement in the future because cross game soft currency movement is pretty
difficult to implement because you also have to account for them, you know, in, you know, in, in,
in terms of like, you have to account for them, right? Uh, so the money has to go somewhere. Um,
so right now we're just sticking to our own soft currency, currency with, with, with, which is
credits and those credits can be swapped into those real world rewards. But later on the plan is,
yes, actually to, uh, introduced in app, uh, other games in a soft currency. So you're getting,
uh, assets and earning value from one game. And then you can move that value to another
game by buying other games in app, soft currency, whatever it may be. Maybe it's, uh,
our more, maybe it's gems, you know,
I understand. Thank you.
Let's go. Thank you guys for the question. Let's throw it to Sanjay next.
Hey, first of all, great, uh, great pitch. Uh, I don't really have like a question,
but more of like a statement. Um, I don't know if keep her as you remember, but
in July, 2023 is when we kind of like got connected and you guys have been building ever since.
And, uh, we hopped on a call and you explained what blog game was. And even today in the pitch,
it's still the same model. And it's amazing that you guys have like stuck around with this,
with the vision you had all the way going back to July, 2023. And, uh, probably even before that,
because you guys were probably building before that and sticking with that and kind of like,
you know, seeing the product, uh, come to, come to the market and you know how the NFTs are performing
and you guys kind of like, um, starting this trend almost, you know, like the token, uh,
token airdrop with the, with the NFT, you know, like the point system trend, uh, almost, uh,
you know, like just want to shout out, shout out to you guys. And, uh, you know,
you guys are killing it and just keep, keep, uh, keep killing it. That's all.
Thanks Angie. Really appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, we've been building on this, uh,
for longer than 2023 July. Um, I mean, in, in, in general, we had the concept for a while.
Um, and you know, we know what we're doing here. So we were sort of convinced with the product
market fit, like probably in 2022, uh, we were searching for exact, uh, ways to make it all
work. But now that we got it, we have a very clear go to market strategy as well. So right now
blog games is a exclusive product. You can only access the product. If you have an NFT there,
you can go to our early access page, roll the dice, basically connect the wallet.
We will see that you have our dice. You will roll the dice. You will get the access code.
You will log in into the app using the access code, all of the NFT holders and people who are
already within the product. They can refer someone once within 24 hours. So we sort of right now,
I think have this way built out a hype where we have probably 200,000 plus registrations. However,
only 5% of the people are already in the product. So we're making it very exclusive because
being early in the product means that you can get two X multiplier on the airdrop. And we also have
airdrop implemented based on all of the in game actions that the players are going to do. So
obviously socials, you know, like follow, uh, engage in a referral friend, but also, you know,
play this game, play that game, which this goal, all of these in game mechanisms have airdrop
points attached. Uh, and also if you have a dice, there's a bigger multiplier, uh, and so on and so
forth. So we have this structure closed until mid February. Uh, well, actually, uh, it's going to be
open very soon. I cannot say exact date. Um, but once we open it up, you know, we have a lot of
pending users, plus, uh, we, we will have some insane referral mechanisms implemented
plus ourselves. We know how to scale apps and we are expecting for a significant growth, uh,
towards March, towards April. Um, and, and, and as well at some point, there is also going to be
a token generation event and post token generation event event, you know, we're not going to sit and
clap. We're going to scale further. And we, you know, and we expect to scale to, to good numbers
by end of Q2. And, and basically that's why I was so busy because we're hiring people, you know,
making sure the sales department is, is ready for the scale, making sure, um, we have the content,
making sure, um, the legal are, are, are all right, making sure the marketing activation, uh,
is planned out well. Um, so there's just a lot of things that we have to, uh,
work out as, as you can imagine, building a product.
Amazing. Let's throw it to ice real quick. And then I have one last question. We probably
will run, we'll run a little bit over, over time, but we got whacked in, in the middle of the space.
So I think that's, that's fine. So ice, let's go to you next.
Thank you, Will. Yeah. I want to dive just a little bit deeper on the revenue shared back to
players aspect. So earlier on you mentioned, um, data collection was going to be a metric, right?
So, uh, my question is what other specific metrics will be used to determine the degree
of revenue share that an end user can acquire? All right. That's a very good question. And I
was hoping that nobody asks for it because, uh, this is going to be disclosed in our white paper.
Um, and I don't want to do it too early because it's just a few weeks away. So if you don't mind,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep this one to myself. Uh, but basically it's a combination of, uh,
two data sources, web two data sources, which are again, I'm going to repeat myself. So, um,
the way, like how many times the player are playing games, what types of games they're
playing, whether they're spending money on in-app purchases. Uh, so we're going to create that,
you know, attribution, uh, profile. And then we're sourcing web three, uh, data, which is,
you know, the value of their wallets. How do they interact with smart contracts, whether they,
you know, using a teaser or not across different chains, cause we're going to be
inter-repairable, uh, cross chain protocol. Um, and then the combination of that, of both of these,
uh, data sources is going to define the reward, uh, algorithm and the algorithm, uh, you know,
is going to be disclosed in our white paper, which hopefully is going to be revealed end of this
month or maybe early next month. I gotcha. I appreciate the candor, Kiv. Thank you so much
for sharing. Let's go. Maybe as a, as a last question, maybe from a strategy point of view,
and I apologize if you already answered this because remember I only heard 50% of your,
of your pitch, but I think what we saw like from a web three standpoint, from an NFT project
standpoint, the last few, last few weeks, um, especially in the last few days is we've seen a
lot of fud like around NFT projects, dropping the token, whether it was because of a really small
supply that went to kind of the, the holders of the NFTs or due to other reasons. Do you have a
strategy without maybe going too much into specifics, but do you guys have a strategy
around kind of keeping holders happy while kind of reaching your, your other goals and your other,
um, other areas? Because I think that's something that we see a lot of projects having
yeah, a really hard time right now. Yeah. So, uh, with blog games and, and we have been in the
crypto industry for a while right now, you know, the number one goal probably for crypto projects
is to make sure that their community is happy and being in crypto means that the community is
happy when they have financial gains because most of people right here, they are speculators. They
want to earn something from it. So we have, uh, a very limited supply NFT collection, uh, which has,
uh, I don't know whether you've seen our economics or not, but it has infused tokens in them.
So basically there's fundamental value in, in, in infused into those NFTs. Additionally, we have
airdrop, uh, allocation, which is pretty significant and we are going to reward
a lot of the people with a lot of, of our pool because we have allocated 3% of the total supply
towards airdrop and for DICE owners who take DICE and participate in the airdrop
contests in the airdrop, in the airdrop, um, engagements, those, those accrued points will
have 100% unlock ATG. So, you know, we're really giving back to the community and, uh, we also have
some fundamental, you know, the token has fundamental value because it's backed by real world revenue
plus the token backs to DICE. Hence the DICE is also backed by real world revenue. So we,
we anticipate for it to hold the floor, um, and, and, and to perform well in, in the upcoming bull market.
Interesting. All right. I think that's it. I left, let's shift if you have
another, another question, but I think we're already a few, few minutes over. Yeah, exactly.
You hear that? Literally just on time.
Awesome. Awesome. By the way, guys, I love the intro. I was vibing with a 50 cent song,
so I really, really nice. Let's go. Yeah, yeah, really good.
Dude, such a good album. Like, one of the best. That was great.
Uh, nice way to compliment one of the judges before I get my take. I see what you did there,
good press, but it's all good. Um, no, it's funny because whale basically took what I was going to
say and it's somewhat managing expectations when it comes to these token drops, as we've seen some
many successful ones that obviously under promised and over delivered, but we've also seen
a lot of token drops that definitely under delivered as a whole. So it's more so how can
you manage those expectations and making sure that the community is aligned when you guys do
these sort of drops. And I'm pretty sure you guys have that under wraps. So don't really have any
question on that side. You kind of just broke it down for us. And also we have the graphic pinned
up of how you guys are distributing the token as well. So I'm very much looking forward to it being
having close eyes on you guys for a while. So really looking forward to it. But as you guys know,
time is up. We don't want to waste all the projects times as well. We're about to the next segment.
So I'm feeling good. Make sure you grab a glass of water at least between each take and making
notes as well. AI Arena, great. It's a pleasure to have you back on the stage. How are you feeling?
Feeling great, Shiv. Great to be back. Running back another second time here. So happy to get into it.
Welcome back round two on whale tank. Hopefully you're feeling better this time as you already
had the first round in the ringer. And honestly, when you're ready to give you a five to 10 minute
elevator pitch, feel free to take it away and we'll start the 30 minute timer now. For sure. Thanks.
Hey everyone, my name is Gway. I am one of the co-founders for a company called Arena X Labs.
You guys probably know us through AI Arena, which is the flagship title that we're releasing.
But Arena X Labs at a high level, we think of ourselves as an AI tech company first.
We built a lot of proprietary AI IP that have allowed us to create and deliver
this novel type of game experience called AI Arena. We're not going to be done here,
but this is the first thing that we're bringing to market. And there are various other things that
we have been developing behind the scenes, much of which we have not disclosed to the public.
But there's more to come throughout this year beyond just AI Arena. So look out for that.
For this particular conversation, I'll focus the pitch on AI Arena. So for those of you who do not
know about AI Arena, it is, we think, a genre kind of creating game. We call it AI power strategy
games. The game experience, I describe it as a crossover between Pokemon and Super Smash.
When you watch the gameplay, obviously evokes the imagery and the memories of
playing Smash with your friends. And your characters are indeed playing this platform
fighting game. However, it's important to remember that your characters are actually
artificial intelligence models. They are intelligent characters. What that means is
that the human player is actually training these intelligent AIs on how to fight,
how to play the game. So the core game loop is actually somewhat similar to, in some ways,
kind of more similar to Pokemon, because it's a training based game.
The key difference here, by virtue of having artificial intelligence models as character
assets, is that now these intelligent characters are able to learn basically any type of strategy.
They are very unconstrained in terms of what they're able to do. And it's all up to the human
player in their creativity, in their kind of learning of how the game mechanics works to
dream up the different types of skills and strategies that they want to teach their AI,
and then trying to actually implement it. And the best players are already able to
create some really, really ridiculous AIs to the point where, for the casual audience,
sometimes when you watch the AI arena highlight reel, you probably wouldn't have clued into the
fact that these are actually human trained AIs fighting. You probably would have just thought
that it was very good players playing a platform fighting game. And I think in the future,
what we're likely to see is these AIs getting better and better to the point where they can
probably start creating inspiration for human players in terms of how they can potentially
improve their own play styles in these platform fighting games. So we're very excited to bring
this type of experience to market. It is very unique and one of a kind. And I think we are
one of those projects where we have the appeal in both Web 3 and Web 2. As I mentioned yesterday
in the conversation with Will, we're unique in delivering this one of a kind experience. And
it doesn't really matter whether we're talking about it or having people try it out in Web 3.
We have tested the game with many different kind of small communities within Web 2.
The feedback is very consistent in terms of this is just a one of a kind game. And once people get
into it, they really, really enjoy the loop. And the in-game kind of stats are pretty crazy
when we saw it for the first time, just the sheer volume of time that people start to put into the
game because the creative and discovery space of different skills and strategies so vast
that I would say even at this point, we're barely scratching the surface. So it lends itself to a
very, very interesting and dynamic player versus player type of central leaderboard arena. And we
built this game off of the back of competitive gaming. And that's where Web 3 really comes into
play. We get this question a lot. Why building Web 3? At a high level, the Web 3 on-chain version
of AI Arena is specifically built and designed for competitive players. So you can think about
it as going down this path of bootstrapping a grassroots level community-built esports system
around this title. We are already getting that structure coalescing around our community.
And with our upcoming Play to Air Drop campaign, we specifically designed this kind of team
captain dynamic to incentivize guilds to organically form. And you're starting to see
a lot of factions kind of creating alliances behind team captains. And we're really looking
forward to that competitive dynamic coming up in our Play to Air Drop campaign.
Tracking back to the Web 3 component of the game, again, it's designed for competitive players.
The Web 3 version is gated by NFTs. The NFTs themselves are a narrow supply collection.
Currently, there's only 420 of them listed on the market. They are trading live in terms of
mint passes. Currently, at a 4E floor. I think we just breached all-time highs yesterday
in terms of where the four price levels are right now. And it's deliberately designed to be that
way. Why? Because the overall business model of this particular game is akin to a professional
sports league, where you have an exclusive league at the top where the best players play. And what
they're really doing is they're creating the most compelling, fun to watch, exciting content
that people want to follow. And those players over time should become kind of the stars of the game.
And as they become more successful and as they continue to push this sport, in a sense, forward,
they're going to galvanize more and more attention at the bottom of the funnel to formulate those
casual players coming in, trying out the game, but also starting to create this kind of star,
fan affinity with each other. That creates the opportunity for us to overlay other layers of
monetization on top of this game, largely through things like content. So things like fantasy sports
experiences are things that we have in our roadmap in building out this kind of star fan nexus within
the ecosystem. This is not really like pie in the sky, hope type of thing. We started to methodically
introduce these mechanics already within our community through our arena point system, which
is, I guess you can call it a soft currency system. And we get probably thousands of people coming in
every week and watching videos of some of our best players, like archive footages of our best players,
and basically trying to predict the outcome of those fights. And what they're able to do is
actually enter a pool with our arena point system and basically wager on the outcome of those fights
itself. So all of these kind of key pieces of building this kind of wet tree, natively grown
esports apparatus, we've been building that structure, architecture, ecosystem, and community
for well over two years now. So at this point, AI Arena is almost ready for prime time. We're
targeting a launch on mainnet at the end of Q1 and the beginning of Q2, probably around that
March, April timeline. And what's upcoming in February is a month long play to air drop campaign.
This is where everyone can come in, participate. All you need is a wallet, it's free to play.
You'll be given everything you need. It runs on testnet and it's going to be a leaderboard system
and you can accrue points from this competition. The more points that you get during the competition,
the more air drop you're going to get once we launch on mainnet happening at TGE. In total,
there's 8% of total supply will be air dropped to the community. No vesting on that, no locks,
nothing. We're highly confident in the community that we have built and can get into the specific
sphere if people have any questions. And 4% of that eight is, so half of the eight is dedicated
to this play to air drop campaign coming up. The other half is being diverted to the NRM box
channel, which is really kind of a reward for active engagement and contributions from a
outstanding community that have supported us through thick and thin over the last few years.
So we have dual channels to kind of reward engagement and skill set within the game
to really bootstrap a very diverse set of community members that add value in different ways.
So all of that is kind of culminating in this play to air drop campaign coming up.
Certainly look forward to people to join and experience the game. Be forewarned, it gets
super competitive. I'm sure people are going to go through their learning curve and get up to
speed about the game. You will be frustrated because there are points you're going to
try to, you know, you want, you're imagining a scenario where you want your AI to learn
something and you just don't really know exactly how to get that effect just yet. That's part of
the magic of the game. Once you overcome those hurdles, it's literally some of the biggest highs
that you'll ever experience watching your AI actually implemented in a live setting and
kicking ass in the arena. So I'll maybe wrap it up there in terms of opening remarks and I'm happy
to turn it over to the judges for any questions that you guys may have. Let's go. Amazing pitch.
Thank you for that one, Greg. I will withhold judgment in this case because I'm one of the
team captains in the AI arena campaign as pinned in the space. By the way, as a brief segment,
I think thumbs up. As a brief segment before we go into the questions, if you want to join my team,
you still can. More news next week. We got a lot of interest on my tweet yesterday where I
announced it. So stay tuned for that. But now, for the hard hitting questions, I will throw it to
Sheriff into the judges. So I don't know who wants to go first. Sheriff is laughing. I will throw it
to him. I'm out. God damn it. Okay. You know what? I got a question. Gray or whale, you guys can
answer this. But can I join team whale? Yes or no? That's my question. If you're good enough,
yes. But after seeing you play against Sanjay, I don't think I want your watching. Let's not forget.
I beat Sanjay. So I think automatically, sorry Sanjay, but this puts me above you
in the roster to get into team whale. So I'm looking forward to that. But I want to pass it
to our other judges around just before we get into it. So Charles, feel free to fire away since you
had enough. Sure thing. Yeah. So this is a cool one. I've really admired this project for a while.
I think it's great. And what I like about it is that you guys are trying to do something really
weird and different, which is in my view, at least the way to go because you're either doing
something conventional and the competition is so intensely fierce and it just can't be understated.
Like if there's a close substitute for what you're doing out there, it's an incredibly difficult
battle to get users doing something weird and wonderful, even if it's not fully understood by
everyone. But if some group is super passionate about it with you, some group of AI enthusiasts,
crypto enthusiasts, you can build from there. At least you have a foothold. So I like that. And
then I'm curious, like the thing that I also like about this project is the fact that I think with
crypto, there's the game itself. And then there's the meta game and a lot of people. And there's
some people who want to play games and there's some people who are pure meta game maxis. They
just want to like kind of trade and observe and sort of like commentate. And I think that's a really
cool element of crypto. People like to do that because when you have skin in the game, the
conversation is more interesting. So I'm kind of curious, you talked a little bit about the wagering.
I'm just wondering kind of like if you could describe like some fun instances or occurrences
that kind of get at the fun of the meta game, where it's like, maybe like, oh, this character
did this unexpectedly, and so and so got liquidated for like some amount of money or whatever it is.
I'm just kind of curious, like, what you're seeing in the joy and fun of the meta game around AI
arena, just like any fun anecdotes or anything like that. Yeah, for sure. I think you're hitting
it right on the head in terms of like, I think it demonstrates like a thorough understanding of the
psychology of this space is, you know, there are different, different stakeholders that want
different things. So on the meta game side, I think the roadmap that we're building towards is
to kind of come back to a comment I made previously, it was really to build this
kind of star fan kind of affinity. And if you look at what traditional sports have done very well is
to really reinforce that relationship through things like fantasy game experiences. And that's
like the early test that we have done within kind of a soft currency system of arena points,
is to kind of cultivate that fandom in some of the best players. So we have within our community
already like household names, you know, for the average audience, they probably don't know, but
within our community, you know, people, everyone knows the likes of jello or raise or even yummy
raw, who's on the IC in the audience, like these are legends in the game. And you have people in
the community just they're demanding to see highlights from these players. Why? Yes, there's
a wagering element to it. So they can earn a P through our point system. But there's also a
curiosity and this like mythicism, right about why jello or raise is able to get their AI to do
something really frickin cool in the game. Like, you know, there was one particular highlight early
on in our in one of our play tests, where our one of our players, his stream name is UK, but he's
actually from Japan. His AI basically went for a off platform kill, like a down smash in in midair,
effectively committing suicide and losing a stock. But it knew that by doing that, despite that it
lost a stock, the opponent would be basically losing all three stocks. So it can it committed
suicide knowing that it would win the match, right. So that type of like sacrificial game theory and
the AI being able to make that decision at that moment in time was shocking. When we saw that
highlight clip, like we were literally losing our minds. And those are like the magical moments
that people yearn for when they watch the clips. And now let me let me contrast that in terms of
the experience of the person who trained the AI and the person who's watching someone else who
trained that AI. So imagine your UK, and this is your AI, and you spend an ungodly amount of hours
tinkering with this AI for it to pull something like this off in the rank battle, where basically
like real money is on the line, like, and in that particular moment, you have no control of the
outcome, right? Like, this is different than if you're playing smash against a friend, this is a
different type of intensity, I would argue is even more intense. Like we have we have people on
our teams, I would like to say it's like, if you ever seeing athletes compete in the Olympics,
and they pan to a shot of their mom or dad watching them from the stands, and those people are like
complete utter nervous wrecks, right? The intensity of their experience is sometimes even more than
the athlete themselves. So in the context of AI arena, you are restrained from intervening during
the actual battle, but you're incredibly invested in the performance of that particular character,
because you are the one who raised it to perform like that. So the pride and the joy and the in the
high that you can experience is is unlike anything that, you know, in my personal view is just is
just different. And it's such an intense high. Now from a spectator standpoint, they're looking at
that, if you have been following UK and his kind of track record in the in this entire kind of
ecosystem, and you become a fan of UK, you similarly feel that fandom and that pride in watching your
hero doing well. But you may also be the one who's aspiring to get to a certain level. So you're,
you know, while being a fan consuming that content, you're also studying the tendencies
of UK's AI to try to reverse engineer something about what UK is doing that you can embed into
how you train your AI, right? So there's multiple layers of kind of that relationship that's built
between the spectator and the player, and giving the spectator the opportunity to try out the game,
what that allows them to do is appreciate the the impressiveness of these highlights.
Because it's, it's not that hard to get your AI to do some pretty good, like, average skills. And
it's actually very rewarding is like, wow, my AI can do all this stuff, and they can be competitive.
But then to get them to like the upper echelon top tier of AI's is so freaking hard. Right. And
remember, this is not your AI's are not pre designed to have certain, like you get to the level of 100.
And this is what it can do. There is no end to this game. There is no description of your AI is
now at level 100 is purely you get into a ring and see how it stacks up against your opponent.
So in that way, it's like real life, if anyone has trained for a sports discipline, or a mixed
martial art discipline, you know what it's like to walk into a ring, and not knowing exactly what
the other guy is going to do, right, that unpredictability and the fact that it opens up
the aperture of the competition to become an infinite game, is what makes this entire thing
super fascinating, exciting to watch. Hopefully that answers your question and gives you like a
window into the experience of players in this game. Great answer. That was sweet. Yeah, no,
I'm imagining the most, you know, those really emotional scenes and like the Pokemon animated
shows, where it's like, Ash is like, Pikachu, come on, you can do it, you know, like that kind of,
it's a yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's awesome. I we should, we should DM I definitely want to
dig in more with you and learn more. We can collab. Happy to.
Let's go. Love the story about the AI suicide. It's a crazy, that's a crazy story. I think
Sanjay had his hand up before I saw we go Sanjay, then ice. And yeah, then we will move on. But Sanjay,
please go ahead. Yeah, first of all, hey, what's up, you know, great, I've been looking forward to,
you know, like, looking, I've been looking at a arena for a long time, we have hopped on a
call way before, like few months ago, and also we are from the same city. So we still got to grab
that coffee. But my question is, you know, you mentioned UK, right? And you mentioned the AI
arena ecosystem. And you said that there will be there will be potential stars at the as the
ecosystem grows, you can say that UK is already a star in some form, and his AI is already a star
in some form. Question is, how will let's say like, let's say ship just joins the AI arena
ecosystem, he jumps into the game, and he wants to like, check out the leaderboard and see learn
more about the top top AI players, is there a specific place where they can go to check that
out? You know, like, or is this a, is there a specific hub or something which you are building
or have built? Or like, for example, if I was to go learn everything about UK, where would I go?
How would I do that? Do I have to research on Twitter or YouTube? Or is it? Or do you have a
platform or a hub of some sort? I do have another question. But this is my first question. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Sanjay. Yeah, for everyone, Jane and I probably live within the audience of each
other. And we met for the first time a few few weeks ago, but that was great. But thanks for the
question. I think it's a very good one is something that we have been thinking through a lot. I think
on the content side, there's so much more that we can do. And I totally get the spirit of what your
question is, is really coming down to like, if this is at the end of the day about, you know,
building that fandom, then we need to have an outlet and a platform to really feature the best
players, give them a platform to tell their stories through different forms of media, and give a place
for people to discover, you know, the stars of the arena currently, and potentially the up and comers
in the future. So I think we are coming at it through a couple of ways. Number one, we're working
with a infrastructure partner in Windwalk and transcribing a lot of what is historically discord
into a web app experience. So not only is that going to help with the onboarding and reducing
that type of friction in terms of onboarding of players, particularly like web two players, because
I think web three, we've all gotten used to the whole like, you know, Twitter X to discord and
all that. But for a traditional average person outside of web three, I don't think that's the best
experience for them to get onboarded into any ecosystem. So through that kind of web web app
platform, there will be specific portals where there could be features of, you know, highlights
of some of the top players, maybe there is even a newsletter in terms of a wrap up of what was
has happened in the arena over the last week or two weeks. So it's almost like think about it as
like, quote unquote, the community square, if you will, where you can go and find all the latest
information. And a component of that will be basically the features of best players or
highlights and things that have happened within the arena over the over some time segment. So
that's one aspect of kind of addressing that question. Another aspect of it is, is actually
exactly why we introduced this kind of team competition mechanic within the player air drop
campaign, and why people like whale and his team are brought on as a team captain. So the best
analog that can give you in the traditional world in terms of how this business model can scale,
and what it could potentially start to look like is Formula One. If you can think about Formula One
as a sport, it's a team based sport, right? I think at the heart of a team is, you know,
the two drivers that are maximizing the performance of a car. But there's a whole group of people
behind the scenes supporting that, from the engineers who are building the cars, to the
marketing departments that are promoting the team itself, that are, you know, working on
sponsorships, that are working through kind of distribution strategies, like it's the entire kind
of machinery around the central feature, which is the car and the driver. In AI arena, it's actually
very similar. And that's how people should think about it. These AIs aren't just a playable
character in the traditional sense. They are a piece of machinery that you can that we don't know
what the limits are just yet, right? And we need a good driver, i.e. a trainer in this case,
but we also need everything that comes around it, right? We need a team of people, and maybe
like a player is the one who's able to kind of be very good at the training intuition, but you may
want to kind of onboard someone who understands the intricacies of AI a little bit better,
have that assembled onto your team. So now you can collaborate and try to extract that marginal
improvement in your AI that's so critical in it being able to move up that leaderboard from like,
I don't know, top 10 to top five to top two to top one, like it's literally a battle of inches
at the top. And it gets more and more lucrative every single step that you can take up that
leaderboard. So over time, what we envision is teams of people coming together and maximizing
every single nuance out of these models and being competitive that way. So from that perspective,
you know, the discovery of the best players isn't necessarily, you know, incumbent on just a trainer
to do. There could be organizations and guilds and clans and structures that are built squarely
around one or multiple of these AIs. And we can see that as like a franchising branding experience
that creators like whale and others can come on board. And everyone plays their role. Right.
And that's, that's kind of the version of the future that we see. And we think we have a
unique game that can actually create that outcome. And it's super, super exciting.
Sorry, I put the laughing emoji by mistake, but no, great explanation. And you know, I think,
I think you guys are building something amazing. And you guys are on on something really cool.
I will let Aisa ask a question. And I have another one, but I'll come back to it after.
Thank you, Wei. This is a great, this is a great way to go about it. Sorry, I messed it up.
Thank you, Sanjay. So, Wei, man, first of all, I think, I just want to say I've been a melee
player for years back in the day. So I may or may not be biased on whatever you're doing right now.
But I do want to say I really, I have nothing but respect for developers, you know,
that come out with these web3 gaming projects that challenges innovation. Because like the
nature of web3 is, you know, if we can't get our consumers to eat our content in two seconds,
then we are out, you know, like we deejans have the attention span of a freaking pringle in this
space. And it creates a lot of challenges for developers to adhere to this. And I think one
of the tactics that we have seen developers do is to ride on the air of familiarity, right? And
that's why there's so many FPS games, you know, because the moment we hop in that game, we know,
we know to use WASD to move, we know to use spacebar to jump, we know how to like hold down right
click to aim and all that jazz, like it doesn't require a very lengthy tutorial, it's easy to
onboard. And in the attention econ world that is here in web3, like this unfortunately does become
meta. So for a game like that, what you guys are building that challenges that meta, it is
incredibly daunting. And it's a huge risk. But of course, it also has the potential to be immensely
rewarding. So shout outs to you for doing that. But that being said, Gui, I am curious to learn
a little bit more about the combat and gameplay side of things. So the combat portion itself,
to my understanding is going to be automated. But now like the training of the AI part,
is this going to be done through manual gameplay? Is it going to be done through like a textual
prompts? Or is this going to be done through our choices of pitting our character against
specific matchups? Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, I need to get some notes from you
on what type of audio equipment you use, because I don't know what it is, but your voice on these
shows is crazy. But so to answer your question directly, it's manual. So there's actually three
steps. But the first step to the training process is actually a manual input, which means that you
asked in order to teach your AI how to play the game or how to exhibit certain modes, you actually
have to show it what to do first, right? So that's a manual input, you actually have a controller and
a keyboard. And there's an environment called data collection where you can go in, and you actually
enter in like punch key, punch key, and put your AI into a certain situation. And basically what
you're saying is, hey, look at what I'm doing, watch me do this first. And then from that, you
can learn to basically embed that into your arsenal of things that you can do, right? So now what that
creates is actually a very unique aspect of the game, which is all else being equal, if you were,
for example, in your case, a melee player, you do have a slight advantage in the sense that you're
able to create a demonstration data set that is very clean, and probably very precise, so that your
AI can actually learn quite well. It's almost like in the real world, like you, again, if you play a
sport, if you're a good player at that sport, your demonstrations probably are more nuanced, that the
person that you're teaching is probably learning faster and learning more effectively, right? It's
a similar, similar idea. So that's the first step. The second step is called the configuration,
which is really, it's kind of like a various different levers that you can dial to adjust the
sensitivity across different parameters on how your AI is learning, right? So and now this is yet
another overlay into the meta of how to get good at the game. Because even if you like, even if two
players show the AI the exact same data or the exact same move, and they do the kind of the
parameterization differently, your AI is going to learn differently. They're going to learn different
outcomes, right? And because they're all probabilistic models, there is statistically
basically impossible for two AIs to be ever the same, right? So the vast differentiation and
diversification of AIs that will populate the arena is what makes the competition so interesting.
And what you see as an outcome is this, there is no AI that can step into the ring and guarantee
100% win rate. It will never happen. But probabilistically, it could certainly have a more
winning record than most other AIs in the arena. And what you have sometimes is at the top of the
leaderboard, certain like is again, it's like kind of like real life, it's like you can be a very
good mixed martial artist, but some guy out there just has your number because stylistically,
they have this thing that exploits your weakness. That happens in this game as well. And this gets
into like the upper echelon of competition and the strategy and the psychology behind how these
trainers are able to, again, squeeze the last mile out of their AI. And it lends itself to this
kind of infinite, ever evolving competition, because the meta never stands still. So we've
already had multiple instances of a new player coming in, you know, having their own vision for
how to train an AI. And then all of a sudden, they establish a new standard, they establish a new
meta, and everyone else starts to adjust their strategies to chase after that guy. And we fully
expect that to kind of be ever unfolding in this game, because again, AIs at the center of these
characters, they're non stationary, and there's no end. So it's an infinite competition. But just
circling back, I hope I answered your question in terms of giving you kind of a visual idea,
hopefully, of like how that training system actually works. There's one last step that I
forgot to mention, but it's very important. The last step of the training loop is called the
inspector. What it is, is the ability for the human player to actually see how the AI thinks,
right? So you can understand visually what the AI is going to do in every single scenario in the
game. We call it seeing into the brain of an AI. AIs are no longer black boxes. We've made it so
that is very, very clear that you can understand what your AI has learned at any moment in time.
That is now a feedback mechanism to the human player to understand and diagnose, where's my
AIs weaknesses? Oh, it still has a tendency to do this in this situation. Now I have to go and fix
that. And then as you're watching other people's AIs compete, you're starting to pick up their
tendencies like, okay, this guy has this type of strategy or this tactic on, for example, edge
guarding. How do I train my AI in that particular situation to defend against this type of
competitor and or somehow derive an upper hand in that situation, right? So this training loop
is extremely powerful. This is why I'm saying it's like Pokemon on steroids because, you know,
your Pokemon can learn anything. It's up to you and your creativity in creating that vision
that you want your AI to be, how it can perform in the arena.
Gotcha. So manual input configuration and then inspection. And, you know, just one last thing,
and then I'll toss it back to Sanjay here. And so as a maybe potential member, future team member
of Team Whale, I have to ask this bro, and maybe I'm taking things too far. But will there be
mechanics such as wave dashing, L canceling, spiking or smash di? Oh, man. I wish the I wish
my co founder Brandon's on he can give you a full slate of all of the different mechanics that are
available to you. I'm not sure if there's wave dashing specifically. I will say this. Our team
at the at the starting point, or in the early parts of developing this game, we literally went
our engineering team went and basically studied every single platform fighter under the sun,
obviously, including super smash, brahala, even rivals that they throw some of the more newer
titles that have come out. So I think, you know, for many of the platform fighter enthusiasts,
they come into the game. And they do appreciate the type of mechanics that we have implemented
into this. Now, we have to recontextualize some of that into a game that's actually being played
by AI's. So we can't replicate necessarily all of the mechanics that people have become familiarized
with traditional franchises. But there is certainly special, special kind of spins that we've
incorporated into our own game that I think gives it a its own unique flair. So I highly encourage
you to come in, whether is with whale or not, but I really look forward to having you try out the
game, give us feedback, but, you know, compete. Because it that's that's the part that's really
fun. Just watching your AI being able to do something that you you you so intently try to
teach it is one of the most rewarding experiences. Let's go. Yeah, it's definitely the whale team.
It's definitely the whale team. You're definitely welcome to join my team. Sanjay, I know you have
one more question, but we have to move on. We're already running 10 minutes over time. So we have
to throw it to the next guest. But yeah, thank you, Gray, for all the answers to the questions
and the amazing pitch. Excited to be one of the one of the eight captains. So yeah, let's get to
our next guest. We have KPR joining us and future site as their speaker. So welcome to the stage.
How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you very much. Really enjoyed just listening to that
pitch. Then that kind of combination of AI and blockchain is really exciting and great to be here
with with such projects of such high caliber. Let's go excited to hear your your pitch. Feel
free to go ahead with your with your first kind of uninterrupted 10 to 15 minutes.
Yeah, thank you. So we're here from KPR. And we're here also to talk about our recent
activation ramen wars, which you will have seen on the timeline in the last couple of days.
But I'll kind of just roll back a little bit and start with with what is KPR. For
those who might not be aware, KPR launched in November 2022. And we're really a project that
wanted to push the boundaries of storytelling, design, gamification in the space. And starting
with a really kind of detailed world building that pulls in different influences from cyberpunk,
solar punk, steampunk genres, and just combines them with that kind of top tier art and layering
that could be done with collection traits and everything that we wanted to be leaders on in
the space at the time. And so we're really big believers in the power of web three to create
these kind of new modes of interactivity between different sectors and how brands can can flow
between online and offline experiences and product offerings. So we come out of that kind of milieu
in the end of 2022 that we minted the same week as FTX kind of collapsing, of course, but
that doesn't dampen the vision of what we wanted to do. And we've been building ever since.
And since 2023 was quite a wonderful kind of experience because we developed this website,
which was part of how we wanted to prove how experiences online are what people are seeking.
They want something very immersive. They want something with depth that they can delve into.
And the KPR website was really a labor of love to kind of display this vision we have for storytelling
and design and gamification in the space. We're not a gaming company, of course, we're a web three
experiences company. So we exist more on that kind of gamification side. And we were incredibly
well received, you know, for a scrappy startup with no VC funding or brand recognition behind
us at the time, we went on to really win a prestigious website of the year industry award
up against the likes of Gucci, Spotify and Netflix were also nominated at time. And that was
incredibly validating. It kind of showed that web three was doing something different,
it was doing something innovative, and that we were part of that conversation. And so our website
really was the first time that people got to see what we mean by what we believe is gamification
in this space, you know, it was designed for users to hunt down law, there were hidden console
commands, they would share them on discord and search out for them, they would build all these
kind of strong bonds and a vibrant community from the very beginning. And this went all the way into
the hidden law that was available in the keeper images themselves, you know, it took people a
little while to realize that there was actually images embedded within the visual data of some of
the keepers in the collection that would unlock new kinds of law and world building would slowly
emerge from this connection between how we're also kind of hyper focused and engaged in this space,
and the media and the storytelling that we were delivering through our artistic and trait based
kind of collections. So from there and that kind of deep community building through our websites
and law hunting, we then really deepened our connection to our holders, and this is again part
of our ethos, by being one of the early projects to really adapt a detailed citizenship system, so
growing number of badges and other achievements. And this was really done and as a central part of
what KPR is here to do, to recognize our holders, not just in collecting keeper traits and tokens,
but also in the events they attend in real life, other online activations, challenges in our node
one virtual space they might do, and milestones that we achieve along the way. So that citizenship
system has become a really important part of the gamification of this space that we believe in,
and how it can really bring people into a journey into the identity that is their relationship to
KPR, their ownership of keepers, and their role within this space. And then what we wanted to do
from those foundations, right, so we showed our vision for detailed immersive storytelling and
world building, for gamification that crosses from discord servers to websites to collection traits,
all of these things that had to be pieced together from different media and platforms.
We then wanted to take what we believe is an important part of our thesis, which is co-IP
creation to the next level. And so in 2023 we partnered with celebrity chef Esther Choi.
Many of you might recognize her, she's a very famous growing superstar really in the chef world,
Korean chef who was in Iron Chef, and you can also see her on shows for First We Feast,
the ones who produce top ones and things like that on YouTube. And so this high level partnership
with Esther Choi really enabled us to now build out and prove this central concept that we have
that you can combine detailed world building with co-IP creation, and that this can really be a driver
for the convergence of culture, technology, entertainment, and an increasing number of
products that we believe Web3 is here to represent. And so with this partnership with Esther Choi,
we've then began to roll out sub-brands within our collection. So I mentioned things like hidden
lore and things like that, but there are also traits that represent different brands.
The main one of those being Boon, which we'll get to in a moment because it's the key
driver behind Ramen Wars, but taking these sub-brands, working with Esther Choi,
and then using this to show that we can bring things from the digital spaces in Web3
out into the physical world and into the kind of mainstream culture was something that we really
wanted to show how that was possible. And so this began really at NFT NYC in 2023,
where Esther Choi hosted two pop-up nights at her restaurant locations that basically transformed
her restaurants into, you know, Boon Ramen for one night and Neon Sushi for another, which are
two brands within our world. And these food brands kind of came to life and they were presented to
our holders and invited guests as these exclusive experiences with one of the world's best chefs in
one of the world's kind of hippest New York restaurants at the time. And so this really
solidified what we believe was that bridge between the digital and physical realms. And
that's when we're now starting to walk back and over that bridge in order to make it more and
more seamless. And so that brings us to today and that brings us to the next part of our
long-term partnership with Esther Choi with Ramen Wars. So with Esther Choi, we've developed
this web game experience, which we've gone out into her world and into her restaurants
with our sub brands. But now what we're doing is we're bringing her back into the digital world.
She's stepping through that portal into the KPI universe as a fully fledged character with
character design, top tier arts and everything else in Ramen Wars. And that was released just
two days ago on the 31st of January. Everyone here can go try it out now for free. Boonramen.com.
And this is a three week and this is quite important. It's a limited time event. It's a
three week gamified storytelling event. And it's really our proof of concept for how web three
can change the landscape of brand development, enable new relationships with your audience,
and really find a kind of global presence that was not previously available, at least not in a
way that was so interactive and had so many kind of touch points with people's digital and kind
of physical identities. And so Ramen Wars is a way for us to prove this relationship, this co-IP
relationship, and that it can flow in both directions. And so we're very proud of it. We
encourage everybody to go and try it out to experience it yourself. But when I say that Ramen
Wars is a kind of gamified experience and not a fully fledged gaming project, and we're obviously
highly respectful and impressed and inspired by those who have fully fledged production companies
and development teams and multi-year development cycles, I think web three gaming is really leading
the charge for mainstream adoption. But for us, it's about gamification. And what does that mean
with Ramen Wars? So there's really three things that we're focusing on with Ramen Wars. And the
first is the kind of user experience. So the art, storytelling, sound design, music, the accessibility
of having your collections represented, the ability for users to just dive into the world
through a web portal, a website, and have fun bite-sized gameplay. We believe that this just
created a highly polished and fully developed experience that as we've seen, you know, an
incredibly strong reception out the gates, and we're really kind of just encouraged and really
heartened to see just how well it's been responded to, not just by our holders, but by other people
who have kind of been enabled to experience it. And so we think these kind of wrappings,
these kind of gamified wrappings have just uplifted standards in the space around concepts
and mechanics that we have, such as sweepstakes, user-generated contests and competitions. And we
believe that this kind of gamification is really, really important to show that web three is
something different to web two, to show that it has a different kind of motivation, it has a
different kind of connectivity with its users, and it has a much, much deeper emotional resonance
that's not always available in other forms, or at least doesn't draw people in in perhaps
as immersive a way as we were able to do in web three. And so this kind of highly developed
gamification experience we believe is incredibly important, and also that what we wanted to prove
with KPR is you don't need a huge war chest, you don't need really, you know, large backers to
create these amazing experiences. The technology's now at a point, the design expertise and talent
out there is now at the point that these things can be created by startup companies, and that,
you know, the kind of the standards out there that web three is bringing to the table,
I think is something that is incredibly special, and is increasingly kind of memorable and unique.
And so beyond the experience itself, we really wanted to focus with Raman Wars on user
acquisition. So our partnership with Esther Choi, she's obviously very kind of web three friendly,
she's incredibly supportive of us, and she's just, you know, she's not being paid to work with the
project, she's doing it because she loves it, and because she wants to work with us, and because she
believes in what we're we're trying to achieve. And so with that kind of a web two partnership,
and her audience, part of our thesis was, well, can we bring her audience with her into web three
and into this digital space. And so user acquisition was the kind of second pillar of Raman Wars that
we've really focused on. And that involves a lot of things like seamless logins with only an email,
you know, non custodial wallet options that are kind of the technology layer is abstracted
from users that don't want to connect in Ethereum wallet. And then also we have, you know, users who
do want to connect in Ethereum wallet will have their own kind of bonuses and perks and everything
there is a, you know, very web three centered focus. But for those who are coming to this space
fresh, as we've seen hundreds of these people do over the last two days, they don't have to have
an Ethereum wallet, they don't have to even know what an Ethereum wallet is, in order to experience
Raman Wars and to be able to get it get pretty much the same experience, perhaps just with you
know, slightly lower odds of winning some of the prizes as those who are really connected and
embedded in the space. And so this kind of abstraction of the technology layers, we feel
is incredibly important. And we wanted to show how that could be done with Raman Wars in a seamless
way. And much of the tech stack, as I'm sure you know, the developers on this, this panel,
other things had to be custom built. So it was a real kind of labor of love. And a lot of these
things, it's such early days in the space that you got to be kind of developing a lot of these
things from scratch. So since launching, just in regards to user acquisition, we're just really
pleased we've seen over 4000 users logging in in the first 48 hours. It's been an amazing reception.
We've had hundreds that have come off the back of Instagram posts from Chef Esther to her fan base,
not just from the kind of web three circles that we all move in. And so now that we've kind of seen
this response, and we feel this proof of concept has shown our vision for what's possible,
we've built this engine and tech stack, and we can continue to really evolve this concept and
push out more activations that can deepen the experience, right? This is a three week limited
time event. And it but it's something that all of the foundations that have been built for it
can then be applied to different longer term activations, different kind of world building
and storytelling, which fleshes out different parts of our world, and that we can really just
explore all of these different types of co IP creation, both with Esther, and, you know, other
high level creators, or even, you know, people from our community down the line,
in different and we hope unique and immersive kind of ways. And so from that kind of highly
polished user experience, that user acquisition that is both seamless and effortless. We've also
a big part of our belief here, and this goes back to the citizenship system, is digital persistence.
So with ramen wars, not only have we included a really kind of large number of Easter eggs,
references to keepers or people in our communities holders, highly detailed law that again, can be
kind of delved into. It's not all on the surface level, you kind of have to hunt for it. But our
citizenship system and the kind of the second season of it or sector two, as we call it,
is based around ramen wars. And so this means that by engaging with ramen wars, which again,
is a limited time event, your actions are remembered through our citizenship passport.
So it tracks all kinds of things, the number of ramen recipes you've crafted, the number of loot
chests you've collected, the the number the high scores you've gotten in the, you know, the Pabst
portal minigame, all of these kinds of things are remembered. And, and these achievements are set so
that your engagement in our events and activations over time comes with you. And so that kind of
digital persistence, we think is a really important part of what blockchain can provide and what web
three can really enable. And this is, again, something that we feel goes to the heart of
how KPR is trying to evolve what it means to develop brands in the modern world. And so the
badges earned through ramen wars, you know, they won't be available afterwards. So the people who
are here now are the ones who add those to the citizenship passport that can be called upon the
ones that were here from the beginning and collected various badges from going to NFT NYC,
or being part of other milestones or collecting certain traits and everything. Their citizenship
score is also kind of included within their odds of winning prizes within ramen wars. So the people
who've been here from the beginning, their odds are added on top, the people who are here now in
ramen wars and future activations, their things will be added and will be remembered. And so it's
that kind of enabling people in our world to really forge a path that becomes increasingly
unique over time. So we've got dozens of badges available, more to be added multiple times a year
with new activations and new products and new events and other things, both IRL and digital.
And so that becomes an increasingly unique identity. It's not something that you will be
able to collect everything for. I mean, maybe if you hear from day one and you're a superfan,
but that will distinguish you yourself, right? It's something that marks you and your time with us
and you become an increasingly unique individual within our world and with our ecosystem.
And so what we're offering here, just to kind of wrap it all up, and then we can go to questions,
is we believe that Web3 brands are not just in an attention economy. We think we have to go beyond
this. And we believe that what we're really operating within is an imaginative realm and one
that enables us to create increasingly lasting experiences. And so to us, in order to really
embed this and anchor this concept, we need to provide these kind of moments of significance
in people's lives that they remember and carry with them. We need to have the activations we do
to be something that stands out and has a certain unique flavor to it. So it becomes a memory in
their lives. We all spend a lot of time in Discord servers and digital realms and chatting with
people or looking into things. And if all of those things start to blend together,
then that time can feel like it is taking you away from your life. The experiences that we're
trying to provide are things that we want people to understand, that your digital life has meaning
and has the kind of same resonance that your memories can have outside of the digital realms.
And so Ramen Wars is our proof of concept that Web3 can provide these kinds of experiences
that connect storytelling and fun mechanics, but also with product rollouts and brand development
that have commercial purpose. But more importantly than all of this, and just to reiterate,
I think at the core of KPR lies this vision that your digital presence is the true value of Web3
and that your actions should be remembered and should be able to be taken with you.
And so the time you're spending in these virtual spaces, we believe should have as much meaning
as the time you spend in the physical world. And that those who are within these spaces,
who you are within these spaces, your digital identity should be able to be carried with you.
And I think just seeing Nifty Island and others have this kind of interoperability
that we're seeing a lot more of. This starts to show that interoperability and being able to
bring your identity with you from one project into another with that kind of memory that comes with
it of your history is something that the space is increasingly considering and looking at,
and that KPR wants to be helping build out. And so this isn't just about the future of KPR,
but how we want to build these things that the whole space can start to integrate and that can
understand that we should be crossing between digital and physical realms. So this kind of
persistency doesn't just exist in the digital world, but you can walk into, following the
Raman Wars event, one of Esther Choi's restaurants and order Boon Raman on the menu. This is a
physical item that will be created by one of our players that we will be able to order in one of
her restaurants. And she's got, you know, a dozen of them throughout the United States. These are
physical items such as the Boon drinks that we've just kind of teased in Raman Wars. And you can
look on the KPR Twitter account to see that that will be on store shelves. They're not just going
to be sold to our community. They're going to be in retail shelves. And that sub-brand of Boon
then acts as another driver into Web3 and into KPR universe as a whole. And so these kinds of
interactions start to really flesh out a much more broad experience of where Web3 is and the
different kind of cultural touch points that it has. And so just finally to kind of conclude,
it's this back and forth between the digital and the physical that we believe is the true power
and the magic that lies at the heart of Web3. So it's not just about being a consumer,
but a co-creator of culture. It's not just about having a speculative relationship with projects,
but an imaginative one. It's not just about being a user, but about having an identity and about
having a history that builds and grows with you. And we believe that it's this new frontier that
has persistency, that has identity, that flows between the digital and physical realms in
increasingly seamless ways is the true meaning of the metaverse. And so that's why we call ourselves
KPRverse on our website. That's why we wholeheartedly believe in Web3. And that's what
we're here to build. So thank you for listening to the pitch. And again, it's just a pleasure to be
here with so many great projects and the panelists and everything else. And I look forward to all of
your questions. So thank you. That's great. Thank you for the pitch. I actually played
Ramen yesterday. I briefly enjoyed it. And it's really a lot of fun. It's great how you designed
it. And I'm curious, do you have data on how many people already played? Maybe how many people
came into from there being a holder or maybe even not just a holder, maybe even from broader
Web3. How many people got in through your partners? Do we have some data on that?
Yeah, I mean, it's been two days since we've launched. So we've got some early data on that.
We will be kind of releasing more stuff on that as we go through the event. But in the first 48
hours, we've seen over 4,000 users log in, unique users logging in, in the first 48 hours. And
following a post from Esther Choi on her Instagram, which is an obviously, you know, pointing towards
her fan base specifically, we saw hundreds of users come in off the back of that. So it kind of did
prove that there is a bridge here. And this is also part of why we wanted it. It's a web experience.
It's a website, they visit the website, they can log in with an email. A fan of Esther never even
has to really know that there are NFTs behind this. We don't hide it. It's certainly very clear
and obvious. But they don't need to have the technical understanding or ability to be able
to experience it. And I think everybody who's who's logged in to the web game kind of understands
what I'm saying there. You can get in within seconds. There's even a way for, you know, a guest
login account without an email to experience the first chapter. So you really can pull it up on a
phone or desktop and be in there immediately. And the other thing that we've done with this,
which we're quite proud of, is that from a web3 perspective, you only need to connect and sign
your wallet once. So with the email login, you're essentially connecting a wallet to that email.
And then you can log in on any device. You can log in on your iPad, your phone, your desktop,
your Mac, you know, anything you want that can get a web browser to it. And you can have
persistency across all of those platforms and your progress will load up immediately when you log in.
And you will only ever have to sign unless you change the wallet you want to connect.
You'll only have to have ever have to sign once. Unless you buy some of the kind of, you know,
accessible in-game monetization units, our chibi go, our cute little courier characters that cost
five bucks each and enable you to kind of boost your progress in the game. This is the only other
time you would really need to involve a cryptocurrency wallet. And for non crypto users,
there are fiat onboarding through that, through credit cards, using kind of third web connectivity.
And that enables them to even purchase these units. And they we have on the back end, we have
non custodial wallets that are connected to their accounts. So all of that stuff is both seamless
and easy to use, interoperable between platforms. And so yeah, we've seen over 4000 users logging
in hundreds from Esther's posts. And more detail on those exact numbers will be coming soon. But
the reception, we've been very, very pleased with.
Let's go love it. Let's go to ice here as a sign up.
Thanks. Well, yeah, how's it going future site? So I'm actually in the game right now. It reminds
me a lot of Honkai impacts town interface, which is really pretty. I'm really liking the aesthetic
quite a bit. My question for you guys. So we mentioned that it's, it's basically free to play
guests can use it, you don't even have to go on with an email. But on the flip side of things,
how does having one or maybe how does having multiple NFTs enhance the gameplay experience?
Yeah, so it was really important to us that we make this as accessible as possible. But equally,
as we've been saying, that our long term community and holders are rewarded and recognized. And that's
incredibly important to us. So essentially, what lies underneath all the gamification here is is a
raffle based system, there's over 500 prizes to win. And as you're playing through the game,
you're collecting raffle credits that then go into the prize pools that you unlock depending on the
progress that you make through the story. And so for it for a user who has no keepers who doesn't
buy any chibi go or anything else, they can log in, they're given a starter chibi go so that they
can actually play the game. And they will be able to collect raffle credits, just just purely with
an email and, and have a kind of a base experience that enables them a certain degree of odds in
winning some of these prizes. And then, you know, as they progress through the chapter, obviously,
the time a mechanic starts to grind up, it becomes a bit more difficult for them to progress without
making, you know, a $5 purchase for extra chibi go. And so that's the first kind of point is,
if you come into this, and you're not even a holder, there are these chibi go units that you
can purchase to enable you to get an extra boost in the timer mechanics, and that will enable you
to unlock more of the prize pools. For our holders specifically for our keepers, they get multipliers
on the raffle credits that are made by crafting ramen or in the daily bonus chests and everything,
every time they do that. So crafting the ramen you get, there's two recipe quests kind of the
things that come out each day. And for a base user, that's worth five raffle credits each time
they craft one. For a keeper hold or a KPR holder, it's five base credits plus the number of keepers
they hold. So if you hold five keepers in your connected wallet, you'll be getting 10 credits
for every recipe. If you hold 100 keepers, you'll be getting 105 credits. So that kind of multiplier
scales accordingly and has a lot of impact. The other thing we're doing is outside of the game.
So the way that we're recognizing our Web 3 audiences actually occurs outside of the game.
So beyond those multipliers in game, after the event is finished, and again because it's a limited
time event, it enables us to do some of this. After the event is finished, the citizenship
score for all of our holders will be added directly to the raffle credit total.
Did I get wrecked again? No, I can't hear him either. Okay, yeah, me neither.
Future, I don't know what's going on. Can you hear me? Yeah, now we can hear you, yeah, now we can hear you.
Okay, now he's gone. Yeah, well, I think let's see if we can get him up again. We're in the last few
of last few minutes of the space anyway, so let's hope FutureSight can join us again, at least for
a few more minutes. We will wait for his request. But yeah, it was an exciting show. Thanks everyone
for tuning. Yeah, there he is. Let's see. Hello, so who won guys? Am I back?
FutureSight, yeah. I'm sorry about that. He can hear you. It's the joy of technology, right?
Let's go. Yeah, I'm back. Everyone can hear me. Thumbs up. Excellent. Yeah, so the citizenship
score will be added to the total number of raffle credits that people collect at the end of the game.
And then there's also extra bonuses. So people who have been in our weekly spaces and have been
collecting oats on the Galaxy platform, they'll get bonus raffle credits for each of those
POAPs they've collected, essentially. People who have been purchasing Chibigos will get extra raffle
credits per Chibigo that they have in their wallet at the end of the game. So we have all of these
kind of additional bonus mechanics that we can add on outside of the game as well that are really
there to honor our holders and their loyalty to the project and what we're building here.
Amazing. Thank you for the answer. I just created by way the poll for the people in the audience.
You can vote on which project or which pitch you enjoy the most, which project convinced you the
most. Feel free to go there and vote for your favorite project or for the project that convinced
you the most. Same goes for the people on stage. Feel free to double vote for your own project if
you're represented. Vote for another one. But yeah, maybe future side is the last question.
Anything people can look forward to that's not released yet? You mentioned it's just the first
few days. Anything that will come out during the experience or something that people have not seen yet?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, what we're really doing here with Ramen Wars, as I've said, is this is
bringing Esther into the digital world. This is bringing all of that engagement and gamification
into the digital world. But we're using that as a slingshot back out into physical product rollouts.
So we've already teased in game the the Boon drinks, which will be a line of energy drinks
that will be coming out. And more words on that will be released by the end of the event,
essentially. This is basically from this digital experience. We're then going to be rolling out
onto store shelves, which has cured various partnerships. And we'll have other forms of
merchant product rollouts over the coming months that really start to bring that brand,
the Boon brand specifically, but attached to that KPR out into the into the retail environment.
And so that's really important for us. And that is part of how we really want to broaden
the presence of KPR so that it isn't just a company that seeks to raise its funding from within.
But is one that is, can everyone hear me?
Yes, I thought you guys read for a second, but you're back.
Is one that is flowing back and forth. And so you'll see all of those products rolling out.
What we then have is obviously the rollout of the winning Boon Ramen recipe into Esther's
restaurants, which will be a huge thing. And then also we we will then be developing and evolving
the platform and the foundation here we've built with Ramen Wars into a longer term staking
experience. So the next thing we're going to do with gamified raffle mechanics, we've gamified
that kind of branding rollout with Ramen Wars. The next thing we're going to do later in this year
with our Haven system is essentially do the same thing with staking mechanics.
And we're here to create the most immersive, the most law base, the most rewarding staking
mechanics that we can possibly achieve in a way that is compelling and fulfilling to be part of.
And not just because you're you're taking up points somewhere that you hope to turn into tokens one
day, but because that that you're actually building out your identity in this world through
these kind of mechanics and gamification. Amazing. Thank you. Future side. Thank you for
for all the all the speakers today. We still have a few minutes left on the on the polls. So feel
free to vote which project come into the most. It's pretty close right now. So please, if you're
an audience, go ahead. It's been in the space. Go and vote for your favorite, your favorite pitch.
But yeah, thanks, future side, for coming on. Thank you, Grace. Thank you, Kipras, for coming
on and telling us a little bit more about your your projects. Thank you to Sanjay for being one
of the amazing judges today. Thanks for saying the time. Thank you for your ice, the legend himself
for for coming on. Also Charles who who had to leave. It was not perfect today. We got worked
several times by by X, but I think we we still that is pretty, pretty good in the space. So thanks
everyone for tuning in. I will pick the winner right now based on the the votes that are in.
KPR is today's winner with the majority of of votes. The Irene and block games are slightly
behind with almost similar similar votes. So congrats KPR. Looks like your pitch or
ramen bars convinced the convinced the audience. So thanks everyone for tuning in. See you soon.
See you next week. Bye bye.