Hello, hello GM GM much James moakers every ready. Can you hear me? Yes All right, let's start this. Thank you Cool ska. All right, so GM. Jim everyone mine is Casey Lauer
And I am the co-host of Web Summit, returning to Lisbon, Portugal this November, first, four. So wow, it's been like three weeks. And I think everyone is super excited for the big event this year, which is definitely going to be the biggest ever. Got more attendees, more startups, more investors, and even bigger venues.
space in all new nights, some at venues. So it's going to be epic and by the looks of it, we're going to be completely sold out by the end of this week. So if you're not coming, it's happening with or without you. Right. I have a massive web three presents across all 17 of our stages this year. And so we wanted to spotlight
some of the speakers and startups that will be there in December. So today we're very excited. We only have our four short time. So let's get this started as soon as possible. I'm very excited to have Amy Wu from FTX Ventures. Amy, of course, I think everybody here knows is that
They have Venturer and M&A and Gaming Initiatives at FDX. She's been on both sides of the table for the past decade plus. She led crypto and gaming investing at light speed as well as an executive at Discovery. And now she's at FDX looking at all the exciting new things that's happening in Web 3. Amy, how are you doing?
Hey guys, sorry, I'm I'm yeah my reception right now huge apologies Casey can you hear me?
All right, we can hear you.
Awesome. Great. Thanks for having me on. You're really excited to be here.
Great. So we've assembled three startups exhibiting it Web Summit to ask Amy some of their startup questions that we relevant to all startups. So if you're in Web 3 or not, that should be an informative
look at what's happening in the space. On stage with me right now is Ulska from Ecosca and Benjamin from Star Origins. Guys, how are you guys doing?
Hey what's up, I'm good in you.
Hey, hey, good. Thank you for inviting to this Twitter space. I'm good. Thank you. How are you? Okay, awesome. Awesome. All right. So let's let's start with some questions. I think let's start up with Benjamin from Star Origin. He's doing a pd play to earn game. Maybe you've got some specific gaming questions there for Amy. Yeah, for sure.
So we are working on this phase strategy game and like we have a ton of questions so I had to shoot on the free. My first question for you Amy is regarding the future of web free gaming. What do you think crypto games are lacking right now to attract traditional web to players?
My general take on this is that, so if you look at the success curve of games in general, it's pretty low. Like I think on, let's say on Steam, something like over 10,000 games get launched for your own Steam.
And the vast majority of my tail. And any given year, you basically have mostly the franchise is being successful. And it's like a pretty much like a power law dynamic to even reach a game where you're doing like let's say like 50 million revenue or something like that per year. And you have millions.
millions of downloads. And so I actually think the biggest issue is one, in that context, a game really needs to be fairly extraordinary in order to become a hit. That has always been the success ratio for gaming investors in space. And I was like a long time luck to a gaming investor before.
through it. And so like, therefore the bar for like game design, game quality, and then game operations live-ops once it's like live, let's say like it actually is super high. And so I think that knowledge-based skill set, like ability to build that kind of
Calibre game is still for a long time like didn't really exist but then but absolutely like some of the games and very experienced games you do you know live break with like gave lady is one of them and we hit movies to build like a multi-dollar game company has learned a lot of lessons is one just like one example of them like wherever
investors in that and also like far away games that found out there was, you know, it really has been operating in like, you know, mobile, Bitcoin core for like 14 years. So I mean, like these are kind of like the caliber of people that are in this space now. And but it's still just like super difficult to build a great game.
Thank you. Thank you. And I agree with you. I think the the Web3 Games writer lack of quality. The space is small. So if you compare it to steam, like you said, the like this 10,000 games every year.
It's still small to create Web3 games, but the lack quality I think and and thank you for your final thank you for the answer Great thanks a lot Benjamin. Okay, let's go to Oscar. You're doing NFT fashion. What's your question for Amy?
Yeah, hi. So we are one of the first digital brands in the world and we're heading to the metaverse and I have the following question. Like, why do you think the Web3 evolution is essential for the generation Z?
Sorry I think you used to be on mute.
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, like I told this like why do you think the web 3 evolution is essential like it's very important for the news generation.
For some reason I can't hear the question at all. Like Casey could you repeat that? Yeah, I can definitely repeat it. Ulf's go wants to know why do you think the Web 3 evolution or revolution is essential generation Z to be part of?
I have always thought that movements happened the other way around. It's actually not essential for them. It's more like if Gen Z isn't involved and there is such thing as the web3 movement. It really comes from the community. I think all the founders and creators in this space need to create products and services and
know, content that resonates with Gen Z, which is like, you know, the younger generations of, you know, kind of internet, like app users are always taste makers, right? And so like, if you don't have them, I mean, maybe you're targeting like a different generation of people, like older, et cetera, that just happened
That has not really been kind of like how internet movements have typically been formed but created but never seen ever. And so yeah, I actually think about it the other way around. Like if we're unable to create compelling experiences, then people will not use them and then there will be no web-jet movements. And that's how I come up with that.
So, we kind of think about like just every project that we back or that we actually build internally at FTX is like what's that bar of actually like people want to use this product. Yeah, that's how I think about it. Okay, great. Okay, we got Bradley just showed up from role. Bradley, we're just going around the roundtable here and asking any questions.
What question do you have for her? Yeah, hey, I mean, Bradley from Rol. Yeah, just a quick question. We're focused on the WebT Creator economy and just wondering how how do you and FTX ventures think about the Creator economy as a category?
I'm not able to hear any of the questions. I don't know whether this is the problem anyone else. It's so good. I can hear it as well. I'm going to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re#
creators and web 3 so um Bradley what you want to know like from your perspective and maybe ftx vent ventures perspective what do you guys think about the creator economy coming into web 3 is there uh you know is it gonna be different than last time or do you think it'll be you know something new by the creator economy
I mean, I'm just gonna boil this down into a couple of things that I think about. One is that I really believe that creators need to be able to earn a living. Just like if you look at other kind of categories like artists,
But the best artists are quite successful, aren't able to make a lot of money, same-game makers, etc. Now, I do think in some of the other genres there are creators, like there's like up again, like at this parallel dynamic, like top creators make a lot of money, but then
I think probably the bottom like 80% like this is probably not going to be their full-time job. Now if Web3 projects are able to democratize that a little bit more, then actually it just creates like more like I think better products you actually get more
people which increases the chances of creating like just more interesting products and content for the end user. And so therefore like this air this this category is just like more broad. So for example, maybe just call out an example, I think the fine arts market a lot more niche than is for example,
I don't know, like, game, although right now I think like game streaming is pretty concentrated as well in terms of like creators that are making a lot of money, but I think like creator economy platforms like at sea and some other ones have really democratized it and created some large businesses like Shopify also.
other like company that's allowed creators to be able to build businesses. And so in the, for example, and a tea space, if like marketplaces and are able to help creators make money, I think that really goes a long way in terms of bringing more people into this
space. One of the reasons why I find that a whole 0% relative concept pretty controversial. Like I think that probably relative these are too high right now, but they also coalition be zero. Just like I think you know like trading fees are pretty high right now, but I think that will converge.
That's something I wanted to talk to you about your tweet that you just sent out not too long ago, right? You said the creator should be able to make a living from their art and people they like it or want to speculate on it. What feels inevitable is the fee compression at the platform level. Is that what you're talking about in terms of the royalties?
So going specifically into the energy space, there's actually two components of fees. There's the training fee and then there's a royalty fee. And so if you look at like OpenC, I would say that like 3.4 A.O. clubs like royalties are 2.5%, but I would say like most elections, probably around 5%
And at the really egregious level, it's like 10% and then like open-sea currently takes you know 2.5% I think magic even bit less and then some other marketplaces that come out have taken even less in terms of trading fees and so I Think a couple of things if you look
like fees, like over time, one maybe like framework that like a marketplace or even exchange, like this is how we think, but it's not the same things about fees in general, is that how badly like does a user want to buy like a product, like what's a value and then get it
it on your exchange or marketplace versus somebody else. And I think you can pretty much change like charge like some material fraction of fees that captures that value. If that fees are which is like realty plus like transaction fee is like super high, then I think
I think somebody would actually not even buy, for example, into a collection of the first place. And so I think that like, if your roles are super high, if your fees are really high, then it's actually limiting the toll of your people who will participate in this space. I mean, this is not even like gas fees on the Ethereum, which is another area fee.
But a user that's like by an empty is gonna look at all the both and so like in general like you know I'm generally a believer that maybe like you know training fees and royalty fee should be like roughly like 50 50 or some like you know It should be 10 90 made probably not but like something closer to like
Maybe like 4060 but like that overall is too high right now and just says that it compares in the exchange place like Finance and us charges like market makers to basis points and fees and I think on average like you know like Coinbase and crypto dot-contractors like 1.5%
That's the Delta right now. That's how much room there is for users to gradually discover that, "Oh, actually, I can buy it. What is completely commodity-chamadentized products?" Somewhere else is almost zero fees. So, I think that's how easy it all the more time.
Now that might take a long I mean, but at the overtime it kind of
That's great. Okay, so before I go back to Benjamin for another question, just want to say what does your take then on the Apple take on NFT royalties there?
Yeah, what's the percentage of their journey? That's 70 30 Oh, you mean like on the apps where I mean like I mean, that's why like epic games and Epic games and like Tim, you know, sweetie has like famously gone out and be like this is literally an outrage and I
Apple and Google are basically monopolies just like extracting undue value. I would say that actually like if you look at a dollar so okay so let's say I'm an app developer and I get 70 cents per dollar like on App Store it is 30% worth of costs of like distribution like I don't know maybe like for a lot of
Maybe for a lot of people that are like, oh, maybe. On real blocks, if I make a dollar as a developer, I actually make about 23 cents. So that's like even more agree-to-this, right? And so that isn't the feel, right? Apple feels high, but like, I mean, too soon, he's trying to basically allow you to use her to actually
Pay with other payment means right to five pass like the app store like I don't know it's still like TBD on that and so like yes It's all relative like 2.5% or really kind of like it's 5% relative supposed to 5% you're paying let's say like close like 10% like 7.5% to 10% for and if
I don't know if it feels high, especially in a competitive landscape, right? Unless like open sea just continues to just have like 95% distribution dominance, then they can kind of continue to charge wherever they want because you don't really maybe you don't have another place like Bay four, buy that
specifically NFT, but I don't think that's also really the case. You can typically buy it through other things. Yeah, great. Okay, I'm going to go back to Benjamin who for new people coming in is the CEO of Star Origins and he is in our Alpha program at Web Summit in November. Benjamin
Let's keep the gaming questions going. Yeah, thank you. So I have a similar question as Bradley regarding FTX Ventures, but more for the gaming aspect. So at FTX Ventures, when you are looking for new gaming projects to invest in, for you, what is the most important factor you are looking at?
Is it the team? Is it like the structure with NFT sales? The project itself? Like what do you look at? Did you hear that Amy? Yeah, but I heard that. Yeah, so and also super apologies for how loud it is. It's all good. It's all good. We're happier here.
So every investor looks at his own things and adventures. I think we're looking at a couple of things. One, the unique capability of that team to execute and succeed in this space that they're executing in. And it could be like a super novel idea.
It could be like like basically what are they gonna be like? X better at than like anyone else is going to be in the space Rarely is the idea itself innovative like for any idea that we're kind of like interested in We're like me might see like five to ten teams like actually got the same thing but like
So who's like best suited from like whether it's like an execution go to market plan or whether it's like Experience expertise of the founder founding team or like or like how much traction they've already demonstrated like in terms of tackling that that probably and design space
And then what's the valuation? What's the valuation that they're going to be raising around that? Because there's a lot of ways to win if our entry valuation is $20 million versus $200 million. Because there's not that many companies have been sold for multiple hundreds of millions, let alone $200.
How do we even make money from this investment? Like those are all things that we think about. And then we also are, yeah, and then like, I think that's probably like encapsulates that there are also areas in which like the technology that someone's building is extremely strategic to FTX.
So it's like a pretty straightforward, we actually then, there's value beyond then all of that when I describe, which is like, oh, we might actually want to integrate this with the exchange or with our FJXP payments platform. And so that's another reason why we might invest.
Good stuff. Thank you. Okay, let's go back now to Olska, who is the founder of Ikuelska, and she's also in the Alpha program at Web Summit. Olska, go ahead. Yeah, so my question is like, what do you think will be the market cap of the fashion NFTs in the nearest five years?
Did you hear that any me?
I did not. Okay. Jessica wants to know what do you think about the fashion NFTs in the next five years? What kind of market do you think it'll be in the next few years over? I'm going to assume that fashion NFTs means like there's some utility associated with an Amazon
I don't see that much of a market in this space right now. But I think that's also because people haven't really found clever ways of interaction with that NFT in the fashion domain that actually users
I think that's what it was.
There were Tiffany's users that were also like huge hoarding fans or vice versa who wanted like one of these kind of limited like scarce like items and that's why they were able to they were willing to buy a lot of money for that but but and then so I think I think other like luxury brands in which there's like a
So, I think that's really good.
super interesting. I don't know if that's like fashion or just like kind of wearables meets NFTs. You could probably also say like this stuff in is kind of like in that category more on the gaming side. But yeah, I think like super-releaning design space, very interesting to see what people come up with.
Great, excellent. Okay, and then we're gonna go back now to Bradley, who is a CEO and co-founder of Rol and is in our growth program. Bradley, what's your next question for Amy?
Yeah, curious what FTX ventures thinks about staking derivative products like
Steve from Lido and now CBE from Coinbase entering the market. Do you see future for Steve? >> I'm on the public issue.
Okay, I'll read it to you. That's why we had them send them in early. So Bradley wants to know a little bit about what he thinks, what you think about staking derivative products like STE and CBE from Coinbase entering the market products for the DeFi ecosystem.
Yeah, I think like in general in the DeFi space people want lower cost of capital efficiency of capital and so if I stake some sort of token whether it's like an L1, you know token and then I'm able to get some sort of derivative so that I can then do something
I can then do other things with my ether, you know, whatever they're talking, then people will generally want to do that. They want to be capital efficient. Like I think that the mechanisms in which you're getting that derivative though.
It's pretty important to understand as a user. For example, if you're like, "Stake in something," you're like, "I'll call like you want." That's not free money. That's kind of from somewhere. That's basically coming from some protocol.
that's essentially air dropping tokens as it means like bar users, but it's not going to go on forever, right? That kind of level of yield. Or they literally have raised VC money and they're using VC money to help pay for yields in order to again, like attract customers. So really understanding the stability of whatever it is, application that you are taking and where some of the yields are coming
from is really important. Do they actually like just taking a self is not a business. And so what's being what is actually the business of the protocol, whether it is like, you know, a lending business in which in exchange it's like a kind of like a fee spread business like a block fire like a self-seeking
the crypto punks are still selling for so much money like millions of dollars still and you guys are still investing a lot into the market so and everybody always asked me I you know is is it really a crypto bear market or not so I want to ask you that directly what do you think what do you guys seeing from ethics right now
And then bear market. I mean, if you look at it from like all time highs, we're probably down to 95% plus on most points. And, you know, like, it's 100% plus down from like peak, like NFT volumes within all four prices.
Even like you know ethereum the corner like down 60 70% from all-time high so I'm higher like and so yeah, I was like this is a bear market But I would say that like even in a bear market there are certain like there are certain assets in which people believe you know why
Why is it not Ethereum is zero? Why is it so fun to work with zero? It's kind of like an value to be older. People believe that crypto funds can still hold a certain amount of value. And so there's still, like below a certain core price, like I think people are still willing to buy it.
And there's enough demand for that. So I think you're actually seeing true demand right now in this environment. And you can really differentiate projects right now, in which that actually had some sort of asset or product of value or value by users versus ones who didn't.
Okay, great. All right, let's go back to Benjamin from Star Origin. Benjamin, what question do you have for Amy? So my last question for you is more like a strategic question because so at Star Origins we are aiming to to make a rugam like
more accessible to web2 players, we want to break the barrier between web2 players and web3 communities like usual iWallet solutions using like starters.gg solutions. So my question for you is do you think the best way to build right now a crypto game?
is targeting an e-shodians like web-free communities and FTP people and this kind of stuff or aiming for more regular web-to-players, educate them and smoothly transitioning by adding web-free elements to the game.
So different studios are doing different things the reality is that the crypto native web 3 native like players are Tiny fraction of the total global player base tiny and and so like I think that There's almost like no answer and
which you can build a sustainable game only on crypto-native players. You pretty much have to convert like Web2 players over. And certainly if you're targeting trying to distract millions of players, there are not millions of like Web3 native players right now.
So some of the most advanced studios in the world that I'm talking to, like so for example, come to us, which is a publicly traded game, and company in Korea, they have already launched three web 3 games. They have launched them, like one of them is a converter from like, you know, web 2 game, they already have like in the mid core RPG space, and then two of them
I think are like launches like native Web 3 games. The way that they think about it is they have like normal players and then they have like Web 2 gaming whales and then they have Web 3 gaming whales. That's actually how they have like structure of their gaming economy and progression in the game.
Because like a crypto native player basically is like that's like doing a lot of like token optimization and like grinding for like NFTs and tokens are playing the game like Actually differently than like a normal like sort of normy like whale gamer and they have basically two paths of progression that they've often
score that right now. And even with like a crypto native like game, they're only seeing, they're seeing like a well minority percentage of total players playing the game like a crypto native style. And so like even even like so they're actually seeing mostly like what's
game adoption, player adoption, and so they basically have created the game so that you can play the game totally normally without even touching the crypto, or if you want, you can play using with the crypto elements. And it's really on the game maker to really figure out how to balance all that out, but that definitely in my perspective maximizes audience.
Awesome. Thank you, Amy. I know you got to run. So I'm going to let you go. We're going to keep the space open a little longer, talk to some of the startups, but Amy, thank you so much for being part of today's sort of spaces. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so sorry. It was so loud like an airport. Thanks for everyone. Hope to see some of you at Web Summit. Thanks for having#
Okay, thanks the enemy safe travels to you in Lisbon Okay, so we'll keep going a little bit because I want to know a little bit more about some of the startups that are here as well Maybe they can tell us a bit more about what they're working on Bradley I'm gonna bring you back up now and talk tell me what is role exactly in
What are you guys building over there? Yeah, I have a role as a social token infrastructure for the internet. So I mean, how we always like to explain it is if you go back to the 1980s in the US, you have three channels, CBS, ABC, NBC. This is how you get content. Now 42 years later,
There's 30 million channels with things like YouTube, Spotify, etc. And anyone anywhere anytime can now create their own channel. Roll is doing that same thing with money itself. So we allow anyone anywhere anytime to create their own, to choke in. They're on money through social tokens.
play is a little bit like striped it with payments, which enabled the gig economy and the creator economy to really evolve. A role is that for social tokens. And so we see a world in which Twitter is a social token platform and social token chats that are, you know, there's, there's Dow podcast apps
and we're powering a lot of the token infrastructure behind the scenes of, yeah, we're a series A company and giving some talks at Web Summit and just super excited about the Web Summit atmosphere and what you guys are doing. Okay, thanks, Riley. I'm getting some people are texting me now saying they can't hear, Bradley. I hope everybody can hear him.
If not, I can hear him clearly. I hope everybody else can. If not, I think the recording will pick up his voice there. And so sorry if there was a low there if you couldn't hear it. Let's go over to Benjamin Benjamin. Obviously you're making a game there, Star Origin, what's the game about? How far are you along?
when are we going to be playing it? Yeah, thank you. So the game is currently under development. We are doing a seed run right now. This is also why we are attending Web Summit to be able to meet more investors and partners. So right now we are raising money and it was very interesting to talk with
Amy and I hope I could picture the deck if I met her at the web summit. So the game is a space strategy game in the blockchain of course, but we are not like all the regular Play-Tour games like we are aiming to reward only the best players this game would be
very very competitive and it's like very addictive very strategic it's a management game so it's not even a triple A so you can play it on your phone on your web browser on your PC that's to have like you know through a crazy through a pick up to play the game the game would be very fun so feel free to check out our website at
star origins.com if you want to have more info about the game. And we will release the alpha version of the game in Q1, Q2 next year. So very, very soon it will stay a little bit on the testnet. And when the game is ready, maybe end of next year, we will release the full version.
great excellent and Ulzka I know you're in fashion and if he's Amy had something to say about that but I want you to explain maybe to everybody like what you working on there at E. Coolska. Yes sure so we are one of the first digital brands in the world we're sustainable socially responsible
And we are developing two main directions. So first it's physical collection of fashion quotas and we see you like locally in Portugal from the innovative by the gradeable fabrics and at the same time we're actively developing the digital directions and we are creating the
not there, I'm not there yet, I'm coming over soon, but what's the fashion and tech connection out there? Are you seeing a lot of that happening? Is that why you're in this space? Well, I would say that all the target market is mostly the US and Europe. We have only our production in
in Lisbon, but for the digital direction we are working like all over the world. And I would say that there is actually great audience and great pool of young people especially who are very interested in the Web 3 and the new like fashion tag and etc. Okay, yeah, I agree with you and there.
So I think it just a matter of time when it gets it gets bigger and bigger It's only the beginning, you know, so like we'll see in the nearest future the progress Let's see let's see what happens when we all get to web summit There's a lot of people coming out the great speakers from all over the world coming to talk about web 3 So I'm gonna I'm gonna put a pin in it there now
Now let everybody get back to their evenings or mornings wherever you are in the world. Next week we will be doing the final one of these Twitter spaces. So I hope everybody here can come back and join us. Our next Twitter space is the same day. So next Wednesday, but earlier in the day one hour earlier, we'll be inviting Sandeep Nailwall, the Co-
founder of Polygon as our special guest. He was supposed to come this week, but we had to flip the schedules. Everybody's running around all over the world. So we're very excited to have the Polygon co-founder out here. You can still listen to the last couple of Twitter space we did with Kathleen Brightman of Tezos and Robbie Young of Animoca Brands. You just head over to the web summit Twitter feed. If you
want. You can sign up at Luma/Web3Space. I want to thank all the startups here. I'm very excited to see Bradley, Benjamin, you guys in Lisbon in three short weeks. It's almost sold out, everyone. I hope we can all see you there. Until next week then.
Have a great day. Thanks a lot.