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WTF AMERICA & is Zed Run punishing holders?! on Coffee w/ Captain #671
Recorded: June 28, 2024 Duration: 2:43:52Space Recording
Full Transcription
I was living Started off with a bitch, now I got coin, I see where y'all goin'
Been poppin' since web one, hella hoax on web two, I was livin' a dream
Now I'm on web three, and it is what it seems, top in the pyramid schemes
I'm tellin' ya, I sell you a percentage on Nebula, shout out to Vince, yo set it up
Surfin' on the web and I'm shootin' at three, I've been goaded when I got my T, I'm an alien
Boy, from a different planet, goaded when I got my G. I'm an elegant boy from a different planet.
Yeah, so I got my drink.
I'm riding in the 1920s model T Ford.
Car, era, Lord.
Call me Levi playing on the keys boy.
And I bout to put my gloves on.
If I said it then I meant that.
Yeah, I like that one. I'm about to get that.
Crash that whip for the drumsticks.
Whiplash. I'm about to get them all.
Are you with that? In a white boat. Surrounded blue, I want one, but I got a cop turned, I wanna fly high in the sky, arms out wide, trying to soar, you a bird's eye view.
I'm on fire, Ricky, Bobby, cracking the pavement, Whitney, Bobby, I'm a hockey bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
Bruce Wayne been a dog, and I keep it 101 cuz I'm feeling kind of spotty
Sipping on some rock and I'm sipping out octane the only thing around my neck is the black 20
Now I got coin I see where y'all go and pop it since web 1
Hella hooked on web 2 I was living the dream
Now I'm on web 3 and it is what it seems
Topping the pyramid schemes I'm telling you
I'll sell you a percentage on Nebula
Shout out to
GM, GM, drop us a GM in the chat down below
Give us some love on the space up above
Those likes, reposts, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated
We'll get rolling here in about 30 seconds
We can make a trade, get a memo
Reviews not falling for the FOMO
Listening to Coffee with Captain
You know we were a wide-day loco
I ain't never gonna stop rapping
Orlando, yeah, we workin' magic
We rockin' Ethereum in her teeth I just went and copped me a half bass
Started off with a bitch Now I got coin, I see where y'all goin'
Been poppin' since web one Hella hoax on web two
I was livin' the dream Now I'm on web three
And it is what it seems Toppin' the pyramid schemes
I'm tellin' ya I sell you a percentage on Nebula
Shout out to Vince, yo, set it up
Breaking them all the truth, why?
But they got knowledge to move, son
I'm shocking in shades with my brother in suits
Yeah, them blues is coming
Even though it's hard to pick, eeny, mighty, moe
Sold out on the mix, no biting lips, it's time to go
Index number one, no thumbs up, you gotta scroll
Looking at the ghost in studio, it's time to go
Had a helmet on by myself until I met a mask that wanted to have a face off.
Had to bring my chainsaw full ticket gas and a bribe when my brakes off.
I'm 8-1 with a deal with a stick zone.
This episode is brought to you by D-Gen Network, the only community-based Web3 media network
bringing you the very best content in the NFT and cryptocurrency space.
Please visit D-Gen.network and check
out our other great shows. That's DGEN. D-G-E-N.network.
Welcome to the future.
Welcome to Coffee with Captain GM. GM, we are excited to recap the presidential debate
for the next two hours. I kid it is a politics free show this morning.
I promise the people we may get in a heated debate about the most important
unimportant round to draft pick in the NBA draft of all time.
I don't know as if I've ever seen any fans upset or,
or even talking about round two picks in the NBA. If you're not an NBA fan,
round two picks are very rarely ever important. Most of them are the 13, 14, 15 man and never
play anyways. People are mad at LeBron for getting his son on his team. I think it's pretty cool.
Me, you know, if we're going to have the GOAT conversation, I've clearly been in the MJ corner there.
But I shared in the war room last night,
if LeBron wins a championship with his son,
I will at least acknowledge him as the co-goat of the NBA of all time.
I think it's pretty cool.
I'm here for the narrative and looking forward to that.
But in all seriousness, it's a Friday.
We will have some fun today. We'll recap the week in Web3, look at the weekend ahead.
We did get news of the Solana ETF potentially yesterday
as we were winding down the show.
And I'm sure a lot of else to talk about,
but I promise no political discourse this morning.
If you want to get your recap on that,
just go check the timeline.
I would just say that I like others. I like Von Fronten. I am
actively looking at property. I think the search for whether it be Puerto Rico or,
I don't know, that might not be far enough, Steve. It might be, Lisbon might suck me in
as we're over there for ApeFest in October. but I've got two years, and then I might be just a world traveler. I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, that'll be the extent of any political discourse. Go check the timeline. If you're on Twitter, you probably couldn't miss it, but not the greatest of day for Americans.
Not the greatest of day for Americans.
Yeah, no, I, my, my, my take on that is, is twofold, not related to anything election
specifically outside of number one.
Have we tried unplugging and plugging America back in?
Is this the best we can do?
Um, I, it was just uncomfortable to watch for me again, not commenting on honestly on
both.
Like we were kind of in the war room.
We were just like, this is awful for so many reasons.
It's, it's not even like even like one specific person is awful.
My only other take is that, you know, and again, not even going down the political spectrum as much as just kind of threw up top.
Like, you know, I was thinking about it this morning because, you know, we're not going to, like, you know, talk about this candidate or that candidate.
I also threw up, Steve.
You're not alone.
I think everybody threw up last night
but i did toss up in the in the jumbotron and kind of throughout this morning because i was
like thinking about it is my kind of final parting thought on it is um well one i kind of tweeted
this yesterday and i didn't put this in the maybe i'll toss in the chat but i kind of basically said
if you if you made a movie about and they had a debate scene and that debate was last night you'd
be like i don't believe you yeah it's not believe you yeah hollywood would not script it's not believable yeah i scored one
i basically said i said score one for the simulation theory on that one uh again we had a
president say uh a former president say i did not have sex with that porn star number one that was
a line on a debate in politics in 2024. So that was insane.
And then the only other thing I kind of threw up there was, well, two other things.
One, I saw Stephen A. Smith on some desk, and I just thought Stephen A. Smith on politics would be electric.
So that was good.
That was something I would look forward to.
And then the only bright thing to come out of it is we do have memes for days.
We are going to, if you're into memes, just brace yourself.
I have a feeling the memes between now and November, we might hit all-time high in terms of memes.
Yeah, well, and that's going to lead to tickers.
So I was paying attention for some tickers yesterday.
No such luck on those.
So yeah, so we'll have memes for days.
And other than that, my only other have memes for days. And then I, yeah.
And other than that, like, you know, my only other take, again, I put up top is I think
I was right that the main sort of, that crypto is not going to be a main election issue.
And I think that's a good thing.
And I don't want to go down like the rabbit hole of whether we think it is or whatever.
I think last night was affirming to my initial belief, which is we're going to see the same talking points add not doesn't matter what questions asked.
If you ask a question of either candidate, they're going to go back to one to three talking
points that they have eventually somehow. What was amazing last night was like, there is a moment
again, this isn't a commentary on one candidate. It's just more like one of those things that's
funny, where, like, I don't remember what it was, but like they asked like Trump a question and Biden had the same thing happen to him.
So it's not a Trump commentary, but this is the one I remember where like he goes on this long rant and Jake Tapper just goes like he goes on this long. Did you, you know, the question, you know, is,
the question was, how do you plan to keep the prices
of pharmaceutical drugs lower or something like that?
And it was just like one of those moments
where like we looked at each other, we're like,
and me and Ms. NFT barked to start laughing.
We're like, neither of them want to address the questions.
They just want to say four to five things at each other
over and over.
We saw that.
And so anyway, long story short,
no, I don't think crypto is going to be in the US election. I think that's a good thing. I think
it actually means it'll be less debated. Initially, we want to be like, I think it was almost
like celebrities coming into NFTs. We wanted it so bad. We want people to be talking about crypto.
We want it to be a main character issue. And it's like, well, wait a minute. If they're just passing
laws and regulations and ETFs are just happening, isn't that probably the optimal thing that we're just not arguing?
Like, we don't have to have people picking sides based on who says what on television
because they're then forced to for their team.
So I don't know.
Like, I'll say that again.
I don't want to get deep into it, but I thought, you know, I had this reflection this morning
where I was like, you know, when you have like something bad happened to you or something happened to
you and you're like,
actually that was the,
one of the best things that happened to me.
I actually think after watching last night,
the last thing I want is those two yelling about crypto on TV in an
uneducated way.
So I think it's a good thing.
So I'll kind of leave it at that cap and then we can move on to
anything.
But I figured I'd throw that out there.
Cause I was kind of,
I was doing kind of good about that actually.
Yeah. I don't, to your point, But I figured I'd throw that out there because I was kind of, I was feeling kind of good about that, actually.
Yeah, I don't, to your point, I don't know if anything comes out of good of any discussions at this point.
It's all, it's just, it's, we're laughingstock of the world.
Like, that's the thing.
I, like, I'm much more in tune globally now than I have ever been before due to I've got global friends before that I really didn't have.
And I, you know, it's just to see all the non-Americans on the timeline,
like laughing at us, like it's embarrassing. I don't know another word for it. It's just embarrassing. That said, hard pivot, too much time on, on the debate. Again, it's all over
the timeline. I'm sure you can, you can find it if you want further discussion on that.
Hard pivot though, Steve, in a talking about something I'm disappointed with,
slightly embarrassed.
I'm going to go light.
I'm going to hit the flyover because I did yesterday,
I sent out a post tagging Zed and their leadership and said,
I was going to go off this morning.
They're welcome.
Stage is open if they'd like to defend themselves or give their side of the
story.
I did get a few DMs and they've committed
to joining us on the show, but
they need some time, Steve. They need some time
because I believe they've
hopefully realized what they've proposed is
I don't say this
lightly. It's the first
time that I've really felt
like I'm getting rugged.
It's the first time. I just saw
another post on the timeline
that I commented on it,
and someone made the comment.
It's like, is this?
Like, it's...
Let me rewind before I even share the comment.
The TLDR is they made an announcement
that they're going to launch ZX.
But to get to ZX,
they're essentially nerfing the current game and all the assets.
I'm going to say that again. This is an on-chain game in Web3 where the players own assets,
in this case, NFTs, that they've played the game with, that they breed to create more assets.
And essentially, in some of these
assets, by the way, are quote unquote Genesis horses, meaning they weren't bred, they were
created by the game. And part of the pitch from day one is there'll never be more Genesis horses
created. These will always be at the core foundation, the core building block, whether
breeding or whatever the case may be. And the TLDR is they're moving to, they're going to call it ZX
and completely start the game over.
And instead of accounting for assets that players have, have acquired, have bred, have purchased,
they're, it's like, I don't know another way to say it, Steve.
Otherwise, it's like, trust me, bro vibes.
It's like, oh, we're going to give you points
for any assets that you hold
and those will convert to something in the new game.
Excuse me?
Like it's,
it's not even at all.
By the way,
only if you engage the current platform.
So like there's been a lot of a big Exodus game has been broken.
It is broken.
It does need a,
an overhaul.
They went through a few leadership changes.
The consensus is the last CEO really,
really broke the mechanics of the game.
It's just, it's not a good game.
It needs fixed.
And probably the best way to fix it is start from scratch.
But to do so and not account for the existing assets is, it's like the antithesis of Web3 to me.
It's, you know, here's the quote I was referring to, Golden Globe Masters. of Web3 to me.
Here's the quote I was referring to,
Golden Globe Masters.
I'm no legal expert,
but if I'm not mistaken,
Zed Run deleting horses so they can run a new game
called Zed X Run
sounds like a lawsuit
with a lot of merit.
I'm not a litigious person.
The whole class action of Top Shot,
and I think, by the way,
we all got 12 cents per moment that we held during that time.
I haven't even taken action.
I held a bunch of moments.
I could probably go claim about $12, but it's not like I don't care.
And I thought that was kind of a silly lawsuit.
I don't know how they avoid a lawsuit if they, in fact, do this.
Because it's not like I've got a lot of horses.
A lot of mine were bred. And I actually like,
I guess like per the ETH,
I've earned racing and breeding and selling.
I'm probably up slightly.
We're not going to talk about opportunity costs.
I see Von Fronten flew up in his hand.
I know he's got some brutal opportunity costs.
I like my worst trade ever,
Steve.
I traded a board ape for a Genesis Nakamido.
Nakamido.
Because I felt it would have,
as long as the game stayed,
it would have ongoing value.
You know, to breed, to race, etc.
And bred a lot of horses with that one.
You know, had some fun with it.
I haven't played the game for months because, again, the game is broken
and they need to reset.
But, and I'm not attempting to start some rumors here
saying, oh, we should start suing these Web3 brands
that rug us of our assets.
But am I completely off base to think deleting assets
that you own, that you were sold and purchased
with believing what the organization told you,
is that not like borderline theft? with believing what the organization told you is,
is that not like borderline theft?
Am I,
am I completely check me if I'm way off here,
but it is it,
whether theft or,
or potential fraud,
like misleading people.
Like,
it's just like,
and now they've re they've,
they've,
they've come back and say,
we're,
that was a missing misunderstanding.
We actually are going to,
you're going to get credit for everything you own,
everything you hold.
We just don't know all the details yet.
And it's like,
this CEO, by the way,
he didn't just start.
He's been on,
I think it's nine months he's been there.
So they had a long time
to prepare about this announcement
in the next phase of the game
and to come out and not have one of the most,
if not the most important question answered.
Like, oh, we don't know.
All your horses are getting deleted, but we'll make it up to you in the new game.
Maybe they do, but forcing your existing community who have invested in your platform to farm your
broken product to potentially get taken care of in the new game, it's the most disgruntled I've been with any Web3 brand.
And I say this as someone who has been a Zedrun brand ambassador
for over three years now.
Even through the ups and downs,
I always saw the potential,
always had faith in the team.
The founding team has moved on in this new leadership team.
I just like, I'm appalled by the announcement
and I'm not the
only one i'll end my rant we get von front in here and see uh if he's got similar different
thoughts we don't have to get it like i already went too far i really was gonna put most of the
conversation until we actually did get their leadership team on to defend themselves and
answer some of these questions but man it is it is i feel rugged i don't know the way to put it
i feel like i've been rugged or i feel like i'm in the process of getting rugged. Yeah. I mean, I'll kick it to Vaughn Fronten in a second
here, but yes, I mean, this is, this is a problem. I mean, this is like, I mean, I'll say like,
you know, this is absolutely something that, you know, is sort of the, to your point, the
antithesis of web three, it's, you know, taking an asset that was given to you in certain promises.
And actually it's kind of an odd timing you have.
Cause I was actually talking to, um, one of your, one, actually one of your boys,
Josh Prabowski and I were having a conversation yesterday about, um, I kid, I know, I know,
although I bet you softed on Josh at some point, whether he's right or wrong on certain things.
But, um, I, I was, um, you know, I was was i was having a conversation with him yesterday where
he was saying and don't react to this initially thing because it's a josh type thing but like
he was saying like you know hit someone else was in the comments saying that you know yuga labs
and other side and then delivering on what they promise and you know do they issue refunds what
does that look like how does it work in the real world type thing and i only bring that up to say it feels like Zed Run is now at the point where it's like
there are some questionable things now what was promised I don't know does the spirit of what's
promised mattered I don't know does the actual I don't know what matters in these situations
what I do know is that you know people put a lot of faith in them early on spent a lot of money and
like forget secondary like you
know i know you mentioned like you traded like a board 8th yacht club for like uh you know a
genesis uh not by the way nakamoto you said nakamigo which is amazing like you traded a
zed run you traded a board 8th club for when they were like 100 east for like a nakamigo that's
crazy um but it it's a problem and it's it's Oh, it was on the run up before they got nearly that high.
It was,
it was an early,
early,
like to give you an,
like just to put the whole trade in comparison,
I had to throw in,
I had to throw in a couple of mad cat militia to get the deal done.
Wow.
A mad cat militia.
That's a,
you know,
that's hard,
but I,
I just,
I don't know.
Like to me,
like I look at it and I say something as simple as like, it's, it is the intent that this is a web three. I do wonder
what sort of action can be taken there because, you know, again, as you know, you know, Josh and
the other person were talking about refunds in my, um, you know, in my DMS and, or in my, um,
uh, on the comments and what they could look like and how they can work and how impact theory did
it and how you would, you know, cause I kind of said, I'm like using the other side example.
I was like, so are you going to cover my gas?
Are you going to cover what I paid the day of the transaction?
Are you going to cover what it costs then?
Are you going to cover what is a coin now?
What if I sold it?
What about the buyer?
What about the buyer who bought it for more money?
What about the buyer for less money?
What?
So like, there's so many things that go into that that make it difficult.
Well, something like that run, I don't know what it looks like,
but the fact that like people have,
I mean, for the most part,
people have stuck with them to some degree
by not just completely unloading these horses
in many ways,
especially through the good, the bad, the ugly.
And yes, you were hoping it was going to work out,
but to see where it is now
and see them saying like,
oh, like, you know, we're, we're gonna,
we're basically gonna nerf all the old assets
and you'll get some points to work with the new stuff.
Like that should have been really well thought out about
what that process is so that the people who were playing the game could think about it. And by the
way, Zedrun also doesn't have an excuse in the sense that like, they are like, they're a horse
racing game that had betting. So they can't pretend like, you know, like Garga made a comment
yesterday about like, I thought we, you know, it seems like days ago at you know like garga made a comment yesterday about like i thought
we you know it seems like days ago at this point garga made a comment about like you know nothing
like overly financialized and what we're building we're just building cool shit and shipping it
zedron can't pretend they're not financialized because the whole thing they had was sports
racing and betting on those sports on those or on horse racing and betting on those horse races. So there's really no defensible position for what they're doing as I
understand it. And I have a handful of horses,
so I would have had a nice little stimmy of something good happened,
but not as nearly as many as you and some others.
So I'll put a pin in it on that one and we can go to Vaughn front.
And, but it's, it's, it is something that, I mean, it is, I, I,
I'm struggling to understand it.
And I understand why they didn't want to come on today because I don't think they have answers yet.
And hopefully, you know, and even though, you know, you said you're holding back, I would actually rather, honestly, I would rather them listen to this and come up with acceptable like solutions.
And, you know, like we've seen, we had somebody on this show.
I won't, or actually I won't say who, but there's a major project that listened to the show
at one point
that made a change
to a mechanic
that is pretty front
and center for them.
And to me,
that's a good thing.
Like that, that's fine.
And so I would love
to see Zed Run do that
all the same.
But Von Fronten,
you came up pretty quickly
when Zed came up.
Go ahead and get in here, GM.
GM gang.
I won't, I won't speak
to any potential, you know, lawsuits or basis for lawsuits or anything like that.
So I don't get spicy a lot.
And my level of spiciness is not the rigs or cap level of spiciness.
But this is going to be a pretty spicy take for me.
And the reason is for the people who weren't there for when people were minting zed run horses right we get
a lot on you know people get upset for what they pay for assets on secondary right and they say oh
my god i paid whatever 30 e for a moon bird and now they're worthless i paid 10 e for a gutter
cat and now they're worthless right but the the the defense is always, yeah, but the project didn't sell you it at that level, right?
The project minted it to you for whatever,
a thousand bucks, a couple hundred bucks, whatever.
That was their financial promise to you
was deliver $800 worth of value.
Anything you got above and beyond that, fantastic.
That was the market that wasn't there, right?
When these things minted, and the minting experience was horrendous for those who experienced it, right?
It was early days.
Contracts were breaking.
The internet was breaking.
Like, the site wouldn't load.
It was like the timeline would have destroyed it in these days, right?
it in these days right but you had horses going like these nakamoto you know z1 genesis horses
were going for like 20 30 000 up top direct to zed run right we had a stable i think we still have
a dozen or so genesis horses that we probably paid anywhere and we never even got into like
you know like you have like the z1s were the expensive, the Z10s were the least expensive at the Genesis.
We played in, like, the Z6 through Z10 streets, right?
Back half, and still probably unloaded, me and a friend of mine, 2 to 3E, you know, minimum, into this space.
Not secondary, not other people getting that money zed run directly getting that
money and we were minnows in this space and so like that that's the part for me for those of us
that great i'm not i'm uncertain there's a lot of people that are that are six figures deep in terms
of their purchases direct from zed if not seven figures deep there's there's like the ding-a-lings
of the world are probably well over a million dollars into into their purchases they bought
direct from from zed well and von fronten's making me feel worse about myself because i totally forgot
like up until right now i don't even know what happened to it because i ended up leaving the
group for various reasons but i was in a private discord group where we would talk about like
various things we'd want to buy and whatever and i I forgot we had a Zed Run stable that I probably tossed one to two ETH into,
which is going to hurt after an ETH ETF gets passed and there's that ETH is worth a whole lot more.
And a few times we talked about like, should we sell? Should we not? All these other things.
So actually, now that you're talking, Von Fronten, I'm remembering my group that I put together.
But keep cooking, go ahead. But yeah, now I'm, I'm remembering that I have money just sitting around on this.
Oh, don't, Oh,
between Zed run and cap rugby me on an AP money egg,
I probably could have had like, you know, 10 to 20 board apes at mint,
but you know, hindsight's 20 point. Um, so you're not,
you're not as down as bad as me right now. So, but no,
so I think that's the, that's the issue for me, right? Look, if other,
like we've seen changes in leadership and projects, right? We've seen other people come in,
try to salvage community, things like that. And, you know, but they, they did it on the back of somebody who, whether you hated the project, whether it was a rug, whether it was a failed
company, whatever, if you minted and you paid your funds to that company,
you probably weren't out a ton.
This hits different because you have people, right?
And you need to take the whales like Cap and, you know,
Diggling and others out of the world, out of it, right?
Right. Like you've got minnows like me who even were spending, you know, 10, 15 grand on these things that, you know a project that I meant for 0.05 ETH,
Like you've got minnows like me who even were spending, you know,
yeah, sucks, but I'll live on to fight another day. This one, and time doesn't heal all wounds.
This one just feels different. It feels more like a true gut punch that that concept of how much people paid directly to the company that you took over
has zero weight, zero bearing on any of the decisions that you're trying to revamp the
platform. I'll even take the value out of it. Things happen. Assets depreciate. It goes to
zero. I'd even give them a pass on that. What to me is, is unacceptable is how many
times did we hear the, like the, the analogy that all on chain gaming is better because,
you know, if, if Madden launches a new, you know, a new game, like you got to go buy all your,
your assets again. Like you can't train, you don't, you don't own those assets here. You
actually own your assets and there's a new game or, you know, like that, that whole
concept is just like thrown out the window here.
It's like, yeah, we're decentralized, but your assets are, we're not going to support
those anymore.
It's like, we're, we're really not web three gaming company.
Are we, this is just a web two organization masquerading on Jane.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's what it comes down to is like, and that's why it makes me
frustrated when I hear, you know, you and Von Fronten talking about it. And again, I've been
in these same sort of streets with a lot of the Zed stuff and seen, you know, like I forgot about
my stable and how much we were racing and, you know, like they were crushing the community.
Like, think back to the early days of Zed. There's a reason it got so
many of us so deep into web three. It wasn't just the game, but the community that developed around
it, the third party content, like they were on top of the world and they chose not to fan those
flames and shit happens. I get it. But man, the, how far they've fallen is it's sad.
Yeah. And like, uh, I, it's just,
it feels like this could have been,
I don't know.
Like,
again,
I don't want to say like,
it could have been a vote.
It's just,
it's just one of those things that just feels.
Icky.
Right.
It just feels bad to see like,
like your assets.
And I would explain to people with that run.
I'd be like,
I own these horses and I get,
you know,
you breed them the whole mechanism.
It's like,
I just, I can't. When you came in on this one yesterday, cause I just stopped
keeping up with that.
I just gave up as a failed, you know, experiment.
I was shocked kind of to hear the decisions and it just, yeah, it feels like, I don't
know what, I guess what it comes down to is we need to know, like, I guess from them,
like, and cap, this would be like for you on front and others, probably something to look into, like what was promised, how
was it promised?
And what were they saying they were going to deliver on?
And then from there, it's just a matter of like, obviously there's, you know, you know,
there's, there's exceptions to everything in how they're, you know, approach.
Right.
I mean, if it's like, they might've had TNCs, but if they're selling you $15,000 horses
and being like, yeah, and then we're going to get rid of those.
Like there has to be something like,
I would have to imagine there's probably something on record of,
you know,
and he's not there anymore,
but something on record of someone like abs being like,
yeah.
And like you own your horses.
So that's even better.
So they never go away or stuff.
Like there's probably something you can find related to that.
And I think that's what it comes down to is how,
what was promised and what was delivered
because i think that's the sort of sticking point when it comes to some of this stuff because i've
heard again even with the moonbird stuff i've heard people talk about class actions against
moonbirds based on things that were promised on the website again i think they had some pretty
tight tncs in there but does the spirit of what they did matter i don't know but it's definitely
going to get ugly pretty quickly.
I got to imagine sooner or later, we see some class actions from the 2021 mania.
Yeah.
I mean, we already have a top shot, top shot at a class action already. And like you said, and I think Joey Val's is saying 33 cents per top shot moment at
the time when they did it.
So I need to check on what that looks like.
So we're already seeing it.
And again, like this is probably a hot take, but I, you know, because people will be like, oh, we don't need laws, regulations, crypto. And I, you know, I get this pushback. I don't think it's a bad thing if we are seeing people, you know, enact actual real life, you know, laws and, you know, against companies that, you know, and right you know against companies that you know effectively rug them like that like
to me that's not a bad thing that is a step in the right direction as crazy as that sounds because
it means that you have to operate like a legitimate business and you can't just grift
off everybody else uh in these in this space my mind is just blown that they didn't like how do
you not anticipate this community blowback like now, now they're screaming, like, oh, no, because at first it was like, you just, your engagement from now until we launch a new game is how you're going to get rewarded points and assets in the new game.
And they're like, oh, well, we actually will, we will take into consideration past engagement.
It's like, and now they're screaming, like, oh, yeah, you're, you're, you're, if you have, like, you'll get some credit for, like, but they don't, they don't have any answers.
They don't know.
It's like, how do you not think you're going to get blowback
if you're telling your community who's paid collectively millions of dollars
for these assets?
We're going to destroy all the assets.
They're not going to be worth anything anymore.
But trust us, bro.
We're going to give you points in the new system that you can buy some assets.
You'll be happy.
It's mind-blowing to me that they didn't think through
the inevitable blowback that they're getting. Oh, I think they maybe anticipated
at least some of it, maybe not all of it, but my, my gut is they probably just thought it wouldn't
be this bad and it would just go away. And it would be like, yeah, you know, you just got to
weather the storm and kind of sit your way through it. And it's like, you know, like that's it. And
I don't think they realize it would be, and who knows if it's this bad, because it wasn't exactly
all over my timeline. So maybe they will get away with it
but yeah i'll be curious to see the direction they go as a company and it just it is a sad day
because zed run is something that onboarded a lot of people into this uh into this ecosystem or at
least a decent amount uh played around on there who were already in there and onboarded others
you know a lot of people it was these streets it was there were discords around it there who were already in there and onboarded others. You know, a lot of people, it was these streets.
There were discords around it.
There were so many things.
And now we sit here with our hands up saying, man, this kind of stinks.
We're just sort of, you know, left holding the bag.
And I don't know.
So I'll let Joey Vals get in here and kind of get his point.
And then we'll go to circles.
And then I know we got Caruso coming up to talk a little bit of true stuff.
And then at 845 and, you45 and from there we can keep running.
But go ahead and get in here, Joey Vals.
GM guys, so I'm going to preface this with I haven't owned a single Zed Run asset.
And the reason why is when I came into this space,
I didn't know a single person that owned NFTs.
So I wasn't really sure where to get started.
Then after being in here for a few months, come to find out a really good friend of mine.
He owns a pretty big apparel company.
He actually is responsible for doing the apparel for all of the biggest NFT projects early on in the space and helped create the token gated, the original token gated merch
store was a huge Zed Run guy. And every time we would talk and we would talk about the space and
what's going on, he's like, did you get into Zed Run yet? Did you get into Zed Run yet? And I was
like, no, I haven't. I was like, it's, I don't understand. Like there's so much information here,
right? Like all the different layers of horses and this and that. And he was like, don't understand. There's so much information here, right? All the different layers of horses
and this and that. And he was like, don't worry, we'll hop on a call. I'll explain it to you.
You got to do it. It's so much fun. I'm up all this money. And I never ended up doing it because
he was so busy. He didn't get a chance to explain it to me. was not easy for me to just drop a bunch of money to start playing
because of how expensive the assets had gotten. I wasn't going to go buy a bunch of cheap-ass
horses that had no chance of winning because I'm competitive. I want to win. I need to figure out
the best strategies, buy the best horses, So I could never play Zed run.
What I can say though, is that my dad does this in real life.
My dad is a races.
He's a, he's a stable owner and he owns horse races, racing horses.
And this feels so he's in New Jersey and he races at a track called monmouth and they have this
thing called jersey breads where every weekend every every race day there's races that are
specifically for jersey breads because jersey bread horses like statistically and genetically speaking are not as
good as Kentucky bread or Dubai bread or whatever, right? Like it's because Jersey is not the hot
bed of racing like New York and Florida and Kentucky and places like that. So they allow you, if your horse was a, is bred and born in Jersey to compete
against other Jersey horses, that would be like Monmouth saying, Hey, sorry, no more Jersey bread
races, only Kentucky bread races. So all you people that have spent all this money breeding
Jersey bread horses, you're fucked now.'s actually to be honest like i would even
make it i would take it a step further and and like i would say this would be the equivalent
of them saying no more horses bred anywhere up until this point only horses bred henceforth
from a new stable that the track is sanctioning shall count and if you talk about us on social
media then your horses will be able to race and you'll get better opportunities. Like that, that's what this sounds like to some degree.
Like it's like, it's, it's even more extreme than what you're saying. Like the real world
analogy makes sense, but like, I think it's even more extreme from what I'm understanding.
Yeah. And that's, what's crazy. Cause I think about like, from a real world perspective,
if they, if they said, forget what you just said, right, which is really extreme. But if they said that to my dad, like, Hey, your stable is basically 95%
Jersey bread horses. And sorry, they can't run here anymore because it's only going to be
Kentucky breads. Now my dad would sue the ever living shit out of them. Right. Because of,
and, and, and I don't, and again, I don't know
the terms and conditions of Zed run and, and, and all that stuff like that, but I can't imagine
that like, there has to be something and I'm not a lawyer also, so I don't know, but this just
doesn't feel forget legally and all that stuff like that but this what what they're doing just doesn't
feel right like i don't know how you expect to build a new community or and bring back your old
community when you're doing something that genuinely makes them unhappy because like my
dad would be like if this was was real life, my dad would
again, would be, you know, sue them and whatever, whatever.
So like, I can't even imagine how much, you know, these people feel.
Um, cause I, like I, it just, it's crazy to me, but anyways, that's what I just wanted
to share.
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's bananas.
It's a bananas, like concept to think about and
like here's the thing i honestly don't care what the tnc specifically say because like it's it's
about what you said your actions as you went on this thing what's even crazier to me though cap
um you know is you know before we go to circles what's even crazier to me is that the product was
so fun right it was like it was like an actual like
even like it's funny because Joey mentioned the horses I had like a couple of Genesis horses some
Z10s and I couldn't I couldn't play in the Nakamoto streets like even though I I sort of I
guess technically did uh play in the Nakamoto streets a little bit um with with the stable
that I was part of but it's like it was fun we there was events there
were people live streaming to your point there were people who had personalities based off the
fact that they would go on streams and stream races and talk about them i went we went to an
event in um you know an event hold it hold like sports center level production quality derby race.
There was more cool community stuff happening back in 2021 with Zed
than maybe we've seen in the collective space since then.
As far as the community actually getting together,
creating really cool stuff that wasn't paid for by Zed.
It wasn't sponsored by a DAO.
It was just the community loved it. That it was, it was truly fun. And there was a community, a real community building
around it. And it's just, that's all gone. It was like an e-gaming community. Go ahead, Joey.
I was going to say the, what I can say that I do remember too, is I was a streamer on Twitch back in like, uh, 2020 and 2021.
And I remember seeing people streaming Zed run in 2021 on Twitch.
Like, so I, I used to play a lot of Madden and we would, I would play in a league.
We'd have 32 owners, everybody got their own team. And we would have like game featured, like our own version of like Monday night football,
where we would have like commentators commentate the game because we had a whole community around it I remember seeing that
with Zed Run like I remember going on Twitch and and being like what is this horse racing and it
was literally people like if it was like you were at the track on a Saturday telling you like who
the picks should be and their their records and. And like, like that's an amazing,
like that's an organic, amazing community. I didn't have near, I didn't have nearly as
many followers back in 21 as I do now, far in a way it was even close. The most engagement I
would get on the timeline is if I put a simple video of my, uh, of a Zed horse winning a race,
like it, you know, especially it was a big comeback. Like those would cook on the the timeline and i'd get like they'd get thousands and thousands of impressions when my average tweet
would get like a hundred yeah i mean it was a it was a true moment in time and again like
like i don't like for those who weren't here experiencing by the way hit us with a like and
a retweet a comment in the room i know fridays oftentimes are sleepier people are just at the
end of the week they're just trying to make it, so we totally get it.
But do us a favor.
Give us some love on the space.
A comment down below.
We'll look through the comments as we go.
But, yeah, this was a very, like, for those who didn't experience it,
what you have to understand is that what Cap and me are saying is
this was a absolute mania with real,
like I felt FOMO, even though I was somewhat small involved.
I mean, even like at one point I went to Atlanta for like the opening of the
fan control, the, I think now defunct fan control football league.
When they had like some, some NFT based, you know you know,
play calling and stuff going on in there.
I showed up down there and I get to Atlanta and like there was Zed run races streaming
on a big screen with people in the night to DGN community because nights of DGN was doing
some stuff with them.
And like members were streaming races like sports center, talking about it, talking about
upcoming tournaments, breaking down the horses, breaking down their records.
There were third party tools where you could go.
And when you were shopping for horses, you looked at their win percentage.
You looked at their percentage through APIs against certain distances
because you could race all sorts of differences.
If you haven't seen Zedron, I recommend checking out
or at least looking up videos of it.
It is a beautiful platform.
My kids loved it.
They would ask me to do horse races regularly.
It's the thing that I would show people when they came to my house
in like the summer of 2021 to be like, they'd be like, I don't get NFTs. I was like, check this
out. I would show them a horse racing, no matter what place I took after waiting an hour in the
queue, because they had so many people in so much demand, I would show them and they would say,
that's really cool. I'd be like, and I can breed that horse and I own that horse and they can't
take it away from me. And I'm able to do this and they have this deal with this. And, uh, you know, I could be like, like people would be
like, I would watch that. Like, it's like streaming video games. And it's just to go from having that
lead pole position to where they are now. It is crazy to see that fumble and see how they're
with the community. But, you know, again, I'm not trying to like talk ill of anybody who's tried to
build or did their best on it. Right. But it's like to have that advantage and that opportunity
and to have such a great product and to have it net out where it is now and to have that community
and people, again, think about this with no incentive or money involved. Some of them
eventually charged, but with no incentive and money involved, people created multiple third-party tools
that they then used with their, you know, they then-
You know what unlocked me?
My biggest aha moment,
like a core memory of mine in my crypto journey, Steve,
was the very first time I logged into Know Your Horses,
which was created by the Lucky Trader group.
I think Know Your Horses is now offline, as the Lucky Trader group. I think Know Your Horses
is now offline, as is Haku, which was one of those third-party marketplaces. The first time
I logged into Know Your Horses and my entire stable was there and all their racing history,
that was my, oh my goodness, blockchain tech is going to change everything moment. It was that.
It was that very moment, the first time I logged into a third-party site and it just instantly i signed a you know a simple transaction yes i own this wallet and all my
historical data came in there and it it it 10x the the experience of the game like it they had
so much like to point we're talking the raging bull of 2021 i was grinding this game daily
knowing it was it was bad opportunity cost.
Like, even though it was profitable to play the game at the time,
I knew when the market was just ripping like that,
it was not the best use of my time, but I was enjoying it and saw the future and to see how far it's just...
I think the other...
I'll wrap my thoughts here and let you take it to hands.
My last thought on it before we get, you know, the actual leadership team on here is just that you can't let things go so long without making
changes. Like you, and if you're going to make massive sweeping changes, you need to get out
front and communicate those with your, your community. And in their defense, this is what
they're saying. Oh, we didn't have all the answers we want to share now. That way we can get the feedback from the community.
But it's been far too long.
It's just like every month that goes by and nothing's said,
you're getting compounding utility debt.
I'll steal Riggs's phrase there.
And expectational debt from the community.
It's just whatever you end up doing is going to be a lot harder
the more time you let go by without any action
to where they're putting themselves, they almost need a Hail Mary.
And I don't disagree that resetting the game is needed,
but how they're going about it and just completely throwing out,
well, I shouldn't say completely,
the communication so far is that your existing assets,
they matter, but you have no idea how you're going to get rewarded for them
and you may or may not be happy with you just trust us you'll you'll be happy with what you get
in the new game is how it's been communicated and that is just about as poor as poor can be
from a common standpoint yeah and and i guess like the the last thing i'll say and then we'll
throw we'll throw around the hands we'll go i know circles that we got and then we have
shiba getting in here and i know cruce's hand up when it related to this as well. You know, to me, it's like, what's crazy.
And I keep saying this is like, the game was so good that like, you like the game required
them to make some tweaks along the way.
Yeah.
You didn't want people classing down and you want to figure out different ways, but like
there, it was like, it wasn't a thing.
And it's easy for me to say from where I sit,
but it wasn't a thing that was necessarily difficult to manage from a,
like you had the things that everybody fucking dreams of, you know,
you had the VC funding, you had big names,
like Mark Cuban involved with it.
Mark Cuban went on what mint condition to talk about it or wreck podcast.
I don't remember which one you had, you know, or not Mark Cuban.
They Darren Revell or not Mark Cuban,
they Darren Revell on when Mark Cuban was getting involved with it.
So it's like, you have Mark Cuban and big names involved.
You have a ton of money from the VCs.
You have attention from people.
And you have a amazing product
that I could show to any normal human being.
And they're like, that's dope.
That my kids say that dope.
We used to breed horses.
Me and my kids would breed horses,
try to snipe someone who was trying to breed within their own stable
or breed with a friend, right?
And find a good cheap horse to breed with and then name them things.
So like we do talk about Bruno, Midnight Taco Bell.
Like everyone got their different ones they're allowed to name.
One named after a Roblox game.
It's like, this was a family event.
This was something that was incredible.
And now we flash forward and we're here.
It's like, again, it is harder to build a business.
And I am not, not, I am very empathetic to how difficult it is to build a business.
I am not discounting how hard it is, but to have such a great product and funding and
a community and money running into it,
that people willingly handing you $20,000 for a horse and having, you know, big names who are interested in it
and having like that much attention to go from there to here.
It's bananas to me that we ended up here with such a great early,
especially because they were known as the innovators.
They introduced these crazy breeding mechanics.
This wasn't just crypto kitties breeding a one-to-one.
This was breeding a living, breathing asset that could race,
that would have stats and, you know,
algorithms that fell into racing statistics based on certain distances
and, you know, everybody playing speculation and fan theories.
And then here we are today.
So I'll get off my rant too because I know we have some hands.
We'll play to hit Caruso probably around nine because we're going to have the Zed team on and then they jumped on us. So I don get off my rant too, because I know we have some hands. We'll play to hit Caruso probably around nine,
because we're going to have the Zed team on, and then they jumped on us.
So I don't think we have a special guest.
So we'll flush the hands and get through there and talk a little bit of true stuff,
talk about someone really building in the space, which I'm really excited about.
A lesson of not giving up, for that matter, and continuing to push through.
But Circles, go ahead and get in here.
Death Taxes and Circles, go ahead and get in here. Def Taxes
and Circles having trouble with his mic.
I gotcha. I gotcha.
Okay, let me get the headphones out. That way I don't sound atrocious.
It's just a
tale as old as time.
I've realized that my headphones are absolutely
shot. The AirPods, this is like the third pair.
So I'm just going raw dogging on the speakerphone.
Can you drop
your ETH or whatever wallet
is easiest for you to convert to USDC? Please drop it in the
wallet. We'll raise $19.99
for Circles Today to buy a pair of wired headphones.
It just went on too long.
Here's the problem. I bought a pair of wired headphones,
and then I upgraded phones, and now I no longer
have a lightning port. It's a fucking USB-C
or whatever the fuck they're called.
Anywho.
That's like $4. There's no
excuses at this point. If you're going to talk on
Spaces, we've got to get you at least
a pair of $20 headphones that work with
your phone. I know. It's a problem.
I'm working on it.
The call is out there for a better pair of
preferably wireless, but we'll get it.
No problem. You don't go wireless, but we'll get it. Anywho, so. No problem.
You don't go wireless.
You just use wired headphones.
You suck up the cord.
It's 20 bucks and it'll sound crystal clear.
Yes, but my Wi-Fi is atrocious and my phone only works in one spot.
So I have to move around and then have the phone be in one spot in order to actually make this work.
There are no good solutions.
believe me um so looking at the zed run stuff more of a macro level um and you guys kind of stated
Believe me.
that this is you know the idea was oh you own these assets and they'll transfer forward well
if the small people aren't doing it does that mean that those like triple a games are even going to
be doing it so what kind of and the answer is probably no they'll just say hey buy our new
assets and poo poo if you have the old ones. We don't really care.
So what I guess my question is,
would the solution be a third party coming in
and being like, hey, we're going to go ahead
and take over those assets and screw you Zed
and we're going to show you how it's properly done?
And I guess the issue with that is it takes money.
So I don't know, just something that my brain was turning
when this was kind of discussed a little bit in the war. So I don't know, just something that my brain was turning when this was kind of
discussed a little bit in the war. So I love this thought circles. I am. This is I did not know
to think about circles. He is incredible because he is a smart guy, but he is a box of chocolate.
Sometimes you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you're going to get shenanigans.
Sometimes you're going to get thoughts. This is the big brain thought of the day right here,
though. This is like the thought, not necessarily even another game taking it over
which is certainly a possible thing but forget that put that aside think about if somebody just
offers literally anything to that community while the sentiment is down and finds a way to onboard
like if you have something that tangentially i don't know what it is so we're just sort of
brainstorming on this one.
It's there. Photo Finish,
they've taken a lot of the market share.
This is the Ian. Maybe we should have Ian
on and let him take his take. Ian's the CEO
of Photo Finish, who's on Solana.
I've said multiple times, you guys need to do a vampire
attack. You do a vampire attack, you'll get the
rest of that community over. Do a one-to-one.
You got these horses.
Their game is vastly different. It's a much
slower burn, and they can't do it exactly
like that. What's happening
now, Steve, is you have community members
in Photo Finish that are basically...
They're dangling free horses to
Zed players. Hey, come over. I'll give you one of my
bread horses.
I think, I truly
do believe, if Photo Finish
doesn't do something soon,
it is a massive missed opportunity.
It's the lowest hanging fruit for a vampire attack
maybe in the history of crypto.
You've got a community that can't wait
to find something else, find a new solution,
and you've got a viable competitor
who's just saying, oh, we don't need to do that.
Maybe they don't, but man, if it were me,
I would take the flood of new
users yeah no big fucking facts and like that just shows that like you know i i didn't know
you would have had that conversation i'm not super familiar with photo finish outside of
i think photo finish at one point reached out to me and i had some some sort of token opportunity i
declined because i just it didn't didn't line up and i wasn't as in the ecosystem but like man like
photo finish or if there's
a car racing game that actually comes out and works. Right. I mean, I know that, you know,
we, we saw right racers didn't, but there's, you know, if there's, I don't know, like some sort of
gaming company that wants to get a community to your point that tangentially or directly related,
like a photo finish, just go and say, trade in your assets and get these. Could you imagine
if photo finish now, again, the tricky part is here is do they fuck over their existing community? Just go and say, trade in your assets and get these. Could you imagine if Photo finished?
Now, again, the tricky part is here is,
do they fuck over their existing community
if they say, cap, you come in,
and now you're a whale and you do awesome?
That's where the trick comes in.
But man, if you can get in there and be like,
hey, Zed Run community, here's what we're going to give you.
And they give you some advantage to get started,
some opportunity.
And it is happening.
I'll go grab a tweet from Dan Chan,
who has been a long time,
a community member of Zed,
also built a lot of those third-party racing tools.
Blood Tool is another one,
so it helps with breeding.
And he spun up his own,
it's called DNA Racing.
So just to your point,
it's more of like,
think of like a futuristic motorcycle type,
but similar racing mechanics.
And yeah, he just came out and said,
basically, they're doing some sort of vampire attack.
You own a digital horse.
Head to our eligibility page
and see if you're eligible for a free bike
and some racing cash.
So others are doing it.
I don't know. Honestly, I don't know if that is the best strategy because you're also talking about utility debt. To your point, not only you pretend you run
the risk of potentially alienating your existing community, but also picking up a lot of baggage
that of the community that largely is somewhat disgruntled or unhappy. I don't know. You can't do a one-for-one.
Probably the way to do it is just some sort of,
oh, come over, we'll give you a blind draw
or something like that.
Man, if Zed even did that,
if they just said, hey, for every Genesis,
you're going to get a new Genesis horse,
but it's going to be a blind draw,
all your bread horses are going into a burn
and you're going to get points or something.
To not have any plan and just pull the trustless bro bro card that is what i'm taking the most issue with it's
like they had to know there was going to be pushback when you say oh your your assets that
you've paid in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars for they're going away and we're not
going to tell you what you're going to get in return and i would even say like i don't know
like i keep getting down to this idea of like not like when I think of the vampire attack, I don't know, like I'm really curious how many
people in that community also have Zed horses because if they're in a horse racing community,
there's a good chance they're also sitting on a bag of Zed pissed off.
So it's like, I just, I don't know.
Like I just think about like the opportunity there that, and potentially, man, it's crazy
to think I was at Disney world a couple of years ago.
And we were talking about like Zed run and and freaking budweiser horses that people were buying on
auction and now we're here but i just i i don't know i think that there's probably something
i mean budweiser stellar they had major partnerships cap it's crazy yeah really i mean it is it is
definitely a fumble and um i i know we want to get to hands here,
so we'll keep the hands buttoned up,
probably 30 seconds or less.
No offense to Sheba or Snowflake,
but shout out to Veggie Dave in the chat.
Joey snuck one in.
If you've not participated on Zed,
we're going to ask you to hold your comments.
If you've been active on the platform,
sure, we'd love to hear how you're feeling,
but if you've not participated on Zed,
we're going to skip over
and keep the conversation flowing this morning.
We've had a lot of people
that love to talk about everything,
every topic we talk about,
and some would have no baseline,
no experience, and have never participated.
That's not the best content for our show.
So no disrespect,
but if you're not an active ZAD participant,
if you've not used the platform,
if you're not familiar with it,
just go ahead and put your hand down,
and we'll move on or if you have questions
about it like happy to answer because Cap was deep
in the streets and I am as well so if like there's a
thought be like hey but is this the case or
ideas always open to those because to
the point like circles I whether
circles participate in Zed or not like
banger point about like you know potentially the
vampire attack and real quick Cap
before we go to Sheba and then Snowflake on that I'll
say this I mean the other thing I'll throw out there is like the idea that like you could do a vampire
attack maybe unrelated to that even like maybe something like it's just i keep thinking that
if you can get people excited about something with that community i guess like my my thing i think
about is like there's some communities i'm not going to name names that i would want nothing
to do with as a founder
and be like, no. People would talk about
they're going to acquire this brand
or Pudgy Penguins is going to acquire this brand.
I'm like, why? It has nothing to do with their brand.
They'd have to build it. The community's already disgruntled.
I know the Zed community's disgruntled,
but I also know that maybe
it's about something unrelated. Maybe it is about a vampire
attack with a horse. Maybe it's a vampire attack with
a current racing program, but the idea that you could potentially get the people
who were creating sports center, like content to me, I just have to think some community can find
a creative way to get those people excited and be like, for every horse you had, you get blank,
or this is what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to do a racing competition.
There's got to be a creative person out there that can find a way to get that and even if you
get 15% of the Zed community and 5% of those passionate ones that's a major win for a community
like maybe this is a way to get some consolidation in our space into some things that they care about
or drive in a different direction but I don't know I got to think on this because like circles
has got my wheels spinning and sounds like you thought about this as well. But, um,
I think we had Shiva snowflake and have in that order.
Shiva again,
I'm serious.
Shiva.
If you've not played on the platform,
please put your hand out.
I don't want to hear your opinion this morning. I would like,
we've got,
we're a little under the gun and I see I invoked Ian who was referencing the
founder CEO of photo finish.
I'd much rather hear his take on this than someone who hasn't played a,
a racing game on chain.
So Shiva,
I'm not kidding.
Like I'm going to beat you from the stage. stage if if you don't have any experience on the
platform okay so i don't know why once again not wearing the mutant right off the bat hesitant and
crazy i played zed i played a lot actually so in the beginning when i started off the game no idea
what the fuck i was doing i actually went on a stream one of the streams i forgot the guy's name
i'd have to go look back because i don't really do Twitch as much anymore.
But I won a horse, and it was a pink one, of course.
Very beautiful horse.
Put him in races, eighth place every time.
I'm like, okay, maybe the horse just sucks.
Maybe it's just like one of those breeded horse the streamers were giving away,
and it just stunk.
And then I got deep into it a little bit.
Then I started realizing the distances had to do with something.
This is back when you can actually sandbag your horse,
when you can take him and figure out the distance he's good in, just put them in those races and
he'll actually place in the top three most of the time. And if you wanted to bring down your horse
and bring it down to like a lower class where it would perform against, maybe horses were good in
that range, but they weren't like the top rank type of horses. Excuse me, I don't remember the
types because it was so long ago. Yeah, but you're right. Just real quick, the term that I used earlier, I appreciate that, Shiva, because I used the
term class down, and that's exactly what I was talking about when I said that.
So I probably used a non-colloquial term, but class down basically is what Shiva said,
where you intentionally lower your horse to win at certain races to maximize your spending
ability.
But go ahead, Shiva, continue.
Correct.
And then they added the energy or whatever the hell it was called, whatever it was,
to where if you did put your horse in a race and it did well and you kept doing a bunch of races, it would reduce the stamina, right?
And then you have to wait. There was a time when you could put the horse back in.
So I would literally spend a day or two sandbagging the horse, downgrading them all the way to the lowest I possibly can go.
You couldn't take them all the way back to where they started, beginner or whatever, or even the next rank up.
But I know you could take it from class one to class
three in a day.
Once they changed that and they went to this whole new
idea of max breeding and then they increased
the supply of the horses and people
didn't really like the game anymore because they couldn't really
do the downgrade or anything, they lost a lot
of players, a lot of OG people that really liked
the different ways you could interact with the platform and the games.
Then we lose users, very similar to a lot of these games.
So just like Stephen Capp said, I think the company would need to capitalize.
You would need to reduce the supply of horses somehow,
burning the token you can use in the game, maybe a new class of horses,
obviously a new strategy trait-wise.
I think we'd have to revamp it to a degree.
Not totally, just revamp the game
in general. Then they bring back, like you said, the OG, maybe five or 10 percent of players and
you get people streaming them again. And then you can actually use the platform. What I would love
to see is something like Zed run at a racetrack. You know, you could watch horses, but at the same
time you could gamble on crypto horses and you can watch them on a screen. That would be ideal.
I'm not saying that would be like, you know, a major breakthrough, but that would be something
that I think could definitely happen. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me
of back in the day when, uh, you know, ZG, our buddy, he's at Gazette who, you know, actually
was one of my intro onboarding people into web three. And I actually have a special shout out
for him in the back of my book because, you know, he would, he would talk about crypto in a way that
I understood. And, you know, it was, it was one of the smarter people early on in the space who I
was just in awe of when he would talk on spaces.
And I remember him saying something very similar where he's like, you know, he would picture, Cap, and I think you too, the idea of, you know, you going, you know, to a casino in Vegas and sitting around with Zed Runhorses going in front of you and being able to watch that. And like that concept, that idea was so cool.
The thought of being like, yeah, like we're sitting in a Vegas casino, placing bets, sitting
down. We've done the research that so many people do from like various sites. Maybe you have some
accessible sites that you could use over there, but the sharps would have other things. Like
that was what we were dreaming of and we never got it. So I think that was like the dream to
Shiva's point and to your point about, you know know what this could have been yet here we are but
um let's go snowflake and then i'll let you kind of kind of hit in and then we'll go with caruso
and hit a little true stuff or no sorry have have after uh after snowflake i forgot we had the hand
snowflake get in here sure good morning um everybody asks asks why founders did this, why founders did that.
And we need to look like in the human behavior in general.
And when you look at some founders and some successful stories,
it's going to start to go down.
It feels like once they reach certain limits,
they'll slightly slow ragging the project.
And if it doesn't work, then they start changing the roadmap the way that community actually
don't want to change it.
Right.
Going like against the community even, or like picking up like one voice and like following
it and saying like, yeah, this was ideal for community when it wasn't.
And like, in this case, you think there is other games that also involve
breeding you know if you do research you see what goes good what's not going good you know it's not
the original concept like if they really really truly believe in like another success in the long
term versus like okay now i go with my other previous life, you know, with the money I earned, then like there's
so many options.
And yes, you have to listen to community if you want to really expand.
And losing this opportunity with so many like engaging clients, let's say, it's just like
a nonsense.
But again, it's just all comes to human behavior.
Like some teams, you know know in the crisis or something reducing
the team doing research hiring people who like uh know like what to do in certain situations
like have the knowledge in certain games and certain tactics like development of the actual
direction but it's all up to like what they decide to do and if they have this tight circle
you know and kind of like dying vibe inside it like there is no no future and you cannot change
human behavior that easily you know and and unfortunately like somebody mentioned before
like what do i do do i sue them like uh like contact some lawyer if you want to know the options but like that's
what end up being with some of the projects they got sued they signed like a day to non-disclosure
after they got sued so people who sue them cannot talk about it and that's it right uh but again like
web free it's so different so you can't really shut up too many people like people will be vocal
people will speak out no matter how many like shoulders they hire saying like this person is
incorrect that's not what happened like the sentiment even for those who not talking like
it's there and it's not changing yeah And you need to listen to silence.
And I, and I think to your point,
then the sentiment becomes hard to get back once you've lost it.
And I think that that's,
I think that's what you run into is the sentiment becomes really hard to get back once you've lost it in those situations. And, you know,
there's only so many options people have in these scenarios.
And I think that's one of the reasons why you're hearing a lot of people's
voices this morning,
sounding almost despondent about how it's going down because it's, it is for sure a, you know, it's a,
it's a tough scenario. And there's, again, there's only so many things that you can do,
you know, in these, in these circumstances. So I think it puts everyone in a tough spot.
And to your point, like, you know, the options become very limited.
The best points, I feel like,
sell the company to someone who actually take over completely.
And not even like a gudger gang did, right?
Like that's the person taking over, took over, right?
More, like completely, 100%.
Don't stay involved at all.
If they can't let it complete.
And instead of trying to milk one way or another,
like just sell it for whatever you think your max milking will be,
you know,
because if they think like everybody is a cow without the brain or something,
it's not how it works.
Like the best thing they can do for community,
maybe it's just sell the company completely.
Yeah.
Instead of saying like beautiful words
that everybody wanted to hear.
It's not going to work.
I agree.
I mean, I think it's a tough spot that they're in
and it's like, well, they bought it for a reason
and they want to run it for a reason.
They have a plan for a reason,
but maybe it's, you know, like Cap said,
I mean, I just think time and time again,
and I've seen this and I'm not going to name names
with various communities,
that you see that these communities
don't realize the consequences of, or these leaders don't realize the consequences of the
community and how they're going to react. And then they seem so surprised by it. And it's,
it's insane to watch. Um, have, let's let you get in here. Have, go ahead and get in here. Uh, GM.
Hey, GM guys. Um, yeah, I'll give up one of my Burners accounts. This is ZG. I ran the DeguBet site for a while. My square spaces don't really work on my personal account, so now I have this one. that they should reward players for past experiences and not going forward on the platform.
But I would ask anyone that's upset with the platform,
if they rewarded us,
wouldn't we just dump our horses and assets in the future?
So just kind of your opinion on,
would you guys do that?
Would you be loyal to the platform
and hold on to your assets
in the hopes that it will get better?
I mean, just as a straight question and answer,
and ZG, good to hear you back there,
good to hear your voice on stage, actually.
I would say I would,
Cap, you may be different than me
because maybe you have a different experience.
If they made the platform work
or gave me some sort of rewards towards the platform,
I still want to do Zed Run.
I still would do a Zed Run horse.
I would do a race today
if I felt like it was worthwhile use of
my time or we were enjoying it again and i was like i would absolutely stay on the platform would
you cap i i would stay on the platform i definitely would yeet some of the by like i just i way way
way way way way way way way way overexposed not even like in the in the realm of being slightly
overexposed um just way too deep. And it was always...
The reason I'm so deep is I was always holding on for that moment. At first, it was the Zed token.
And that was, well, not a rug. It was very underwhelming based on the assets I held.
And so I'm like, well, it can't get any worse. And so it was always... Then we lost the third
party marketplace. And it was just, it was really hard to sell and buy horses. I'm like, well, it was always waiting for the right moment to take some off the table. See, I certainly would be taking some off the table, but like Steve, I actually enjoyed the game. And if they can fix the broken parts, which I believe they can. I mean, there's even been so many suggestions from the community. Most of the community is like, just roll the game back.
Just roll it back a couple versions
ago where it was fun. People were racing,
people were breeding.
Most of us know when they broke the game.
If you've been playing, just roll it back
to that prior state. Let us at least...
Two versions of Zed would be
better than killing this. Some are saying,
just keep the old version running, build your new
version, and people can choose. I don't know that's the answer but i i'm pretty confident the way
they've communicated what they believe to be the answer is is poorly communicated at best
yeah for sure um joey let's get in here then i'll throw it back to you cap to uh or ian ian's
waving a hand so i'm gonna go to ian before we go to joey just because i know the hands not up but ian i i'll cap i'll let you you talk in a
little bit at like we and uh go from there yeah it's been a while even i don't know if someone
pinged you or you just you caught the bat signal but uh appreciate you jumping on this morning
would love to maybe do a more formal deeper dive and a and a have you on us one morning when when
timing works but you know i'm sure you've been paying attention,
I've seen this.
I made the suggestion,
waiting for that vampire attack from Photo Finish,
not to feel free to take the conversation
wherever you'd like,
and not asking you to bash on your competitors,
rather just curious what you are
on this conversation we've been having.
Yeah, I mean, I had a little bit of a,
I was very shocked for sure.
For people who don't know, we run Photo Finish. It's kind of the competitor to Zed, I had a little bit of a, I was, I was very shocked for sure. You know, for, for people that don't know, we run photo finish.
It's kind of the competitor to Zed, I guess, you know, we've been out for a little over
a year and, and, and definitely have been watching Zed so closely, but at the same time,
I know those guys that I met them back in 2018 before their product was out.
And we were like discussing, sharing our racing engine with them, like as the licensing deal, because they didn't even they didn't have racing racing working at that time.
So I just always loved that they were kind of, you know, trying new things.
But I also as a as a design team, we we could see the flaws in that economy with the sort of infinite breeding.
And, you know, I just never expected that they would shut it down.
I really thought that they were going to, you know, announce,
to be honest, a lot of our mechanics,
like aging or something that was going to go down.
And then I'm like, all right, we're going to,
now it's going to be a fight.
You know, I was just really ready for a battle.
And for it to basically just be like, well, now we're shutting down.
And the new battle might be a year from now.
It's a new product, but definitely shocked.
And not any kind of tap dance on Grave, because as I mentioned to the team,
I thrive in competition.
And when I was on Madden for many years,
it was actually a real bummer when the license came to me,
because I liked having QK5 and ESPN NFL and all that stuff there to battle
against and have
that sort of thing that you compare against
and I think one of the problems
that somewhat happens to your user
base is if they don't have another
game to compare against, they start
comparing you to a mythical unicorn that
doesn't exist and it gets even harder to
keep people happy because there's just nothing
else out there.
So there's just basically like they compare you to the perfect game ever.
So anyway, I really wish the best.
I have nothing but compassion for you guys, people that invested.
I mean, the guy that got up on their Twitter spaces, I couldn't believe it.
He said, Hey, I spent $800,000 on horses.
Is there anything going to be done for me?
And I was just like, my heart just
broke, you know? So obviously for us, yeah, we're photo finishes here and happy to take on anyone
that wants their horse racing fix. We've got tons of, you know, horses to loan people or give out
or have them try the game. But I'm not, I'm really not interested in, as our community says, sort of
ambulance chasing. You guys process the loss and the grief. And if you want to play, you want to play, it's fine.
But really for me, I'm just bummed.
I think the multiple horse racing games helps the community,
helps the world.
Zed and Photo Finish were so different that it didn't really look to me like,
oh, we have to eat each other's lunch, you know,
to actually feel like we were growing.
I feel like we could both throw the pie.
But yeah, it's shocking, for sure.
And the vampire thing is an interesting
one. I mean, that was a pitch to PhotoFinish
many, many years ago
was that
bring your Zed horse into PhotoFinish
and we'll burn it on Eve and remit it on
Solana was an idea.
But we never
wanted to do that because
it would give value to Zed.
So we were really like, well, that would make the horses valuable.
We didn't want people breeding in Zed and, you know,
and then bringing it over.
So the math was too hard for us to balance like any kind of vampire attack.
But I agree with what you guys are both saying.
Like someone creating a game with those horses,
the community of zed is
unreal i mean like there's so i mean i even seeing the posts of people saying well you know it's been
a rough go but i i think it's the right decision and i'll just wait it out and keep playing i mean
it's that's wild to think that that many people are still like so mad and so frustrated it's been
years of like sort of, you know, anger.
And they're still like, all right, well,
at least I'd love to play something though.
I still want to try.
They haven't lost everyone yet.
So, so yeah, anyway,
I'd love to have a Zed community come play photo finish and everything,
but I also would, I would love for Zed to get it,
get it together and get something going.
I wouldn't cross your fingers.
But I was going to say,
the thing is,
I think a lot of people in NFT communities have that,
where we have people who talk about
NFT communities that are clearly on the way down
and we haven't heard anything good
and they're filling in the blanks.
And I think Zed runs no different.
I would say this.
The one thing I would say is that
not a bad time now,
because you're like, we don't want to do a vampire attack and give Zed value. I don't think you is that not a bad time now because i you're like you're like we don't
want to do a vampire attack and give zed value i don't think you have that worry as much right now
so not the worst idea because i'll be honest like the thing that you run up against a little bit
is because the experience was like well on one side of my mouth i'm like oh if they fix that i've
got all these horses i'll make it work on the other hand it's like starting over and cap
i want your opinion on this the idea of starting over on a new platform is actually way too daunting
for me with the time i put in there it's a complete fallacy but that's one of the reasons
why some sort of vampire attack might make sense because at least people like me and certainly
potentially people like cap i want to get your take on this chris is like the idea that like i
would start over on a new platform and then be like, well, what if
this happens again, regardless of what anybody tells me is, is I think a very real thing people
go through and cap, I don't know. Do you have that? It's almost like somebody who's been in a
relationship and was hurt and won't get in another one. Right. It's like, would you cap if no vampire
attack, are you going to get involved in something like photo finish? Are you like, no, there's too
much baggage there for me. I'm out, but you you would and would you as the two-part question cap number one
is there too much baggage there for you to start over on a new platform from scratch
and then two if there's a vampire attack would you go over and try it i don't know if there's
like yeah i would i would
both i guess and i i think like, the baggage you refer to,
it's not that I'm...
It's not that I'm giving up on horse racing games on-chain.
It's really rubbed me the wrong way for on-chain gaming.
I go back to what I said earlier,
like, that is the antithesis of on-chain assets,
that they can just be vaporized
and you not get compensated fairly for them.
Like the, you know,
Ian used the Madden reference.
Like, you know, that narrative of all,
like, you know, you build up your Madden team,
your Madden ultimate team,
and then a new game drops,
you got to do it all over again.
Like the whole reason, part of the benefit of on-chain a new game drops. You got to do it all over again. The whole reason, part of the benefit of on-chain assets
is that you don't have to do it all over again.
I'm not opposed to learning a new platform.
The current system is broke.
Has it always had some challenges?
Yes.
And respect to Cadet Racing in the chat,
I will quote, says, let me just grab it.
Exactly.
I'm so wrong.
Chris Jordan is so wrong right now.
There was never a time
in Zed where people weren't bitching and complaining.
It was always in various states
of broken. I do agree.
People have always been bitching in Zed
about something, but
my opinion, my perspective is the game
was a lot of fun back in the day.
They could not...
Not to interrupt, but every game has that.
Every successful game has communities. That's part of the fun sometimes you know you bitch with your
friends one of the theories i have is the the uh the copy pasta from zed general discord that was
you know if anyone's got that drop that in the chat but you know the guy's legs shaking like
their drops were horrendous you know but but they admitted that hey we're not a drop company we
botched this the The game itself,
the community was vibrant. In the game, I had
a lot of fun. So much fun in that I
was giving up massive gains by trading, not
trading as much as I should have been during the bowl
of 21 because it was fun.
And the
broken states then,
I don't think it was an inhibitor
to growing
the game and individuals having fun. Whereas now,
I attempted, I went on after I heard the news, I attempted, I went on to quote unquote,
engage the platform as they're asking or requiring to get full benefit when they switch over the new
system. It's just hard. It's a clunky lobby. It's like, I don't know, man. I feel as it's just, it's, it's a clunky lobby. It's, it's like, I don't know, man. I am, I feel as it's taking, you know,
the last few changes have taken steps backwards instead of forward.
And this was, you know, kind of the, the proverbial final straw,
I guess that if it's not done yet,
maybe they come back and they reverse course and they,
they communicate more clearly what these assets will lead to in the new game.
But yeah, it's a pretty,
pretty disappointing for someone that you,
and I think that's probably part of my frustration,
Steve is road,
throw all the road through all those prior broken States,
right?
It was like always given benefit of the doubt and they'll get this right.
And,
and after not hearing something for,
you know,
six to nine months,
and this is what we get that that's probably the root of my disappointment.
Yeah, I think we need to have a full-on Zed panel discussion day, maybe either before or after the interview, just because I know we're going to get the current team up here, hopefully, to answer some questions about the direction they're going. And I mean, we said this before I've said this about,
you know,
to some degree,
but the Dow can get me back and eight chain can get me.
And I'm excited about eight chain,
you know,
despite it,
you know,
some,
some experience with the Dow,
the Dow I've, I've been out on.
But the reason I make this analogy is like the worst thing you can have is
people who have just kind of given up and don't keep up with it and become
apathetic.
And that's what I became with Zed run.
Like I know cap,
you've been paying attention on the periphery, but like really the lack of races and participation shows
you you know you're sitting there hoping for the magical internet bag to come but like at the same
time you've effectively given up on them and it's like that is the worst thing you can have happen
like even if because the to make the to go on the comment of like hey people always bitched about
zed run absolutely but if people are bitching about your platform and other people on your platform are arguing
with the people bitching, you're actually in a pretty good spot.
Every single thing is going to have arguments, you know, like, again, like I'm well, actually
I won't get into it.
I was going to give a sports analogy example, but it's going to take us down a rabbit hole,
but people are always going to bitch about, you know, a product as it is.
always going to bitch about, you know, a product as it is, right?
Right.
You know, like, I've never seen anything go, like, friggin', like, again, I'm just gonna
stop making the analogy.
Every time I go to an analogy, I'm like, this is gonna take us down a rabbit hole.
Point being, like, there are always going to be complaints about anything.
People will complain about the new Madden.
People will complain about the new NCAA.
People are gonna complain about every single... People complain about
when you see
preseason football or whatever, and I'm like,
I don't care. There's football on my screen, and I
can bet on it. But then other people complain
about it. So I just think there's always
going to be these things that happen,
but the fact that the community
either A, it's just a wave
of negative responses, or B, it's crickets,
that's what you don't want.
Joey Viles, get in here, and then we'll hit some TrueStub, I think,
and then we'll definitely be talking Zed again in the future, I am sure.
But Joey Viles, go ahead and get back in here.
Yeah, I'm excited to talk about TrueStub.
I have some questions, but real quick for Ian,
I don't know if you heard earlier, but my family owns racehorses,
and we're big into
race horse racing and i i've often wondered like and and i like what cap said about maybe bringing
you back for another show because i do have some questions but just if you could answer this real
quick do you have any data with your users on how many are, are strictly like digital horse racing fans and actual
horse racing fans?
Like what is the overlap that you guys are seeing?
Yeah.
We, I mean, nothing like hard, but we have run like a survey early on.
I think we've run a couple of surveys on, you know, maybe a thousand people.
So we got a decent, I don't know if it's statistically significant but a surprising amount were not horse racing fans you know 25 percent uh
much more were into poker and sports betting uh dfs type stuff that was more of the audience and
and a lot of them weren't really crypto heads either um so it's kind of a range right there's
like you got a third of the people in there that
are hardcore horse people you got a third of the people in there that are maybe um dfs and fantasy
and then another third that are um just crypto maxis that stumbled in and now love yield or
the defy concepts of it or you know what have you yeah my dad and i we talk again because of the
horse racing we kind of joke about how like they're keep coming out with all these laws with horse racing about how like, Oh, you can only whip
the horse so many times and you can only run them so often and you can't use this and that.
And then we joke about how one day it's going to be, it's not, you're not even going to really
even see them race. It's just going to be like pretend racing. And I was like, well, actually,
you know, there's this thing called, uh, on chain horse racing where it is kind of like pretend racing. So,
and I don't know if we're going to lose real horse racing anytime in our, in our lifetime.
But I, like I said, I was just, and I do have a ton of other questions, so I would love it if they
bring you back one day and we talk about it. Yeah, we'll definitely make, we'll make a commitment
to that. We'll bring Ian back. We'll talk more as that, especially like, more that especially like you know there's definitely interest in the room there's interest in the chat
it's always fun when we strike a chord with the audience that we didn't know was there when we
look down and see sort of the comments and you know uh you know lacy every single thing they
implemented was disaster nothing was flawless from drops to budweiser to getting finals runs
without a hitch it was a daily thing um steve can I also say his example in the, in the, in the war room about
like, when is somebody going to come out with car racing? So that way you can just place
like advertisements all over your car, like in real life. That was like, that was an awesome
suggestion from hisy in the war room. Yeah, absolutely. So no, it's a cool, it's a cool
thing to see, like, you know, people actually getting excited and involved about this. Dort's got the VR GM of the, of the horse in the, uh, in the actual house from when that virtual thing was the thing. I remember when Ebs tweeted one on a beach and everyone was like, oh my God, it's crazy. Um, you know, Wisco Doug is a huge Zed Maxie. I feel very burnt. I moved to photo finish and Ian with full conviction, maybe how Ian found us.
Although I think he was in here before that. I can't wait for Ian to hit the stage here.
So we'll definitely do that. But I just, I get excited because you forget how many people are
really just OGs, right? In frigging this space who actually went through the trenches with us.
And it's amazing when you meet people who have that, you know, background that you didn't even know about. Um, and so, you know,
appreciate that. And we'll discuss this again for sure, because it's clearly a topic that
I think, you know, it's an important topic to discuss and important healing moment.
I think for us as a space a little bit, because it was such an early big thing. Um, look, that
said, I want to, I want to pivot for a minute uh later than expected but
what a crazy conversation crusoe before we dive into uh true stub and everything you're building
there uh since you've taken over with bci any thoughts on the zed conversation we've had so far
also if ian dips just want to say thanks for jumping up on impromptu and we'll hit your dmc
when our schedules can align for a future uh data yeah, happy to do it. Yeah, they pinged me in Discord, and I was like, oh, they're talking about you.
I was like, oh, cool.
I typically am up, and I try to tune in with you guys, but this summer, you know, I get to sleep in.
It's nice.
100%.
No, appreciate you jumping by, and we'll definitely have you back.
But, Caruso, any thoughts on the Zed thing?
Because you've been around the block.
We were on, if you probably don't even remember, forever ago, we were on like a top shot stream together in like frigging 2021.
and I was like,
man,
this Caruso guy's a big deal.
I'm,
I'm excited for this opportunity to be on this stream,
but so you've been around the block.
Did you participate in Zed and any thoughts on everything so far?
Absolutely.
And GM,
everybody really,
really stoked to be here.
Thank you for having me.
And no,
I still have about 30 horses in my stable.
You know, my OG bags were Top Shot, Apes, Pixel Vault, and Zed. And I was so, I mean,
I still have all those bags, but I was convinced that I was going to be able to just sustain my
mortgage off of Zed. I was making more money than I was making at Tesla just by breeding horses.
And it's like, it's actually, you know, Joey, my dad wasn't, my dad doesn't own horses,
but he worked for TVG, the horse racing network, and was the dude who was one of the guys who
pioneered being able to gamble from your TV remote via, you know, just from your couch.
And he was so excited when I was doing all this weird Web3 stuff.
And then all of a sudden, we had something to connect on.
It was actually one of the better onboarding experiences for all of Web3 because you're
able to breed a horse for someone, gift it to them.
breed a horse for someone gifted to them. And like, that's, what's crazy too, is like,
And that's what's crazy, too.
I, it really, it became a sustainable economy for, for me where like, I purchased a few of
my initial Genesis. And then I had a system where, um, anytime I would breed a mare,
I would keep the mare. Anytime I read a male, I would sell the male, but then you were just
able to rinse and repeat that. And every breed cycle you would have more horses
and i think it's actually it's interesting i think a lot of the uh a lot of the pain that the
community uh let in you know cap i'd be curious for your thoughts on this as as well stem from
like the initial precedent because the gaming was fun the race was such a fun experience
but a lot of the initial onboarding wasn't around the racing it was like oh my god you can make so
much money off of breeding and that's like there are a lot of people who were only just using the
platform to breed not participating in it and i think that that was the initial hit when they got rid of the, you know, all the,
when they lowered those breeding fees, it completely, that's when they, you know, I was
still racing for a bit, but even as someone who really enjoyed the platform, it became way less
enticing just off of that precedent that was set. And I also just want to really shout out Ian,
I think it's an incredible look that the Zed team didn't show up and that you showed up here. I've heard nothing but great things about your platform. It makes me extremely bullish.
on breeding and like there's and to your point like it created economies of different ways to
participate it was one of the things that i thought was really interesting about zed to your point
is that there were economies built within it you know we talk about blast building an ecosystem and
what makes it interesting with the content flywheel to the loyalty program to the gambling to the
you know jackpot to all these things and when you look at like something like a zed run you know
zed run like you had the creators some of which racers, but a lot of them were like sports
commentators were, hey, maybe they were pretty good at racing or they're fine at racing, but
they weren't the pros. And they were able to commentate on it because they knew depth of
information about things. Then you had the breeders who were always trying to, you know,
who were putting out things into the world. Then you had the creators of the tools, the picks and
shovels, the know your horses, the things that would give you all the information on your stable.
And then you had the people who casually participated. I always say I'm probably a
target consumer for most people. I'm a now 41-year-old male with two kids and a dog and
like to spend discretionary income collecting and having fun with things. And my exact experience
with Zed was I wasn't trying to get rich. I was trying to
participate for a little bit of money here and there, occasionally win races and our team would,
you know, we would celebrate, have my kids be competitive over whose horse they named did
better and, and just simply participate casually and show my friends and family. And the dream
that, you know, Ebbs put out here one day of like having the horses racing on a table and going in
a circle is like a VR type thing, you know, just kind of suit like his dreams of that versus, you know, you know, doing
it on, but even doing it on my television and showing, you know, whether it was my parents
or my friend, family and friends, like Zed was the thing in June and July of 2021. I showed
everybody. And while people will be like, I don't get why I'm collecting a gift when I would talk
about a top shot moment, or I don't get why I'm collecting a gif when I would talk about a top shot moment or I don't get why I'm collecting a video when I showed them Zed and explained it
to them everybody's like oh so you get to without being rich you get to participate in horse racing
it's like yeah and immediately I was like damn Zed should be doing Facebook ads to like the Kentucky
Derby and other fans of other things and getting on horse racing fans but something that you said
Caruso there which I think is an interesting nuance, and not to stay off topic, but I'd be curious your take on this, is you mentioned the financial model of getting people in.
And it's interesting because my big contention with Top Shot for years, and still is, and with all day, was that the people they went out with are crypto-native people that didn't understand the product they were buying.
If somebody is buying a, you know, Darius Garland moment, who doesn't know who Darius Garland is,
and they're just buying it because they think they're going to sell it to someone else for more,
who's also speculating they're going to sell it to someone else for more,
that is the wrong base versus if you onboard basketball fans similar to,
and by the way, I fell into this.
I'm not a major basketball fan.
I know it to some degree.
I like sports, but I was buying players I didn't know.
And I was selling and flipping and ripping packs
and going on the market and looking,
like I would look for debut moments,
like rookie moments and debut moments.
And I had a whole collecting strategy on this thing,
trying to like, based on what I thought
was going to have value in the future,
based on what the past had value.
And there'd be players I didn't know
that I would be stacking because I believed that
they were going to go up a dollar in value and I could sell.
And that's the wrong way to build the platform.
And I think NFL Day, similarly, like they went to crypto native people and I know they
need to test the platform, but you need to have people who are going to buy a Josh Allen
moment because they want to own a Josh Allen moment because they live in Buffalo and maybe
they have a chance to want to sign Jersey owning it, not, you know, selling a Josh Allen moment because they want to own a Josh Allen moment because they live in Buffalo and maybe they have a chance to want to sign Jersey owning it, not, you know, selling a Josh Allen
moment to somebody who, you know, lives in Texas, doesn't watch sports and is simply, you know,
trying to flip the moment because they got early access because they're in dapper. So anyway,
I'll get off my soapbox, but Cruz, I'm curious your thought when you talked about the financial
incentives that were put alongside when Zed came came out do you think that financial incentives
oftentimes while they can be a nice thing to say as an upside are were and are overplayed and that
attracts the wrong audience absolutely no i think that's the take for sure the wonderful cop with
top shot as well because it was the same thing and as much as the like i and i'm a huge nba fan uh top shot was my light bulb moment i
was into crypto for a few years and even heard about digital authentication had seen you know
super rare and all this but once i saw top shot i was like oh i get sports collectibles i know the
nba and i understand that these are actually a real thing now and that's when it was game over
and then i get in there and i'm like oh my god there's so much money to now. And that's when it was game over. And then I get in there and I'm like, oh my God,
there's so much money to be made.
And that was when it was like, it got crazy.
And just even like, it's the same thing.
Like I still participate in Top Shot a bit
and I still hold my, I'm a bag holder.
I'm a diamond head for better and for worse.
You know, we can talk about that with like,
how with, you know, where we're at with Wicked Craniums now too,
to the point where I acquired the collection, we're carrying it.
But it's really, yeah, I think whether it's,
financial is definitely going to be one of the strongest points,
but I think it comes down to the onboarding mechanics,
whether that is through the financial incentive or whatnot.
You need to be thinking about the long term.
And to your point, Steve, like who is the actual demo that you want on this?
Because the typical demographic that we have coming on currently, I mean, people are chasing airdrops.
They're chasing.
Let's be real.
In Web3 right now, meme coins are dominating.
We're in a casino.
Obviously, there's underlying tech that's really exciting.
There's platforms that are happening.
There's stuff like what Ian's doing,
like carrying the torch and moving it forward.
Even from what I've come to understand,
they're actually approaching their mechanics
in a much more healthy, sustainable way.
But to your point,
yes,
the financial incentives you need to,
it's like,
it's,
it's kind of blown out of distortion in terms of our expectations and what
you think you deserve,
what we,
what I think I deserve as a D gen,
you know?
Absolutely.
so with that said, like, and I appreciate the
perspective and the thought just because you are a true builder in this space and are working on
a lot. One, just for those who don't have a quick, uh, you know, brief background of you,
you know, you gave a little bit of background on what you did in this space and how you came on.
I would love for you to give like people a flyover of like your, your background,
like on a TLDR. And then why
acquire wiki craniums and how that correlates to turning it into, and by the way, full disclosure,
I'm an advisor on this. So people know when I'm asking questions, like this is something I believe
in enough to be involved with. Um, but the true stuff part, like talk about your, your like sort
of, you know, back, like why acquire wiki crraniums and then how that correlates to a ticketing, like sort of ticketing engine or platform, I guess would be the right term.
And then, you know, what that looks like.
No, I appreciate it.
And for the record, the acumen that you bring is so incredible.
It's such a it's an honor and a privilege being able to chop it up with you like we do.
You know, and my TLDR, I'm in a weird amalgamation of music and tech.
My 10,000 hours initially were as a touring and producing artist.
And then I fell into a startup run that led me to Tesla, where I was managing about 2%
of the North American pipeline from factory to delivery up until the pandemic hit. And
that's when I left to go full send crypto. I started consulting for different artists and
labels on the convergence of music and Web3, launched the first NFT collection for a record
label back in the day, and then started working with Wicked Craniums pretty early on in September.
The collection launched in June of 2021.
I mean, it was, you know, being a day one board ape, I thought I would never change my
PFP when I saw those Wicked Craniums, you know, coming from a music, like more of a
heart, like I said, I mean, these days I listen and play a lot more, but you know, rock and roll is at my core. So seeing those, those skeletons, especially at a
time when everything within the space was so cute, it was like, okay, this resonates. This is hard.
I can rock with this. And the next thing you know, fall in love with the community. We have all sorts
of different artists and incredible creators coming in. And then when I joined, it was pretty
easy to establish that the community was built around music, experience, and events. And I'm
really proud of what I was able to accomplish just being a member of the team for a long time.
You know, everything from a partnership with Alt Press, you know, we worked with UNICEF, made them
some money on a beautiful charity,
partnered up with 5B Artists and Media, the team that manages everyone from like Megadeth and
Slipknot. You know, just, it was basically we, we, what that led to was carving out the Wicked
Ticket Utility. I know that utility has turned into a gross word in the space, but I will die on the utility hill. I think really there's a lot,
I mean, what this does for you is an important question. And with art, if that
elicits a reaction, an emotional feeling, that's a utility, that's doing something.
I also understand that the art isn't enough for what this underlying tech is a utility. That's it doing something. I also understand that
the art isn't enough for what this underlying tech is capable of. That's not necessarily
what it's about. It's a small factor. And this era that we're going into now, in my opinion,
is really like an era of products. What is the underlying tech? It's not about the crypto.
of products like what is the underlying tech it's not about the crypto it's about what does you know
what what can the crypto do tucked in the tuck in the back end and so you know kind of to fast forward
with the wicked ticket utility if you're if you are a wicked cranium uh then you're actually you
have access to a list of shows you could right now i think we have Nicki Minaj, Blink-182. I know we had 21 Savage,
Rolling Stones last month. But we have about 12 different artists every month, shows all around
the world, where just for being a holder, you can get into the show for free. Oftentimes,
you get extra access and all sorts of goodies. We've gotten our community into over 300 festivals,
concerts, and shows around the world.
We've also thrown over 10 of our own events.
So really, Wicked Craniums was a major precursor for what we're doing here with True Stub,
just really being a Web3 community that's galvanized around live events and music.
So cut to the end of 22 going into 23. I was talking with the founders of
Wicked Craniums and they were like, you know, we're thinking about selling. We're not sure
what we want to do. Do you want to take over the company? And I was really honored by that,
but what I decided to do is start my own company here in the start of Delaware C Corp here in the States, acquire the IP, and then I brought in some music industry legends to really help shape out this concept for True Stub and what we can do on a larger level with something even bigger than a collection.
gets to the true sub platform where we are turning your ticket stub into a time capsule
that unlocks rewards you know true sub it amplifies events unlocks rewards unleashes the ultimate fan
experience i could get deep into it for a while you know on a tldr web 2 front end web 3 back end
that basically makes the fan create tightens the fan creator experience and makes it way easier for
promoters to be able to understand their demographics and
and work with them yeah so how do you so how do you intend on implementing something like that
so talk about like the things you can earn on the platform what it is i know the launch announcement
is up top by the way give true stuff a follow and uh you know you hit on some of the things at a high
level bring it down to level and elevation like Talk about the experience that's broken when you go to maybe
a concert or an event or
an experience that maybe has the opportunity
to be disrupted.
Thank you. So out the gate,
talking from an experience point,
the ticket stub is gone. That ticket
stub was a beautiful,
tangible connection to
an otherwise ephemeral experience.
And whether it's
all the shows you go to, all of your experiences, that makes up who you are.
And, you know, if you pay enough, if you care enough to pay for a ticket to a show,
you're more than halfway up the totem pole to superfan. And when you go to that show,
you are a part of something way bigger than you, way bigger than the artist.
You're a part of a tribe.
You're a part of a community.
So there's like a ton of cross-references
to what we're doing in Web3 here.
And with that in mind,
it was a really beautiful kind of flow
going from, oh, what can we do for the Wicked Cranium community
to this is just what an artist needs for their community too.
This blows up way bigger than even music.
We can also go into sports.
We can go into conventions, comic cons.
But it starts with the ticket stub,
making sure that you can have that tangible connection
to an otherwise ephemeral experience.
Then from there, you take it to the next level.
Because when you're at that show, there's this incredible energy.
It's a euphoric feeling when you are a part of something.
When the artists are in the pocket and you're just dancing, you're free, even if you're having a bad time, that's an experience that's in your brain.
And for you to be able to capture, save those memories.
So that's where we take it another step with the time capsule function.
So not only are you able to have a beautiful collectible version of your ticket stub with unique art,
of your ticket stub with unique art, but you're actually able to flip it over. And then it turns
but you're actually able to flip it over.
into a time capsule where the artist, the brand can upload some of their own content, whether it's
the audio from the show, the official poster. But what I think is even cooler is you're able to put
yourself into the ticket stub. Now you're able to upload all of your own content, your own photo
video, write your own text in there. You know, let's say Steve, you and I went to a show,
Steve got a little too drunk. I could, you know, I could say that because it wouldn't happen. We
know this guy. But, you know, if that was the case, you know, I could literally take a picture
of him, you know, being a little, like a little slouched over and like make a funny comment
and save that there. And anytime I think about that show, I can go back and reference and look
at the pictures easily. And then I can take it another level. I can share it with other people that were at the
show. Not that I put Steve on blast, but let's say you got a great video of the guitar solo.
You know, if you were to post that on your socials, a small percentage of your fan, like of
your followers actually give a damn about that artist. But if you're connecting it up with other
people that were at the show, you're going to get a better dopamine hit. Those people actually care.
Matter of fact, you're probably going to be making new friends, making new connections,
and that's what gets us into the societies. So not only is this a time capsule, but it also
unlocks rewards and is a key into a token gated servers where it's basically an
exclusive club where if you cared enough to go to the show or the artist deems you
deems you of a certain caliber of fan they're going to give you a pass into an exclusive
pocket where we have a gamified loyalty program where everything from free tickets, VIP upgrades,
merch,
meet and greet discounts.
These are the things that you're able to get Steve.
And I'm sorry,
it took me so long to get there.
And I know that Joey's had his hand up.
It's I just to like play it back and then we'll go to Joey.
So you're basically talking about a ticketing system where it's like,
you are in the,
you are in the gate.
You are able to codify your memories in there in various ways.
It's something like I've
talked about. It's funny because before a cruise, I even knew he was building this. I talked about
this, not with just a band tickets, but even with plane tickets where it's like you fly,
you land in a place. So, you know, who knows maybe a true stub, a cruise, true sub client in
the future is like, you know, an airline who's been able to say like, put your memories and
remember when you flew place to place. But like the, um, I probably
should have saved that for an advisory meeting. I don't know why that just popped into my head
as we were talking, but like the idea of an airline using true stub as like an actual platform
is also less involved as far as like the actual rewarding factor, which I'll, I'll hit on in a
second that you said, but it gives, you know, the potential opportunity at a high level for someone
to codify their trip. And also remember always when it was and have it in one solid place.
But the point being, like, one, codify memories.
Two, have your memento of your ticket forever so it's not like, oh, I put my ticket into a frame and that was that, right?
Three, it gives data and information to the artist to be able to find out who their true fans are.
Go ask Mr. Beast who his top fan is. He doesn't know.
But when you go ahead and ask, you know, a company that is utilizing true stuff
or a band is utilizing true stuff where their top fans are,
they know who bought the most merch, cared the most, got the most points,
and used those points on them.
So the idea that you could become a super fan through a platform,
it's funny because I always said artists should do this on an individual level.
And then in talking to Caruso on it, I had this aha moment.
It's like, no, an artist doing this on an individual level is so cumbersome on a one-to-one basis.
They would try different blockchains, different opportunities, different things.
This instead is giving you the opportunity to say there's one solution that artists could use. And again, they're able to engage with it and then have those conversations with their
fans on a one-to-one level.
Imagine if your favorite band sent you a cameo,
like a cameo video,
people prefer cameo videos.
Imagine just by being a top fan,
they sent you a cameo video.
They thank you.
You could show your friends,
you share that on social media because they know you attended.
They know you bought a bunch of merch. It's not just like, hey, tweet at us and figure out if
you're a top fan. So this is the aha moment for me. And this is like the future of what ticketing
is going to be one way or another. And the fact that TrueStuff is working on it with the platform
is pretty cool to me. But Joey Valls, go ahead and get in here. I know I saw your hand fly up.
I'll go ahead and get in here. I know I saw your hand fly up. Yeah. So, um, I,
back in 2022, I had conversations with multiple people about, you know, getting tickets on chain.
And I have a friend, um, from my, my past experience of working in Miami at all the
different nightclubs, who's still very big in the space. And we, we had conversations about tickets
and he educated me. And we talked
about this in the war room, like the ticket industry is worse than the mob. Like, you know,
the live nation ticket master, like these organizations, they control everything because
they can go to venues and say, Hey, you're only going to sell your tickets through live nation.
And here's $10 million for it.
Right?
Like they literally will pay venues to only sell tickets through them.
So I, I guess my question is, do you envision your product as an add-on to the existing ticket companies? Or are you genuinely trying to replace
a Live Nation or a Ticketmaster and go to venues and say, hey, don't sell your tickets on Live
Nation, sell them through us. And if that's the case, how do you intend to penetrate that market?
Joey, wonderful question. And Steve,
just to your, like, thank you for summarizing that so beautifully. I recognize I was,
I'm a little too deep. I've like, I want to hit all the details, but to your point,
it's the, we, for the first time you're allowed to, you're able to, if you are bringing more
value as a fan, you are getting recognized and getting that value back. And that's,
you know, what we're
calling a virtuous cycle. It's really exciting. But Joey, to your point, that's really just it.
Ticketmaster Live Nation, they own about 80% of the market. And it's not even mafia-like. They
literally are a mafia. My co-founder actually ran a company called Virtuous Ticketing for nine years.
co-founder actually ran a company called Virtuous Ticketing for nine years. And they started doing
enough numbers that they pissed off Ticketmaster. Joey, they did exactly that. First, they called
up their clients and were telling them that they couldn't pay payroll and that they were in trouble
when they weren't. And then when that didn't shake enough of them, Ticketmaster literally called up
all the clients and said, hey, we're going to give you this $250,000 marketing bonus to sign with us, which is
basically just a way to poach them away. So no, they are ruthless and aggressive. And absolutely,
I think that that is the number one reason that blockchain ticketing has not worked.
So, but to your point, TrueStub actually isn't directly the point of sale.
We work agnostically with any ticketing platform
and blend in seamlessly to provide a second layer.
And that's where it really gets interesting
because we're not taking from Ticketmaster
and we can, whether it's Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, Vivid,
you can go through the list.
We're already designed to be able to
port up seamlessly. And then we actually add value to every stakeholder within the ticketing
experience, including the ticketing companies. And I think that that's where we really have a
unique angle here is by onboarding directly through. So we partner directly with the promoter,
with the ticketing company, or with the artist.
And the majority of the partnerships are through
and will be through the promoter
because that's where our pocket really lies.
So like I said, my 10,000 hours before tech
were in the music industry.
One of my co-founders, he ran Virtuous Ticking,
that company for nine years. Before that, he was managing Sire Records, worked with everyone from
the Ramones to Lou Reed to the Smiths, could keep going down the list. And then my other co-founder
is the former CMO of Insomniac. He left right around when the pandemic hit as well, but he was
the head of marketing the
first year that EDC ever sold out. And before that, he founded Moonshine Records. And he's a
godfather of electronic and has been promoting throwing festivals since the 90s. So the way that
we're able to penetrate and go to market is through the promoters and through what we're doing with
True Stub Prime, which you can really equate to something like
really rolling loud loud punks
is probably the easiest comp and white labeling that
because you're able to put a huge amount of capital up front
into these promoters' hands
while then providing a seamless experience.
But I don't even want to muddle it with Prime.
I'm probably getting a little too deep in the weeds here again.
Can I ask a follow-up?
Because now you mentioned promoters,
and that's something that I had done with EDC,
with made events, with all these other venues.
And so the idea would be to go to,
instead of going to the ticket companies,
you're saying you're going to go to the event promoters
and maybe like the agents of the artists.
Is that going to be like your initial target?
Yeah, correct.
So the initial GDM is going,
is with promoters.
We already have our first two festival promoters warmed up.
That being said,
one of our co-founders has a really great relationship
with a ticketing company that we're,
is already really interested in the platform,
which gets to like what we got done yesterday
or this week rather,
and our rolling out you know we
it's we had a major milestone getting the platform up and running in terms so you can actually head
to truestub.com right now and set up a website and we have actual activity on chain with people
getting delivered their founder stubs um i'm just really excited about that joey but to your point
yes we're going to market with promoters because, you know, our team really understands them.
We understand the pain points that they're dealing with.
And they're the people that are going to, you know, on the B2B side, you know, benefit arguably the most from what TrueStep does.
Because as much as on the front end, you know, we're tightening the fan creator experience.
On the back end, this really becomes a CRM that gives obfuscated, we're not giving anyone's actual personal information, but account data.
The psychographics that we're able to understand about fans, to what Steve was saying, it's pretty unprecedented and it's really frustrating for current artists for current promoters to be the people who are creating all this data and be data gated and paywalled from the on the
platforms that are holding it and that's one of the major ethos that we are operating with here
as well as you're putting the data back into the hands of the creators okay one one last one i'm sorry uh is anything that you've
built proprietary or like patentable or that can stop somebody like a ticket master or a live nation
from doing themselves like what is is there something that you guys have and you and i mean
you can just answer with a yes or no.
You don't have to tell us what it is if you can't.
Joey, don't apologize.
I remember last time I hopped up here,
you asked killer questions.
The short answer is yes, absolutely.
You know, we've built out our completely,
down to the wallet that we're using for the platform.
Everything is built out our own.
That's part of why it's taken so long.
And we think we have a pretty defensible mode.
Yeah, great one, Joey.
I was going to say like...
Thank you, Steve, for letting me ask those questions.
No, no, no.
You don't have to thank and don't apologize.
I was actually...
It's so funny.
Like, I'll just reveal because I randomly, you know,
probably not like, you know,
no need to be a secret what which say behind people's back.
I literally texted Cap about you this morning, like during the show about how you like you're the ideal stage member, Joey.
You ask good questions.
You're interested in the guests.
You pay attention and actively listen.
And like, again, like Cap mentioned earlier, he doesn't want people talking about things they don't know about.
You don't do that.
You actually ask questions about things instead. Like when you
ask about, like, we've had two people on stage this morning, someone running a horse racing,
you know, the horse racing based game, and now a ticketing game. And you ask engaging questions
in both instances that we might not have asked. Plus, I also have the Caruso conundrum of,
I'm so deeply close to this at the moment
that for me, I would maybe not go as deep as I could.
So anyway, long story short,
appreciate you and never apologize for asking questions.
I will always, just because we're homies,
I know I can always cut you off if I need to
or anything like that,
but I haven't had the need to at any time.
So, appreciate you, Joey, and just echo what Caruso said that you asked great questions.
Dan Chan, I saw your hand fly up as we were talking a little bit of ticketing,
so I'll let you get in here if you want to ask Caruso a question as well.
My questions are not about what he's talking about, the ticket stuff.
I'm still on the Zed stuff.
So, if you want me to talk about Zed, cool, let me know.
If not, I can wait up.
Yeah, we can get back to that then, but just, uh, just hang tight and we'll definitely get
back to that as we, as we keep going, maybe in the next couple of minutes as we, uh, keep going
through this. But, um, I guess, uh, Caruso, let me ask this, you know, so you're basically
building to your point, working directly with artists and creating this thing. As I kind of
mentioned earlier, it's like, you know, instead of every artist creating their own thing individually
and trying to have a blockchain team, it just made like, it blows my mind that as much as I've worked
in, you know, the business world and done these things that I didn't come to that conclusion.
My conclusion was like, Oh, Taylor Swift should release something for her fans and have a whole
blockchain team. Not really feasible for artists, big and small. So like, let me ask this, like,
is this something that's built for all artists? You know, obviously big ones are probably the ones that are going to test it out early.
But like, what does it look like from a testing perspective when people are using this tech?
Like, could somebody who's a local artist potentially or a smaller artist get involved with this in some way?
No, great question.
So, no, out the gate, we are going to be focused on more of like, you could think of it as like white glove. And we're going to be partnering directly with larger artists, making sure that we can properly control, just manage the experience.
Because it's really important to foster each one of these societies and communities that enters.
Because that's part of the special sauce here.
As much as the the ticket stub and
it's not the ticket but your ticket stub is your onboarding path really the web that catches you
is the fan experience of the societies and the loyalty program and the rewards of everything
that we're building in there um but here steve can you can you kind of tighten me in for a second
there no no like i i think i think you're doing a good job.
Keep rolling as far as the – you're basically talking about the way you're white glove servicing people onto it.
You're going to be able to utilize this with them at least at the start.
And then the goal long term is blank.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
And beautiful.
And really – so there's two goals long term that-term that I can't wait to get to.
A, whether you are a new band or an artist or even just a fan of an artist that you think deserves a society and should be on True Stub,
that's absolutely coming where you're going to be able to basically cast a vote to be able to rally to get that community in there.
to be able to rally to get that community in there.
Another thing that I'm really excited about doing
that we can't implement quite yet,
but it's going to be so cool,
is being able to backdate all the shows you went to.
Because it's really exciting that we're able to
capture all of the current memories from here on out.
But what about everything that came before this?
What about all the experiences?
The example I always use, because as much as we're talking about music, True Stub is going to be huge for sports.
And the example that I always use is I have the last time I ever saw Kobe.
I have that ticket.
And it's fading.
It's losing its luster.
And it's also a piece of paper.
I could lose it.
And for me to be able to have that saved on the chain,
for me to be able to not have to have it with me,
to be able to share that I was there,
for the Lakers to know that I was there
and for me to feel like I am rewarded as a fan for being there.
These are all things that I think are really
achievable that Web3 unlocks for us. And it's not like we need to shove Web3 down people's throats.
Like when I say Web2 front end, Web3 back end, you're able to log into TrueStub with just an
email and password. You know, all the crypto wires are tucked in the back where you don't need to see
them because that's actually a turnoff.
And what I'm so excited about, too, is how the same way that Top Shot was a major Trojan horse use case for Web3.
It pulled me on just because I was an NBA fan.
We're able to do that for fandom, whether you're a fan of a sports team,
whether you're a fan of an artist.
If you care enough about that artist to buy a ticket,
we then are able to put a digital asset
into your hands for free,
make it fun and exciting.
And that's an interesting part too.
It's like, I'm so, We couldn't have done this a couple
years ago because we didn't have gasless minting. And in order for this to work, it needs to be
fun, exciting, and if not free, it has to make sense. And that's what's really cool too about
the model is we've actually figured out how to make money off of these true
stubs while giving them to our users for free and that's where it's you know we basically just
charging something around a dollar in the service fees of your ticket so and that's this is why when
you partner directly with the promoter with the tick ticketing company. You know, if anyone's buying a ticket to a show, the service fees right now are ridiculous. So we're, you know, if you just
charge something like $1 in there, we can sleep well at night knowing that we're providing well
more than a dollar's worth of value with just the collectible alone. Then you have the time capsule
function and all the loyalty that comes with it. But that's where you're able to kind of just Trojan horse this web three
adoption into the ticketing experience.
Yeah, I think that that's exactly it.
And your point about your Lakers Kobe one is a great example because,
you know, I was talking about the aggregate earlier,
and we were talking about the aggregate earlier of going to shows and doing things offline,
which is one of the big, beautiful parts.
We talk in NFT communities so often about what are you doing for the international holders
and what are you doing for the dispersed holders
and what are you doing between from a digital perspective?
And here, you have a solution for artists to say,
if you're creating fan content, maybe that's eventually going to find a way to get you prestige.
If you are buying things digitally, maybe that's a way for you to do it.
If you're engaging with them, maybe that's a way.
All these ways for you to earn it when you're not going to concerts,
not just going to the richest person who gets a front row seat to a Taylor Swift concert.
And similarly, you know, if you're a huge fan, again, I'll give an example of a smaller artist.
I always say this example, like I love Jason Mraz. I love his music. It happens to have the same birthday with me, which is wacky
by the way, but love Jason Mraz, love his music. And me and my wife always have been a fan because
we're like, Hey, like he makes positive music and we dig it and we can, we can vibe. He doesn't
play the biggest arenas, but the idea that I could have him on this platform show my fandom, because
I've literally thought about getting my
first tattoo of saying, I won't give up on us because there's a song about it. And it's actually
about not giving up on yourself. People think it's a love song. And he talks about how it's about,
you know, driving yourself forward and not giving up on us. He's singing the song to himself because
he was in a dark time. It's one of my favorite NGMI songs that I go back to, to bring myself
back. It's like, if I do that and earn earn prestige the idea that i could get a backstage pass or a signed guitar or you know a you know a personalized
shout out or like we like him it's like those ideas of those things because he would know i'm
a top fan and not just me tweeting at him and hope he sees like is is how i displayed it but
what cruiser just said on a you know, zoomed in micro
level, imagine being able to know that you were at, you know, someone's last, like LeBron retires,
he has his last game, he plays with Bronny. And because LeBron has more money than God,
LeBron could say, I want everybody at that last game who showed up to be rewarded with a signed
jersey by me and Bronwny he could do that
buy wallet and then that ticket or you know people might even be able to sell the opportunity to have
that but even if they couldn't like the opportunity that you would receive that reward is so cool to
redeem so there's just these unbelievable opportunities from a it's weird because it
feels like marketing but it's like not marketing that's trying to trick you as a fan.
It's marketing that works for both the artist and the fan. So it's like a whole new term and
a whole new form of loyalty that changes. But Joey, again, saw your hand fly up. Go ahead and
get in here. Yeah. So you're talking about collectibles and obviously then my hand goes
up because as somebody who is in the collectible space right now
with on-chain collectibles and also a huge fan of off-chain collectibles,
I just watched an episode of King of Collectibles on Netflix
where somebody brought in the ticket stub for...
Oh my God, I'm drawing a blank.
Anyways, it was a ticket stub.
Oh, it was from Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game.
And, you know, it's graded and whatever, and it's worth all this money.
So, like, do you, and people love having that, right?
They love touching it.
They love feeling it.
And then, obviously, we believe that, you know, putting that stuff in a vault and on
chain is safer and better.
So, do you think that the the art is your thesis that the future
one, sorry, will you be able to trade these at like what you're saying with you can these moments
and with these ticket stubs, will there be a marketplace to trade these to Steve's point?
Like if I go to LeBron James's last game and him and his son both score 30 points and it's the first time ever whatever so
now my ticket stub is valuable will you guys support a marketplace or what will that look
like when it comes to trading these yeah absolutely yeah so the the only the only tokens that are
currently sold down on the on the platform and will be are the founder stubs, the ones that we're releasing
right now, because we want to make sure that the people that are really with us are riding with us
and there's some special goodies that come with it. That being said, it'd be undecentralized,
which it'd be against the ethos if we, and just not aligned with what the actual ticket stub was
if you weren't able to sell or trade it.
These absolutely may have collectible value.
That's something that as a team,
we're more focused on the priceless aspect of this.
Like that Kobe stub to me,
you couldn't put a number on that to me.
And like, that's what gets me so excited about TrueStub
is as much as these may
have collectible value and absolutely can be traded. There's a real personal value that
transcends the financial where just people care about holding onto these because that value is
like, that's a, that's a little piece of themselves. And that's what I think is so
exciting about bringing the ticket stuff back
yeah so so the there will be the ability to trade these stubs and moments like we do
currently with ticket stubs but your hope is it becomes more of a like a priceless collectible for people is that what i heard or no yeah that's pretty much it. And thank you. So let me reiterate, my bad.
So yeah, you absolutely will be able to trade, sell, collect these on a different level.
But the way that we're designing the platform down to the reward mechanics, we're more focusing
on the fan aspect than the collectible aspect. Like we want you to hold on to this
because it's your key into that connection
with the tribe, with the artist, with the brand.
And that's where we think that there's a ton of value.
Awesome.
No, this is, again, this is exactly
what this space is all about.
And you can see as I'm talking, as I get excited,
why I find everything so interesting right it's like oh by the way hizzy sharing in the chat a
millie vanilli ticket that is a fucking grail amazing um but um the best is when they tried
to re-record it and god bless them like by the way like i saw some like meme that was like
millie vanilli watching all these kids you know get get famous for lip syncing on tiktok like and they just had them being like what the fuck but the best is when
they they tried to like re-release uh their music and god bless them they were not singers and they
tried and it was just like god you know it's true because it just doesn't sound quite right um so
god bless them millie vanilli uh they were the OG lip syncers. But in any case, putting the train back on the tracks,
I would say this is a really cool solution.
I recommend people follow TrueStub and keep up with it
because there's going to be opportunities to engage with your favorite brands.
There's going to be bone shake coming up,
which I don't know if you want to hit on that before we let you go,
Curso, as well.
But there's a ton of things that are coming down the pike for this.
And I think it's exactly what this technology is built for.
And it's actually using the technology, hiding the technology, but using it in a way that
sort of makes things better for something that everybody participates in, which is music,
fandom.
Like you can be a true stub.
You can engage in true stub if you go to one concert a year or you can do it in a way to engage with
your,
with your,
with your favorite artists.
So Caruso,
any other,
any other thoughts on that or anything you want to hit on before we let
you get out of here?
Well,
you know,
first off,
I just want to thank Steve.
You're an absolute legend.
Chris,
you're,
you're even better than Steve.
Don't tell him I said that.
but,
and, and Joey, like, I really think of you as, like, a third host on this, man.
The acumen that you bring with your questions and your thoughts, it's, I just want to, before
I say anything else, I just want to say thank you so much for hosting such an incredible
space every morning.
I've been waking up, you know, I used to joke the first time I came on Coffee with Captain,
I was like, oh my God, it is so early over here on the West coast. These days I've been waking up around this
time and coffee with captain is part of my morning. So, um, you know, it's just, it's such
a pleasure to be able to vibe with people that are as plugged in and smart and really to, to
Joey's point at, you know, digging in, asking the right questions. Cause I mean,
we are in a very, uh, we know we're in a niche pocket here. I mean, how many active wallets are
there? Um, but I'm just, you know, I just want to say everyone should definitely sign up and
create an account. Um, I want to do a special little hookup for, uh, the coffee with captain
crew. So what will, you. So if anyone signs up over the
next hour, we are going to be giving away another Founders Stub to any of the new signups over the
next hour. So make sure you hop into truestub.com, create an account. You're going to be able to hop
into your shrine, which will be empty right now. We're going to run a little bit of verification.
But just for the record too, I want to point out that this is the alpha version. So I want you to get in there. I want
you to try and break it. I want you to give us feedback and let us know what you love and what
you don't. We've been working on this for a long time. And this alpha version that we just released
is really complicated. Whether we're talking about building your own wallet
that's tied into the login system,
whether it's having all these interactions,
this has been a real balance to build,
and it's all built on one instance right now,
which is if you're a dev,
you know that that's a whole cumbersome beast unto itself.
So really interested to see what people's reactions are.
And I just want to point out too that that founder stub actually happens to be a very special Pop
Wonder piece. Pop Wonder did the first ever collab with Wicked Creams back in the day. So it felt
like a beautiful full circle moment. We wanted to make sure we had a beautiful
collectible to go alongside with it. And Pop is an absolute G. If you're bringing up Bone Shake,
I do want to point out, yes, we are throwing the, we're planting a flag for IRL. Like,
talking about what we've done with Wicked Cranium has gotten the community into over 300 festival shows around the world.
You know, live events have been a part of our ethos for a long time.
Now that we have the CMO, former CMO of Insomniac as our CMO, it's like we're taking a level up.
So, you know, we recognize that, especially stateside.
Is that person doxed? Because I'm curious who it is.
Yeah, his name is Steve Levy. Absolutely.
And by all means, too, actually, if anyone's interested, we just did a whole...
We brought on Dre Milley. If anyone knows him, he's an incredible, incredible guy
as our community and partnerships lead.
And he just hosted a great space with Steve, Billy, and myself all on video
that you can find on the Wicked Craniums
or the True Stub website where we were talking about True Stub, breaking it down. So you can
actually hear directly from those two legends yourself there or find them on LinkedIn.
Love it. No, yeah, it's so much expertise and so much opportunity. I'm just grateful that I was
able to connect with Caruso when he came on to be a part of it
and follow up afterwards.
I mean, you could hear my excitement on the show as we had him on.
And the more I dug into it and the more discussions we had,
it's just, it's something that I, you know, again, I don't put my,
you know, I have made the decision after, you know, working for,
I mentioned this after working for like 90 plus hours a week
for a long time or probably like 70 to 90 depending on the week for you know basically a year and a
half two years whatever it may be i made the decision i'm only going to work on the things
that i want to work on and this is one of those things that really caught my interest and and so
i don't know cap any any other thoughts on that as we let caruso get out of here yeah i love it i
mean very fitting while some may have not connected the dots yet
in terms of going from Zed Run to ticketing back to Zed Run
and a few other highlights I want to just fly over
and maybe do a deeper dive next week.
But perfect, I think perfect segue, perfect connection
because, Steve, we've been quite literally talking about tickets
and how on-chain tech can make something better.
It can disrupt an existing industry.
It can truly enhance the current non-Web3, the current Web2 product.
And we've been talking about this as a concept since
I don't know, the early
Zed Run days?
Full circle.
No, literally since 2021
on this space
and even before we were even doing this space
we've been talking about a cap.
It just makes too much sense
and excited for Caruso
and appreciate you coming on today. Looking forward to supporting. And this is one that we've gotten, I think for a while, we've gotten caught up in celebrity meme coins and everything that's happening immediately right now in the space, all the different farming activities.
all the different farming activities.
It's refreshing to not lose sight of real builders
building real world,
whether on-chain consumer products
or real world physical products
and exciting to see the builders still building.
So yeah, appreciate your time
and thanks for joining us this morning.
Yeah, thanks for coming on, Caruso.
Love having you on.
Steve, I think we guess I guess we lost Dan,
so we don't have to go back there.
Maybe we'll have him on for the,
during the Zed Run leadership show.
I'm sure he'll have a few feedback points for them as well.
But the couple other talking points I wanted to fly over,
I did pin up above a post from 3D Shannon. I'm not going to read the whole thing,
but the TLDR is Cool Cats and Turmoil right now. A lot of the team was let go. Discord was
somewhat in disarray. I don't have all the details, Steve, and maybe not time enough this
morning to really dive into it. But it was certainly, I feel, relevant,
newsworthy, and at least worth mentioning in passing. That full post is up above, or if you want to hop in the Cool Cats Discord and get more details, you can. But the TLDR is the
board making a decision to lay off, let go most of the staff. Klon, the artist, still is on the board
along with Ken Kron and two founding members
of Futureverse, six board members in total.
This is all kind of coming, like I said,
via Discord and feedback I'm seeing on the timeline
as well as some DMs.
There was an announcement due yesterday.
They had a teaser video last week, I believe, that teased an
announcement yesterday
on the 27th. That came and went. No
announcement. And then followed by
a lot of, a majority
of the team, it sounds like, being let go in Discord.
So, on one end, we have
the Cool Cats turmoil. We have
the Zed Run turmoil. On the other end,
Steve, and I said this in the War room, I don't say this lightly. I think ETHNFTs might actually be back this time.
I've been hesitant last couple of days. Things have been looking good. There's been a lot of
unique sales. There's been a lot of sales above floor. Listings are at all the lowest they've
been in over a year. Sales have been the highest they've been in over...
It is, I believe, not a coincidence
we saw this shift in line
with the blur farming essentially coming to an end.
We had, I think it was last week,
we had the loan crisis
that we saw a bunch of liquidations
which led to the dip in floors.
And it's been climbing up since. But I think more so than
floor prices climbing up, people are
collecting again. These aren't, A, listings are down.
These sales aren't people just buying bids that they're probably going to flip. We're seeing
a lot of people collecting in multiple collections, not just apes and pudgies, but those
are the two I've seen. Just in the last 48 hours, a lot of my friends have made big moves.
And I don't know, man, it really feels like sentiment has shifted. Will there still be hiccups? Yes, but I still am extremely long.
I do think ETH NFTs, NFTs in general, but I think it'll be led by ETH NFTs
to get another run in this bull.
I think it may be underway. I don't want to jinx it, but
but everything I'm looking at on the timeline,
everything I'm looking at on the timeline, the sentiment, and the underlying metrics,
the sentiment and the underlying metrics,
it doesn't seem like CBB is going back to blur farming.
Could things change?
Potentially.
But I think we're past that error
of incentivized bidding
being the lion's share of the volume in this space.
And with that,
we're going to see less volume,
but it's people who actually want to buy the NFT to collect,
or at least hold for a while and potentially sell for a gain later,
as opposed to bid,
get stuck with it and dump it into bids because they don't have any,
they don't care to sell to the loss because that's not the game they're
playing.
Like it was just,
it's still kind of...
And everyone's entitled to their own opinion.
It just really blows my mind
that there's still individuals
that don't think blur farming
impacted sentiment and valuations
of NFT collections.
I could just...
I've seen data on both sides of it.
I've seen arguments on both sides of it.
And as we start to come out of this,
I think that's another data point
that incentivized bidding is not good for collectibles
and quote unquote NFT communities.
Well, yeah.
I mean, here's the thing.
Like, I think both things can be true.
Like, and I think you agree with this.
Well, first of all, on the cool cat thing,
before we get into that one,
absolutely insane.
Shout out to Mackie for tagging us and giving us that information yesterday because that was you
know he hit us last night and i woke up this morning because i know you and i both i went
to bed after the debates after i was like what the hell is going on here i went to bed confused uh
as many of us did and then woke up this morning had the text had some context for mackie
looked in tried to shake a couple trees, couldn't get any answers initially.
But yeah, the fact that it looks like the team's being laid off, nobody knows what's going on in Discord.
It's crazy to see.
What's even crazier, though, to some degree, is that Cool Cats, once like a 13, 14-need floor or something like that, was one of the hottest projects in all of Web3.
People buying at all sorts of crazy valuations.
One of the most noteworthy, like the cute IP,
was in the Macy's Day Parade.
My daughter's friend actually pointed it out to her.
I remember my daughter being like,
yeah, my friend showed me an NFT that she liked.
I'm like, what do you mean?
She's like, yeah, like my friend,
we were Googling around because we heard about NFTs and she showed me one. She's like, it looked kind of like a doodle,
but it was a cat and it didn't have quite the same style, but it was kind of bright.
And I was like, cool cats. And she showed me, she's like, that's it. And they loved it. And
then when they wanted to, when we went shopping together and bought one, it was like a crazy,
great brand. And so I have so much admiration there, but it feels like a bunch of fits and
starts, whether it was on games or the milk token, or, you know, trying to create, you know, this, this, this, this series, all of these things just kept happening and it just couldn't seem to land the plane.
And to see what's happening yesterday, the crazy part to me is as we talked about with like me being apathetic with Zed Run is that this would have been a major story even 18 months ago.
And a year and a half later, people aren't even,
it didn't even make B-Check's snapshot.
B-Check does the snapshot every day,
which is an incredible coverage of it. It's how I wake every morning.
If you're not following B-Check, if you're not following Legendary,
if you're not listening to Modern Market, you're missing out.
Anybody who listens to the show will tell you,
listen to Modern Market to get the TLDR and stuff. Come here and we can talk deep about it. And it's like almost like a
one-two punch that a lot of people like with our shows. They're a serious business show. I love the
way they approach things. So they're very much after our hearts. But like the fact that we didn't
lead with that, the fact that it didn't get discussed until after we went, you know, election, Zed, True Stub, talked a little bit of everything, you know, we've hit on other things throughout like various topics.
And then at 10, 20, 20 minutes after Showtime over and all these other things, we're hitting on Cool Cats potentially.
That is a sad state of affairs to begin with.
The other thing that you said though in the ETH NFTs is that I think both things can be true.
And I think that people sometimes like it's weird because crypto is the
smartest people I know,
but sometimes I feel like we just try to oversimplify things.
This is the same way that like sports fans do where we're like, you know,
people will be like, Oh, like Peyton Manning can't win the big one.
It's like, but his numbers are good in the super bowl.
His defense sucked. And then he wins with frigging, you know, he wins with, I mean, he won one with Indianapolis
when he was good.
But when he won one in Denver, Peyton Manning sucked that year.
He was like a middle of the road quarterback, but yet that was, he was getting credit for
We create these narratives.
You can't win the big one.
You're being generous calling him middle of the road.
He had a literal noodle arm.
I don't know if he could throw the football 20 yards downfield that year.
Yeah.
I believe the term, the technical term is he had a PP arm, but no, he, um, he basically like,
you know, he, he like, but the point being, we had this narrative Peyton Manning can't win the
big one. Then he didn't. Suddenly he was on the pantheon of quarterbacks again. And you know,
he wasn't going to be Dan Marino, although all time moment, by the way, and I'll get off my
rant on this, but it's funny all time moment. I want to say, and I'll try to find the video. It was Boomer Esiason was sitting at the desk and said this comment where he was like, yeah, Peyton Manning
doesn't win. People are going to start asking if he's just going to be another Dan Marino who
couldn't win the big one. And Dan Marino was at the desk with him was like, what the fuck, man?
So I got to find that. I got to find that clip. But like the idea that we create these narratives.
And I think with ETH NFTs, people have done this thing to make the, to like the idea that we create these narratives. And I think with ETHNFTs,
people have done this thing to bring the analogy and actually land the plane on this, where they're
like, ETHNFTs were killed by Blur. ETHNFTs weren't killed by Blur. They were a bubble,
and that's why they fell. It has nothing to do with Blur. Both can be true. We can actually
have this conversation in an intellectually honest way to say, if you're incentivized bidding to
bring down numbers and you turn non-fungible tokens into fungible assets
by over-financializing them,
then yes, people aren't shopping for traits and grails
and trying to trade things around.
They're just going to do the incentivized bidding
to make more money.
If you incentivize people to lose money
to make more money in the end, it will happen.
So yes, the incentivized bidding
absolutely hurting with NFTs,
but also
we don't know what the true price and value of these things are. We don't know yet. They are
Veblen goods, yet they have utility, right? And so they are programmable software, but at the same
time, they're a luxury item. All of these things can be true. And are they worth $500,000? Maybe
not, maybe not ever again, you know know but are they worth more than what they're
worth here maybe it's hard to know until there's a true market so i think the blur thing is
definitely one that we will uh continue to keep an eye on i don't think it's the bottom i don't
think they've given up blur farming but i think cap i guess i'll leave it with this and then i'll
let you kind of go to go to snowflake or however if you want that's what i think what you don't
think it's the you don't think they've given up blur from what do you mean by that oh i didn't the top the top blur
firmer you said that was out actually put out a tweet that said he was going to or he or she was
going to continue blur firming and again i'm not as deep in those streets no unless i've missed
something cbb is done like not not only cbb that's it i thought i had seen that like or maybe i'd
heard i thought i'd heard on modern market so don't quote me on this because i'm missing this but i thought that uh cbb had said uh they were
not done after all they like said they like backed that down but i'm not sure but if they are and if
the top blur firmers are done then yes that'll happen but i just don't think blur firmers are
completely shaken out yet from what i was but again you might be more in the streets than I am. No, I mean, like you can,
so let me like the incentive is still there to earn,
like you'll get rewarded.
You'll get,
you'll get leaderboard points if you are bidding or buying or trading on
blur.
So it's still there,
but after many of them felt like like it was like they they felt
they got rugged on this this last round because it was their reward was significantly less than
what it was in previous seasons and and how they i think it was even they awarded...
I don't know.
I should get the exact numbers because let me see if I can find CBB's tweet.
Anyways, while it's still there,
they were massively, collectively,
it's anecdotal,
but they were massively underwhelmed,
disappointed, pissed off, frustrated
with the reward they got
for their blur farming last season.
And while blur farming is still a piece of the equation,
it appears that it's going to be far more advantageous
to farm blast, to play the scratch-off game,
to get your blast points.
The blast farm has taken over the mind share,
the attention share for blur farming.
So while people can still do it,
just like you can still earn points on magic Eden.
Magic Eden is not having an impact on the market because it's not,
you don't have whales that are only bidding to,
to earn points.
And then if they get stuck with anything, going to dump it into bits like that, only bidding to earn points.
And then if they get stuck with anything,
going to dump it into bids.
Like that, I think now,
will you still earn points for bidding on Blur?
Yes, like it still exists.
But the thought of these,
I mean, you can see it in the collections.
You can see it in the collections where the bid walls,
they don't exist anymore.
Like previously, there would be,
like in a collection like Apes, there would be thousands,
several thousand
in bids at any one time.
Individual farmers would have
hundreds of bids each
because that's how they're earning points.
Now, since this new season,
it's almost went away.
Now, there are...
Actually, I take it back on the Magic Eden front.
Magic Eden right now is getting,
it looks like if anyone's farming,
it's Magic Eden and not Blur.
I'm looking at the Ape collection right now
using Mintify because it's an aggregator
that pulls the data from all of them in.
And Apes, which by the way,
since we've been on the phone,
or since we've been on the call,
I think Apes Floor has ripped up over a full ETH. I think it came in today just around 9. Just now back into double digits at 10.1. So the Floor is at 10.1. There is a bid wall at 9.75, 345 bids on Magic Eden from seven different bidders.
but we that's the first I've seen a magic Eden bid wall like that here
recently,
but to give you an idea on the blur bids,
there's one bid at 9.81,
one bid at 9.8,
one bid at 9.75.
And then one person has 10 bids at 9.46 compared to,
if you would have looked at this before this last season,
the blur ended you,
it was hundreds of,
of it in several places.
And it's not just apes.
It's across all these collections.
So the actual high-volume Blur farmers,
and CBB is the...
I think he had more Blur points last season
than the next 10 farmers combined.
It might have been the next 50 combined.
But either way,
one whale at the end of it was doing the majority of the volume.
And that, at least as of now, maybe he said something differently, but he said he was done.
And you can see the data. The bids have clearly been pulled. They're not on blur anymore.
And so when all the farming was going on,
often you would see the majority of sales
would be sold into bids.
Now, if you look, the majority of sales are buys.
We're seeing...
I'll hand it...
You know, you got hands here, Steve,
so I'll hand it back to you.
I'll see if I can grab some actual data.
I don't want to just be making up information.
I've seen a few tweets on the timeline
with good data points
and their sources in terms of
things I mentioned earlier like listings
actual sales above floor.
This is something we just weren't seeing
during the blur bidding
era, the incentivized
bidding era. It's now
we're seeing what I believe
less volume, less volatility is a good incentivized bidding era, it's now we're seeing what I believe less
volume, less volatility is
a good thing for PFP
collections, for collectibles.
It's people buying
what they actually want to buy,
even if it is for a flip.
They're buying with the intent to flip
it to sell it for more, not just
dump it into a bid for less.
It just has a huge impact on the market.
I agree with you.
It wasn't blur farming that didn't.
It's not the sole cause of NFT floors crashing.
I didn't see a path towards NFT floors ever reviving while it was going on.
That's the biggest issue.
We just saw it play out probably a half dozen times.
It was near impossible for any of
these collections to build any sort of real momentum because as soon as they'd start building
momentum and people would start buying and collecting, buying what they wanted and floor
going up and oh, this might be, then you'd have a couple hundred assets dumped into bids by farmers
and it would crush the floor again. So it created a lot of buyer uncertainty. You had buyers who,
hey, maybe wanted to join a community
or join a collection or pick up an asset,
but knowing that the blur farmers loomed large,
like, well, maybe I should just wait
and they're likely going to continue to drive the floor down.
Because it was just, we saw it play out so many times.
I wasn't a buyer.
I was a very, very selective buyer.
And anytime I was making a buy during that era,
I was doing so fully expecting the floor
to likely continue to dip.
It's just, that was a very, very significant headwind
for all NFTs.
And now that that is,
appears to have been eliminated for now,
if not greatly mitigated,
because the ones who were doing it
at the extreme volume are not doing it.
And if that holds, and I believe it will,
because it's just not,
it doesn't appear to be worth it for them anymore.
Yeah, no, I mean, a lot there.
And I think, yeah, like that's the,
that'll be interesting to see.
And it's funny because you can check the tape
on this show, by the way.
If you look back, you can check the tape.
And my three scenarios I've generally given go as follows.
Hold up.
Who is the Magic Eden bidder?
Because they just pulled him.
Whoever's listening in, show yourself.
Who just pulled the bids?
I saw him disappear in real time.
Amazing.
Yeah, people listening into Cap right now.
But the way that
this works is threefold that that i said there are two unlikely scenarios and one likely scenario
uh and then there's obviously the fourth scenario that blur just continues to cook so there are
really four scenarios i played out in this scenario number one unlikely pacman just shuts
down blur because it's not worth his time and he just wants to spend all his time on blast
you know and says like look look, blur's cool.
That was nice.
We have a nice community there.
We have some loyal people who have stuck through it with us,
but this is not the way.
And he pulls out that will be number one.
That's not going to happen because there's a lot of reasons that won't
happen,
but that won't happen.
Thing number two would be that it becomes shut down some way by like the
government or someone goes after it.
There's a
regulatory thing again unlikely not going to happen but that will be the other way that something like
blur goes away option number three which is the well option number three is the obvious you know
like if all things stay the same and stay equal blur farming just continues and things get farmed
into oblivion down to zero right which is a relatively likely scenario and the other most
likely scenario that
I've been pounding the table on for months and months at a time at this point is that at some
point the rewards, the punch bowl goes away and the rewards are not worth the work. And because
a combination of Pac-Man wanting to drive more people to blast and the combination of the rewards
not being as worthwhile, they
find time, whether it's with blur or whether it's with blast or another ecosystem, spending
time elsewhere for the farmers is worth more money and it is not worth their time, money
and energy to risk in here.
Whereas the risk is not worth the reward.
People maybe get wrecked and don't make money or people do make money, but it's not as much
as they want as we've talked about.
And now we're actually seeing that play out
potentially in real time to Cap's Point.
And that's the scenario that I've been pounding the table on
for months on this show where at some point,
if the incentives tip in the other direction,
because with a thing like Blast,
the token has to hold up, which it hasn't, by the way.
It's been dipping consistently.
We'll see what the season two Blast announcement is next week
and if they get that thing back going.
But with Blast, it's like you can just participate in the blockchain
and just stake money and earn native yield.
If you do nothing else, and assuming that there's obviously platform risk
and blockchain risk, but assuming nothing else,
if you just have ETH sitting there in the Blast ecosystem bridged,
you just earn money against it, right?
Like they have
the native yield that was part of the giant premise that they had it's why oh it's having
mando bridged over like 500 eth initially all those things and then anything you earn on top
of that becomes gravy if you do nothing else right it's obviously ways to gamble and the farming and
all that stuff but like blur introduces an element of you might get wrecked on a bunch of money and then you might not make money.
And so to me, that's what it was, is when the rewards become less than, and kind of what Cap just said out, a scenario we've been talking about for months, less than the game theory goes in the state.
I dropped my phone and it just unplugged my wired headphone.
So I'll just finish my thought on the speaker and then I'll hit Caruso.
And then maybe we might actually need to,
we'll let our guests get back in here and then we probably need to wrap
because we were running way over time.
But the game theory will tip against spending all the time,
energy and money there,
making bots,
paying people,
losing money at too much risk with low reward.
And I think that's what we potentially see playing out in real time.
But that said,
Caruso, I saw your hand was up. So I want to go what we potentially see playing out in real time. But that said, Crusoe,
I saw your hand was up.
So I want to go your way one more time for any thoughts on any of this
before we probably close down.
Yeah,
I appreciate the toss and I lowered it because you basically touched upon
But the lesson that I'm taking away from this talking about,
you know,
the three different platforms that we've chatted about today,
whether it's blur,
whether it's Zedrun, whether it's Top Shot, is the unhealthy precedent that's set initially with high incentives. I think that if you're a platform, if you're a founder,
you have to be thinking about that long-term balance and that sustainability, because I think
we've seen the way that this plays out now and that the rewards are going to,
if you're bringing in people just for the money,
like obviously you need to balance that
and you need to incentivize early adopters.
But you need to, I think that overall,
like just the rewards need to,
and I hate saying this as someone who would be receiving them,
but I think the rewards need to be lower lower if you look at like a 2.0 or a traditional loyalty or rewards or a
cashback program something like delta sky miles or anything like this like they've found a healthy
balance to make this work and people still use it and i think that that's where we need to move
towards yeah no i agree and i think that that's a healthy thing and look there's always good like here's the
thing that's great about blast by the way is that there's always an opportunity with blast uh to
participate in the casino if you want to participate in the casino right there's always that chance
there's going to be casino games and there literally are casino games on blast and by the
way i think that's healthy i think if people want to gamble give them things to gamble on there's me or garga said yesterday
in the tweet cap we didn't even get to this a whole other topic maybe for monday if it even
is still relevant but you know i i put out a tweet yesterday that um about about garga um
you know talking about like not financializing in an exchange with beanie by the way heartwarming
beanie's working on educational content he said he was inspired by my book and the things we were doing, which
is like crazy full circle considering he was the first crypto influencer that I remember or NFT
influencer. And I bought Punk's comics because of him and ended up making bank on them and all
those things. And there's been a whole Beanie arc that's been, you know, good, bad, ugly,
and everything in between with some things that people ask questions about. And, um, you know,
he's been, I think a pretty relevant player, but him and Garga had an exchange and, you know, good, bad, ugly, and everything in between with some things that people ask questions about. And, um, you know, he's been, I think a pretty relevant player, but him and Garga had
an exchange and, you know, Garga made the point of like, look, we're not doing anything that's
going to be specifically financialized. We're doing things that are just shipping cool shit.
And I don't know, like, I think as we go that direction, I think it's a good thing,
but I also think it's fine to say if a blockchain has a gambling program on it, if other side has a casino in it, go use it, go gamble.
But the gambling doesn't necessarily need to be on the assets you're excited about.
You know, again, like, you know, Colony is a great example where it's like, you know, Joey's running on Colony.
It's like, I don't care that there wasn't Blast Gold.
There was a card that I saw below market value last night from one of the top collectors.
I put in an offer.
They accepted it.
It has nothing to do with me farming gold
or getting this for that reason.
It's me continuing to build up a collection
of things that I want.
So look, I mean, that said, Cap,
any other thoughts?
We should probably,
and apologies to Joey and Snowflake.
I think we are going to close it there
because we are at 1038,
so we're running long.
We're running about 38 minutes long,
so I know, Joey and Snowflake,
you've had your hands up,
but I actually have some meetings I got to get to in.
I got to get ready in the next probably couple of minutes and I need to
somehow shower and be ready in the next 20.
So for an important one.
So cap any parting thoughts before we go and I try to do a speed shower.
Yeah.
Good chat today.
Appreciate everyone's time.
Thanks for everyone listened in and joined us on stage.
I did post the chart.
It made my story a lot better
if there wasn't 345 Magic Eden bids up there.
So the fact that they removed them to help me out,
I do appreciate it.
The lack of bids is promising,
which may sound weird,
but it wasn't real liquidity.
It wasn't real bids.
It wasn't a bid wall of actual buyers.
Rather, 99.9% of them were actual dumpers.
And that was just a very, very challenging mechanic
or incentive rather to create any sort of real momentum.
I don't know where it goes from here.
I've been saying,
I do think consolidation is inevitable.
Maybe,
and I'm not taking shots.
I'm not,
I don't wish any of them ill will,
but to attempt to tie it all together today,
Steve,
maybe we're seeing a couple of them,
a couple of our topics today,
be it cool cats and Zed,
maybe that's two that don't make it through this cycle.
Maybe that's part of the cost of consolidation
is a couple that have,
and I'm not saying this happens,
Zed will relaunch and I freaking hope,
I hope it goes well,
but I think we'd be naive to think that everyone makes it.
And if this take on not just liquidity, but momentum coming back to EthanFT's momentum
and attention, I have a hard time thinking it's going to be all.
I think it's going to be a lot of the ones that we talk here about regularly, but even some of those may not make it through. Because I think if we do get
another real run, Steve, it's going to start... Whether we like it or not, it's probably not
fair to the teams and founders. I think it almost instantly increases the level of expectations from the community and the holders.
I think if they,
meaning if apes and penguins
run up to 20 ETH and then 30 ETH,
if other ETH NFTs aren't moving,
aren't seeing any momentum,
if they're just,
and not even going to zero,
just like using the example one
that ripped up the double-digit ETH before,
now it's sitting at 0.2, 0.25.
If we see majors run in 2, 3x from here
and an excitement come back
and some of the ones that have been around since 2021,
they're just maintaining,
I think maybe a consequence or a side effect of that might be
creating a harder environment for those that aren't seeing the increase in floors.
We're human beings. And I think I could think of a lot of projects that if they've had a lot of
community members that's loyal, I might question how loyal they would be if we get that second bull run of NFTs
and they're on the sidelines. I don't know. Any thoughts on that? That'll let you close this out.
No, no. I mean, honestly, no closing thoughts. I think you kind of synthesized it pretty well,
and I would just kind of verbally retweet everything you said. And it's going to be interesting to follow to see what, I mean, this is the natural progression. We say this on the,
on the show from time to time where it's like, we say 99% of this stuff is going to zero and,
or is going to fail just like any other startup and any other businesses.
We're seeing it play out in real time. It's like, man, I, you know,
it's everyone was like, the bags are all gonna go to
zero just not my bags and everyone held them and it's like statistically something you're holding
is not going to do well and we may see this starting to play out so look i mean that said
i'm gonna head out of here i know cap's gotta head out of here it was a great discussion glad
we went a little over glad we had some great builders on stage some great commenters thanks
to everyone who showed up you could have spent the last hour
or two hours and 42 minutes with anyone.
You spent it with us.
We appreciate that.
With that said,
we'll let everybody sail off into their day.
Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, everybody.
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