Yeah, really excited for this space.
And, yeah, I've been waiting for this one.
Actually, I'll record for some of the wolves, too.
But a lot of things also going on with wolves that I'm super excited about.
I'm super excited about that.
I'm super excited about that.
I'm super excited about that.
I'm super excited about that.
I'm super excited about this.
We can't just be a mess for stragglers.
And also, for other spaces at the top of the hour to end.
So they can come flood in over here.
I'm doing very, very good.
Yeah, it's a busy, we're having an insane week.
But, yeah, otherwise doing insanely good.
at least listening to the space,
and hopefully he recovers quickly and well.
For sure, Sam's a trooper.
He's also somebody that I highly respect,
so hoping that he gets better and stuff like that.
He has a few trips that he's going on,
so hopefully he gets better,
and he can actually enjoy the trips
and not having to recover.
But Lou O'Connor, are you guys going to GDC?
Yeah, we've got, no, so myself, no.
We've got Juan from our team who's going to GDC.
Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think.
I've heard, I think, on Twitter,
it's like 100 out of 300 Valve-style members
I know, it's going to be a lot of fun.
It's probably the biggest consolidation of Wolves
that we've had in existence,
We're going to be producing a lot of content.
That's why I was going to ask you if you represent,
or if you have a representative there,
I would love to sit down and talk with them
for a couple minutes or so,
record them, put a mic in their face,
but I know he likes that as the marketing lead.
But Lou, yeah, would love to have you,
if you do end up coming out.
Yeah, I see, it's not plans,
launching a token is a fucking mess,
just too many things to do.
But yeah, though, I see if I can make time.
I would, honestly, I would love to go.
And yeah, so I'll hit you guys up if I end up going.
All right, well, let's get this space started,
because I know both of us have a hard stop
which I do not want to waste any more time,
because I have been doing a lot of research on Xborg,
because you guys are building the thing
that I've been talking about for two years,
and I absolutely love it.
So first, I want to just do introductions here,
so please get your expectations lowered right now.
But first, I want to introduce the guests here.
First, we have Connor Kristin,
who is the growth and marketing lead at Xborg,
starting in blockchain early as a blockchain intern
at Trader Lee back in 2018,
while running Kristin Transport as a co-founder,
so founding member for a lot of the companies
that he actually have done in the past.
After doing that for a bit,
he worked at Coin, a digital asset exchange
built as a white label solution,
where he was the growth and BD there at the time.
So he has a lot of blockchain Web3 experience,
but also just a lot of marketing
and business development experience.
Super excited to be picking your brain, Connor.
Also just how you have a lot of plethora
of marketing background in different types of cases.
I'm a marketing buff as well,
so love to just hear your thoughts on Web3 marketing
But next up is Louis, who's the founder and CEO of Xborg.
Was previously a quant and crypto specialist,
though data and tech nerd like me.
After a couple of years, he joined Swissborg,
where he was building Xborg and stealth
And then he was building Xborg for two years now
and has a lot of success in doing so.
For people that don't know,
Xborg is a gaming credential infrastructure
empowering players to create their digital identity
and has built a tremendous community
and one that is respected in Web3.
I definitely respect you guys
and how you guys run your community,
especially during the bear market.
Also have a question for that a little bit later,
just because I'm the one up here asking questions
and I freaking love community.
And all of this started with just him
and now has scaled up to team members of 20 plus
doing a couple of rounds during the deep bear market,
which just means that your guys community
has a huge conviction in what you guys are building.
So very excited to dig into that.
And congratulations for getting this far
as well, Louis, and surviving, right?
I was watching your cyber link.
That's what a lot of investors told you,
just hold on, just hold on until you can get
But I'm super excited to dig into Xborg today, Lou.
And yeah, welcome to the panel.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Connor is going on a Twitter space, Spree.
It's insane the amount of AMAs and spaces he does.
But I think if you're into gaming
and you can't show up to the Vols Dao space,
I wonder what the heck you're doing.
And I think Vols Dao is a community in gaming.
I truly appreciate, we've met at the 3XP conference.
And since then, just Vols Dao just kept killing it.
And I think, you know, Vols Dao was created in the time
where work for gaming was still very small.
And I think having a group of people that have convictions
and that are truly here to make a difference
and empower gamers to own their assets
and to change the gaming space for the better.
I'm truly excited to have this conversation.
And yeah, it's good, it's going.
Really just a first question,
this very softball question here is from a high level
for people that just don't know what export is
or what you guys are building your social identity platform.
Please just like double click into that.
I would love to just hear from both of you guys actually,
if you guys want to, Lou from you first, what is export?
Yeah, so we're building the identity of gamers.
and the problems that we're solving is,
today when you play games,
and I'm sure here we all play games,
you play on different platforms,
you play for like thousands of hours or hundreds of hours.
And like, it is a time consuming thing.
And the thing is your data is not recorded on a ledger.
Or if it is recorded, it's not yours.
And, you know, the many instances where Steam,
you know, shut down accounts.
And then from one day to the other,
your whole history is essentially wiped out.
And, you know, we believe that the GTOL world
is going to be a lot more important than it is today.
You know, we see like the Apple Vision Pro
that's just one instance where,
essentially what's going to be GTOL VS what's physical
is really going to be like,
there is going to be a blurry line here.
And though we believe that what you do online
is as important as what you do offline.
So offline, you have your CV
that you can sort of take it with you.
And like online, you actually don't have any way
of aggregating your data and like owning your data.
And that's exactly what we do is we're building
this protocol that aggregates your data as a player
that achieves governance.
So that means you can sort of trace back your data
And what's cool is allowing developers to build use cases
on top of this like ID that you're building.
So what that means concretely is games can integrate
with this solution were not just games like platforms.
I think a use case that's interesting for games is,
you know, as you guys know,
like AI is disrupting games in a way that,
so it's hard for game dev to know who is playing.
Like, is it an AI or is it just a real person?
So having like an ID system
where you have a reputation tied to it,
well, that sort of hinders bots
and that achieves what we call a proof of personhood.
But I think some more like cool use cases
is let's say you're a CS2 player or CSGO player
and you're playing a new FPS game.
Well, you know, this FPS game can know
that you're a CS2 player and as a consequence,
you know, give you perks or like give you access
to some DLCs or skins because, you know,
you're like a player from another game
Obviously there are like tons of other use cases,
like, you know, can go as like a tournament platform,
let's say, or today there is no way to know
to whom you're competing against
and like to know the history of that person.
And, you know, if it's a community gaming
or to integrate with us, then that's easy achievable.
And they are like more, let's say,
what three native use cases were, for example,
today when we discussed about L drops
and like token L drops or NFT drops,
it purely goes to speculators.
And I think fundamentally as a game,
what you're looking at is not acquiring a DJ
and so much, but acquiring players
because fundamentally a game with no players has no value.
And that's where you come in
where if you're building like an MMO game,
you can urge up tokens to like MMO players.
And I think that's like what we call
the next generation of gaming,
but one where your data actually matters.
And yeah, I think that's the TLDR,
which was, I guess, pretty long in the end.
But the true, I think the true edge that we have at Xbox
is knowing how to distribute this solution.
So I think this network sounds cool
and it sounds like it's a pretty cool idea,
but concretely, if you have no users
or no players on this network, it's worthless.
And it's also my take on blockchains,
like if you have a blockchain, it has no users,
it essentially has no value.
So the goal for us last year was how can you scale that
to like hundreds of thousands of players
And so we've partnered with Team BDS,
that's, well, they used to be the champions on Rocket League.
They are the LEC, NIP, Ninjas and Tijama
with the non-stamps a couple of weeks ago,
And here I can announce on this space
that we've partnered with the best esports team
in the world by cash price earns.
because there's still like some,
I guess there is a marketing launch plan,
but they are integrating naturally on our protocol
and yeah, super excited about this.
Let them tell us, Connor, just kidding.
When it comes to the way that you guys go about growing it,
I really very much like it.
So when it comes to the strategy of growth
on how it usually is done in like the web three ecosystem
is that you kind of go from like community to community,
you try to find things within the ecosystem
to try to grow your apps.
But actually for you guys,
you guys went outside of the ecosystem.
And why did you guys target esports
as your main like avenue?
You can just jump into that a little bit.
Cause that was very intriguing to me
whenever I was listening to CyberLink
and just how you went about doing things
and how you guys are on a road to like a million players
being into this ecosystem.
It's not actually through, you know, web three.
It's actually through like these esports organizations.
So can you like maybe unpack that for us a little bit?
when I mentioned that you're trying to solve problems
in the industry, like that's why we're here.
And esports as an industry is,
so, you know, what the esports industry is,
obviously you have a competitive angle to it.
But from a business viewpoints,
an esports team is really just,
let's say middleman between fans
and brands that want to get that reach.
But the issue that esports teams have
is there is no like infrastructure for them to,
you know, build the identity of their fans.
So just simply just engage with their fans.
And so, you know, earlier in 2022,
I've met with the execs at Team BDS
and, you know, we've quickly identified that issue that,
yes, it's super hard for them to sort of
create this environment where fans really feel
like they belong to a bigger organization.
And so, you know, we decided, okay, you know,
that is actually an amazing use case for what we're doing,
as in building the identity of players and as a proxy to,
I think your experience as a player,
it's also not about the games that you play,
but also the communities that you're part of.
And I think esports is a very big angle.
And then, yeah, we just, so honestly,
an opportunity to have an impact and, you know,
like a work through impact to a much bigger audience.
So Team BDS was first and then Juan from our team
did an amazing job at chatting with all the esports teams.
You know, we're not directly from an esports background,
but we, you know, we got amazing advisors
that helped us on our way to like, you know,
now signing with like Ninjas and Pjama
and like this other team and like, you know,
we're chatting to the big guns like T1 and like OG Sports
and like those big, big names.
But it's just, honestly, it's because the product
that we're building is a perfect fit for the industry.
And that's what we saw from the esports side.
I also want to bring here the fact that we actually
are not paying to, unlike a lot of work through solutions
where they just end up dumping a lot of cash
for people to adopt their solutions.
What we saw is teams were willing to pay for what we do.
And I think that was a very strong use case
and like value proposition for the protocol.
And yeah, so I would say a lot of luck,
because, you know, we've met, I think, Team BDS out of luck
and they're just opportunities
and we ended up scaling it and found a lot of success
in doing so and yeah, that's essentially how we got here.
Yeah, and maybe going into a little bit of like your pitch
to like BDS and some of these, like the apps.
And if you can't touch on this for surely,
But we'd love to just like hear your thoughts on it,
because in CyberLink you also mentioned something
and I keep on reference, CyberLink,
I would highly recommend anybody that is interested
in like learning more about it.
I don't know how often you do them,
but they do these CyberLinks,
specifically like blogs, video blogs
And a lot of the questions that I am asking
I would love to just hear from you, Lou,
the pitches that you do to these teams,
like what are you offering them that like they find
like extremely valuable to their ecosystem?
So, you know, Xbox is this data layer
and we're plugged to many different games or launchers,
like Epic, Riot, Steam, Battle.net.
And, you know, as an esports team,
you're obviously very competitive.
And today the current engagement solutions
where it's just about like following people on Twitter
or like doing stuff on Discord,
which is not really the way in which you build your community.
So here we're coming with a, I think,
piping plugged on the identity layer.
You're connected to those different APIs and games.
So you can, as a community,
can do any challenges that you want
on the games that we support.
And that means, you know,
Team BDS can do challenges on, for example,
League of Legends or like TFT or Rocket League,
which is a very powerful value prop.
Which not a lot of platforms are able to do
because you need large partnerships to be able to do this.
And then the other aspects which we haven't discussed about
is building your identity is not to us just building data,
but it's also how does your identity look like.
And so, for example, on the platforms
that we were building with NIP or Team BDS
or like the other esports teams,
is you have an avatar, which is your own, let's say, identity.
And as you go through your journey as a player,
you craft unique items, which you can resell.
So like almost like an MMORPG or, you know,
through your experience, you can earn loot and like loot boxes.
And then, yeah, you can just create your own character.
And I think that was like this pitch,
which was very much against social farming,
which, you know, we had a lot of teams
that were looking at like those social engagement platforms,
which I think are great, like by all means,
but like the likes of like Zilly or, you know,
the old Crew 3, it's all about like engagement farming.
And I guess our platform came as a solution
that really fit players or it's all about gaming.
And that's what we, that's what I think
just was really compelling for them.
And I think the last part is really us going the extra mile.
So we essentially are building separate clients for them.
So that means us like building separate front ends
and that's pretty much a turnkey solution.
So they don't have to do much.
And on our side, we do all of the groundwork.
So like, you know, last year has been just a whole mess
doing all of that, like, you know, hiring like a 3D team,
like doing the design ourselves
to have like the best looking platforms.
And yeah, that's, I think that's still the whole pitch.
Awesome, love also to touch on like,
so you have like a data layer, but then also apps
and which is probably what this,
the esports are wanting apps
to build on top of that data layer
in terms of like what people can plug into
in terms of like builders on why it would benefit
then plug into the export ID and everything like that.
We'd love for you to just elaborate a little bit on that
aspects of things of plugging into your data layer.
Yeah, so I think one is distribution.
So you're essentially, you know,
by virtue of just integrating with it,
and you have access to the players and the fans
of the best esports teams in the world,
which is, I would say a very compelling pitch.
Then what's relevant is knowing about the demographic.
So just having insights on who's using your platform.
So if you're, you know, doing a tool on that forum,
okay, like what kind of profile are using that platform?
And you don't really have to log in with our credentials.
You can just bind our credentials
and the game dev will have access to it
or the app developers will have access to it.
I think that's like a very basic user acquisition strategy
or you can stream notifications through the network.
So if you want to target like CS2 players,
and again, you're like an FPS game,
you can say, well, all of the, you know,
CS2 players with a KD above five on like X type of games
or modes will get like free schemes.
And that's like one way in which you can do giveaways
And I would say like these are the core value props.
Now to, because obviously we're still early in this,
you know, our goal today is really scale the network.
Because we don't think the value prop is compelling enough
until you have a million players.
Because concretely, I mean,
we've spoken to the big brands and to the big like developers
and, you know, for them, they really want to see scale first.
So our priority today is really to say,
well, we'll onboard a ton of these sports teams
and their fans onto the network.
And then we really build on like focus
on the infrastructure for devs.
We'll also have a grant program
to incentivize developers to build on top of us,
which is essentially what Lens Protocol is doing.
And yeah, I think if you guys here in the audience know
Lens Protocol, I think the best way to put,
well, to summarize what Xbox is doing is at the end of the day,
so the Lens Protocol of gaming,
I think that's the best way to put it.
Yeah, definitely decentralization of like social media
and like having your specific data,
being able to take it wherever you want to
and also very web three culture driven.
Also, maybe a question for you, Connor,
if you're willing to answer it,
it is more from like the marketing perspectives of like,
you know, you have like a lot of like
these esports organizations,
I think you have on your website,
you have two more that have not been announced,
but it's really exciting just to be in that.
And I think in cyber links, the episode two,
there's like, I think around 10 more organizations
that you guys are doing to on the road for 2024,
to be able to get to that million players,
and you guys are trending on that.
How do you deal with like, you know,
all of these cool announcements,
all these major announcements,
I know you've been hitting these Twitter spaces a lot,
but what other plans do you guys have
for in terms of marketing?
Sorry, Luke, the toughest part I have to say,
Peyton, is keeping Lou's lips sealed
when it comes to the announcements of the teams,
because we're truly working with
the biggest players in the space,
when it comes to the teams, and then also brands,
and then even the top esports leagues.
But that's all I'll say about that.
It's really exciting, you know,
especially being gamers our whole lives.
Some of us have played, you know, esports professionally
and competitively, and, you know,
have been watching these teams, supporting these teams,
and now I'm hopping on calls with them,
and figuring out, okay, how can we, you know,
onboard their fans in the best way,
and, you know, get their players
and content creators involved.
Our next esports team announcement,
they actually have 200 content creators signed to their org.
I would say they're the biggest org in the world,
and so it's all about figuring out, okay,
how can we, you know, in the most efficient way,
convert their fans into these type of super fans
that use their apps on a daily basis,
and, yeah, really want to start building their,
and nearly drop the team's name,
but let's say the ninjas and pajamas,
their character, you know, within their app,
and go on that kind of journey with their team,
and then support their team, and all that kind of stuff.
So when it comes to the marketing side of Xbox,
it's been really interesting.
I have to be kind of two different people.
The one side, I'm, you know, really web three,
where I'm hopping in Twitter spaces all the time,
chatting to web three games,
and different projects in the space.
Also, you know, we have quite a big community of gamers,
One thing that I really like about Xborg is that,
you know, we're really pushing forward decentralization,
and governance, and transparency.
And so, you know, jumping in between like proposals,
and voting with NFT holders on like the future of Xborg,
and our protocol, and decisions, and all that kind of stuff.
And then going to the, you know, web two side,
the traditional gaming side,
and figuring out, you know,
working with the top esports teams, brands,
putting together proposals for leagues,
and all that kind of stuff.
If, you know, we sign them,
it's going to be a huge announcement.
So it's been really interesting,
and I've grown a lot in the last two years.
Yeah, I think, I mean, like more concretely,
the team that we're announcing should be beginning of March.
And I think Sam has the ultimate alpha here,
but yeah, essentially the info that we're building
is replacing an app that already exists today
that has a hundred thousand monthly active users.
So it's like, I think a million is obviously quite a lot,
but when you talk to those big teams, it's actually,
you know, we all know how big the gaming industry is.
And so that is really, like, it's not much,
but we also understand like,
the work through native growth is limited
to a degree we were today.
There are not so many games that have organic growth,
or we all know it's driven by a lot of incentives.
And it's not really healthy.
And so our bets today is to really try and,
like push the boundaries of what we can do in Web 2 Esports.
And yes, like essentially assign as many teams as possible,
which is like the big, I mean,
essentially consuming all of our time.
Web 3 is still like obviously very important
and like the whole infra is built up of Web 3,
but we believe there is greater value
in just doing the groundwork in Web 2 Esports
and bringing them over to Web 3.
I think when it comes to like the social identity
and what you guys are doing
and collecting the social identities
of some of these organizations that have it,
you have like long-term value, right?
Medium to long-term, you also touched on that
whenever I was doing some deep dives there.
One thing that you also are really focused on
and your export community is actually
one of the strongest communities in Web 3
that people probably don't know too much about.
And I would really love to just really dig deep
into like why you decided to go so hard in 2022 and 2023
in a bear market and focus really internally on community
because it definitely did pay out.
And for people that don't know this,
they did a Prometheus Mint,
which we'll touch on a little bit later,
but they helped raise a 400K for the export deep bear.
So the community like really believed
in what you guys are building.
So I would love to just hear from Lou and Connor
if you also want to color that in as well,
but focusing on community during the bear.
I would say the two big achievements was,
yeah, September, 2022, I guess,
I know most of you guys were actually here.
We'll get a lot of retail that will come by
that will never have experienced that stuff.
But it was a very, I think, tough time for the industry
where a lot of games that we were chatting to
And we did this maze, which in insight was pretty crazy,
but it turned out to be very successful.
And then the most recent events
is the community seed rounds that we did.
like some business angels that came in,
but like we had 7 million of interest
in our latest community seed round,
which was still in the bear market.
I mean, that was June in 2023.
So the market was pretty trash
and we raised like our hot cap of 2 million,
which I think today was our biggest achievements,
like doing this when actually no one believed in crypto
like ETH was like so down and stuff.
And now we're doing a pre-sale actually,
or today we, I mean, it's still going to be like 30 days.
But to come back to your points,
I think the bigger reason of why we're building x-book
is like first we believe that your data is important,
but we also believe that the next generation of gaming
is one where gamers have a say
over decisions that are taken by gaming studios
I think here I'm going on a tangent,
but that really aligns with like the vision that we have
is that we believe that with AI,
we'll be able to do and replicate apps a lot,
like in a lot easier fashion.
So we all know like the Blitz app from TSM
or like children platforms,
you'll be able to do that super fast.
Obviously there will always be barriers to that,
but we believe that at the end of the day,
why you will use a product is not going to be so much
about what the product does,
but more so what do I have to gain from using this product
and like which community supporting this product.
So for us community is super important.
And that's why like we put transparency forward
by doing the cyber links,
by showcasing as much stats as we can.
And that's also I think how you gain trust.
And I think it's also a huge advantage
because when you have the private markets
that is so down and just desperate,
you still can find support in your community.
And that's, I think at the end of the day
when you're releasing a token,
it's not for the team and the VCs
to just dump on the communities,
for the community to just be stronger.
And what we did in our history is actually
we actually just have the community.
So like you have the community
and obviously you have KOLs that invested
but essentially I would say it's as close as possible
to community during projects.
we're not like completely decentralized
because it is at the end of the day,
we have like big partnerships
and we have big commitments.
We can't just like fuck things up
and not deliver on the commitments.
But yeah, I think Connor,
do you want to add some stuff here?
Yeah, I mean, just in terms of building
our community during the bear,
We were in a unique position,
no one was really building in Web3.
Well, there weren't many actors in the space,
a lot of games closed down
and projects were a bit low on numbers.
So two things we did to really build
a really strong community
and the one was obviously
we come from esports backgrounds
So we decided to host a ton of tournaments
on Web3 games to help cultivate the scene
and try and support games
as well as bring some fun for players
And that's one of the ways
we have cultivated a really competitive
So if you could play against
it's not going to end well for you
and a lot of people in the space
anyone who's played tournaments
So we have a really strong community
of gamers for those reasons
and then also with our NFT Mint,
one of the bigger utilities for that
is we developed a launchpad
and we've done about 12 projects
that have launched on the launchpad so far.
I mean, one of them most recently
was like Eth Lizard seed round,
my angry Yakuza girlfriend the other day
and obviously gave access to like
pre-seed and seed deals to our NFT holders.
So I would say another big part
of our community is also players
that are really interested in investing
So that's kind of how we built our community
and it's one of the reasons why.
I think, yeah, I add to that
that we came in like early 2022
essentially or you still had,
you know, and I still have some respect
for like the Big Axie and Axie Infinity.
And I think we came in from like an angle
where we say, okay, we believe
that the future of gaming
is not just like vanilla playing to earn
or just the game is not fun,
but we believe that, okay, game has to be fun
And I think, yeah, we haven't made
I think there are things that we have to learn
like the sort of Web3 native side,
we did like this 100K cash price
tournament, like 100K cash
that was sponsored by Brave
and we had like five games
And, you know, we essentially are doing this
to cultivate the Web3 gaming space.
And yeah, also as a proxy
that truly believes in Web3 gaming.
And actually speaking of that,
you were talking a little bit
like marketing expenditure
for like more tournaments in 2024
or using some of that to secure
some like really great ambassadors
that he's gonna be working with you guys.
Like what's it looking like
Yeah, so you have two angles.
so very much product driven
and the other is I would say
Web3 like DJ and sort of native side.
we'll secure the Web2 side first
because to us that's the toughest part.
And at the end of the day,
we understand how Web3 works
and we've been in the space
for like the last seven years.
But the truth is like through 2023,
I think that was a very tough year for us
building the core of Nino4ire
and securing those partnerships
which really looked like a nightmare.
because you have so much stuff
Like at the end of the day,
and just like a lot of Web3 companies,
but like working with those big guns
is really a different scale
and you have different commitments.
Now, as far as Web3 native growth,
I think it's very important
to partner with the people
that truly align with our values
I have a very strong take
and I think a lot of people
that do not spread the word
I think Sam just did like in 2023
Raiden as well, like Raiden came
essentially out of nowhere
and just building great content
and I love looking at his newsletter
and I think it just really inspired us
We also have yellow pantry on the space.
and yeah, so that's for us.
okay, we'll partner with the people
that we believe represent our values best
and that fundamentally understand
what we do and truly vibe
and then obviously they are,
DeFi native growth angles
or just large DeFi keywords
sort of who brings volume
or yeah, so we understand this side
an amazing job on this front
and we'll announce I think
is it this week or next week?
I think it's right now in this space, right Connor?
You're supposed to announce it.
Tomorrow we'll make a post
the first batch of payrolls
that have invested in export.
Yeah, and I think just overall
there will be a lot more budget
native, like with the native growth,
whether it is the shape of airdrops
or airdrops to actual users
or just people using the protocol
but this will be more like
or you really are tapping into people
as a sort of nugget of thank you
and you can use it for governance
and you can just take it with you
and expand it within the ecosystem.
One thing that I want to cover
for you guys is what's coming up, right?
Like I think a lot of the stuff
that's reflecting back in 2023
and you guys have done tremendously
that you guys are having a lot of,
you guys are gonna be announcing partnerships
you're doing esports organization
but you also have an entertainment
that's coming up in I think a few weeks
as well as a token airdrop.
So could you guys just go
a little bit more into that
on how people in this space
and before you jump into it Lou
for people that like to retweet this
I'm gonna run a Twitter picker
about an hour after this space is done.
Just want to get the message out there.
We're gonna give away two whitelist spots
which is actually a very low supply as well.
for hooking us up on that.
and retweet the space for sure
and I'll be picking that out
Yeah so I think next week
we have the NIP app that goes live
and I think that's a important moment.
We've released like three apps
but none of them were like public.
So this one is the first sort of public launch
which is good for the growth of the protocol.
we do have like this free mints.
This free mints is one access to our pre-sale
but I think most importantly
access to our launch pads
or instead of having to hold
XBG tokens you just have to hold this NFT.
And you know we discussed about growth
and you know we understood
like web through native growth
the current trends and the meta
and I'll try and do it like differently
or like doing like do it transparently.
like DJEN stuff in the past.
We like you know for example
NFT price went from like 0.2
to like now I think one point something
and like no one heard about it
because we don't we haven't
captured to a very sort of DJEN
or let's say web free native origins
and I think this free mints is really
for the web free native legends.
it's really a great event for us.
You know we're tapping into communities
or like the Pudgy Penguins
Wolfdowers I think you know
and then we have our pre-sale
so that's tied to again our token.
But before this we have the
our biggest announcements to date
and that's going to be the announcements
of the best esports team in the world
building natively on our protocol
that is something that yes like
people will see this and be like
yeah that's just one announcement
but like it's just so many hours of
worry that went into this stuff
like the legal team did so like
such a great work and like take
you know take team and all that.
So then you know once we announced this
so that's going to be before the pre-sale
then you have the different apps that launch
so NIP is the first that come
but then you have the app for like Team EDS
then you have the app for
and then obviously you have all the teams
So in the pipeline we have about 14 teams
it's a pretty heavy pipeline
but obviously as we announced
like the biggest teams in the world
and people won't see this as a big event
but that still you know takes
So I would say like this is the very short-term roadmap
and that takes us up to you know April.
Obviously between this we have the token launch
which we are very excited about
and that's super time consuming to be honest.
And yeah we'll scale the launchpad
which is I would say more of
which is showcasing what we do with
well one part of what we do with with esports teams.
Then we have actually the developer tooling
that's coming up for later in Q2
you will essentially be able to sign in
and then you'll be able to as a dev
to have the infra and like have the SDK
and all the APIs that you need to tap into our network.
That's also when we roll out the grants program
so hopefully obviously depends on token value
and treasury and cash at the time
but we are looking to drop about 10 million into this
to really boost the dev tooling
and then there will be other products
and the community will have a sale of the products
that we build on top of infra.
I think they are amazing use cases
for example today the experience around the
esports teams are tied to avatars
and there is this big trend today
and I think that's a cool use case of having AI companions.
So for example if the community wants us to build that
and we believe there is a strong use case
and there is strong revenues derived from this
then we might do this later this year
and yeah I would say that's the high level short term roadmap.
Luis I just want to ask a question based on what you just said
like for you you know that grant money that goes in
obviously you want devs to be building on your platform
is there any specific app that you would like love
to see people build on top of exports infrastructure?
Yeah this AI companion app to me is a really I think compelling use case.
You have NPCs in game or today you actually don't know
like if you have an NPC in game that chats to you
the NPC has no background about you
same when you chat to a new like AI companion
this companion has no data about you
and like they don't know anything about you
and then you can obviously have different twists to the AI companion
so for example you can say okay the AI companion is going to be your coach
and so obviously you know the coach would have the data
and think then that unlocks a ton of great use cases.
The most important use case of our protocol
and that's likely going to be developed by us
is what I call the gaming messaging protocol
so it's really just a way in which businesses
can like directly notify players through the network
but instead of paying an intermediary like you know TikTok
or like Instagram they are paying players
so it's just like the way dbank works for example
so dbank when you go on dbank you can say okay
you know if you want to reach out to my address
like my like eth address is going to cost you 10 bucks or like one buck
and it's essentially going to be the same for players
and there is amazing interest on like from brands
like Kitkin Gaming or Razer or like those big brands
but at the end of the day we have to make it happen
and so this is I would say the most compelling use case
Launchpad is one we've developed so you know we're not
it does not excite us so much
today one where we actually started to work on this
sometime back based the NFT landing protocol
which obviously is contingent on the overall growth
and traction of work through gaming
but today when you land an asset
you let's say you're an asset owner
and you lend assets to a player you have no background on the player
and when you're chasing the best yields
and here we're talking about like pure let's say play to earn
or like gaming assets that yield some kind of return
you know you want to know okay who is going to actually rent my assets
and what's his let's say yield potential
that's exactly what we what we unlock
these are like I would say cool use cases
there can be social media is built on some of it
obviously where you match people like you know if you want to play games
and you want to know the data of the player
so yeah these are like some pretty cool use cases on the white paper
we have like a whole bunch of ideas we put forward
and that we're ready to finance today
here's a here's a question for you Connor
for you know data is like a really big marketing tool
is there a specific like app that you would be very interested in
from like a marketer or user acquisition
sorry to put you on the spot definitely not on the show notes
in terms of something built on top of the export
yeah I mean I haven't thought about it much
but I think what's interesting is
in the same way that Lou mentioned our launch pad
and it's something that we really want to do is integrate our launch pad
with our identity system and so that projects can target specific player types
or players based on their gaming credentials
or reputation or whatever the metric is
so that you know players could get all of a sudden opportunities
based on who they are in the same like in a similar manner
it would be interesting from a like a growth and marketing perspective
to target players obviously not for investment opportunities
but perhaps players that would fit your kind of target market
you know if you're a shrapnel and all of a sudden
you know that your kind of target market is like a escape from Tarkov
or Counter Strike or Valorant or Call of Duty kind of player
that could be quite interesting to build you know an app that could do that
and perhaps like Louis said you know pay the player instead of
instead of paying like a third party could be interesting
very interesting no yeah absolutely like fascinating like infrastructure like data
especially like it being hooked up to like Steam or Riot or any of these things
and having like a historical data like what I am I'm definitely a FPS
so it fits very well with like shrapnel counter even just from like a playtester
specific one like even just spitballing with you guys here live on stage
and we're gonna wrap I'll give you guys the last five minutes I promise
is like you know having the kind of like a resume like you said
I think Lou put it out like as a C fee but like from like a gamer perspective
of like playtesters right like shrapnel having Cairo and Orangy
they had to do that mostly qualitatively having like seeing Cairo play dead drop is like oh my
gosh he's this guy's cracked let me give it into shrapnel to try to break the game
well for you guys in terms of your your social specific data layer you can go in you could see
okay like Icy is is good at uh you know seeing the games right sorry I should not disrespect
your your gamer ability but like Orangy and Cairo being like really good at gaming but also Icy can
be saying that like well for the casual gamer coming in that's probably going to play just like
an hour or two you still need those playtesters too right so very cool like playtester network
would be really cool where they get support and get paid into playtest games at an early stage
which I think is like really fascinating so love what you guys are doing at xborg I wish that we
could talk for honestly another hour but I know that we're hard capped at the top of the hour
um uh five minutes would love to hear from both of you guys Lou and Connor what you guys are
most excited about what you guys need to hear or what you want the audience to hear and also a
reminder for the audience like and retweet the space I'm going to be running a twitter picker
in around 45 minutes uh or so uh for people that are going to get two whitelist spots
for the upcoming mint which they've already mentioned the utility for that is uh token
by presale as well as um being able to get onto those launch pads which their launch pad v2 is
also something that cyberlink uh episode number 13 touched on for Lou but love five minutes Lou
Connor what are you guys most excited about yeah I think um I think it's it's um it's not a city
about what we do but I would say it's about how we do it um and I think that that kind of sounds
lame to be honest but I think the the work through space has um um you know let's say
you know you've seen all those big ecosystems like polygon uh partnering with web2 um ecosystems and
and like you know what you need to understand is in the end what really happened is and that's the
same for mutable right when when they have those like those market-based deals is what they do is
they just dump a ton of cash um and you know we believe that the adoption of web3 is not one that
is forged but one that is generally like um because the solution is subpar and that you know
we believe like is because the entity believes that the the solution is great and and that's why
they do it and so I would say that's like you'll see a lot of esports partnerships in in web3 but
you won't see a lot of esports partnerships um or the the esports team actually pays us um and so
they they you know they actually pay us to build the infrastructure uh and they well to essentially
work with them which is a which you know from a retail point of view like you'll see okay there
is this partnership and and I would say as an audience they just you know be careful with what
you see because I think first economically it makes so much of a difference but then um
yeah I would say in terms of like growth and user base it's also very different because one
is paying for it so they have incentives to you know be very involved yes the other the others
are just paid for it which is which is very very very different and um yeah I'm personally like
super tired of saying like big work for ecosystems because they have a token that they have value that
the audience are showering the esports industry or like the gaming industry or like any other
industries with like ton of cash which I don't think is very healthy for the industry and we're
really are trying and pushing hard to onboard these teams in an organic way without like spending
money uh but quite the opposite so that I would say to date is is the thing I'm most proud of
um and yeah Connor over to you cool fantastic I always uh if you see me throwing up laughing
faces it's because Lou's either leaking something or um bashing a really big player in the web3
space with a tough take and uh I'm gonna have to deal with the whatever marketing fallout is going
to happen afterwards um but uh yeah really excited um for you know the next few months
we'll be announcing huge teams huge partnerships like Lou said um these are all revenue generating
for us they pay us to build their apps we're on retainers plus we get revenue share across
all the items sold and traded within the applications which is obviously you know
really big potential uh in terms of of revenue uh for us um and then also working with brands
and leagues uh we'll be announcing uh that later this year um and releasing those really
bigger apps um because if we work with a league then we work with all the teams in that league
which is very very cool very excited for that then we obviously have our freemen coming up at the end
of feb um and we obviously you know connecting with with awesome communities like neo tokyo will
style for that ethlizards and um some big nft communities as well um and then our pre-sale in
march uh today was actually a great day we we reached uh or went over the the five million
dollar mark um so we have about five million dollars worth of interest um from about 4 000
people um you know that was our our target raise and we announced the pre-sale last week we have
about 30 days until the the sale starts so um fomo hasn't even kicked in yet and we still have so
much time we've just started collabs and uh so we're super grateful for that but also you know
really excited um that there's so much demand for xpg um so yeah really excited to launch the token
to do the pre-sale to get so many more people into our ecosystem um and have that you know obviously
it's a governance token so have them take part in shaping you know the next generation of gaming
with us uh we're really excited uh for that yeah awesome yeah i think go ahead yeah sorry go ahead
patan no i want to say yeah i think um you've touched on governance um color but i would
also like to say i think workfree also has a lot of bullshit governance and we really are trying to
put our community forward and that's i think why there's a sense of trust is just the pre-sale for
example was decided by the community and we actually are voting today on the pre-sale terms
like the actual valuation the the like the luck the way it's going to happen and same for the
kl rounds you know we're doing a killer round or not some some some top guns tomorrow but the
community actually voted on this and i think this showcase of transparency is is one that's i think
pretty specific and and hopefully well and i know the community likes this and yeah hopefully we can
show show the way for like other communities to do um you see that has downsides but um at the
end of the day community just ends up supporting you which really keeps us going love it love it
well lou connor thank you guys so much for giving me an hour of your guys time i learned a lot in
terms of what export is doing what you guys are going to um try to get as much leaks as i can but
connor your bodyguard uh helped alleviate some of that unfortunately uh but uh love it you guys
have a fan out of me for sure i'll be um being an ambassador for you guys uh unpaid ambassador
for you guys because i just really like what social identity that you guys are doing and um
having like more actually crypto companies actually having like uh revenue models that
are actually going to be lasting for long term is extremely bullish to me and i'm glad that you guys
take that approach but lou connor if you guys definitely go to gdc please let us know that's a
lot of uh i guess the alpha was leaked out this morning but yeah 100 wolves are coming out uh to
gdc in um march of 2024 uh we got an airbnb and a lot of other things that we have planned
uh but yeah be looking towards saturday too because we got a little bit of a hype video
coming out on saturday too so can't wait um and uh thank you lou and connor we'll see you guys
thanks so much uh for hosting and thanks uh thanks so much for your time as well
cheers man bye bye absolutely thanks