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XTalks: Transparency or trickery? How to spot the Web3 marketing scams
Recorded: June 11, 2024 Duration: 1:11:49Space Recording
Full Transcription
we're just gonna do a little introduction so we're not sitting in silence
uh do we have everybody up can you guys hear me okay i just had a connection drop
yeah it's all good uh we can hear you gabriel it's all good don't worry
getting people on board always makes me nervous when you log in the xcode host
yeah it keeps your spaces and it's like i know it keeps you on like on your toes okay
right and with guys whoever is a speaker for tonight please request send us a speaking request
we will approve it if not i will be sending you speaking requests as well and
be with us for a bit but whilst we're waiting i just want to mumble that this topic is literally my
favorite because it's the most frustrating one for me personally um it's it's so tiring it makes me so
tired battling through all the web3 promoters that are actually not promoters and stuff
so i'm delighted we have this discussion i'm delighted we have a great panel of speakers
who would share their valuable insights and opinions on the topic because this is crucial for
young projects as well as like you know well established established projects as well you know
to be able to determine who's who what's quality what's not and why they're so expensive what are we
paying for at the end of the day it drives me insane i'm really sensitive in terms of this topic so
even though i'm really really sick today but i'm so so happy to be here
i'm gonna stop my mumble now and let cody speak sense
hey everybody uh sorry you're not feeling well you know that's that's never fun so hopefully you'll
get on the mend quickly uh like inna said my name is cody i am the chief experience officer here at
layer 1x layer 1x is a layer 1 blockchain that specializes in decentralized um bridgeless interoperability
um so some pretty cool things that we're doing around that but uh today's topic is something
completely different so um today's topic uh we're definitely going to be diving into like inna said
uh some of the transparency and trickery of marketing uh shams and things like that out
there pitfalls to avoid things like that so um thanks everybody for joining if you haven't done so
already please uh share out the link to this uh episode of the x talks ama uh we would greatly appreciate
it our goal here at layer 1x uh specifically with x talk is to unite all chains projects and users in web3
we're not here to compete against them we feel there's no better way to do that than through inviting
everyone to come to the table and to discuss various hot topics within web3 so thanks to our panelists
coming on today we will get with them here in just a minute um but uh just to kind of introduce today's
topic um we've all seen the flashy promises the influencer endorsements and the hype trains that
can take off overnight but how much is it how much of it is real substance and how much
is just smoke and mirrors in today's episode we're going to be exposing some of those tactics the
psychology behind it and the potential dangers of deception um in the crypto world we will also
explore some um and give you some tips and tricks to uh potentially see red flags uh why uh projects
communities can be both a blessing and a curse and how to protect yourself from falling victim like
you know i was just talking about so uh as i mentioned we definitely have a great
lineup of panelists today um from seasoned devs to project founders and those who have learned the
hard way about the dark side of web3 marketing so get ready uh we're about ready to go down some deep
rabbit holes so welcome everybody um let's take 30 seconds and start to introduce your project and
who's behind the handle and let's start with carveris
thank you hi everyone my name is alex i'm the founder and ceo of carveros sentinel 3. we were
previously known as min defense you might know us uh with that name uh we are the number one security
solution for crypto users um one of the reasons why i joined this space is because one of the hardest
things is to detect rug pulls and bad projects so what we do is we detect actors that try to steal
directly from you meaning trainers and things like that but we also come upon uh some projects that we
feel that are going to rug and we have actually blocked them manually on our platform and we have
actually prevented our users from losing money so we have a lot of knowledge on on this topic and and
it's a great topic to talk about i think everyone should know um everyone that's here should should
be more of an insider uh to to how these things happen so that they can protect themselves when
the bull comes when there is a madness and you have five seconds to decide you should know this now
100 thank you for being here all right next we have new new spirits go for it my friend hello
everybody hi ina sorry you're not feeling well uh awesome i was as always to be on spaces with layer
one x uh obviously i try to join whenever possible because i love what you guys are doing and uh yeah
our project new new spirits it's a hybrid model so we have a free-to-play game and a web free portal
and they're linked by a bridge uh our game is all about planting trees and we've planted managed plan
over 20 000 of them so far and uh we're hoping that with uh some renewed vigor and some in the launch
of a our multiplayer which we're hoping to get out by the end of this year uh we can get that number
up to something more like 20 million trees so that's what we're about nothing so serious as uh you know
our friends at uh keveris but uh but we we like what they're doing as well because we think this is uh
as ina said in the beginning this is really crucial uh that we're creating safe spaces uh for people
to learn about this technology so we don't have to fight so much fud
absolutely welcome back as always good to have you here arena games you're up next
oh hello hello guys uh i was a bit late sorry i think the link was broken or something so i had to
find you guys but yeah uh guys this is fatty from arena games platform i'm the product manager here
and as arena games platform we simply bridge uh web 2 games into web 3 and through our software
development kit uh this is the services we provide for developers but uh also for gamers uh if you're a
web 3 gamer uh arena games is the spot to discover new games so yeah thank you thank you for having me
here guys yeah thanks for being here uh ben you're up next hello um great to meet you all i think i've been
on a space with a couple of you before but um i think i've been with the layer 1x before i think i've been on
here um so currently i'm in a bit of a limbo stage so i have a consultancy firm but i also was the ceo
of um granted granted actually going through an acquisition now um which is great um and in that
kind of limbo i've been focusing on helping pretty major l1s and newer l1s and l2s to either launch
grant programs and ecosystem funds or reform their existing ones um i always wanted to clarify because
i don't know if i'm the one that's lost here um are we talking about scams from web 3 marketing
agencies or are we talking about scams in web 3 that are being marketed to retail for example
i could can i yeah can i answer this question actually because i do feel like uh the topic is
quite specific but we also have um cabros who mentioned you know um certain aspects of it
so initially we wanted to talk about web 3 marketing space scams and not only scams but like
the predatory kol behavior specifically um you know when you pay a shitload of money but what for
because it's all like fake uh comments that don't really bring any necessary attention or value or
substance and this is so bloody annoying but we are we are left with no choice you know so and you
know i know i may piss someone off uh saying these things however those who bring inequality would never
been it would never be pissed off with this comments right those who however know what they're doing
and know they're doing wrong they may get offended but you know we move we are vocal here it's friendly
space and we're just having a friendly discussion so this is the topic i hope i answered your question
yeah well that's that's good i've uh i've also ran and operated um advertising agencies in web 3 and
built ad tech products in web 3 so i'm looking forward to maybe some inside industry knowledge
that people that buy the quote unquote scams might not have seen so that's cool all right thank you guys
yep welcome welcome welcome maurice you're up yo what's up man uh dope to be here thank you for
uh having me as a guest uh yeah this is maurice andrew the cmo of spicy capital uh you also may know
know me as shubzy baker it's like my old name on twitter uh but yeah man excited to be here and
talking about transparency of trickery i think this is gonna be a cool cool discussion it's actually
coming from our side as well because we do have a marketing hand where we have a marketing agency so
yeah it's gonna be cool to get some insights and uh what people can look out for in the future as well
it's always fun being in a space space with shubzy good to see you again man
they always bring the spice don't they all right uh senior course
hey there thank you cody it's choice actually happy to see some familiar faces here and yeah
thank you for having me here as well our project is thrust network thrust is building the web 3 native
alternative to discord we're leveraging web 3 strength in monetization and on-chain credentials
so our platform is aiming to unite everybody in web 3 all of the stakeholders and you know allowing
the builders and the creators to earn from speculators and trades and defense so have everybody
earning on the right way and having everything on chain i invite you guys to review our latest
demo with the blockchain gaming alliance to have a sneak peek or get in touch if you want to learn
further thanks for having me here yeah thanks for being here uh thanks to all of our panelists for
being here uh as you can see we've definitely got a great lineup uh a panelist joining us today so um
yeah couldn't be more excited to dive in so without further ado let's just kind of dive in uh oh sorry
we got uh we got one more one more sorry about i uh i snuck in i was a little bit of technical difficulties
it was showing my personal account when i thought i was on the main on player account so we got that sort
sorted out thank you for getting us in um i'll give like a kind of quick intro so i'm adam meyers i'm
head of business development for player gaming blockchain and we are a subnet on avalanche and
right now we are in testnet we've got about six games that we've developed and we'll be bringing those
over to our main net which is going to be happening here pretty soon so we are looking forward to that
our long-term goal is really to just provide a platform for game developers to bring their games
over and kind of like a plug and play almost where they have put their effort on the game and we've
kind of figured out the crypto side of things and as long as their game is great we can bring them on
to crypto and that's kind of the the service that we provide for people long term but short term we're
really just focusing on our six suite games that we've we've played and uh made and looking forward
to this space thank you well congrats and thanks for joining us glad you're able to make it so as i
was saying before if you're just tuning in my name is cody i'm the chief experience officer here at layer 1x
um if you haven't done so already please give these uh panelists to follow uh they are definitely
going to earn it uh today we've got some pretty good questions for for them as well uh please be
sure to share this link out so that we can get more and more people i know we kind of had an issue
with the previous one so uh we would definitely appreciate you guys sharing out this new link that
we had to do so with that being said let's just go ahead and jump into the first question um i'll
kind of tee it up as an easy one for you guys just to kind of get you guys warmed up this morning uh
this afternoon or evening wherever you're at so um what are the psychology uh psychological vulnerabilities
that web3 scammers typically target how can we understand these and help our audience to
be more resilient against these type of manipulation what i mean by that is just basically the fomo um
you know the uh all that kind of stuff so i think arena games then we'll go to maurice benjamin and
sir choice um yeah yeah guys that's a really nice question and there is actually like one main thing
that you should look out for if they are somehow promising any kind of profit or you know any kind
of excess or free money it's it's it's going to be a scam man like no company will ever promise uh profit
or no company will promise and say like oh our token will do 10x 5x like companies don't do that legit
people don't do that only scammers do it only people with bad intentions will tell you you will
earn this much or it will pump up this much or you will get a certain amount of tokens so it's money is
the driving force here so whatever project that you are going into if they are somehow trying to trick
you into paying money especially you know like oh you have hundred dollars but you have to pay five
first that's that's going to be a scam so yeah
maris go for it uh yeah so i would say that any company or any project out there
um that promotes purely on the idea of fomo um and obviously there's different ways to do this
you know people use fomo for different things but when i used to do events we would use fomo for
events obviously to get people to register to get people to get there all that kind of stuff you know
you don't want to miss out on this blah blah blah in web3 it's very very different if you just look at
cryptos uh shit coins at the moment if you just look at meme coins for an example look how many has
popped up in the last i'd say two weeks three weeks been a meme coin frenzy and people still
you know i'm one of them for sure i don't i don't really believe that we are even at the peak
yeah i think we're really just getting started we might be in for a few months of this uh there's a
lot of liquidity running around right so people are gonna take that and use that as a as an advantage
you know look out for things that say this will be the next dogecoin this will be the next this
this will be the next that um you know we're gonna have utility we're gonna have this
where there's like a lot of promises it's most likely gonna just be either a scam rug pull or
whatever it is right um and the other thing as well when it comes to people promising things
especially when it's maybe a marketing agency or stuff just you know remember back to web 2 ask for
a reference so let's say a marketing company is going to offer you some things and they're trying to
obviously to take your money and just say you know we're gonna give you x lines there we're
gonna promise you this ask for a reference just say okay cool who have you worked with before okay
we've worked with these people sweet thank you can you shoot me that email and i tell you that okay
cool here you go bang message them hey man how's it working with this company where's where it's tokens
where it's pre-sales where it's that kind of stuff check the freaking contracts man see if the um
if see if there's a revoke freeze right see if there's a revoke mint so nothing else can be created
um see if they've burnt the lps lp tokens that they were given so that they can't you know rug the
project um so the same due diligence that you do there you just do it with marketing agencies as well
so the first thing is yeah definitely look out for different kind of phrases wording they're all going
to be the same just in different terminologies depending on the project and then just make sure that you do
your due diligence on the coding and making sure you research the projects that you're getting
involved in it's like this it's like a it's very self-explanatory like for real it's it's not
difficult it's really easy just don't be an idiot like that's just that's literally it just just make
sure you do your due diligence and ask the questions because we're in web 3 and everything moves so fast
people forget to ask for a reference do you know how many people that have come up to me offering
me these services and i just say to them hey man who have you worked with oh i've worked with this
guy okay cool can you send me his telegram or can you send me their email and if they don't do it i
automatically know okay cool something's weird something's up because that's not a mad thing to
ask i need a reference i need proof that you actually did this you could show me figures and all that other
stuff but i want to know from the person you worked with so yeah i definitely say watch out for stuff but
also do proper due diligence don't just look at someone's twitter and say oh they have followers
great insight all right ben let's go with you and then we'll go senior choice
cool i just want to make sure are we talking about two different topics or just you know marketing
agencies and marketing services so if it feels like we've been talking about scams in general and
then scams of marketing i just want to make sure i'm talking about the right thing a little bit of
both sure okay i'll do i'll talk so for everyone's context i'll talk about marketing for the entire
call then i'll keep it simple um so i've managed agencies slash agencies i am friends with most of the
you know marketing agency advertising agency owners in web3 as a byproduct of that um and i kind of agree
agree with um the last person that talked i'm sorry i've forgotten your name again mate um but
there is two real simple ways to make sure you're not being scammed the first one is um your contract
should be tied with kpis i understand social media advertising marketing stories a little bit different
so if you have people doing content for you you need to be subjectively measuring the success of that
yourself um to an extent now if you are paying someone an exorbitant amount let's imagine you're
a polygon this is a completely different story they should in that case be tying you to kpis but i'm
imagining you're paying somebody um let's say anything in the range of two thousand to eight thousand
dollars a month to do content creation for you that's going to be subjective measurement and that's
going to be up to your own satisfaction if they are great they will be tying you in um for first month
satisfaction guarantee so even if you dislike it you can get out they're going to refund you the
first month not saying that's always going to be the case but you should be able to find those agencies
and marketing agencies um but anything else so we're looking at community growth we are looking at
advertising um anything above you know um they should all be kpi based so you are never at risk and
there'll be no liability on yourself um to lose money based on the unsuccesses of any campaigns
um and the caveat to that which is the important part is that those kpis should have kpis so if
you're looking at ten thousand users or ten thousand followers um those need to be followers that are
verified as real and there's different mechanics to do that um feel free to dm me on twitter about that
because i do know the way so you can measure those things so just let me know if you want to find
them out i just don't want to spend too much time on this saying it um and the last thing is look at
where they are um incorporated in the world um and make sure they're incorporated in the world
um they should be you know if they have any references like the last guy said um which you
should also be asking for um they should be incorporated and if they are incorporated um
i'll use the common sense phrase that um you use just then um just like a weather incorporated i
don't want to say anything about specific countries it would be rude here um but there are specific
countries where you can get a license to do pretty much anything overnight um or get an incorporation
which is going to be a tax haven or there's no extradition or no um uh outer um national um
what's the word um basically getting arrested um or having any um thing against you or dual
liabilities so for example you can be a uk citizen like myself incorporate in one country and your
liability is completely um negated to that country so if i was to commit a crime in that country through
my company that country just isn't going to extradite me to convict me even though it's probably
gonna be a civil case but there's also a difference between scams and fraud you know scams are one thing
fraud is another thing they tend to get mixed up they are two very different things if someone takes
your money doesn't contact you again that is fraud if someone performs a service terribly that is a
scam two very different things a scam is a civil case fraud is a legal case so it's whatever it is
federal or state um conviction based on the actions that company's taken but that's it i've said a lot
of words so sorry i've taken up a lot of time no i just can i just quickly insert my tip penny i i would
love you to be rude actually as you mentioned i don't want to be rude but i think everybody knows pretty
much like unspoken you know truth um first of all and then also uh about kpis because like again we've
i've personally experienced that assessment you know you try to approach the certain situations
certain offer um with like cold heart and most um reasonable approach you could possibly find kpi
setting kpis doing due diligence uh going one by one checking scanning those accounts and stuff on the
subject of like you know um i don't know how legitimate they are and stuff and then and still and still
it's just a waste of time and money but i know like maybe i'm just too burned at this stage but you had
definitely um you've got you've got really really good insights sorry that's it for me there's one
more mini tip on top of that when it comes to kpis if you're going to be spending anything over a few
thousand dollars on um a contract um pay a lawyer 100 to 200 dollars to make sure it's okay um because
they can put whatever amazing kpis and measurement and parameters in that contract but if there's
just a tiny tiny clause that lets them get out for whatever bloody reason um that doesn't mean
anything um and if you're gonna be spending thousands of dollars i don't think that a couple
hundred dollars is going to be too much of a risk that would be your only liability at that point so
i would say definitely do that sounds great uh it's your choice go for it thank you cody so you were
asking about the psychological factors that drive people into falling into these scams or that the
marketing agencies or people advertising projects are using i definitely agree with the one who said
that what drives the space is you know financial change is the promise of jump into crypto and you're
going to get wealthy and rich filthy rich or choose rich right and there's a lot of hype driving the
marketing and you see influencers you know talking and promoting projects without even having substantial
information about them so you just got to be careful and my suggestion and my advice to people
out there would be surround yourself with the right people i mean we have a lot of familiar uh faces here
in the web 3 space i meet with many on different spaces well like a big family there are groups we share
with people that it's into the industry for some years now so spend time with the community uh try to
see the face of the team are the founders really going out there and talking jumping into ama sessions
spending on gaming nights if it's a gamify project you know get to talk to the team and surround
yourself with people that have experience and that can prevent you from falling into sketchy scams
because they're going to be all over the places and just take careful people and yeah have a good
friend that's knowledgeable that has been on the space for long and that can you know give you a quick
check hey is this project looking solid or not and then he's going to teach you how he's checking on
them you know checking into the team do the the research before jumping into anything and
obviously do not sign your wallet on any sketchy website always be mindful of that
now those are all great points thanks for sharing uh adam go for it yeah so just uh wanted to echo
maurice i i really loved what you said with the due diligence and the referrals i've i've got a
little bit of a little bit of a a little bit of a story time for you guys and kind of my experience
with it recently and we had one we had one guy we were working with and on the surface everything
looks great like dude make great content he his agency you know had lots of connections
and we met the guy spoke with him a couple times and everything at the beginning was great but then
once we started talking to him and hearing some of the facts that he was actually putting out
it started to raise a little bit of red flags and that was kind of the first warning sign that we had
to be like okay let's let's do a little bit more research so we started looking in and one of the things
he said is oh i brought 1.5 million dollars worth of liquidity to this project i was like okay that's
that's a weird number how do you even track that okay so that was like the first thing and then
he was like oh um i helped them with their their node sale and they completely sold out of their node
sale i was like okay that's actually something i can go and and verify and i went looked at the project
and then sure enough they're still in like phase whatever five of their node sale so they didn't
actually sell out so he must have just looked at their stuff and tried to spew out some bs and so
just wanted to highlight what was said earlier is just do your due diligence like whatever they tell
you you know give them a chance if they look good on the surface sure they're probably legit but there's
also a chance that they're not so just wanted to throw that out thanks
oh that's a that's definitely a good point which kind of leads me to my next question
um about kols and influencers in the space um good bad you love them you hate them um but they uh
definitely take things to a whole new level um so i guess my question is should influencers be held to a
higher standard when promoting web3 projects specifically um should we have a system of
accountability um to uh you know keep things kind of decentralized in the space or or should we just
let them keep going the way that it is whoa lots of hands sorry i didn't see who come up first so let's go
with i think it was nunu then ben and then we'll just take it from there so i think the the biggest
problem that we have um in this kind of outlet stage or space with kolo the pr uh is is that
and well actually this goes for some launch pads as well is that people are um and exchanges they're
taking money from both sides of the equation um which which in my mind represents a conflict of
interest and and it's often or almost always not disclosed in in web3 so you know if you're going to
pay anyone to shill or uh promote your project they should be disclosing that to their uh the the
consumers of their content and and they're just not at this point in time because they don't have to
um so i think that's that's the biggest problem for me and i'll leave it at that because there's
probably way more to go into on this but there's all the hands are up for this one so take it away
guys yeah um my main thought on this or like pointer here is that kols need to be managed like when i
look at kols this isn't kind of like a picky choosy campaign this is this is a fully fledged marketing
activity that needs to be taken seriously and i don't see it taken seriously very often
um i love the idea of a ko well or influencer agency now in practice there's very few that work
well so from my experience the best people to manage a ko well campaign they are normally
individuals they're normally freelancers um i know a really great one um guy called micah um he's now
at token.com he's ex partizia head of marketing algorand great guy um has a really great network and he
manages those campaigns himself so he is kind of the sole arbiter of the success whatever project
you're working on and one thing that he and other friends of mine do is they still set kpis which
normally you don't see in ko wells and that's why i said that social media content is pretty much the
only time where it has to be subjective um now it's not going to be like you know twitter advertising for
example when you can pretty much guarantee like a minimum benchmark cpa and blah blah blah blah
um and you can get it pretty accurate from what the results are going to be now what ko well should
be doing is they should be guaranteeing a minimum so this is at the minimum viable success that you'll
be getting from a campaign otherwise you either get a full or partial campaign a full or partial refund
sorry or a continuation of the campaign until you actually acquire those results um and any ko well
worth their weight in whatever should be fine with that because they know that their community is
real um so yeah i would say again kpis and again get a manager don't get your see it sounds like we've
got some great cmos in here now if you are specialized in influencer marketing of course do that and trust
your cmo for that but most aren't you know most are not that myself included i've run a marketing agency
we didn't touch ko wells because it's not our expertise we would give it off to third parties
um so yeah don't manage it independently and make sure there's still kpis attached it's not going to be
the beautiful kpis you'll see in advertising which is why i went into advertising but it's still going
to be something and it's still going to stop you from being scammed great points thanks uh let's go
arena games and then search choice oh hello guys uh the speaker before me has actually made a lot of
really good points you know we need accountability when it comes to kols but i think we need to
differentiate between kols and influencers because kol key opinion leader and that being a key opinion
leader does not come from having followers any any amount of followers it doesn't indicate that so kols in
by themselves are important influencers on the other hand you don't need influencers but how do we
differentiate between an influencer and a kol it usually depends on what kind of content they provide
are they informing their audience uh on some projects or uh upcoming news or are they simply
offering some kind of money or some kind of campaign uh for their followers to just go ahead
like retweet and that's that so it is it is easy from our side to differentiate between those two
but it is uh really hard for a normal user to differentiate because
they see there's 100 000 followers and they think like oh my god then this dude must be giving some
golden advice or he must be shilling some really good tokens in reality no they are just being paid to
post whatever they want but there is also a way like we choose kols too you know if i go to a kol and you
know like uh yo dude here's my project you know you can go ahead check and would you like to work with
us would you like to promote us if they are being doing their due diligence you know if they are asking
you to send your white paper your past campaigns or all the information then i trust that kol because why
would he request information from me when he's being paid because that person does not want to promote
something scammy or something as we have in the title having some kind of trickery so those are the
kols and we really need to differentiate and we really need to take a look at influencers dude influencers
don't matter that's my honest opinion influencers don't matter in this space they are just buzz their
sound that's it you know you will pay them and two days later they will disappear usually most of their
audience is just bots and there are some paid people to paid actors to behave and you know write
comments so like it is for users to decide but if you're a user and if you're looking to get
the proper information from the people you're following definitely check their past campaigns and past
content that they provided if all their only content is you know like like this retweet this and there
is a like 20 reward or whatnot just unfollow them and they're worthless they're not going to provide
any kind of value to the users and to the companies also so yeah
interesting takes thanks for sharing uh senior choice go for it thanks cody so there are so many
kols i love in the space some that i don't like that much but i definitely believe that there should
be accountability on both sides in the project height in the kols and in the kols promoting such
projects so definitely there should be a research done by both bodies and we cannot just allow this
space having kols that are publishing content and tricking people into following something that is
going to just you know empty their pockets and having a terrible experience on the web through
world which we already got enough of those so they need to do the research the kols need to check
what the project is on of who they're working with who's the theme behind what are the talk economics and
they should try to educate when they create content about such projects so that it can help you know
spread the word and teach the community of such project and those that will be coming to it about
what it is about what is it in there so they don't jump just into you know blank here and same for the
projects i mean i've seen projects spending crazy amounts of money on kols that didn't even check their
projects before uh they created content i mean i have seen live sessions of one ko after the other
where they were you know promoting a x game i'm not gonna say which one and they just literally opened
the game for the first time while they were on the stream so they there needs to be a accountability
for sure and a little bit of shame to do your research you know check who you're working with and
and make sure that's happening that's what i wanted to bring to the table
thanks for sharing those are some other great insights let's go adam and then maurice and then
kerberos
yeah thanks so i i agree i think they need to be held to a standard and there needs to be
a checks and balance in place of some sort i know everybody's probably watched movies and tv shows and
there's so many to choose from how do you know which one you go to so one thing i like to use is rotten
tomatoes so what if there was like a a rotten tomatoes of crypto influencer kols whatever you want to say
that everybody could go to and just quickly get a review on those individuals and that's something that
i haven't seen and that's something that i would like to see in the future so anybody that's listening
that wants to create a company create a rotten tomatoes for crypto i would love to see that
this is such a good idea honestly this is such an amazing idea i've actually i've thought about the app
that would just you know you could go in and rate other influencers slash kols and stuff but i think it
would be so so so vicious it would be a war funny though
barice go for it
yeah um so yeah i think we have kols and influencers so
to be honest what determines a kol what determines an influencer like in obviously web two days and
coming in obviously web three as well an influencer is someone with influence so the only way you track
that is if you probably have not a kpi they hit in terms of social media presence and stuff it'd
probably have to be something like signups to whitelist or whatever something that they can actually
improve to see if they're actually doing what you're paying them to do as an influencer okay well
kols i think working with kols is pretty good i think it obviously works as well but there's no
build there's no sense of community that comes from that because most kols act like influencers
and they're completely different things like an influencer as i said is someone that's supposed
to influence the people there's someone that's supposed to post a few things on a continuous basis
that over time influences people to make a decision and the influence needs to be needs to be something
positive there's a thin line between influence and manipulation manipulation is for the person
influencing is for the people so most influencers aren't even doing their job influences should be
one making sure that there's no financial advice but two there needs to be a track record that
whatever they've influenced people to do is being of benefit to those people but also to the company
as well and if you're not able to track that then that's it's not even a conversation about bringing
them on when you have kols for the kols yeah man run tomato for kols i love that idea i think that's
a really really good idea to have a system where you can track and report on different kols and
influences however that's also got a massive downside to it as well if it's not done correctly because then
it will just become a spammy place with some random stuff there's got to be some sort of civil protection
so that yeah there needs to be something input into it yeah that's actually what happens what we're
what we're getting to eventually is we're all gonna we're all gonna get to the point where where
we're discussing this and how do you prevent scams and that and it has to come with some sort of
civil protection some sort of get get coin passport or something like that to verify users and then
like like you guys said track you know actual actions and uh and be able to see those actions on
chain so there is a history you know it's the same thing that we're talking about with our governments
uh right now you know our government's actually doing what they promised during a campaign and
the answer is almost all of them no they're not you know so it's like how can we how can we keep kols
honest if we can't keep politicians honest you know it's like it's this this kind of issue we have in general
yeah no i completely i completely get what you're saying there um but yeah when it comes to the
rotten tomato stuff i think there needs to be so if that was to be created if there was to be something
that you could report on good or bad do good good or bad reports on kols or influences there needs to be
hard evidence and there also needs to be a thing where these influences or these kols are doxed to a
point there needs to be a thing where they're doxed to um a a level where there could be some form of
trust because it could it the thing is i know a lot of people that are i know i know literally a few
people that have multiple kol accounts and some of them are kols on three different kol accounts for
the same company and the company doesn't even know but they know how to monetize their systems and
a lot of a lot of people here don't know that there are ways that you can if you're able to
manage it you can have five six kol accounts and rip profit like crazy they'd still provide good
content like the content they provide is it's actually pretty good but they are able to do that
uh you know a crazy level the reason that's not a good thing even though it's a good idea they saw a
gap in the market and monetizing it congrats to them but it's not a great idea because it
takes away from other people who are just a kol on one account an influencer on one account
so i think the things that would be done for the rotten tomato stuff like if we were to have our
own version of that i think it could be a thing where one there's hardcore evidence two you have
to be doxed so you can't create multiple accounts um obviously well addressed connected all that kind of
stuff and then it can also be a thing where when we're looking at the reviews it's not hate it's not
bullshit it's not anything like that because i have worked with a few people being at a marketing
agency being at a vc doing marketing before i even joined the company i've worked with tons of people
where i say to them okay cool what are the kpis you want to hit and the first thing they tell me is
followers and i'm like bro you bought 20 000 followers do you not understand i'm going to
have to get rid of all your fake followers then rebuild your engagement that was never there in
the first place then bring you back to 10 to 20k followers sustain it and then build from there
you're asking me to destroy a meal remake it the right way and then serve it so that's a that's
another thing there needs to be kpis that this is my opinion that don't involve followers
i think kpis that involve followers is bull and i that's definitely something i see with um
what's it called influences and kols i spoke with a few of them because we work with a ton of them
yeah we we work with a ton of these guys and um we bring them onto projects that we might invest in
so they can get on kol rounds and the first thing some projects ask them is hey man so how many followers
can your kols bring and it's like wait what do you mean how many followers can they bring it's not a
metric you can measure you like what the hell are you talking about we can measure impressions we can
measure an average of how many views a video a picture a thread may get that we could measure
because it's measured on twitter they've given us that system that we can use so but i think it's i
think it's both sides to quantify potential um and and it worked uh in in the very early days when
people weren't buying and uh you know if you have a a certain number of followers you have you have a
certain amount of reach which if you have a product that you can sell to those followers then then that
can can basically be an indicator of future success and so in in the game of crypto even even in the in
what we call retail it's still somewhat in an investor mindset in that i need to look at who
i'm going to buy tokens off of based on whether or not they're going to be able to sell those tokens
in the future to at a higher price so that i can make my profit and and and what we're finding or
at least what we've found uh personally is that the follower account really doesn't have any indication
on whether or not your project is building and and profitable um but at the same time we've had
we've had you know talks with uh you know uh investors in the space and they're just like
yeah we're not interested or we had we even had a a launch pad basically say your your kol or your
follower numbers aren't high enough we're dumping you last minute and we're like okay what does this
have anything to do with any you know any part of our project you know it's like they try and measure
growth but then you know it's they assume people are buying it and if you're not buying it then you're
not worth it it's it's a weird jiggery pokery
ben go for it yeah and i was just going to say i was agreeing with that i think the followers should
be a byproduct of other success going for followers is always going to be a trap
yeah i'm a i'm a firm believer in that um i'd rather take a thousand uh followers that have a
hundred loyal very engaged followers with them and uh basically use them over a single kol that has
a hundred thousand that might only be able to reach like one percent half the time of their followers
and so there there's definitely there's definitely a fine art uh when it comes to marketing with
kols that's for sure love the rotten tomatoes idea i think that could be even expanded in um take on on
getting kols to convert to something and basing that kpi off that conversion into like a whitelist
subscribe or something like that yeah that's that's definitely something measurable and actionable
followers anybody can twitter bot followers now nowadays uh and they'll stay for like three three
four days before they're gone so yeah that was that was a great great call shubs yeah yeah um for sure
so if uh we're coming into the last few minutes of of the episode been great so far thank you everybody
for your input if you happen to have a question for one of our panelists uh feel free to jump on and
throw that in the thread and we will definitely bring that up uh for somebody to answer on the panel
a little bit later here in just a few minutes uh but before i uh jump in uh to the next question
it looks like maurice has his hand up yeah just a quick one i think yeah the the rotten tomatoes idea
that's for the appreciation but that was adam's call um adam was the one that called that i just
jumped on it and dove into a little bit more because i love the idea of it and it reminds
me of an app called tv time because he spoke about tv shows if you want an app for tvs completely
different um story and topic but tv time literally allows you to track everything and it's exactly what
he was talking about having something that you can write reports on and a community you can do it and
everyone can see it it's completely transparent as well but yeah yeah it could totally be a business
idea i mean you can you can go into every aspect of crypto because crypto is kind of it's got so
many different categories so you could have those categories within it so you could even filter by
gaming or filter by dexes or sexes whatever you want and almost give you your own due diligence
to help you get to that point of okay yeah i want to invest in them um so i don't know we'll see
hopefully we'll see something in the future for that here's the funny part about that business model
though pretty much the only way that i can see the monetizing is selling ad space
definitely ad space no 100 you cannot charge for a platform like that this makes no sense
to write a report on something like what the hell it doesn't make any sense man
nice gotta love it all right so jumping into somewhat of the last question here is uh and i just had it and
then i lost it um nope there it is uh as the web 3 space matures how do we all envision trust being
established and maintained in web 3 especially around marketing um and uh some of the uh shans
out there we've heard the rotten tomatoes concept we've we've heard uh kpis but realistically what is it
going to take um to get everybody on the same page ben go for it and then we'll go senior choice
so the last two years we saw many many many different marketing agencies maurice definitely
would have seen this because he's a cmo so a lot of marketing agencies crop up and it was
made and developed by very young guys including myself i started my agency very young i dropped out
of university um start my agency had a lot of success with it moved on um but there was a huge class of
these very young people who were kind of taking advantage of the space so you know um i appreciate
the effort but there was a lot of scams going on and there still is some but what i will say is that
most of them have dropped off the face of the earth as a byproduct of having no revenue um and i think
that's that's a trend that happens in every emerging um industry and it's definitely happening now and i
think it's going to get even better over the next couple years the actual options for marketing has
decreased massively um and that's a good thing it's not a bad thing that's a good thing and i
think that's going to continue so i understand that there's definitely ways that we as an industry
can improve the methodology for trust but i think that the industry is going to mature in a way that
we're not going to even have to use those techniques um there's always going to be scams but there is now
even now emerging kind of like a premium class of marketing agency and advertising agency and those lines
have been discerned pretty concretely now and they're only improving so i think
yes we should all be diligent when selecting these agencies but i do think that it's improving
naturally anyway so i think that's a positive out of everything in the call i think that's the one
positive we might be able to draw from it and it's that these scammers unsuccess and failure has
actually benefited everyone in the long run it's a new choice go for it perfect so there's one phrase
that i resonate so much with the founder of our project that is the future is on chain now we can
you know the the fees of the layer twos are becoming so small that we could definitely track everything
on chain we could build reputation on chain so if you have the right people with the right amount of
information or knowledge about the space being responsible for granting points or roles to those
who truly earn them because of their efforts and their contributions then we could have you know a better
look into who we work with and why we work with them and that's one of the things that we are building
within our platform so definitely keeping a record and building each by each each one being able to
build their own reputation on earned points that are only given by the right people with the right
experience that then can help you keep track of your your your profile but on a higher level so
one ko can come work with one platform with one project if they loved what he did then they're
going to grant him points or grant him a role so the next project that is going to hire him will
have some insights and will have a proven record from that person being successful at some point and
same can happen with gamer profiles let's say you have uh pros of first-person shooters and they
earned that title because they bring the x amount of hours within a game and that information was saved
on chain and is accessible and verifiable by other parties so then they can target that persona
uh without having to gamble if that's the the right target that they're looking for or not so
building an online on chain reputation i think is something that we need to look into
i can't say yes enough choice one like 100 100 100 times over
totally agree um maris go for it
yo um yeah man i think first of all thanks again for having us as a guest speaker this was
a really cool space really enjoyed this um conversation and this topic always a vibe
being on layer 1x's spaces man always enjoy these um but yeah i would say honestly i would say that
things will just remain how they are i don't think they're gonna change i don't think there's gonna come
a day where we're all gonna be on the same page we've been on this planet for freaking centuries
man we still aren't on the same same page with simple simple stuff we're now a world of crypto
where meme coins are popping up everywhere most of us are dgens at heart and we'll dump a thousand
pounds into a meme coin before even thinking about it before even making sure that the contracts revoked
or this is safe or this is that there ain't gonna come a day we're all gonna be on the same page about
marketing it ain't gonna happen man like it's just not that's just that's just the fact that i believe
anyway i know it's my opinion but that's what i think it is um what i think will happen is
those who are good
especially good at marketing so those who are good with their you know in their heart and they're doing
things the right way and those who are good and exceedingly amazing at marketing will be probably
you know top one to five percent in in the crypto world they'll have the market share it's just going
to happen um everyone else will just fall by the wayside we're going to get scammers every year we're
going to get scammers every six months it's going to happen this is normal just you know if you're in
the space and you are crushing it in marketing you have your own agency or you have or you're a cmo or
you know you're doing something in the marketing world and you're just wanting to build up just
continue doing your thing like there are going to be scams it's going to happen just make sure that
one you document everything that you do two you have proof of all your success with all your clients
so you can show it three um three join twitter spaces this wasn't even supposed to be advice
but yeah join twitter spaces for sure that that helps a ton because that helps with people getting
to know who you are like i'm on twitter spaces so much now that people know more about me they know
more of who i am so if i was to speak to someone most likely someone can refer who i was yeah
so um it doesn't have to be yeah i don't it can be uh it can be live events as well those really
help as well yeah those help massively man get up on stage share your project you know uh if you're
a kol get you know uh take part in those spaces and join your projects in those spaces as well
um yeah i think there's a huge missed opportunity there um for for kols in general massive massive most of
them don't go there because most kols aren't making any money because they're not kols but
that's another conversation for another day but yeah so i would say that i don't think there's going to
be big change but what i do believe is the guys who are amazing at what they do in marketing will
you know they'll blow they'll exceed and they will be the guys that are taking up the market share
that's just how it's going to be
now all great points and uh we definitely want to thank everybody for uh coming on and sharing their
insights their wisdom their tips tricks and tips around the uh transparency and trickery of web 3
marketing in general so thanks again everybody uh we appreciate it we're just being mindful of
people's time today so if you want take uh let's start with the cabarrus and do 30 second call out of
how people can get in contact with you um and keep following your your guys's project
let's start with you for sure um so i didn't actually get to speak um but i just want to add a
very short thing to what everyone else said um doing the rotten tomatoes sounds cool and everything
but at the end of the day if we don't have uh criminal persecution like actual criminal prosecution
people will continue to do all the bad things we need uh we need that we need we need these to be
more involved uh we need the sec to stop chasing after real companies and start chasing after bad
actors uh that's what we really need if we want to improve things not like it's it's all good about
doing due diligence getting the rotten tomatoes and stuff but if people continue to do bad things and
there's no accountability for it and i'm actually in criminal accountability it will just continue that's
the the main thing as for how to get in contact with us sorry i have i i have taken people to
court and i will continue to if people wrong you and they scam or they're they're fraud take them to
court that's what's gonna that is the solution you can take these people to court that's the difference
you know um yeah but there has there has to be a way where it's not you taking them to court
if there's a project taking 10 millions of dollars and rugging then there has to be an actual
institution or or a group of people that will do that for you you are not big enough to go after a
10 million dollar scam or even a hundred million dollar scam and that doesn't exist yeah no there
is there's there's a lot of firms in many many different geographies that will do ad hoc work if
you've been scammed with crypto scams um they they um it's not good enough trust me it's not it's not
good enough i i know people that lost millions of dollars and they cannot never get them back it's just
not robust enough that's the problem people get away with it too much that's the problem i agree
it's all right i'll agree with you that i i agree that it's not robust enough and i do think it's
harder to source than most people would think it's counterintuitively hard to David people to go for
it but and yes so i see what you're saying there isn't a solution for everyone that there is a solution
for some yeah okay and if you want to get in contact with us our website is kerberos.com you'll get the
best protection on the market to protect yourself not against
web-free marketing scams but against actual websites that are designed or hacked to steal from
perfect thanks new new spirits let's go with you and then arena games
all righty so this has been an uh an awesome talk uh x talks uh with later one x uh always always
bring in bring in something that we can get spicy about um i love all of these speakers please
please follow them uh if you're in the in the crowd listening uh they dropped some serious knowledge
today uh i'm honored to be among them if you want to check us out i would be i would love to have you
in our community uh we have a great discord going um that's kind of our our primary outlet uh we have all
kinds of stuff going on in there so uh hop in check out new new spirits uh dot io for all the links and
all the due diligence side of things uh but uh that's it for me thanks everybody
arena oh yeah yeah it's my turn um yeah thank you guys for the space uh it's be it's been a pleasure
uh in the meantime if you're a gamer looking to find new games uh or if you're a developer looking
to release your game in web 3 arena games is your spot so also we have our airdrop campaigns going on
so if you are into airdrops definitely do check us out perfect ben adam and then maurice
if you have an ecosystem fund or a grant program uh dm me on twitter yeah
yep so we're player gaming blockchain you can find us on twitter at at sign on player o n p l y r
and then our website is also player dot network p l y r dot n e t w o r k we've got some stuff planned
for this next month we got our main net a bunch of airdrops token sale cluster sale node sale sex
listing we've got a lot of stuff going on in the next couple months so give us follow we got some
exciting stuff thanks uh yeah man so you guys can obviously message me on twitter here you can also
message uh spicy capital in the audience down below the handle is at sc group vc and also feel free to
message on telegram as well at shibzy baker but yeah we're a vc finding a crypto space looking for
infrastructure projects mainly in gaming ai d pin um we're looking at and we're looking into l1 and
l2s as well when it comes to gaming we don't just want to like jump into a video game we also want
to see if the game or gaming studio has other um other resources that are going to be helping with
building the infrastructure not just in gaming but also in the space helping onboard other web 2 users
and stuff um and also onboarding web 3s we don't have enough web 3 people gaming so that's definitely
something we're looking for and um in terms of just me as as a whole i am getting back into gaming
a lot more man i've been on the halo flex at the moment started from the original campaign so i
played halo reach first playing that back man that was sad i really understood yeah reach was gone
there's no there's no saving it is so mad um so that was quite fun then i did halo anniversary the
first one the combat evolved and i'm on halo 2 at the moment so i'm like i think three missions in
or something having a ton of fun i'm contemplating streaming this thing from the from the beginning
and uh if anyone this has nothing to do with work by the way in terms of you know doing this for
work i say that in quote uh but if anyone has a little you know extra time and you're on xbox i'm
putting this out there if you want to stream i'm willing to complete the entire campaign with you on
legendary with a few skulls on because you have to do that for the banter right but when we stream it
there can be no cuts you know when you watch a walkthrough and it's just a clean walkthrough
there was no death there was nothing no we're keeping everything in because it took me like 30
minutes to get past one freaking checkpoint the other day and i'm like this would actually be quite
fun if we stream this if it's completely transparent because yeah you could be a good gamer but it'd be
quite fun to see to have people just watch you know get completely obliterated by a grunt or something
right so if you are down you know i am i'm i'm i'm probably gonna do this anyway with or without
someone so if you want to jump in it'll be a vibe but yeah man thanks again for having us in the space
yeah maybe after we get done building a a layer one we'll uh i'll join you on that one to stop the
old no scope i would argue that halo is more important than nail one but yeah carry on sorry carry on
choice go for it thank you so much cody so guys if you are a community builder or close to a
legendary community builder with the right mindset and the right values shoot me a dm and i'll be happy
to to introduce you and explain you further about our platform it's the web3 boosted esteroids discord so
happy to connect happy to explore possibilities and and bringing the brave ones to building their
communities on a place where all the information will stay on chain and you will unlock new revenue
streams so monetizing and keeping the casualties on the on the right hands that's what we are about
and happy to talk to all of you thank you for the space and i hope that alina will get better soon
thanks for having us appreciate you all exactly thank you thanks for everybody for coming thank you and uh
we can't say enough about our resident badass inna for all she does for us the sex space would not happen
without her uh so thanks to and a big huge shout out to her um so yeah uh thanks everybody for joining uh
tune in next monday for our next episode of x talks uh we've got a pretty good good lineup coming if you
want to see what uh those are make sure that you follow the x talks handle uh they have all of the
upcoming amas listed on there as well so thanks everybody have a great rest of your week and we
will catch you on the flip side have a good one thank you guys speak soon
