The industry is thriving with exciting cutting-edge advancements continuing to shape the future of blockchain technology. What better way to showcase the brilliance than the recent Consensus 2023 held at Austin, Texas? Consensus brings together developers, investors, founders, policymakers, brands and others to find solutions to crypto's thorniest challenges. In this episode, Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger give you not one, not two, but FOUR exclusive interviews from the event! They sit down with the CEO of Redeem, Toby Rush, to talk about how they are simplifying and accelerating the path to Web3 experiences. The Sandbox’s Sebastien Borget also shares how they are empowering gaming communities in the metaverse. Matthew Harper of Snail Games tells us about their newest title, Project Hermes, and their transition from Web2 to Web3. Finally, the CPO of NEAR, Alex Chiocchi, lets us in on their blockchain operating system, where they bring together builders and super fans into a two-sided market. Tune in to this special episode and relive the magic from the Consensus 2023!
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Consensus 2023 Interviews: Redeem, Sandbox, Snail Games, And Near
Get ready for this special episode as we bring you not 1, not 2 but 4 exclusive interviews from the Consensus event held in Austin, Texas. From groundbreaking blockchain-based operating systems to the latest developments in the gaming industry and beyond, this episode has got you covered. Tune in to gain unique insights here from industry experts and explore the cutting-edge advancements shaping the future of blockchain technology.
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We are live at the Consensus Austin 2023 and excited to be here with Toby Rush, the CEO and Cofounder of Redeem. It is great to meet with you and have a chance to chat for a minute.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on.
Remind me, where are you based? What brought you to the event?
I’m based in Kansas City. I have been there for several years. I must like paying because this is my third startup from scratch. I love building advanced technologies but I always focus on simplicity, convenience and things that touch your users to make their lives better.
We talked a little bit before but we love to talk about the edge of utility and real-world use cases that make it easier for every human to benefit from Web3. We were particularly interested in what you are doing. Tell our readers a little bit more about Redeem, how it works and how you came up with this idea.
I will start with the origin story because it speaks to both the challenge and the opportunity. A few years ago, I dove back into Web3 and blockchain. I'm like, “There are so many projects and interesting things of everything happening.” The one that fascinated me the most was NFTs. NFTs smart contracts allow everyday people to hold a digital asset to own outside the traditional walled gardens of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, Visa and the government, name your big ecosystem. If it is going to be held in an open ecosystem, how do you maintain trust? That is what NFTs could do.
My entrepreneurial mind was like, “We could do this.” I have all these cool ideas. As I began to think through the user journey, I was like, “That is no way. That is way too hard.” I’m a big believer. Change is hard. New mental models are hard. You got to make it set already fit into the natural flow of what people are doing. You are going to remove steps, don't add steps.
I started thinking, “How do you make this easier?” I was like, “I bet someone has figured out how to use phone numbers and phones as a hack to make this better.” As I started looking in the market, I was like, “Nobody was doing it.” The more I thought about it, the more I was like, “This seems like a good idea. Maybe I should do this infrastructure as a phone layer.” Our tagline is like, “How do you simplify and accelerate the path to Web3 experiences by linking a phone number, blockchain wallets and activations?”
There is a segment of Web3 users that don't want their phones to be used but a lot of people are comfortable using their phones. They prefer it. A lot of event systems are connected to your phones. I prefer text and a lot of people feel the same way. It is an important use case to flesh out. As this continues to mature, you are getting people who are like, “I like it, Josh.” Even I prefer that the text messages were like, “How has it been received?” What are the use cases you are already starting to see?
The way that our flow works is we are not passing the phone number around everywhere. We are onboarding you. One of the unique things that we are doing is rather than as a company sending you a text message, which does have some security holes, if you simply flip that model and a user is sending our backend a text message, which is incredibly secure. Even if someone were to see it, you can't change it. You click on a link or screen a QR code. That pops up a text message prepopulated. The two filled out the content and you hit send. That is the entire onboarding process.
There is no app to download. There is no form to fill out. We will send you back a link to an artist, the brand's website, the ticketing or whatever the thing is you are trying to access. I want an NFT because I want to unlock something. I'm not getting an NFT to sit in my wallet and do nothing. We send that link back. They click on that link and they are automatically loaded into a partner's app.
As a part of that process, we are dropping an authentication token into the secure element on the phone. When you come back, it is not like you have to send another text message. We know this browser is linked to this phone number and is linked to these various wallets, whether we spin up a custodial wallet, a MetaMask, Coinbase or Rainbow and make that your default wallet. We are trying to make it simple for the consumer.
You can use multiple wallets. You can work with MetaMask or other wallets. Is this cross-chain at this point?
If you are on your device, we are working with one of our customers. They could be on Solana, Flow, Avalanche or whatever they happen to be on. If they want to drop a token, it is great. We know they spin up a default wallet or if you already have a wallet, all you have to do on the same device as your phone is sign a message with that wallet. We know this phone number is also linked to this wallet. That information is off-chain, secured and highly private. We want to make sure that it is secure. That shouldn't be public.
From a consumer, letting my phone number be linked to a wallet across any of these ecosystems. Ticketing is a beautiful use case because I can scan a QR code. It launches the browser. That QR code is a gating link that says, “Does this phone have possession of a wallet that holds this NFT?” We can make everything seamless for the user. They scan the QR code. What we return is the NFT. They don't have to find the app and NFT. They don't have to show a QR code. It is seamless.
The flip side or the balancing act with simplicity is security. What if someone steals my phone number, sim swap or I change numbers? How do I make sure all that work, stays secure and I don't lose access to anything?
The solution to that is the same. We talked about that flow there. We put a secure authentication token down in your hardware on the phone. Every time that phone loads, it is like, “We have seen this phone. We know this phone.” If somebody sim swaps you, they are going to AT&T and say, “I lost my phone. I need someone else to give me my phone. Can you change it? I'm John Smith. Trust me.” The AT&T clerk gives you a new phone. If you try to connect to our platform, we are going to say, “This is a new phone. You have to do two things.” You have to send us a text message but you have the phone.
We also put a simple six-digit pin as you do on your phone. Everybody has that six-digit pin. Everybody knows their pin. You can also rate-limit it. Even if someone were trying to get your phone and try to start cranking on brute forcing it, you are going to know within hours that your phone has been SIM swapped. It is going to get shut down. A six-digit pin is more than sufficient as a backup but you only have to enter the six-digit pin when you change phone numbers or someone's sim swaps it as long as you can possess a phone and remember a six-digit pin. You only need that six-digit pin when you change phone numbers. That is convenient.
Making it that convenient and making sure that security is there is essential. The use case of getting all these people on easily is its hurdle of having people come on and experience that. As soon as someone comes in and sees how easy it is to put in your phone number and start using it, how have you seen both retentions? As you keep adding more features, more people are like, “This is great.”
As Redeem, we are building an infrastructure and scaffolding around the phone number. We are not doing the end utility. The companies we are working with are doing the ticketing, loyalty and gaming company, the NFT-powered games. They love it because they can stop educating and get straight to experience.
We do a lot of live events because of the idea of scanning a QR code. The ticketing is powerful. We love the idea of an NFT-powered game. I got an NFT-powered game, an NFT or in-game assets. It is a sword, loot box, power-up, skin and an avatar. I got a new upgrade in my game. I go on social media. There is an influencer who says, “Everybody, there is a new release. Here is a link. If you click on this link, we are going to give you a new power-up in the game, a loot box and this new skin.” It is something to do with that influencer.
If they click on that link, it automatically adds that NFT to their wallet. They get redirected into the game. It is loaded, authenticated and ready to play with an NFT. All they did was click a single link. You can take this offline through online to on-chain but to a consumer, they don't have to spell NFT. They don't have to worry about where all this stuff is at. They want to play the game.
Having that bridge like that 2.5 where no one knows what is happening in the background but the result is what you want. That is the most powerful piece of this.
We love those use cases where creative people think, “How do we use NFTs to cross channels?” That gaming is crossing the channels or inter-company collaboration. I got a ticket to an event so I can do a pre-event and post-event. The artist can engage with me. I can get open up a playlist on Spotify. I can go onto an eCommerce site that is associated with a sponsor and get some benefits. A consumer was like, “If I access my phone, I get access.”
We were talking a little bit before but if you could elaborate on some of the partnerships, the real use cases that have come about using this technology and what is on the roadmap, that would be great.
We are still early. The folks we have worked with have been mainly live events but not just ticketing. For some of our NFT experiences, we have done a VC3 as a Venture Capital 3.0, a traditional venture capitalist operating as a DAO and doing investments. They had a conference down in Puerto Rico. They used our platform for ticketing and some other cool events. We did archive as a decentralized museum. They had a big VIP dinner at South by Southwest here in Austin. They were doing a live NFT activation, which was fun. We did a big VIP dinner at NFT NYC. I can't say who because they also want us to do a cool race car event at one of the next big race car events where they are doing an NFT event.
It is not the ticket to get in. You are alongside. If you get into this pavilion, you get NFT. It is like a Pou app. It unlocks all stuff in there. All the sponsors are going to have cool unlocks. Brands are doing live events. A lot of ticketing, concerts and VIP gatherings are where we are seeing it. We love the gaming use cases. We are talking to a couple of people. We haven't deployed those yet but with the idea of this direct-to-engagement, everybody loves it.
You guys are ticket company agnostic. You can work with any Web3 ticketing solution or Web2 solution.
We are across the board. From our perspective, we are providing scaffolding around phone numbers and phones. If you are a ticketing company, I don't care what chain you are on or what you are trying to do. We are trying to simplify and accelerate the path for the consumer to get to that experience.
It is a key middleware solution because there are a lot of these ticket companies that come about and have approached us about partnering in Outer Edge. They are all different in their use cases but fundamentally, you get the benefit of adding gasoline or nitro to all those solutions in a game where it is like, “Who is going to be the winner?” We don't know but you can win alongside whoever is moving the ticketing part of the industry forward.
One of the things we say is, “We don't care what wallet you use because we don't know what wallet is going to win.” There won't be one. There is no scenario. There are always multiple cloud providers, emails and phones. There is no scenario where there is one wallet that wins. We don't know which wallets are going to win. We don't care. We don't know which minting platforms are going to win and we don't care. We don't necessarily even care what use cases. What we do know is the phone will play a central role in all of it.
When you go to these different types of events, some people don't necessarily want to download another app but if you are able to get the phone number and can immediately get things going a lot faster, you are already getting over a big hurdle for a lot of people. That is a big advantage. Coming to something like Consensus, being able to come, meet and see everything that is going on here, what is the vibe you are starting to see within the market? What have you excited about the future of Web3?
What I am excited about Web3 is the utility or the unlocked. You are not seeing a bunch of coins getting pumped, tokens getting pumped or this community for the sake of the community. Communities are great but what is the purpose? What is the objective? How are NFTs unlocking value and utility? Hearing a lot more mature, grounded use cases for Web3 makes a difference in the real world. It is not like, “I'm going to buy this token because I hope it goes up in the future.” That is where you get the Ponzi scheme. That is where you get a lot of the pump and dump and where a lot of the manipulation has happened. I'm excited to hear, “How do we use NFTs and Web3 to power different experiences?”
It is cool to learn more about yourself and Redeem.XYZ. I answered the question with my statement but how can people learn more about Redeem, follow what you guys are doing in the space and stay in touch with you?
Redeem.XYZ is the website. It is Tobias Rush on Twitter and LinkedIn. We love to connect with folks.
Thanks a lot for joining us.
Thank you.
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I’m with Sebastien Borget. How are you?
I’m very well. Thank you.
What brings you to Consensus?
At Consensus, I'm going to have a fireside chat about like the lay of the land around virtual release estate in the Metaverse. I can assure you that Metaverse is not dead. There is an active engagement from an ecosystem of builders' experience and keep launching. We have some big news. Sandbox will be opening self-publishing towards the end of Q3 of 2023.
We expect a lot more experiences to be available and greater diversity of content that people can engage with. We have ongoing land sales as one that has been announced with the Mega CT 3 avatar collection, an official one with great partners that have come and sold out well. Things are going great. It is a chance for us to connect with the community and builders to talk to the ecosystem.
We did see each other in New York at a special Animoca Park event. You brought the house down with the concluding experience. It was a lot of fun. Richard and I were there. Can you tell everyone about that partnership with the dance community because it is special? It is a good example of co-creating and helping communities that have trouble monetizing what they do in creating long-term value.
We are talking about The Wild Ones Collection in ownership with DanceFight, which is bringing a street dancer to the Metaverse. They have such unique dance moves. They often participate in battles and post on their social network more, like Instagram and TikTok. The truth is even though they are talented creators who are innovating in the way they move and push forward like street dance, they don't monetize this at all. Their dance moves are being copied. They are being integrated into games like Fortnite without proper credit and monetization.
DanceFight is creating more of this Web3 committee movement for street dancers. They want the creator to be rewarded, monetize the content they create and leverage all of their original skills and move to bring life into the mirrors. We have this collection of 3,000 avatars called The Wide Ones that represent over ten popular break dancers and street dancers.
We launched that collection in Sandbox. The sale is ongoing. We have an experience that is live where people can play with those avatars. They can earn rewards in the form of $SAND Tokens and NFTs. More than 50% of the revenues generated from the sales are going directly to the dancers themselves. It is a way to empower that community and bring more emotion and life to the Metaverse.
It was an exciting event. I was struck by how many of them have created dance moves that have been used by other influencers and got millions of views. They got no attribution at all. These avatars represent their dance moves and they can say, “This happened on the blockchain. I created that move. No one else did.” It is cool.
I'm glad that you were here in person to meet the creator. At the end of the day, it is technology and content. It is also a human adventure. At the center of it, if I can meet the creator and see them live and come into the metaverse, that is something important for us.
That brings me to my last question. We have had a lot of conversations about Metaverse. Is this about big experiences and concerts that are hyped up and ticketed versus more the day-to-day experience of dropping into the Metaverse? How do you see that world of activity in the metaverse? Where do you see that going in terms of the more predominant use cases?
Over the next several years, our Metaverse will be part of our day-to-day life in value forms. At Sandbox, we started with entertainment, gaming, fashion, music, sports and media. We want to make sure this is tangible for more general mainstreams. We can create an avatar and start accessing those experiences. Over time, more use cases will develop around education, work, collaboration, virtual events, virtual shows and concerts.
What the user will make up of it will define at the end of the what they assist. This is a whole new format of entertainment at our centric. We are excited to see ten of thousands of people already engaging daily. They are bringing life, connecting, making new friendships and showing that it is just not virtual. People have real emotions. They make friends. They start to earn revenue as creators or users. Together we are defining the future of what a Metaverse can be.
I reflect on Outer Edge LA and how much of it has been a journey of discovery with our community. People have feedback for what an event should be a conference. I tell them, “Help us co-create it. Your ideas are our ideas. Our home is your home.” That is how the event has evolved. I’m glad to have you guys and Animoca Brands as a partner. We look more to you in LA. I appreciate spending a few moments together. We will keep following all these amazing adventures for Sandbox. Thanks for your time.
I love that it is focused on the community. Hearing their feedback, building the conference with them and getting the chance to meet and live experiences as you saw in New York with DanceFight and Wild Ones should be a great example for future events.
I want to do a DanceFight at Outer Edge. Let's do it.
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I’m with a new friend. We met out on the floor and I want to get to know him better. This gentleman's name is Matthew Harper at Snail Games USA. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do over at that studio.
I'm a huge gamer. I have been playing Snail Games games since I was fourteen years old. It started with a game called Age of Wushu. From there, I fell in love with a company and the publishers behind it. What we are trying to do here at Consensus is we are excited to announce one of our newest titles called Project Hermes, which is going to involve Web3 elements within the game. As a company of many years with 25 different titles, including titles such as ARK: Survival Evolve that we have published, we are excited to be a Web2 company coming into Web3.
You went through a lot of stuff. I want to unpack that many years of history in the gaming space, multiple successful and multimillion-dollar titles. The titles have sold millions of copies. I'm curious. How did you come up with this concept? What made you decide to take the leap and do something in Web3?
We believe in blockchain and Web3. The two core tenants we are looking to have within Project Hermes are called user identity and user ownership, which are two of the things we are hoping to include in our next title.
You have this fundamental belief. You have been watching this space. It sounds like these are some functionalities that you thought could be better executed in Web3. I'm trying to understand why you do something in Web3 as opposed to continue doing what you are already doing well.
We have been doing well in the Web2 space for a long period across a number of titles. Web3 particularly interests us because we like to stay on the cutting edge with new technology.
Web3 interests us because we like to stay on the cutting-edge with new technology. Click To Tweet
I like what you have brought up about user identity. A lot of people can relate to playing games, getting all these great character buildups and weapons. People start to relate to the character in their game in doing that. How is it that you're going about and taking the approach of making sure that these users can have that identity and take that with them across either your games or potential platforms?
That would be something I would be excited to discuss with you at a later point in time.
Tell us a little bit more about Project Hermes and some of the game mechanics in it that you can talk about.
Project Hermes is the space-themed Survival Sandbox MMORPG. It is going to be launched on PC. It is going to have a lot of cool concepts involving planets, exploration, battles, building and some other cool stuff that we are going to be coming out with soon.
Did you conceive of the game yourself? What was the process of coming up with this concept? What made this your first choice of a Web3 game?
It is a game we wanted to see in the space. It is a game we wanted to see built in this space, in particular. Project Hermes combines everything that we have wanted to do within Web3. It also showcases our proprietary engine, Flexi.
As you have been building this out, you have a lot of great things coming with it. For the users that have already used it, whether through your alpha or beta, how has it been received by those who have experienced playing this great game?
Project Hermes and Consensus have been received well by people across a variety of different brands and companies. We are excited for people to showcase that here at Consensus.
When we look at your roadmap for the game, what are some of the key milestones coming up that folks can look forward to in terms of wanting to get more involved?
It is the beginning because we arse excited to announce the title that we are going to be having in this space and say, “We are a Web2 company looking into Web3.” We have been talking about Web3 for a little bit. In 2022, our Chairman, Shi Hai, talked about Web3 at a particular game summit. We are able to follow it up with, “We are a Web2 company. We are here. We are looking towards the future.”
Anything specific in terms of the timeline that you can hit on in terms of what is next?
I can't give you any information on the timeline at this exact moment but I can tell you that it is something we have been working on for a while. We are excited to be able to showcase it to the community.
Anything else about the game or company that you think would be worthwhile for our readers to understand?
The history of Snail Games is interesting when you delve into the history of what we do and who we are. We have spanned over a number of different titles. For example, the Age of Wushu is a take on ancient China. ARK: Survival Evolved is a game that we are a publisher of that deals with Sandbox Survival. The variety we are able to bring to the gaming industry has always been something that I have enjoyed talking about and something I've always enjoyed seeing. As a company, it has been some of my favorite titles growing up when I was a child.
Being into the games you created and dropping with the Hermes, can you give us a little taste of what game it is? Are we talking about an RPG or MMORPG? What can people expect when they come in and start to enjoy this?
We do survival games well. Project Hermes is going to be a good take on the genre. It is something we are looking forward to.
It is a cool survival game. We will see if there is some multiplayer and other stuff in it. Another quick question for that is, where is this going to be based? Is it going to be PC or mobile? Where can users potentially go and play this?
We are looking at a launch on PC at this time but something else that we can add is that it is going to be online multiplayer. It is going to be a downloadable game. It is not going to be a web-based game. It is going to be one of our most exciting titles yet.
This is a great example of what we have seen traditionally, not necessarily there, as Web2 companies are getting into the space. We have heard about a lot of it but I don't think it is widely known. It is great to meet a company like yours that is getting into the space, trying new things and seeing value in Web3 technology. I’m excited to stay apprised of what you guys are doing. I would love to let folks know where they can learn more about your company and this game and stay in the mix.
You can learn more at Snail.com.
Thanks, Matthew. I appreciate your time.
Thank you very much.
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I’m here with Alex Chiocchi, the Chief Product Officer at NEAR. We are having a conversation to get an update since we met with Illia and Eathan.
The energy is buzzing here.
What brings you here? What are some of the important updates that we show them about the big announcements that made EthDenver? You can start from the beginning there. We will assume that folks maybe didn't read that episode.
EthDenver was exciting for us. We went over there. We had a hypothesis for what we thought was a wacky idea of what if you could start taking blockchains up the stack and decentralize the front end. It is not just the back end of the transactions but your JavaScript, hosting, CCSS, HTML and that experience layer. We put out a prototype, which we wanted to bring together builders and super fans into this two-sided market. We wanted to see how it went. It is a classic product experimentation. The feedback we got was people were excited. We had a lot of people reach out to us, both Web3 native builders and Web2 brands, who wanted to keep learning more and see what they could utilize this new tech for.
This is a new operating system that enables Web2 developers to use languages they are comfortable with.
We call it the blockchain operating system. The way we are thinking about it is it is less about the background of the database level. It is more about that experience level. That is what an operating system does for you. It creates a set of technical and design standards that makes it easy for users and builders to create new experiences.
You might think of building an app on Android. That is a common operating system that people like to build things. We don't have that for the decentralized world. Android is owned by Google. Apple owns Apple Store and the IOS system. We all know that sometimes those incentives don't align the best. We looked at this as a unique opportunity to create a new public good for the crypto ecosystem.
I like the concept of the public good. We touched on that last time in our conversation. What is cool about this ecosystem is when a lot of people think of NEAR, they think about this Layer 1 protocol but it is much more. You have more than you are building. You touch on all of the amazing things that are still on the horizon for NEAR.
I want to make sure I answered the whole thing. It runs on JavaScript too. From your smart contract layer to the front end, it is roughly a react-based framework. It is a commonly used web app framework. That makes it easy for people in Web2 to get started or even for you to take your existing Web3 web application and decentralize it even more.
In terms of other things that were coming with that, if you look at an operating system, there are many layers to it. We described that application layer for your front end. There is an authentication layer. How do you bring a user in? Something that we hinted at EthDenver was this new approach called Fast Off, where you no longer have the trade-off between decentralization and ease of use. Traditionally, you might say, “I need to bring a wallet in but I got to download special software to seed phrases.” That is difficult but it is decentralized. You can use something like Off Zero or Google Off. It is easy for the user to get started but you got the issue that you are dependent on a Web2 service.
We looked at the OS of different phones. We are using the secure enclave of your phone to derive a private key for you. It is based on the hardware of your phone. We allow you, through a web portal, to use a face ID, an Android pin or a fingerprint to verify the ownership of that. We have an email recovery that works through a decentralized system and an MPC system that works with a few different parties but it is going to be starting to work on the protocol itself as a decentralized protocol over time.
We have crossed that chasm over. You can get started in a few seconds. You still own your keys. It is still your crypto and NFTs. If something happens to your phone or you want to log in on a new device, get an email magic link. That is not owned by one organization. It is decentralized. We are excited about that part. That is going to be a live demo. That is going to be exciting for people to start using NEAR.org.
We also have launched some new services behind that that allow users to get started without even having crypto. We call these relayers. It allows for the developer to be a patron of the user and pay their fees on their behalf. Go to NEAR.org and log in instantly with this system that I talked about. Do not have any crypto and start using decentralized applications on this new operating system.
This is revolutionary when it comes to the onboarding conundrum. It is not like people couldn't use their credit cards. There weren't opportunities for some of these things but it is the elegance of piecing that all together in a way that is seamless for big brands. I'm looking at the sign out there. We got Google, Nansen, Ledger, Brave Browser, MasterCard and WeMade. These are major players that represent trust and credibility for some of the experiences in our world that people that are into blockchain use but people that have no interest in blockchain necessarily use.
It sounds like the use cases are going to be possible here. They are going to be seamless for someone whether or not they even identify themselves as a Web3 aficionado, enthusiast and power user. Can you talk to some of the use cases that are being conjured up or are being used by some of your partners?
It is a major improvement for Web2 brands trying to get into Web3. I can talk some more about those use cases. We are seeing this within the Web3 native community, especially the DeFi ecosystem. They are excited to reach out to us, saying, “How do we decentralize our front ends and make it easier for users to get started?”
To the point about the conundrum, it is helping everybody who wants to get involved. Getting deeper into the Web2 use cases, I can't go into specific new names at this point but the general idea is it is in retail and luxury space. There is a huge issue with proof of authenticity of the goods and having a profile around that. After that, they are facing a huge problem from existing tech companies, from the Web2 boom of places like Poshmark or RealReal.
Those tech companies have created social marketplaces that are utilizing the value of these goods and the communities of these goods makers. They are extracting value, as opposed to that value in the community who cares about the brand being able to run its secondary authenticated marketplace, which doesn't exist now. There is a huge fraud issue on a lot of those secondary markets because there is no way to prove that those goods are real. That is a cool use case that is coming up. It uses NFT in an awesome way.
We talked about selling GP and sports. We have had other sporting opportunities that have come our way as well, thinking about those authentic fan engagements. It is easy to get started with so you can scan a QR code or face ID in three seconds decentralized identity. You can have those moments in the game where you can scan it and capture that play of that last dunk or slap shot that made it into the goal. That is native to the user experience of watching your favorite game.
There have been some other interesting ones in community and fan loyalty. The blockchain operating system has a major social part to it. If you log in, there is a feed, comments and identity bringing together that community commerce of thinking about, “I enjoy doing exercise together with my friends at my favorite studio.” That might do that.
How do we get points together and sponsor each other to keep doing classes, keep being healthier together and win NFTs that might be redeemable for supplements or lifestyle products? Seeing this explosion of my summary of community commerce. If we look at the beginnings of where NFT started, this feels like the natural evolution.
That is a combination of words I have not heard in over 200 episodes of our show. Community Commerce resonates with me with that intersection of eCommerce and Web3 with the decentralization aspect. It is a very powerful combination of words.
Thank you.
Seeing all the things that NEAR is doing and building all that. I always like to see NFTs being that bridge to Web2. It is a 2.5 because you see all these different use cases that are already being utilized but they haven't had the infrastructure in place to start to identify and track these things along, be able to provide these loyalty programs and these DIDs, decentralized identities and everything else. You can do authenticity. You have a digital mark that can go with you across platforms and in other ways, which is extremely powerful.
It is cool to see that those innovations are resonating with the Web 2.0 crowd. As you see more of the reception to doing this because this takes years to see this pan out, how do you see more of these types of companies and institutions embracing it? Once they see you are creating this community commerce and these other things and they get excited about it, do you think that is going to be the next step as we look at the rest of 2023 and we go into 2024? Is this the direction that we see the industry going?
It is a promising one. There is a bunch of cool directions but this is one that is starting to click for people. What is interesting about this is if you notice on the whole thing, we are not talking about the chains. A lot of these different groups have come up with different chains they have in mind and they care about minting the NFT or doing transactions on it. The BOS is multi-chain
I was the VP of Product at Kraken. It was an open-source salon and open-source Eth before joining Kraken. What is fascinating is we always talked about there being a multi-chain world. Chains are almost a little bit of a religion for us. We have always had a reputation in NEAR as being quite multi-chain friendly. This is the first time we are taking the technology and putting it into a platform that makes it very easy for people to embrace that.
There will be more things coming back to your question. There are more use cases that are even going to come out from that because it has never been easy to do that before. That is what I'm always humbled by, especially in open-source development in communities. Somebody will come out with something else and maybe even something better. That is why we are excited to be here.
We are excited about everything coming up. You guys have NEARCON in November 2023. We are going to do some more content together. Stay tuned. Where can folks go to learn more about BOS and yourself and stay in touch with the NEAR community?
Go to NEAR.org, the primary gateway. We talk about gateways. NEAR.org is one gateway for the BOS. You can also run your gateway and domain. If you go there, it got all the resources about the BOS. We got lots of one-pagers about all the different features we talked about. There is the whole community there. If you make an account, you can get involved with some of the different application groups that are involved. It is an easy search system. You could look up my name, AlexCH and my Twitter, Telegram and profiles there. You can connect with me. I will be happy to talk to anybody.
Thanks so much for spending time with us. Have a great Consensus.
Thanks for having me.
Important Links
- Redeem
- Twitter – Tobias Rush
- LinkedIn – Tobias Rush
- Sebastien Borget – LinkedIn
- Sandbox
- DanceFight
- Snail Games USA
- Flexi
- NEAR
- Illia Polosukhin – Past Episode
- EthDenver
- BOS
- Kraken
- NEARCON
- Twitter – Alex Chiocchi
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