There are so many exciting things happening in the NFT space. But so often, it is those that draw a community that make their marks. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of Cooltopia with the Co-founder of Cool Cats and the mind behind Ghost Boy and Alpha Labs, Evan Luza. Evan takes us back to his origin story and how a fear of death led him to create one of the most successful NFT launches since. He talks about the phenomenon of Cool Cats, from how it continues to draw a passionate global community to how it has evolved into a digital powerhouse. They are even expected to be in the 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade! Evan also shares his wisdom on navigating through the noise and the need for responding versus reacting. Plus, get to know MINtangible and what they are offering to creators and owners on NFT IP rights and more!
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Listen to the podcast here
Evan Luza Of Cool Cats — The Platform Where You Can Experience The World Of Cooltopia, Plus: MINtangible
This is Evan Luza from Cool Cats, the leading player in Web3 storytelling.
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Stay tuned for this episode to learn how fear of death helped lead to one of the most successful NFT launches in the bleakest of markets.
If you're getting lost in all the noise, wherein lies all noise and responding verse reacting will lead to harmony in life and business.
Learn how MINTangible has made an easy button for creators and owners to craft and understand NFT IP rights. All this and more on this episode, enjoy.
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This episode features Evan Luza, the ingenious Cofounder of Cool Cats in the creative mind behind Ghost Boy and Alpha Labs, hailing from Austin, Texas. Evan has made a significant impact in the world of Web3 and NFTs. With his deep expertise and insights as a seasoned creative and entrepreneur, he's left his mark on major brands like Bitcoin.com, Microsoft, Adult Swim, and Valves. He's channeling his talents into his latest venture, Alpha Labs, where projects like Blockalizer are taking shape and the development of the captivating Ghost Boy NFT Collection.
In this episode, we'll delve into the phenomenon of Cool Cats, a renowned blue chip NFT brand with a passionate global community born from the imaginative comic character Blue Cat. This brand has evolved into a digital powerhouse, boasting an impressive array of collectibles, animated content, comics, games, and merchandise. As a trailblazer in Web3, Cool Cats is dedicated to igniting innovation and crafting immersive experiences that draw the community into the captivating realm of Cooltopia to the Adventures of Blue Cat and his friends. Here's our new friend, Evan Luza. Welcome to the show.
Good to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.
It's great to have. I think we covered it all in the intro. That's it. We’re probably good. I appreciate you joining us. Cool Cats is a massive community, engaged community, and passionate community. It’s a brand that does embrace the cool name.
The clue’s in the name.
Also, innovation. At the forward edge of innovation. That's the stuff we like to talk about. Let's start at the beginning. Share with us how it all came together.
I told Clon this too, so I have permission to say this, but I'd like to think of myself as Morpheus and Clon’s Neo. We went to school together. We went to Georgia State from Atlanta. He's from Atlanta and we're both in school together. I was always significantly more of nerdy crypto tech-centric dude. He wasn't familiar with blockchain or anything like that.
After I graduated, I ended up at Valve and Microsoft. At Microsoft, my buddy put me on crypto for the first time and it was like the ChainLink ICO. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the ICO days back in the day, but that's what got my bug going in crypto land. That was like 2017. I worked at Bitcoin.com for a little bit after that.
Long story short, I was contextually the technical background to understand at least the crypto space to some degree. I saw the Apes mint. It was like 2021. It feels like many years ago, but it's also like yesterday. They minted and someone who's from raised off Pokémon and Game Boy and Yu-Gi-Oh cards who loved and cherished that back of recess trading peer-to-peer stuff, I was like, “There's something here. There's some collectible component.” It's on the blockchain. I don't get it. I don't understand what I was looking at.
I had the idea. I was like, “If these Apes are selling, if other stuff is selling, I think there's a market opportunity here.” I had the idea to do a project called Sushi Pets, which was these anthropomorphized little pieces of sushi. I worked with a pixel artist and the plan was to launch the collection. I hit up Clon and he was doing motion graphics at the time. “Look, this is NFTs. Everyone on the internet's going crazy about collecting these Apes and it's all unfolding right in front of us. There's no rule book here. Anything goes. It's all the Wild West. It's all very exciting.”
I slowly contextualized him to the market opportunity and red-pilled him. That's why I said the Morpheus to Neo thing because I red-pilled him contextually on what the opportunity was. Long story short, we ended up getting Sushi Pets about ready to launch. At this point in time too, solidity developers and smart contract deployment, it was very rare. You couldn't go to Fiverr or open up Twitter and be like, “Who can fork this contractor? Who knows a Solidity dev?”
This was the cusp of when NFTs were rolling out. It was hard to find someone who even knew how to tie a front end to a smart contract. We had Sushi Pets basically 90% done ready to rock. The dev we had, he didn't rug us, but he was like, “I’m going to do something else. I’m not into it.” Me and Clon were depressed for like 2 or 3 weeks as we had put a month's worth of blood, sweat, and tears into this project we wanted to bring to the market. We felt defeated. Long story short, we're on the hunt for a new Solidity dev and we're starting from ground zero. We're scrolling through the Twitter feed and I think it was Clon. He found Faticorns.
Faticorns was the project that Link and Tom, who were the other two cofounders of Cool Cats, had been working on. That was Pixelated Fat Unicorns. We joined their Discord. There are probably ten people in there. It's mostly me, Tom, Link, and Clon. We contextualize them. We're like, “We're not idiots. We understand the market opportunity. Here's Sushi Pets, what we were working on. Do you guys have any interest in helping us launch this thing?”
The Faticorn website looked good. It looked like if you've ever got like Animal Crossing game or anything that Nintendo makes, there’s a website tied to it. It was crisply done and the smart contract worked, which was what we were looking for. We tell Tom and Link, “We got Sushi Pets essentially at the finish line. We'd love to work with you guys to help bring this thing to life.”
They flipped it back on us and said, “We're interested in working with you guys, but how about something we could have equal involvement in? What could we do from scratch together?” That was then a challenge to ourselves like, “Let’s put Sushi Pets on ice.” We now have a Solidity dev and a front-end guy that was Link at the time who's doing the front-end stuff. The task at hand is like, “What are we going to bring to the market now?” He went by the moniker, The Catoonist, which is like a play on the cartoonist, but The Catoonist. He had a whole catalog of Blue Cat as comics and a bunch of different poses, bits, strips, and all that stuff.
He had a poster on his wall that was Blue Cat and this was before, simultaneously during the advent of the whole PFP craze. It was serendipitous. It was looking right at him. He had a poster on his wall that he made years ago, but it's Blue Cat dressed up as a ninja, as a dog, as a turtle, and as all these things. He's sitting on this couch, he's like, “Why don’t we bring Blue Cat to the blockchain?’ It was looking at us the whole time.
Long story short, that's what we got in alignment on. We didn't know what to call. We didn't know if it was going to be like the Cool Cat's Casino or the Cool Cat's café. It was this whole getting the brand right, getting how he would be perceived, but it ended up manifesting as Cool Cats and it's all these different variations of Blue Cat in different outfits.
That's the TLDR story. We had no idea the magnitude of success we would have. We thought it through and we're thinking this super weekend project of the boys coming together, making sure the assets look right, the website, the story, the narrative, putting Twitter in the right position. We opened up Discord. We had some sales. We didn't sell out instantly, but we hit the market in the right way and authentically.
A few hours later, we ended up selling out, and then next thing you know, there are celebrities buying Cats and we're watching this thing explode in real-time and people are like, “What's next?” We're like, “We don't even know how we got here.” It's been this surreal road trip of assembling the plane while it's simultaneously taking off. That's the high-level Cool Cats story.
It's a moment when preparation meets opportunity. That's the whole thing.
That's true. To that point too, it takes ten years to be an overnight success. Not to knock other collections or artists, people work at different speeds and different cadences. Clon had been working on Blue Cat for 7 to 10 years. That's a character that he had. He had put his heart and soul into it. It wasn't like, “How do we slap this on the blockchain and tell people, ‘That looks cool?’” He has real pain and struggle. If you go and look back at some of his comic strips of Blue Cat, you can follow Catoonist on Instagram still. You can go through the archive or even in the Cool Cats Discord.
I forget what it's called. It might be called Originals or something like that origin story or something. There are many different instances where Blue Cat’s struggling with writer's block and depression, like human things. It's basically Clon who was channeling himself in this character that he's a Blue Cat. That's what lent itself to the stickiness of the Blue Cat, Cool Cat story is how authentic he was at channeling himself into this character. It's not as simple as, “Cats are cute. I’m in.” On the surface, it might feel that way to some people, but there's a story underneath it all.
There are probably two types of folks reading this story that you've encountered over the time of success for launch. One that's like, “I tried to do that too, but mine didn't go that way,” or, “I wish I did that. I missed it.” There's so much nuance to it and the nuance is where the magic happens. I had another question, but I am curious, is that what led to the accelerated momentum during the sellout? Do you think it was the narrative, a story that you guys shared? Did you make a couple of the right calls to people you knew in this space?
No, it was totally organic, and even to this day, we've never paid for the endorsement. We've never paid for any manipulative floor what have you. Historically and retrospectively, if you go back to the crypto and ICOs, the whole subculture of crypto land, there's nothing cute and inviting about it. There's degenerately baked into internet crypto degens even.
Nothing but respect for Yuga and other folks of their caliber and the same thing. It's the art and the aesthetic is, “I’m on a yacht. I’m smoking a cigarette.” It's a different audience that I think Cool Cats, I believe, was the first to market to come with this. I wouldn't say it’s child or kid-friendly, but it was open to all. It's the same feeling that you get when you look at Pikachu or Hello Kitty.
There are grandparents that love it and are into it. There are kids that love it and are into it. With Cool Cats, we presented this character that was like a breath of fresh air. We also set the standard for what was the foundational pillar which influenced and informed a lot of other people after us as well. I think we've validated the cute and cool model. It's not too cute, but it is also cool. There are no cigarettes. There's no cussing. There's no degenerate stuff like that. It's very palpable and relatable to the masses at large.
You guys made history again when you touched down during Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, a classic institute in our society. I’m curious about what led to that.
We're the real Blue Cat float that is going to be in the parade in November 2023. Macy's announced that they were going to open up a contest that I don't know if they handpicked or I don't remember how it went, but we were up against the lights of GMoney, Gary Vee with the VeeFriends, Cool Cats, and maybe 1 or 2 others. The TLDR is that the winner of a fan favorite community-voted collection would then get a balloon in the actual Macy's Day Parade.
Super shoutout to the community. It was a neck-and-neck thing. GMoney was up there for a minute. VeeFriends was up there for a minute. No one had it in the bag, but in the last week or few days, our community banded together and made it their undying effort. We're going to see Blue Cat in this freaking parade in real life. Everyone's going home. The community rallied and we ended up securing that. That's the big brand moment that we've been trying to funnel in as much preemptive thinking throughout the year.
When we have that moment in November when Blue Cat is being broadcasted to tens of millions of people around the world for the first time and they're like, “What is this cat floating around?” We're going to make sure we coalesce that into a properly thought-through activation moment from digital to physical. Shout out to our community for helping us make that a reality.
Over 69,000 votes. Pretty awesome. Congrats.
Thanks. That was a blur.
I don't know why they're not putting the heads on the Edge of NFT cohosts inflated in the Macy's parade, either. I’m a little bit bitter about that.
That wouldn't be a sight to see at all.
I’ve heard a little bit of buzz generally about the Amazon NFT marketplace and various people in projects getting involved. You can confirm, deny or neither confirm nor deny your potential involvement in the Amazon NFT marketplace. Do you see anything going on there? Is there anything you can share?
Confirm or deny? No comment. I will say it's tough because obviously, every coin has two sides to it. Amazon's clearly like a centralized entity and they're very consumer-driven. You could argue that they're the other side juxtaposed to what decentralization is all standing for.
I could argue with Amazon, but then I wouldn't get my packages delivered to my doorstep. Be careful what I say.
It's going to be players, Amazon, Target, Starbucks, and these other gargantuan that are going to be these gatekeepers that usher in the NFT space and expand the NFT audiences and reach as we know it. We've seen so many Web2 and Web2.5 brands attempt to break into the Metaverse or Web3, but there's a fine line between authenticity and money grabbing and defining the why.
There are also a lot of wrong ways to do it and there are a few right ways to do it. That being said, I know Amazon is probably the most well-funded company in history. Don't quote me on that number, but they have a few acorns that they know how to spend in a way that'll probably perpetuate their success to some degree.
All that suffice to say, I am eager to see how they end up scaling out their NFT marketplace and rolling out their NFT platform in general. It has the potential to be a big deal. When Coinbase was talking about their NFT platform, everyone was like, “Game changer. They got 1 zillion wallets. This is it. This is the moment. Lock in.” It's just, “I guess we're all still going to use OpenSea at the end of the day.” We've talked to them a little bit. I’ve talked to them a little bit. They've understood the implications and the lay of the land to authentically try to come to the market in some way that'll onboard as many people as possible while simultaneously upsetting as few people as possible.
We'll see. Until the curtain is open on that one, it's going to be speculative who knows sandwich. I’m personally more optimistic and eager. This is a step in the right direction because I think more and more NFT collections rolling out on an increasing basis and I don't think we have the infrastructure as a global society that there's not one consumer touchpoint that's been Web2.5 into Web3 that can potentially integrate us in the way that Amazon potentially could.
Speaking of businesses expanding beyond their initial mission or vision, you've also launched Alpha Labs. Can you tell us a little bit about the story there and what your vision is for this aspect of your business?
Basically, stepping into an advisor role with Cool Cats as opposed to being involved in the day-to-day gave me the freedom to pursue my own thing. I’ve always been entrepreneurial. I need to make stuff. I need to touch things. That also put me in the position to do my own collection, Ghost Boy. I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.
Alpha Labs is a Web3-centric product studio that's also NFT-centric, where myself and my cofounder Uneeb who used to work at Coinbase. The intention is to rapidly iteratively bring experimental, disruptive, and innovative products to the market. Blockalizer was the first collection and experimental tool we came out with. Long story short, I won't get too into it, but basically, there's a lot of non-sexy data as far as what's inside of a transaction.
If you send someone $5, there's nothing to look at. It's the ETH moved here, and USDC moved here. I said, “What if there's a way to connect to a platform where you could select a transaction address that you've had before TX 1, 2, 3, 4, and you could convert it into a digital collectible through P5 libraries and using generative art? It could turn something that doesn't have visuals into a digital collectible.
That's what I mean when I say experimental tech. Generative art within itself is not for everybody. Some people are like, “What am I looking at?” Other people who are into technology and who are tech purists are like, “This is impressive. This is cool. This is technically sound. I’m impressed by this.” If it doesn't have a cute face on it, some people are like, “I don't care at all.”
That was our first stab at launching something with Alpha Labs. The intention is to do twelve geneses to one a set of 1,000 every month. We've done two so far. We want to do twelve, but we skipped a month because we had East Denver and other stuff going on. The intention is to have another 1,000 every month.
With Alpha Labs, the intention is to focus on all these different market opportunities within space. Peer-to-peer trading, NFT trading, and fractionalization haven’t been solved. A lot of people are trying to solve wallets. MetaMask is best suited, but the user experience across the board of the Web3 land as we know it, it's so difficult. Nothing is easy. Everything is very difficult. With Alpha Labs, our intention is to find market opportunities where we can bring innovative, easy, pain-alleviating solutions to the marketplace.
If you look at Revoke.cash, for instance, they're a prime example of the formula that we're trying to apply to ourselves as well. Before them, someone would click a wrong link, they'd get phished and then their art block or something is gone, their Ape, or whatever. There's this scramble that went crazy on Twitter. People are like, “How do I revoke all my stuff?” They saw a market opportunity Revoke.cash and there you go.
A lot of times, it's this chicken and egg thing where something bad or something not so-good needs to happen in order for it to be improved upon. That's the underlying ethos of Alpha Labs. To find those things, to be conscientious, always aware of what's going on and try to make solutions. It’s exciting but also annoying and stressful because in Web3 land, every 2 or 3 weeks, it's like there's a new standard. There's a new blockchain. That's a scam. Now this one's not a scam. Half the battle is like having your ears open and your ears to the ground.
I’m looking at the launch and you guys did almost 5,000 ETH in volume in this market. That's impressive.
For a Ghost Boy, you mean?
Yeah.
That's on OpenSea. We did another 5,000 or 6,000 on Blur, which is cool.
Open Sea doesn't even track the volume that's not on their own platform. Interesting.
Back in school, Clon and I went to design school together back in Georgia. He had always been working on Blue Cat. It was in design school in 2015. That's when I started. I came up with the first sketches of Ghost Boy. I’ve been petrified of death. I think about it all the time. I was thinking about it before I go to bed. I can't. There are some things I can reason with and rationalize, but the fear of the unknown of the other side has been seared into me from middle school. I remember it hitting my head one day. I was like, “My consciousness is going to not exist one day. I can't. This is scary.”
Ghost Boy is my interpretation of it. It's a celebration of life and the time between now and the other side. Ghost Boy is supposed to be an art collection. I said there's no utility. Half of the funds from Ghost Boy are used to fund Alpha Labs, which gave us a little bit of a runway for the first year. The other funds raised with that is me trying to scale the brand as best as I can.
My degree of clout and previous track record with Cool Cats is what led to how sticky it was and how it was well received on Twitter and led us to sell out. It was a lot of fun. It's wild reliving the PTSD of what we learned through launching Cool Cats and the momentum of happy people, people not being happy, expectations, reality, time, what's the utility, and what's this?
I did it all over again with Ghost Boy for some reason, because clearly, I’m unstable mentally or something. We had pretty awesome numbers there. It's goofy because I didn't realize it until hindsight. Upon launching Ghost Boy, as I was how I was perceiving the collection or the art, I was packaging. I’m like, “This is an art collection for me of immortalizing a piece of me that's on the blockchain so I can effectively live forever and I can beat death, like take that death.”
Upon selling out in the traction, I go, “I think I made a brand.” It transcended an art collection. It is an art collection. Now I’m ideating through, “Who is my audience? Is it a lifestyle brand? Is it a clothing brand? Is it an animated series?” I’m having a lot of conversations behind the scenes about the best way to authentically scale Ghost Boy beyond the blockchain. That's through Alpha Labs and my cofounder and some of the team at Alpha Labs, they help me do the front end and the smart contract to get the collection out live. That's under Alpha Lab's belt as well.
Also, the intro to Lunar Pass has definitely piqued our interest. If you could go into what that is, maybe reveal some of the features and benefits and how it adds to the overall Cool Cats experience going back there.
I don't want to spill too much because I don't know what's out there, but you'll get access to Alpha Discord. The way to think about it would be like behind the curtain look into what we're developing, what Clon’s working on himself in regards to the next character or characters. It also adds their cool score a little bit. The way to think about it is essentially like an Alpha Insight Pass as far as getting one more layer behind the curtain of what we're cooking up over at Cool Cat's land. That's as much as I can say about that one.
Thanks for sharing. I never struggle with death.
Tell me the secret. What is it?
It's like sleeping or whatever. You got to be there to experience it.
My struggle is that there's pain in life, but I don't know.
I’m right there with you. I think about it all the time.
Some people allegedly aren't afraid of death and I’m like, “Are you lying to me or are you not?” I can't.
There are moments where I can be okay with it, but once you have your Ghost Boy, you're good.
What’s immortal can never die. There you go.
I didn't go to design school, but I went to music school and there was a good jazz guitar player that was a couple of years ahead of me. He was not a dark guy per se, but he was quiet, gruffly voiced, like always smoking a cigarette. I got into a little conversation with him one day and I think we got into what he was reading. It's called Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It's all about how everything we do as humans is, in essence, like a way of us denying the fact that we're going to die. I don't know if that's going to overcomplicate your ruminations on the topic or not to read the book.
It gives me a hug and it scares me even more.
I went in and read it. It was an interesting book. We're at the last question here. Looking forward to getting to Edge Quick Hitters next. Before we do that, can you share a little bit about the general on your personal roadmap within all these projects? What's coming up, partnerships, artists, collaborations, features, and stuff like that you might not have mentioned yet?
It's like watching me make a nothing burger in real time. There are so many conversations we're having behind the scenes, both Cool Cats and with Ghost Boy, and it's like, you can't. It's like we're having conversations and there's a lot of potential, but I’ll reemphasize the big moment that we're propping up for 2023 is going to be the float reveal for the Macy's Day Parade with Cool Cats. W
We're shining our laser cannon and making that moment the shot hurt around the world. This is going to be the first NFT float in the Macy's Day Parade ever. We're making sure that the touch points and the stickiness and how it's perceived. We're thinking through it as much as we possibly can. People who don't know anything about anything and the reach is massive as possible. That's what I’ll say about that.
With Ghost Boy, there are a lot of ideas I’m working through. I’m talking to an animation studio. I’m talking to some clothing folks as well, so I’m trying to figure out the best way to scale him. Back to Cool Cats again, we partnered with Animoca in 2022. When we rolled out Cool Pets, we got trapped in this feedback loop of, “Let's do a game. We should build the game ourselves.”
Things didn't materialize in the way that was conducive to optimal success. Animoca does games. They have 300 people under their umbrella game suite. We're in a position where we can partner with them and work on games. That's to say, we have a couple of things in production with them. I can't say when we're going to share what that's looking like, but as someone who's seen some of that stuff personally, it's looking great and it's going to be exciting. Blue Cat's going to transcend the blockchain to an app store near you is what I’ll say. That'll be cool.
Blue Cat's going to transcend the blockchain to an app store near you. Click To Tweet
Thanks for sharing. Keep an eye out. Lots of fun stuff coming. I appreciate you sharing with us, Evan. We want to transition a little bit, as Eathan shared with you.
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Before we jump in here, we got another segment called Edge Quick Hitters, and it's a fun and quick way for us to get to know you a little bit better. There are ten questions. We’re looking for short answers, like a single word or a few words, but we may dive a little bit deeper here or there. Are you ready to get after it?
I think so.
Let's do it. Question number one, what's the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Ever? Before NFTs?
If you can remember the time before NFTs, then yeah.
Probably like a Snickers bar, but as far as something that I had more conviction about, probably like a pack of Pokémon cards or Mage Nights. Did you guys ever hear about Mage Nights? Do know what that is? It's those little miniature characters and there's a bass that you can click them. I was into that as well as a kid. I remember buying those at the comic bookshop and all the endorphins would wash over me, hoping I'd pull a rare one.
Question number two is what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
I got a sad story. I got finessed on eBay for my Yu-Gi-Oh collection. I don't even know if PayPal was like a standard on eBay. It must have been, but the rules and regulations were not there. I had this insane Yu-Gi-Oh collection that I had spent my whole middle school assembling. I like shoes now. This was like Yu-Gi-Oh Evan.
I had some heaters and I sold them to some random guy who sent me a picture of a money order who allegedly sent it. He said, “The money's on your way.” I remember waiting day by day and then as a month went by, the money never showed up. That's simultaneously the first thing I remember selling and getting rugged on at the same time.
That sucks. Rough one, for sure. Question number three, what's the most recent thing you purchased?
I bought another deed.
We've got a rare one of those bad boys with a coda and all sorts of fun utility. That was a wild day where I lost a couple of NFTs, did the mint, and ended up very fortunate.
What do you mean you lost them? How'd you lose them?
I connected to a rogue other deed site and they got sucked out. It was an expensive lesson, but for me, I’ve taken similar path as others have done with crypto and spread it out on a number of wallets. I appreciate the idea of having that one wallet where everyone can see all the cool stuff you have.
It's not sustainable because you're one click away from not being jeopardized.
I personally am a big fan of spreading that stuff out.
That's a big brain move. RIP to the fallen soldiers, to you, and to anyone else who sees this. Gone but not forgotten somewhere out there on the chain.
Question four, what's the most recent thing you sold?
I sold my Moonbird at a super loss. I don't even want to talk about it. It hurt. Next question.
Let's move past it. Question five, what is your most prized possession?
It's got to be on my Cool Cats, obviously. Come on.
Question six. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, and experience that’s currently for sale, what would it be? What do you have your eye on?
I could buy it or I had the money to buy it or what is this? Is it free?
Infinite money.
Infinite money, like Sims cheat code. Probably some insanely swanky house that is way too big for one person, but Palm Beach over here, the mountains over here, everything. Maybe there's a helipad on there because why not? A modern-day fortress would be cool.
Your own ZIP code. I love it. Don't forget the little guys. Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
When I think of personality traits, I think of NFT collections.
That's so funny because, in all 250 episodes that we've done this, I don't think the traits ever come to mind. In all these guys, it hasn't come up from a guess, but it's never occurred to me, either. Has it occurred to you, Eathan, Josh?
That's a tough one. I don't know because we're all learning and bettering ourselves. People should be more like me, but I’ve been better at getting better about due diligence and even what you were saying earlier, Josh. We get stuck in this like, “Now instant. I got to click the link right now.” Having a pause of if you're in the eye of the storm, catch your breath for one second and it's all noise. Everything's noise.
Give yourself 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 1 hour to breathe, audit, and understand the situation you're in. Whether it's talking to someone, a relationship thing, minting something, and being like, “Am I reacting here or am I responding here?” It's easy to robotically go through these motions of clicking things. The older I’m getting, the more conscientious I’m trying to be. I’m not like that all the time, but that's the way that I try to be.
I love that. It reminds me of a cool feature that Gmail added and I’ve noticed with my iPhone. You sent an email. You have about ten seconds to undo your email. I did retract 1 text or 2 where I felt a little bit crusty at that moment or maybe there's a mistype. I’m hoping it works.
Let's flip that one on its head. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
Let me zoom in on all my flaws real quick. Sometimes I interject a lot because I love talking and I love expressing myself. Maybe allowing more of a pause between my expressing what I have to say and someone else expressing theirs.
Question number nine, what'd you do before joining us on the show?
I was in the gym. I did a cold plunge. It was very cold, and then I worked out and I did the sauna, and then I made some coffee.
I do like the half-the-cold plunge where I put half my body in cold water.
That's better than zero.
Question ten, the last one. Evan, what are you doing next after the show?
I got to take Young Charles aka Carlito, aka Sir Charles, aka Charmander, out on a walk because he's been a good boy. He needs some outside sniffs. It's like 85 degrees here in Austin, so he's going to be a hot ball out there. He's got to touch the grass. We all got to touch the grass.
I was hoping with the consensus being earlier, it wouldn't be so hot.
It's going to be like 90 degrees when everyone's getting here. Welcome. Come on in.
Cool off in your pool, I hope, at some point. I’ll see you over there.
It's incredibly hot in Texas.
You guys should say hey, though, when you're here. We’ll get some barbecue or something.
I love me some barbecue always. That'd be great.
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Shall we get onto the Hot Topics?
I think so, yeah. Thanks for sharing with us. We got a special Hot Topic. Eathan, let's jump in.
Let's do it. A little special sponsored Hot Topic here. We're excited to have a sponsored spotlight for a MINTangible. This is a pioneering company, transforming the intellectual property landscape in the Web3 space. It launched a game-changing blockchain solution for NFT creators and brands designed by experts in IP law, licensing, and blockchain technology.
The solution that they're launching will enable creators to bind IP and royalty rights to NFTs on chain patent pending solution with all the complexity behind the scenes so the users don't have to worry about that going on. The IP right structures are generated intelligently and coded on chain bound to each NFT and the NFT collection. Each NFT receives public rights registry listing where anyone could look up all things related to the IP terms of the NFT’s verified identity, the licenser, and registered works being licensed in the IP terms that apply. Pretty cool.
In some sense, anybody could be attaching this information to any NFT, but nobody's doing it in an organized way that's user-friendly. This is an exciting step. It's interesting to see how this project develops. Any thoughts on this, Evan, as someone who's got your own IP going on here? How do you think about this stuff?
It's funny because there are so many that are like, “What can I do with the IP?” It is like, “You can do anything.” They're like, “All right, cool.” It's like no one does anything. It's so much like, “What can I do with it, though?” I don't know, but stuff like this is great, clearly defining what you can do.
It reminds me of a previous podcast I had. It was the Run With It Podcast and as the cohost, the thing that we thought was super exciting was we would have these experienced entrepreneurs on the podcast and they would share a business idea that they don't have time to pursue, but they think is awesome. The thing that we thought was exciting is we offered to the listeners from the very start to send us an email telling us why they should be the ones pursuing this idea. We'll connect you with that experienced entrepreneur for a private mentorship session. Incredible. Nobody took us on it.
That's a great idea.
It's true. People want to enjoy IP. Some people want to do things with it, but it is a little bit of a conundrum. I can see what you're saying. They're asking you, “What should I do?” It's like, “It's up to you.”
“What can I do?” “You can do anything.” “I don't want to do anything.” It's like, “Okay.”
A little bit more context, MINTangible did come by Outer Edge and they had a cool booth and they talked to a lot of creators there. I introduced them to a few creators. There was this moment, to your point, Eathan and Evan what you're saying, where creators were like, “I haven't even thought about this.” There was this pretty big educational component to what MINTangible is doing in terms of they come from an IP background. Emily, one of the founders, is an IP lawyer by trade. It's talking to creators about how they can be more empowered through the digital assets they create. It's a powerful concept when you think about it that way.
One of the missing components, though for that infrastructure is we need some intermediary white label third party or net new solution where they say, “Have you got a collection or NFT from this collection? Okay, cool. We have the infrastructure to instantly deploy a storefront for your goods.” A lot of people want to apply their NFTs a thing, but a lot of people haven't done a Shopify store before or launched anything. It's like where do I start? I think that's going to be something we're probably going to see in the near short term.
That sounds like a job for your new laboratory.
The other side of it, too, is there's always a power law with anything. We had the producer come on and show us how he was doing things with his Ape NFT at Outer Edge and we had spotty Wi-Fi and things like that. There are those people that are doing it and are excited about and they know what to do and they're on the track. In essence, those people sometimes are wondering why other people aren't using those privileges and rights. There's probably another world here, too, that I don't even know. This is a place where the law has to be written around this to license out your rights to monetize your NFT to someone else who's excited about it.
I feel like so much of the granular intricacies of whatever avenue or sub-avenue, so much of it comes all the way back down to education. There's so much information and misinformation about the application of, “How do I get the token? What can I do with it? How do I put on a thing?” Nothing is easy. None of this is easy. We're in hard mode land where it's like funding a wallet with crypto and buying a token. That took a lot of work to even get there and make sure your keys aren't even jeopardized. Way to go, you. How do we apply that to other things? I think it's all going to be like an educational thing.
MINTangible here, that’s their goal. To have something that's a trusted solution. We've got these NFT lawsuits that are hitting the headlines. IP disputes are out there. In essence, I think the crux of what they want to do is protect the IP for the creators and the royalty rights. Give them something where maybe that part of it is a little bit of a headache that's a little bit difficult to consider. I’ve got to write up a contract or something like it. It turns into almost a legal zoom of a sort. That's my terminology, not necessarily theirs.
In order to put this all together in a quick and easy way, it gets us closer to the easy button. When you think about IP, there are a lot of nuances from music to using the product in a movie to creating a product, to doing a collab with the product, to tracing a derivative of that product and then creating something with it. I think these are all things that the creators should be able to think about and have an easy button for figuring out what rights they want to give and how they want to give those rights.
It seems like it'll perpetuate adoption for sure.
The flip side of it, too, is owners and collectors need to know what their rights are and feel comfortable using that IP effectively. These folks are not experts in IP. They're not IP attorneys. They don't know. People are out there using them willy-nilly. If they know, what are we allowed to do with this thing?
The other cool thing they're doing is they're publishing open-source NFT license templates for people to use, which again if we're talking about adoption and easy buttons, the legal zoom side of it, things like collectibles, commercials, music, other places to support both sides of the equation. The creators that are making this stuff and then the owners that are on the other side of it that want to use this stuff but maybe are even tentative because they are afraid of stepping on toes or doing something that might be illegal. That's pretty cool for them as well.
There's nothing potentially illegal to do here. I’m kidding.
In the meantime, if anyone wants to check out what these guys are doing, we are big fans. MINTangible’s offering a free certification for your first NFTs and you can experience that on their platform and maybe streamline some of your IP management, help with trust, and transparency, all things that we care about in the Web3 ecosystem. You can go to MINTangible.io. Follow these guys on Twitter. It’s @MINTangible_io on Twitter. Check these guys out.
They also got a funding round. They got some capital to go make this thing happen as well.
That concludes our Hot Topic segment. Thanks for your enthusiastic participation, Evan. I think we picked a good one for this particular episode. We appreciate it. Now we move on to a quick shoutout segment, which we always enjoy and I think we did talk with you previously to pick a few interesting folks or projects to shout out. Is anybody, in particular, you want to hit the audience to check out?
I always got a shout out my brother, Clon, obviously @ClonCast. Follow him. My buddy Atown Brown launched Grumbies NFT. He helped me do the produce the metadata and like the RNG, the assets for Ghost Boy. Shout out to Atown Brown. Check out Grumbies and then @GhostBoyLives. That's my new baby. Check out the project. Get you a Ghost Boy. What's immortal can never die. Be part of the movement.
There it is. I appreciate the shoutouts. Before we break for the episode, we also got to let folks know where to follow you and all the projects that you're working on. Where should we send them?
@EvanLuza. Elu is what I go by. I’m a big freestyle rapper. I’m from Atlanta. The joke is if you're from Atlanta, you rap. Everyone raps in Atlanta. Elu was bestowed upon me many ciphers ago and I kept it with me. I’m on Twitter. If you're in Web3, you're on Twitter, then you can check out Ghost Boy, @AlphaLabs, and then obviously @CoolCats as well from my Twitter. Check me out.
We've reached the outer limit. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this Starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes right now. Rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- MINTangible
- Cool Cats
- Ghost Boy
- Alpha Labs
- Bitcoin.com
- Catoonist - Instagram
- Cool Cats Discord
- Blockalizer
- MetaMask
- Revoke.cash
- Lunar Pass
- Denial of Death
- Animoca
- Run With It Podcast
- @MINTangible_io – Twitter
- @ClonCast - Twitter
- Grumbies NFT
- @GhostBoyLives - Twitter
- @EvanLuza – Twitter
- @AlphaLabs – Twitter
- @CoolCats – Twitter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
- @EdgeOfNFT - Twitter
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