There is an immense potential that Web3 art holds that remains to be tapped. Kanon.art is making waves in the art community as it combines top-tier art industry players with Web3 technology. Today on the Edge of NFT, our Edge team sits down with Fastackl, a representative of this community that is making strides in facilitating the growth of Web3 art by building protocols and products that align the incentives of the artists and collectors. Kanon.art is a pseudonym collective of institutional art design and crypto-native technology professionals dedicated to building enduring practices and protocols for the art of the next 100 years. Plus, learn how yWhales, a community-based firm, is revolutionizing the world of commerce through a metaverse trade show concept. Tune in for all of these and more on the Edge of NFT!
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Listen to the podcast here
Fastackl Of Kanon.art - A Web3 Art Community Combining Top-Tier Art Industry Players With NFT Technology
This is Fastackl from Kanon.art. We are a pseudonym collective facilitating the growth of Web3 art. I'm on the Edge of NFT, the show that is showing you what is growing in every season of Web3. Stay tuned.
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Stay tuned for this episode to learn how Kanon.art is making waves in the art community, combining top-tier art industry players with Web3 and what our guests would do with a hyper-personalized AI assistant. Finally, how yWhales, a community-based firm, is revolutionizing the world of commerce through a Metaverse trade show concept called Y1.
Before we go, don't forget that our Outer Edge LA event returned to Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. Did you know you can catch up on all the discussions, presentations and more by heading over to Watch.OuterEdge.live and registering with only your email address? You will have access to over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Binge watchers are welcome. Netflix, watch out. See you inside.
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This episode features Fastackl from Kanon.art, a platform that builds protocols and products that align the incentives of the artists and collectors. Kanon is a pseudonym collective of institutional art, design and crypto-native technology professionals dedicated to building enduring practices and protocols for the art of the next 100 years. Fast, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I’m very excited to be here. It is great to be here with all of you.
For the readers, we did mention that we are pseudonymous. Fast is joining us. You can check him out on YouTube as a small green dinosaur in a cool desert background.
A levitating dinosaur, at that. For those that are driving or working out, please do not endanger yourself. Just visualize this.
I get jiggly when I get excited.
Kanon.art is an artist collective that utilizes blockchain tech in the Web3 community. Maybe you can tell us about the project and when you became a part of it.
In February 2021, I had been collecting for maybe about 3 or 4 months before that. Around December 2020, I collected Deadmau5’s first NFT. I started getting into NFTs. I also had a friend who unfortunately couldn't join us. He used to work for one of the largest art institutions in the world. Both of us had been doing degen stuff for five years before that.
We both started getting into NFTs. We got together. We were like, “We should do something.” It all came together within the space of three weeks. It was an incredible whirlwind but we thought, “We should get a collection together of NFTs.” Through Alexis's network, you can get access to some of the most incredible artists in the traditional world.
I had started to build a network in the crypto digital native world. We are like, “Let's put together a collection.” He said, “My institution might be interested.” If they were interested, we were like, “The biggest institution in the world is going to launch a collection.” We sat down with them. They said, “This is awesome. We want to do this. How does August sound like a launch date?” We are like, “What are you talking about? We need to launch in two weeks.”
We walked out of there. We were like, “I don’t know about this. Maybe we should do this ourselves. We know the people, artists and curators. Fuck it, we got what we need. Let's do it.” We did it. We launched the K21 Collection. We have included twenty artists. The other thing is Elon Musk posted that had this banner. It said, “We don't do this because it is easy. We do this because we thought it was going to be easy.”
We thought we were going to get this thing done. We launched it in three weeks. We are going to get this thing done in two months. Several years down the line, we started realizing all the opportunities that were there. We are almost done with twenty artworks. We are going to do 21. Cai Gou-Chang’s artwork is number twenty. It is one of the most resource-intensive to pull off.
In Canada, we are working with artists both in the crypto-native space and also in the traditional space. We are picky about the artists that we work with. They have some vision that we think needs to be brought in and we help them make that a reality. In terms of Canada, we are like a fight club because I'm not from a curatorial side. I can say these things. The curators would be horrified that I say it was like a fight club.
I don't know if you remember that scene where people are walking around in their normal jobs. The number one rule is you don't talk about fight club. People recognize each other because they got marks or black eyes. People are trying to figure out where these curators are and who they are in actual real life. They are walking around there with two lives with us at Kanon, doing the stuff that they can't do in their traditional personas and institutions. At the same time, they are incredibly experienced in real life.
There is so much that we could unpack there. What it sends out to me is a couple of things. One is using the drop-in four-letter bombs feels normal because I came from VeeCon, where Gary Vee was dropping those with no tomorrow. I also interviewed Nate Alex, AKA Founder of ChainFaces, over there. It feels like there is a little bit of that in what you are saying here. For those that don't know ChainFaces, shame on you. It was a bit of a fight club mystique to that project where there is a battle royale. You got these scars on your NFT. Your NFTs could die if you lost a fight.
I appreciate the traditional roots of what you are building there in terms of getting to our cardinal instincts. That is the essence of degen. You guys are building some cool stuff. One of those things is Cai Gou-Qiang and the EET Oracle Project. Those are both on your roadmap. I would love to hear a little bit more about them because they converged with some of our favorite topics, like AI.
The artist’s name is Cai Gou-Chang. I'm not from an art background. My background is in software and finance. I fell into this through doing degen stuff on both DeFi and NFT sides. I can say this because I'm not from this traditional world. He is probably one of the top five living artists in the world at the moment. He started to hit his stride in the ‘90s. He was the visual director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That is a massive event. What he is most famous for is gunpowder. He will use gunpowder both on canvas. He will also use gunpowder in these massive in-person events. Josh, would it be okay to show a video? I could talk about it to get a sense of the scale.
You gave us the link. Let's pull it up here. What were you going to say, Josh?
My girlfriend has purchased a handful of NFTs in her life, one being Tom Brady. For me, some other special projects. One was this gentleman's fireworks project, which is one of her favorites. This fireworks project that he did is incredible. It is one of the first dynamic NFT projects, to my knowledge.
His girlfriend approved. Let's check this out.
“Contemporary artists are playing on the big stage. I remember hearing about the explosion events and thinking that guy nailed it.”
“This combination of space and scale and invention, I saw it. It was clear to me that side arrived. That was the moment.”
“To say that the Chinese artist, Cai Gou-Qiang, has exploded on the contemporary art scene is no exaggeration.”
“He is turning the idea of what art is on his head.”
“As far as him, how do you challenge yourself?”
“Early work has begun on the largest single installation ever commission.”
“His work does have a strong subtext. He is trying to do art with integrity.”
For the audience, we didn't preface it too much but that was a Netflix promotional video for Sky Ladder, the official trailer there, which I don't know that they would necessarily mind us sharing. A lot of it is in a different language. It might not come across perfectly but what we can do is recap the video. It is inspiring on a highly professional level in terms of artistry, what an artist can achieve and what they can aim for. He is impressing a lot of people with what he aims to achieve and communicate through his art.
The scale of these things is immense and the amount of resources that go and execution that is required to pull these things off. For this Sky Ladder, they don't show it in the document because they are trying to tease you into going and seeing the documentary, which I would highly recommend people do. It is mind-blowing.
If you look up Sky Ladder on the internet, you will see an image. It is a ladder of fire that goes up 500 meters into the sky. It is massive. He had this dream for 22 or 23 years to do it. He has four failed attempts. The documentary covers that arduous journey. All the while, he's building up this incredible career for 23 years. There was one thing he did in 2016 that was the one thing he was obsessed with. The amount of energy and drive that Cai has is insane. In person, he is a lovely guy with an incredible sense of humor. He is warm. He doesn't speak English. There is always somebody translating for you. One of the most exciting things is working directly with him to create EET.
Breaking a lot of boundaries and working with a pioneer has been an innovator his entire career. It is a special collaboration. To put a pin in it for our readers, what we are talking about with EET is an AI augment fortune telling on the blockchain featuring the first ever on-chain generated GIFs. This is quite special. I'm curious. Why did you choose to work with an AI oracle to produce this?
This was Cai’s vision. I just started working on this but the Kanon team had been working with Cai for a while. Throughout his work, Cai developed a personal philosophy about unseen forces around us. This is something that took me a lot of time. I used to be an M&A banker and software product developer. This took me a while to wrap my head around it. Cai has a philosophy that he has developed throughout his life about how to commune or interact with the unseen world. There are these unseen forces around us. It is different from the materialist view that we have in the West. He deeply believes in the curative and the guiding power of the unseen world.
Throughout his work, whether it is the fireworks events or gunpowder paintings, he is always trying to get audiences to experience that connection, especially for people in the West like us. It can be quite an alien thing. I'm reasonably skeptical about these things. The beauty of the artworks of Cai Gou-Qiang is you can go to one of these explosion events.
I don't care how skeptical you are, whether you are a scientist or spiritual. If you are able to sit through one of these explosion events without feeling something, you might be an AI. You might not be human. You are going to be moved and feel something no matter how hard-nosed you think you might be. I'm speaking from a layman's perspective. What I find the most amazing about Cai's work is his personality.
EET is Cai’s third or fourth NFT project and I'm excited. Josh, I heard your partner was into Cai’s previous work. He doesn't need Web3. The guy is operating at the top level. He saw potential in Web3 to be able to reach people in a way that no other medium can and to be able to reach millions of people, potentially. He is very excited about that. What he gave us was a challenge. He said, “How can we heal the world with art?” That was his vision at the time.
People are very unfamiliar with practices that go back 10,000 years. People in China, India or Japan are more familiar with this concept of being able to interact with the unseen world using oracles. These are situations where some question might be weighing on you that is causing a rupture in you. It might be, “Should we launch the next meme and shitcoin? Should I leave my job? What is going to happen if I marry this person?” These kinds of things that is important that we have logic and reason to be able to grapple with some of these things but it is also not sufficient. That is well understood, particularly in the East, that logic and reason are not sufficient and interact with forces beyond our perception.
You don't have to believe that there are forces but if you act as if there are. The feedback that you can get from some of these systems that date back 10,000 years, in the case of EET, is an evolution of an old oracle bringing in blockchain and AI. That is where Cai saw the potential to help people heal when they are trying to deal with uncertainty. I will pause there because there are a lot of concepts in there.
What I'm gathering in summary with everything that we were talking about is there are elements of rationality and creativity or generativity in some way. That is at play. We see that throughout Web3, life in general and ancient philosophical concepts like the Ying Yang or Tao Te Ching. These things are useful and I love that you pointed out that rationality is something that we need to utilize and can't ignore. The whole trusting your gut on questions that maybe require some statistical analysis is not always the right answer.
One of my favorites is Brian Eno, the famous musician and recording engineer, who had these oblique strategy cards. If you were stuck in the recording studio or life in general with a bunch of cards, you could flip one over and say something like, “Make it backward. Take it twice as fast.” You could do whatever you want with it. It is to stimulate creativity.
Thinking outside of the box is where this is all leading. We are always in need of something. Einstein said, “Doing the same thing over and over again can be insanity. If it is not working right, you need to find something new.” How does this all connect with making it a non-chain GIF? How did this all lead to becoming a GIF-centered project yet?
We’re always in need of something new. Click To Tweet
When we started, we started developing this idea, “We can help people by creating an oracle.” We are building on top of some old traditions. There's this oracle called the I Ching. People don't know because it emerges from pre-history. It is a beautiful, super concise system. It sees life as a wave. It oscillates between extremes. What the I Ching does is it tells you where in that wave it is. That seems weird.
Think of the Elliott wave or business cycles. Even in the West, wave is intuitive. When you are at one extreme or the top of the cycle, you are going to swing back to the other side of the cycle. You are going to need to revert. There is an element of that in it. The system is incredibly elegant. There are no words. It is like these 6 lines that get generated into 64 combinations. It leaps back to the 1600s or 1700s when he wrote his paper on binary arithmetic on which we base all our computations. He mentions in his seminal paper the I Ching. Mathematically and artistically, it is a beautiful system.
We saw opportunities to evolve. People have been adding layers to that system for 10,000 years. We saw an opportunity to go, “It is not repackaging the I Ching because it turned out to be quite different.” We are being inspired by this old and sacred system. We want to bring it into Web3 and borrow elements from it that we think are going to resonate well in Web3. We are going to need some medium to express the artistic message of this and what Cai wants to express artistically. When you come to an oracle, you ask a question and you are going to get an answer. The answer that you get back is going to be a non-chain and beautiful GIF.
What are the alternatives to doing that? Could we do an SVG? I don't know if I'm getting a little bit deep into the weeds here but normally when you see chain artwork, it is an SVG. This is effectively like an HTML that you can tell, “Draw me a rectangle here. Draw me a line here. Make it this color to make a human-readable text.”
SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphic, which means you could make it into a movie poster, a billboard on the side of the road or a poster stamp. It is going to still have the same integrity as the image.
If you go onto the EET website, you will be able to see what we are able to generate with GIFs. You will see haziness and animation. There are emotions, ideas and feelings that you can communicate with the GIF that is not possible to do with an SVG. One of the big reasons that they mentioned as we were developing this is that an SVG is a Scalable Vector Graphic.
When you expand it, you don't lose any of the resolution because it is not an image. It is instructions for a machine to draw a particular image. Whereas the GIF itself, the GIF is dated back to the early days of the internet. It was the first widely adopted image animation format back in 1996. If you want to have an animation, it has to be a GIF.
It is not human-readable. It is compressed. You need a machine to read it. It is not going to scale when you expand it. When you expand it, you get these interesting properties like haziness. It is incredibly difficult to do on-chain. It is not something that you can whip up quickly. It took a lot of techs to figure out which we are going to open source to figure out how to do that on-chain.
That combination of the expressiveness of the medium, and this is the first time that this has ever been done, told us, “This is what we need.” Something that Cai and we feel momentum is putting this new oracle out that needs a medium that lives up the same as gunpowder if you are going to write in the sky with gunpowder. If you are going to create a new oracle, create a new medium for it, release the medium to the world and showcase what you can do with this new medium.
You mentioned, “Go to the EET website.” I have that as EET.et. Is that correct? Is that where you would send people?
Yes, that is right.
There is more to unpack here. It is the answer to every question when we talk to you about this project because you are using eDAO to gamify ownership of the art in how the revenue goes. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of the project?
In its most ambitious expression, Cai is serious that he wants to heal the world with art. If you take that seriously, that means reaching millions of people over the next X years. If you are going to reach millions of people, you are going to need infrastructure. If you think of ENS, they mentioned two million names. They have raised $40 million worth of capital. I might be getting the exact number wrong but in that order, they got 30 or 40 people working on it. It is the same thing with Dapper Labs and CryptoKitties. These things that are big in scale require big infrastructure. Even if it is in a DAO, it is centralized. That was the initial motivation.
We had been in the background working on some because we had been in the space for a long time. We were also skeptical of the DAO structure. In particular, skeptical about whether the DAO structure is effective in attracting the most capable people through time as opposed to the people that are more able to gather votes, whether it is through buying governance tokens or being effective at building big audiences and getting them to vote as opposed to being effective at expanding a project.
We came up with this idea with the eDAO and the idea is, “How do we ensure that the most capable people for expanding the oracle's audience and also safeguard the oracle for the next 100 years are in charge at any particular point in time?’ The solution we came up with was the eDAO. The way that works is it is a competitive on-chain game and it continues forever at a high level.
The way it works is you have scorekeeping. The rules are still like the works but at a high level. If you are best able to demonstrate on-chain that you can grow the eDAO and you can sell more of these fortunes, you are going to accumulate a higher score. If you get a high score, you are more able to challenge whoever is in control of the project. You don't have to challenge them but you are more able to.
In theory, let's say you have a team that is not performing well. If you demonstrate that you are able to sell more fortunes than anybody else because you can't mess with the rules and they are on-chain, you are able to come, challenge and snatch control from them. That would be quite an aggressive move. You don't have to do it but that is baked into the protocol as a way to make sure that there is competitive pressure on whoever is at the top of the chain. Not only a competitive pressure that is directly linked to a mission that is built-in for EET, which is growing this. Let's get this out and put it in the hands of as many people as possible.
As DAOs do it, it makes us think about governance and how we are going to approach that in the future. I can only imagine in as little as 50 years from 2023, maybe less, different forms of governance coming onto the scene here, especially with AI and all these different progress in terms of technology. It shows the faults and the flaws in the systems that we have at the moment. Can you provide us with any insights here on the plans here at developments for Kanon? Any upcoming features and collaborations? What is on the agenda?
Eathan, I forgot to mention that there is a quick analogy for the eDAO. It is probably either Willy Wonka or Ready Player One, depending on your age group. Instead of using the corporate system of voting for who is going to be in charge, if you remember, in Ready Player One, you have the creator. His name was James Halliday. He puts an easter egg in this game. That gets everybody to compete to show who is the most worthy. If you are able to find that easter egg, you are going to do the best place to have control of the revenue, supply and pricing. That is a shorthand way of explaining it, which I should have done.
The analogy for me was finding the matza when I was a child. I was good at finding the matza but I don't think my family wanted me to be in control of any major decisions with our Passover Seder.
The main thing is EET. We were going to get that out. Keep your eye out for the announcement on that. We are going to need to do some work on the EET. It will launch. It will still be under our control initially. Our next big piece of work is finalizing these eDAO contracts. That governance system is in place. We will hand over EET to the eDAO. We will be in control of that eDAO.
We will see what happens or who wins. I'm excited to see who is going to play, participate and win. That is next in our roadmap. After that, we are going to go back to focusing on the vault, which is an automated mechanism in which we are going to put all these 21 artworks. It is going to be a mechanism that allows people both, probably some token sitting here, that we need to be careful about how we talk about not financial advice but it is not just about tokens. When the artworks go into the vault, it is the ability to be able to borrow those artworks out of there. We have built a protocol to do that.
The idea is rather than putting artworks in a vault and staying there stagnant, we want as many people to be able to experience these artworks from these 21 incredible artists. Being able to bring it into your wallet for whatever you might want to do, you might want to have it there. We have been getting demand for exhibitions and shows to bring these artworks into your wallet while, at the same time, the ownership remains collectively owned. That is the next big thing we are going to get through in 2023 after we are through EET and eDAO.
Thanks for sharing this all with us and there is probably a ton more to share. We don't have so much time and life. We will roll the dice for the next segment of our session here. Let's consult the oracle. It is Edge Quick Hitters, which happens to be a fun and quick way to get to know you a little bit better. There are ten questions. We are looking for a short, single or few-word response but feel free to expand if you get the urge. What is the first thing you will ever remember purchasing in your life?
It was a Hot Wheels. When I got some pocket money, I bought some Hot Wheels but the back one used to be metal. I love that feeling in Hot Wheels.
We had a Hot Topic about Hot Wheels releasing some new Fast and Furious NFT collections.
I might have to open my wallet up once again many decades later.
What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
It is a failed attempted selling. When I was 13 or 14, there was some tobacco that my dad brought as fertilizer. In my naivety, I thought you could make cigarettes from them. There was a construction next to us. I got some paper from the printer and tried to make cigarettes from fertilizer tobacco. I lit it to test it and see if the product was up to scratch. I ended up burning the whole barrel of tobacco. Apparently, it is flammable.
This even has connections to the whole gunpowder affair that is going on.
I had never thought about it but I guess there is a connection there. Sadly, I didn't do as much with my life as Cai did.
In addition to the caveat, this show is not financial advice. We have to add a new caveat to this show.
Do not try this at home.
Do not play with fire or fireworks. It is not a good idea.
Tobacco is bad for your health. It is a bad idea from all angles.
Don't look for the matza.
There are a lot of warnings related to this show. What is the most recent thing you have purchased?
I'm excited about this. I have purchased a pickup truck. It is a Mazda BT-50. I'm in love with it.
Dinosaurs can do some walking but eventually, you get tired and you want an extra pair of oil. What is the most recent thing you sold?
I sold a Milady and I regret it. I sold it because I was slipping into some other Milady derivative. I have been holding them for twelve months. I regret that. I want to buy it back. I hope people flood it so I can buy it back.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
My heart says, “My truck.” My mind says, “My house.” It is because after ten years of working, we were able to get one and my family has a roof over their head. No matter what happens on the degen side, they got that. That gives me peace of mind.
Never say never when it comes to what happens on the degen side. Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service or experience that is for sale, what would it be?
Outside of the truck, I have few desires. I don't know of anything I wanted to buy. Time but it is not real. If I could buy time, I would buy another 50 years.
We will put you in touch with that guy. I have been seeing him all over YouTube. He is doing some protocols to make himself younger by the day.
I know what I want. I want my unfiltered AI instance.
What does that mean?
Who knows what guardrails they put on? It is not that I want to do anything malicious with it. I want to make sure that I get the most out of it. I want it also train the stuff that I care about. That is what I want. Cai did that. He got his AI. When I saw it, I was like, “I want my AI.”
If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I’m struggling to find the adjective for it but it would be the ability to step back and not be reactive. This is something that took me a long time to develop. I want to pass that on certainly to the next generation. Before reacting, take inputs. It doesn't always work. This is not something I invented. It is something that was taught to me. I want to pass on the benefit of that.
There is a word for that in some languages.
You are saying that moment of reflection before you take action.
That space.
The bigger concept here is getting to Eathan, which I don't think there is a word for it in the American lexicon but I bet there is a word for it in another language. Sometimes we appreciate the merits of the English language but it doesn't always quite say what is on our minds.
There is a Viktor Frankl quote that I heard. This is similar. It was like, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. That space is our power to choose our response. In response lies our growth and our freedom.” Is that what you are talking about?
Yes.
He is doing the happy dance that was promised.
I'm responding here with a jiggle because that is right. You can always rely on Viktor Frankl to blow it down for you.
Thanks for sharing that, Eathan. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
I don't expect it to disappear but I do like comfort. I love comfort. I like hot showers. Jocko Willink gives this rallying speech to the troops. He is going like, “If you guys think this is tough, imagine the people at the reserve, Korea and things they had to go to. What you need to do is take cold showers every day.” I'm like, “I'm out.” You lost me there in cold showers. I'm scared of that.
That is when I always find a way to avoid too, even though I know it is good for me. Jocko has a whole line of products on Amazon to make life easier, even though he is telling everyone else to get uncomfortable. I found it. I was surfing. I was like, “Jocko finally figured out a way to extend his brand to the product wall.” Check it out on Amazon.com. It is not an official advertiser in the show. They got this whole line of products.
Somehow, I feel strangely better about that. I go, “Maybe it is not that bad.”
We hit the elimination of a personality trait. I can take a cold shower here and there but that is cool. Question number nine is, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I'm in the Asia time zone. I was asleep and I woke up. It is not very exciting but that is the truth. I woke up and had some water.
Question number ten is what are you going to do next after the show? Is it coffee time? Is that the shit long short of it?
It is coffee time. Where I live, we got good coffee. I'm ashamed to say that I import Folgers Coffee from America. It is like the warm showers. That is what I do every morning. I get a weird look. I go, “What are you doing?” This is good stuff. I don't know what they put in it.
There are crystals.
It is not the instant stuff. It is the ground stuff. You have to brew it but I don't know what it is. I'm hooked.
You have to have it for that song. Do they still even use that? That is classic ‘80s marketing.
That is what it was watching all this stuff.
The need to be more songs about products. I feel like they have stopped doing that. Sometimes they do some weird hip-hop thing where they try to do some modern version but we need that.
It was like, “Double double your refreshment.”
We are going on to Hot Topics next. We can bring on our Hot Topics guests here, Jay Steinback and Siva Avvaru of yWhales. It is a platform that is boldly pushing the boundaries of Web3 evolution and innovation. Jay is the Cofounder, Chief Exec Officer and Chairman of yWhales, at the best of hundreds of business professionals around the planet that were eager to learn and invest in the up-and-coming Web3 transition, leveraging the YPO network to transition into a Web3 community and became a full-time endeavor.
Prior to yWhales, Jay managed the successful sale of his family's retail empire to private equity in 2019 with a few decades of venture capital and startup experience. He was also one of the Founding Board Members of Arch Grants, an annual equity-free $75,000 global startup competition in charge of building the competition selection and due diligence process.
Siva Avvaru is the Managing Director at yWhales Solutions. He is a veteran of Web3 advisory, monetization strategies and technology strategy and development. He has a strong track record of helping over 30 clients realize $500 million-plus in revenue uplifts across various industries throughout his consulting career. Before yWhales, Siva was an Engagement Leader for the Advisory Practice of Advanced Technology Group.
Finally, here is a little bit more about yWhales. It embodies a community-based firm advancing Web3 technologies through four divisions, community solutions, ventures and labs. Your ecosystem is a network of global CEOs, entrepreneurs and executives united by the belief in the transformative potential of Web3. Siva and Jay, welcome.
I apologize. We are not floating cartoon characters. Fast has that on us.
Every time I do a good job reading, I flash back to second grade. They would bring up the thing and you had to read out loud. I was like, “I'm not bad at this. I'm doing okay.”
Certainly better than me. That is why I'm not ready to raise my hand for that role, especially the pronunciations which I'm running to butcher. As I was reflecting on the serendipity of how we curated this show, I couldn't help but appreciate it. We have two innovative teams on the show that are pushing the envelopes of traditional concepts in the case of what Fast is doing but also in the case of yWhales and its origins from YPO, which is fascinating. Jay, you can kick off this chat by telling us a little bit more about the story behind the creation of yWhales and what makes it unique.
Thank you for having us on. I’m a big fan. I appreciate the time. yWhales was born from the fact that NYPO, which is the largest global business network around the world, we all have traditional businesses for the most part. These businesses are already up and running and in some cases, have tens of thousands of employees producing billions of dollars a year. If you add up all YPOers together, we are the eighth-largest economy on the planet. We have certain sets of rules we have to follow.
I bought my first Bitcoin in 2010. I got interested when Ethereum came along. I was like, “There is another bull coming. Let's go for it in 2020.” I reached out to a bunch of my YPO network and said, “What is everyone doing in this?” It was chaos. There was no collaboration. The reality is that for every meme coin, DAO or Dragon, those of us that have to be KYC and AML. We already have existing businesses. We have to follow regulations and laws and deal with this from a global perspective.
We are those who say, “We see the benefits of blockchain. We know blockchain is going to win.” That is a hands-down approach. How do we legally apply this to our existing businesses to grow and expand our markets and networks around the world? That is what yWhales is. We want to learn. We are consistently educating ourselves. We come together twice a week in private Zooms. We are going to talk about what we have learned from different perspectives in 10,000 hours.
Finally, how do we implement that for ourselves, our families and our businesses to take advantage of everything we are learning and doing? That is where Siva comes in. He is the Managing Director of yWhales Solutions, which is what it sounds like. It's designed to say, “What are you doing in the traditional world? How can we apply blockchain and Web3 technologies to that?”
You guys can't break the rules and start a fight club but you can bend the rules to take full advantage of all this unique technology.
The one thing is that there are already a lot of rules and regulations that exist. Traditionally, most people go, “We are blockchain. We don't need that.” That is going to be some people's approach. We look and say, “That is fine.” We can do some amazing things on-chain with smart contracts, ZK-rollups and a variety of others to say, “Why see everything we do?” We are not worried about it because the savings, the cost and the infrastructure expense that we can do are worth the technology compared to running on these archaic oracle database servers that have been running since the ‘80s.
It is a great approach that a lot of people need to take. We have had various folks on the show here and there. That is their key value prop of what they are doing. This is all vetted highly and goes through legal processes. It is a mix. I was watching the great documentary called The Men Who Built America, which goes through what you are talking about, Vanderbilt, Chase and all these guys. Throughout history, there have been people breaking the rules before they get made. In some essence, going back to that I Ching oracle, deviation and do-new-things concept, those things need to happen but at the same time, when the laws are already there, you might as well get to know them.
Some of the things that we deal with are I implemented Web1 into my family's business. We were a multi-state in retail operation. I put in the first email servers. I was teaching hundreds of people how to use email. People can be like, “What do you mean?” Back in the day, it was a novel technology. It was not well adopted initially. With those core concepts of watching Web3, people don't understand how to use wallets, manage smart contracts and self-custody. It is the same things that we were dealing with aren't in the day, which are education and making sure that across the board, you are picking and choosing the right technologies.
Siva, I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about this thing about to launch Y1. It is the first of its kind in many facets. Tell us about it. I'm sure readers will find it interesting.
Y1 is one of our first product identifications where we understood that there was a gap in the market. When you think about Metaverse platforms, especially from a business perspective and mainly targeting a B2C customer base, there are not a lot of platforms that capture the necessities of businesses to interact with one another.
The tried insured conduit that still exists regardless of a lot of technology disruption that occurred throughout the decades is the trade show, where a capability, such as a metaverse capability or extended reality, XR capabilities, can bring some power to bear here is how do we start evolving on that experience that most organizations know how to interact, which is the trade show? How do we capitalize on that? How do we amplify that? That is where Y1 comes in.
Think about this from an analogy perspective. It is easy to resonate amongst your users. We are building an XR enablement for that trade show model where businesses can come and integrate, interact, learn and facilitate commerce with one another more effectively and efficiently. One of the beauties, as we know in crypto and Web3, is that there is no constraint of time. The minute we go virtual 24/7 becomes a reality.
There are two things that a lot of these Metaverse platforms miss. The first we are seeing was 2022 was the big first entrance of major brands testing their toes in metaverse platforms. We saw some big use cases. DKNY and a lot of these luxury brands were leading the forefront on this. If we summarize this, what was happening in terms of those experiences being offered to the customers or the users isn't anything pushing the boundaries of what they could experience in real life. When we think about the core nature of the Metaverse, it is how we start to push ourselves past the physical limitations of our physical environment.
The second big thing here from Metaverse forms that we understand a gap around is there is not a lot of power behind the assets that are being generated in these platforms. If you have a 3D asset that you have some digital asset as a brand and you go and deploy something spatial enabled or Roblox, you are confined to those walled gardens.
Whatever you develop for one platform, you have to go and extrapolate and develop for 3 to 4 different platforms. In marketing, that is traditional in an omnichannel marketing experience. One of the strengths of Metaverse is interoperability. There isn't a platform that stresses how you go and deploy this asset across five different metaverses at the same time. How do they connect? How are you capturing this information back to your centralized enterprise technology stack?
A big thing that we have a personal thesis on is that the next adoption event for major brands to get into Web3 has to be in a way that weaves with their existing enterprise stacks. For the most part, most organizations, especially large brands, don't have the nimbleness or flexibility to go and introduce a net new capability that hasn't been vetted for longer than four months and say, “We are going to go, generate, rely and build the backbone of our entire new revenue strategy on this platform that has only been live for four months.”
It is awesome that you guys are thinking about this as one of your major projects. It makes a lot of sense to me in terms of the enterprise adoption use case. Eathan, we have a little sneak peek of what is to come here.
Let's check out this demo video for 1 minute or 2. We may or may not include this in the show but we will keep a link to it as necessary. Let's check it out.
“In one overlay here, as you guys are watching the video live, is every partner, every logo that you will see here are legally signed commits to the platform.”
For the readers, as we are watching this, we are flying through a spaceship-type idea. I see a bunch of wild animals. I see Jay talking to Dmitry Buterin. I see Spatial, eToro, Solana and a lot of well-known brands committed to what is going on here. I feel like it is an upgraded version of the Starship Enterprise vibe here.
Part of the concept here is that the entire space can be turned over in seconds. Nothing is static except for the walls in the station. Every one of these little booths is a kiosk, as we call them. As independents, they have their smart contracts, APIs and businesses in a box. We have developed all this backend technology. We got some amazing partners that are helping us build the hooks into this.
If you got a trade show related to cars, Fast wants to do a pickup truck convention around here and talk about nothing but pickup trucks and a couple of hours later, that ends. The kiosks we are going to be around for when we shift over to a FinTech conference or anything else. It is going to be entirely different. We can change over the space extremely quickly and almost on the fly.
It is a mall. No one goes to a mall when it is empty. There is a time it opens. There is a time it closes. Everything is token-gated. We know who is there, what they are doing and where they are going. You can see there is quite a bit of integration around the immersive technologies that we already have on our desks. Zuckerberg helped us understand that you don't want to force people into VR capabilities. Whether you are on a phone, tablet, normal desktop or VR, everything works.
If you guys need some fireworks displays, you know the right guy to pick up the phone and call.
This is the closest we have right here to the dinosaurs. It is of our verse. They are a fabulous partner of ours. If you can see how big this is on the screen, that is a single GLB. All the animations are built in. We have developed our little package around how this is. These are massive files that have to be shrunk down because you guys know that on-chain NFTs have to be small and nimble. There are a lot of tech and partners that we have worked with on this one.
One of the biggest personal purviews we have on a lot of these metaverse platforms or what is going to be a successful platform for an enterprise is it has to be infinitely scalable. It has to be infinitely nimble enough to go and deploy for a variety of use cases where the core infrastructure is not the constraint but it is simply what is your 3D asset.
We have solved that also to be a self-service capability within the platform itself. You, as a customer, don't have to have a marketing agency. We have a no-code deployment capability in here for you to go and maybe upload an asset. We can digitize it, 3D model it, render it and put it in the file format. It can be deployed. The key thing is that it is connected to something. That is the big point here.
With Y1, it is a stress. We are a research think tank community. It is also our way to push the boundaries of a lot of the platforms that are out there. One of our big things is when you are deploying a 3D asset that is going to become brand IP and brand longevity. There has to be some real-world connectivity here. Every 3D asset here has to have some infrastructure pipe that enables it from it being a one-to-one representation or visualization.
Let's say Uber Eats, as a 3D asset, is deployed there. You have to go. If you interact with it on your Oculus or mobile device, it has to go and launch the platform. You read the app right away. You can do direct fulfillment from the platform. That is something that we are not seeing. A lot of things happen from a metaverse capability sis stressed on the visualization.
You mentioned trade shows are one of these classic things going on. It made me think about Columbian Exposition and the World's Fair. I love that this feels like the next evolution of that stuff.
To you guys from St. Louis, the 1904 World's Fair is considered one of the best purveyors in this space and see that come bleed through here.
I’m excited about everything you guys are building and the ability for IPO to be open to a broader audience. Unfortunately, we could spend a lot more time diving into what you guys are doing. Where do folks go to learn more about Y1?
What they can do is go to yWhales.com. Since it is in beta, we have a contact us page. That would be the first one. Second, they can reach out to me or Jay here since we are controlling who is allowed in or out. The third is also our head of ecosystem, Abraham Micael, who will post his contact information here. He is in charge of every partner that is going to be having a presence in this space. We will have all that contact details here for you guys.
I appreciate you popping by and telling us a little bit more about what is going on in your world.
You can catch Josh and me on your show.
We had you both on our show. It is great to have some cross-pollination here. I’m excited and thank you for having us.
We'll catch you on the flip side quite a bit. I'm sure lots to talk about and collaborate on. See you around. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks.
In our next segment, we will have our shout-out. I understand you might have a couple of generative artists that might deserve a little bit of extra attention that you wanted to shout out. Am I correct on that?
There are three people I want to quickly give a shout-out to. The first two are generative on-chain artists. The art they are doing is on-chain and has no external dependencies. We have been pushing the boundaries a lot. They have been pushing the boundaries since 2020 or 2019. We are early to recognizing these guys and going, “For a lot of stuff that we are doing, these guys have been pushing the boundaries.”
Those two people are Michiko and the other person is OX3, both beautiful people in real life but also incredible at pushing the boundaries and probably not well known enough. It is an artist-to-artist thing. For those people that are pushing it, we look to those guys who go, “These guys are early at some interesting ideas.”
The other person is someone who came out of the blue and has been an incredible supporter of Kanon. He understands what we are doing. He has an incredible ability to bring people together and make people feel like they are part of a community. We don't have a direct relationship with this person. That person is called Neverland. He is an incredible human being and a huge fan of ours.
That is how we are wrapping things up here. We will get to our closing and outro but before we officially wrap, we want to make sure readers know where they can go to learn more about Fast, Kanon and the projects you are working on.
The first place I direct people to is the EET site. There you will find links to our social media. The other place is Kanon.art. That is our broader collective. You can follow our work there.
We have officially reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks to everyone for exploring with us. We do have space for more adventures on the starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey also much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes. Rate 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 Web3 content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Kanon.art
- yWhales
- Watch.OuterEdge.live
- K21 Collection
- VeeCon
- ChainFaces
- EET Oracle Project
- eDAO
- Jay Steinback – LinkedIn
- Siva Avvaru – LinkedIn
- Show - yWhales Podcast
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
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