Sologenic is disrupting the asset trading industry by offering tokenized securities, crypto assets and NFTs in a decentralized ecosystem. Leading the pack as the company’s Growth Manager is Favio Velarde, an experienced marketing specialist with a background in technology and owned-media growth in the entertainment industry. In this episode, Favio discusses how Sologenic is guest is on a fast track to tokenize about everything you would want to. The idea of tokenizing all kinds of different digital assets has been around for a long time, but there hasn’t been an easy way to do it. Favio and his team are working on changing that. Tune in and learn how they’re doing it! Plus, we have not just one but two Hot Topics for this episode. Stay tuned to get the latest about Supermoon Camp, how Bitski is taking crypto wallets to the next level, and more!
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Favio Velarde Of Sologenic — The Platform That Is Revolutionizing The Trading Experience, Plus: Supermoon Camp, Bitski Crypto Wallet & More!
This is Favio Velarde from Sologenic, the platform that is disrupting the asset trading industry. I'm here on the Edge of NFT, the disruptor podcast that brings you everything you need to know about Web3.
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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how our guest is on a fast track to tokenize about everything you would want to, perhaps even including your grandma and your dog, get an enticing glimpse into the musical side of our guest and finally, find out how Supermoon is putting on an incredible event in the Denver Clock Tower and beyond during ETHDenver.
Finally, NFT LA 2022 was a blast. It was also a blast-off in a giant plume of bright burning rocket fuel. Web3, NFTs, blockchain, decentralization and a suite of immersive new tech developments have exploded onto the canvas of life. Outer Edge is the theme of 2023's event dedicated to those of you building with us at the outer edges, making the future happen.
The community-centric gathering returns to Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023 to uplift creators and technologists through interactive experiences, a wide variety of discussions and presentations and entertaining surprises that transport participants to the outer edge of what's possible when we co-create a new paradigm, embracing the decentralized web, artificial intelligence, extended reality and more. To register to attend or learn how to co-create an experience on the Outer Edge, head over to OuterEdge.live. The event is being organized by the Edge of Company and the founders of the Edge of NFT show. See you there.
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This episode features Favio Velarde of Sologenic, the leading platform for tokenized securities on demand. Favio Velarde is an experienced marketing specialist with a background in technology and owned-media growth in the entertainment industry. As Sologenic's Growth Manager, Favio manages multi-channel campaigns as well as B2B and B2C partnerships that leverage both Sologenic and Coreum technology, including the Sologenic NFT marketplace cataloged as the largest in the XRPL. Prior to Sologenic, Favio started an independent record label to bridge the gap for artists seeking authentic expression and sustainable marketability to the mainstream.
This piqued his interest in the intersection of decentralization and NFTs, allowing him to cultivate meaningful relationships with artists, content creators, influencers and brands. Additionally, Favio led a Latin American expansion effort for the top-five Brazilian gaming company, Sherwa, cultivating the creation of new communities rallying around a common interest in disruptive and engaging technologies. Sologenic is disrupting the asset trading industry by offering tokenized securities, crypto assets and NFTs in a decentralized ecosystem. The Sologenic Development Foundation is formed by independent developers who maintain, build and expand the Sologenic ecosystem. Favio, welcome.
Thank you for the intro, Eathan. It's nice to meet you, Jeff and Joshua. I'm happy to be here to be sharing some of the core values that we're trying to put up together with Sologenic and Coreum. I like the intro. It sounds like it's far more than talking about technology. We're talking about the human element of NFTs. I'm overall excited to dive deeper into that route as well.
It feels like you're at the edge of a lot of different emerging technologies, which is what we love to discuss. It's great to have you in the mix as well.
There's a big event coming up. It's amazing to partner with you. Let's talk a little bit about the origin of Sologenic. We have had the opportunity to tokenize all kinds of different digital assets as a background possibility for a long time. There hasn't been a particularly easy way to do it. It sounds like what you're working on is already changing that. How did this idea come about? How did the project come together? How did you get involved with it?
Let me start by saying the main aim of Sologenic. The main use case of the SOLO token was tokenized securities but overall being able to facilitate this in an easy-to-use and secure-to-use decentralized self-custody way to the retail users. The first component that was launched was the DEX, which is currently the largest on the XRP Ledger. The DEX offers you tools for experienced traders as well as some tools for new people to blockchain technology. You have an organic order book. Compared to other decentralized exchanges, for example, Uniswap, that's one of the core advantages.
The aim for this DEX from the beginning was so it works in a hybrid model with the tokenization platform. Users at some point can send their tokenized securities, for example, a Tesla stock, into the DEX. They can trade it against other cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. To touch on your question on how is this possible that Sologenic has two arms. One of the arms is regulated NTT which has to do KYC and AML-compliant to allow users to undergo that process. Once their account is whitelisted, they can go into the decentralized branch, which is live and trade these assets. I hope that makes sense but fundamentally, that's the hybrid model we were trying to put together.
I can trade Tesla's tokenized stock for Dogecoin and play all the different angles of the Elon Musk saga. Is that what you're talking about?
The goal is to get there at some point but let's talk about what you can do now. You can already trade all of the XRPL tokens, stablecoins and also NFTs because we have an NFT marketplace on the same web app. It's decentralized. Self-custody is in control of all of your assets. The aim here is to have the same experience you would have when you're trading on Binance, for example, a centralized exchange to have that experience in the decentralized realm.
However, the tokenized securities part is already ready. It's tested. You can tokenize that Tesla stock. We are fetching data from the NASDAQ and the New York Exchange and working together with Saxo Bank. That's our broker in Europe. You can do dummy trades, tokenize the security and then send it on the test net, which is pretty cool. It gives us a glance at what the features are going to be, for example, fractionalized ownership, being able to trade after hours and many more in that line.
There was a certain company that doesn't exist anymore that was trying to do this with synthetics and derivatives. They didn't do it in this sophisticated way that you are doing it. It was fun for a lot of people. I imagine that the crowd will appreciate what you're doing, which is being done in a more regulatory-compliant and less-leveraged manner. That's exciting, especially these owner-exclusive content features within the platform and other token-gated features. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
First off, it made sense to start with a decentralized branch as we are obtaining a license because that way, you can test any surface. It's better to test that out with NFTs or assets that would not have a repercussion from a regulatory standpoint because if you do that with stocks and people lose access to them, it's a very different problem than if someone does not have access to an NFT and you can assist them. We kicked off the NFT side of things at Sologenic. I was the one that was leading the deployment of this new platform. We were the first ones to do it on the XRP Ledger before the XLS-20 amendment was pushed.
The XLS-20 amendment is the amendment that allowed native minting functionalities on the XRP Ledger but before that, we worked around it to do it as tokens. Once this was launched, then the full potential of the marketplace was released, meaning we had automatic royalty settlement and very low-cost minting. That was the main reason why we were doing it. The XRP Ledger has cheap fees at 0.0000 XRP. It's fast because they're all about cross-border payments. They were trying to solve that problem. That's why we saw an opportunity there.
No NFT marketplace was taking care of that front. With that, we focused on tools. Token-gated is one of the fronts we're tackling through owner-exclusive content. We did a collection of 3D avatars for gaming. When you purchase the NFT, you get access to an asset package that you wouldn't be able to get access to if you weren't the NFT holder. We're trying to handle all of these on-chains so it's more secure and reliable for users. Usual NFT projects do it through a Discord server or using Web2 platforms. We wanted to provide the tools within the Web3 platform that we're building.
You announced the launch of your flagship NFT collection for Sologenic. How are you going to be using avatars here to help the holders customize their characters and show off their personalities? What does that look like?
The first step of this project was to release the first batch of avatars that already give you AAA gaming quality rig models that you can have access to. The asset package, if I'm not mistaken, included an FXB file and three other types of files that are commonly used on metaverse gaming applications but we haven't seen the potential because their interoperability is something that metaverses are struggling with. I see them as games because a metaverse that is not interoperable is a game that has in-app cosmetics and customization levels. We wanted to give the asset to the users so they can do whatever they want with it but in the future, we will be announcing partnerships with more metaverses as they come along.
Let's take a step back for a moment and look at broad market conditions and where we're at in this given moment in the world of Web3, dealing with this bear market. There's a lot of stagnation when it comes to the view of the outside world looking in but the reality is we got people in there that are persistent and building and making progress heads down with resources and capabilities, willing to continue the charge. What's your view on that? How do we get more people across that bridge if they're not quite there yet in the space? Maybe they're getting ready to punch out and bail on something that might have potential. What do we do for those folks?
Let me answer this in two parts. The first one is to address the problem and my perception of the effect of the bear market. There was a shift in the way people perceive NFTs. There's a stigma to it that a lot of people still see, especially when we were trying to do high-profile partnerships. It was tricky to navigate that and get them to understand that we're trying to promote the utility of an NFT instead of promoting a collectibles collection that has no value. That's the first point.
The way we addressed that is by framing the NFT marketplace as a marketplace that provides you the tools to transact and provide value to the users or the holders of our collection. We have even seen some NFT collections doing staking rewards as being backed by a validator node, which I found pretty interesting. That's a way of providing direct value to the holders of a collection. To address the solution or the main touchpoints that need to happen to push the mass adoption of not just NFTs but tokenized assets as well, that's funny because I have seen this in all industries.
People are framing more NFTs as part of the tokenization talks because, in the end, NFTs are one type of asset. You can still put them in the pool when you talk about tokenized assets. Wallet activations are one of the touchpoints that we're working on to solve to push mass marketing campaigns because if you are familiar with the XRP Ledger, you know that you have to have 15 XRP reserved on your wallet to own NFTs and transact tokens. We're working on a way to have a fiat-to-NFT activation rail so users can be onboarded quite easily.
I still think that's one of the main problems, not just in the XRP Ledger but in using onboarding. Every time I talk with people from other blockchains, they're all working on the same entry point. There are some initiatives, for example, in the Cosmos space. That's why we are building on that space. I'll touch on that later. It's ease-of-use and ease-of-entry barrier-wise. For example, minting an NFT on Sologenic is costing you less than $1. That's how we are addressing the bear market conditions and facilitating the entry points.
I was on a call. It's not a bear market. It's a builder's market.
We're using that time to expand. For example, for our securities market team, we hired a couple of new leaders there to make sure that regulatory frameworks are met. That's an extensive research process. It's building. For the NFT front, we have built more updates because usually, when you have a great user flow, then you are perhaps more concentrated on addressing bugs or direct use of capabilities. You're directly addressing problems but when you have perhaps fewer users, you are able to test out new features. We rolled out a notification system, for example, and some social components into the marketplace. It's a builder's market.
When you're building, you have to work hard and play hard. We hear there's some exciting stuff going on in Vegas, which is the play-hard capital of the world. You were over there. What was happening there?
We did a meetup during the summer of 2022. We saw that there was a big Apex convention for the XRP community. As we built on top of the XRPL, we worked closely with Ripple and all other projects that are also building on that same blockchain. We saw an opportunity to do an event there. It was quite interesting how the community got together. They helped us organize. There was a big turnaround. There were 300 people at the MGM Grand.
That was the beginning of also another NFT collection that was called the Sologenic OG holders. The Club collections were trending. We wanted to do our own to provide some value. They got pretty much free access to all the events and open bars. They also got the same thing for Coreum in that event. These are our core community members. We value what they do for the project. We thought this event was a good way to kickstart that relationship. Given that Apex what happening in the same week, we got to interact with more people. More partnerships arose from that event as well.
There's nothing more powerful than that in-real-life experience of meeting up, talking and collaborating. That's why we love IRL events. That's cool.
We should put on our event sometime. I'm kidding.
Are you going to be in LA? It was funny to match the Twitter handles with the faces. Sometimes they would be like, "My name is this." I'm like, "I don't know your name," but they will be like, "This is my Twitter handle." I was like, "I've seen you in a lot of spaces there." It was quite funny.
"You don't look like a JPEG in real life."
Although some people show up with their JPEGs strapped onto their faces.
That's a good strategy.
That's not uncommon. It was gmoney. He doxxed himself. We had gmoney and G. Love on the same episode. He doxxed himself but it was an interesting case because various people knew him in the community and saw him around. You could recognize him but this is something different officially to let the world know, "This is me. This is what's going on."
At this point, I'm not going to say that leaders in this space have to be fully doxxed but transparency overall is quite key. We have always been like that. Bob, our CEO, has quite a reputation for being super doxxed. Everyone knows where he is and who he is, in general.
It's safe to say that Jeff, Eathan and I are very doxxed at this point.
You didn't know but Eathan is an alias. I'm a wholly different guy. I always think of it as Mardi Gras, a carnival or something like that. It's fun to dress up and be somebody else for 1 day or 2 of the year but in the long run, it works to be yourself and carry your reputation. We have heard of this term in context with what you're doing with industry-agnostic NFTs. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that is, use cases expanding beyond avatars, collectibles, gaming and stuff like that? What does this mean?
It has to do with what I was saying about interoperability. At some point, NFT freedom is limited to a blockchain because the whole point of them being unique in a blockchain is deterred but what we're trying to do up front is to become interoperable. Coreum is one of the rails that we are using to make this happen. I was talking about Cosmos. Cosmos is an interesting ecosystem because it's super easy to build applications within other applications. Overall, IVC interoperability opens the door to a lot of different chains that are built on the same SDK or Software Development Kit but they can easily switch a node and be interoperable.
We have seen this also on wallet applications. For example, Citadel.one is one of the wallets that are going to support Coreum. They have embedded in their wallet Osmosis. Osmosis is a popular DEX if you're aware of the Cosmos ecosystem as well. That's where we're trying to reach more interoperable opportunities. The first one we are doing is from the XRPL to Coreum. That will be a bridge through multi-chain. Hopefully one day, we hope to see the NFT marketplace also be interoperable with that.
Thanks for the clarification.
Interoperability is a foundational layer to every form of blockchain product and its evolution of it. It's foundational but what's also foundational in this space is to have this layer of enterprise functionality. From what we were looking at, it sounded like the inclusion of the Coreum smart token is going to help with that, in particular, as it relates to NFTs. What's the story there? What's your push? How is Sologenic thinking about the enterprise layer of this equation?
Let me tell the story of how Coreum came to mind. There was an early stage of research first, two years trying to nail down what is the problem that needs to be addressed from Layer-1 blockchains. From the Sologenic perspective, the tokenization platform was built to, at some point, be utilized with smart contracts because that allows us to be more efficient and also comply with regulatory frameworks. In that sense, we came up with Coreum. The first marketing phrase that we had for Coreum was, "One blockchain for all," but then we realized we need to tackle something more specific first.
That's when we did more research for a year and decided to build Coreum for enterprise solutions. It's a blockchain that was specifically designed for companies of any size to utilize blockchain technology with a specific emphasis on regulated financial companies. The reason I say this is that we built on top of Cosmos SDK but some transactions are unique to Coreum. One of them, for example, is the ability to have an optional KYC feature. They can automatically adopt the system into their current workflow and be able to have that feature without having to require a third party, an integration or anything like that. To have it on-chain on a Layer-1 is a game-changer.
Other than that, smart tokens are the biggest development that we encountered with Coreum. To explain it in one simple sentence, it's the ability to program tokens to execute contract-like functions without having to recall an external smart contract. It's programmable assets. One of the use cases of these assets is in the NFT realm since you can program certain NFTs to be interactive, meaning they can react differently when an account is holding it. For example, Eathan, you receive an NFT from me. It's programmed to recognize that if it was sent to you, it then executes another function. It can be linked to another smart contract.
The options there are very scalable but at the core, the reason why smart tokens are revolutionary is that it's reliable and fast since in a blockchain, all transactions are known with native tokens. It's a faster alternative to smart contracts that can be potentialized with smart contracts. I'll make myself a bit clear. Another pretty popular one is soulbound tokens. To have a token linked to your identity is also one of the use cases we hope to power with this technology.
Soulbound tokens are fascinating. It's something we're looking into and at the edge as well. Speaking of all this progress you've been making, you've got this Coreum mainnet launch coming up soon on March 24th, 2023 and a party. What's a launch without a Core Nova party? What can we expect from this collaboration?
Parties or in-real-life events are quite important for us. They have been key to our community's growth. We did one in Vegas. We did one in London. We had previously done one in Miami with Ripple. This event is going to be the biggest of them all. It's a Layer-1 blockchain launch. We booked the Lighthouse ArtSpace in LA, which is a 400-people art space but all the walls are customizable. That's pretty cool. From the start point, you will get this immersive experience. It's a very futuristic theme.
We're going to have entertainment. We booked a quite famous DJ. We're going to have some high-profiling invite guests as well that have been announced. Some of them are in the crypto industry. Some of them are outside. The aim here is not all to be about Coreum. It's to start conversations from leaders outside of the space and within about mass adoption and enterprise use cases. That has to do with the grant program that we're deploying as well focused on smart token technology.
That's great. I've been to that venue or the Van Gogh exhibit they had there. It's incredible. It's a super immersive and cool spot. It sounds like we're going to have a good time together.
Will you be joining us?
I'm based in Venice. Our whole crew will be in LA for Outer Edge LA. I wouldn't want to miss it.
I'm excited that we secured that partnership. We will be at the afterparty. I'll also be in NFT LA on the grounds of the event that week. It's going to be huge. We are going to launch the mainnet live there. We also have invited a lot of our partners and a lot of the companies that we have worked together with from exchanges to other companies in the crypto space. They will be present there. It will be an all-coming-together moment to start a new horizon for blockchain technology.
That's what it's all about. We say it over and over again from our event, what we anticipate and everything we're building into it. At the end of the day, it's about bringing people together. Good things happen when you get folks in the same room that have this shared belief, these core values and this vision for the future that are in here to build and help progress the space. They have a long view. Relationships form business partnerships, inspiration and education. You don't know where it's going to come from but you know that it's there. I can't wait.
Even when you're building relationships with influencers or other people that are getting to know about blockchain technology, in general, I always say, "Invite them to an event," because in the event, they get to experience firsthand community members talking to them and people that have done extensive research. It's not linear communication. It's more like you can take opinions from different people on-site. That helps.
We're amped about it. We appreciate collaborations. We've got a couple of more questions before we get to Quick Hitters, which is going to be fun, I'm sure. What about your roadmap? What does that look like going forward? Are there partnerships, collaborations or other stuff we should look out for?
For Sologenic, in the roadmap, we released a notification system. We have one of the biggest dApps. What I'm most excited about is the IDO Launchpad. You have currently the DEX NFT marketplace. We also have a market index for all of the XRPL tokens, which is quite useful because of the recent growth of the XRP community. Overall, more projects are building on it. That's also in the roadmap to be integrated with CoinGecko. They can track all of those new tokens.
The IDO Launchpad will allow you to launch a project from scratch on the platform and raise funds or capital in a decentralized way. The way we're addressing this is to make the token issuance process quite smooth. You can have your XRPL token and issue it in about ten minutes following some steps. When you create the IDO, you can put some information like your team members, any airdrops you're doing and the tokenomics.
There's the trust core component that we incorporated because this is all decentralized. You can list whatever you want. We want to avoid scams as well but at the same time, we can only provide the tools. We cannot actively delist projects. We do have a support team but we're trying to aim it so it runs on its own. We incorporated this trust core component. You have to submit a transaction to vote in favor or against a project. It builds trust because it's not like someone can inflate the votes. You need to verify your wallet and everything to submit it.
After the IDO, we have the XLS-30 implementation. That is going to bring AMM capabilities into the XRP Ledger. We are going to be on top of that. They released the previous amendment, XLS-20. We were the ones who incorporated as well. We're already working on that. We are also working on app versions of both the NFT marketplace and the DEX. That's all for the next two quarters. It's pretty packed. For Coreum, there's the mainnet launch and a lot of exciting things coming there as well.
We're super excited to see you at Outer Edge in KA. There are so many cool things happening. We appreciate you sharing that with us.
We wanted to shift gears a little bit and head over to our next segment, which is called Edge Quick Hitters. It's a fun and quick way for us to get to know you personally a little bit better. There are fun questions, only ten of them. We're looking for short, single-word or few-word answers but we may dive in a little bit deeper here or there. Are you ready to get after it?
I'm excited about it. Let's do it.
Here we go. Question number one, what's the first thing you remember purchasing in your life?
My drum kit.
How old?
Five years old. I've always been into music.
Are you still drumming to this day?
Every day. It's a morning routine.
Do you have a favorite drummer?
Taylor from Foo Fighters passed away.
Question number two, what's the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
An old DJ mixer to buy a new one.
There's this music theme in here. We didn't get that before.
In the intro, there was the record label. We have to hear more about that.
There's some more happening here. There's more brewing on that front. Question number three, what's the most recent thing you purchased?
Len's Coffee right before this.
Question number four, what's the most recent thing you sold?
For my job, you have to sell yourself at every point of the day but I have no idea what was the last thing I was told.
Always be closing.
I sold an NFT. It was an NFT that they made for us at the London event. An artist did it custom for us. I sold it to the community.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
I have a 5-terabyte hard drive that has all of the songs I've ever made. That's my most prized possession.
You're writing for music. Is it just the music? Do you have lyrics? Is it everything? What do you have on there?
It's mostly project files. I'm not attached to a lot of material things but I feel like having a track record, even for photographs. We don't print them out, rarely. My generation at least always has it on their phone. That's why I pointed out the hard drive because everything is there.
Question six, if you could buy anything in the world, something digital, physical, a service or experience that's for sale, what would it be?
Top of my mind, I would go skydiving in Italy.
Is there a particular reason why Italy versus somewhere else?
I'm half-Italian. I've never skydived there. That's the reason why.
You've skydived elsewhere?
No.
The sky is warmer there.
Have you ever skydived, Jeff?
I have out in Virginia but doing it over the Amalfi Coast would be pretty awesome. Seeing Sorrento and that area is a whole other level instead of dirt, which is what I saw.
I wanted it to be more specific. I got that picture. You got the picture.
I got the picture. Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
It's creativity and the discipline to be able to brainstorm ideas, commit to some and be able to prioritize from a creative standpoint.
It's the execution side of it. You can come up with an idea.
It's the discipline to be creative because even for marketing, we have a lot of ideas but our brain is not designed to retain ideas. You have to have the discipline to be able to decide which ones you're going to commit and which ones you're going to execute. That's a good skill that my personality has. I would pass it on.
Here's the flip side of that. Question eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
I tend to overthink a lot but I would eliminate that. Count to three and make a decision. Sometimes you need to do that.
It's easy to get hung up, waiting for perfection and not executing. Question nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I had three meetings. There's a lot of planning for the mainnet event. Making it a big event requires a lot of planning in terms of deciding what the itinerary is going to be and who's attending. Entertainment-wise, we are focused to make it a show because a party could be a party with music and drinks and that's it but we have a full scheduled pack of things that are happening. That takes time.
Here's the last one. Question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I'm going to go have lunch probably outside. It looks so nice but it's minus two. Vancouver is a pretty cold city but I can't complain. Most of the time, it's good. I'll have lunch after this.
I was trying to think of a bonus question. The best I came up with is this. Can you either beatbox, drum fill with your hands a good drum fill or tell us a drummer joke? This is a drummer thing. Do a drummer thing.
I'll beatbox because I'm terrible at jokes.
That's Quick Hitters. Thanks for sharing with us. We appreciate it. Word on the street is that we do have a little Hot Topic to hit. It's a pretty interesting one. Do you want to head over there, Eathan and crush that Hot Topic?
For sure. We're shouting out a special sponsor relationship with Supermoon. There's an exciting event taking place at ETHDenver. Supermoon is known for pushing the limits and coming up with innovative ways to connect builders and founders, high-impact networking stuff and experiences like this. We're excited to share it with people. We're talking all about events. There are more great events to participate in and good stuff.
On that point, we're getting people together. You're hearing this theme a lot in our conversations with people we're collaborating with, not because we're throwing Outer Edge LA here from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023 but also because it matters. It's getting people together in person, especially coming out of that COVID period when we were separated from each other. That energy is real when you get people together. Builders and founders coming through these experiences are going to innovate and make some amazing things happen.
I see some echoes or parallels with what you are trying to put together there, Favio. They're taking over Supermoon Tower. That's the iconic Denver Clock Tower. It's going to be there from March 1st to March 3rd, 2023. It's going to be a centerpiece of the event to be there. For three days, people will be in this opulent setting with breathtaking views of the city skyline.
There are lots of activities, workshops, interviews and networking breaks. They've got a social hour going on for people to mingle. It's a private thing exclusively for Supermoon members, sponsors and supporters. You're curating not only the entertainment and the experience but the people that are there to make sure it's the cool crowd that can make things happen.
I'm getting a lot of FOMO from ETHDenver. A lot of people we know are attending.
That's big stuff for sure. I don't know if you've ever seen that or been to that clock tower in Denver. It's pretty cool. It's a great venue to do this.
I haven't seen that myself but I do have FOMO too for ETHDenver. Josh is going to be there. I wish I could be going too but we did have one of the founders of the event on before the event in 2022. It's such an amazing story too, starting from a handful of people meeting in a bar every once in a while to this huge event. It's free. It's amazing.
I also have a note here. Supermoon is hosting NEAR House from February 26th to March 6th, 2023. That's going to bring together leading builders and founders in the NEAR ecosystem. That's cool. Participants get a chance to stay together and build together. Those not building on NEAR Supermoon Camp have two other fantastic residencies where founders can stay together for six days, maximizing their ETHDenver experience. What was that MTV show?
The Real World.
The Real World ETHDenver hanging out with the builders. I'm sure there's a lot less drama and a lot more productive things going on.
It's interesting. Building, especially if you're talking about software development, happens at all kinds of different hours. If you're in the same place hackathon-style, you never know what's going to come out of it.
It's fun to get together at that level with people too. Here's a shout-out to Jeff for taking the couch. We have gone on various journeys for business and some conferencing stuff. When we find a place, we're like, "We don't have enough beds." Jeff is the guy. He took the hit for the team. He hit the couch.
That's my old Army days. If you tell me to sleep within three minutes, I'll be asleep on the floor with no pillow. It doesn't matter. I'll sleep anywhere.
Do you have a technique you can share, Jeff? Honestly, there are some military techniques to fall asleep under stress.
For me at least, you clear your mind. Otherwise, if your mind is working, that's what's going to keep you up or at least with me. You learn to clear your mind. Once you do that, usually sleep comes pretty quickly thereafter if you're tired. That's how we would do it. If I count down from 100, I'm probably not going to get out of the 90s. I'm going to go to sleep.
I used to be good with sleep too. Lately, I've been having issues but I had a similar thing. I could go to sleep on a dime. There is an app called Sleep Reset, which I tried. They have a three-month program. One of the key factors there is you get in command of your sleep by taking the sleep out when you're awake and getting out of bed. The idea is when you get in that bed, that's for sleep.
If you're awake in the middle of the night, you don't try to sleep in bed. You wake up until you're tired or you get up until you're tired. You get back in there. A lot of it is also associative conditioning. For Jeff there, it's not only associated with a place or a bed but a thing, "Sleep and do it." When the command comes, you have to be able to sleep.
There are a few more things about Supermoon we probably want to let people know about. They've got Startup Day set to take place. They've got 30-plus participating VCs, including Techstars. Techstars is awesome. There are a lot of cool people out in that program. There are prime opportunities to meet some of the most influential investors and entrepreneurs in the industry.
We should let people know if they want to join Supermoon in the Denver Clock Tower. Two lucky winners will receive a ticket to this very special and intimate networking event. There's only one day left to enter. We will put this out on socials yet again. People can quickly head over to our @NFTLAlive Twitter, check the pinned tweet, mark their calendars, pack their bags and get ready to dive into the exciting world of Supermoon.
Check them out. They're @SupermoonCamp on Twitter. Their website is SupermoonCamp.com. Check it out. It sounds very cool. If you haven't headed over to that clock tower in Denver, it's an iconic setting for this iconic event. That's super cool for Supermoon. Eathan, word on the street is we have a very special Hot Topic.
Let's get to it. Our Hot Topic guest is Donnie Dinch, the CEO of Bitski. Donnie is a Web3 pioneer, seasoned business leader and entrepreneur with over ten years of experience cofounding and leading cutting-edge companies, including Out There Labs and WillCall, which was acquired by Ticketfly. Donnie, it's great to have you on the show. Welcome.
It's great to be here. I'm excited.
Isn't the age-old crypto problem getting people to acquire crypto, start a wallet or get in the boat? That is age-old in the decade that crypto has been here. You're helping to solve this major problem that still exists even after all this time knowing it has been an issue. Tell us about it. What's the story behind Bitski, the design and the overall vision for what you've created?
To be very clear, when we started Bitski, it was right after the 2017 ICO craze that we were all buying tokens. We have no idea what the hell's going on, "I need a token." It was interesting. I don't know why. We all knew that there was a lot of bullshit happening but there was still something compelling about it. At some point right around the end of 2017, I've seen CryptoKitties. It was the first non-financial application that I had seen on the blockchain. I was able to buy a cat and sell a cat.
Candidly, that was a eureka moment, "We should be able to sell our digital goods. Why am I spending $20 on Fortnite banana outfits that I can't sell? This seems illegal and ridiculous." That moment was like a wild hare, "How do we enable this for everyone? How do we enable the idea of ownership in the internet in a way that is accessible to people that don't care about blockchain or crypto or don't need to?" We have always been very outcome-oriented about solving these problems or addressing these people's problems. We think blockchain affords these new user experiences.
We realize that everyone is going to need a wallet. We have a belief that wallets will be the most important piece of consumer software over the next twenty years next to email and have the same amount of saturation across humanity. Those people aren't looking to be keeping their seed phrases private and managing the security of those. There needs to be a better way to do it. We saw wallets as the entry point to helping proliferate this idea of ownership throughout the internet.
Even if you look at a VeeCon, people are trying to figure out, "How do I get tickets to VeeCon if I don't own a Series 1 VeeFriend?" They have, "Here are the steps that you have to take to get one." There are 30 different steps. They do a great job of communicating the information, "Open a Coinbase account. Open MetaMask and transfer your money there. Go to OpenSea, buy this and then validate it." There are so many different steps. As good as you can do it, there are still too many. It's too much. We need some solution ultimately to get us there.
I'm going to be giving a talk about this later. In layman's terms, the juice has to be worth the squeeze. Over the arc of what we have seen in 2021 with PFPs in the speculative market, the upside was so potentially high that people were willing to go through some pretty nonsensical things to try to reach that goal. Now that it has leveled out a bit, very rarely you're going to see these big blue-chip NFT projects come to fruition.
People aren't going to care as much. The hurdles that they have to go over need to be lower for them to participate. There's a bit of a head fake in the space because there was so much money to be made in 2021 but you're right. The reality is we have new software and user experiences. It can't be harder to use than the things we have already been doing on the internet.
I probably have done less than a lot of other people in terms of trying to pursue various token opportunities but when you said, "The things that people go through for the potential upside," I'm remembering. It was bananas swapping bananas for staking and farming coconuts. I'm remembering all these things. Your friend had to tell you how to do it. That was my biggest challenge in the whole system. The wallets that you've created are continuously improving. You've been around since 2017. You've got a new version. Can you tell us key features and improvements that users can enjoy moving forward?
We have launched Bitski's 2.0 wallet. There are big things that we have added. One, the wallet was primarily only a web-based or mobile app. We have added a browser extension. We have rebuilt it from the ground up the mobile wallet. The easiest way to explain this is having been in Silicon Valley for years now, building software through the golden era of mobile apps or social apps where there's a certain level of delight and polish that people were putting into these things, I feel like we may be lost along the way. That doesn't mean it has to have beautiful animations and things like that but it has to be a very intuitive product.
We didn't want to settle for anything less with this release for the wallet. This is a wallet that anyone can pick up that knows nothing. They want to connect to a game or an app that says, "You need a wallet." It's very simple. Sign up with an email and password but at the same time, you can also import yourself a custody key. We allow you to watch other wallets. We do transaction simulation. You know if you're going to get raked or not when you sign some random contract.
We have an incredibly rich beautiful activity feed. I don't know if you've looked at activity feeds in most wallets but it's not made for humans. What they're doing is decoding these contract interactions. We have spent a lot of effort manually going through. You know if you get an airdrop. You know if you give OpenSea permission to manage an entire collection. All of these things that seem obvious because it works have been the effort. We have been hellbent on building what we think is objectively the best wallet for people trying to buy and sell NFTs. That has been a big focus.
At the same time, we have a browser extension that is pound-for-pound as strong as the mobile wallet. If you add a wallet on the browser extension, it shows up in the mobile wallet and vice versa. These are common things you've seen with Web2 products for years. We have applied that to this paradigm. The way that we look at the wallet is very much a construct that's yet to be defined, meaning that beyond a place where I can buy and sell, it has a lot of responsibility of communicating to the user what they're doing and what's happening with their wallet and letting them know what's happening with the things that they own. We're excited about it.
The intersection of privacy and transparency is so interesting. Where is that line? There's a ton of private information. Your assets have to be secure. What are the steps that you take to ensure that you are hitting the target in those categories like privacy and security?
The big thing is that on-chain data is on-chain data. That is what it is but the account system is not on-chain. It's a very much hybrid stack of using the best tool for the job at every crossroad. The industry best practice was a SOC 2 Type 1-compliant outfit. We provide enterprise wallet solutions that leverage the same infrastructure that we use for consumers. Our consumer wallet is a great patient zero for a lot of new things that we try out. We try them at scale.
That's one way that we handle security on that side. As far as the key management for those that decide to use, every user that signs up with Bitski gets what we call the Bitski Vault wallet. That's a wallet where the private keys live in Bitski's hardware security modules. Keys never leave hardware. All transactions are signed in hardware. Bitski has no ability to sign or transact on behalf of the user.
It's a quite novel architecture. We're happy to provide the optionality for you to import your self-custody key if you want and that's the new feature but at our core, private keys should almost always stay in hardware, certainly for most people. Maybe you've mentioned this before but look at email service providers versus running your email server. It's pretty obvious what direction wallets are going over the next 5 to 10 years. We're very well positioned for that.
In this particular category of security and privacy, when you think of the other wallets in the marketplace, for a layman that doesn't understand necessarily the architecture behind it, what do you say to somebody about why Bitski over MetaMask or other options that are out there? Why should this be the centerpiece of where you're storing your digital assets?
It's funny. We have good reasons for all of the wallets of why we think you should use ours over that but we break it down into two simple categories, people that are new to the space and people that are familiar with the space. If you're new to the space, you're probably not that excited about trying to manage self-custody. There isn't another wallet that does that.
There are other apps like what Nike has released lately where you can sign up and they walk you through getting a wallet for that app. It's pretty interesting. We're excited to provide some of those solutions for brands in the future as well. That's how it should be, just an email and a password. If you're new to the space, we don't think there's anyone that competes at this level.
If you're used to using software over the past few years and mobile apps, this is going to feel like something that feels responsive and thoughtful. If you're a MetaMask user, we do pound-for-pound almost everything that MetaMask does except for maybe some fringe edge cases around some DeFi things. With that said, we do a lot more for user safety. You're not going to get your stuff stolen. There are all the hacks that you've read about Kevin Rose or whomever. Our wallet explicitly says, "We're about to take this amount out of your wallet."
I did a demo of it. I was asking the audience for a spam site where we could go and test this out. I went to Pudgy Penglins. I hit the sign and connected my wallet. It took a little while. The reason it takes it a while is that the way that this scam works is they look through your wallet for what's most valuable and then say, "This is what we want to take." In our modal, it shows up, "We wanted to duck 3,000 SAND from your wallet." I said no but if you're on MetaMask, you would lose all of that. You wouldn't have any introspection into what's happening.
That's such an important thing to point out because that's where people get caught up. They don't know what's about to happen or what's happening in that real moment.
The beauty or the glory of blockchain is this trustless environment but in any new software, you have this cat-and-mouse game of people exploiting vulnerabilities and those things trying to get patched and addressed. It's running rampant in Web3. Smart contracts are still such a new medium and canvas for baddies. They find new ways to rap you all the time.
It's something that we're vigilant about and that we stay on top of. We work with a great partner, Blowfish, that helps provide a lot of the simulation of transactions, meaning we go and run the transaction as if we were going to execute it. We tell you what the outcome is. It's still early days on that but I don't think that there's another wallet in the marketplace that handles it better than Bitski.
Is there anything else regarding onboarding that's worth sharing that makes it easy? It's one of the reasons there has been a lot of appreciation for our event, Outer Edge, as being something that's accessible to a wider audience and things that, "Bring a friend to Outer Edge and onboard them onto things." You mentioned a lot but that makes it easy for folks to get into.
The big thing is signing up with an email and a password and being thrown into the wallet. We put a lot of effort into the new user experience on the NUX. You get into the wallet. You might not have an NFT yet. We allow you to claim an NFT right off the jump so you get to understand what that experience is like. You have something showing up in your activity feed so people can start to get familiar with what's going on. The reality is because it's still a new paradigm, you need to guide the user a little bit.
I'll give you one other example. Whenever you sign a transaction in the wallet, we say, "Submitting transaction." We have this beautiful little modal. It animates down to the activity feed tab and then you see a spinner with a number, "You have one pending transaction." You can tap that and look in the activity feed. You have this feedback loop. That's the real challenge.
In a lot of wallets, you don't know what the hell is happening after you hit submit in a lot of places. We went through a step-by-step process, "What about this induces anxiety and confusion? How can we address that and triage that?" We still have a lot of work to do but there isn't a wall that has been more thoughtful on how we get somebody new to understand not just to buy something but to understand how it happened in the whole process of what's going on.
It's infrastructure. Fundamentally, this is the foundation of everything that happens. Every transaction that happens comes back to somebody having a wallet with assets in it, whether it's from a currency perspective or otherwise. Fundamentally, it's there. We're still chopping wood to improve. You have taken a big step forward in helping to create the sustainable infrastructure that we need. It's pretty amazing. For the folks that haven't had a chance to look at it or play around with it at all, where should we send folks? Where do they need to go to check out Bitski and everything you are working on?
We had a fresh new website, Bitski.com. You can get download links for the browser extension and the iOS wallet from there. We also offer enterprise wallet solutions that leverage that same architecture and infrastructure that we have built out. You can find all that information on the website.
Check it out. Bitski is changing the game for wallets and accessibility to the masses. Donnie, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
Thanks for having me. It has been great.
We will talk soon.
Should we move on to our shout-outs?
Let's do that. We added this little shout-out segment to give a little bit of love to people that are moving the needle in our lives. Favio, do you have anybody you want to give some love to?
Here's a shout-out to the influencers that are confirming their attendance at the Core Nova event. Here's a shout-out to CryptoWendyO and Crypto Mason. I love the content they do every day, trying to put the most reliable information for their following.
I went on her show. I had a lot of fun. One of the great things about her is she's very genuine. We're in the middle of the show and she's like, "That's my daughter at the door. She's asking me to be done so we can play games." She's a genuine person who's there to give you genuine information and put it all on the line in the name of helping other people. That's a great shout-out.
Favio, before we break for this episode, we have to let folks know where to go to follow you, the project and everything you have going on. Where should we send them?
In terms of Sologenic, you can go to Twitter. It's @RealSologenic. We also have a Discord server. For the Coreum event that we're doing with the Edge of NFT Crew, you can go to Coreum.com. You will find all information there. It is an invite-only event but we have put up to 20 or 30 tickets for public sale. They're going fast. You can go to the website there. Core Nova is the name of the event. It's happening on March 24th, 2023. Mark your calendars for that. The mainnet will go live at the same time.
There are so many great things coming together all at once. We will look forward to seeing you live and in person out there. We have reached the outer limit at the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, 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.
Important Links
- Sologenic
- Supermoon
- ETHDenver
- OuterEdge.live
- Coreum
- Sherwa
- DEX
- Cosmos
- Ripple
- gmoney - Previous episode
- Citadel.one
- Osmosis
- Core Nova
- CoinGecko
- NEAR House
- NEAR
- Sleep Reset
- Techstars
- @NFTLAlive - Twitter
- @SupermoonCamp - Twitter
- Bitski
- CryptoKitties
- VeeCon
- VeeFriend
- Coinbase
- MetaMask
- OpenSea
- Blowfish
- CryptoWendyO
- Crypto Mason
- @RealSologenic - Sologenic
- Discord - Sologenic
- Spotify - Edge of NFT
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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