The quest to give content creators more control over the product of their labor is not a unique thing to Web3. It has been a problem that has been tackled in so many forms in Web2. But Snapmuse takes a step further by finding a way to reward both creators and their fans to benefit from the value that they create together. Joining the podcast to explain how this works is Gökberk Kızıltan, the Community Manager at Snapmuse.io, that is revolutionizing the social media experience of millions through blockchain technology. Join in and find out how they came up with the concept for Snapmuse, how they onboard new users, how they’re expanding to new markets, and what they envision for the product in the future. Plus, learn about their new native token called SMX and some of the most interesting collabs going on right now in the Web3 space. Spoiler alert: one of them features Bruce Lee! Tune in and learn more about it.
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Listen to the podcast here
Gökberk Kızıltan Of Snapmuse.io — A Community-First Web3 Platform For Content Creators And Fans, Plus: Bruce Lee Enters Web3
This is Gökberk Kızıltan of Snapmuse.io, the platform that is revolutionizing the social media experience of millions through blockchain technology. I'm here on the Edge of NFT, the show that delivers everything revolutionary in Web3.
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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn about Snapmuse.io, a Web3 project that allows creators and fans to benefit directly from the value they create together, what popular restaurant chain serves sandwiches that taste like freedom, and finally, what are the latest Web3 collabs in the works for iconic IP brands like Bruce Lee and Adidas. All this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
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In this episode, we feature Gökberk Kızıltan, the Head of Communications at Snapmuse.io, a platform revolutionizing digital socialization. He's a political scientist and international relations specialist. He began his career at GRF, an international think tank before working at a consultancy firm focused on geostrategy, geoeconomy, and geotechnology. In 2019, driven by his passion for innovation and cutting-edge tech, he founded an NFT consulting and artist management company and has since been fully immersed in the Web3 space.
Gökberk also creates videos for his YouTube channel in his free time. Leveraging extensive expertise in music and content, Snapmuse.io is a groundbreaking community-driven Web3 platform that connects YouTube content creators with their fans. The platform empowers content creators to grow their channels while offering fans an opportunity to engage beyond merely consuming content. For the purposes of the show, we will be calling you Gök because you have an interesting pronunciation. You could say your name upfront so people can get the true spirit of it.
The true spirit of it is Gökberk Kızıltan for the record.
Thank you very much. We were given a lot of alternatives. It means sky in English. Is that correct?
Gök means sky in English.
That's beautiful. That's cool.
It's always great to have someone on the show that is drinking their Kool-Aid. You are doing some creating of content like us. It's a special type of person that likes to create content for the world. We immediately have that bond going on. As we are looking at blockchain technology and how to use it to make things easier for content creators, which is a shared passion of ours, it's always nice to have experience on both sides of the process and learn from doing as opposed to learning from what other people do.
Tell us how Snapmuse came into being. Where did this idea come from and get started?
I love to tell the background story. It all starts with a company called SMG Müzik. That company is the biggest music licensing company for retail businesses in Turkey. In Turkey here, when you go to your local supermarket to buy some groceries, for instance, and when you hear music, it's more than likely licensed by us, or if you go to a restaurant. That's a ten-year-old business. Eventually, right before the pandemic, we started building on our expertise and experience in music and licensing. We created a royalty-free music business for creators. This is when we have started to work with creators across the board from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or whatever platform.
As you can see, I'm sitting at a music studio because we produce our music in-house. That royalty-free music business is called Snapmuse.com. We accumulated a lot of experience. We got to learn the problems creators face. We got to learn the issues with different platforms, the shortcomings, and also the problems that the fans have. The a-ha moment comes when we realized that we could solve most of these issues using this new technology called Web3. That's how Snapmuse.io was created.
As someone who's a musician myself, I'm familiar with the music licensing world. I need to go back. I have a bunch of music that I need to put into the system. I probably got more distracted than I should have because my royalty streams didn't come in until a couple of years after I submitted my first music. All of a sudden, I'm getting a check for $50 here and there. Something was on Amazing Wedding Cakes on the Discovery Channel or something. Music licensing is a very fascinating world.
We like to do things a tad bit differently. We create our music in-house. We don't buy music but it is a fascinating world for sure.
It's one ripe for disruption. We talked about it a lot at Outer Edge LA, and the conversation continues in New York where I am now for NFT.NYC. I was at a big music event at a recording studio where this was the theme, "What can we do here to help empower creators?" You are stating that you are the first project that enables creators to grow, relying solely on fans and empowering fans to do more than watch. That's a pretty bold proclamation, which is cool. We got to be bold in this world. I would love to understand where that statement comes from and how the platform works to achieve this goal.
Let me go back to my previous point and pick it up from there. When I told you that we have got to learn the main issues that the creators face, one of the core problems that were out there is that creators need growth. For growth, you need funding and engagement. The funding part is a big thing because as a social media creator, you can't go to your local bank and say, "I make videos for YouTube. Please give me a loan." That doesn't work. You do have some alternatives. You could consider selling your content, which is not great. We are in the business of empowering creators. We have been doing this for a while, and that doesn't sit well with us. We think that creation and creators shouldn't be separated. That's not okay for us.
Another option is you could create extra content or what we call exclusive content. There's a whole business on it. We are not super happy with that either because based on our experiences with creators and my personal experience if you are creating content, especially as a full-time creator, you have to keep up with at least three platforms. You have your YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. You have to be everywhere all at once and create a constant stream of content. When someone asks you to put exclusive content on top of this, it pushes you to the edge of burnout. That's not okay for us either. What we want to do is to give the tools to creators.
Keep Edge of Burnout in mind as another show name, Josh.
What we want to do is to give the tools to creators to almost tokenize access to them. We want them to create what we call creator passes, which are NFTs, and offer those to their fans. By collecting these, the fans give the creator the funds to invest in their channel. That's step one. With this, the creator will do whatever they want, start a new channel, take a trip around the world, or vlog their way through. That's up to you. That's your money. The fans get to access their favorite creators on an exclusive Discord channel for three months.
There's a beginning and an end to this. It's not an endless NFT contract. We added an honorable exit, which is very valuable after spending a few years in the crypto and NFT spaces. That's that. We want to give the fans access and the ability to contact their favorite creators. The fans also get rewards based on their engagement levels. We create a reward pool. That's a percentage of the primary sale. We want to incentivize the fans to engage more and reward the fans who engage more. This is the part of Web3 mix. We want to reward people for the time and attention they give the creator.
That makes a lot of sense. As a creator knowing a lot of creators in the space, everyone is looking for that more direct relationship with their fans and that ability to incentivize folks on both sides.
We don't want to give the creator the burden of extra content. We want them to show up once a week on Discord to chat with their core fans. There's a sense of togetherness that we are creating because these are the fans who spend money to buy your creator passes. These are people giving you a lot of their time and attention to you. You are becoming one of the first people who are giving something back in return for their engagement and time. The creators get funded without intermediaries. I like that idea.
Me too. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you are building this Web3-style sense of partnership between what would traditionally be Web2 creators and their fans?
I touched upon that a little bit. In my mind, Web3 stands first for removing intermediaries and second for getting something in return for the time you put online. These are to me two big staples of Web3. For the creator side, we remove the intermediaries to get access to funding. We also remove the intermediaries to get in touch with your favorite creators. On the fan side, we give you a way and enable you to get something in return for the time and attention you put into your favorite creator.
It sounds great on paper. I'm curious how it works in reality to onboard new users. That's what we all want to do here. We want to showcase this amazing technology that's available. We want to empower creators. There's still a gap between traditional music content creation enthusiasts and Web3 that exists. How is Snapmuse going to onboard new users and unleash this potential? What are the obstacles you see along the way that you are going to navigate around?
This is a perfect date to be asking this. Before I get to this, I will clarify one thing. We are focused on social media creators, not on music creators. It's going to be your YouTubers, Instagram creators, and TikTok creators. These are our target audience.
Thanks for that. I get impressed by your music background but that's only one niche of creators, and you are trying to support all different types of creators.
We will get to this but we will be expanding to music creators too. This is part of our roadmap but we are starting with social media. The onboarding part is something that we have been spending a lot of time and energy on. This has been the topic at the office. The big issue with onboarding new people to Web3 is mostly technical. You have to go over technical hurdles. You have to get a MetaMask. You have to learn how to navigate all these centralized exchanges and buy crypto.
It's very complicated. We have seen it. I have been in the space for a while. I know my way around. It seems easy to me but we have done some product tests. As I saw people struggle, I remembered myself a few years back trying to understand the basics of this technology. We have been focusing on making that crossover as easy as possible. On Snapmuse.io, as we launch, you will be able to log in using your Gmail account or any email account. We will automatically give you a non-custodial wallet. There won't be any requirements to have a MetaMask wallet. That's Big Hurdle number one.
Big Hurdle number two is if you want to buy anything in crypto, you need crypto. What we have established is a one-click checkout of NFTs using credit cards. Looking at our website, you could tell that at face value, it looks very much like a Web2 website whereas we use Web3 infrastructure. This has been the talk in any Web3 space if you go back a year or so.
It's that the newcomers to Web3 won't necessarily know that they will be using Web3. They will be using it as an underlying technology, and they will have an easy UX. The team here has a vast background in Web2. They are now becoming very native in Web3 as well. We are doing a good job. I can say clearly and happily that we are doing a good job using the Web3 infrastructure and providing the easiest UX. That's what's going to help us onboard a lot of people.
I created an account. It took me one minute. I was impressed with that, "There's a wallet address right there under my username. Did I connect my wallet? What's this?" I like that there are some aspects of people wanting to completely put it behind the scenes, so there's nothing there but sometimes you have a username or number anyways. It's cool to have that as a nod. The people that are Web3-familiar get it. I also like the fact that there's a quick email check-in process and stuff like that to get things going. That's interesting stuff. You have a launch coming up here. You have got a Spanish-speaking LatAm geographical expansion on your agenda. We are talking about also going to Africa and India. What can we expect to see going out of these initiatives?
Maybe you could elaborate on the question a little bit. What do you mean by going out?
Meaning as we get into these different areas of the globe, is it content that's focused on how you are going to onboard some Latin American-specific creators? Is it more directing it toward an audience? Are there any partnerships specifically around that?
We are preparing for our launch, and that's a very exciting time for us. Maybe you can tell by the way I talk that I'm a bit sleep deprived. We have been sleeping little hours at the time but these are exciting times for the entire team. I'm happy.
You fell asleep for the past five minutes. You just woke back up but we are rolling with it.
We are starting with Latin America and Spanish-speaking Latin America, in particular Mexico. This comes with the burden of localizing the language of the website and all the processes, flows, and communication. As we expand to new geographies, we will reiterate that over and over again. We want to be localized. We want to talk the language the people talk.
We want to be able to communicate with them. We have built our team in Mexico. We have started slowly building our team in Brazil as well. We want to create the proof of concept there. As soon as we get that, we will expand to other areas. Each time, we want to have a local team. All the creators that we are going to be dropping are from Latin America, Mexico, and Colombia.
I spent some time living in Peru. I have a lot of families from Mexico and various Latin American connections.
I have been to Mexico a couple of times but I have yet to see Peru.
We have got a great team member with our partner, Howl Labs, who's located in Columbia. His name is Daniel Forero. He has been doing our Twitter Spaces as well. He has been doing a great job at that. It's great to be connected there.
I am curious about how you choose your launching areas. There's a creator boom globally. There are different maturations of the creator market in different geographies and different considerations around that. It sounds like you thought pretty methodically, given your background in terms of where you might launch a project like this. I'm curious if you could comment on that.
There are a few metrics that we looked at when drawing our roadmap and deciding how to go about that. First and foremost, we need social media usage. This is criteria number one. In Latin America, it's quite powerful compared to, for instance, Turkey. Turkey is trailing Mexico, for instance, in terms of the maturity of YouTube content creators and the market. That was criteria number one. Number two, crypto adoption and the ability to use crypto are of the essence. That's another thing that we look into. Three is the youth of the population. For a product like ours to be able to thrive, we need a young population.
You are launching a native token soon called SMX. I would love to understand how that's going to look and what some of the utility elements of the token are.
We are doing things a little bit differently than your regular crypto project. This is something that we considered as a team. We decided not to launch the token before the project. I told you the team has some deep roots in Web2. We decided that it would be better to create the proof of concept and then launch the native utility token on top of that.
Not that you asked my opinion but that's the prudent way to go. When you look at both the regulatory environment and the need to create more trust and credibility in this ecosystem, it's, unfortunately, a novel idea when you look back historically at crypto projects but looking forward, let's give people value and then use these token economies to amplify that value.
It never sat well with us to sell a speculative idea anyways. That's how we decided how we end up going. We are planning to launch SMX three months after our first creator drop. That will give us enough time to drop a few more creators and show that the product is working. From there, our long-term vision for SMX is for it to become the standard bearer of the creator economy in Web3.
There will be utilities. You will be able to buy your creator passes using SMX on our website. That's one thing but we also want to do the reward distributions using SMX. This will enable us to distribute the rewards. In the long term, once we have 10, 20, 100, or 500 creators in the system, we want to bring the brands into the picture too. Ideally, what we want to do is to have the brand add input in the creator ecosystem to trickle down all the way to fans. We are hoping that SMX will help us underpin that.
How do you keep that token economy stable and the right level of viscosity before you have the advertising component? Fundamentally, the ability to buy the creator passes is going to surge at the beginning and then slow down. There are reasons for people to convert these tokens to dollars and extract them. What are the reasons for them to hold these tokens long-term? What are the staking mechanisms? How are you thinking about creating a token economy that has a high level of utility on both the supply and demand side?
Let me touch on a few points. Honestly, for the initial phase at least, I do not expect the demand for creator passes to dwindle. We are hoping, planning, and working toward increasing that. That's number one. Eventually, after the first drop, we are planning to onboard more creators. There is the growth phase. Somewhere in that growth phase, we will be bringing the brands into the picture. That's number one. The rewards mechanism is one of the main utilities of the SMX token whereas 20% of each drop is allocated as a community reward pool. That will be distributed to the community through various community activities.
For instance, you will watch a video from the creator, and there will be a code in there. You will input that and earn some rewards, for instance. Those rewards will be distributed in SMX. The good thing about that is that SMX will be backed in USD because we are not distributing a speculative coin. At least there's a claim mechanism to be precise. The fan is gaining $100 through that community activity. They will be able to claim $100 worth of SMX. This is what we mean when we say we are bringing rewards based on real value. We are not expecting that much, hopefully, of a fluctuation. We are hoping that it's going to be more or less stable.
In the example you gave, you were talking about a reward going to a fan or a creator, or both.
The rewards go to fans from the creators. Let's say you had a primary market sale of $100,000. Twenty percent is allocated to the community reward pool. Over the course of three months, this is distributed through community activities that will incentivize engagement.
I'm sure you have looked at projects like Rally and other creator economies and what worked and what didn't work. There's an inherent preface when we talk about a token economy. There's an element of experimentation here that's inevitable but you have these theories, and then you are tweaking the model as you go if you need to ensure the right amount of utility. Major projects like Axie Infinity and others in the space have adjusted their models over time to maximize the value of the token. It's important that everything is experimental in this space. You do your best to create value for all the different stakeholders. That's the beauty of Web3. It unlocks this potential.
This is a space where if you don't evolve, you can't survive. That's very important. Every project will go through this. We have done our research thoroughly but the issue, for instance, with Rally is they were creating tokens for every single creator, which to us, and it proved to be correct, wasn't sustainable. We will discuss it further if you want but we have seen all the experiments in the space. Our main value proposition is our ability to back SMX, especially SMX rewards but also down the road, hopefully, when we have more brands join us, SMX with a stream of real money or fiat money.
If you don't evolve, you can’t survive in the Web3 space. Click To Tweet
Tell us a little bit more about the roadmap going forward. You mentioned expansion globally. Are there any partnerships, artist collabs, and other things that we didn't cover? Did we cover most of it?
This is the time when I should bite my tongue and not reveal too much. We are launching soon in Mexico. We are getting ready to announce our first creators but I shouldn't reveal them. These are people who have 9 to 10 million subscribers, which is very exciting to us. We think it's a good start. I spend a lot of time meeting with creators. I'm happy with where we are and with the people we are launching with. In terms of the roadmap, we have talked about this but with the Spanish-speaking Latin America product rolling, we will soon turn to Brazil. We have started working toward that goal.
From there, we will expand toward geographies. Africa is one thing. We are interested in Africa because of the young population and the need for funding creators. There's India as well. I am keeping a keen eye on Korea too because I know that there's a very vibrant creative economy there. At least I'm getting this in the roadmap too. The expansion is not only geographical. We want to eventually reach out to music creators as well. This is our background too. We know them. We know their issues. We will get to that too.
That makes sense. Why did you choose to include them later on the roadmap out of curiosity?
This is a business. For us, it was a market size issue. Unless you have a viable product that stands on solid ground, if you try to start in a smaller market, then there's a little chance you will survive. That's the approach we need to take.
That makes sense. I can tell that with your background, you are looking around at what's going on in the space more broadly. We like to ask our guests what you have been following in the space outside of your project in all your free time. What inspires you in the space?
What inspires me is tenacity. I will start with resilience because what could have gone wrong went wrong in 2022. Resilience is very impressive. If I may, I want to tie that to my story. Going toward Web3 and crypto was a big career change for me. It makes me even happier to see the resilience of this new space I have adopted for myself. This I find inspiring. I am also excited about the opportunities. In the last bear market, we have taken another step toward maturity in the market. There are projects like ours that are trying to build real businesses that stand on solid ground.
The resilience in the Web3 space is very impressive. Click To Tweet
Are there any particular projects in the space that you respect and admire that you have been following on their journey or recent projects that have launched that you are excited about?
Over the years, I met with some serious people who are very keen on building good projects. I won't mention particularly new projects but I could give a small shout-out to my friend @KingOfMidtown from my days representing artists. I know that, for instance, he puts a lot of time, energy, money, and effort into building something where non-Web3 natives can cross paths with something from Web3 with NFTs. I always admired that effort.
Here's a shout-out to King of Midtown and all he has done in this space for sure.
That concludes our regular conversation topics. We can move on to Edge Quick Hitters. It should be exciting. We get to often learn a little bit about growing up in other cultures as part of this process. Edge Quick Hitters is 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-word, or few-word response but feel free to expand if you get the urge. What is the first thing you ever remember purchasing in your life?
It was a Subway sandwich the first time I went out with friends. It tasted like freedom.
I want to taste a Subway sandwich that tastes like freedom. That sounds exciting.
I was young. I didn't have a developed palate back then.
Did it taste like freedom because you were able to purchase it yourself?
It was the first time I went out with friends. It was a big step.
What's the first thing you ever remember selling in your life?
That's even further back. When I was in primary school, I used to cut these objects from paper and sell those, whether it's goggles or animals. I used to cut shapes and sell those to friends until my business got disrupted by the teachers at school back then. I had to pay taxes.
All those teachers are crushing our early entrepreneurial dreams.
He crushed it. I'm telling you.
Good teachers need to ask for a kickback. I'm kidding. No good teacher is going to ask for it.
There's a teacher out there thinking about how to add a little bit of a side hustle because of Eathan's bad influence. Back to the conversation at hand, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
The most recent thing I purchased was an Insta360 X3 camera. It's a beast only if I get to learn a bit more about how to use it properly.
That is also great for a house party.
One of the requirements of that camera is you have to live in a 3D environment. Make sure you get that thing taken care of first. It should be easy from there forward.
That sounds like a nice and expensive purchase. Maybe it's related to the next question. What is the most recent thing you sold?
This will be a bit cliche. It's the combination of the hard work, sweat, and tears of my friends at Snapmuse.io. That's the last thing I have sold.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
That's my camera. It's a regular beginner camera but it's my way of putting everything that's work, family, and friends aside and taking the time to create. That's why it's valuable to me.
I used to enjoy going around and taking pictures of anything. I haven't done it as much of late but it's very fun.
I will break your concept a bit but can I ask you a question? I'm curious if creativity for you comes like that. I have gotten to learn that there are some people who overflow with creativity, and there are some people like me for whom creativity takes some effort. I'm curious. How is it for you?
Personally, the creative part of it overflows. Whether it's good or not, I don't know. I'm naturally very creative. I like to create new things but my approach is the filtering process where you create a bunch of stuff. That's what I have learned over the years. That is how I address this problem of wanting to create but also getting frustrated if it's not perfect or wanting to create good things. The solution to that has been for me to create a lot of things and then to set aside the ones that turned out well to share. You could share the things that didn't turn out well. People don't care. How about you? Does that work for you? Is that how you approach it as well?
What got me to push myself to start creating is there was a moment in my life when I noticed that I have only been doing stuff that people were handing me to do, "Do this work. Do that work. Get family stuff, friends stuff, and work stuff." I felt like my creative muscles atrophied. I decided to push myself to create but it takes some effort still.
Much respect goes out to people who put the effort to create because it's not always obvious how much effort it takes. Josh, why don't you answer your experience with creative expression?
This Edge Quick Hitters is going in a million different directions but this is what happens when Eathan's creativity runs wild. I have to be in a creative mood. I have to have intentional time and energy set for creativity to fully flush out a concept. I find my creativity comes through interaction with others. The victims of that are members of our team that have some project that I'm co-creating with them because I will send random text messages with my ideas in real-time so I don't lose them. My creative thoughts fly in and fly out if I don't have intentional time set aside.
Some of the more interesting ideas come from that spontaneity that happens through conversations and looking at the world. I can recall that some of the more interesting creative thoughts I have had have been at random times when I'm traveling. I'm on an airplane. I'm in a new city. I'm enjoying some food I haven't had. I get these associations that lead to some creativity around the business. I don't put a ton of creative energy into my life outside of the company. I use that as my catalyst of creativity. That's probably TMI. Let's keep going.
That's good. Josh doesn't necessarily create art, music, or anything like that but he's very creative with relationships and business for sure. I will give a shout-out to a new podcast called Tetragrammaton. It is by Rick Rubin who is a famous record producer. I know that as part of that, he's looking to explore creativity and the way people express it. He also wrote a book about creativity. Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience that is for sale, what would it be?
I would buy a house in Irvine, California, and a nice car.
Is that because you have been there and you like that area?
My girlfriend studied in LA and then worked for a year in Irvine, California. Every time I visited her there, that was the first time I could dream of a family, a house, a car, a dog, and all that white picket fence stuff.
You wouldn't be too far from me. We could hang out. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I don't want to sound obnoxious but I have the ability to understand people. After spending a little bit of time, I collect a lot of data points in understanding the people I spend time with. It's unconscious but it helps me a lot in life. That would be it.
If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
That's the part where you get honest, "I'm too great. I would stop that." What I would prefer to not give to the next generation would be my fear of things not turning out great or not turning out the way I want them to be because, at times, it could be debilitating. It could almost be paralyzing because you don't do some stuff because you fear it won't be great.
I have this sign in front of my desk at home. Scott Froschauer is a cool artist in LA that takes traditional signs and uses juxtaposition with different language. He has a stop sign that he put the word start on. I have that in front of my desk. I look at it every morning because that is the reality that you are referring to where some of the most exciting things in life and the biggest opportunities, you get the stop sign and the start sign at the same time. I appreciate his approach to juxtaposition there.
I never got the full description of that one. That's cool to hear about. We got the last two. Number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I have been fine-tuning the product for launch.
For lunch and dinner.
You got to make a sandwich that tastes like freedom. That's what you need to do. Here's the final question. Number ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
Go to the gym.
That sounds good. I was checking out your Instagram. It looks like you are doing some weightlifting and keeping in shape. That's good work, my friend. It's inspiring. That concludes Edge Quick Hitters. Thanks for playing along with us on that. The next segment is Hot Topics. Let's hit that. The first one is, "Bruce Lee Enters Web3, Starting With Open Edition NFT From Pplpleasr. The Bruce Lee Estate will establish a Web3 presence for the late legendary martial artist and actor thanks to a new partnership with Shibuya, an NFT-driven video platform."
I have talked to Pplpleasr as part of the show before. I don't think we had her on an episode but we released a panel I did with her at one point. She's a very talented artist and a great thinker and personality. Bruce Lee was such an inspiring character for me as well. I haven't watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies but I'm very inspired by Bruce Lee, the person, his vision, and his trajectory. It's cool to see when these estates make these decisions.
All this memorabilia, especially for people who are not with us in person at least, is a good way to do open editions because there has been a lot of pressure. I don't work with artists anymore but I do keep an eye on that scene too still. I know that some artists have been criticized for doing open editions but for them, at least it's a good way to evolve and survive. It fits the bill for memorabilia about people who are not with us. I like it.
It's a sign of the times too that there have been a lot of conversations at Outer Edge and generally about buying NFTs like a cup of coffee. You enjoy that cup of coffee at the moment. Maybe you remember that coffee from time to time. It doesn't have to be something that has this massive deal friction of you doing the transaction.
These are 0.008 ETH which converts to about $15. For someone that loves Bruce Lee, it's a very palatable purchase as well. It's cool to see Pplpleasr evolving what she's doing with Shibuya and this type of collaboration. These are good indicators and good signals of what's possible here in terms of that intersection point of the metaverse, entertainment, IP, and fandom. I'm a fan. I may or may not have a Bruce Lee t-shirt in my closet.
Is there a slogan on the t-shirt? Does it say, "Be like water, my friend?"
I don't think it has a slogan. I have to look it up.
Do you have that T-shirt?
I don't but I have seen it somewhere I'm sure.
He's a legend. It's a cool one. What else have we got, Eathan?
Let's hit the next one. The next one is, "Adidas Releases Chapter 1 of Its ALTS Dynamic NFT Collection. Adidas first released its Into the Metaverse collection in December 2021, promising holders of the NFTs exclusive access to collaborative merchandise and virtual land experiences throughout 2022. Its first Web3 exploration, a collaboration with NFT influencer, GMoney," whom we have had on the show, "PUNKS Comic and Bored Ape Yacht Club as well, allowed holders to burn their NFTs to receive a new ERC-1155 token from the next phase of the project and claim physical clothing items."
Kudos to them for picking some incredible collaborators and also leading the charge in this space. It has been interesting to see. I don't know the exact moment when shoes became collectibles. I remember the buzz around it back in the '90s or something. It was a big deal. I remember a magazine headline that said, "Your shoes or your life." People were getting murdered on the streets for their shoes. I remember that moment of a street culture where shoes became super valuable but it's grown. I don't know if there was much before the '90s or something when shoes were a collectible thing.
Our experiences differ a bit. It's not the same because where I am in Turkey in the '90s, shoes weren't that much of a thing. It is becoming now, especially now that collecting shoes is becoming an even bigger thing in the US. We are getting drips off that. I have been collecting shoes for the past few years ever since I became able to afford some luxury shoes but I do remember how and when they pretty much became a collectible in the crypto space.
I remember being super excited when Adidas came to the space. I remember being excited despite some minor controversy when Nike came into the space. Don't look at my wallet because I don't own anything from them. They had always been a bit too expensive for me but this is something I'm keeping an eye on. It's very exciting. I want to see where it goes.
What are your most prized stinkers in your collection?
The last time I was in LA, I bought some Air Jordan 3 Chicago Fire Reds. The first time I saw these shoes was years before. I had to wait years before they reappeared. It was an exciting moment for me.
I had some Jordans in my head. I thought you might say that. He's one of my faves even though I'm a Celtics fan. I'm very excited. I coerced my mom to watch the playoff game. I'm going to be heading to Boston next. I'm taking my mom to watch the Celtics at Boston Garden. I have not been to Boston Garden or a Celtics game back home in over a decade. It's going to be a treat.
Can I add something to this? I played basketball for a long time. I attended one NBA game. This is a crazy spectacle. It's incredible. You know how to do that show there.
It's beautiful. I will say this too. In the podcast I mentioned earlier with Rick Rubin, Tetragrammaton, one of the first guests he interviews is Phil Jackson, the Chicago Bulls coach. It's fascinating because he's asking questions like, "What is a guard? Tell me what a guard is." It's great to hear two people that are experts in their fields talk and be willing to be naive to what each other does but very respectful.
Eathan, the next Hot Topic is pretty interesting. Do you want to squeeze it in quickly?
Let's do it, "Companies Behind Azuki NFTs and Line Friends Characters Join Forces for Web3 Expansion. Chiru Labs, the Web3 company behind NFT collections Azuki and Beanz, and IPX, the parent company of the popular character collection Line Friends, said they have begun working together. The two companies intend to collaborate on content merchandise, retail distribution, real-life activations, and immersive metaverse experiences, initially focusing on the Beanz NFT and Line Friends characters." Big players are coming together to do some interesting stuff in a lot of diverse areas where all these things are getting executed. What are your thoughts?
I love it. Collabs are the name of the game. Finding like-minded folks in the space that you gel with and then working on bigger partnerships makes a lot of sense to me. These are two powerhouses. When you think about it, there are inefficiencies in the IP game in terms of all these one-on-one conversations. It might make more sense to approach a big IP partner with a combination.
Collabs are the name of the game. Click To Tweet
One insight I have had from talking to brands is that brands want to hang out with cool communities. It's not necessarily about that one-on-one collab. It could be one-to-many. If they have a chance to work with new communities that they expose to their audience, and those communities can help each other out, this is an interesting signal of what might be to come here.
I agree that collabs are the name of the game. This was one of the difficulties we faced along the way. This pushed us to, for instance, simplify Snapmuse.io and make it an easy UX. We found ourselves trying to first sell the narrative of Web3 and then sell Snapmuse.io or Web3. It's easier to grow your community with people who are already in Web3. That's where the collabs become very valuable.
There's one more thing before we wrap the segment, Eathan. I will mention that we will be at Consensus as a media partner, and then VeeCon coming up. Maybe we will see some of our audiences there. I'm excited again to have Yat Siu over at Consensus. I'm going to be checking out his talk. He will be speaking about where the future of the metaverse and NFTs go from here. Maybe I will see you at Consensus.
That concludes our Hot Topic segment. I don't know if you had a quick shout-out. We have our shout-out segment next. Is there anybody interesting you want to give a shout-out to?
I shout out to King of Midtown before but I also want to shout out to everyone on the team at Snapmuse.io who have been working their butts off to create the best product possible. I also want to shout out a dear friend and a crypto artist, Murat Sayginer, who brought me into this space, which I always appreciate.
Thank you so much. That's great. It's always great to share something new and interesting with people. That's a wrap here but before we go, where can audiences go to learn more about you and the projects that you are working on?
We invite them to visit our social media, Twitter and Discord. Come join us and say hi. We are always happy to answer questions. We are about to do our launch announcements too. It's an exciting time for us and anyone that's going to be on board. On Twitter, we are @SnapmuseIO. You can find our Discord link on our website. We are always around to help and answer questions.
We are looking forward to it. Finally, we do have a giveaway. You have generously contributed a cash prize of not the native utility token system since it hasn't launched yet but 500 USDC on Polygon that will distribute among a few winners. Look out on our socials for the details on how to enter and keep up with everything that's going on with Snapmuse. Is there anything else to say about the giveaway? Did I cover it?
I'm happy to look out for the community.
We have reached the outer limit at the show and maybe the Outer Edge of Burnout. Thanks for exploring with us. That's a callback to earlier in the episode. We have 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.
Remember, we did Outer Edge LA. It was a huge blast. If you feel like you missed out, don't worry. We do have a bunch of our content, nearly all of it, online at OuterEdge.live. You can go to the Watch tab. All you need to do is enter your email, and you can review a bunch of great content. We look forward to having you participate in that way for anybody that missed out. Thanks for sharing this time with us. Be sure to tune in next time for more great Web3 content.
Important Links
- Snapmuse.io
- Snapmuse.com
- Outer Edge LA
- NFT.NYC
- Howl Labs
- SMX
- @KingOfMidtown - Linktree
- Tetragrammaton
- Scott Froschauer
- Bruce Lee Enters Web3, Starting With Open Edition NFT From Pplpleasr
- Shibuya
- Pplpleasr - Previous episode
- Adidas Releases Chapter 1 of Its ALTS Dynamic NFT Collection
- Into the Metaverse
- GMoney - Previous episode
- Companies Behind Azuki NFTs and Line Friends Characters Join Forces for Web3 Expansion
- Chiru Labs
- IPX
- Consensus
- VeeCon
- Yat Siu - Previous episode
- Murat Sayginer
- Discord - Snapmuse
- @SnapmuseIO - Twitter
- Spotify - Edge of NFT
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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