The vision that 0N1 Force holds for the future of NFT ownership is cross-platform integration. They foresee a boundaryless digital social network. And now they’re coming back on a scale that a lot of people did not expect. This episode features Henry Finn, aka Starlordy, the person at the helm of this billion-dollar brand. This is a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the mastermind behind a company making significant strides in its industry. Join this conversation as Starlordy talks about the background of 0N1 Force and its ground-breaking approach to art, storytelling, and technology. He also talks about the brand’s resurgence in what could be the greatest comeback story in Web3! Plus, learn about Metagood’s Dimensions 10K project inscribed on Bitcoin and why it's so special. All these and more in this episode of Edge of NFT!
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Listen to the podcast here
Henry Finn Of 0N1 Force The Future Of Storytelling, Plus: Metagood's OnChainMonkey
This is Henry Finn AKA Starlordy of 0N1 Force, the blue chip project that will always be coming back and delivering beautiful Web3 experiences. I'm on the Edge of NFT, the bluest blue chip show around. Stay tuned.
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Stay tuned to this episode to learn how 0N1 Force is taking its unique style on a comeback tour to prove their commitment to greatness.
Plus, learn how much this guest values his reputation as an asset that surpasses any physical wealth.
Finally, hear about Metagood’s Dimensions 10K project inscribed on Bitcoin and why it's so special. Before we move forward, don't forget that our Outer Edge LA event returned to Los Angeles in March 2023. You can catch up on all the discussions, presentations and more by heading over to Watch.OuterEdge.live and registering with your email address. Then, you'll have access to over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Binge watchers are welcome. Netflix, watch out. We'll see you inside.
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This episode features Henry Finn AKA Starlordy, the CEO at the helm of the billion-dollar brand 0N1 Force. This is a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the mastermind behind a company making significant strides in its industry. Before launching into the Web3 space with 0N1 Force, initiating the first anime and sideways PFP project, Henry Finn crafted a successful career in commercial, film and TV production. With a fifteen-year of experience under his belt, he partnered with notable brands such as Nike, Samsung and Google. The vision that 0N1 Force holds for the future of NFT ownership is cross-platform integration. They foresee a boundaryless digital social network. Henry Finn, Starlordy, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
What's up? Thanks for having me on.
It's been a minute since Outer Edge LA. It was great to have you as part of that. There's so much history on this show and context around real projects that have long roots in the space that are continuing to evolve. I'm excited. Fun fact, the last time we had 0N1 Force on was episode 60 so we've been through over 170 episodes since then. It's been a minute.
I am very glad to be on. I am excited.
We have a lot to catch up on. For those folks that maybe haven't checked out every episode in history, there are some. I met one of them at VeeCon. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about the background of 0N1 Force and its ground-breaking approach to art, storytelling and technology? Where did this all begin? Where does it fit into the space?
0N1 Force was the first anime PPF project for sideways PFP, the first to create and use the allow list as it's now known. It was the first project to use storytelling and art as a key part of its ethos as a PFP project. There were other little things, like first-to-use Lo-fi music in Discord and things like that. At its core, it was all about the art and the storytelling. That's something that set it apart in the early days. For people that don't know, it was minted right after Bored Apes. It was a massive hit. It sold out in five minutes and was an original blue chip project.
The beauty of it is that where we're at, nothing's changed. We’re still all about storytelling and art. That's still a core part of our DNA, what makes us tick and one of our biggest value drivers for the community. With the new ownership group and a team that we have in place, it's more about taking that mission and executing it in a big way.
You have very unique ideas. We're going to talk about a comeback tour. We can talk here about reminiscing as Josh did. It's funny in this space to reminisce about, “About 12 months ago or 18 months ago, back when we were wee children in this whole development.” You guys are doing this comeback tour. I'm curious if you could shed some light on what exactly this entails and how the audience can get involved.
To continue the history of 0N1 Force, after being such a major success early on, it was also one of the first or early blue chip projects to fail or take a tumble in a lot of ways. I came on in late January or early February of 2021 as the project manager. By the time I came on, it had dropped from 7 ETH to 0.2. You could imagine how tough that was for the community involved and its place in Web3 in a lot of ways. We hung in there for a good year when all of the diehard fans knew that this was a valuable brand and it still had a lot of importance in the space. It was because of the previous ownership group and the mismanagement of the brand that a lot of people in the space had written it off.
First of all, I was a huge fan of the art from day one. I'm complex as art still holds up. It's still one of the top PFP art projects in the game. As an outsider, initially, I was a huge fan. That's what kept our community together. We had this strong belief that there was something there. Also, the community itself was legendary in terms of the value that it brought in the early days and the type of talent that we attracted. I still felt that passion, faith and belief were there in our core community.
I remember probably in my first or second Town Hall, way back when. I proclaimed that we would be the greatest comeback story in Web3. This is why we're still at 0.2. There were probably a lot of people who laughed at me for that but the people who were the core members of the community believed that was possible if we could get certain things right. We hung in there for a year until we got through the acquisition. Since we have this brand-new fresh start and opportunity, what else would we call it? It is the comeback tour. We’re here. We never left. The space is finally noticing.
For us, the comeback tour is a way to give a lot of acknowledgment to our core community, the people that supported us and suffered during that time. You could imagine if at one point any time brought up 0N1 Force, there would instantly be memes about us, people dunking on us or people writing us off. That's hard for a community to bear to go out there and see that in the Discords, Twitters and stuff. It was painful in a lot of ways. It showed their faith in the brand. This tour is for them to have that moment that they deserve where they can feel vindicated for support.
Also, in a broader sense, everybody loves a comeback story. It’s almost ingrained in our DNA. There's something special about that that the vast majority of us can identify with. We've expanded the theme of it to include anybody who has ever felt outcasted, doubted or has ever had their challenges in life. We want it to be inspirational so that people can see if we could come back, then pretty much anybody has a chance to. That's what the comeback tour is all about.
Eathan mentioned a year. It's been at least a year and a couple of months. That's 10 years in Web3. I appreciate the nuance there in terms of a place for everyone that appreciates this type of art. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more in terms of what the DNA of the art in the community comes down to. You're a little bit biased but you've been on the outside and the inside. What is so special about this vision that attracts such a wide swath of folks?
This is something I've been thinking about very deeply for a long time. We call ourselves the first anime PFP project because we are but one day, I saw a lineup of anime projects of the PFPs in a grid. I realized something interesting. The art by IMCMPLX is very unique. If you put it against other anime projects, it's odd in a way. It's not fully anime in the same way that some of the other projects are. For people that don't know, it was greatly inspired by the art of gorillas. You could see it in the mouth, the teeth and the shape of the jaw.
I call IMCMPLX the Tarantino of PFP artists because there's something about him that his knowledge is so deep in all of the areas of art, anime, manga, comics, gaming, fashion and toys. Once you start talking to him, it's crazy how knowledgeable he is. Shoes and all that stuff, he knows the history of all of those things. He knows how to make that. His attention to detail is crazy.
The reason why I call him the Tarantino of PFP artists is he somehow manages to combine all of these different aesthetic things into one package that is uniquely his. You can't find one project out there that looks like 0N1 Force. We're talking about how many tens of thousands of projects have launched since then. That uniqueness is what attracts a lot of special talent. People who know art and who appreciate art can appreciate the quality of it.
I'm not joking. There are times when I would sit and pull up the collection. I love art. I would pull up the collection and stare at it. I would zoom in on it and look at the way he did the lines or the way he did the shading on the hairline or the way he does shadows and stuff. It's immaculate. In great art, those invisible things that influence the artists speak to people somehow. It has resulted in us naturally attracting top-level talent in every field in Web3. We want to continue that and turn ourselves into a home for artists because of that.
That's one of the Catch-22s of great art and being a great artist. Oftentimes, the greatest are the ones that invest themselves so deeply in the details. It's easy to get lost in the details and the shuffle in terms of getting the exposure that you might deserve as an artist. That tends to be the pattern. It's a Venn diagram. Those that pay close attention to detail tend to be among those that are treasured and revered but not everybody that pays that close attention to detail gets that reverence and attention.
It's cool to see it. It's a great investment to know that IMCMPLX is doing that kind of investment in the work and the understanding of the history, art and all those aspects of things. You mentioned bringing talent to the project. There's talent involved and advisory as well. Those things are key to the growth of it. As you're steering the ship here, how do you plan to recruit new talents and advisors here that help bring things to life?
There is a famous Kobe line when they ask him, “How do you recruit people to the Lakers?” He said, “If you want first place, come with us. If you want second place, go with whoever you want,” or something like that. That's the pitch. We believe ourselves to be one of the greatest art PFP projects and the art still stands up.
More importantly, we love artists. We genuinely love creators. Those are not just artists but developers, marketers, storytellers and writers. It doesn't matter. If you're in the game of creating something for Web3, we want you. For us, we celebrate at our core, the people. It is similar to, honestly, Edge of NFT. Like how you said at the beginning of the intro, for all the people that want to be pushing the space forward that are innovators and care about technology, art and all that stuff, we want to build a home.
There are a lot of great artists out there. A lot of them have all the ingredients on paper, whether it's paying attention to detail, asking why or having the technical skills but somehow, a lot of artists fall through the cracks. For us, we want to provide that place where artists get a chance to be seen and heard. That's our main pitch for talent.
Not only will you have the best chance to develop your Web3 career with us but also, you're going to feel so much love and appreciation that you're not going to want to go anywhere else. The last thing I'll say is we're also very open and collaborative. The way that we work with people is we give them a chance to do what they want and be who they want to be as artists. It's not so much about directing them or controlling their work but more about providing a place for them, like a playground.
I appreciate all of that. That's what we've tried to be as well, a place for all the different types of creators and builders in the space to come together and create something bigger than themselves. Switching ownership is not something to be taken lightly. It's a pretty big deal. A lot could go wrong and right. We would love to better understand what the new ownership DNA is all about, how this came about and how you guys are working with this new ownership group.
The new ownership group is a consortium of people led by OFR, which stands for Old-Fashioned Research. That's a fund that was created by the ex-CFO. His name is Wei Zhou. He has the finance labs team as part of OFR plus other partners. It is also partly owned by Goltra who is the COO of Yield Guild Games. We have a group of heavy hitters. The people from OFR have been referred to as the greatest M&A group in crypto history. They created finance labs and acquired hundreds of projects and companies. Wei himself has been the CFO of two publicly traded companies. The list goes on and on.
This ownership group, since I have worked with them since February 2023, I honestly believe that when it's all said and done, they are going to be looked at as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, ownership groups in NFT history because of the level of experience, resources and network. We've done more business development in three months than a lot of projects do in a whole year. We're getting started. It's crazy for me to be part of this.
The main thing though that I want to call out is that the original founders deserve a lot of credit for getting us to this point. First of all, you have to imagine the mental health situation. For a year, pretty much, you are being slammed on and getting death threats. They were getting abused by a lot of toxicity but they held on. To the very last moment, their whole mission was to find an ownership group or owner that was going to be able to take this brand to the next level.
When I first came on board and interviewed each of the founders individually, that was the one thing that they all had in common. They all said to me that they love this project. They believe in the community. They are proud of what they started. They wanted to make sure that whatever home they could find for it would be somebody that could deliver and take this brand to the place that it deserves to be. To their credit, they selected this group. They made the best choice. They have given us an opportunity to go to the next level.
A lot of people have money. Money is not the answer, to be honest. The thing that sets this group apart is that they share the values of this community. They have a mission that is important to us. When they first came on, their pitch to us was that they want to continue what we have already started, which is focusing on the art and the storytelling and allowing us to do that.
They have proven true to their word. They have given us the resources and support. They’ve only enhanced what our mission is. That's what makes this group special. We have an actual understanding of what's important. When they bought the project, they referred to it as a community buyout because they factored in the community itself as part of how they valued this company. That's what makes this group special.
I was probably going to leave after the acquisition because I have my ambitions and stuff but after meeting Wei and the team, I realized it would be silly for me to leave and miss this opportunity to work with them. There's a famous line that when he had sent an email before the acquisition was done, he said that he wants this project to be positive, create hope in this space and be a light for the industry. At the end of the email, he wrote, “Love is love.” I was like, “That's cool. That's my kind of guy. That will keep me.” That was the moment where I was like, “I'm sticking around. I want to be part of this journey.”
That's such a beautiful and candid answer to my question. I appreciate all of that. I don't think everyone understands the amount of heart and conviction that goes into creating a project like this. To your point, you couldn't be more open and vulnerable than birthing a PFP project in the early stages. It's like having a child and having see-through glass doors and windows where the entire world is examining what you're doing raising that child every second of the day. That's the amount of pressure that goes into running a community in those early days when people have made a substantial investment of money.
Maybe folks, to buy this art that they love with expectations, hopes and dreams, it comes to something bigger than what it was when they got into the mix. You never know what's going to happen there. Yet, those expectations only increase over time. Shout-out to the original crew. A lot of love to them. A lot of them have come to our events and are in the community. I appreciate you sharing what you've done as a result of being so inspired. Thanks for that.
The one thing I'll add to that is that's a great analogy. Everybody is judging you every second of raising a baby but they also expect that baby to be Michael Jordan when it grows up. It's not easy.
We're going to wrap up here in a minute. We're going to get to our Quick Hitters. This is going to be fun, I'm sure. Are there any artist collaborations and other features we might want to look out for?
There are so many. To be clear, our mission is we want to be the greatest cross-platform storytelling experience birthed out of Web3. Comic books, anime, manga, gaming and live events, we want to make sure that our brand grows in all of those areas. We've put together key partnerships in each area to push us forward to be an S Tier project. For instance, we brought on Hicham Habchi who is the former Principal at Riot Games. He is responsible for a lot of brand development for Valorant, Overwatch and things like that. We brought on David Ulsan whose family owns the film rights to Batman. His dad produced the first Batman movie. He's got a ton of experience developing IP and is helping us expand our distribution and development options.
0n1 Force movie.
That's the goal. That's been the rail from day one. We're way closer than I would've thought in the sense of the moves that we're putting together are going to help us leapfrog in a lot of ways. You could expect more partnerships in those key areas, whether it's comics, manga, anime, gaming, fashion or lifestyle. Those are the core intersection of our group community so we're going to be making a lot more announcements around those areas.
We are very excited about that. We'll have to keep you in the mix in the future as more of these announcements come out. What's the closest thing on the roadmap of all that stuff that you shared?
That's Comic-Con. Comic-Con is going to be a huge moment for us. We were the first NFT project to premiere there. We're going to be the first to return with our comic book line. We're going to be making a lot of announcements and revealing a lot of cool things. People who have been following this comeback tour should expect July 2023 to be a lot of fireworks and validation to people who've been holding or came in and feel like they're part of a movement.
We like to close out with one question. You've been in this space a while. You have your sense of what's going on too. Are there any projects out there that you particularly respect and admire how they're approaching innovation in Web3?
I am genuine about this. I'm not saying this because they're part of the program. I have been exposed to OnChainMonkey early on. They were very good at building a core community that supported them in the early days and then what they've been doing with BTC is very interesting. They are a project that we watch to see what they're investing in and how they're developing things. Maybe that's top of mind because of that but that is legitimately a project that we look at and would love to work with.
You get to watch up close again.
I would love to even collab with OnChainMonkey and that sort of thing.
I appreciate all that insight. It's time to move on to Edge Quick Hitters. Edge Quick Hitters is a fun and quick way to get to know you a little better. There are ten questions and we are looking for a short, single or few-word response but feel free to expand if you get the urge. What is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
A comic book. Spider-Man.
That’s very appropriate. Speaking of a comeback, you had mentioned the Batman franchise. I didn't get a chance to watch the whole movie but have you guys seen Birdman?
I love Birdman. That was one of the greatest films I've seen in a long time. That was Michael Keaton's comeback. He almost won an Oscar. It's good to see him be Batman again. It's pretty full circle in a lot of ways.
I got to go again and watch the movie. I got to finish it up. It's very intriguing. Next question, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
It was also a comic book.
Did you go to your dealer or was there a little bit of arbitrage there to someone in your school or something?
It was arbitrage to a friend. We lived next door. We both bought comic books so we would trade and sell them to each other with our lunch money and stuff like that.
Is there any recollection of who got the better of that deal of your first comic book set?
It was me. I am guilty about that because I over-pitched the comic books. I was like, “This is going to be a blast,” and he bit on it. I feel like I got in trouble. I'm pretty sure his mom was like, “What happened to your comic books,” or something. I ended up with more somehow. I don’t know.
I got accused of racketeering as well. I set up a handheld video game arcade on my porch and charged all the kids in my neighborhood. It wasn't the fact that the kids didn't want to pay. They were happy to pay. It was the parents that weren't particularly happy with that operation.
That's what it comes down to. Some kids are natural entrepreneurs or hustlers early on. Other parents don't like that.
We got to make sure the next time that happens to give them a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. Maybe they'll change their perspective. What is the most recent thing you purchased?
When I was in Japan, I ended up buying lots of little toys, figures and merchandise. We were in Japan to be inspired and make sure that we connected with the roots of anime and stuff. We were paying attention very closely to how IPs develop products and stuff like that. It started as research and then I ended up buying a bunch of stuff.
I hope you also researched the food because they have some amazing food in Japan.
The Happy Belly, for sure. I ate a lot. I gained weight in Japan.
What is the most recent thing you sold?
I don't sell my NFTs so I haven't sold any of those. During the pandemic, I was on brand. I was selling comic books. I started an online retail store. I was selling comic books left and right on Facebook, OTC and all that stuff. I sold a bunch of my collection.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession? Is it a comic book?
It’s not. It’s a sad story. Also out of the pandemic, I had a mold problem in my house so I ended up having to get rid of my entire collection. I'm starting from scratch there. I don't know how this is going to come off but when you asked that question, my first instinct is I feel like my most prized possession is my reputation. When I came into the space, I already knew that.
Gary Vee said, way back, 99% of projects are going to fail. When I looked at how the economics or Ponzinomics of the space was operating, I felt like that was wrong in a lot of ways. If you're a project that has good intentions and you failed, that's fine. There are so many rugs and people out there that take advantage of their names and use that to suck out liquidity from people. It's created a bad reputation in the greater world.
I remember I was having lunch with a friend and explaining what a rug is. They looked at me like I was crazy. They were like, “Do you mean embezzlement?” I was like, “Yeah.” That's how other people look at it. It's not a cute word. We look away from that stuff too casually. My mom told me when I was young, “When you say things like that is your credit and then your actions pay that off, that becomes your reputation.” I've been very careful to make sure that I'm authentically me.
I'm not a saint or anything. I'm still a degen but I care about people and I want people to win. For some reason, that's what popped into my head when you asked. At the same time, physical things disappear. I'm not a materialistic person. At the end of the day, the way I look at it is can you look at yourself in the mirror? Can you sleep soundly? That's all that matters to me.
That's a good answer. I don't think we've had that particular reputation answer before. We have people on the show, because of some nature of their project, they're anonymous, for example. It is nice to have people's faces here and know that they're standing behind what they're doing and that if there was some sort of reputation to be lost, it's lost by a human being, not an avatar of some sort.
You could be anonymous and still have a great reputation. I wish I could be anonymous, to be honest, but when I came into this project after what happened, I was like, “There's no way I could do this anonymously. I have to be doxed because otherwise, the community won't trust me.” Reputation is a function of behavior over time.
You got to have that time investment. If you look at someone like the famous Banksy, Banksy has developed that reputation over years and years. It's affiliated with a pseudonym but it's attached to something meaningful. Let's go to the next one. Number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service or experience that is for sale, what would it be?
I don't buy too many things. It's odd. Honestly, if I could, I would buy a ton of 0N1. I would love to be a whale in my project. Fun fact, I've never bought an 0N1 that I didn't end up giving away as a gift. I technically only own one 0N1 out of the entire collection. Since I know how successful we're going to be, if I could, I would buy 100.
If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I have to be self-aware.
You checked that box.
I went through a long journey to find myself, to be honest. I was very nihilistic when I was young. One day, it clicked that life is beautiful and that people are beautiful. We all deserve love. If I were to pass on one thing, it is to have faith and love for humanity. It's so easy to be cynical and judge each generation as it shows up. I don't like that. If you were to look at a kid or something in their formative years, if you were saying every day to them, “You suck. You're awful,” that would make it hard for them to grow up in a positive manner.
Life is beautiful and people are beautiful. We all deserve love. Click To Tweet
We should be supporting the next generations. When I look at the next generations, they’re incredible and what they could do. The space is truly part of that. If you think about the average age of people in this space that are doing crazy innovative stuff that's going to end up influencing all of reality someday, it’s incredible. You could be 19 years old or 50 years old. It doesn't matter. That's what brings us together. Having some faith in the future would be my answer.
If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
Probably workaholism. I don't think people should work as much as I do. Potentially, they should also enjoy life a little bit more.
Are you a Millennial?
Yeah.
You're an outlier for the Millennials in terms of that.
I'm like a grandpa Millennial. I'm right on the edge of Gen X and Millennials so I am a little bit of an outlier.
Hang out with more Millennials and maybe you'll have some perspective there but I hear you. I suffer from the same illness there.
Question number nine is an easy one. What did you do before joining us on the show?
I was sleeping. I'm in Bali so it was like 6:00 something when I woke up. I did some stretches, took a shower and put on a fresh face. That was what I did before.
The next question is the opposite there. What do you plan on doing after the show?
I have more meetings and then I'm probably going to take a quick nap but I don't know. We have a big announcement in our space coming up so we'll be focusing on that.
Maybe you'll dream of me and Josh in your little nap there. We could go on some sort of Batman adventure or something. I feel like I've seen those. It's Derren Brown or something, this guy who's a magician. He does these special things where he puts you in a room, talks to you for a little bit and influences what you're going to dream about. I'm supplanting a little dream in your head. It's me, Josh and you in Batman costumes, making an 0N1 Force movie. That's going to be what it is.
I've got a great guy in Bali that we know to introduce you to. I'll make the introduction via email after the show.
That would be great. I'm looking for people to connect with while I’m out here.
Let's check in here on our fun new recurring segment where we own and manage our Web3 digital basketball team brought to us by Swoops. Swoops is a blockchain-powered basketball simulation game. It allows users like you and me to own and operate a 100% unique team, enter a real money contest with their squads and win daily cash prizes.
We are very excited. We got through our first season. We did not win the Swooper Bowl. We did not even enter but we have agreed it's time to move on and look forward. We've minted some new players that have pretty high star ratings. It looks like season one. It is our time to shine.
We're ready. We took some bombs and bruises but we learned a lot. At the end of the day, education is power when it comes to the next swipe at success. I'm feeling good about our chances of moving forward.
Swoops 100% sold out for that second consecutive mint.
Congrats. I'm not surprised. They've put together a cool elegant approach to simulating basketball. It's fun. They're using blockchain NFTs to the fullest. Kudos to you guys for selling out.
We're looking into how the pre-season works here and having some fun. They've reset all of the pre-season stats. The squad's road to the next Swooper Bowl begins here. What do you think, Josh? Do you think we're going to do it? Are we going to make it? We're a pretty competitive crew here. I feel like you always got to root for the underdog.
We've made some off-season adjustments to the lineup. I'm feeling much better about our team. No disrespect to our original crew but they needed a little bit more help. Let's say that.
That sounds good. We have a 4-star new player and a couple of 3-star new players. We had a bunch of 1 stars and 5 stars. We were lopsided. We're filling things out, looking to maybe do some trades and play around with what's possible. What do you say we look into what it's like to play a pre-season game? Do you want to try that out?
Yeah. I'm down. The trading market's hot. It looks like someone offered a six-year veteran for an up-and-coming player Jayson Tatum. There is some interesting stuff going on in the trading market if someone has a few minutes to check it out. Let's get into it. Let's test the market and see what's out there. I'm here in pre-season trying to figure out how to stack my lineup and get some practice in. Let's give Swoopster-2793 a chance to see what he can do and then we got to pick some free agents. I've got a guard here. Let's get a guard that can strongly assist. This guy blows everyone else out of the water. Free agent six, you're up for that.
Maybe someone strong on overall scoring gets it done. This guy seems to do that. Free agent three, you're up. It’s time to find a forward, maybe a forward that is good at rebounds. We got free agent six. We are looking for a straight-up forward. Free agent 21 is coming in strong too. Let's give him a shot. For the center, maybe someone can block it. There are a couple of options here with the same blocking results. This guy has a much higher field goal percentage. He probably dunks a lot. That sounds fun. Let's go with him. I'm submitting my lineup. We'll see how this goes.
Josh, that was pretty fun. To be honest, it's fun to get the opportunity since we have more than five players to see what it's like to pick players. In that pre-season, interestingly, we could only pick one of our players. We got to play with some other free agents and see what it's like to pick from what's available and imagine new players on our team.
Before we wrap, it would be great to put something out about naming our new players. We already named Tron Stockton and Chris Polytron. Thanks to our fans out there on the socials that answered our Twitter polls. We're going to head up next to our highest-rated players at the moment beyond those two is Swoopster-2794. We'll come up with some names. We'll put out a poll on Twitter and see what you guys think. It should be pretty fun.
Let's do it.
That concludes our segment on Swoops this time around. The fun is beginning once again. If you're interested in playing with us, you can always go over to OpenSea, pick up some Swoopsters and put your team together. You can go to PlaySwoops.com to play with us. If you need the coupon code, it's EDGEOFNFT.
On to Hot Topics, this episode’s hot topic features Danny Yang of Metagood. Danny is the Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of Metagood. He yields a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford and a BA from Harvard. I've heard of those. He previously founded MaiCoin, Taiwan's largest cryptocurrency exchange and BlockSeer, a blockchain analytics company sold in 2018, which is one of the first visual block explorers for Bitcoin in Ethereum. He also founded the Stanford Bitcoin Meetup in 2013.
Danny's expertise and passion have played a pivotal role in the success of Metagood's ground-breaking project, OnChainMonkey, as the first 10K NFT PFP collection created in a single transaction on Ethereum. As the first 10K inscribed a Bitcoin, OnChainMonkey has made waves in the crypto space and exemplifies Danny's dedication, pushing the boundaries of technology and social impact. Danny, welcome to the show.
It’s great to be here.
It’s great to have you.
It's an honor to have you. I feel like our paths have crossed with OnChainMonkey so many times from originally having Bill and Amanda on the show to falling in love with the project. I should say for full disclosure, we do hold official OnChainMonkeys. We are excited about what you guys are doing in this space.
Thanks. What's the hot topic?
You tell us. You guys are pioneering in the biggest way with the Ordinals protocol on this Dimensions collection. We’ve heard about it and read the blog post but tell us about it in your words. It's a big deal.
Bitcoin Ordinals is a hot topic. Bitcoin has been around for a number of years. In terms of crypto, it is the blockchain that has been around with the biggest network. We were seeing NFTs being that whole market appearing on Bitcoin. We saw it on Ethereum, Solana and other chains. On Ethereum, one of the big things was the ICO craze a couple of years ago. That was ERC-20 and then it was ERC-721 with NFTs. You haven't seen either of those play out on Bitcoin. Bitcoin Ordinals, what it empowers is stuff like that on Bitcoin. We're going to see a lot of growth, applications and new stuff helping on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Ordinals.
Bitcoin Ordinals, for people who haven't paid too much attention, is a quite new protocol that came out that lives on top of Bitcoin protocol. There are two parts to it. There's an Ordinal and inscription. It's a very simple design on top of Bitcoin. What it allows people to do is create NFTs but it's a different type of NFT. It is an NFT that is all on-chain. You could argue it's a digital artifact. It's not one where you point to, let's say, IPFS or another centralized server somewhere that hosts an image. That's a pretty important distinction.
When you think about Bitcoin and fungible tokens, they are all on-chain because they live on-chain. The representation of Bitcoin is all on Bitcoin. It is not put in the bank somewhere out in the world. The blockchain speaks the truth there. With digital assets on Bitcoin using Ordinals, these are all on-chain digital artifacts. It's a new protocol. People are experimenting with it.
My background is I've been working in the Bitcoin space for a number of years. You could say I'm originally a Bitcoin maxi who went on to experiment with other chains too. I've built on Bitcoin for most of my crypto career. With Bitcoin and blockchain, the white paper is very simple. It describes an elegant system. The scripting language is purposely reduced so that it maintains its security design or security model. You can't do too much with it but with the Ordinals protocol, you could do enough and simply.
When we saw this come out, we have been working on a 3D journey of collection, Dimensions, for a number of months since 2022 even before Ordinals existed. We were planning to do it as an on-chain collection on Ethereum but as soon as we saw Ordinals, we said, “It’s the perfect medium to do this generative work on Bitcoin.” We quickly adjusted and redesigned it. We redesigned Dimensions on Bitcoin in a Bitcoin native way. It's even better on Bitcoin than the original Ethereum. It supports a number of things that we’ll reveal pretty soon about what’s special about Dimensions and what's great about enabling other creators to create on Bitcoin.
Let's go back to Dimensions. It's a 3D generative art collection on Bitcoin Ordinals. We had an application process for people to mint the first 300 of those and that already closed. We got a pretty big response. Over 6,000 people applied for the 300 spots. The mint will be on June 15th, 2023. In two weeks, we'll have the mint for those. That should be a pretty exciting period.
The work itself pushes the boundaries of what you can do with the Ordinals protocol. You can't do what we're doing with the Ordinals protocol. We've been working with the org team, wallets, marketplace and the ecosystem to help advance the protocol so that we could do more powerful things on the Ordinals protocol. Dimensions, the work itself, we inscribed back in February 2023. It's been four months since we created the original work. In two weeks, the Ordinals protocol ecosystem will be ready for us to mint it and have people own those unique pieces.
Can everyone participate in the mint? There's something that has to do with owning the set of the Genesis OnChainMonkeys. How does that all fit into the picture?
With the collection, we're doing a special mint of the first 300 on June 15th, 2023. That is straight on Bitcoin. It is also a unique Bitcoin minting experience. That's where we took the applications that we said we got a bunch in. Of those people that applied, 300 of them will get a chance to mint that. For other people, you can buy it on secondary, which will be available on June 15th, 2023.
For OCM holders or OnChainMonkey holders, there's an additional supply of these that will be re-created over time. If you're familiar with OnChainMonkey, we have desserts. The OCM Genesis or OG OCM membership PFP can burn a dessert to get karma. We are going to have some allocations of burnable ETH tokens that the OG Genesis can burn and then they will receive a Dimension when they burn that thing. That comes later. That process will also happen over many months and probably years. The supply will go up slowly but it will be capped. There's a total cap of Dimensions at 2,500 but 300 are what's maintained in 2 weeks.
There are lots going on there. We are jumping on something very intriguing here. It looks like the Asprey Bugatti egg collection uses the same tech as the Dimension collection. Tell us about that connection there.
One of the things that people are slowly realizing is how Bitcoins work. It works because Bitcoin miners are paid to secure it by mining. They're paid a block reward for every block. They can also get paid by transaction fees. There is a concern that transaction fees might not be enough to pay them because a block reward is going down to halves every cycle. At some point, it's going to be very little block reward or zero block reward for miners long-term.
Transaction fees are only paid if there's a use of Bitcoin. For the last couple of years, the main use of Bitcoin is to store value. It's to securely store the value of your Bitcoin. You don't have to transfer that back and forth all that often. Sending Bitcoin on Bitcoin is super cheap because the transaction fees are low but that won't be the case because of things like Ordinals where you have use and utility for Bitcoin, the blockchain, beyond to store the value of your Bitcoin. What that means and not everyone has realized this yet, is Bitcoin fees are going to be proportional to how much use and utility Bitcoin is. There's going to be a lot more utility because of something like Bitcoin Ordinals.
Let's say, for art, like creating art, it's a new medium. The digital art or digital artifacts I described have to be stored on Bitcoin on-chain. How much storage is there each year? It is a maximum of 200 gigabytes. Practice is much less. It is probably even less than 100 gigabytes a year in practice. That is pretty much the most sought-after digital real estate you could have in the world. People will pay for it. The whole world will pay to use that. People haven't caught on yet. This is the best time to create stuff on Bitcoin because you are buying expensive digital real estate for very cheap. In the future, let's say in 2024, you'll be paying appropriate market prices for that digital real estate.
What does that mean for what we're doing? With what we're doing with Dimensions or the Asprey Bugatti egg collection, this is the way that when fees are what they should be on Bitcoin, which is high, you want to optimize whatever you're doing. Whether it is art or other applications, you want to optimize how you use digital real estate in the best way. You see that even in the world. In big cities, how do they optimize the land area? They build skyscrapers. All big cities have skyscrapers because that's the best way to use the space you have.
The same thing is going to happen to digital real estate on Bitcoin. It's also a very technical thing of who can have the best techniques to use that real estate and make it optimal for the whole world to use. We're showing one broad way of things you can do on how you can build on Bitcoin this valuable digital real estate with Dimensions. That is part of the art that is beyond the 3D art that you see. We've shown the 3D art but we're going to reveal more of that and what it means. You're building skyscrapers on Bitcoin. That's also the art of OCM Dimensions.
I see Starlordy’s pontificating face there as he is processing all this. You're a fan of this project. You understand a little bit more about it. Do you have any thoughts or questions for Danny?
This is exactly why I'm fascinated with OnChainMonkey. You guys are thinking very tech-forward and what it means in first principles. I am curious. How do you separate the two chains in terms of what your community expectations are? How does that play into how you manage the expectations?
You're talking between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin and Ethereum are very different chains. One's a UTXO model proof of work. The other one is a smart contract, churning complete type of system, proof of estate. We'll do the appropriate things on each chain. We're quite focused on Bitcoin because the protocol is so early. There's so much to do. There are many opportunities to shape it for a very productive or valuable future for the industry. There's so much we're doing there.
One way to look at it also is even though they're very different chains, the things of DeFi, like minor extractive value types of attacks, have been a lot of things we've learned on Ethereum. That is because smart contracting has enabled people to build apps, go crazy and explore and experiment on Ethereum. That hasn't happened yet on Bitcoin. It won't play out the same way on Bitcoin but some of those things will be happening on Bitcoin. Those learnings from Ethereum will apply to Bitcoin.
Teams that have an experience with both chains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, which we do, will have an advantage. Also, this is good for more collaboration between the Bitcoin experts and Ethereum experts to collaborate and build future applications on Bitcoin. That can get some of the best of both worlds because they're very different but they're combining some of these ideas that will make for new things that will create, on Bitcoin, quite a bit of value for Bitcoin.
Will that have different expectations from the community in terms of utility or why they should have both chains in their portfolio? How do you manage that?
We have digital artifacts. On-chain is the most secure and long-lasting. We're about long-lasting value. The thing we want to last the longest, we're going to move over to Bitcoin. The Genesis collection will be one that's migrated to Bitcoin from Ethereum. That was one we inscribed very early on. Its inscription is 20219. We were able to time it so that it is the exact year and month that the original Genesis locked in Ethereum. It is 2021 in September. Inscription 20219 is the whole collection of Genesis on Bitcoin. We're waiting for the protocol upgrade so that the Genesis holders on Ethereum can switch over to Bitcoin for that collection. That is a generative collection done efficiently on Bitcoin.
We did the whole 10,000 collection. It was the first 10,000 collection inscribed on Bitcoin. We did it very quickly or rather efficiently without clogging the network so no one using Bitcoin at the time was bothered by it. The whole collection with metadata images took less than 20,000 bytes of that. I was describing the expensive real estate on Bitcoin to digital real estate. It took 20 kilobytes for 10,000. If you divide it out per image, it is less than 2 bytes per image, which is very small. People wouldn't even believe that you could do it that way. That is one example of how you can build these skyscrapers on Bitcoin that are valuable for future creators.
Thanks for your questions, Starlordy. Was there something else? Did you get most of it covered? That’s good because we're getting quite technical here.
Going back to non-technical, Henry has some great points about the importance of reputation and core values for the community. When we launched OnChainMonkey, one of the first things was establishing the core values that we believed in and what our community believes in. We have an acronym for it. It's RISE. People in our community say that every day. R stands for Respect. I stands for Integrity. S is Sustainability. E is for Enrichment. Those are our four core values. That also shapes our community. When new people join, they ask me, “Why is everyone saying RISE?” We can then explain the values of our community.
I appreciate you taking the time, Danny. It was very enlightening to spend time with you. Before we wrap with this segment, can you give us someplace to send the audience to find out more about you and what's going on with Metagood, OnChainMonkey, Dimensions and all this stuff?
Our main Twitter account, @OnChainMonkey, probably gets the most updated stuff every day and then Discord for getting follow-up from our community, mod and team in there. Those are the best two places.
Thank you so much for joining. It's been a pleasure. We hope to see you again on the flip side soon. We'll catch you later. We would love to go to our shout-out segment. Our shout-out segment allows you to give a shout-out to someone you got some respect for or some project or something. What do you have on your mind there, Starlordy, for a shout-out?
I do have a shout-out. I want to make wishes to my boy, Dan Hoban, who is a Founder of a project called The Sad Times. He works in fashion. He's developed a cool clothing line that's been worn by big names like Justin Bieber and Shaun White. The list goes on. He is a good dude. He has a cool project that I was supportive of when it launched. He's going to do some cool stuff. I don't know why that popped into my head. I feel like he's a classic Web3 underdog story where he is a super talented, great person, very forward-thinking and a great artist, which is the type of people we support. I want to give him a shout-out or a little shine.
It's perfect for this segment because we often give our audience something to tap into Google and Twitter and learn about something that they might not know before. That's great. That's pretty much the most of the episode. We're about to wrap here. Closing an outro here, where can the audience go to learn more about you and the projects you're working on there?
The 0N1Force website is 01NForce.com. It is the same thing for Twitter. My Twitter is @StarLordyFTW. Those are the best places to start.
We do understand that you're doing a generous giveaway of an NFT from the collection. That is very generous. We appreciate it. It is a great project as we've heard throughout this episode. If you're a reader and you're interested because it piqued your interest or you haven't heard of it or you're waiting for your opportunity to get in, here it is. Go to our socials. Go to our Twitter, @EdgeOfNFT and keep track of what's going on. We'll tell you about the giveaway out there. Our newsletter is also a great place to find out about giveaways. It is Edge of NFT Newsletter on Substack.
This is not financial advice but this is the OG collection and one of the originals. The floor's been moving up north based on all the exciting things happening in the community. This is a community that you want to be a part of and that you're excited by what Starlordy has shared. It's a fantastic opportunity to get into the community without any kind of barriers to entry. Thanks so much for sharing that gift with our community.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for hosting me at the conference too. That was a great experience. I’m happy to be here.
We have reached the outer limit of 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 and iTunes. Rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT with no spaces. Start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Watch.OuterEdge.live
- 0N1 Force
- Episode 60 – Past Episode
- OnChainMonkey
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- PlaySwoops.com
- Metagood
- Bill Tai and Amanda Terry – Past Episode
- @OnChainMonkey
- Discord – Metagood
- The Sad Times
- Twitter – 0N1 FORCE
- @StarLordyFTW - Twitter
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
- Edge of NFT Newsletter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT Podcast
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
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