Luxury isn’t something you typically associate with blockchains and NFTs. Lukso is working to change that perception. In this episode, Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley & Josh Kriger interview Marjorie Hernandez , cofounder of the digital lifestyle blockchain platform. Marjorie talks about how Lukso was conceptualized and how the concept of luxury brands will change with the advent of blockchains and NFTs. Tune in as we learn more about the digital lifestyle today.
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Marjorie Hernandez, Co-Founder Of Lukso On Supporting the Digital Economy Of The Multiverse, Plus: DKNY NFT, Opensea’s Surprisingly Small Team, And More…
This episode features Marjorie Hernandez, Cofounder of LUKSO, the blockchain for a new digital lifestyle at the intersection of digital and physical goods. Marjorie is a multifaceted design and innovation expert, equal parts entrepreneur and designer. She has supported organizations across Europe to outward latent unmet needs into holistic experiences around them.
An architect and designer by training, Marjorie spent most of her professional career creating ideas and concepts for her clients, ranging from well-known artists and creative agencies to one of the big four accounting firms. As the digital transformation and strategy executive, Hernandez collaborated closely with Ethereum and the Iota Foundation. She takes special interests in the confluence of design and tech, as well as in which ways those can be used to promote well-being and create new business models. Marjorie also cofounded THE DEMATERIALISED, powered by LUKSO, an experimental marketplace for fashion NFTs. Marjorie is a transformational leader in blockchain tech and fashion. We are lucky to have her here to chat with us.
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Marjorie, welcome.
Thank you. That was well done. Thank you for having me.
That’s because of your impressive background. Great having you here.
You’re in the fashion industry. You know how starting off with the right look is important to having a great day.
That’s true. I agree. The outside forms the inside and vice versa.
We’re pumped to hear about what you’re doing, what you’re up to with LUKSO and everything that that you can share with us. We wanted to start at the beginning and learn a little bit more about your first exposure to NFTs. What was that experience like? Was it something where you knew right away this was going to be the path for you or was it more of a slow burn?
I wouldn’t say it was super-fast since the beginning but I was intrigued since the first time I heard about NFTs. It was the CryptoPunks and then the next time I heard about it was with the CryptoKitties. That was, back then for the Ethereum community, a super big moment. It was like, “The Ethereum network is full. It’s super challenging. There’s no transaction right now because everybody was breeding CryptoKitties.” That gave all of us a taste of how blockchain technology will look.
We all knew it’s going to impact many industries but it wasn’t clear how those experiences are going to be, which products are going to be first. That gave us the first taste of like, “This is what it would be like for a regular consumer or buying a regular asset using blockchain technology that is not trading, speculating doing all of that stuff.” I was immediately intrigued. I knew it was the beginning of something but as time evolved, I got more fascinated about the thing. By 2017, I was sure that this is it.
One of the interesting things early on was so much of it was about trading and collectibles and the full spectrum of possibilities around NFTs wasn’t that evident or wasn’t that talked about. It was that transition, at least for me personally, that was massive. It was mind-blowing. When I realized, “This can be used for more than collectibles or nostalgic items,” which is a huge market. It has a big place here. There’s much more to this.
It begs the question, when specifically did the LUKSO concept come together?
Me and my cofounder, Fabian, went to university together in Germany. Since then, we have always collaborated on all kinds of projects, data projects in the university. We teamed together and did a bunch of stuff together. When we started working, each one of us was on our own path. Fabian became part of the Ethereum Foundation. I was doing a strategy and consultancy in Germany and Switzerland.
Luxury Blockchain: There’s some understanding about the value of digital goods. We are all observing these because even if we’re not that old, we want to bond with it.
One of the many nights, we’re always talking and thinking about what it will be to create the tools because he had done ERC-20 at that point in time. It was at the moment that we were starting to get this mass adoption around ERC-20. It became super evident how when you standardize certain pieces in the smart contract that you can create this network effect of, all of a sudden, having adoption by an unlimited amount of people.
At that point, we decided, “What would it be like if we created tools and applications that will power creators of culture to enter the blockchain space? How will it be if we have the ability to tokenize cultural goods or consumer goods in a simple way and have the same ability to scale and monetizing as people had with ERC-20?” That was the beginning of it. That was in 2017. At that point in time, we were both having our respective jobs. By the end of 2017, we were convinced with the idea of moving forward and putting those thoughts into LUKSO.
It’s interesting because we often talk about the Edge of NFT as the intersection of technology and culture. When you look at what’s happened now, you’re pioneers and ahead of your time because that is the conversation. When people ask, “Why are NFT is selling for thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars?” It has to do with this intangible around technology and culture. How do you describe that to people because it’s hard for you to grasp like, “What’s going on here?”
First of all, it goes to the immateriality, intangibility and dematerialization of the good itself. Including us, we come from a world in which you invest your money in things that you can see and touch. People have a challenge more around the lack of materiality of this course. Even if we have a physical counterpart, the challenge goes upon those things.
We all understand that the value of things is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not always related to physicality. The value of the Mona Lisa is not the canvas and the painting. It’s all of these things around it. Blockchain technology and all of these digital goods, what make this tangible and make it easy for a creator or an artist to basically be able to capture that value and to see the results of it immediately.
I don’t think it’s a foreign process. I don’t think it’s a process that is not related to how culture has worked but all of a sudden, we have it at a bigger scale, like these hype cycles becoming more evident. The thing around scarcity is the whole NFT world is like a Supreme shop 24/7. This is always demanding lines and people seeing and playing with dynamics that come up with the hype cycle.
We will have some of the hype cycles but maybe it’s a different conversation we can have. Eventually, we will have a little bit of normalization around consumption. This is something that I look forward to. This is not about the hype and the crazy prices and how many millions per one NFT but it’s that daily consumption of every digital good that gets purchased on the internet. The metaverse is happening over effectively NFTs.
I totally understand. I’m thinking about our social media coordinator who tries to take a quote from each episode and turned it into a graphic and you’ve given her a lot to work with. We could check that box.
You’ve talked a lot about your enthusiasm for what’s going on with NFTs and consumer goods and things like that. You were chatting with us about how friends of yours in the business world were saying, “Why didn’t you do something in DeFi?” You have a serious background, the ability to do something that’s not so engaged with typically fun, entertaining and consumer-based things necessarily. Why do you think you picked that? What was your answer to people when they were asking you why you chose this instead of a DeFi project?
First of all, from a personal interest perspective, Fabian and I met at design school. Prior to that, I had studied architecture so my personal interest is in cultural and cultural goods. All of the DeFi protocols are fascinating as they are. If there’s not a real economy around them, they become self-serving. We have our bank accounts, credit cards and all of this stuff but we have them for what? We want to buy cool stuff. That’s the end game.
We all want to be able to afford cool stuff that we like. That cool stuff for me and everybody who’s younger than me, especially, it mostly tends to be a digital good or a good that has a digital representation as well. At that moment in time, we thought this is the biggest transformation of our time. It is the dematerialization of consumption that can be powered by blockchain technology.
Everybody was thinking about DeFi protocols because of all of the money that was being generated but when it comes to real mainstream adoption, we are all more excited about owning cool stuff that we like than being stakeholders in some DeFi protocol. That’s cool and all but what passions most people is cultural interaction or consumer interaction. It’s how we started but it was funny back then especially for Fabian more than me. “You’re a serious guy with the ERC-20. Why are you into sneakers or whatever?” People thought at the time. We do something with DeFi but we both had a passion for culture and technology. It was a no-brainer for us.
This sounds like distant history, how long ago were people asking you these questions and have these conversations?
At the beginning of 2017 when we started thinking about that, I would tell people and I will go to my friends in fashion and artists. They were all super excited. They were like, “I don’t understand what you’re saying but it sounds like it could be the future.” Our friends and contacts from the blockchain space were always quite skeptical but it changed.
What was the moment that everyone got it? Was it when you guys collaborated with Chanel? Was there a particular drop that you did where everyone was like, “This makes sense?”
We did collaborate with Chanel. We have two advisers from Chanel. The most recent and most relevant one is Eric Pfrunder, who was with Chanel for over 37 years and was the image director. He and Karl Lagerfeld work hand-in-hand. It was a creative marriage. Eric, we met and I told him that story several times. He told me, “Karl would have been fascinated by this. He would have been the first person to jump into this wagon of technology because Karl was fond of technology. It was something that he liked.” When you have a person like him with all of his heritage and all of his cultural values, it validates for a lot of people.
In the general perception of LUKSO, people have started changing. They were in lockdown and they start realizing they might be up to something when they keep talking about the dematerialization of goods and spending a lot of time in virtual environments. When everybody was in confinement, it was like, “This makes sense. We all need these avenues of consumption that are not physical ones.” Definitely, these are things that we have achieved through our network and the business development activities and our advisory board, who have definitely complex support of an argument.
It’s interesting how the quarantine and the virus accelerated and influenced a lot of this stuff and made it real and tangible for folks. I have been working on virtual projects since the same time around 2017. I had a lot of people scratching their heads and then jumping on board around 2019. As we get back into travel too, there’s an idea that people can get out of their houses and get out of the digital world so maybe they’re not going to care as much. Interestingly enough, if you look at me, I’m traveling to Los Angeles to go visit Josh so we can work on our episodes about NFTs.
For example, for the basic stuff, I use my son as my research. You also get inspired by the stuff that he’s interested in because he’s the consumer of the future. For the last few years, he has not asked for anything that is physical besides hardware. Everything he wants to buy is digital. He’s always in Discord with his friends. During the lockdown, they were all the time on Discord, hanging out together.
They do these parties and then they make the slang to buy the Gucci Roblox drop. They were screaming at the top of their lungs with their excitement for this good. I take Joshua anywhere. He’s being all over the world in any type of city. He likes it. He enjoys it. He appreciates it. He likes seeing the architecture and the art but he doesn’t want to buy anything. I take him into shops and say, “What do you want?” He’s like, “Nothing.”
His grandmother gave him €50 for his birthday. He shows me the money. He’s like, “What can I do with this?” I was like, “Don’t worry. Give it to me and then you can use it from my credit card.” He’s always trying to mine crypto and all of this stuff. He understands it. It’s not only him but so many of his friends are the same. That’s something interesting.
There’s a generational shift. There’s also a different understanding of the value of digital goods. We are all observing these almost as anthropologists because even if we’re not that old, we weren’t born with it. We weren’t born looking into an iPhone. This was sci-fi for us. We’re still trying to understand a phenomenon that is still slightly outside of our initial nature but for these guys, this is the built environment. This is how it is. It’s been part of their life since the beginning. There is an understanding and appreciation for the digital good that is as real and as important as anything else. If not, even more.
“Grandma, you don’t have a MetaMask? Grandma, what are you doing?”
Joshua will prefer like, “Do you want to get this Rolex for your eighteenth birthday? Do you want a Bitcoin?” He will tell you that he prefers that Bitcoin.
What a world. It’s amazing. We haven’t given folks the goods on LUKSO yet. Tell them what LUKSO is, why it’s important to the space and a little bit more about the platform.
Luxury Blockchain: People who into fashion trends love the digital stuff, but they get intimidated by the whole crypto scene.
Our team’s mission is to demystify and make it simple for creators and users to utilize and interact with blockchain technology. That’s the core premise. We wanted to make it super simple for anyone to be able to issue, manage and control their NFTs or whatever type of digital goods they might own. That was the main premise of LUKSO.
When we started, we have our own network which is an Ethereum sister chain. For us, it is super important to remain compatible with Ethereum. We’re putting most of our time in our research and development time and Fabian’s time into standardizing the core pieces that we think are super important parts to create an ecosystem.
We came down to the key component which is the identity of the user, creator and identities for the products. We have created this complex matrix of established smart contract standards in order to enable different types of interaction and different types of NFTs to exist. The main tool being something that we call universal profile, which is supposed to represent your own chain profile. It is supposed to have nothing to do with your hard identity. It’s your own chain profile where you effectively will issue and receive NFTs.
That identifier is the place where you can go and verify, “This was issued by Virgil Abloh, Chanel or Joshua,” and then from there, they start going into the market and transporting, etc. We are taking the complexity away from it. The key management and all of that stuff have been simplified tremendously. We see that as the key component that is necessary in order to have that mainstream adoption of blockchain tech.
This is something that we test extensively on my second venture with THE DEMATERIALISED, which is a digital fashion marketplace. We are targeting regular fashion consumers, people who love fashion, who are into trends and love the digital stuff but they get intimidated by the whole crypto scene. They come to our website and issue in the profile. It is super simple. They can purchase in a very seamless fashion. We transfer the ownership all in the background and then they can manage the profiles. It’s easy in the same way you manage any of your social media accounts.
With DEMATERIALISED, is this digital-only or digital and physical or a mix of both?
It’s meant to be digital-only. We did a drop with one physical garment. It was cool because the designer was conceptual and smart. Her name is Gala from TRIBUTE BRAND. What we had on the side was an NFT with an audio file of her describing the product and a picture of the texture of the product that she was going to use. It was one of a kind because it was made for the person who bought it. We have these moments in which we might go for physical but we prefer to remain digital.
Taking a step back, you’ve been a pioneer in this space. What do you see is the future of Web 3.0 consumer consumption? What challenges do we need to solve along the way? What’s coming down the pike?
There are still a lot of problems that LUKSO is solving and the other companies are solving that people have not realized yet their problems. Once people start realizing all of the money they were giving into buying skills in games and all of the money we’re investing online, we are not buying anything. We are just gaining access. We’re paying for the right to access a specific thing. Once a person realizes you’re not owning a thing, that consumer needs of, “If I’m going to give you my money, I want to own something. I want to have access regardless of your platform. Regardless if you still are in business in ten years or if you don’t like me anymore and you want to blacklist me, I want to own my stuff.”
Once that consumer is going to come at this, it’s going to come super soon. A lot of the things that we have are the most of the things that you can buy and what you consume online are in some form or another NFT or a token. It would be the means of consumption in the future of the internet on the metaverse. It is going to be some blockchain assets. That’s the future. How do we get to make it easier? The user journey has to be simplified. It comes down to that. It is something that needs to happen like MetaMask and all of those steps. They’re massive barriers of entry. I know a lot of people get intimidated. A lot of women get intimidated so we need to simplify that.
That’s something that LUKSO is proposing. It’s the absolute killer application that we’re doing with universal profiles and something that could be implemented in Etherium as well because we are going to publish everything open source. Having that ability to have your own chain profile and that being your profile that you 100% control, where your ownership and identity are sitting. From there, you have the access to different applications and games, etc.
Will that Onchain profile work across chains? Now, there are NFTs on MATIC, Solana, BMB or Binance Smart Chain. Is that the goal?
Yeah. There are a lot of technical impediments that I’m not 100% aware of what it will mean to do it. I know you could have the same standard deployed, for example, in Ethereum that, by no means, you still have two separate profiles. You have a profile in LUKSO and a profile on Ethereum. The NFT world now is big but we’re all in the monkey cage so it feels bigger than it is. It’s not that big yet. In the past, we’re thinking, “I have Facebook and I have Myspace.” At this point, most boys and girls are posting using Instagram.
There will come to a point where you have that one place that you like. The stuff that you own in the past, you’ll realize you cannot verify their offer. There’s a lot of problems with those NFTs. They might not be as valuable as you thought so you might not be too much thinking about the past and think about the future in that place where you have access to all of the cool stuff, your profile is easy to use, etc.
Thanks for going into that detail about your ideas of universal public profiles. I know LUKSO is working on this new digital economy including cultural currencies and digital certificates. We haven’t explicitly talked about the roadmap. What can you say about the roadmap for LUKSO from this point forward?
2021 is an important year for us. A lot of the things that we’ve been talking and working on are coming to fruition. We are expecting to deploy and release a lot of the things that we have built by the end of 2021. That includes our mainnet, a stable version of universal profiles and the universal profile extension. We’re also coming with a digital wallet, which is a digital fashion app where you can hold your NFTs, wear them and do stuff with them.
These are the things that we have in the pipeline that we’re hoping and looking forward to releasing before the end of 2021. LUKSO is a German company so it has a Germanic culture. Although things are not as good as they can be, there’s a strict CTO who won’t let them be out before there have to be standards. The quest is very dramatic, understated, underpromised and over-delivered, which I personally enjoy. We are pushing by the end of 2021 to have a lot of that stuff.
I saw your blog entry talking about how you guys are so intentional with not overhyping things. There ia a slim minority of folks that approach things that way. It’s great and it’s important to the industry that we do what we say and we say what we do.
We try our best to have that ethos too here. That’s what people are paying attention to. It’s interesting how you put it, Marjorie. There’s that hype and there may be a place for it in the coming days. You’re trying to take a reserved approach to this, think long-term and what’s the foundation here.
It’s easy to be seduced by the opportunity of creating hype around something. The point with the hype cycle is it’s difficult to maintain long-term. There has to be a certain level of organic growth attached to it and actual substance. It will be us in the best case as well. We invested a lot of time into making sure that we issue our token in Germany and we are in compliance with German Regulatory Law. We have put a lot of effort into creating not only a solid legal foundation but as a way the company operates to have it solid, made in Germany and all of that stuff. We are thinking about, “If you want to be something that lasts long, you have to have patience.” We hope that by the time everything is ready and we’re ready to launch, we can organically enter some of these cycles of extreme excitement of our center topics.
I was looking over your LinkedIn profile and saw that you were a chapter ambassador for Singularity University. That’s an interesting overlap with what you’re doing and it’s a forward-thinking organization. We like to get a perspective from folks about what they think is going to happen long-term, how do you see the industry of NFT several years from now or where things are going. I love an answer from you on your thoughts about the far future. If you have anything to add from your experience with working with Singularity, we’d love to know that as well.
I like Singularity. I had a great week there. It’s like a summer camp for adults. Once you become a grown-up and you’re not in university anymore, we don’t hang out. I’m either working or doing these or that. I don’t hang anymore. It is great because you go for a week and then there’s a bunch of people interested to hang and listen to smart people talking about different topics. It’s cool for your brain to shake things up every now and then, put new content and stuff like that.
There’s this author, Edward de Bono, who talks a lot about how creativity works. Creativity works when you have to constantly destroy your built-in reactions. If you think about a house then the archetype appears in your brain so you have to constantly break those archetypes up. I felt like, “I will go there and see what it can do for me and my archetypes.” It was super cool. Sometimes, it feels a bit cultish but it’s super interesting and they have fair points.
It comes down to what you guys were asking before about what is the hype around NFTs, where is the value and how to explain it to people. In a world where we know computers are going to be better than us in everything, the creative value, impracticability and spontaneity of humans are going to be a real asset. In the future economy, creative goods are going to be the most appreciated goods that we can trade.
Everything that you would be buying in the digital world would be in NFT. Effectively, a lot of goods that you buy in the physical world especially luxury stuff, might need to have some digital tokenized presence that can be also seen as an NFT or potentially they will be NFTs. Otherwise, when I meet my friends from brands, I always bring them a handbag with our digital identities like an iPhone without a battery. This sweet phone design does nothing for you. We need to have that layer of experience on top of stuff.
Luxury Blockchain: It will come a point where you have that one place that you just really like the stuff that you own in the past, you realize you cannot really verify the offer. There’s a lot of problems with those fees.
Creativity is our number one asset as humans.
Marjorie, one last question before we wrap. Besides what you are doing at LUKSO, what other projects in the space excite you with regard to NFTs?
My personal favorite is RTFKT Studios. They’re absolutely brilliant. They might have one of the most talented teams. They created an insane amount of creative output just by three people for a long time. RTFKT is cool. I enjoy their work and everything they do. There’s another Russian digital artist. He’s spotted with CGi work. There are a couple of cool creatives.
There’s a guy in a community in LUKSO. He goes under Alts Anonymous on Twitter. The stuff that he produced, I’m like, “When do you have the time to produce this amount of creative content having a full-time job on top?” There are a lot of the projects that are associated with LUKSO or DEMATERIALISED, which is my venture.
Our friend, Dennis Lisk, which is a fairly famous German rapper, is doing this VR club like mirroring the Berlin nightlife scene in the digital world. It’s a super exciting project. The guy is from FANZONE who are tokenizing sports collectibles and they venture the spin out of Fischer. They’re doing a lot of cool stuff with the German football and soccer team. It’s interesting stuff.
In general, there are a lot of good projects all over the digital fashions in the NFT space. What’s missing is to bring some of the old people, the heritage to our space. That would be interesting to have and what we will do with some of that stuff. What we were doing with Karl Lagerfeld Archives and things like that would be super cool to have more of those.
Take notes, readers, we’ve got some cool projects out there. If you haven’t heard of them, it’d be great to run those down and then see what you think for yourself. Should we transition from segment 1 to segment 2 and hit some Edge Quick Hitters?
Yeah. Marjorie is going to have some good answers.
Edge Quick Hitters are a fun quick way to get to know you a little better. There are ten questions and we’re looking for a short single word or a few-word response but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Let’s dive in. Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It was a CD from Oasis when I was eleven or something.
Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
I was good at drawing in school. For the art class or the joined classes, I will sell my talent to my fellow students and do their homework for them in exchange for money.
Good service. I see all of that in the background, the city, architecture and design. It’s all coming together in your history.
I could make NFT selling homeworks.
That would be interesting. Question number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
I bought a Bottega Veneta handbag.
I’m not familiar with that.
It’s a cool brand. The designer used to be part of Phoebe Philo’s team at CELINE, which is a core thing because Phoebe Philo hasn’t worked in a while. He was one of her guys. I bought a handbag from them.
Clearly, we need Marjorie to hook us up with some fashion consulting.
All three of you look great but if you ever want to add some more, let me know.
She’s good at lying too.
It’s not true. It’s your personal style.
Let’s move on to question number four. What’s the most recent thing you sold?
Shares from THE DEMATERIALISED, a bit of free seat if that counts as selling.
Number five, what is your most prized possession?
Luxury Blockchain: It’s very difficult to maintain the hype-cycle in the long-term. There has to be certain level of organic growth attached to it and actual substance.
I don’t want to say something cheesy but I have a son and boys are not expressive but he writes very nice letters every now and then. It’s two sentences. If those will be gone, I will be devastated. Everything else gone, I don’t care but those letters are cool.
What’s an example of something he said in one of his letters?
He did an essay at school that he gave me after. They have to write an essay about something they like. He said, “I like my mom because she never gets angry at me and she always understands me.”
That’s so special.
He’s a guy. By the time he’s 30, he’s never going to write me a letter ever again.
He could be nurturing a superpower. That’s amazing.
I can see how those sweet letters also might be useful in getting out of trouble in other situations. He might continue.
I like those notes. If everything is burning, I will try to reach for those.
Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service and experience and it’s currently for sale, what would it be?
I would like to buy an extensive piece of land in South America, somewhere between Venezuela and Brazil, in that area. The future of the planet is down there. It’s an amazing piece of land where I can feel like something cool.
I got my eye on an island in Argentina if you want to split it.
In a bit North of South America, we tend to have our reservations with Argentinians. We love Argentinians but we tease them because they’re too good at football and they think they’re so great, which they are. Argentina is definitely an interest. I have a phobia of islands. I don’t like islands. I like to be able to live by the Earth, not boats, not swimming. I want to be able to go but it sounds good though. If you get it, I will go visit. The first thing that came to mind, Jeff, when you asked me that question was, “Unlimited time to do things that normally don’t fit in the schedule.” If I could buy time but that’s not feasible.
The one resource we can’t buy back. Let’s move on to question seven. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would that be?
If there’s something I like about me, I’m not afraid of things. Going to a new country completely changed my life. I’m afraid of other stuff but I’m not afraid of massive things. It’s feeling brave enough to follow whatever you need to follow and feel adventurous. I’m a little bit of a nature explorer. A lot of people in the new world tend to have that trait, being explorers. Not being afraid of taking risks.
On the flip side of that question, if you can eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
That personality trait comes together with also not changing direction relatively fast because you’re not afraid of changing direction. That sometimes can be difficult for the people near you. Being better at communicating and being more thoughtful about people’s feelings in your adventurous nature is something that I would like to have and I’m trying to improve. Communicate better with others. Also, understand that not everybody feels comfortable taking a lot of risks so you have to take it easy.
I get that one. You’ll freak the people out around you. “What are you doing? What is this? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?”
Take the time to convince them to get on that bus to the unknown with you.
Communicating is good.
Question nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I had a coffee and a piece of chocolate because I always think my brain works better on coffee and chocolate. I talked to my team. We’re planning to go to New York. We were planning a new job trip.
Last question, easy one, question ten. What are you going to do next after the show?
I will drive home to hang out with Joshua. I am hosting a friend who is coming over for dinner. He’s going to help us out with some UX stuff.
That’s Edge Quick Hitters. Thanks for playing with us. It’s great to know your answers. We got some hot topics to dive into as well. What do you think?
Let’s dive in. Sounds good. I also appreciate my coffee and chocolate, Marjorie. I’m a huge fan of chocolate. OpenSea’s team of 37 staff is currently handling 98% of combined NFT volumes. I was on OpenSea getting excited about NFTs producing them, buying them and all this stuff so I can see that. I didn’t realize they only have a team of 37. There’s a lot going on in that site and a lot of volumes as well. $2.84 billion trading volume, daily volume hit an all-time high up to $224.6 million from $111,800 transactions over the 24-hour period. That is a ton.
Luxury Blockchain: Not everybody feels comfortable taking a lot of risks. You have to take it easy.
It’s fascinating to me. I was having this conversation with some folks at Bright Moments. As much as we value decentralization and spreading out the opportunities to different people to create NFTs in all these different platforms. Something about human nature seems to be pulling us towards an aggregator where we can easily access everything that’s available for sale and look at trends and data all in one place. These guys have a major upper hand given their market position. I find the convenience factor to be such a significant part of the equation. What are your thoughts, Marjorie?
It’s amazing. I’m happy to know they’re doing so well because they’re good people working there. The concept of decentralization, I don’t think it correlates necessarily to the fact of having curators and people who select things for you. Even more in a decentralized environment, you have more that need for that curator and people finding the school hunters who will find the stuff for us and put it in a place where we can all find it. We don’t have to look in the vast universe to find the stuff that we like.
Those figures are still going to be super important. Curation, test making and all of that are going to be even more so important. These power structures are breaking down. We know from how the publishing world is suffering and how Vogue is not as important as it used to be. The test making and the curation will be single figures than these massive editors that we used to have. You will have a plethora of people that you follow and you like and they will create content for you. OpenSea is super fortunate that they’ve been one of the first ones to create super cool and affect user experience.
We got a tweet from their COO, “Referral bonus will pay 1 ETH to anyone who connects us to engineers or designers that we hire. Resumes to OpenSeaRoles@gmail.com.” 1 ETH is a little stingy, to be honest, for a good engineer or designer. They probably should be willing to pay a little bit more.
The 37 people managing all those transactions is bananas. They have a long way to go to continue to up their game around their platform. It’s relatively straightforward and simple but it’s also impressive that it’s not crashing every day. There’s so much flowing through that platform that they’re able to maintain it. It is darn impressive for me. They got to grow the team. They raised a bunch of money, $100 million. They got to find people to come on board and help out.
I was there and I got a notification. It said something about the site wasn’t working and it said, “Cloudflare supports this site.” There’s a version of the site up to support it but I found that interesting. I don’t know if they’re doing some maintenance or something went wrong. I could see how that could happen given the volume that’s going on.
It also shows you how you can feel amazing stuff with not an insanely large team. A lot of tech startups also have this inflation of hires. Sometimes a couple of people can get efficiently more done than a large team. This shows you how many people you need to hire.
Before we move on to the next topic, one thing that’s interesting is all of the transactions and the ownership is supported by the blockchain. It’s cool if the site does go down or something like that. Nobody necessarily loses out on the things that they own. It’s a place for viewing and transacting around those things.
This is the amazing thing about decentralization. The platform becomes a window. It’s an interface to a thing that is happening in this parallel dimension. It could be any application on top. Even more so, it comes down to that experience. It has to be exciting, easy and amazingly curated because it could be anywhere.
The basic example is what everyone says. Uber in the decentralized world is a smart contract and not a corporation. It’s a smart contract that matches and processes the transaction. It comes down to all of a sudden there are different power dynamics. It comes down to having a good product more than just controlling a market share because you got there first.
Look out Uber. That’s interesting. The next hot topic on the block here, Rolexes and Lamborghinis are so yesterday. NFTs are the new digital flex. “Bitcoin is bouncing around $50,000. DeFi is seeking to go mainstream but all anyone in the digital asset world wants to talk about our NFTs.” It may be what we experienced in the middle of my generation of this digital native concept. It was easy for me to understand email, surfing the web and things like that whereas my parents are still having difficulty getting on a Zoom call.
I watched my child watching shows on Netflix and getting excited about characters and all these things. You can’t help but imagine, “One day, he’s going to want to continue to engage with that character through more digital engagements, have NFTs around that and all that stuff.” What are your thoughts on this specific call out about Lamborghinis and watches?
I’ve been diving into Clubhouse more and someone jumped on late at night excited because there was a Twitter conversation with one of the owners of West Coast Customs, which is a high-end car dealership. I don’t know if they just do purchases or rentals. Paris Hilton is one of their clients. They dropped some digital cars that are like Matchbox cars version of their cars that you can buy. That gives you some access to their community and some association with being able to see the cars, maybe driving them and different levels of rarity.
That was a moment of awakening for me that this luxury car company felt compelled to dive into digital cars. This was an older gentleman that doesn’t know a lot about NFTs and he’s super excited about working with Origin. The drop is called Drops.WCCNFT.com. They have these limited-edition luxury cars on the blockchain so that says it all.
Especially if you think about the archives, everything that is vintage, all of those Ferrari’s that were made well are still alive. They’re one of the most beautiful things ever done by any human. You never get to see them. You could issue them digitally and give them a second life effectively and bring them again. There’s a massive opportunity in there for anybody who has a critical culture to bring your archive back to life.
What you were saying about NFTs being the ultimate flex, the ultimate flex in the future is going to be access to things. Belonging to community X to give you access to something and this is something that can be granted and built through the form of NFTs. If you hold this NFT, you have access to this stuff, this thing and this community. How one can define the new luxury is having access.
The community element of it is the thing that stands out to me. It’s different from buying a Lamborghini and driving down at sunset in it. You may get some looks of love and you could talk about it with people. Fundamentally, that’s not what’s going to be in your Instagram profile that’s going to get you the love. It’s being part of the community.
When you have your CryptoPunk or your Bored Ape and the community that’s being built around that, the access to other people, the admission to events and the other perks that come along with it. Being able to share that with other people that experience the same thing or want to experience that thing. These are some of the elements that I see that jumped out. I agree wholeheartedly, the community is driving the ultimate flex here that’s evolving in the space.
To dive a little deeper into that, the article calls out some of the things to the novel reader that are going to sound a little bit ridiculous. Someone spent $1,300 on a Pudgy Penguin for his niece’s birthday. He said he sent her this penguin and a few days later, that penguin was worth $7,000. Also, it mentioned some of these other projects that to someone who is not involved in it, it sounds crazy like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or something like that. Before the dip in the crypto market, I was farming bananas. There are these certain things that start to sound ridiculous. I see that part of the NFT craze is almost making fun of the ridiculousness of it. Let’s get into Pudgy Penguins. Let’s make this thing ridiculous. Let’s have a lot of fun with it.
To call back to Lamborghinis, if you look at these cars, that people still to this day, it’s a long-lasting high-value asset that people want to put tons of money into. It’s a select group of people but they continue to do it. I’m curious, Marjorie, before we head on to the next hot topic, your thoughts on that. What high-value expensive things are still going to be around despite the ridiculousness of how they sound? It’s maybe ridiculous to someone to buy a car for hundreds of thousands of dollars but they’re doing it.
The perception of value is subjective. If some aliens were to land here tomorrow, they would not understand why we find luxury watches and things like pieces of metal with little mechanical pieces. It’s difficult to explain what value means and why the picture of the penguin is not as valuable as this other picture. There are a lot of subjective factors and the person into some museum, which was a cultural moment.
It would be the same with an NFT where you will be seen as ridiculous. An academic pathologist was shamed for being ridiculous, which is a massive moment in Hartbeespoort history. Ridiculousness is super important. It challenges what we consider valuable, like, “Why do you think this has value versus that?” I’m totally fond of the ridiculous as well. It’s totally fine.
Luxury cars, watches, handbags or anything that is a luxury, there will be moments where they become obsolete. Certain products might start becoming obsolete and luxury will be considered something else. David Fischer, the Founder of Highsnobiety, said, “Brands are the new bands. Young people now are more passionate about brands than we were super fans of any of these bands.” It’s what the brands are. A brand is a soft IP. It’s soft for selling. It’s not deep. The perception of value is totally human-made and completely subjective. Whatever people want to see as a luxury, it’s up to them.
Luxury Blockchain: The amazing thing about decentralization is that the platform just becomes a window. It’s just an interface to a thing that is happening in this parallel dimension.
Check this out, somebody at that same event at Bright Moments predicted that people will eventually be wearing green screens as bodysuits. The only way you see what they’re wearing is if you have the right NFT or the right glasses. These bodysuits can morph based on where they go and the level of rarity of the NFT. They can put on different NFTs for different days. We didn’t talk about this earlier but this whole conversation is making me feel like this person is not that far off.
I don’t think he or she is far off at all. I don’t think it would be a green suit because it’s not a green screen. Augmented reality technology is meant to be a bit more sophisticated that requires a bunch of green suits walking around and then it will start to reference it with strange. They will find your silhouette where we will be all walking around like Trinity and Catwoman boys and girls equally with tight skin onesies so we can enhance ourselves digitally. The funny thing is I can have this nice jumper digitally and I can choose what people see me in. If appearance matters then you choose what you see people on.” It gets a bit scary.
What if you could choose for different people to see you in different ways? That gets pretty wild.
For your parents and the director of your Catholic school, if you’re wearing something else, that could be. There’s this horrible Black Mirror episode where you could block people so you couldn’t hear them anymore or see them anymore or something like that.
All this stuff is right around the corner.
The prototypical if you’re nervous about public speaking, imagine the audience naked. You could have some goggles that do that for you. It makes the whole experience a lot easier.
I never understood that. Americans love to say that. I’m like, “How does that help me? Imagining a bunch of naked people? That’s horrible.” I want people to be well-dressed maybe. If there were a bunch of naked guys, I’m like, “No.”
Imagine them all in nice outfits.
It should be imagining the audience smiling and engaged. Let’s hit on this last topic. It’s a fascinating conversation. Clearly, there needs to be a back to the future update here for the next metaverse incarnation. The next headline, DKNY to Auction Its First NFT to Benefit American Nurses Foundation. It sounds great. “DKNY will auction its first NFT featuring a new logo to benefit the American Nurses Foundation. The auction will open on September 1, 2021 at DKNY.RAD.live and will appear on the DKNY brand creative ready-to-wear and accessories beginning September 8, 2021.”
We haven’t talked about this much but it’s definitely come up a lot here. Brands partnering with charities to get into the NFT space seems like a soft way to make an entry where you can lower the amount of risk, still do some good and get your feet wet. I don’t know if you’ve encountered this. It seems like a soft way to get into NFTs for a larger brand.
It’s a good strategy. A lot of people in brands and institutions are a bit concerned to have the public perception that they’re jumping because they want to participate in the hype cycle. They don’t want to be perceived like they’re just going in for the money while they still want to start experimenting with the technology and what can be done with the type of goods. Doing it for charity is a great way.
I was talking to this fairly famous British artist and he was like, “I don’t want people to think that I am doing it for money.” I was like, “Do it that way for free. That solves your problem. Don’t sell it. Give it away.” Radiohead, years ago, you could choose how much you pay for the album back then and you’d get to see the release. You could pay $0, $10, $20 or whatever and you will still get access. People put strategies like this. It’s a cool way to say, “We’re in for the technology. We’re considering it. We’re not in it to participate,” which is a cool way to do it.
That’s great advice.
Luxury Blockchain: The perception of value is very subjective. If aliens were to land here tomorrow, they will not understand why we find luxury watches valuable.
It’s fun to have the fashion brands as an obvious place to get into this stuff. I’m going to this website, DKNY.RAD.live. There are some beautiful digital artworks that are pleasing and interesting. Why not have a brand like that get into things like this and present us with the coolest attempts at what’s going on?
I love the culture of giving back and social good around all this. It’s part of the DNA of what’s happening in blockchain, in particular with NFTs. It’s great to see that mindfulness and the impact it can have.
This was amazing, Marjorie. I know we had to combine schedules for a while to make this happen. It was totally worth it. It’s great to have you on the show with us.
It’s nice to talk to the three of you. I love this trio. You guys are amazing. What are your favorite NFT moments so far? What has been the moment that you guys enjoyed?
When we launched Edge of NFT probably.
I became a fanboy when I got an ON1 which was a special one and then the next day, I was at a get-together in LA and I met two of the founders. I heard this story of how they came together at Bright Moments months previously and the struggles that they had been through as artists and creators. Also, how this collection, which is now sold over $100 million of Ethereum, was the genesis of creative collaboration and friendship over three months that has changed their lives.
Now, the biggest brands in the world are all hitting them up daily. They’re down-to-earth. For me, it symbolized everything that’s possible with this industry. It is ingrained in my mind meeting those guys and their humility, in spite of the fact they sold over $100 million of NFTs two days previous to that.
It’s cool when cool people make money. It always feels nice.
For me is when Dapper Labs brought the original beta version of NBA Top Shot to market in August of 2020 because I had been following them for a long time. We’d had this idea bouncing around doing something similar to what they were doing. When I saw how well they did it, how they made it community-oriented and the deliberate nature of their approach, I was like, “This is game-changing.” I didn’t know it was going to be as game-changing as it was at that time. Otherwise, I would have bought a lot more NBA Top Shot moments. It was so cool to see that. I knew it was an inflection point.
For me, that was the most special moment in NFT so far that I’ve experienced personally. It’s led to a lot of what we’re all experiencing. Marjorie, it’s great to have you on. It’s amazing to know about everything you’re up to and your perspective on many different things. We’re excited for you and LUKSO. Where can folks go to follow your journey in social and other places about the future?
Our Twitter and our Discord are the places to go. We’re @LUKSO. The server is also called LUKSO on Discord. Discord is cool because all of our team communications also happen there so we are always there. It’s the easiest way to reach if you want to reach the developers or anybody on the team. We’re all looking at it. It’s a good place. On Twitter, we prefer to share a good amount of information over there.
Is DEMATERIALISED the same?
Yes. It’s the British spelling because it’s a UK-based company and my cofounder is Scottish. We went for British variation instead of American variation. We are launching our Discord server. It’s private but we will open it up. Instagram is also @@TheDematerialised
It sounds like we’re not quite ready to announce it but there will be some kind of special opportunity for our audience coming up with one of your upcoming drops. Is that correct?
Yes, there’s something special coming up in September 2021. It’s a partnership that LUKSO will announce and we’re making the first manifestation of the partnership with a drop in THE DEMATERIALISED. It’s a beautiful collectible that we assume is going to sell out fast. We can reserve one for one of your lucky audience.
That’s amazing. We appreciate that. We try to stay on the Edge of NFTs and sometimes that means the pre-announcement so thanks so much.
This is a good one. It’s a culturally relevant NFT.
We’ve reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFTs for this episode. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on the starship so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us, say something cool and then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Do you want to help co-create Edge of NFT? Got a guest you want to see on the episode? Questions for the hosts or guests? An NFT you’d like us to review? Drop us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us @EdgeOfNFT to get in the mix. Lastly, be sure to tune in next episode for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.
Important Links:
- LUKSO
- THE DEMATERIALISED
- CryptoPunks
- CryptoKitties
- TRIBUTE BRAND
- LinkedIn – Marjorie Hernandez
- Singularity University
- Edward de Bono
- RTFKT Studios
- Alts Anonymous – Twitter
- Dennis Lisk – LinkedIn
- FANZONE
- OpenSea’s team of 37 staff is currently handling 98% of combined NFT volumes – article by Cointelegraph
- Bright Moments
- OpenSeaRoles@gmail.com
- Rolexes and Lamborghinis are so yesterday. NFTs are the new digital flex – article by Fortune
- Clubhouse – @JoshKriger
- West Coast Customs
- Drops.WCCNFT.com
- Bored Ape
- Pudgy Penguin
- Highsnobiety
- DKNY to Auction Its First NFT to Benefit American Nurses Foundation – article by WWD Media
- DKNY.RAD.live
- ON1
- Dapper Labs
- NBA Top Shot
- @LUKSO – Twitter
- LUKSO – Discord
- @TheDematerialised – Instagram
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
About Marjorie Hernandez
Marjorie is a multi-faceted innovation and product expert, equal parts entrepreneur and designer. The Caracas-born trained architect, strategist and innovation consultant, built and led EY’s Innovation Lab in Berlin, before founding LUKSO.
Marjorie worked in Art Direction across Europe, before establishing herself as a Brand Strategist for Swiss and German brands. She created and managed EY’s Digital Innovation Lab, as a Digital Transformation and Strategy Executive, where she worked closely on Ethereum and with the IOTA Foundation.
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