Maya Draisin Of TIMEPieces — The Web3 Community Initiative From TIME, Plus: Roblox Rare Digital Item & Mastercard Free Music NFT Passes

May 26, 2023

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One of the strengths of Web3 is its ability to bring the most talented people together and come up with incredible works. TIME encapsulates this idea as they expand their iconic brand into this massive space through their project TIMEPieces. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger, CBO Maya Draisin shares how they gather artists, collectors, and fans to build long-term utility and community value. She explains how they keep their Web3 items relevant and fresh despite the ever-evolving demands and expectations of the virtual world. For this episode’s hot topics, they discuss how Roblox is embracing and shunning NFTs at the same time and MasterCard’s release of free music NFT passes. Finally, they highlight a brand-new project called Swoops.

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Listen to the podcast here

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Maya Draisin Of TIMEPieces — The Web3 Community Initiative From TIME, Plus: Roblox Rare Digital Item & Mastercard Free Music NFT Passes

This is Maya Draisin from TIMEPieces, TIME’s leading NFT Collection Community Initiative. We feature original artwork from more than 158 of the most influential artists in the space. I'm here on the Edge of NFT, the show where you can access the most influential people in projects on the Web3 space. Keep reading.

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Curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how TIMEPieces continue to expand the reach of its iconic brand into Web3 and is doubling down on true utility for collectors.

Our guest has in common hot air balloons, French bulldogs and marathon-level stamina.

Finally, how Roblox is simultaneously embracing yet shunning NFTs within its massive ecosystem, all this and more in this episode. Enjoy. Outer Edge LA is an awesome community-centric gathering, returned to LA from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. If you missed out, here is a way you can catch up on all the interactive experiences, discussions, presentations and more. Simply, go to Watch.OuterEdge.live, register with your email address and get a full recap of over 60 captivating conversations and performances. See you inside.

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This episode features Maya Draisin, the Chief Brand Officer at TIMEPieces. She is the CBO for TIME and Head of TIMEPieces, their Web3 community initiative. At TIME, Maya expertly manages various business divisions, including TIME subscriptions, print and digital retail, licensing, accolades, time for kids, as well as marketing and community for TIMEPieces and Web3.

Before her tenure at TIME, Maya held the position of VP of Marketing at Condé Nast, overseeing iconic brands such as WIRED, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, Pitchfork and Teen Vogue. Moreover, she Cofounded The Webby Awards and an esteemed judging body, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. We will dive into TIMEPieces and inclusive NFT community initiatives featuring six captivating collections, Genesis, Inspiration, Long Neckie Women of the Year, Slices of TIME, Beatclub Collection and the most recent, the Seven Collection with Deepak Chopra. Maya, welcome to the show. It is a pleasure to have you here.

Thanks so much. It is such a pleasure to be here.

I don't know if you know but we had Leah Lamarr. She was our emcee at Outer Edge in 2023 and TIMEPieces Entertainer of the Year in 2022. That was a pleasure to introduce her. I remember that accolade was awesome to be able to share with the world. She did an amazing job for us.

TIME is doing such incredible stuff. TIMEPieces represents this venture into Web3, which has been very bold and forward-thinking. I wonder if you could walk us through the genesis of the project and maybe provide a bit of an overview of everything it has come to entail.

We got into the NFT space in March of 2021. Keith Grossman, who was President of TIME, was in conversation with Marc Benioff. He and his wife owned TIME. He asked if we could see a place for TIME with NFTs. We met at WIRED and he went to Bloomberg. He is an art collector himself. All the little light bulbs went on and he was like, “Absolutely.” We started by selling one-of-one covers. We sold about eleven of them.

As that was winding up, it was the start of the PFP community initiative in the summer of 2021. We said, “It would be cool to do that and how could TIME authentically enter into the space.” One of the things we realized is that throughout history, TIME has always recognized an uplifted artist by giving them our covers to the next generation of artists.

We had Chagall’s, Lichtenstein’s, Basquiat’s and Warhol’s in our collection. If we believed that this was the next evolution of the internet and the next generation of artists, wouldn't it make sense to give them a cover? We ended up doing an 8x8 square with a red border in which to create. We gave them the theme of Build a Better Future. That was the launch of our Genesis collection.

Since that, we have done five other collections, including one with Nyla Hayes. At that time, she was twelve and we paired her with Times Women of the Year, which went and looked back because, until the ‘90s, it was Man of the Year. There had only been one woman recognized. TIME went back and said, “Over the course of 100 years, who would the women have been?” Nyla took those 100 women and put them into her Long Neckie format.

We did Slices of TIME, which was a collaboration with TIME’s creative director, where he took all the covers from a given year and made a collage out of them. We had a burn mechanism on those, which you could trade for art if you wanted or keep those covers. We did a collaboration with Timbaland, which supplied a beat. We had fourteen artists who created visual art to go with that beat.

Lastly, we have the collection of Deepak Chopra, the Seven Collection, where we brought back celebrating the 25th anniversary of his book, The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success and bring that wisdom back in a TLDR format for people with 73 artists creating covers. Seven of them create interactive, immersive spaces with artifacts.

I particularly resonated with that. It is humbling to face that it was only Man of the Year for a while.

It is insane when you look at that.

It is great to see an intentional, not only adapting it to feature Women of the Year but also to go back and make up for what was lost. I appreciate that.

I love Nyla's interpretation of it so much.

She has been an amazing contributor to the space, more broadly speaking, at such a young age and a powerful voice in the space. We had a chance to have Keith on the show a while back and we talked about the unique way that TIMEPieces is bringing together artists, collectors and fans and trying to build long-term utility and community value. We would love to get an update from you on how that is looking, especially in this builder's market of ours and what strategies you employed previously and maybe some of the newer strategies you are utilizing.

We have been committed from the beginning to long-term values. This is not a short-term flip play. We are not the thing that is going to go up and down or hopefully stay up, whatever that case may be. For a lot of our value, we assume it will be providence or historical value. It is important for us to continue to add value. We do that by creating a real community, which is the key element. It is not necessarily the fancy stuff per se but we have had a lot of success.

We provide tax information when tax time rolls around. We cook together online on a weekly basis. I have chill time every Sunday morning, where a group of people get on the Discord voice channel and talk about our weeks, what is going on in the space and all kinds of things where you get to know the other people better. We have historically, at the big events, done an artist dinner where we bring our artists and collectors, about 150 of them, together for an intimate connection. I heard a lot from the people coming out of NFT NYC that they are beginning to appreciate the smaller, more intimate connections about meeting and getting to know people. We do that well.

Part of it is we create a wholesome space where everyone feels safe and comfortable. It is a good first stop for people. For people who don't know what they are doing, our Discord is incredibly welcoming. No question is a stupid question. That is not everywhere. We are trying to create a cozy, comfortable place for people to be themselves, get to know other people in the space, ask questions they may not feel comfortable asking in other places, learn together and discuss the biggest things going on in this space.

That is what TIME does. It starts and holds the most important conversations. That is important in this space. As you ask about what we are doing more of, we are starting to say, “What are we talking about this week? Who can we pull together to have that conversation?” You will see a lot more of that happening but we want utility as useful things.

I was not to create more FOMO but I was at NFT New York. It was interesting comparing the contrast of being on the front lines of planning a larger gathering where this time around, my focus wasn't creating media but joining community events. On a grassroots level, I went to some deep music events in the space and joined the OnChainMonkey on the NASDAQ floor, which was fun.

I had a chance to go to the Impact Theory Dinner, which we are early supporters of what Tom's doing in space. I did appreciate the value of these 25 to 150-person events and what you can get out of them. Something we are looking to do with our community as we move forward is mixing those small, medium and larger events digitally and in real life because you get different outcomes from mixing it up like that.

IRL is better than virtual hugs. There are no two ways about it.

IRL is better than virtual hugs. There are no two ways about it. Click To Tweet

I want to dive a little bit deeper into the process that goes into creating these various collections. You got six of them in the bag already. They vary in a number of different ways. Can you tell us what that process is like, the creative side, the inspiration, the distribution of content, the marketing and all of that goodness?

They are made up of two different kinds of collections. One is our signature drop, which started with Genesis. The framework we used was we were going to invite half the artists and they were going to invite half the artists. That allowed us to choose artists that are probably more well-known and for them to choose people we should be discovering. We were thrilled with the results of that. We launched that with our signature event.

In the beginning, we also did a combination of NFT artists and TIME cover artists, which was an interesting thing. What we found over time is that it is a fairly steep learning curve to get into the space and continue to build value in the space. We moved more towards NFT natives, although we have had great success with 4 or 5 of our cover artists from the first drop who fell in love with the space and dove down that rabbit hole too, which is exciting.

The other collection was the artist-in-residence collection, which Nyla was the first of and Timbaland was the second of. In the Deepak drop, we combined them. He was the artist in residence, except for his art was his wisdom. We paired him with an artisan signature drop style, which was the largest set of artists we ever had, which was 73 of them. Every time we try, we don't want to be doing the same thing. We want some elements that are the same but it is like working with a 100-year-old brand. You bring forward things that people love the most. How do you keep it new and relevant in the space?

With Slices of TIME, we added a burn mechanic. The first set of art that was minted for the Slices of TIME was made by our creative director. You could either choose to hold it or burn it. You established the rarity going in. As you chose to hold or burn, the rarity of the slices dropped and got more scarce. The rarity of the art started to get less. It started at zero and it would move up from there. We thought it would be a fun dynamic but it ended up being a mechanic that was far better than we ever could have imagined because people started seeing them as scratchers. They started watching the numbers and that ended up being incredibly fun.

When we got to Timbaland, we wanted to get into music NFTs. We saw that conversation happening and we wanted to be involved in that but it was a 252-piece drop. It is much smaller. When we got to Deepak, the additional element was the combination of things in partnership with artifacts. We did not only make book covers with Transient Labs but there was also an element of OnChain Books. Also, 3D sculptures that you could work into your virtual environments if you got one of those. These immersive worlds are fully built out by some of the artists, one for each chapter that you could explore for a short period. We are constantly trying to think of like, “What is that new extra layer that remains relevant and is making some commentary on what is going on in the space at any given time?”

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You know what works traditionally and have applied so many different cool techniques. I’m excited about the next batch.

To the question of how we are adjusting to space, many of us are thinking about it. We have 20,000 NFTs out in the world at the moment and I like to think of them as chapter one. The first set of 6 is our 1st chapter based on the signature style. Everyone is discovering, “What do you do moving forward?” I don't think it is necessary. I don't intend to do a large signature drop again anytime soon.

If something fabulous comes into being, we will. Otherwise, how do we add that utility? How do we add value? What do we do for the people who are already there? I'm more interested in what mechanisms I could use to burn down that supply and gamify it in some way. I was excited about the new manifold announcement to see whether that is something that could work.

Lots of diversity in what is going on as well and perhaps it is useful to dive a little bit deeper into that collection with Deepak. It was fascinating when the buzz started. I remember because we are in the domain and you would be at an event. Somebody would be like, “Deepak is going to be doing something.” It has been interesting to see what has bubbled up from his domain. Do you have any insight into the conversations around getting that going? Is that something where you guys reached out to him or he reached out to you? If you don't have that info, any more info on what the experience has been like for the users and the fans of the time?

Deepak was a TIME 100 honoree at one point. I already recognized by time who Leah Lamarr was. He has been interested in and active in the space for a long time. We are working together. He did an incredible drop with Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones. They did an auction drop. Needless to say, mental health is a huge issue in this space. Whether it is FOMO, disconnecting from all things or that sense of having to be online 24/7, all of those things create a lot of mental health issues in the space.

He is always pushing the envelope forward in association with Seva.Love, his foundational side and if you watch, they are doing a lot in the space. Having a conversation about how we could partner together to bring that issue to the forefront and work with some fantastic artists. It happened to be the 25th anniversary of his book, which seemed a great way to bring that information back into the world.

What I will say to your question about how people responded to it, I would start with the artist because, throughout the artistic process, Deepak provided several opportunities for the artists to meet with him via Zoom. Those sessions were the most incredible thing. What you found is you had a lot of the artists who had some personal connection already, either themselves or via their parents or their grandparent. This was wisdom that had worked its way into their lives. You had another set of artists who hadn't previously had any exposure to this and were struck by it. It was changing their lives as they were making this art, which was incredible.

We had a ton of spaces, some with him and some with the artists, where people were sharing these stories about it. People say, “The art is the utility.” This NFT is its utility. It is life-altering if you let it and it has beautiful art on top of it. Access to Deepak, he did some weekend meditations and he still does this through Seva.Love. It was interesting to see because none of the other collections had this consistent throughout the entire process, a positive experience for anyone. It was a niche. It wasn't for everyone but anyone interested in it was radically touched. That is all I can say about it.

Wellness is something that we hit upon over and over again. I like what you said. It is an especially important subject matter in this space and technology in general. It is such a fast-moving space. There is a lot of excitement and dopamine-fueled personalities. It is good to have the other side of things and a place to reconnect, rejuvenate and make that part of the conversation. It is exciting that that is the most recent but also excited about what is next.

This is such an important thing. My girlfriend is a marriage and family therapist. She has been volunteering some of her time to help people in crisis and doing some additional therapist work on the side besides her day job because there are many people in need of mental health and elevating their consciousness. It is an interesting tie-in to something that you guys are thinking about as you engage in mental health awareness month in May 2023 in working with someone who is a true collaborator in space and a friend of Edge that we worked with on a wellness event tied to the event during community day. I would love to hear this breaking news about what you are doing for Mental Health Awareness Month.

We are partnering with Shira Lazar and several other partners on a project called the JOMO Effect. JOMO is Joy Of Missing Out instead of Fear Of Missing Out. It is the sense of, “While I'm not there, I take joy in the fact that other people have a great experience.” There are 40 artists who are creating art around the JOMO. It benefits five nonprofits in this space. It is dropping in May 2023 for Mental Health Awareness Month. We are super excited. Seva.Love is involved in that one as well. We are excited to continue this conversation with the same partners and new partners because, as noted, it is super important. About twelve of the artists are TIMEPieces’ artists. It is always fun to meet new artists from the other group that isn't.

All the money goes to charity, 100% of it, which is a unique type of drop. We’re looking forward to being in the mix and seeing how that goes.

I'm excited about it. It is an incredible group. I'm sure it will go incredibly well.

We covered a wide spectrum of activity over at TIMEPieces but I’m curious about anything that we didn't cover already. What is next? What is in the hopper?

We are talking to several people about exciting partnerships coming up. I can't announce them yet. I'm sure you guys feel like every day, we have the most exciting conversations from Web3 native people to Web3 champions who may have Web2 ties to Web2 companies who are looking to get into the space. It is an endless set of interesting conversations and opportunities. We have about a handful that we are excited about coming to fruition.

That is a question we love to make sure we hit upon. There is always something to cover. Another one we like to ask is, what are the projects that we haven't mentioned that you might be following in the space, be a particular fan of, inspired by, a trend or movements you are noticing that you are excited about?

Let me start with projects. There are so many but I'm going to go ahead and name two that I'm a particularly longstanding fan of. One is the Aku and Micah Johnson, which has all the potential in the world and focuses not only on great art and utility and has a great community but is interested in doing good in the world. You will hear from us at a time over and over again that we are interested in those elements of adding value. It is a culture of degens and do-gooders. We try and lean on the side of the doing good.

The Robotos, Pablo Stanley and Humankind, the creativity and the fun that he and his team do, plus the tools from Bueno, are exceptional. We are fans of both of those projects, among many others. What am I excited about? As noted already, I'm interested in Manifold's new ability to burn from any collection because that is something I have been trying to do.

I'm interested in Starbucks Odyssey because I do think that they and Ticketmaster probably have the immediate opportunity. Also, Reddit. It’s the three of them doing something at scale for a more mainstream audience. Although I would never call Reddit an audience mainstream. Simultaneously, all of them are approaching not as an NFT but as a digital collective, a digital stamp or digital avatar, getting away from the vernacular, which I find interesting and doing it with millions, which is important.

It is from the vantage point at which I sit. I am interested in as much as what Web3 can take back into Web2 and create Web 2.5. I continue to find myself resonating with tweets that say things like, “Web3 is going to win by solving a Web2 problem that is hard in Web2 and easy in Web3.” I think that is true. I feel like I was trying to solve loyalty issues from Web Zero. It is what I call print.

I get to range from Web Zero to Web1, to Web2 to Web3. I was trying to solve loyalty issues as we headed into our 100th birthday with people who had been print subscribers for decades. It is expensive and hard to track them. They may subscribe for a while, drop off and come back and it doesn't recognize them as the same person. All kinds of things in the blockchain, which we saw, were easy in Web3. What intrigues me is what is hard in Web2 that is easier in Web3. I'm also intrigued by the ethos and the thinking of Web3.

When I first came into Web3, Keith told the story that I always used to say, “Everything's upside down and backward.” My instincts for several years were always wrong. He would write back, “No.” He would have a period, an exclamation point, a question mark or no punctuation, which was the worst of them all. I was so off base that he wasn't even going to punctuate it. That is because the thinking is different.

I was on stage at CES talking about paywalls. I said, “Web1 thinking, in this case, is you are going to come to my website. If you come enough times, I'm going to charge you because you have the propensity to pay.” You would never do that in a Web3 world. You would say, “The more you come, the more I owe you and the more value I have to deliver to you.” That is upside-down thinking. I'm fascinated by how that Web3 thinking and ethos reapplied to the common way of thinking the status quo will change everything because I think it will.

Since you are naming all those interesting mainstream cases, I'm also excited about NHL and what they are doing with Suite.io. This one is coming on the hopper. It may hit your radar, Maya, maybe not but NHL rewarded a contract to Suite. It has taken a while to get that off the ground. From being an NFT New York, I have some alpha that is coming soon.

Web Zero might be spiderwebs but we have to disagree on that. We get to move on to our next segment. Jeff, do you want to want to pull us into that?

This is Edge Quick Hitters. We talked about it a little bit before the show. It is a fun and quick way for us to get to know you a little bit better. We are looking for short answers, a single word or a few words but we may dive a little bit deeper here or there. Let's do it. Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?

Snoopy.

Are we talking about stuffed Snoopy? I saw a picture of a live dog that looks like Snoopy.

Stuffed Snoopy, 6 foot tall.

Is it still around somewhere or long gone?

Long gone.

Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?

I'm going to go with Webby sponsorship, which is lame.

It is not lame at all. It is a highly valuable thing to sell.

My twelve-year-old sells sneakers. It feels weird.

Were you twelve when you first started selling those sponsorships?

No. I sold Girl Scout cookies.

Question three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?

Plants. When I moved back to San Francisco, I was the queen of Facebook Marketplace at the moment.

Plants on Facebook Marketplace

Plants on Facebook, who knew? Plants on Facebook Marketplace, you can get big old plants that would cost you hundreds of dollars for a lot less.

I am so nervous that my girlfriend is reading this because she is a total plant lover and we have no more room in our house for plants. I might have to have Sean get this segment edited down to not give out this additional information. I have no room left for plants but that is good to know.

I can change this and also say, “Apparently, art books are a great thing to buy on Facebook Marketplace.”

Facebook Marketplace crushed it over the last couple of years. It is such a big win. Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?

The most recent thing I sold is a chair. Nothing exciting.

On Marketplace?

Too bad you guys are catching me in my Marketplace moment. All those transactions are back and forth.

Question five, what is your most prized possession?

My GM hat and GM necklace. I got it from one of our community members. Beyond everything, it is my most prized possession.

Shout out to CryptoJeweler, who created the GM necklace.

This is something to none but I do love CryptoJeweler.

He did a limited edition bracelet for our VIPs. He also did a collab on the GM necklace. I had him on my mind. There are other GM jewelers out there.

I love my necklace.

Question six, if you could buy anything in the world something digital, physical service or an experience that is for sale, what would it be?

I have been talking about the balloon that goes into space. I don't want to go on a rocket ship but I like the idea of the balloon.

A lot of people want to go to space and we have heard space a lot as an answer to that question but the first-ever response it includes a balloon is the space balloon, which is awesome. The one that the Red Bull guy, the highest skydive. That is awesome.

I saw that documentary about Richard Branson taking the hot air balloon and that was scary stuff.

I like the vibe of a balloon so much better than I like the vibe of a rocket.

Question seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?

Stamina.

Do you happen to play poker or any games that take a long time?

I ran the Rome Marathon. It is something that is unfortunately lacking. It is something, for whatever reason, I have in space. I would love to pass a little of it to my children even.

Question eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?

Workaholism, which is the flip side of stamina. They have healthier levels or boundaries around that.

It is hard to do in a 24/7 space as we operate in. It sucks.

That is where mental health comes in. All of it is about it.

Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?

I was on the phone with our global chief revenue officer.

About anything fun?

It was good. It was fun.

Question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?

Take my dog for a walk.

What dog did you get over there?

He is a French bulldog. His name is Bucky.

Why Bucky?

He was named for Buckminster Fuller.

We got a bonus question.

This one is mine. It randomly came to me. I don't know where it came from but Maya, do you have a regular practice of any kind that maybe has some relevance to the word GM?

I do. For many years, I have had a word-of-the-year practice. On January 1st, I choose a word of the year. It is a guiding principle for the year. In 2022, it was GM. I promised to get online, say GM every morning and see what happened. In 2023, I loved the practice so much and it had such a positive effect on my life that I doubled down on GM. My word of the year for 2023 is GM GM. I'm seeing what happens when you continue a practice for a second year. I have long write-ups for both ‘22 and ‘23 about what GM means to me. It has been very powerful.

I don't know if you are the antagonist for this but I have been getting a lot of GM GM DMs and texts. Maybe there is a contagion going on here.

I would love to take credit for that.

Look out for 2024 when your word of the year will be GM GM GM.

My oldest son was like, “You can't do that. That is not even trying.”

That is Edge Quick Hitters. Thanks for sharing with us. We always appreciate that.

That wasn't so bad. Thank you.

You made it through. You got the stamina for this thing.

It is like an obstacle course.

Hot topics. The first one is about Roblox. Roblox is adding rare resellable digital items. They are not NFTs. Roblox's dominant online gaming platform rolled out a new class of wearable virtual goods. It could be sold in limited quantities or by third-party creators. For company announcements, they are called Limiteds. It can also be resold by Roblox users at any price of their choosing with a 10% cut of each secondary sale going to the original creator. There are some echoes here.

It reminds me of this rumor. I don't even know if it is a rumor. Maybe it is a fact about the government creating some digital transactional element that is going to be very fast and compete with some incipient digital currencies and things like that. These brands that have a proprietary history that is working have a little incentive to move out of it. That is what this is a comment on.

It is fascinating from a discovery perspective on what happens and how a big brand doing NFT-like activities without NFTs impacts the overall NFT market and other brands. I'm curious about what happens here. They wanted to take a step towards supporting the concept of digital collections and digital wearables. It has been commonplace and gameplay for decades. That is one of the early genesis that happens here. The royalty component is a new thing here, the ability for users to pick their prices. It sounds like it is based on US dollars, not based on an in-game currency. It is based on real currency. There are some interesting elements of what they are doing here. What do you think, Maya?

For Roblox, it is a great experiment. It is authentic to what they do already. They allow the creation of gameplay by decentralized users anyway. There is a continuation of what they have already done and how they interact with their user base already, which I love. To your point, it is like a nudge to NFT culture without it being actual NFTs. It’s this sense of how you take Web3 Ethos or NFT ethos and bring it into something more traditional. How does that change that?

All of these things are natural and organic in their space. It is great because as you train that ethos, whether it ends up on the blockchain or not, this is the thing that is the big transition. Radical evolution is how we think about things. They are going to be doing it at scale with young people. That will change everything.

By promoting the NFT culture without offering actual NFTs, people can easily transition in this radical evolution. Click To Tweet

It wasn't in the article but worth mentioning as a click on the announcement that we have that the creator gets 30%, the seller or distributor gets 40% and the platform gets 30% of the 1st cut. The creator gets an additional 10% royalty thereafter. They thought about this. This is a giant committee thing with a lot of background research, algorithms and modeling that went into this. It is going to be an interesting experiment.

They are making that announcement after people are backing off of creator royalties. Kudos to them for keeping them at this moment in time.

The next one is MasterCard is dropping free music pass NFTs with perks for holders. Payment processing firm MasterCard debuted the free music pass NFT drop. The annual NFT NYC conference is offering collectors a number of benefits ahead of holding the token. The digital collectible is part of the MasterCard Artist Accelerator program launched in January 2023.

The first comment on this is it is interesting to see MasterCard diving into the space and continuing to do interesting things there. It is an interesting point in Web3, NFTs and blockchain. We have seen a near doubling of Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is slowly but surely creeping up on us. Big brands and players continue to dive in and do interesting things.

We have a partnership with MasterCard. We are doing this with the City of Miami, MasterCard and Salesforce. I’m a big fan of their efforts in this space. Tying authentically to what they support, music is one of those pillars they are supported. Sebastian Auto, I’m a big fan of him and his work when at Vayner and MasterCard. I'm intrigued to see what they do with this.

We spend a lot of time thinking about this in our world. The tie-ins to membership, rewards and credit cards are at the tip of the spear when it comes to that. I'm curious to see where that leads if it does lead to more NFT-based rewards, membership rewards and other kinds of benefits to card members. It is such a great format for that rewards system. It hasn't been utilized heavily by the biggest players in the credit card world.

There are a lot of interesting things about this project. In May 2023, they are launching an AI studio. You can create your music tracks using an online AI studio. You got other names involved besides TIME, like WarpSound and Polygon, in this particular project. Latashá is a powerhouse in space. Brian Trunzo at Polygon. Kudos to MasterCard for going deep down the rabbit hole and trying to do something authentic and cool.

These can be minted for free until the end of April 2023. Drop is taking place on Polygon. Ethereum Scaling Network has been all spin used by Starbucks, Nike, Reddit and various other Web3 initiatives. Hop on over there and claim it. Why not? Get in and check it out. That was a fun one. Let's move on to our shout-out. Maya, we will let you know about this beforehand. We do this segment to give some love to community members, projects and ideas that we think are cool. Whom would you like to shout-out for this episode?

I wanted to shout-out the JOMO Effect, which is the partnership we are doing. It is the Joy Of Missing Out and Mental Health Awareness Day, Shira Lazar, Seva.Love, Peace Inside Live and 40 incredible artists. That’s my shout-out. I'm very excited about it.

That concludes most of our segments. We want to get into the closing of the episode. Can you let folks know where they can go to learn more about you and the project you are working on?

They can go to NFT.TIME.com and TIME.com/TIMEPieces. The best to go to is @TIMEPieces on Twitter to follow along in real-time. I'm @MissMayaDᵍᵐ if you want a GM with me there every day.

We also have an amazing giveaway that we are going to be running here with several layers to it. There are three different prizes. We got prize one, TIMEPieces, Genesis, Build a Better Future Token. That is Find Your Muse by Julie Pacino. Prize number two is the TIMEPieces Beat Club Token. That is the Emotion Cycle by ArinaBB. Prize number three is TIMEPieces, the Seven Collection Token. That is Arial Jade. These are cool prizes. We will be sharing information on our socials about all the details around how to score these. Keep an eye out and participate in this contest. Win one of these amazing prizes. Thank you so much for your generosity, Maya. We appreciate that.

Thank you so much for doing it. We love sharing our fantastic artists with everyone. That is an incredible group.

That is a dope contest. Thanks a lot.

We have reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We got space for more adventures on this starship. 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 hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.

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For our next segment, we are going to do something cool. This is the first time we are going to be talking about a new project that we are going to be repeatedly highlighting on the show called Swoops. Let's get into it, give an introduction and get the readers started and involved. We got a fun engagement opportunity for you before we split on this segment. First of all, what is it? Swoops is a blockchain-powered basketball simulation game, a virtual gaming league that allows users to exclusively own, operate and profit from their unique basketball franchise. We are going to be participating. We have a team. How do you feel about this, Josh?

I'm feeling good. It wasn't an easy thing coming up with the team name and figuring out a team logo but the heavy listing is over so we will be able to dominate this league.

As in everything, we will dominate, I'm sure. Let's get a little bit about what makes Swoops special. If you readers have ever dreamt of owning, operating and profiting off your basketball franchise, this is your chance. The game is built on the blockchain so every user has 100% true ownership of their players within Swoops. That includes us. We have a team that we will be playing with. Can you hit the readers to the name of the team, Josh?

I'm down to share that with the readers. It has been a long time in the making. Outer Edge Travelers is our team name. We are excited about this crew. We got five players ready to get down here. It is going to be a thirteen-week season. We will be competing over that time. In the end, there is this Super Bowl. There will be cash prizes, which is not a bad thing for the hard work that we will be doing, simulating basketball teams. I couldn't be more excited. I'm in Boston. We are about to see game two of the Celtics playing against the Hawks. It is primetime for basketball season playoffs and Swoops.

That team name reveal was a little bit earlier than we planned. You got a little bit of intel. We will be revealing some other things after teaming up with Swoops in our next session. We will be revealing the logo and a little bit more about our players but we have a fun engagement opportunity for you guys out there both in the show and online.

We have five players. We need to name them. We are going to get started on naming the first player. We have a handful of options that we have decided on. He is a guard. I was in Chicago for all of the Bulls championships winnings and played basketball as a kid but that is the extent of my basketball moment. I will be making all sorts of snafus here.

He is a dope guard. He got a mohawk. He got a well-rounded game. We are looking for a name that represents him, his personality and his skills on the court.

He is a great player. These players come with stats. He is a highly-rated player. Here are the three names. We are going to put this out on the socials for you guys to vote on. We came up with some ideas. You can decide which one is the best. They are Tron Stockton, number one or would you prefer Gary Plasma? Finally, our third option is Solidity Curry. Tron Stockton, Gary Plasma or Solidity Curry, which name do you think deserves to be an Outer Edge Traveler? We will get the votes, tally and announce the winner coming up soon here. It is going to be awesome.

If you guys want to play along with us, which I highly recommend and with no hurt feelings if we dominate you, you are going to want to head over to PlaySwoops.com and snag your batch of players. To improve your chances of winning, you learn to pick the right players. The original Swoop sold out in 35 minutes. Get your name on the presale list as soon as possible. The owner cutoff date is coming up on May 14th, 2023. You got some time but dottle.

You can click presale and fill in the form to sign up for the Swoops SSN1 presale event. We got a number of milestones coming on here. Sunday, 5/14/23 is the owner's cutoff date. Wednesday, 5/17/23 is mint day one for owners only. The following day, Thursday, 5/18/23, is mint day two for presale. Finally, Friday, 5/19/23 is the mint day three for the public. For those that sign up for the presale, you will have a chance at landing 2 limited edition 5-star Swoops, highest-rated players Swoopsters, each of which will be randomly hidden within the first two days of the SS1 Mint. In the next episode, we will have more details on those hidden Swoopsters.

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