The NFT space is evolving at a rapid pace, and Dapper Labs wants to be at the forefront of these changes. With projects such as NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties under their belt, what’s next for this company? We get the answer to that question in this episode as Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger discuss the future of NFTs and blockchain with the SVP of partnerships at Dapper Labs, Mickey Maher. Mickey talks about how he got introduced to the NFT space and clues us in on what’s to come. Tune in for a great look at the NFT space from someone intimately associated with the top NFT projects of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
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Mickey Maher of Dapper Labs – CryptoKitties to NBA Top Shot & Beyond, Plus: Snoop Dogg is @CozmoMedici, Snoop’s NFT Party Pass, OpenSea NFT App, And More…
This is the show that brings you the top 1% of NFTs and what will stand the test of time. We explore the nuts and bolts and the business side and also the human element of how NFTs are changing the way we interact with the things we love. This show is for the dreamers, disruptors and doers who are pumped about this ecosystem and driving where it goes next.
Dapper Labs: We have a long way to go before VR becomes mainstream.
This episode features Mickey Maher, SVP of Platform and Blockchain Partnerships at Dapper Labs, the groundbreaking company behind NBA Top Shot that uses the power of play to deliver blockchain-based experiences and digital collectibles that are made for you and ready for the real world. Mickey is responsible for all partnerships involving the Flow blockchain or Dapper Wallet. It’s aiming to expand the company’s open ecosystem partnerships in content, entertainment, gaming, music, fashion, talent, influencer, payments and more. Mickey has a BSEE, Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Southern California. I’m excited to have you, Mickey.
I’m excited to be here for sure.
It doesn’t look like you got the party hat that we sent you in the mail but this is a big occasion for us. This is our 50th episode. Randomly, I couldn’t ask for a better guest than you in representing Dapper Labs. It’s been busy for us. We’re up to episode 50.
Congratulations, you could have definitely pushed me off if you wanted to have more notable guests but I’m happy to be your 50th guest.
Even if you got the hat, we wouldn’t want to cover that hairdo. That’s tight.
Thank you.
You’ve worked in virtual currencies and gaming for more than a decade. Were you super early on Bitcoin and crypto in general?
I was but I didn’t put enough money where my mouth was. I was into Bitcoin talking about it often and actively as early as 2012. I wish the amount of time I spent talking about it, I spent that amount of money buying it. Unfortunately, I did not. I bought a little bit but then I also sold a little bit. I have more now but I don’t have Bitcoin or crypto at the 2012 prices. I have it at more recent prices, which is unfortunate. I was pretty confident and I should have been more confident that the stake was coming.
How about NFTs, did your tune change there? What was the moment that you realized that NFTs can be what they’ve become?
What have they become is an interesting question. The reason I’m at this company is that I was messing around with CryptoKitties. I was interested and curious about it. I understood NFTs. I don’t even know why they were called NFTs. I knew they were CryptoKitties on the Ethereum blockchain during the ICO boom of ‘17 and ’18. It piqued my curiosity and here I am.
I can remember meeting with one of the founders of CryptoKitties in a bar in Venice. It was the Whaler back in the day and him talking about how the network blew up and what they’re trying to do to scale. It was the early days of nine people hanging out and having drinks. Times have changed.
A big part of that conversation too was, “This is a great fit for sports, collectibles and cards.” Josh and I, this was the obvious use case being baseball card collectors from our history and whatnot. When we started to hear about the evolution of Top Shot and everything, we’re like, “This is the use case.” I don’t think we could have ever guessed that it would take off the way that it did when it did but it’s something else.
You’re into CryptoKitties. You’re getting into it and understanding what’s happening here. You’re realizing some of the capabilities there. How did you make the connection though with the Dapper Labs team and the guys behind it? How did that relationship form and then ultimately become a working relationship?
One of the ways I operate in my life and in business is I try to be helpful and as helpful as I can. It comes naturally to me, to be honest with you. I’ve spent a lot of time on emerging platforms in gaming and consumer applications. I have a lot of connections and built a lot of contacts. I’m always trying to be helpful with people networking, people who are getting into the space, giving advice, putting them in touch with the right people, etc. It’s what I do.
Interestingly enough, I learned about CryptoKitties on Twitter. I started to engage with CryptoKitties. I was early on the Facebook platform, 2007 and 2008, in a startup right when they opened up to apps and games. This is pre-Zynga and pre-everything. I was right at the forefront of that and that was successful. I moved quickly on from that after my company was acquired by American Express into mobile. I was on mobile in 2011 or 2012. I was early on mobile and I rode that tidal wave all the way up until 2018 with quite a bit of success in that space.
I had seen it happen a couple of times. Given my experience in the space, I knew that all of these consumer applications and game developers were going to flood to the next platform. I didn’t know what it was going to be at the time. There was a lot of conversation around it being VR/AR, etc. I didn’t believe in the VR space as much then. We still have a long way to go before VR becomes mainstream. One of my thoughts prior to discovering CryptoKitties was I didn’t need to work in crypto. If I wanted to make money in crypto, I could invest in crypto and trade crypto. It didn’t need to be a job.
Dapper Labs: The winners in the mobile ecosystem we’re all simple five to 10 person startups that came inbuilt natively and creatively for that specific platform. These grew to become billion or multi-billion-dollar businesses.
CryptoKitties was the thing that changed my mind because I saw very clearly how this could be the next platform or growth opportunity for all these Web 2.0 applications and game developers that may have sputtered or plateaued on mobile and were in search of that growth stage on another platform. When I saw CryptoKitties, I was like, “I can work in this space.”
To wrap this all up, once I learned about CryptoKitties, I decided to research the company. Frankly, two of the individuals that were founders of CryptoKitties are people that I had helped with their companies or in the mobile or Facebook space in the past. It was an easy and seamless conversation to say, “This is what I want to do next. Do you have a role for me?” The rest is history and that was a few years ago.
You mentioned earlier being helpful. I know a lot of our readers want to co-create the space. We’re all about co-creation on the show and we have quite a few readers who are as well. Before I ask my next question, I want to ask you for any advice about how to be helpful. First of all, if you do know something to bring to the space, it sounds like you’ve been in situations where maybe you didn’t know as much. You found a way to be helpful, gain knowledge, be productive and be an integral part of things growing. Anything to say about that?
When I was embedded in the mobile space, I knew as much and I was as well networked as anyone. I had a lot to offer. Some people would disagree with his advice but I was helpful to people that I liked and I thought had the right intention in mind and had something to offer to the space. A lot of people ask first and ask for something, “Can I have a piece of your company?” “Can I have a piece of equity?” “Can you pay me?” “Can you do this?” I gave up some short-term revenue or opportunities at that point just to be helpful but being helpful led me to a much greater set of opportunities down the line including Dapper Labs. It’s not for everyone but my advice would be to be helpful to people that you think can offer something to space and the universe will come around and reward you probably eventually.
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That leads to the next thing I want to ask about. You did find that things were coming back around for you and you were being behind the scenes during the ideation and development stages of a project like Top Shot. Did anyone foresee how in-demand, in some cases, valuable these moments would be?
We did and we didn’t. We believed in what we were doing. Our CTO wrote the ERC-721 standard on Ethereum and we invented NFTs as they’re known now on Ethereum. We were all in on NFTs and the future of NFTs. We’re more into the power of smart contracts, composability and blockchain beyond the collectibles. We knew something was there. That’s the reason we engaged a world-class partner like the NBA with 1.5 billion global fans. It’s because we knew that type of brand in the space certainly had tremendous potential.
The other thing is we didn’t expect it to take off this quickly because there is so much left to do from a product standpoint. We’ve experimented with great utility in Top Shot but we haven’t completely unlocked all of our ideas around utility, composability and the openness of a project like that and what that potential could be. The fact that the collectible and the beautiful UI/UX and design of the product has driven so much notoriety and activity is a very good sign. We’re still at the starting line here of what we think is possible, not only with Top Shot but with NFT and smart contract-based projects.
I heard the word composability at a conference. Can you tell our readers what that means to you?
It’s what you would think of when you think of the metaverse. It is smart contracts functioning as Lego blocks that are built on top of each other or around each other. If you have a smart contract, that can be a leverage point or a building block to build other experiences or other smart contracts on top of. Any smart contract or any project leveraging smart contracts that get built in the space becomes a stepping stone or an accelerant to other projects. Internally, we’ve used the terminology that blockchain and smart contracts can accelerate software development and that’s exactly what composability is.
Lego blocks have high composability and dirt doesn’t.
It’s a great segue. Everyone knows CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shots but I’m sure our readers are curious about what’s next. What are you guys going to crush next? Where are you going? Tell us a little bit about your roadmap and how you intend to continue to build out the ecosystem.
Sports are obvious. We have a UFC license. We’ve had that for a while. We announced LaLiga, the Spanish football league as a partner in the Dapper Labs studio. What’s important to note is Dapper Labs is a studio building into our layer one flow blockchain ecosystem. What’s next for us is the 3,000-plus developers that are building into our open ecosystem.
Because of the success of Top Shot, there tends to be a focus on what Dapper Labs and the Dapper Studios are doing. Dapper Studios is a customer of blockchain. We’re going to build projects. We’re going to build projects around sports and other IPs. We have a lot of other ideas that could be great fits for other large IPs and we’ll continue to release those into the Flow ecosystem.
The power of the community, albeit entrepreneurs, Web 3.0, Web 2.0, everyone that’s now coming into this space and building and those 3,000 or so developers that are building into the Flow ecosystem, that’s going to unlock so much potential and so many interesting ideas. Dapper itself can never capture all the ideas that are coming out of those 3,000-plus developers.
There are so many different possibilities that require a lot of bandwidth and focus. There are so many amazing people coming into this space with ideas. How do you amplify the ecosystem beyond the constraints of your own team?
The two platforms that I’ve been successful in are Facebook and mobile. Those platforms were built by the long tail, the indie developers and the entrepreneurs. The winners on the Facebook platform, iPhone or in the mobile ecosystem, we’re all simple 5 to 10 person startups that came in and built natively and creatively for that specific platform. Those things grew to be billion or multibillion-dollar businesses that are there now.
It’s like the origin story of CryptoKitties reimagined over and over again.
The more shots on goal you have, the more developers that are building the space, the more interesting projects like Axie Infinity, CryptoKitties or an NBA Top Shot will emerge.
Let’s talk about some of those projects. What projects come to mind that is operating within the ecosystem? We heard about Momento, for example. Can you tell us about that project or maybe some others that come to mind?
I don’t want to say too much about Momento specifically but there is a project that Momento is building in the space. I am always hesitant to share too much about projects that aren’t live because the entrepreneurs are sometimes sensitive. Momento is building into the Flow ecosystem. I always hate to do this too because there are so many projects being built in the Flow ecosystem that if I name a few, someone’s going to get mad at me but I’m going to give it a shot.
There’s a company called Mint. Mint built a project for an art gallery, which sold over $1 million worth of art. They built a Chicago Bulls NFT project and it’s all built on Shopify. You can think of Mint as an agency and Mint builds out Shopify stores in partnership with Shopify in the Flow ecosystem. There’s a company called GigLabs. They’re built into the CNN website, Vault.CNN.com. They built the Miami Hurricanes college football team ring project and they’re similar approach to Mint and they will also be leveraging Shopify moving forward. There’s a company called Eternal. Eternal has a record of secondary market transactions outside of Top Shot in the entire Flow ecosystem that is a platform for Twitch streamers to sell NFTs.
There’s another one called the RCRDSHP. RCRDSHP is built by a technologist and EDM artist, Obie. They are doing a series of NFTs whether they’re video, collectibles, etc. around emerging EDM artists. Obie is an EDM artist himself and a coder. That’s doing well. We have a Steam game called Chainmonsters. Their Genesis NFT sale sold $1 million worth of NFTs in under ten minutes or something like that. All those NFTs are launched, built and designed to have utilities in the actual game. Things like Chainmonsters is what is moving the space forward. Aside from art and high-end art, that’s fine to remain as collectibles. NFTs need to have utility and need to have a use case. You are in a digital environment. The power of digital is to allow these assets to do something and be distributed. Projects that are building with utility in mind are going to be successful projects.
Dapper Labs: It’s more important to this upcoming era, what people’s digital social capital is than what their physical social capital is.
How do you work with these folks and mentor them and support the ecosystem? What have you found works best and how much of it has taken off the training wheels?
The company knowledge that we have at Dapper is much greater than any knowledge center on earth around NFTs, NFT design, what works, what doesn’t and what the future looks like in terms of NFTs. We try to take as much of that knowledge and pour it into our Flow ecosystem because we want those entrepreneurs to be successful. We want them to build projects as great as Top Shot or as successful as Top Shot in the ecosystem. We take all of that knowledge and all of that learning and we try to help these entrepreneurs as much as possible.
I’m on this show so I have a fear of misquoting the actual number but it’s something like this. The NBA Top Shot itself has more users than the top 40 or 50 Ethereum projects combined. We have a lot of users in our ecosystem. We want to help all of these third-party projects in our ecosystem get discovered by those users. When we talk about network effects, we might not have the network effects that Ethereum has in terms of high-end pieces yet but we certainly have a tremendous head start on a lot of chains in terms of the number of users in the ecosystem that we can build network effects around. We like when those users discover third-party projects outside of Dapper projects.
It’s pretty special what you guys have built there in the time period and also what it’s grown into over a similar time period. I do want to know one thing. I asked about Momento and it stood out to us because we did see a press release about it. I want to call it out because there’s something interesting there. Our understanding is it’s a direct-to-fan NFT social network that allows for the fans and collectors of particular content creators to own the best moments of that content creator’s content, which is pretty special. Especially for us and folks in a similar boat to us, there are all these special moments, these mic drop moments from our episodes that we love to capture in a different way to share with our fans. It sounds like that’s the path these guys are taking. I wanted to elevate that because it’s something that popped up. We think that’s special.
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A great thing about the space is connecting creators more directly with the fans. What 3LAU is doing with his Royal project is exactly what this space is and is exactly what the space needs to evolve to. I’m sure you’re familiar with that project and your audience is likely familiar with that project. 3LAU is selling his music as a set of NFTs and he wants to enable other artists to do that.
My understanding of the project is that users combine these NFTs and by owning those NFTs, you get rights to that music or that album. You can earn cashflows. That asset would appreciate as the album does well and that asset also gets you special access to 3LAU whatever that is that he defines whether it’s backstage access, part of the exclusive clubs so you can capture social capital.
Those types of things are what moves the space forward. That’s utility. That’s beyond the collectible and that’s what makes the space interesting. You mentioned Momento. It’s the same type of thing. It’s connecting a creator. No one likes the word influencer anymore, except for me but an influencer more directly with someone that is their fan or they might resonate with.
I want to know a little bit more about the evolution of Flow and what you guys are projecting or planning. What are the plans for interoperability are you planning for the Flow platform?
The Flow foundation and Dapper Labs, all of us are big and true believers in the open ecosystem. Everything should be as open as possible and that interoperability is as open as it can get. I believe that the interoperability is based on community demand and it’s more of a community initiative to bridge over to the other projects that they want to bridge over to. If the right team or teams came to us and said, “We want to build a decentralized bridge over to Ethereum.”
We would certainly support it if it was the right team and we thought they built the project well, secure and sound. We’d be behind it. It’s a community initiative. There’s been a number of projects that had launched assets on Ethereum first and built their own more centralized one-way bridge to port those assets over the Flow. It was a community and developer initiative, not a Dapper Labs or Flow foundation initiative and that’s the way it should be. We would certainly help.
It is a common competence development or development of any sort. If you’re a true visionary, sometimes you can preempt what the customer is going to want and need but if you go too far down that rabbit hole, you can end up expending a lot of resources in vain.
To be clear, I’m sure that our ecosystem is going to want these things but I also think it’s an opportunity within our ecosystem for someone to build a nice little project or business around it. It doesn’t have to be Dapper Labs or the Flow foundation to meet the entirety of the demands from the ecosystem. Given there are 3,000 developers building into the ecosystem, there’s plenty of development talent to go around to meet the developer needs in my belief.
It’s constant reshaping and evolution right around the platform. It’s great.
We get a lot of fun inbound guests that see themselves as being on the Edge of NFTs. I can’t imagine how many people reach out to Dapper. You have a good perspective on where this could all go. One fun one that I got was around AI-enabled NFTs that have a soul that you could program. I’m excited about that show coming up. Where is this all going, Mickey? What are the NFT projects, platforms and ideas that we haven’t covered yet that stand out to you as paving the road to the future?
I always love to bring up Genies. Are you familiar with the Genies project on Flow?
Let’s hear about that.
I am. It was prior to their blockchain use case.
They were not blockchain native before and now, they more or less are. Genies is a digital avatar company where it’s almost a kickstart into this metaverse thing. Genies are NFT avatars that can be brought to multiple different websites and/or properties digitally, where your avatar as it exists, grows, changes, it follows you around to your favorite sites. You get to own it because it’s a blockchain asset. There are accessories around it that you can own and trade. There’s an economy around it based on those accessories and those different avatars. Where they have integrations is where your avatar goes and you can start to see it propagate across major properties across the web. This is an intersection between this metaverse concept as assets follow you around where you go.
What this is capturing is what I call social capital. Here’s an example. I grew up outside of Chicago. Every year in school, when we came back from Christmas break, the kids were excited to see who had the new Jordans. It was when I was 7-years-old, 8-years-old, 9-years-old and all the way until high school, it was like, “Who got the new Jordans for Christmas? Who are the coolest kids in class? Who’s showcasing their coolness with what they own?” Where I grew up and a lot of the US in that era, Jordans we’re capturing your social capital.
My point is that I see that type of behavior moving digitally so it’s more important to this upcoming era what their digital social capital is than what their physical social capital is. I can imagine a world where Genies and Genies with their digital Jordans are the most popular person or the person with the most social capital versus that person that would also have that in real life. The digital accessories are on your Genies, the digital accessories around your metaverse are how you’re capturing your social capital, how you’re flexing, how you’re bragging, etc.
My concern is that my Genie knows me better than I know myself and starts buying Jordans that they think I would like without my permission then that gets a little bit strange.
It’s coming.
That’s like my son who’s got our iTunes account now.
It’s dangerous stuff.
Now you’re like Obama. You wear the same suit every day. You don’t even have to think.
There you go. You make it easy.
The Genie, the avatar, is buying for you.
You have your green suit and the Genie is dressing you in the digital world.
All you need is a catheter and a bedpan and you’re good to go.
It’s The Matrix.
What part of Chicago did you grow up in?
Dapper Labs: Your passions can be easily monetized in today’s world.
I grew up on the Southside.
Beverly or something?
Calumet City, the real Southside. We moved over to Northwest Indiana when I was a kid so I spent 8 or 9 years in Southside Chicago up until I graduated high school and Northwest Indiana.
Living here when the bulls were in their glory was an incredible experience. Being downtown, I remember when they went to their third championship. You can never have an opportunity like that again.
That was the prime of my life. They won the first title when I was in eighth grade or freshmen in high school and then they won their last title in ’98. I was a sophomore or junior in college so it was a good time to be alive.
Now’s the appropriate time for me to ask. Are we going to see some Jordan Top Shot moments? Are we doing some throwbacks?
You’ll see. It’s TBD. We’ve got a lot coming. A lot will surprise you and a lot will be interesting and exciting. We’re still starting. We’re still scratching the surface of what is available and what can be done in the Top Shot ecosystem and frankly, in some of the things that Dapper Labs is going to be doing overall.
It’s exciting times to be in the space for sure.
There are going to be a couple of tremendous announcements so pay attention to them.
Mickey, thanks again for giving us the background on all of that. We’re excited to see where you go next. We want to get to know you a little bit better and hear your personal perspective on some questions that we call Edge Quick Hitters. It’s a fun and quick way to get to know you. It’s ten questions. We’re looking for a short single word or fewer responses but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Are you ready to dive in? Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
I rode my bike up to the local baseball card shop and I bought a pack of a 1986 Topps Baseball card pack. It was an ‘86 pack and I got a Kirby Puckett in that pack. At that time, he was a stud and I was maybe eight years old so it was a big deal for me. Within a half-hour, my friend and I fell into the creek behind the baseball card shop and that ruined my entire pack including my Kirby Puckett so I cried myself all the way home. It’s a traumatic experience for my first purchase.
Let’s move to question two. What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
As my wife would say, “You’re a hoarder,” but not a lot. I’m old so we didn’t have eBay, Craigslist, etc. so it’s hard to sell things at that time. I’m sure I had sold baseball cards and stuff previously but I don’t remember specifics. The first thing I can remember selling was the Jeep that I bought. It sounded like a good idea but if you know anything about the Midwest and anything about Jeeps. They’re great in the summer but very non-practical in the winter when it gets cold and the air blows through it like you’re outside.
I bought a Jeep when I was 19 or 20. During the summer, I needed to sell it within six months of buying it because the Jeep was not affordable to me at the time. Definitely, a winter car on top of the summer car, a Jeep was not something I was going to partake in so I need to get rid of it and buy something more practical.
Jeeps still have a high demand nonetheless. It’s a cool outdoor car. Maybe something that would have been nice to still have in your hoarding collection.
I doubt it. That was a good twenty-plus years ago. It would have left us nonetheless.
Question number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
It’s going to be so boring. It’s Robux. Everything I purchase now is for my son.
That’s not boring at all. That’s interesting.
He came running up to me one time because he needed $5 worth of Robux to do whatever he was doing in Roblox. That’s what I purchased.
We’ve had a lot of guests who see what’s going on with their kids and what I want to purchase. Digital items reinforce their confidence in this digital space.
A lot of times when you use that Air Jordan example, I referenced my son which is entirely true. He couldn’t care less what he’s wearing but the things that he has and whatever digital environments, mostly Minecraft and Roblox, are the things that he brags and talks to his friends about the most.
That’s Peter Lynch’s investment strategy for the Magellan Fund. Originally, it looked to see what his wife and kids were doing and buying at the mall. Research says companies in S&M worked out well for him.
I’ve heard a lot of VCs talk about their investment strategies are built off of what their teenagers are doing especially in the social space. I think that’s a good strategy.
Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
My wife has an active eBay store and sometimes she wants to get rid of my stuff so she sells stuff that I’m not even aware of. It was probably a pair of shoes or something that I no longer wear. Back to the hoarding, she’s figured out a way to clean that out.
I sold these white Air Jordans that looked like they were from the late ‘80s. That wouldn’t be good.
I’m all about holding. I’m not selling anything in the crypto space. That’s not something that you’re going to hear out of my mouth.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
Probably, unfortunately, my phone because none of us could live without a smartphone at this point, sadly. We’ll go with my iPhone. I’m very sad to say that.
When you take the time to think about what it took to go coordinate a trip to the movies with your friends as a teenager or something, it’s mind-blowing to think about what we went through to do that relative to now.
What about a Thomas Guide? Do you know what that is? I had one of those in that Jeep that I sold. Just trying to find the place and popping open that Thomas Guide. Google Maps has revolutionized our lives in ways we don’t even realize.
What about Moviefone? They call you to tell you when the movies are playing. You’d have to wait for the theater that was in your neighborhood.
It was a good ten-minute ordeal.
Question six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital-physical service and experience that’s currently for sale, what would that be?
A CryptoPunk. I’m jealous of everyone that has those and mad at myself because I could have had a lot of them when they were cheap. I have a lot of regrets there and I have a lot of jealousy. That would be my answer.
Josh and I heard about the Bored Apes way too early to feel good about where we’re at with those right now.
We got the memo the day after the launch and it seemed way overinflated to our overly analytical brain so I’ve turned more and more an ape with every passing day in the space.
Be careful out there.
Question seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would that be?
I’m a tireless worker. There’s a quote from John McEnroe. I don’t know if this quote but it’s one of the best ever. John McEnroe is one of the best US tennis players ever and a reporter once asked him, “Your son doesn’t even pick up a tennis racket. Why doesn’t your son play tennis?” John McEnroe simply said, “He suffers from affluenza, meaning too much affluency.”
I grew up with not a lot. I’m not saying that my son is growing up with a huge amount but he’s growing up with a lot more than I have. I’m cognizant of not only him but this generation is somewhat spoiled overall. The work ethic, at least that I was exposed to in my generation, I don’t necessarily see it. Maybe I’m wrong but I feel that is something I would want to pass on to everyone in this upcoming generation.
Some of that grit.
There’s a Warren Buffett quote when giving his kids money, “Enough that they could feel that they could do anything, not so much that they felt they could do nothing.”
I’m part of the problem because one of the answers that I gave previously was I bought Robux, that I go out and do that. I’m creating a problem that I’m well aware of but I can’t help myself.
Dapper Labs: This is what the future looks like, whether or not this is the particular activation or project that crushes it.
Question eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
I would say to follow your passion versus follow what you think is necessary or expected of you.
It’s a trap.
You have a little bit of that intuition to follow what’s needed or expected and you’re happy when you follow more of the passion.
There was not a straight path to getting here. I was an engineer in college. I was an engineer mostly because I was smart and good at math but I was like, “This isn’t going to pay me a lot at 22 years old so I’m going to do this.” I absolutely despised being an engineer and I despised every class that I took in engineering. It was a miserable existence. I can’t discount how it got me to where I am now, which I’m happy with where I am now but I did it for reasons other than following my passion.
It’s so important to do. Now more than ever, people have an opportunity to do exactly that and make a living doing it. It’s a special time.
That’s a great point. You can play video games for a living for God’s sake. Your passions can be easily monetizable in this world. Maybe the advice is timely for this generation.
Question nine is a little bit easier, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I sit on 10 to 12 hours of Zoom a day so I was on a Zoom with a potential Flow developer. It’s not exciting but it’s the truth.
It is exciting from what you were saying before.
I bet that developer is excited.
Do you think so? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do after.
That’s question ten. Let’s do it.
I will drive my son to baseball practice and then I will leave. The point is I’ve coached a couple of seasons and it’s too overwhelming for what I’ve got going on with work. I wish I was coaching but at this point, just dropping them off at baseball practice is a win for me.
Don’t you want to be that dad with the vein popping out of his neck?
That’s why he has to leave.
That is the antithesis of me. I’ve got to let them run wild and do whatever they want. They’re kids. All they should be doing is having fun. Unfortunately, there are those dads and moms frankly with the veins and such.
Mickey, thanks so much for playing some Edge Quick Hitters with us. We appreciate it. We have some hot topics to dive into as well.
Let’s hit it. Gin & Juice and NFTs. There’s a little bit of a theme here in hot topics. Snoop Dogg is ‘CozomoMedici’, owns over $17 million in NFT. Here’s the story. “Snoop Dogg from his official Twitter account on September 21 posted, ‘I am @CozmoMedici,’ disclosing to his 19.2 million followers that he is behind the pseudonymous crypto Twitter personality. Also, the one who holds a blue chip collection of NFTs worth millions of dollars including an aforementioned Bored Ape. His wallet contains Ethereum NFTs worth $17 million. That includes nine CryptoPunks,” Decrypt reported. I looked at the account and I read through the tweets and all that if he’s a Gemini and he has multiple personalities or something like that. Maybe I didn’t look deep enough but I didn’t see anything that was characteristic of what you would expect from Snoop Dogg’s personality in those tweets.
Why would he claim it though?
I know we were talking about this before. Maybe he has other people tweeting for him. Maybe I don’t know Snoop Dogg’s personality as well as I would think. That would be totally understandable. Mickey, do you know Snoop? Are you buddies with that guy?
I do go way back with Snoop. The Chronic with Dr. Dre and Doggystyle was the must listen in my 1983 Chevy Blazer in high school. The mystery can be solved by saying that someone else’s writing his tweets and handling that account. I don’t think he has time for that, whatsoever. That would be how I would solve the mystery by saying that there’s someone else with a different personality writing those tweets.
The question is why would they be tweeting in the first place? Is that person an NFT investor personality that is good with that and he hired them as a portfolio manager or something like that? I can’t wait to hear how this all falls out.
I’ll be paying close attention.
Our next topic may provide some answers to that right.
Let’s smoke some NFTrees here. Snoop Dogg Enters The Sandbox Metaverse. “The Snoop Private Party Pass is a limited token that gives you access to step into Snoop Dogg’s lifestyle. With the Party Pass, you can attend Snoop’s private metaverse party and get access to exclusive NFTs, priceless experiences and a chance to have Snoop Dogg perform an exclusive concert on your LAND. There will only ever be 1,000 passes available. That is not many. People are going to snatch these up if they’re not already snatched up. Create your account now to get your pass on that Sandbox. Three ways to obtain one.”
“Purchase one of the 212 Premium LANDs in the Snoop LAND sale. Purchase one of 650 passes sold on the marketplace and be the lucky winner of 138 giveaways during their airdrops,” which is sick.
We’ve talked a lot about access. There’s definitely a cannabis culture that has transferred into the metaverse and into a lot of art. There have been quite a few general projects that have a certain segment of the NFTs reserved for the cannabis culture knowing that those folks like to buy NFTs. This is a no-brainer. Snoop will crush it with this project. What do you think, Mickey?
It’s got a lot of potential across it. This is what I’ve been talking about. This is a great use case. This is digitally native access with ownership especially in a digital environment. There are all kinds of composability and things that could go on here. This is what the future looks like whether or not this is the particular activation or project that crushes it. I’m not sure but I love the attempt and the idea. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. If it’s successful, we’re going to see more and more of these and more of these will lead to more creativity and you’ll start to see the space move in this direction, which is an excellent direction to move.
For me, I look at it and say, “One, why wasn’t it 420 passes?” What I’m waiting for is the hardware component of this to give access in a way that’s seamless for people whether it’s VR, AR or something. It’s to tie it together in such a way that it’s not particularly invasive on people’s ability to access the experience and make it super easy and part of their day-to-day life. That to me is going to be the major inflection point when we get that hardware from someone. We don’t know it’s going to be from Apple or from somebody building from the ground up. That’s what this makes me think about is when are we going to hit that point? Who is it going to be? What’s it going to look like?
You’re ready for Ready Player One already.
I’m ready. That’s the inflection point in my mind.
Jeff, this is a step in that direction where we’re getting into ownership of LAND and bringing the party to your virtual house. We’ve talked a lot about utility and the metaverse. This is bringing it all together in a way that creates additional value that doesn’t exist otherwise without this underlying LAND that you get to have that is part of a community of like-minded individuals like you. You can throw a house party with Snoop.
The next step of this is that I own that piece of LAND and I can rent that piece of LAND for the concert. Maybe I don’t want to attend the concert. Maybe I want to monetize my holdings so selling a ticket to the concert leveraging my piece of LAND is the next step to this.
Speaking of LAND, we had Frogland on an episode who’s creating an interesting virtual LAND for the NFT project. They started releasing some of their frogs. It’s a cool project around virtual LAND and NFTs as well.
Buy a Frog, get a piece of LAND. They sold out. Shout out to Snoop Frog in DC.
Next hot topic and then we’ll start to wrap up. How to make 0:51:49 into the next NFT drop even easier? It’s the largest NFT market by volume. It’s OpenSea. It’s launching a smartphone application. I did see a notification. I haven’t downloaded it yet but that’s exciting. It makes things a lot easier. At the same time, it’s interesting to see the different platforms. They’re on the computer first. A lot of strategies have been mobile-first and computer contemporaneously. A lot of these crypto projects are going ahead and starting on the desktop or laptop first. It’s here and it’s ready to go.
Moving from web app to mobile app is a big move. You can open it anytime you want from your phone or wherever much more easily. You can do it from Safari, Chrome or whatever on your phone but this makes it so much easier. I haven’t messed around in the app too much but I feel it’s probably going to open the door to a lot more trading. Probably the features around auctions and the different levers in there and staying on top of that probably keeping tabs on that more easily. What comes to mind for me is one of the nice benefits of having that app.
The lack of mobile presence has also been one of the factors that have been holding I would say the space back. It’s that friction point between Web 2.0 closed ecosystem and Web 3.0 open ecosystem. The app stores are the Web 2.0 closed ecosystems and it’s tough for them to understand this Web 3.0 concept and how it’s an antithesis to the way they operate. We’re seeing the app stores slowly get on board with this. OpenSea will be another thing that leads to probably the app stores becoming more and more open to Web 3.0 experiences.
They’re exciting times. All these improvements and iterations are driving this thing forward and it’s so rapid. It’s exciting to be in the middle of all this. That’s a wrap for the episode overall. Where should folks go to keep tabs on what you’re up to, the projects you’re working on and what they can expect next?
Dapper Labs: There’s plenty of development talent to go around to meet our developer needs.
The best places are to keep tabs on the company and know what’s happening within the company is the official Flow Twitter account and the official Dapper Labs Twitter account. Anyone’s welcome to follow me on Twitter. I’m not that interesting but Dapper and the Flow Twitter accounts are great ways to keep up to speed on what’s going on within both the ecosystem and the company.
We have a little giveaway you were working on Josh with the Dapper Labs team. Did you want to maybe get some background on that?
I’m pumped about this. We talked about the Chainmonsters and they had a Genesis sale. My understanding is that there’s this Beta Season Pass 25 season exclusive NFT plus one rare collectible NFT, which was only available through their presale. We are going to be offering ten of these. That’s amazing.
It’s an excellent project. It’s a fun game. This is one of the first projects in history that is a game built specifically with NFTs and NFT utility in mind. Having one of these is going to have, nonetheless, a historical relic that you can say was one of the first NFTs to have user utility within an actual game.
I’m super excited and appreciative of you coming to the show to celebrate our 50th anniversary. Time flies when you’re having fun. Continue to look forward to what’s to come with Dapper Labs and Flow. Thanks so much.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Our readers should look out for more celebratory things coming out of Edge of NFTs as well for this 50th episode so pay attention.
We’ve got our own project that we’ve been cooking up for quite some time. We’ll be sharing more details and give folks that have read to this episode an opportunity to get on the presale for that. Lucky for them.
We’ve reached the outer limit of the Edge of NFT. 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 and say something cool and then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. If you want to help co-create Edge of NFT or you’ve got a guest you want to see on the episode, questions for the hosts or guests or an NFT you’d like us to review, drop us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us at @EdgeOfNFT to get in the mix. Lastly, be sure to tune in to the next episode for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.
Important Links:
- Dapper Labs
- NBA Top Shot
- Flow
- CryptoKitties
- Twitter – @MickeyMaher23
- La Liga
- Axie Infinity
- Momento
- GigLabs
- Vault.CNN.com
- Eternal
- RCRDSHP
- Chainmonsters
- 3LAU
- Genies
- Moviefone
- CryptoPunk
- Bored Apes
- Snoop Dogg is ‘CozomoMedici’, owns over $17 million in NFT – Moneycontrol article
- @CozmoMedici – Twitter
- Decrypt – Snoop Dogg Reveals Himself as Ethereum NFT Whale With $17M Collection
- Snoop Private Party Pass
- Frogland – past episode
- Flow – Twitter
- Dapper Labs – Twitter
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
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