There are a lot of lessons learned from the past ball run that we can apply to make more sustainable games in the future. This is on top of mind for this episode’s guests, who spoke with Josh Krieger at the Web3 Gaming Summit 2023, powered by ABGA. On the list are Walter Lee of BNB Chain, Ed Chang of Ava Labs, Sami Chlagou of Cross the Ages, and Vera Li of Ape Coin. Join in as they tell us of the latest tricks they have under their sleeves and give us an idea of this new approach that developers are taking to make blockchain games more sustainable while meeting the needs of the communities behind them. Tune in for more!
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Organic Growth And Success In The World Of Blockchain Gaming With BNB Chain, Ava Labs, Cross The Ages And Ape Coin
We are in Singapore at the Web3 Gaming Summit 2023 powered by ABGA. This is our second year here. We're having a blast meeting all sorts of cool people. We are learning how the Asian gaming ecosystem is developing. Certainly, a key player in that is BNB chain. I'm excited to meet here with Walter Lee, who is the Business Development and Web3 Gaming Growth Lead at BNB Chain. It is great to have you on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
A little background for our audience. BNB Chain is a leading L1 blockchain infrastructure. Walter spearheads the Web3 gaming initiatives, fostering strategic partnerships and building connections across the gaming industry. He's also the Founder of GameFi, which is a Web3 GameFi management consultancy focused on the growth of the gaming sector in Web3. He is Chairman of the GameFi Committee at the Risk and Insurance Management Association of Singapore. He advises Aether Games, a prominent Web3 gaming studio. You are really deep in the gaming space. That's the bottom line.
To update a bit further as well, for GameFi, it was before I joined BNB Chain. I closed that consultancy business because we do not like to have any clash of interests at BNB Chain. I closed that and the chairman position at RIMA is a nonprofit angle from there. My main role is really in BNB Chain.
You have this broader perspective from all this other work that you've done. I'm excited to talk about some of the detailed projects and everything that you're working on. What does everyone need to know about BNB Chain and how it's tied to the gaming ecosystem if they're not familiar with it already?
Most people will refer to BNB Chain as the layer one blockchain with the largest ecosystem. We have around 1 million daily active users in the markets. That creates about three million transactions every day. In the sense that projects such as games, you're looking for people and an ecosystem, that is where gaming will shine on BNB Chain for developers to develop that game. If your game is fun and, naturally, if you put it in the largest ecosystem, you will gain the highest traction with the most number of gamers. This is the angle of BNB Chain in gaming.
Your job is pretty easy, then?
Not really. Since it's a very dynamic atmosphere, we have to consistently, as an infrastructure company, catch up with the technology for our developers.
To develop high-fidelity games with AAA games.
That’s correct. We have to provide the infrastructure for that. On layer one alone, maybe a few years back, the technology might be enough, but layer two is coming out. We need faster transactions and lower gas fees to feed the developers what they want to do for Web3 gaming. You're right. Many people will love to deploy here. We're happy and we welcome them, but overall, we have to be on our toes in this industry.
I'm assuming that you're a gamer by trade. To be the gaming lead, you have to have a passion for gaming. What are some of the games that have come out on the chain that you're excited about the gameplay and maybe some of the ones coming out soon that haven't been released yet?
Since the industry is very new, if you see the games that we have, there are a couple of trading card games or casual games. For example, Gameta. Back then, we had SLG games like Monsterra. It is more the early days of Web2 gaming style. Don’t be mistaken. There are many genres of people still enjoying this era of casual games. As most gamers know, high-quality games like PC games or console requires a lot of manpower and time to develop.
Also, many years.
Many people and many years. We are at a stage where we talk to a lot of them and they are developing. Some examples that you can see some launching the betas and alphas like Citizen Conflict, for example. There are a few games we featured at EthCC in France, Oxya Origin. By LitLabs, there is a game called CyberTitans. GFAL is a studio that created lots of games. They're starting to put up one game out of the studio. Slowly, they're increasing the quality and getting more talent. I believe more high-quality games will launch very soon, maybe in 2023 or 2024.
That's a theme I've experienced in these conversations in Korea and Singapore so far. Be patient. The games are being built. It's a little bit different than the normal launch mentality. You can't launch a game prematurely if it's not ready. This is a complex infrastructure that's being built.
I agree.
It makes sense. Speaking of infrastructure, you're doing a lot to support the ecosystem. One of those initiatives is a BNB Chain hack solution, you call it?
Yeah. It's one of our hackathons.
What's that all about?
For BNB Chain, because we want to grow our ecosystem, we understand hackathons are important for startups to showcase themselves to potential investors or other people who are looking for great games to play. Hackvolution is the hackathon event that we did. Follow our social. You can see we do a lot of hackathons almost every few months. We have the Most Valuable Builder. We have the Zero2Hero. We also have one goal, to let startups showcase the quality of their games and their innovation and to put that up on the market so that they get invested and have the runway to bring the games to the community at the BNB Chain.
That's great. That’s something to check out if you're in the gaming space. You also partnered with Animoca Brands on a unique GameFi tokenomics study that focuses on what are the network effects and sustainable tokenomics for gaming. Tell us a little bit more about that project and some of the learnings.
For BN Chain, because we are a decentralized platform, we specifically partner with firms and stuff. What we do is collaborate with many strong brands like Animoca Brands itself. Together, we built the gaming infrastructure itself in the BNB Chain space. For example, they probably have games in their portfolio that are looking for a strong, maybe multi-chaining strategy or they're looking to deploy on BNB Chain. As BNB Chain, we can work with them. We get those projects with high potential and help with maybe marketing or some ecosystem support to bring the games to our users and community.
You also studied the tokenomics and what works. Are there any insights from those studies that you were surprised by?
There is no perfect recipe for tokenomics. I can't comment on what kind of tokenomic recipe to use, but over the years, for gaming tokenomics, we have to be very careful about the past cycle. We have to be careful about the supply and demand of tokenomics. Oversupply is dangerous.
Right now, there is no perfect recipe for tokenomics. Click To Tweet
We've seen that.
We have to have burning utilization of the tokens to keep the demand up and that kind of thing. These are the general macroeconomics that we must focus on for future games to be successful. These are a few things.
That makes sense. There are a lot of lessons learned from the past bull run that we can apply to make more sustainable games in the future.
I agree.
In terms of BNB Chain, you do have exposure to what your colleagues are doing in the Web3 space. Are there any initiatives or projects that you're particularly excited about in terms of the broader Web3 ecosystem that BNB is building?
What I'm really excited about is what we're offering our developers. BNB Chain is already relatively fast and has low gas fees. That is part of the success of our growth. We are catching up further. We are building opBNB using the optimistic roll-up.
What does that stand for?
Optimistic BNB. opBNB. That's layer two of BNB Chain. We offer faster transaction rates. Roughly, it's tested. It’s about twice as fast with 80% less gas fees. I believe that we're helping adoption. For gamers, sometimes, although the gas fees are already low, for certain concepts or certain transactions, people still feel that it can be cheaper and faster. It is so that we can drive the fast-moving and big volume in the Web3 space as a whole, not just gaming. We are very excited for that. We are probably launching this in 2023.
That's exciting. Are there any projects outside of gaming that have launched that have really taken off, maybe in the entertainment space or the virtual world space, other genres outside of gaming?
Since Web3 is all about people and community, there is a convergence. Some people do call it SocialFi, and then GameFi back then. There's convergence. Gaming is also about the people. For traditional gaming, we are behind computers since online computing. In the online space because of Web3 communities, Axie Infinity has a huge community in the Philippines because of people owning tokenomics and maybe having a DAO to make decisions off the games that bring the social aspect into gaming, which is the interesting part. This is leveraging on the spirit of Web3 to change gaming. The social aspect of social gaming is an upcoming trend. We can't even see this in traditional games.
Is there someone that's launched on BNB?
There are many launches. We can see some upcoming in 2023 or 2024. It is a platform that users hash and then you participate in the platform and the games. You can create community links on it and that kind of thing. All of this is happening. To highlight that, in BNB Chain, we are in the Web3 eSports. We have the gaming ambassadors, the GaiminGladiators. They're the number 1 Dota 2 team in the world. They have a logo over here on the Jersey. They have a gaming platform. That's one of the few gaming platforms that we have on BNB Chain that brings the Web3 social and gaming aspects together.
That’s very cool. Thanks for sharing all these insights with us and spending a little time together. If folks want to learn more about the BNB gaming ecosystem, where do they go?
They can follow our Twitter. It is our largest and strongest social. On Twitter, it is @BNBChain. Look out for information and different events and campaigns being featured there.
Thanks for hanging out.
Thank you so much.
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What's up, everyone? I am with Richard Carthon in Seoul, Korea. We are having a blast. We are at Ava House, which is on this dope floating island. It was really cool to come over here besides the traffic. We're getting to know someone special in that ecosystem, which is Ed Chang, Head of Gaming at Ava Labs. It's great to hang out.
Thanks for having me. This is exciting.
Ed brings a wealth of experience to the team. He has a background as a Senior Director of Partnerships at Electronic Arts, Head of Business Development at Streamlabs, and the Founder of Basikz Agency. He is well-equipped to navigate the industry's evolving landscape and drive innovation adoption in the world of blockchain gaming. Gaming has been the talk of talent for this trip. It's easy to appreciate that with all the iconic IP and gaming history in Asia. It's worth asking the question. Why did you guys decide to do this event in Asia on this dope floating island? How does that relate to your focus?
When you look at the progression of how Web3 gaming has developed, you've really seen a lot of investment from the Asian publisher side, especially in Korea and Japan, where you've got publishers like Nexon, NEOWIZ, Netmarble, Square Enix, and Gumi. These are storied publishers. They've bought into this crypto Web3 ethos more so than maybe their Western counterparts.
Alongside a lot of the regulations and things that are being adopted, and a general sentiment towards crypto, we think it's really ripe to scale up in terms of mass adoption. We were very targeted as a company, not just in gaming on the Korean market and Japanese market. You've also seen that in the moves that we've made. The team traditionally has been in the West, but our first international expansion was in Korea. We've got Justin as our head of Korea. We've got Roy as our head of Japan. They're doing a great job of spreading the word of Avalanche and bringing on some solid partners.
I am excited about the gaming aspect. One of the companies that is doing something cool is Shrapnel. I got to experience playing a little bit of that game plan. It’s a taste of a lot of cool gaming that's coming this way. In addition to the gaming and everything else, you have a ton of awesome content that's coming out. What are some of the highlights and things that you're looking forward to as far as some of the things that Avalanche is moving forward?
It's great because it's not just on the gaming side. We announced a couple of big partners in Japan. They were focused on the loyalty point system. Across the over 100 million potential users being represented, this is tech and scale that we're really excited about because we feel like you can only do that on Avalanche. There was that. We are announcing a DeFi protocol called Cavalry.
We've also announced a new NFT platform in the marketplace called Hyperspace coming to Avalanche. We're also going to be on stage later to announce a new partner for a gaming program that we have called Arcade. It allows us to broker and bridge the connections between traditional Web2 publishers who want to learn more from native Web3 gaming teams and vice versa.
You also have a partnership with Rumble Kongs, if I'm not mistaken. I'm a fan of the sports genre of gaming. I was an old-school fan. Tell me a little bit more about Rumble Kongs and what you guys are doing there.
We really like that team. One of them was a co-founder of Sandbox. Another one was a crypto native and NFT rental platform, alongside other things. We've had a good relationship with them. We've been talking with them for a while. I also grew up playing games like NBA Jam, which is very similar to 3-on-3.
More of a theme. They've done a really good job building a strong brand traditionally on Ethereum. They've brought in some well-known influencers like Steph Curry and Paul George who have repped the different gear and logos. They've got CA sports on board. They built a rabid following. As they're transitioning away from an NFT collection to an actual game, you need the scale. You need the speed. You need the transaction fees that something like Avalanche can help with. We're excited to announce them coming aboard. It's going to be a gradual transition of how to get all the assets over. We're working a lot with them over time on figuring that out.
With the gameplay experience there, does the rarity of your ape have a lot to do with their performance on the court?
There are a lot of things to figure out. Gaming, in general, has moved towards more of a traditional free-to-play, even on the Web3 gaming side. The early games were an NFT that was going to gate your access to the game. If you're a game publisher, you don't want to limit that potential success. You need to hit critical mass. It's then about how you get that top of the funnel as wide as possible, and then you can add on freemium or premium features with NFTs and stuff like that.
I have picked up on that theme in conversations. Especially with regulations varying by country, some folks are making that experience around blockchain come later in the process, where you're already hooked in the game. You can take another level of stickiness to the experience.
Exactly. That's a great point. When I started here, the conversation was very similar to what Axe Infinity did with 2 tokens, and then it was 1 token. It was then like, “Do you need a token for the game? Can you use a stable coin or the native coin of the platform?” There are a lot of really interesting considerations that were stepping through with all of our partners.
It’s really cool to see the evolution from what you're doing in gaming and figuring out how to bridge these pieces, making it more seamless and having that good experience. You have other initiatives going on. One of them happens to be the Avalanche Vista. You have some really great announcements that's been coming out with that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah. The blessing and the curse of Avalanche is that we're not an NFT platform. We're not just a gaming platform. There are six verticals that we try to excel in. There's institutional, DeFi, and enterprise. Morgan leads our institutional efforts and has been doing a great job. There's this concept of RWA, which stands for Real World Assets.
We've announced a program with KKR, the massive private equity fund, about tokenizing one of their funds and putting it on the chain. It’s super exciting. You have instant settlement and way cheaper transaction fees. Think of a world where pretty much everything is on chain and tokenized and you can easily transact those things back and forth.
Vista is one of our first large initiatives to help spearhead that to help handhold a lot of these large traditional finance companies and bring them into this new age of Web3. With the toolset and the tech that we have, we are one of the only chains that can enable this at scale. It’s really exciting with all the efforts that Morgan is putting in.
That’s very cool. Besides gaming in the South Korean market, you're also working with SK Planet. You did a big partnership there.
Going back to this loyalty use case, they have a loyalty program called OK CASHBAG. This is something where it's got tens of millions of people who are using it in the Web2 world. They're bringing that into Web3. They're slowly onboarding all of these KY seed users, like actual real use cases of your loyalty points on the chain. You can transact for other things. You can sign up for merchants.
That loyalty use case is massive in Asia, even more so than it is in the Western world. It's the start. There are a lot of other things we're talking to that team about. SK is one of the biggest companies in Korea. It's a great first massive announcement to the world that we're taking this market seriously and we're going to be here for a long time.
Loyalty use case is massive in Asia, even more so than it is in the Western world. Click To Tweet
That's a really good distinction. There is something I want to spend a quick amount of time on. There is a lot of emphasis on how you can grow in the Asian markets and learn from a lot of active pieces that are different than the Western side from the loyalty standpoint. There are different interactions that happen over here versus what happens on the Western side. You are able to learn from that and able to take it into other parts of the world. What do you say is one of the biggest things that Avalanche has learned from being here in Asia and then being able to take some of those lessons and apply them to the rest of the world?
There are a couple. One of the first things is having a dedicated Korean team in the market has been helpful. Here, getting to know a lot of the players is spending a lot of face time with them and building a relationship like in other markets. Having boots on the ground here with localized language support and all that has really been helpful in helping partners like SK and others get up and running and get help quickly. That's been great.
On the marketing side, the way you're going to market to a Korean market is going to be different than the way you market in the US. Our team understands a lot of those nuances, has tried those things, and has figured a lot of those things out. On a larger level as well as even crypto adoption, people hear a lot more openly when they hear like, “This is an NFT,” or, “This is on blockchain,” which is great. The Asian market has a much higher penetration than the Western market in terms of crypto adoption.
You are underscoring a key part of all this, which is the importance of being on the ground, having those face-to-face interactions, and breaking down barriers that way, especially in cultures where that's the way that business is done. It's not done via Zoom or Twitter DMs. It makes a lot of sense. Is there anything on the roadmap here in Korea or, more broadly, that you're particularly excited about?
Yeah. The interesting thing on the roadmap side is Avalanche is one of the first out there to develop this app chain thesis. The white paper years ago talked about this subnet feature that we have that allows you to deploy your own private blockchain at the top of our main chain. For a long time, it was speaking about a blueprint where partners would be like, “That sounds cool.”
We've got a ton of subnets in deployment. We've got ones like SK, Merit Circle, Shrapnel, and all that. People are seeing that vision. Other chains are taking notice and a lot of them are trying to fast follow the app chain thing. It's been great for us because the value prop is, “We've always said this is the future. This is our make-it-or-break-it. It's going to be subnets. It's going to be horizontal scaling.”
Stay tuned. There are going to be a lot more cool developments around subnets. We have things like Ava Cloud, which we've announced, that allow for one-click subnet deployment. We have a lot of really cool custom features that allow you to deploy your chain within minutes. That stuff makes it easy for a traditional non-crypto native developer to get up and running as fast as possible.
There are some pretty meaningful benefits from a security perspective, privacy perspective, and the control side of things that enterprises and game publishers are looking for where they want to beholden too much on someone else's platform or technology.
Exactly. Even beyond that, the analogy we use a lot is a freeway. A lot of these monolithic chains are maybe a large freeway. Eventually, there are all these different cars and DAPs. There are times when there's going to be traffic and you're beholden to the masses. Whereas with a subnet, you have your own private freeway. You can set the rules like speed limits and traffic rules. You can control that flow and what the tolls are.
What's great is the things that are happening on the main net don't affect the subnets. The privacy part, speed, customization, and all those things, especially for a game developer or a developer like SK, you don't have time to think about what's happening with the rest of the world. You're so busy building your business.
We’re on the other side of Seoul. We're going over in traffic. The bridge is clogged. We get here and we're in this beautiful floating island oasis where it's Avalanche, swag, and tasty food. There are cookies with the Avalanche logo on them. I get it. It's your domain to do what you want with it.
It’s the Promised Land. Exactly.
If you could have some little cost for me to get over this jet lag, that would be great, too.
One other thing I wanted to bring up is in 2022, when you were planning this event, unfortunately, they had the flooding and everything else that happened that could put a damper on things. How does it feel to be here this 2023 fully and have everyone here on a nice, beautiful day? How are you feeling with everything going on?
It feels good. We're known for a lot of things. One of the things that's awesome that I've noticed is that our events team does such a good job putting on great events and content. It was such a shame in 2022 that they weren't able to showcase the full power. It was so impressive, like flipping on a dime, switching the venues, and doing a one-day event. This is a pinnacle of all the planning from 2022 and 2023 as well and they knock it out of the park every time. It's great to be here.
There you go. Where can folks go to learn more about what you guys are doing in the gaming realm more broadly and maybe get in touch with you if they want to do something on the gaming side?
Our Twitter handle is @Avax for all things Avalanche. We've also got a gaming focus. On Twitter, it's @GamingOnAvax. You can send a DM to that account. My personal account is @EDC. DMs are open. I am looking forward to hearing from anybody who might have questions or wants to talk about their project.
Thanks for having us. It’s great to get a sense of what's going on in your world. We look forward to hearing more in the future.
Likewise. Thank you so much.
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Welcome back to the show live in Singapore. Thank you to ABGA Gaming Summit for bringing us together with the CEO of Cross The Ages, Sami Chlagou.
You are doing well.
Thank you so much.
I am impressed.
The complicated names are par for the course in the world of Web3. Cross The Ages is a dope trading card game leveraging blockchain tech for real card ownership. Sami is the Founder of PixelHeart, Rush on Game, and Free Agent games with seven global studios. He has a strategic vision around driving industry change and revolutionizing gaming experiences with blockchain integration. It's the top game production studio redefining card gaming and blockchain's role in entertainment. It sounds exciting. What does the world need to know about Cross The Ages?
We come from the gaming industry. We spent twelve years probably doing games for the Web2 for Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox. Our expertise helps us a lot to understand how we're going to be able to create a Web3 project. A few years ago, Cross The Ages started with an idea to create not a game but a whole IP. We start with 7 books with 7 writers for 10 years. The first book made 1 million downloads in many languages.
From that, we started to create the community behind us. We generate more followers. They start to follow the law and discover the adventures and the character of the universe. This helps us to build the card giving. I spent twenty years of my life collecting card-giving, like Magic, Pokémon, and all this stuff. When I was a kid, I kept those boxes sealed, which I sold in 2020. I paid them for $100 and sold them for $300,000 each. This money helped me to launch Cross The Ages and to hire more than 100 artists internationally.
I love that bootstrapping story. It is like the Airbnb founders selling the cereal. It shows your passion for collectibles.
I'm a huge fan. In 2019, I completely understood the mechanics of NFT. I've become an owner of many Apes, Zukis, artifacts, and collections. I feel that it's going to be good to have them in the future. The idea was to create the first game of TCG, Trading Card Game, where people would be able to have a challenge play with a new kind of game first and then be able to be a Web2 game. The big problem and the big issue we have is when we're talking about Web3, all the people from Web2 are very scared about that. That, for them, is Ponzi. It’s a scam.
It sounds like you're not even using words like that. You don't need to. You have to play a fun game.
You have to play the game. We are using the blockchain technology for the ownership.
It’s the best technology for the need.
With that, you can be able to sell and rent with everything you get. We also created a system of interoperability in the universe of Cross The Ages. I am not selling the moon and telling you that we are going to take stores from another game or a car from another game. You're going to have all the same assets from one game to another game. We start with a TCG. We're going to start in 2024 with an opening work. It’s a completely different game that’s more attractive.
What is that called again?
Arise. It’s going to start in the middle of 2024.
That’s exciting. You also have Mantris season two coming up. What's the inspiration behind that initiative?
Every six months, we have a new collection. The collection is a part of the universe of Cross The Ages. You have fourteen collections already prepared and 1 every 6 months. The first collection was Arkhante. The second collection was Mantris. This is pretty impressive because we start at pre-sale. We have a limited pack of 8,000 packs with a number of NFTs. We sold in less than 3 hours 600,000 NFTs. When we are talking about bear markets, when everything is like that, how can a collection be sold like that? How can a collection with more than $2.2 million NFTs raise the price day after day?
What was the average price point on those NFTs that you sold?
The minimum price is 1.
1 ETH?
$1. The maximum price is $135,000.
Richerd from Manifold talks about how buying NFT should be buying a cup of coffee. Is that something you agree with?
It's different. People are buying the NFT of Cross The Ages because of the utility behind it. For us, we are mainly focused on giving utility behind that. For example, we've seen an evolution on our back NFT in one year. Every partner of Cross The Ages from the first edition made between x2 to x500. All of them. That means that some packs of $10 that you used to have in June 2022 are already $5,000. The utility behind it is what you can find inside that helps you to evolve. You can sell it, rent it, or whatever you want to do with it. This is exactly the objective of giving utility to the NFT.
Are you dabbling with AI at all?
No. We are only using AI for the BDE mode that's going to launch. We are not going to use any kind of AI for art illustration. I have an agreement with my artist. They are all drawing everything. For us, it's important to keep this handmade. I know it is old-school, but we are really proud to have a basis for the company.
That ethos, I appreciate that. You make a decision and stick with it.
I’m very okay with that. People say, “You can create a card for cheap and don't have to pay and wait.” When you create a universe like that, you have so many people coming from the artists. The artists of Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and Avatar are all included in Cross The Ages. We are happy to have this experience.
I appreciate that. ABGA brought us together originally. We're doing the interview at TOKEN2049, which is right next door to where that event was. In both cases, Asia is thriving. Why is Asia important to you and what you're building?
Our first community is based in France because we launched the game in France. However, the second community that is super close is Japan with 80% of our community. We have 20% in France, 80% in Japan, and 7% in Korea. We haven't started the communication yet. Imagine the potential of those.
It’s organic. The community found the game and latched onto it.
We have 120,000 regular players and real people and help. We have fifteen daily users. This can be 10 times more in 2 months because the game was released in April 2023. It's pretty new for eight weeks. We get the top chart and the top rank for Apple store and Play store and what we're doing is getting more organic.
That’s pretty exciting stuff. I appreciate your perspective. I look forward to seeing your progress. Where can folks go to learn more about what you're up to?
We have the website Cross The Ages. Follow us on YouTube, Discord, Telegram, and all the social media. We also have Twitter. We are pretty active on social media. I always say that you don't have to spend anything. It's free to play. We are really happy if you want to discover the universe, the comics, the books, the movies, and everything created in the universe.
That sounds awesome. Thanks for spending some time together. Let's catch up again soon.
Thank you.
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We are in Singapore at the Web3 Gaming Summit that AGBA is putting together. We are excited to be here again because we came in 2022. We had a great time. We met some amazing people. We saw what's at the forefront of gaming in all things Web3. I'm speaking with Vera, AKA Vera the Ape, who is part of the special council of APE Coin.
For those who don't know, she has a sense of background working at Nvidia and Apple and her involvement with Bored Chili and Pink Bored Apes. She has been a leader in this space. It was cool to have you as an attendee at Outer Edge. We continue to look forward to doing more together. A little bit more context for those of you who don't know, ApeCoin is linked to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. It merges the ERC-20 token, fostering a decentralized autonomous organization called ApeCoin DAO along with anyone that holds Ape tokens to participate in governance.
Despite its ties to Yuga Labs, the creator of Board Apes, ApeCoin emphasizes a community-driven nature. It's a broader ecosystem in a rapidly growing model. I had the opportunity to moderate the presidential special council debate, but you somehow managed to escape my debate because you are already on the council, right?
I'm already on the council. Lucky me. They were barbecued by you.
It wasn’t that much of a barbecue. They had a good time. They really put a lot of thought into the answers because this is a serious position. There is a lot of responsibility. I'm curious what made you decide to join the council. How has it compared to your expectations? Do you have any buyer's remorse?
I've been in this ecosystem for a long time. I was like, “This is a great opportunity.” They're all dudes that are running for the council. My community messaged me, saying, “We need more women to be on the seat. We need diversity.” People are deeply participative and care about the community. I have my virtual community. I listen to the community. That's why I ran for the special council. In terms of experience, it's wonderful. It is a lot of stress because of this constant communication with the community and expectations. We're a DAO and we're serving the community.
What's been your focus in terms of your role in the special council? What are the types of things that you're trying to advocate for?
I pretty much go to a lot of events and show faces there to share with people who we are and how to participate in our DAO. I am having conversations and navigating people who are willing to write a proposal. I walk them through the process. I am delivering the mission that we have. I am spreading the word. That's pretty much what I do. I do a lot of the Europe-Asian approach as well. I bring diversity.
That’s very cool. You have a pretty thoughtful long-term roadmap for marketing and bringing more awareness to ACO and what you guys are doing. At this point, you're in the early phases of that marketing execution plan. Maybe you can talk about the specifics of what you all plan to do in terms of bringing awareness.
As our special council, our role is to design to govern the DAO and make sure that everything is running smoothly. We're following the rule and legal perspective as well. We are not the ones that are creating that role. We wanted to inspire communities. They can create a marketing group and they can write a strategy coming for the proposal. They will be leading on that marketing strategy and where we're going. We are there to make sure that things go right on their behalf and how we can serve them. In terms of our road design, we don't have a roadmap design for the DAO. We wanted the community to create that.
It's all about co-creation, right?
Yes.
That makes sense. What have been some of the fun outcomes so far in terms of proposals you've seen go through and are excited about?
There are very interesting proposals.
Probably some eccentric ones, too, right?
You see other proposals in the grant system. They're talking about infra. They're talking about building and this and that. For our DAO, you can see everything. There are people who want to create a Hollywood movie for our DAO or feature DAO plus the Bored Apes in it.
Are you going to have a cameo?
Maybe. Also, there are proposals that were created for Thank Ape, one of the proposals that we had. They requested a certain amount of grants and then they're empowering as a smaller entity to support the community artists. They are also giving grants smaller grants as well. Smaller requests don't have to go through our proposal process, which is much relatively longer and needs a lot of attention from the whole DAO voting. They have a smaller group of people that can make those smaller decisions, which can be a little bit more efficient.
There are pros and cons of having a big DAO with a lot of opinions. Having that fast track for smaller decisions makes a lot of sense. I've seen that trend. You're also doing some cool partnerships with Thrive Coin. Can you tell us more about that?
Thrive Coin is the one that created Thank Ape.
What's the background there on that entity, Thrive Coin?
Thrive Coin is building this DAO reputation like an HR ecosystem. They are working designing for a lot of DAOs. They're participating in different DAOs, building this service plus infra layer of people management. Also, the DAO operational assistant functions in different DAOs. We're one of their customers.
I know you're passionate about community. You're passionate about ApeCoin. You're passionate about inclusion in the space. Are there other specific technologies that you're excited about? I know you have a background in AI. When you look at the space and where we are, you have such an interesting background. What are some of the things about Web3 that you think are untapped with unlimited potential?
I've been into crypto for a long time. I got in in 2016. In parallel, I was in the AI industry. That’s another story for the AI story. For the crypto, it is about what that person resonates with the part of the crypto. I got into crypto early, but decentralization has never been a huge part of me. I grew up in China. That wasn't really my thing, and then it came to DeFi world. DFi hasn't been my thing because I'm an engineer. That doesn't resonate with me that much as well. NFT created. That whole culture-related and art part of it resonated with me.
Me, too. It was the moment where I was like, “There is something more here than this speculative economy.”
After many years, we finally found a language that introduced this industry to a broader audience. It doesn't have an engineered background. It doesn't have the need for decentralization or a financial part of it. With that being said, I was excited about that language. As we already onboard a lot of people through NFTs, we can see that application level of onboarding is happening, especially in Asia.
Since we're in Asia, you will see that adoption and the population benefit here. We need the right language to introduce this industry to people. It is removing that part of scammy perspective and bias on people. Even in the Bay area, the tech people are super smart. When I talk about crypto, they think it's scammy. We need that language for people to understand. It doesn't matter what kind of industry. It could be games, social apps, and movies. It could be anything. That's something I'm excited about.
We need the right language to introduce this industry to people. Click To Tweet
NFL Rivals came out. It's a cool game by Mythical Games. You don't know that you're players of NFTs. You don't know that you're playing a blockchain game. The marketplace feels like a regular marketplace. That's what you're talking about with these practical applications. I'm curious. I want to go back to your background in AI because not too many people were on both trains at the same time. Do you think there's this closer convergence happening where these things are coming together in parallel? To what extent do you think that AI can support Web3 instead of being considered antagonistic or a competing technology?
I was in the AI. AI has been around for a while. It got really popular because of ChatGPT.
That’s generative AI.
It's much closer to us. That technology includes a lot of parts. There are a lot of hard problems that need to be solved. In terms of AI, we can see crypto and AI landing on shared GPUs to improve the experience of AI generations. AI could benefit in this whole creator economy. That will include artists, music, and content creators. We're here creating content. That whole AI experience will make what that idea is and turn it into a product or at least a proof of concept.
Faster, right?
Yeah. It is much faster and much easier. You will know this is not the one that you want or this is the one that you want. You can easily showcase it as well. We'll see more in the future that storytelling can be generated by using the technology of AI. Plus, there is that visual and music part. I'm really excited about that alignment of AI and crypto. That's growing into the broader audience. There's one app. It's called Can of Soup. It was created by Y Combinator people. It will scan your face and be able to generate. It could be that you put a poem, write a story, or whatever, and then it will create your face into different scenarios. It is like the experience of Instagram.
I'm going to have to check it out.
It will be the future of metaverse. You can see a smaller seed of how will that look like and a bit of a taste of the future metaverse.
On the blockchain front, are there any emerging projects that you may not even be directly tied to that you're excited about? You see a lot of things. You're traveling all these events. What emerging technology gets you excited?
There is one project called Story Protocol. They lead by a16Z. I'm talking with them a lot. They’re a protocol on the layer of IP licensing plus storytelling. They're solving the bigger problem not only for creators but they’re also for the consumers who are willing to use IP. That's another very interesting thing. I'm looking forward to seeing more women's products being built because we want that language to be delivered to women. I'm creating my own Web3 cosmetic line.
Is it digital and physical or just physical?
Digital and physical. It includes governance, voting mechanisms, and revenue share mechanisms for the cosmetic brand. It will be physical cosmetic stuff.
Have you decided where you're going to make them in some of the products and some of the unique components of the cosmetics?
I'm working with a very amazing OEM. They are an IPO company in the US. They do a lot of big brand production. They have a factory in the US and Korea. When I was in Korea, I went to see the factory. I'll post my picture on Twitter.
Have you publicly shared the name of this company yet or is that soon to come?
If you have seen the Made By Apes, that whole video, you can see there's a picture of Bored Chili. That's the product. The teaser might not look the same.
When's the product line coming out?
I was planning to come out during the Ape Fest, but the factory is giving me a hard time.
I've worked in physical goods for many years. Timelines are notional, especially in the production environment. There are very busy factories and a shortage of supplies. You'll get there. I'm excited. We'll give a shout-out to your product plant launches. It's really cool to spend some time with you and get to know you better. Where can folks go to follow everything you're up to?
You guys can follow me @VeraTheApe on Twitter. You can also email me at VeraTheApe@Gmail.com or Telegram. I want to give a lot of people the introduction of the ApeCoin as well. People would associate us with BYC and assume that you need a BYC to participate in our DAO. You only need one ApeCoin to be part of the DAO.
That is a couple of dollars USD.
You don't need an ape to be part of a DAO. You are the creator of our community product. You are the owner and the creator.
I love it. Thank you so much for hanging out.
Thank you.
I look forward to staying in touch with more of your adventures.
Thank you for hosting.
Important Links
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