The NFT space is brimming with opportunity, both on the business and the creative side. In this episode, it’s time to meet three people trying to make a splash and leave their mark in the NFT universe with their new project, Frogland! Our hosts, Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley & Josh Kriger meet the Frogland trio of Snoop Frog, Gamabunta, and Shrimp McFly. The Frogland team discusses the creation of their metaverse, how their NFT differs from other NFT projects and how the community drives the progress of this imaginative project. Jump in and listen to how these pioneers are changing the game and having a ribbiting good time.
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Snoop Frog, Gamabunta & Shrimp McFly Of Frogland On Building The New Pangea Metaverse NFT Playground For Frogs, Gutter Cats & Rats, Wicked Craniums, & More…
This sponsored episode is brought to you by our featured collaborator, Frogland, the soon-to-be metaverse home of 10,000 generative NFT frogs. We’ll be speaking with team members Snoop Frog, Gamabunta and Shrimp McFly. Snoop Frog is the CEO of this rock star team with a track record, developing emerging technologies with industry leaders such as Nvidia, Samsung and Mattel. Gamabunta is a research specialist and leads the development and management of NFT traits, properties and tokenomics. Shrimp McFly is a Hollywood creative director with years of experience with Iconic IP that will be present throughout Frogland. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having us. It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to hopping into Frogland.
It’s exciting to have you guys talking specifics about a project that’s coming up that has generated a lot of buzz in the community. We talk a lot about the macro of what’s going on in NFTs. This is a chance for us to dive deep with guys with a lot of experience doing something cool specifically the edge of frog NFTs. Why don’t we start off by asking the question, what is Frogland? What’s this all about?
Frogland is a generative sale as we’ve touched upon 10,000 frogs that will ultimately bootstrap the development of a next-generation metaverse. The metaverse itself has been developed by a former AAA development team that was the flagship studio for one of the leading games consoles out there with some incredible experience building for lots of the generation games. We realized some time ago that the NFT space is gravitating towards metaverses because the artists want the world to be able to demonstrate their avatars that aren’t working with NFTs in a more massive capacity, as you’re not just scrolling through on a mobile phone.
This has drawn a lot of interest into the existing metaverse that we have in the space but in my opinion, those metaverses are the 2017 metaverses. That’s where the blank voids for artists to be able to demonstrate two-dimensional images, artworks and occasional advertising here and there. Since seeing the rise in, for instance, The Bored Ape Yacht Club, a generative series of 10,000 apes where they built this incredible community. That community went on to dominate the NFT space and to become one of the most sought-after NFTs in this current wave.
We sat by and saw, having worked with a bunch of other NFT projects, that this is a technology that had to stay. We saw that the metaverses again are now having the need for artists to pop in and to be able to demonstrate artwork. There are a lot more people needing to move into these spaces, not just the gamers from the last generation. The Bored Ape Yacht Club raised a lot of money, selling them NFTs. They spend that money buying land in Sandbox, which is a very gamified and Minecraft-style world. It didn’t represent the aesthetics of their community.
Given my track record, having worked in the XR space for a number of years, knowing a lot of the key players in both the hardware and the software development world and now having run a few projects with some of the fine gentlemen, we realized that there’s an opportunity here to bring the community together and build a metaverse that was more in line with this current wave of generative projects.
In doing so, the concept of Frogland was born. It’s the idea that we could work directly with the artists that created the artwork on the NFTs that had been so popular in the community and get them to help design districts suited off to their aesthetics with AAA game developers, effectively have a metaverse that was customized and designed to be a home for each and every project to help that.
With that in mind, we started reaching out to some of our most favorite projects. The Gutter Cat Gang and the Wicked Craniums were the first two partners that we decided to connect with our game developers to build district and their aesthetics. As such, the Gutterville was born, the homeland of the district for the Gutter Cat Gang within the NewPangea metaverse. Frogland being the founding district in the center, we will have the Gutter Cat Gang to the Western border.
We also have the Island of Osseous, which is the district for the Wicked Craniums and Wicked Stallions and that is to the South of Frogland. This is a community center named The BoneYard. It can be found at the very center with a view that, at a later stage, after the initial Frogland sale, we can continue to roll out future land sales. Those funds will then go back towards the development of the whole metaverse ecosystem itself. There will only ever be one Frogland sale, where the only way you can buy land in Frogland is by buying a frog. This is why we have the catch-phrase, “Buy a frog, get land.” In essence, this is where it all came from and where we’re going.
There’s a lot to unpack here on the show. I got to say, for Snoop Frog, your accent is quite different than what I’m used to. I was wondering, was it Snoop’s background that got you excited about this? Was it his accent? I’m pretty enamored by the accent, personally.
It’s a bit of both. It’s definitely a charming accent but a very impressive background. We’ve had the opportunity to work with him a bit before. We’re quite excited to jump in and get this project started however we could.
Snoop, you alluded to it before, NewPangea. What is NewPangea? How does it relate to this? I heard of the different components. What’s the interaction like?
NewPangea is the name of this metaverse, Frogland being the first founding district of NewPangea. Imagine Frogland in the center, North, South, East and West. We have initially four districts that will be surrounding Frogland and in the future, also when the community demands and this is so important, the community must want it. We’re not going to force anything down people’s throats here. This is something that is going to be a space built by the community for the community.
You only eat the flies when you want to eat the flies.
That’s how we’re trying to differentiate and be something different and cool from some of the other metaverses out there. This isn’t a product that we’re wrapping up complete and then giving over where we’re saying like, “We’re at this early stage. We want your inputs to help us make this a home where everyone is collaboratively helped.” That’s where the best projects have come from is a community collaboration in helping create their law and the vibe. That’s what we’re trying to do from a metaverse perspective, get community inputs ongoing and early.
What does a Hollywood creative director like yourself do differently? What’s your perspective on how to create amazing metaverses at a high level?
The narrative changed when I came aboard to bring it into the noir cinema gangster, good guy versus bad guy, cops versus robbers, all the things that we love about movies and narrative. One of the challenges of Hollywood, for example, is it’s very top-down. You have a writer and a director that dictate how the story is going to work and everyone falls in line like an army.
In this case, it’s an army of frogs and everyone brings their own ideas with a guiding story. The idea here is to build communities or provide the tools so that NewPangea becomes a process or maybe even a cesspool of stories within their own districts. They can draw upon all the media that inspires them to build out their own NFT project lore, NFT project aesthetic and as a place to play and grow with their fans.
We’ve heard a lot of cool stuff and a few comparisons with existing metaverses. In what ways is this one going to be different than other ones? What kind of vision do you have that’s different here?
A large emphasis on what we’ve been doing has been not only the visual style of this new generation of the metaverse but it has been the narrative and engagement within the space once you’re in that. This is where we brought on board some tremendous creative writing experts there. In fact, one of the gentlemen who is an ex-LucasArts and ex-Disney has been working on fleshing out the film noir narrative with Shrimp.
We have this whole notion where, for instance, the Gutter Cat Gang has been negotiated by the notorious people of Frogland to establish a deal to then protect the Western borders in return for Frogland providing the cat with catnip. The Wicked Craniums in return for giving frogs access to their Wicked Riders will be allowed access to various aspects of the Frogland District.
Frogland: The NFT space is gravitating towards metaverses because the artists want the world to be able to demonstrate their avatars that aren’t working with NFTs in a more massive capacity, as you’re not just scrolling through on a mobile phone.
We’re fleshing out this whole narrative where the communities that are not participating will be able to see the story get built out and contribute ideas. This will be the co-creation of a narrative that is so impressive. When you start to get a lot of people in the same space at the same time, you see some magical things happen. By buying a frog, you’re not just buying a portion of land but you’re also getting a say in the development process.
As a gamer myself, someone who always strive to be able to participate in a game development process, to now have the option to have a lot of people effectively participate in this entire game development world, having a window into the development studio in the process from concept to completion, where if someone comes up with a good idea and the community gets behind it, we can make that a real thing. This is why we’re using world-class game developers because these are not straight out of university. These guys have built one of the bestselling launch titles for one of the bestselling games consoles in the world. They know their stuff.
The level of gamification and narrative is something that you simply don’t see in existing metaverses. The last-gen metaverse is a blank void for people to jump into to walk around but they rely on individuals in there for any level of engagement. This is the space that you could jump in independently by yourself if you still wish and still have a lot of fun inside. The real difference is adding more of a gamification element to the metaverse than just the metaverse itself.
As you describe it too, I know Jeff, also known as Frog Gronkowski here and Josh too, VanillaFrog and myself, Talib Frogli, have all had some experience with comedy improv. The way you’re describing it makes me feel that way. It’s like that yes-and mentality and making a ridiculous situation, giving people things to play with from the start and saying, “Come on. Let’s play together, have fun here and let loose.” I like that.
There’s nothing more fun than a cute, untrustworthy dungeon master. That’s all the frogs are in this underworld. They might be smugglers. They may have shady backgrounds. There are archetypes of different frogs. We’re going to see bookies, fugitives, racketeers to loan sharks, going all the way to the extortionists, smugglers and bad actors.
I have a correction here. I think you mean loan frogs.
Loan frogs are sitting there in the pool, waiting to jump out.
Loan frog sharks, maybe that’s the right terminology.
Part of the enchanting aspect of this is frogs are fun and cute and everyone loves them but they’re mysterious. Their eyes are always a little shifty. You never know quite where they’re looking, what they’re thinking or what they’re doing. We’re double-downing on the empathy towards that animal, as well as pulling out as much uneasiness and absurdity at the same time. It’s the mashup that we hope to touch with our audience.
We know there’s a Burning Man community that loves NFTs. I’m going to lay down a prediction here. There’s going to be some DMT frog, hallucinogenic haven somewhere in the metaverse that these guys are going to come up with. It has got to happen.
Let’s say that making that inspiration in both skin, tone, absurdity and eyes is a large component of this. We hope that the audience responds with that.
Let’s take this a little bit further in terms of what things can be done in the frog metaverse. I know, Snoop, you had some conversations with the Gutter Cats. Are we talking about specific games that can be created where people can earn something? Are we talking about a frog-audience-focused music show where a top performer comes in dressed as a frog and there’s access to special concerts and events? Are you bringing all the different capabilities of NFTs together in this metaverse over time? Is that the goal?
I like to think of it as, “What can you do with a piece of paper?” There are endless possibilities. You can write a book, draw a picture and write a poem. There are so many things you can do and this is what we’re giving. It’s a blank canvas for people to come in and start exploring, developing and brainstorming what it is exactly they would want to do with this next-generation environment.
I know we have a roadmap and an idea of what we would like to see realized but none of this is set in stone. Everything is put to the community. If the community says no, the community wants to see something else and we will get some incredible insights. For example, we were doing the Twitter Spaces community chat in the Wicked Craniums’ evening hour. We started doing a Q&A with a lot of the Wicked Cranium holders. They started coming up with some cool ideas for how we could use the Wicked Craniums and what they would like to see happen in that space.
Similarly, with the Gutter Cats, we had one of their weekly Twitter Spaces. They invited us to co-host to have a bit of a Q&A with their community. We saw the feedback and the people flowing into our Discord, throwing ideas into the individual channels that we created for them. This is where the magic begins to happen because we have a wonderful idea, great roadmap and team that knows exactly what they’re doing but the community is where we’re going to start seeing these absolute golden nuggets coming out.
We have fourteen people working on this project between the game development, artwork, blockchain and everything but it’s probably about seventeen now. There are only so many ideas seventeen people can come up with. When you get 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 or 100,000 people all throwing ideas into the mix and getting the community to vote on them and filter the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to get some pretty cool things evolving, the unknown unknowns, none of us here can even anticipate.
This is what I love so much about the emerging technology spaces. It’s the Wild West. There are no rules, handbooks and templates to follow. You have to do it yourself. Something will work. Something won’t but through trial and error, working in this space and a number of other spaces and working with your chops, we’ve struck upon the epitome of utility and that is community. In my mind, the best utility is having the community involved one and the same. This is what Frogland has managed to do. It’s managing to pull the community together into a shared space that is more immersed, engaging and entertaining than anything else that’s out there so far.
In that space, what’s almost certainly going to be required and needed are betting down and finalizing the artistic and aesthetic aspects of these different districts of Gutterville and the Wicked Cranium community as well, getting those parted and then getting builder tools. People are still going to want to within that aesthetic of that particular district to customize things. They’re going to want to be able to display their NFTs, for instance, in the art district. In terms of how we gamify, there are a million options. There’s going to be more engagement in betting down exactly what aspects are gamified and how people can interact beyond building and customizing the space. That’s our next on the roadmap.
We’re building out a series of lore and potentially NFTs attached to those lores to compound the mystery. That includes individual rap sheets for famous, notorious frogs, crime scene investigator reports, notes by lead investigators, photo snippets, evidence and confidential files. It will play up that mystery with a little bit of puzzle, narrative, fun and a lot of cool art. All of these things take time. The process of building out that roadmap and the sale of these first NFTs allow us to hire the right people, build up the narrative team and drop out all of those little bits into the pond sphere into the Frogland. Floating papers on the road of travels and you pick it up. You have a new mystery that you can go and search for or some information that you can go find.
Your background in Hollywood is definitely coming out there. We’re talking about real character development, like what you would find in screenwriting, developing those characters fully. It sounds like there are some opportunities to develop IP shows, maybe even in the future, around some of these frogs, characters or the community.
How I got into the NFT space, my background is visual effects animation at Lucasfilm. I worked with Bob Zemeckis on a few films and then got into VR/AR. Mr. Frog Tree, who is not here, is my creative partner for many years. He and I have written several screenplays together. We’ve had a lot of challenges getting them off of the ground. Netflix, as much as they’re looking for hot content, Amazon and all these streaming services are still playing by the old rules were great. Who do you know? How much control are we going to have?
That whole rights thing, George Lucas figured that out long ago. Getting that will never happen again. The only way to do that is to reverse-engineer the system. Build an ecosystem where everybody has a piece of it. Everyone is building that narrative. All we’re offering is being the dungeon masters through our experience of what makes a great narrative, dropping those bits in and seeing where the community goes with it. It’s like crowdsourcing narrative design. That’s what’s super exciting about it and I think why there’s this filmic aspect to it. The NFTs will reflect that. They will be different in a lot of ways than the other NFTs you’ll see out there. At least, the avatar-style generative.
Frogland: There will only ever be one Frogland sale, where the only way you can buy land in Frogland is by buying a frog. This is why we have the catch-phrase, “Buy a frog, get land.”
True co-creation at its core is community building and engagement. Let’s talk about that a little bit on a higher level. When you think about partnerships and developing those to help advance what you’re trying to build here, what partnerships have you formed? What are you working on? How do you form those relationships to advance Frogland?
It’s a lot of fun forming these partnerships. Now, I personally am a holder of the Wicked Craniums, Gutter Cat Gang, Gutter Rats and Stallions. I love the aesthetics and styles. This is why, as a group, we decided to pick those two of multiple projects as the leading ones. The backstory for them ties quite nicely to being a little bit on the otherworldly side and a little bit troublesome. We felt we were building the narrative that would give us a lot of maneuverability when we want to start fleshing those stories out.
Getting the first part on board is always the hardest because we had little to demonstrate other than some cute and cool-looking notorious frogs and some cool ideas of some cool people. They saw with the background that we had, both in the NFT and out of the NFT space, that we could effectively execute on these pretty interesting ideas. The artists are working with us on that. That had the snowball effect, where once we then started to be able to tell people, “We have partnered with the Gutter Gang,” all of a sudden, “Hang on a minute. How do we get on your list?”
The network effects are building quite quickly where now I’m getting bombarded by people who have other projects saying, “We want to get our own district in Frogland,” but this is not our decision to make. This is a community decision to make. Ultimately, these are the things that we could potentially have some new actors bought into this whole new space, story and narrative. Is this something we want to move forward with, with this group? You already touched on co-creation. It is where the magic happens. Having communities this large, active and engaging is something I’ve never seen before and I’ve been in the emerging tech space for quite some time.
For Gamabunta, a follow-up question there is, does that make the development process more or less complicated having this decentralized, autonomous team of people that want to help you but maybe they write code very differently than you write code?
It’s going to be very interesting taking that input. There are certain aspects where they’re implementing and aspects where it’s more collaborative. That’s initially around lore. We’re not at the moment taking a community code, for instance, but hopefully we get to that point.
Certainly, it would be awesome if we get to the point where people can submit code and aspects of that already. When we say the community discussion and involvement, what we’re talking about is having the game development studio available for weekly and bi-weekly conversations with the community to field questions for the Discord to be a mechanism to curate the best and decide on the best ideas. We put those ideas to the development team. Provided that’s technically possible, we can make it a thing. It’s more of that level of curation rather than digging in and having to do the hard work yourself. We’ve got the professionals taking care of that so you don’t have to. You just get the fun, big picture guy, “Do this. Do that. Is that a cool idea?” The community gets behind it. We’ll make it happen.
Usually, you would go in and pitch an idea. A studio would throw some development money at it. A couple of people in a room would come up with some ideas. They would re-pitch it. It has to go up the chain of command and finally, someone green-lights it. It’s very top-down. This is the other way around where we’re selling the NFTs to fund the development. By owning the NFT, you get a say in where it goes.
However, building metaverses, codes and stories in a controlled environment is a complex process. Having a say in that, something at this scale with this level of developers and artists is unprecedented and quite exciting for everyone from an armchair moviegoer to a kid or someone who wants to be driving in a seat someday who is directing. There are going to be a lot of opportunities to put your frog prints on the artwork when it comes out and make an impression.
The specifics of some of the qualities that you’re introducing into the frogs themselves, like the features of these things and maybe even paired with that what you’ve come across in your background that helps inform how you might decide on those types of features. What are the new things that you’re coming up with? What are the traditional things that you’re bringing into it? How do you see that influencing what comes next?
It pulls a lot of influences, anything from meme culture to crime and gangster culture, to noir FBI investigations. We even have an alien aspect where the opening scene is an extraterrestrial that the frogs find dead that unravels the incident mystery that kicks off the narrative. Narrative design is a part of all of this. Ensuring that there is enough room for being nimble, being an immersive game and not being too prescriptive is always where games and cinema have broken down. Matrix, the game, always had that challenge of like, “Are you dictating the story or are you playing in the game?”
The metaverse is this perfect place where you can almost be involved in a telltale-style game in a new form. You can make suggestions. The ideas that you may introduce may end up being crime scenes, storylines or an NFT. All the components of the frogs may seem disparate, random and outlandish but they have these secret narratives involved with them.
There are certain combinations, say, for example, a particular character or inspired by a particular character, that is going to be rare. Those particular frogs may end up being gangster leaders or different ranks of the mafia. They may be common everyday frogs that get swindled. You’re not quite sure what you’re going to get until you start digging into the traits and what those traits represent on the narrative scale.
Is there a favorite trait that you guys have, one that you’re like, “That’s something that I’m pumped about?”
It’s so hard to pick one. Every time you see one, you see the next one and then everyone is your favorite. I could pick a top five. If I could get any of those and manage to mint ten of them, I’ll be a happy bunny.
The leather jacket with the crown, the one that’s a little over to the left screen of Snoop there, that’s a favorite. Also, the notorious frog, a little up on the left, has got some horns and bleeding eyeballs but he is in a suit. Each one of these has a story behind them. Not all 10,000 of them but that’s part of the fun of it. Some future utility might include crafting the rap sheet of your frog. These are all ideas that we’re kicking around. Once we’re able to release them and find out who the passionate storytellers, narrative designers and holders are will be able to take this metaverse and attract some other NFT players that want to be in the underground with the frogs and who knows what they’re smuggling.
To shamelessly follow up with something Edge-of-NFT-related, we’ve got a ZED RUN horse, Purple Elf. It so happens it’s the 21st most popular horse in OpenSea. We’ve got people going to like it. Go to OpenSea, search Purple Elf and like our horse. Also, we purchased a Gummy Bear. We could set up a little narrative where the Gummy Bear is riding the horse around.
Everything in this world is told at this point through a Polaroid SX-70 camera and that is the motif. There’s a room in there to have other cameras. Let’s think Instagram here for either future NFT releases or other storylines but this is that Polaroid that is supposed to be only a one-off. If you burn or destroy it because it has got a bad material on it, it’s gone forever. Let’s talk. I would love to integrate some of your ideas.
Gamabunta, we can’t let you off the hook. What’s your favorite trait? What’s at the top of your list?
I would have to pick the trait category of the eyes. It’s unique from most projects. A lot of generative projects have different style eyes in them but you can only convey so much emotion and character through the eyes normally here because frogs have such interesting eyes. It’s a trait with a lot of depth, in my opinion, in this project. I’m excited to see how people react to those.
One last question on this segment. Snoop, you’ve been a bit of a pioneer in AR/VR. You’ve confessed to me that you’ve got your trading collecting gene as well. What are the NFT platforms that exist now or maybe you would like to see them exist that you think are changing the game outside the collaborators you’re working with on this project and your project itself? Let’s take a step back. What do you see out there that you like?
I level up to Hic Et Nunc, which is a great platform on the Tezos blockchain due to it being very efficient in gas. The platform, unfortunately, hasn’t unfolded the way I would like it to see. I still love the platform. I’m recommending it if you want to check it out. That was one I will certainly keep an eye on. OpenSea is having a 90% market share. They’re doing pretty well. I would love to see some more innovation. I would love them to start opening up, receiving credit card sales and doing the processing from Fiat to crypto on the backend so they pay the artists in crypto. They’re big enough. They could certainly do that if they wanted to. If they can get off their ass and do that, that would be awesome.
Frogland: The level of gamification and narrative is something that you simply don’t see in existing metaverses. The last-gen metaverse is a blank void for people to jump into to walk around, but they rely on individuals in there for any level of engagement.
Anything in the space, anyone who is innovating and trying to lift the bar a little bit higher, push the space forward and give back to the community more than they’re taking out of it in ETH, they’re going to be a good force for the space. This is the Wild West. There are so many things that no one has explored yet. It’s almost impossible to be able to forecast what they are. The only thing you can do is pick one, dig into it, find out as much as you can and see how you can move that one concept forward.
The future is bright. Frogland has a place in it and I’m excited to see where it goes. Thanks so much for sharing all the ins and outs of it with us. We would like to take a minute and get to know you guys a little bit more personally. We have this thing called Edge Quick Hitters. It’s ten questions, which is a fun and quick way to accomplish that goal. Do you guys want to dive in and have a little fun?
Let’s do it.
I will work my way through these questions, call out the first and second person to answer them and we’ll make our way to the end. Question number one. Snoop Frog, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It was a sand rose that I managed to haggle when I was on holiday with my family in Egypt as a tiny kid. I have very fond memories of not having enough money and trying to persuade this market seller to sell me this beautiful-looking sand rose. Ultimately because I was a 5 or 6-year old kid, he ultimately agreed to do it. I walked away there thinking, “That’s pretty cool. That was worth this amount and I got it for that amount.” I’m being quite happy with myself.
Shrimp McFly, what about you?
In middle school, cinnamon sticks were popular. I was able to manage to get enough money to buy a pack of toothpicks and a little cinnamon bottle. I would make my own but they were extra strong. I was a little dealer on a third-grade playground with cinnamons.
You were also a manufacturer. That’s impressive.
Frogs don’t like pointy things but they were definitely tasty until the teacher told you to take the toothpick out of your mouth because you were running with it.
Gamabunta, how about you?
The earliest thing I remember buying myself is magic cards. Back when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I certainly had things before then but I remember purchasing for myself. At my school, quite a few of us got into magic cards. It was a lot of fun constructing decks, collecting and playing against friends. At that age, your decks aren’t very sophisticated. It was probably an introduction to some interesting mythic and dark-looking art as well because I always played pure black at that stage. I had lots of creatures that die and regenerate and such.
We’ll move on with question number two. Let’s start with Shrimp. What’s the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Outside of the sticks, which I gave away, I was probably peddling Garbage Pail Kids to my buddies. Here’s what I do. I would either make money from the sticks and go buy the Garbage Pail Kids and then flip them also on the schoolyard. There were two different crowds. I made sure that they weren’t influencing because if I was taken down on one side then I would still have the other business.
Gamabunta, how about you?
Tazos. Probably, it was a local thing. It’s like Pogs that’s like collectible disc things.
Snoop Frog, how about you?
I was about 12 or 13 years old and I found you could buy land in Scotland for about £20. With that land, it would come up with a title. You could become a laird. I went to school with a bunch of rich kids and I realized I could sell that land for about €500 in Spain where I was living. I was flipping a £20 land for €500 to a lot of the kids in school. Sure enough, they got their laird title. One guy even managed to get it converted from laird to lord when he got his passport renewed. Everyone was happy but that was quite apt as well, considering what’s about to happen.
Is this land anyone ever visited?
No, it’s 30 square centimeters of land in Scotland somewhere. It’s what you need to own to become a Scottish laird.
All the puzzles are coming together. You got the landowner over here, smuggler up here and gamifier down there.
I’m looking into this land after we get off this episode. Gamabunta, we’ll start with you. Number three, what is the latest thing you purchased?
0N1 Force. I minted some from the contract.
How bad was the gas? I heard it was going to be horrific.
I managed to get five and I paid 2.3000 Kwei to get my transaction through. The 0N1 Force probably ended up costing somewhere between 0.35 or 0.4 for each one if I factor in gas costs.
Snoop Frog, what’s the most recent thing you purchased?
Frogland: Part of the enchanting aspect of this is frogs are fun and cute, and everyone loves them, but they’re mysterious. Their eyes are always a little shifty. You never know quite where they’re looking, what they’re thinking, or what they’re doing.
It would be a piece of art from a lady called Faye Chou, who is a lovely lady at Clubhouse. It’s her genesis, two pieces I picked up. She has been a tremendous person in the space. She has been a huge support for anyone who asks for her offer. This was her very first job so I wanted to show a level of support. She is pretty cool.
Shrimp, how about you? Latest thing purchased?
Since Gamabunta stole my thunder there, let’s just say I made a whole bunch of returns to Amazon. I would consider that income.
Were they things that you planned on returning when you bought them already?
I plead the frog fifth on that one.
Number four, Snoop Frog, we’ll go with you. What’s the latest thing you sold?
It’s called Ape Gang, a pixelated version of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. I picked up a bunch of them and flipping them back and forward for shits and giggles.
Shrimp, how about you?
It’s not the latest but it’s the most notable. Before getting into NFTs, I was doing Amazon FBA. I was manufacturing my own Nerf darts but these were specialized, almost poisoned-tip hard rounds and they would leave welds. Now, they’re called Weld Whackers. I did pretty well on that. That’s probably the most notable thing I’ve sold.
Gamabunta, how about you?
A Cool Cat, I sold it to fund the early purchase.
Let’s go to question number five then. Shrimp, we’ll start with you. What is your most prized possession?
Probably the red box that I built back in the day if you know what red boxing or blue boxing is. I’ll leave it at that. That’s probably one of my most prized possessions.
We have to know. I don’t know what it is. Tell me. I’ll be the audience that doesn’t know.
It has to do with phone systems and they can call it. We know where this narrative is coming from.
Gamabunta, how about you? Most prized possession?
Other than my seed phrase and Ledger, probably either my PC or a ring I made myself.
Is it a ring for your fingers? What kind of ring?
It’s a ring for my finger. It’s packed away. It’s a pure silver ring that I made.
Snoop Frog, how about you?
This is probably in a previous life pre-NFTs and pre-Frogland. It was a gadget that I had put together. It was the first self-contained virtual reality headset. We demonstrated that publicly in about 2013 and 2014. We continued to iterate for a few years until we realized self-contained headsets were not the way to go. We built a few very cool prototypes over that. Some of those prototypes would definitely be some of the fondest memories I’ve ever had in the tech space.
Gamabunta, number six. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service and experience that’s currently for sale, what would it be?
Probably a trip to Japan. It has been huge on my list for ages and I still haven’t gotten around to it.
Frogland: There are so many things you can do and this is what we’re giving. It’s a blank canvas for people to come in and start exploring, developing, and brainstorming what it is exactly they would want to do with this next-generation environment.
Snoop Frog, how about you?
If I could buy anything, physical or digital, I’ll buy half of the CryptoPunks and let some people keep some of them.
Shrimp, how about you?
I would go with a ranch up here in California that’s away from the fires but someplace where I could write and build a little pond. Maybe it’s a little drug smuggling in there for cinnamon sticks. I would do some property that’s away from Hollywood.
Moving on to question number seven. Shrimp, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
The sense of discovery. Without being able to ask questions, there is nothing to discover. I would always encourage people never to give up and always be curious.
Gamabunta, how about you?
Optimism. I’m a pretty upbeat person. It has helped me in a lot of things in my life. We tend to see a lot of the problems of the world and I think that’s good. That’s how we improve the world. That’s why in fact that it’s never good enough but to remain optimistic about what’s here and where we’re going keeps a good flavor in life.
Snoop, how about you?
Tenacity. In anything, you need to keep pushing. People don’t delay gratification much more anymore. You need to be able to keep persisting until you make something happen. You got to be relentless and keep going. Don’t stop. Never be satisfied.
Let’s stick with you, Snoop. Number eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits for the next generation, what would that be?
It’s probably my tendency to overthink things.
Gamabunta, how about you?
Procrastination. It’s very easy to get distracted. There are so many cool things out there.
You were the one responsible for the delay in us getting the show notes prior to the episode. Got it.
It’s paying attention and maybe reading something. Usually, I come in. I’m both the procrastinator and the NUT reader and the last-minute guy that throws the breaks. The handbrake turns the wheel left, skids out into the side, going, “This doesn’t work,” after everyone made their decision and fell in love with it. That’s me but I won’t do that for a crypto project. I promise.
Moving on to question number nine. Gamabunta, what did you do before joining us for the show?
I caught up a long call with a good friend and I’ve been trying to get him into DeFi for ages. At last, he didn’t just listen to the theory but he pulled up SushiSwap and was buying some coins that I was pointing him to. I got hands-on so I’m pretty happy with that.
Shrimp, how about you? What did you do before joining us for the show?
I was busy making some decisions on some key gangster attributes for our frogs.
Snoop, how about you?
I was spinning a million plates at the moment. I was on Clubhouse on one channel. I was on Discord voice on the other channel. I was doing a little bit of typing and trying to read the notes as well. It’s all action stations at the moment.
It all ties together. We’re seeing how it works. Shrimp, last question. Number ten, what are you going to do right after the show?
I’m going to probably enjoy the afternoon with my family. We have a brand-new puppy and he is rambunctious. He’s a Crypto Corgi.
Frogland: Building metaverses, code, and stories in a controlled environment is a complex process. Having a say in that, at this scale with this level of developers and artists, is unprecedented and quite exciting for everyone.
Snoop, how about you?
I’m going to get some breakfast at 3:00 PM and I’m starving.
Gamabunta, you, sir?
I’m going to go jump into the Frogland Discord, have some fun and maybe get some coding done.
Thanks for indulging us there with the Quick Hitters. It was a lot of fun and good to get to know you a little bit better. Before we break, we always like to ask where our readers can go to learn more about you and the projects that you’re working on. Where should we direct them?
We have the website of life, Frogland.io. Remember, “Buy a frog, get land.” It’s the only thing you need to take away from this whole show, in all honesty. Certainly, if you want to jump directly into Discord and you don’t want to visit the website for some strange reason, you can go to Frogland.XYZ for those on the side of the pond. We have Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is @Frogland_IO or @FroglandIO for Instagram. All that information is online. I would urge you to jump into our Discord and let yourself be known. We can get you on the radar, get yourself a notorious frog name and keep you updated with the lovely surprises.
We talked about doing a little giveaway. Do you want to share some tidbits about it with our readers?
We have a Gutter Rat, one of the Gutter Cat Gang’s little friends in the district that they’re going to be having in NewPangea. We would like to offer that as a giveaway to one of your readers. How you determine how that’s going to get distributed will be entirely down to you. This is to highlight and celebrate the partnership that we have with the Gutter Cat Gang, with them being the first part of the district to be setting up a shop inside our NewPangea metaverse.
It’s worth noting that the frogs are pretty precious. You got to get into the community, join the Discord and be part of the minting day to get a frog. I’m sure people are like, “Why is the frog not part of the giveaway?” Can you talk a little bit more about what it takes to get one of these frogs?
The frogs are quite competent. The idea being these frogs are beautiful pieces of art but they guarantee you a plot of land in this founding district at the heart of the metaverse that, in our opinion, is going to be the metaverse. It’s a valuable commodity, in all honesty, when you look at what you’re getting with the frog. Therefore, the people who are going to be taking up residence inside Frogland specifically need to be good actors and players. They need to be part of the community. They need to build this. In theory, they could come along for the ride but we would much rather have people who are contributing and posting forums are doing so because they want to help flesh out this new world.
The metaverse that you have now, there’s no choice of what you get to do. You do what you’re told to do or you can’t do anything. I don’t like that idea. There’s so much that can be done now. Jumping into the space and having this participation gives us a better idea of what you want to do. Ultimately, if you’ve got that killer idea that could make this metaverse a killer metaverse, that’s something you’ve got to claim for the rest of your life. People that are going to contribute are who we want. In that regard, giving away to randomers is not quite the way to go. If you jump into Discord, you’re present and active, we can see who you are. We know and we have the analytics, information and technology. You will certainly be rewarded.
You have got to be relentless and keep going. Don't stop. Never be satisfied. Click To Tweet
We have a fantastic road right beside us too where we can play Frogger with the inactive frogs.
Get in the mix, guys, FrogLand.io. It’s amazing stuff. Keep an eye on our socials. We’ll get you details regarding that giveaway. We’ve reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFT. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve 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. Go to iTunes, rate us, say something cool and then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Want to help co-create Edge of NFT with us? Got guests you want to see on the episode? Questions for the hosts or guests and NFT you would like us to review? Drop us a line at Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com or tweet us @EdgeOfNFT to get in the mix. Lastly, be sure to tune in next episode for some more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
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This is Shrimp McFly, I’m Snoop Frog and Gamabunta from Frogland, one of the most ribbiting new NFT projects out there. If you want to keep up with the hottest in NFTs now but also what’s going to stick around, hop into the Edge of NFT often and read up.
Important links
- Frogland
- The Bored Ape Yacht Club
- Discord – Frogland
- ZED RUN
- Purple Elf
- Gummy Bear
- Hic Et Nunc
- 0N1 Force
- Faye Chou
- Ape Gang
- @Frogland_IO – Twitter
- @FroglandIO – Instagram
- Gutter Rat
- Contact@EdgeOfNFT.com
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
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