Intro (00:00:05):
Welcome to zero knowledge. I'm your host Anna Rose. In this podcast, we will be exploring the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web, as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact online.

Anna (00:00:27):
So this week Tarun and I take a step further into the NFT space and chat with two content creators slash entrepreneurs, Andre Anjos, or RAC, and Trevor McFedries both are making work that intersects with NFTs, crypto and other novel blockchain concepts. We discuss their work and explore new ways in which creators and influencers can engage with blockchain tech and NFTs. We also try to imagine what living in a digital reality really means for the creation and consumption and ownership of content. But before we start in, I have two key points I want to share. First, I want to let you know about an event that is coming up this week, February 15th. That is the first ZKsessions online event. This is a meetup that I'm putting together. Ideally, we're going to roll this out monthly. It's a bit like a mini ZKsummit, but with a focus.

Anna (00:01:16):
So this event is all about DeFi and privacy. We're going to be exploring the ways that these compliment or at times conflict with one another. And hopefully through these conversations, we'll have a better understanding of what privacy and DeFi could and should look like. So I've added the link to that in the show notes, check it out, sign up, but only do that. If you're definitely coming it's free, but there is actually a limit on the number of spots we can share. And so really do only sign up if you're planning on coming. Uh, yeah. So if you think you'll make it, check it out and hope to see you there.

Anna (00:01:48):
Secondly, I also want to thank this week's sponsor Aave. Now Aave is an open source, decentralized non-custodial liquidity provider on Ethereum. And a fun fact, I just learned Aave, is the Finnish word for ghost, which totally explains the logo with other users can participate as depositers meaning they provide liquidity to earn a passive income, or they can act as borrowers and borrow in an overcollateralized way or an undercollateralized way. So think one block liquidity flash loans that we've talked about a couple of times on the show,

New Speaker (00:02:21):
Aave is decentralized and community governed, and it has an ecosystem grant program. So anyone who's building anything that contributes to Aave should definitely check it out. Maybe a little bit referenced to this episode, the DeFi state NFT collectible game Aavegotchi actually originated as an Aave ecosystem grant. So to learn more about the grant program and obvious a project visit aave.com, also, they told me to tell you, you shouldn't hesitate to reach out to them directly if you have any questions or need more info. So thank you again, Aave. Now here's our episode on the intersection of creatives, influencers, blockchain and NFTs.

Anna (00:03:02):
Today, Tarun and I are chatting with Andre Anjos and Trevor McFedries both are artists quite different from each other, but the connection point of this interview is that they're both working with NFTs and blockchain tech. And I think what's pretty cool about this is we're going to get a chance to see from an artist perspective, how NFTs standards are evolving, how they can be used. And also maybe we can talk a little bit about what being a creative in the digital world actually means today. So first off, let me welcome Trevor and Andre. Welcome to the show.

Trevor  (00:03:35):
Uh, yeah, thank you for having me.

Andre (00:03:35):
Thank you for having me. I'm stoked to be here

Anna (00:03:37):
And Tarun is guest hosting. So you'll also hear from him,

Tarun (00:03:41):
Hey, excited to be back and happy to be talking about, uh, art and crypto.

Anna (00:03:48):
So we have done a few NFT focused episodes already. We did one episode on actually the ERC standard, how that even comes about. And we focused in on the ERC-721 and the NFT standards that have come since I've also interviewed Dieter Shirley from Flow and Alex from Rarible. I think that was last year. Both are blockchain projects, heavily focused on NFTs, but there's a lot more projects doing that. And I hope that during the year we actually get to bring on some of those other platforms. I know we're going to be mentioning some of them today. Now to kick this off, I think it's really good to hear a little bit about your stories, what you actually do day to day, maybe if like how you got excited or involved in this space. So Andre, why don't we start off with you?

Andre (00:04:33):
So I've, uh, I'm primarily a musician. That's, that's kind of a, it's kind of a loaded term for me. It's like, how do I define everything that I do, but I think musician is pretty all encompassing. So I usually go with that. Uh, I've been making music professionally since 2007. I've, I've done everything for remixes TV, film, uh, original work, uh, worked with labels of all sizes. I've kind of done everything and it's something I'm really passionate about. And I enjoy, I discovered crypto, you know, I feel like a lot of people talk about this and I'm like, yeah, I read the white papers. Like, no, I turned about it cause it's Silk Road or, you know, some article that like, you know, whatever. But I was always really interested in open source and I had been pretty involved in like, you know, BitTorrent and like, like that whole world.

Andre (00:05:21):
And I sort of saw the power of like peer to peer networks. And I, I always felt like Bitcoin is sort of the next evolution of that, you know, uh, obviously very different applications, but ideologically, they were aligned. So I always, like, I was kind of interested in, I didn't really look into it properly, like as an asset, you know, until like maybe late 2016, uh, which felt late at the time. It's kind of funny. Uh, and like many people, I just went on Coinbase, I bought some, and then I looked at all these other assets like Ethereum specifically. And I was like, okay, what's this, uh, there's apparently like an whole ecosystem here that I'm completely unaware of. So I think I stumbled on a video of Vitalik Buterin talking about it. It must've been like Dev Con 1 or something, you know, there was still the world's computer analogy, you know, but, but at the time I was like, this is amazing.

Andre (00:06:14):
This is so cool. Like we're going to change the world. Everything's going to be better. This is going to solve all the problems in the music industry. Uh, and then, you know, you know, just realize pretty quickly that it's way too early. And, but the idea is still stood and on their own. And, and I was, I was just very interested in it and it hasn't really stopped. And I, I sort of kept up with it ever since and try multiple projects. We can get into that, but yeah, that was sort of my introduction.

Anna (00:06:40):
But your day to day, I mean, you're not like, would you, would you call yourself like a blockchain practitioner or are you working in it or are you like doing something that touches it?

Andre (00:06:49):
So according to CoinDesk, I'm a, I'm a yield farmer and a musician, so yes. So, uh, no, I, I mean, like there are, there are days where I probably spend more time on crypto, uh, whether that's on the investing side or, you know, not really trading to be honest, but more like, yeah, just kind of exploring different projects and it just take up a lot of time, but then again, like being a musician does afford me a lot of flexibility so I can kind of come in and out of it. And, um, I'm kind of in between albums anyway. So it's like a good timing for me to, to explore the things. And, um, but, but yeah, it's definitely not like it's, you know, my life's work is definitely music, you know, but, uh,

Anna (00:07:31):
Your musician name is not your name, your musician name is...

Andre (00:07:36):
RAC. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wish I had a better story for it, but it stands for Remix Artists Collective, which at the time I was trying to start a business in college. And that was like a whole bunch of remixers kind of working for labels and other artists and that never really panned out. So just kind of kept it as like a brand, as a name, as an umbrella, you know? So it's kind of.

Tarun (00:07:59):
This was like around the Girl Talk era, right?

Andre (00:08:01):
Yes, yes, yes. For sure.

Tarun (00:08:05):
I remember, I remember like my first exposure to you is hype machine.

Andre (00:08:10):
It's, it's, it's funny. Cause like Trevor and I like really come from that like similar era, you know? Uh, yeah. It's, it was a great time,

Anna (00:08:18):
But that, that connection point you just made to like the P2P music downloading to blockchain to kind of now like finding a way to intertwine them. This is interesting. I have done an episode long time ago about like file storage and PTP storage. And my background is also like my interest initially is all the way back to Napster. Like I used to write papers about this stuff, cause I just thought it was super neat. I want like I wanted everything to be free. And then I worked in the music industry and actually worked for artists and realized like, Oh wait, they also have to make money. It, I would've just been like a user, like a, you know, uh, like a listener. So I was a professional consumer, uh, consumer. I was really loving the freeness of it until I realized there was this other side,

Andre (00:09:06):
But one quick thing on Napster is like, so also for context, like I, I grew up in Portugal, you know, we had three and a half channels on TV, like one record store, you know? So when Napster came out, that's when I really discovered music, you know, I discovered the Beatles like through Napster, like to give you some context. So there there's another side to it that maybe, you know, that really opened up the world of music for a lot of people. And I, I definitely like sort of feel aligned with that. So, uh, it wasn't all bad. You know,

Anna (00:09:41):
I feel that too, even in Montreal, I had a very similar thing where as a 16 year old, I couldn't necessarily get the records. I didn't know where to find them. It was hard. And then all of a sudden I'd access. So Trevor, now I want to hear a little bit about your story and, you know, your background, how you got to the place that you're at. And also, I want to hear a little bit about the project that you're working on now.

Trevor  (00:10:02):
Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I think there are kind of like connective tissue amongst all of us weirdos in this space. And I, I grew up in small town, Iowa, relatively small town and had to drive an hour to Iowa city to kind of get any of the records that I wanted as well. And so, you know, peer to peer and file sharing, all things were like really important to me as a young person. But I think also because I grew up quite poor and I kind of saw this software, it's like this playing field leveler where it was like, Holy shit, if I can download this or like pirate this Adobe suite, and I can learn how to use these tools, like I'm a graphic designer. And I don't know if I can pirate FL studio and like some drums sounds like I'm a music producer and that was really, really inspiring.

Trevor  (00:10:40):
And so I think, um, back to my story, I grew up in Iowa. I again kind of saw software and the internet as it's playing field leveler. And he started kind of building E-bay templates for like, you know, my friend's moms for money and like, you know, hacking together X-carts and like WordPress's for other, you know, parents, little pop-ups shop her stores and stumbled into like becoming a "software developer". And, um, when I was 16, I moved from Iowa to Los Angeles and I ended up going yeah, totally insane. And also, yeah, it was pretty crazy. Um, I ended up going to Beverly Hills high school too, which was like the most extreme culture shock of all time.

Anna (00:11:19):
Like the, like the TV show. Is that what they went? Oh my God.

Trevor  (00:11:23):
Absolutely. Yeah. It wasn't West Beverly this is just Beverly Hills high, which I think was like a bit more diverse, but you still have these people whose parents were like, you know, captains of industry and you got to see that they were human beings also. And like coming from a place where in Iowa, like the dream was one day I could be like the football coach or like maybe a firefighter to like, wait, your dad started Guess clothing. Like, that's great. And you know, he's just a normal guy who probably is about as smart as I am. Like maybe I could do those things. And so that was kind of my journey, it was like, I love software. I moved to LA and was like, you know, playing in hardcore bands and, you know, how can you get our websites, and when I moved there, it was like, Oh, maybe you could do those things.

Trevor  (00:12:01):
And so, um, you know, went to university bizarrely on a football scholarship and quit halfway through. Cause I wanted to just start this little web dev shop. And while I was doing that, I was making beats for fun and end up getting signed to Interscope. And I think that's where like, you know, Dre and I have a bunch of overlap and that like, we're just kind of endlessly curious and I've kind of lived across these different like media ecosystems that have been, uh, corrosive at best to like in my career. And so I think, you know, a lot of people just stop there and said, I'm not going to dive into the business piece, but I wanted to learn more and sort of managing and producing and eventually started this current project called Brud, um, which, uh, you know, our dream is to kind of build a modern Disney or Marvel.

Trevor  (00:12:43):
And we created a virtual character named Miquela, really interfaces with her fans the same way a celebrity like Rihanna or Katy Perry would via screens and Miquela speaks Mandarin and Portuguese and English and Spanish. It can be everywhere and, you know, multiple.... So we're kind of bringing this idea of scalable narrative narrative in a time where I think there are more global issues than ever whether it's climate or economic or pandemic, you know, if you can kind of create these, these narratives that can compel people to mobilize against some of these things and solve for these things, probably we could build a better world and that's the dream. And I think, you know, building decentralized celebrities, always at the end of that roadmap and we're getting closer every day and you know, I'm sure we'll kind of dive into some of that stuff, but that's the long and short of it. I'm a startup bro who made a little music.

Anna (00:13:26):
And now you are one of the people, I guess, behind Lil Miquela, the Instagram influencer star,

Trevor  (00:13:35):
Yeah, yeah, I guess, to give more context for those who aren't aware, Miquela has, you know, millions of Instagram followers, billboards in times square. And she's one of time, magazine's most influential people. Isn't like Samsung commercials. That's all the trappings of an emergent celebrity she's even signed to CAA, which is, you know, the premier, uh, talent agency in Los Angeles. She's our first virtual talent. But, um, yeah, she, uh, she has software.

Anna (00:13:57):
I actually wondered like pop stars are often criticized for being very manufactured. They have a team of people who are curating their outfits, their photos, what they say sometimes. And in this case you just took out the person and you have this team, I guess, of really talented people. And you would have had to in a way, put something else in, is it an animation? Is it an animator?

Trevor  (00:14:23):
Yeah. And you could call it CGI. Um, you know, we basically have built this, this character, right. That, that lives inside of a game engine and is driven by a whole team. So instead of like, you know, a K-pop factory kind of plucking some Korean teenager on the middle school, you know, we effectively, we said, let's, let's kind of like push our talents through this lens. And, you know, I see a lot of that in cryptocurrency as well. Like, you know, you have Toby Shorin kind of Headless Brands. Thesis is kind of a thing that we apply here. Like the sum of our parts can be bigger than if we kind of apply them through this vehicle. And I'd like to see, you know, uh, uh, media applying some more of these kinds of decentralized tactics to the properties that they create.

Tarun (00:14:59):
One, one kind of question about Lil Miquela, is Lil Miquela interacts with the blockchain. So maybe what do you kind of view the future of the interactions between kind of virtual celebrities and blockchains looking like, like, do you, do you view virtual celebrities as being controlled by a DAO or are they kind of chaos monkey type influencers or do you imagine it's like a DAO structure and like all the fans get to vote on decisions that the influencer makes?

Trevor  (00:15:27):
I think the dream would be kind of DAO model and things that we're exploring, you know, we've, we've often talked about like what, what the future Disney or Marvel would look like. And to me, it is kind of like a de-centralized Disney or Marvel. We almost have this global choose your own adventure and you could imagine governance tokens being used to like drive the decisions that a character is making and the big kind of macro trend IC and media is this move from kind of more of a scripted broadcast, medium, where you have like a writer handing lines to Cary Grant, who's delivering them and the shipping and kind of like interactive, you know, I think like Cardi B and a Lil Nas X are stars because they really understand how to have someone fire off a tweet or, you know, you know, clap at them and they can clap back super quickly. Right. It's, it's less scripted and less manufactured. And so having this kind of like hive mind, almost like, you know, you could imagine like the Link Marines, driving your character, kind of like

Tarun (00:16:17):
They got political support this week.

Trevor  (00:16:23):
You could, you could imagine that some of these brands, I even like, you know, like the base community or something that they had kind of a figure that they could kind of drive and make decisions for and kind of animate, you could imagine it having legs. And that's kind of a weird future that I see taking shape.

Anna (00:16:36):
I wonder as an experiment like right now, this influencer Lil Miquela is still, she, I guess I should say she she's is she a, she is she's she? Okay. So she, um, is kind of built by a group, like a relatively small group of people, I guess. How many people are you? Are you like 20 or,

Trevor  (00:16:56):
Yeah. So I guess we're about 35 now we'll bring in contractors here and there. So yeah, it's a, it's a decent size outfit, four and a half years old now, you know, we've raised a bunch of venture and are trying to build this thing out.

Anna (00:17:07):
Are they like in that group, how are decisions being taken? Like, is there sort of a corporate structure behind the scenes? Is there a leader? Is it decentralized?

Trevor  (00:17:16):
Yeah. So probably a hybrid kind of like traditional corporate structure met with, um, almost like show runner tactics, right. Where, um, I mean, that's, it feels very commonplace in Hollywood, but for those of us who aren't, you know, writing Brooklyn Nine-nine, or whatever, you kind of have a group of creative people in a room jamming on ideas and kind of landing on directions and kind of like macro arcs and then kind of like more granular narratives. And what we tried to do is think about things in a similar way where, you know, there is this kind of like grand thesis is it's almost like Marvel in a lot of ways. Um, you know, Miquela was created by this evil company and then we have liberated her and we turned on her and she turned on us and yeah, all these narrative arts, like fans carve out and fan wikis and stuff.

Trevor  (00:17:56):
But what we try to do is kind of like, you know, there are these macro arcs, Miquela is a sentient robot in the narrative. It's really a story of otherness, right? Like one that a lot of our teammates and like a lot of our company can like relate to. And we're trying to create empathy and tolerance by exploring these narratives of her not fitting in and wanting to contribute and wanting to be heard and wanting to be seen. And I think as a result, you know, those themes resonate quite well with young people. And we built an audience of primarily young people. And so in parallel, which one of the things we wanted to do from the jump is like explore these different sociopolitical dynamics. And so she can be navigating a love triangle. We'll also try to figure out what the George Floyd protests mean and like making sense of it to a community. That's looking to make sense of these things. And that's, that's the opportunity of narrative, right? Like we are narrative driven beasts. And so if we can figure out how to create ones that can explore important themes, then maybe we can like, out-compete some of like the Logan Paul stuff.

Anna (00:18:47):
Yeah, yeah. Please do.

Tarun (00:18:51):
Isn't isn't his hasn't he been canceled? I thought he was canceled.

Andre (00:18:56):
I don´t know, I think it happens every other.

Anna (00:19:01):
So Andre, I want to kind of go back to your story a little bit. And you've been working with NFTs specifically right. Already. Was that the first thing that you did in the blockchain space that connected your music to the tech? Or was, was there something else before that?

Andre (00:19:17):
So in 2017, I actually actually got in touch with this group called Ujo music. Is there a part of consensus, you know, Joe Lubin is like incubator, if you want to think about it that way, I was actually a part-time consistence employee for awhile. It's kind of funny,

Anna (00:19:34):
Got a lot of people back then.

Andre (00:19:39):
My official title was artist in residence. Um, which was kind of funny. Um, but I, I was really just working with the Ujo guys and we, my, my whole approach is like, Oh, well I had an album that was about to come out. And I was like, okay, like, how do I integrate, how do I use this basically? Cause like, I, I see the future, how do I make it happen? You know, it's like, how do I at least start a conversation about the, so our approach was, let's basically just release the album through a smart contract, you know, in addition to everything else, it wasn't like exclusive, but it's like, okay, let's, let's set up a smart contract where if you deposit X amount of ETH, you get like a download link for, for the record. So like very simple idea. Right. Um, but in practice, you know, getting people to download meta mask and getting ETH in Coinbase and, and transferring it over and adding, you know, custom token, like all that stuff that, you know, obviously it was a little bit tricky, but it started a really interesting conversation about it.

Andre (00:20:33):
And, and I probably got more press around that than in the album itself. So, uh, uh, just as a quick side note, I'll get to the NFTs in a second, but I, I remember very vividly being in Japan, on tour, doing press with like a, it was like nine hours of press and, and this, uh, poor, poor woman, she had to translate all these questions about a Ethereum, like through a Japanese, like a Japanese translator. It was like she was a pro by the end. She was like, I got this, don't worry about it.

Tarun (00:21:04):
The real question is, did she go and buy any NFTs after?

Andre (00:21:09):
I don´t know, I hope so, but okay. So, so in that process, you know, this was it was just a simple download, right. But in that process, we decided to get everybody an ERC 20 token as a commemorative thing, it was called the Ego. So the album was called the Ego. So we gave everybody an Ego token, um, and, you know, ERC-721 didn't exist at the time. So, but the idea was the same as like, it's just a collector thing. Like you were there, you were, you were a part of that first experiment, you know? So that was really the first kind of experiment with NFTs that, uh, that I've played with, even though it wasn't technically an NFT, you know, but then the bear market happens, you know, but, uh, yeah,

Anna (00:21:49):
The one started to jump ship that's when this podcast started, actually started properly, like January, 2018 was when this started to come out every week. And, uh, yeah, we lived through that.

Andre (00:22:01):
Well, I mean, like that actually probably was a good time because then you got the real people, you didn't get the people that were just riding the wave. Right. So, um,

Anna (00:22:09):
It was actually funny. Cause at the beginning it was almost like, you know, we had to push people away at the doors because it was still a little bit of the bull market. And then after a while, like people just weren't coming to the door saying you are, and we're like, Oh wait. Okay. Okay. But I think it made us all work harder. So I think it was a good thing.

Tarun (00:22:25):
Im happy to make friends in the bear market versus a bull market, because like you only make false flag friends, I guess.

Andre (00:22:37):
Yeah. So, yeah. And obviously in the midst of all that, like I became pretty obsessed with DeFi and like, well, what we call it now, DeFi. So make DAO, Uniswap. Like I remember seeing that like Vitalik paper first explaining the concept of Uniswap before Uniswap became Uniswap. And it was like, this is amazing, you know, cause I hated EtherDelta and like all that other order book type of decentralized exchanges. So, uh, anyway, I'm kind of interested in that and then fast forward a couple of years, it actually in 2020, it was, I did this project called uh, the tape token with these Zora guys. So the whole concept was let's take like a limited edition. Good. So like a, uh, you know, a piece of merch, basically a cassette tape of, of my album and let's, let's essentially put it on a market and see what happens. So there's only a hundred copies and we basically put it on Uniswap and uh, I don't know what I expected, but you know, we started the price at $20 and it went up to like $950 on the first day or something. So the irony of a cassette tape selling for $950 in 2020 is this is not lost on me, but it actually ended up peaking at 400 or 4,000 or I think 4,200 was, was sort of the, the high

Tarun (00:23:54):
Not 42, not for 20,69.

Andre (00:23:57):
I wish. Uh, no. So it actually, for a moment in time became the most expensive cassette tape of all time. So it was, we beat Prince, Prince, actually, I think this is unofficially by the way. So I'm not going to claim that, you know, I don't have like the actual record, but you know, just kind of a funny, funny quirk of how markets work, but, but this idea of applying a market to something that's scarce is like super fascinating and letting price discovery happen. And then, you know, basically when somebody redeems that token, it burns the token and then you get mailed to cassette, but it also reduces the supply, which makes the curve even steeper. So like, I mean, it's, it's what Uniswap has been doing. And it's like the Saint fame project as well. So certainly wasn't the first, but, um, I I've been super fascinated with all this stuff. I love to experiment with it.

Anna (00:24:47):
You mentionthe project it's Zora, Zora. I know it's on Twitter. What, like, I haven't had them on the show. What, what are they, what is it?

Andre (00:24:54):
You should have them on the show. The, uh, Jacob is a, is a genius. I think, I think it's fair to say, uh, in the whole team, this whole team's amazing. Um, so Zora started out as like a platform for that concept of applying market dynamics to scarce goods. Like that was the first that was like Zora V1, basically. And then there was even a couple of competitors, like foundation kind of did something similar and I think was a super interesting idea, but they they've kind of changed recently. They've pivoted to something else, uh, which entirely, which is there. I hope I get this right, because it's kind of, it's very broad and very all encompassing, but basically they're, they're trying to be a format for all media. Like they're basically trying to NFT everything. So, and Trevor feel free to jump in here because I know you're into this.

Andre (00:25:50):
Uh, we, we kind of work with them pretty closely, but, uh, so, so th the whole approach is that they want, they want to make it, turn everything into an NFT, and then they're calling it crypto media. So just anything, it could be a word, it could be an emoji, it could be anything is ownable and, and tradable. But I think one of the really interesting innovations that they've created is, um, this idea of the NFT, having the market built into the NFT itself, as opposed to being siloed in super on superrare or Rarible or all these other different platforms. So it's like all these other platforms have to feed into the NFT itself, which if you really think about it makes total sense. I mean, it's sort of how it should be in my, in my view. So like the, the way that they talk about it is almost so like grandiose and like, cause it's, that's the scope of it. It could be, it could be kind of everything. Yeah.

Trevor (00:26:43):
And to me, it ultimately reminds me of like, when I had, uh, uh, I got handspring visor or like some of these early kind of like Palm Pilot fell devices. And there were these like open app stores and like curation obviously was the killer feature of like the, the, I have the iPhone app store. And I think like, what you're going to see is like marketplaces, uh, you know, basically becoming like great editors, right? Because like, what is the skillset? The marketplace is actually built into the entity itself. It's finding great people and curating. Cause there is a ton of stuff out there is garbage.

Anna (00:27:11):
Yeah. I, that's actually a really good point. And I didn't think about that where the NFT platforms that I, you know, I've had a couple on and I know a few others, they are, are they existing in really in a siloed way? I mean, I know, especially if you have NFTs on different blockchains, then I can imagine they aren't like siloed, but if they're all built on like the ERC standards, are they still unchangeable depending on the platform?

Andre (00:27:34):
They're compatible, but you have to, like, you have to move them around. You know what I mean? It's a manual process. So if like, if something's on super rare, you can only buy it on super rare and you have to move it to open C to be able to buy and sell it, uh, or, or, uh, or you have to move it to Rarible. And they're not, they're not fully compatible yet, for example, like they all have their own set of standards in terms of, uh, like royalties that go back to the original creator, like things like that. So I see this, what Zora is trying to do is sort of upgrade the NFT, you know, um, where yeah. Sort of building the market into the NFT itself. It, it just makes sense,

Anna (00:28:14):
Trevor, I would love to hear your interaction with both Zora and just the NFT space. Cause it sounds like you're like, there's also a connection point there.

Trevor  (00:28:22):
Sure. I mean, I have to give Dre a ton of credit. I think like, you know, it's funny when you're, when you're running a startup, like 99% of my life has kind of sucked into startup land. And, you know, I was like, I had a couple of groups of kind of like crypto traders who were all really excited about like the, the opportunities that we all read about, I suppose, you know, the kind of first NFT solid conversations, or even kind of like the first blockchain stuff that I read. I'm kind of like a 2012, 2013 guy, they got mechanics sold up and like parents sold up and down and it was kind of treating it more as like a speculative way of like, you know, making some quick cash. I wish I could say I was like, you know, as big brain as others that saw the longterm vision.

Trevor  (00:28:58):
But, um, Oh it is to say like I was in some groups with friends, a lot of them in media who were like trying to make a living and found that like trading crypto was one way to do it. And, um, along the way, you know, I was hearing things about DeFi, always excited about Ethereum, but being at a time, like dive deeper into the rabbit hole and like, you know, finally caught back up with Dre and he started kind of breaking down some of like the MakerDAO stuff, you know, my friend Calvin was at Compound and I started talking with him about that stuff and it just started to click. Right. And so I got sucked into the DeFi rabbit hole, I guess, like relatively early and the NFT piece again, I think, I feel like I got into a bit late, but I think I come from a world.

Trevor  (00:29:37):
Like I work with a lot of friends who were like contemporary artists, like real fine. And what I saw in NFTs, and what I still kind of see now is like kind of more collectibles. So when they were described to me as like fine art, I was like, this is garbage. I wouldn't buy this stuff. You know? And then it kind of made sense to me where I saw almost like what I saw on YouTubers when people were like, YouTubers is going to replace Hollywood. And I was like, these are different things, but they're both equally valuable. Like, you know, I don't know, Liza Koshy is not Tom Cruise and that's, that's important that that's right. And I kind of see NFTs is, you know, I think, I dunno people is not Jordan Wolfson or something and that's okay. And that's the way it's supposed to be.

Trevor  (00:30:18):
And so for me, where I got really excited was when actually Jacob and the Zora team started talking about the opportunities that NFTs can create for people that are creating media. Because I think, you know, Dre mentioned this a bit in the beginning as well. I kind of was old enough to know. And you mentioned an era of scarcity and music, especially when you had to pay a premium for a CD to get one song filled with like 18 filler or whatever it was. And then the internet obviously opening all of it and being able to access all of this incredible music would been driving the value of that stuff down to the point where when I was a recording artist, you know, it was really tough to make living. And I kind of lived between those, those, those two, like duality, like you have one or the other.

Trevor  (00:30:59):
And I actually joined Spotify in 2010 and helped build it. But this idea of like maybe creating an ecosystem that could like be more rewarding for artists. And I'm not sure that we nailed it, candidly looking back at it. And when Jacob was kind of exploring this idea of a blockchain being kind of the source of truth, almost in the same way that the Louvre is, you can kind of have this phenomenon that you kind of only really see around like public art, where the Mona Lisa is maybe one of the most reproduced images in the world, both reproductions don't drive down the value. They actually drive up the value because you understand the one in the live to be the actual one-on-one. And so this idea to me, of having a blockchain act as like the Louvre for all of the stuff that we create, and then the reproductions living on Tik Tok or Instagram or Spotify or whatever it is, and driving that value up to the, NFT, which they can be resold and value passed back to the creator forever is like really, really exciting to me, I think really is a game changer.

Trevor  (00:31:50):
And so that's where I think, like, you know, 'dre, myself and bloa, other friends are trying to spread the good gospel and like make this paradigm shift to reality.

Anna (00:31:58):
It's funny with NFTs. Cause when I first came across them, my, my issue is like, what would I do with it? What would I do with this thing that I've spent cryptocurrency on? And it lives in a wallet potentially that I don't get your show. It's sort of sitting there. But I, I think where it sort of changed for me was thinking about something I already loved some piece of content. I already loved some show. I love some creator I love. And then it's like, if you've ever really been a fan and really liked something a lot, you like I've gone out and found books and found like extra things around that. I guess what that means is you still need to have an audience. Like there still needs to be like an audience of people who want what you're doing. It's not that because this platform exists, you create something it's inevitably going to sell. Even if it's beautiful, there has to be almost like something else, a little bit around it. And I wonder like, you're, I mean, Trevor you're working with like the influencer space. That's so typical for that where it's like something quite innocuous, but if it's connected to an influencer might be something valuable to people. Like, is this something you're thinking of playing with?

Trevor  (00:33:00):
I was talking about this with another buddy of mine. I think like I was kind of raised in nightclubs, you know, like I was this DJ and you start to like, you just, you know, I think via osmosis, just take on this idea of status games as being like the, the, the macro game. And if you think about, you know, I actually, I think it was, uh, I remember the director, but like post godfather talking about the human being, seeing themselves as like the star in their own film. I now think we see ourselves as like the star in our own MMO RPG where we're collecting likes and follows and other things and like trading them for love or fortune, you know, whatever it is. And so you kind of, uh, abstract that into like the influencer stuff. Like it made so much sense for me that okay, if like what we actually care about are these like points follows, lights, whatever.

Trevor  (00:33:44):
We can create a vehicle to capture those points in likes, uh, you know, in a way that, uh, you know, a traditional celebrity never could. And in the same way, if you can kind of like, you know, abstract that status game onto a blockchain, all of a sudden you have this way of like displaying all this value and kind of a more logical way almost to the point where like, you know, Mark Cuban's, um, you know, crypto wallet lead yesterday. And I sat and I sent him some of like, or I have a community called FWB and we have a crypto token, it's just a token. And I sent it to his wallet and I got a bunch of screenshots that they'd be like, yo, Mark Cuban holds FWB. You know? And so all of a sudden there's like this very visible way to kind of like monitor the status game gets paid,

Tarun (00:34:26):
That´s marketing dollars ever spent

Anna (00:34:30):
Tarun you've mentioned this on another episode actually about like people watching people's wallets and it's like following what they're doing completely. Whether or not it makes any sort of financial sense, but that's a form of marketing in itself.

Tarun (00:34:44):
For sure. There's definitely this like copy trading type thing. But I think people actually, one of the most monetizable uses of ENS domain so far has been, you know, someone like DegenSpartan, who's this kind of DeFi overlord influencer master. I don't know. I don't know what other,

Trevor  (00:35:04):
Overlord sounds right...

Tarun (00:35:04):
Has this huge following of people who just like copy anything he does, or just do tape trade any on any advice he gives them. So he just has to DegenSpartan. ETH where he publicly just posts trades because he knows that people will just copy, copy pasta them. And I think what Trevor did the different form of this kind of PSYOPs, except with, with a little bit more marketing pinash

Anna (00:35:30):
Um, have you like, cause I actually, I want to at some point talk about the tokens as well. It sounds like you both have also been experimenting with your own tokens and what that would mean in an artist to like, to an artist, but before we kind of move away from NFTs, I kind of want to finish off that, that topic and think like, where do you actually see these going? Do you see this as something that will eventually actually reach the mainstream? Will people care about the fact that there's potentially like a physical item with an NFT attached to it? Will they be ready to collect just the digital form?

Andre (00:36:02):
Yeah, I do think it will. It'll definitely grow from here, but my gut feeling is that the younger generation are, this is already normal to them. You know, like a lot of these concepts like of collecting CS skins or, or, you know, Fortnite skins and like that, that kind of idea of, of digital collectibles is already pretty ingrained. I mean the art side of it, maybe it'll, it'll take some time, but like, I feel like it's so small right now that it can only grow. I kept thinking, you know, like, I don't think it's going to get a little smaller, you know, um, the, the one thing to say about NFTs at least maybe from an artist perspective is that I think Trevor kind of touched on this is, this is a different thing. This is a different medium. This is like what I like about NFTs, I'm leaning into it as a, as what's unique about this medium and how do I like play with that as a creator,

Andre (00:36:56):
You know? So what, what I'm doing is maybe, you know, I'm collaborating with visual artists and, and, and writing music and insert or instrumental loops with like a, you know, a scene, uh, kind of like a diorama, like, you know, it's sort of like just something you look at, it's, it's very easy to, you know, look on a screen it's kind of made for it. And, and I, I'm trying to be as creative as possible within that medium and trying to, uh, at least from my perspective, trying to elevate it and trying to, you know, just do my best at that thing, because there's nowhere else where you can do that, you know, or where, where it's worth doing, you know, like, yes, I could maybe do it for Instagram, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't get anything out of it. So like, I think that side of it is going to continue to develop and I think it will fragment. And so all these different pockets and yeah, there's maybe going to be the fine art model over here, then there's going to be the collectible model over here. And this is going to be like the game skins down here. You know, I, I think it'll just kinda continue to progress in, in fragment, I guess.

Trevor (00:38:02):
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think the thing I talk about a lot with my team and other people is I just think like largely value is shifting from like meat space IRL. Yeah. To virtual, you know, like when I used to get ready for the first day of school, I would try to look my best so I can impress like a, a n of 400 or whatever, but now he wear a nice outfit. You take a picture and put it on Instagram, so you can touch millions potentially. Right. And so like, where is the actual value of that outfit? Most of it's shifted online. And I think you're going to see a lot of that reflected in all different types of media. I do think, you know, it's easy to kind of connect the physical to the NFT early on, but I actually think that's like one of those things, it feels like almost like reading a book on the radio early on, like it's just like porting a format.

Trevor  (00:38:43):
I think, you know, with Tinder the dope, I mean, hit isn't the actual date, like it's the match. Right. And I, and I think that's the part that people need to optimize for is that if you can build a great on chain stuff, the off-chain stuff, I think like you don't even need to worry about. And so I, I'm a big believer. I think you're seeing more folks kind of explore these things in ways that make sense of them. I think Dre with the kind of diagram of style stuff makes sense. I'm super narrative, so even in the Miquela NFT that we sold for like, you know, almost a hundred thousand dollars, there was much of narrative stuff woven in that almost like Easter eggs that tie back and into her world. And so I'm really excited to people explore this space. I think there's Zora innovation is going to be a very big one. And we're watching people pouring day by day. I mean, there was a Mark Cuban NFT, funny dance or something.

Anna (00:39:28):
What was the Miquela one. What was the NFT?

Trevor  (00:39:31):
Yeah. So, um, it was a super rare collaboration, uh, effectively. It was like a video with some music actually Amnesia Scanner, we made one of her songs and there was a bit of like a, an alpha leak hidden inside this little glitch or whatever it is. Yeah.

Anna (00:39:45):
Easter egg or an Alpha leak

Trevor  (00:39:48):
Yeah. Yeah. There, there, there are some different things kind of woven inside of it, but you can, you can check out Lilmiquela.eth and kind of look at the, the NFT that she minted.

Anna (00:39:57):
Do you think, I mean on that, on what you just said though, do you think that, like, I think it's obvious things need to be much more usable, but is there anything in particular that you would say to like folks developing NFTs standards, working with NFTs that you think really needs to be there for there to be adoption? Have you ever had some idea where you're like, man, if it was just here or there, or this way, then it would be easier for people to actually engage with it.

Andre (00:40:22):
My biggest gripe is the file size and that that's sort of a technical limitation. Um, so it's, it's limited to either 50 megabytes or a 100 megabytes depending on the platform. And that that's extremely limited for, especially for video. So it's actually informed the, the format itself, you know, like the reason why there are short loops just because of the size. So, so that's like a technical limitation that I would love to get over.

Trevor  (00:40:45):
Yeah. There's like so many web3 basics. Like, you know, we have this, this community friend with benefits, you know, fwb.help and folks at home on check it out. But like I'm trying to onboard friends all the time and they're like, wait, I can't see the tokens in my MetaMask. And I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh. Of course you have to add this custom token. Like you forget all of the friction and how foreign that stuff felt pretty early on. And I think just getting to the basics, like, you know, removing some of that friction would be, it would be huge.

Andre (00:41:10):
I've actually one approach that I've taken is just, uh, pushing people to like, wallet´s like Rainbow, that sort of support NFTs natively and these wallet connects. So it's like pretty easy. Um, that that's been my approach because a lot of my audience is non crypto native. So you know that every, every community kinda has to tackle it their own way. Yeah.

Tarun (00:41:28):
Yeah. I was actually going to add, I was going to ask about like, what do you see as the future of, um, for NFTs? Cause I, I, I still think, yeah. I mean, other than Rainbow, there's not really anything that's close to usable for, for like, you know, my mom as the standard, not to insult you mom, but you know, you're kind of are the, the standard for, for, for like, if you can use this, then I think like we've hit, we've hit, we've hit takeoff. Uh, but actually to that point, you know, I think one of the things that made DeFi take off was Metamask and Etherscan really like getting to the point that they were usable by people who didn't know what a Merkle hash was or like what transactions were, or like how like gas was. Um, so like what do you view as the things that other than wallets that will like kind of get adoption? Like, like, like increase adoption, like something like Etherscan, right. Is like a vanity plate, right? Uh, this, this DegenSpartan thing. Where everyone reading copy trading him, they're going to their scan, looking at his profile right. Or

Anna (00:42:32):
Weirdesr marketing platform ever.

Tarun (00:42:35):
Right. But it's really, it's really, it is what it is. Right. So what do you kind of view as like the "vanity plate" things that will like at NFTs, you know, to the masses? Cause I kind of feel like there still needs to be something where it's like, look at my, you know, what, what does Miquela need to like to get that?

Trevor  (00:42:54):
I think this is funny for me for like, NFT specifically again, it's like all kind of informed by like my nightclub brain. Like whenever someone buys a $5,000 bottle of champagne, there are all these sparklers and I'm like, Oh God, I hate that they do this, but yeah, how embarrassing. But I did buy a $5,000 bottle of champagne look at how awesome I am. Right. And so like, you could imagine if, if we had kind of more social kind of like day-to-day spaces where you had to like log in with your wallet, it was tied to some, you know, ENS dress or whatever. And you could be like, wow, like, you know, Tarun, you're so cool. And Whoa, you have this people for the million, you know? And you're like, Oh God, I hate that. Yeah. I just, this I've used, this was a login, but also, you know, cause you need that dynamic of like walking into someone's home and being like, is that a Picasso? I mean like this thing. Yeah. Uh, you know, I think that kind of passive stuff would be helpful.

Anna (00:43:47):
You actually bring up one point I have on our list of questions, something about NFT and privacy. And I wasn't sure how to work it in until just now. So you like this idea of having something attached to your address permanently if it's something of value. Cool. But what if at some point you don't want that to be attached to you? I guess you could always start a new wallet or try to like do a mixer and get, get it hidden somehow. But like that is actually like attaching these things permanently, like optically connecting them. So people can actually tell that you you own this thing. That's interesting.

Andre (00:44:23):
I only buy NFTs on my public ENS for that reason, because it's like publicly known that's who I am. I don't think anybody copied, I don't trade on it. So like, no nobody's copying my traits, but like, yeah. I'm pretty conscious about that because I don't want, yeah. You know, I want a certain degree of sort of privacy and if, uh, this is not, yeah. So

Anna (00:44:44):
I guess you can't steal NFTs, but I'm just like one like, like the same way people don't walk around necessarily like broadcasting their wallet addresses, unless they're comfortable with everybody looking at what's in their wallet address. Um, especially on the personal front. I just, I wonder, cause there's like the luxury expose, there's like the showcasing, Hey, I have something cool. But also yes, usually tied to something financial and it's potentially like, I don't know a bit of a vulnerability to an individual maybe.

Trevor  (00:45:12):
I mean, it's funny, like if you go out in the world, people drive half a million dollar sports cars and like where a hundred thousand dollars, like these are targets

Tarun (00:45:20):
Like this is how we know you live in LA.

Trevor (00:45:30):
Yeah. My LA mush brain is like, what do you mean drive that doesn't happen to you guys. But I do think we've got this kind of like, there's kind of like old money crypto thing where like the new money idiots are going to come in and be like flaunting. And I think that's got its own type of gravitational pole. And I think that may suck more and more people into the space and as dark as it sounds like Instagram followers define what actors get cast and what musicians get remixes and XYZ, there's probably a dark future where it's like the NFTs you collected and like the status of your wallet defines like, the access you get...

Anna (00:46:06):
That is dark.

Andre (00:46:10):
Right. But like, if you know that that's the game that you're playing, you sort of just maybe just accept it and play it. I don't know. Or opt out completely, I don't know. Totally.

Anna (00:46:22):
Or, or like all cultural shifts. There's always like a pushback to those things. Like I always think of like the eighties as being very flashy and then the nineties has been very subdued and like actually being the underdog was way cooler and being glossy and shiny was gross. And when you look at a lot of the Instagram stuff, it's super glossy and shiny and I'm just waiting for like alternative rock to come by somehow...

Tarun (00:46:52):
One question maybe related to that is, you know, there, there are two, the, the dual side of privacy is maybe DeFi type of stuff. What, how do you view kind of like DeFi and interacting with, uh, kind of NFTs and, and do, do you feel like there's a sense in which, you know, one of the big missing pieces is an exchange or one of the big missing pieces is blending because, you know, I think if you make the analogy of NFT to art, um, there's a lot of like finance and art. And if you make the analogy of NFTs to collectibles, it's very different. Right. And so somehow, because DeFi is been successful and you guys have kind of used both DeFi products and worked on making these tokens, where do you actually see kind of the intersection and where do you see things that like work for, you know, fungible assets that you're like, I don't think anyone's ever going to care to do this.

Andre (00:47:45):
And can I, uh, can I make a prediction? Uh, I don't do this very often. I'll make a prediction that a makerDAO add NFTs as collateral at some point in the future.

Anna (00:47:57):
Would be Maker, or will it be something else?

Tarun (00:47:59):
Well, there's an irony here though, because CDPs themselves are technically ERC721. So like CDPs are implemented as an NFT, like you can't count. So, but yeah,

Andre (00:48:13):
You know what I mean? Like they all have their own risk parameters. I'm not saying it would be 150% like ETH, but maybe it would be 500%. I don't know. Like, but being able to borrow against your assets is not a foreign concept. So like, you know, if there's like a proven track record in a public blockchain of, of like price action, it doesn't seem that farfetched to me now I do see them as pretty interconnected. So that that's, to me is maybe the, the low hanging fruit. There's a couple other projects that are, or I feel like I'm showing my own bags and NFTX. I think it's a pretty interesting one.

Tarun (00:48:46):
Definitely. I don't, I don't even know if like I'm happy you said it, so I didn't have to say, cause I just invested in it. I don't want to be, I don't want to be shown...

Andre (00:48:55):
I own small amount to be completely transparent. Um, but you know, for a reason, because I think it's interesting.

Tarun (00:49:02):
I think NFTX could be in maker DAO, right? Like it actually seems like the, the vaults could make it to make her go, which is, which is actually kind of cool because it blends NFTs you're involved and like tradable asset into one thing, which is kind of like, that's like take all the buzzwords of the last 12 months and put them into a box and like it works right. It's running

Trevor  (00:49:24):
Totally. A buddy of mine told me he invested in like a, uh, big, uh, sports cards fund, like a trading card fund that like, wow, because in like infinite money printer world, like Sports cards, like Pokemon cards, I like mooning also. And so this guy created a fund and you have to imagine that like, you're going to see a lot of those types of behaviors happening on chain as well.

Tarun (00:49:46):
GameStop is now known as a, NFT trading firm.

Trevor  (00:49:52):
Um, I'm ready for the GME Synthetix. Oh man.

Tarun (00:49:54):
I mean, Hey, there's a bunch already on chain, so yeah.

Anna (00:49:59):
So you, you both mentioned tokens. Let's talk a little bit about those. So there is the $RAC token. Is there Trevor, what's the token that you you've created or have?

Trevor  (00:50:11):
$FWB our community token - friends with benefits.

Anna (00:50:15):
Yeah. So what, like, how did these come about? Are they, is this a recent phenomenon? Is this something that's been around for a while? How, how did you go about doing this?

Andre (00:50:23):
Um, I guess I'll go first. Uh, so I, you know, obviously I saw the ICO boom in 2017, got a little bit sketched out by tokens. I think a lot of people did where it was like, okay, maybe this isn't the right mechanism, you know? But then in DeFi summer, I was like, okay, tokens are back. You know, this is a, like, there's vesting now. It's like, Oh my God, there's a, there's this, you know, people are

Anna (00:50:48):
Figured it out. You don't dump it all on the market the day of launch.

Andre (00:50:53):
I think that´s not maybe a good idea. I feel like we're learning all the, all the lessons from like corporate structures, but like the hard way. But anyway,

Tarun (00:51:00):
Um, but it's a lot faster. It took like hundreds of years now it's only taking, you know, a few hours of degeneracy,

Andre (00:51:08):
So, okay. So in that context, like I'm watching, you know, all of these, um, you know, all these projects like launch governance, tokens, and they're, they're really taking off. It's really interesting. That's creating these network effects. This is really interesting, like as a form of like bringing people together and aligning people and, and, you know, just aligning incentives basically. So, okay. This is, this is super interesting in the meantime COVID is happening. I'm not on tour, uh, touring industry imploded. I'm on Twitch streaming three times a week. I'm on Patreon. So like I had a fan base already, but now, um, now they're in discord and now they're, they're, they're talking to each other. This community is forming. And like, this is amazing. This is, I couldn't have predicted this. Like, uh, it turns out they have like a lot more in common than just me.

Andre (00:51:57):
So, so like, uh, like I don't even need to exist for that to continue. And that's pretty cool. I think so in, in that context, you know, I'm seeing all these, all these projects, you know, kind of evolved. And the example I like to give is, you know, if people can rally around a decentralized exchange, you know, what, what happens when you apply to something cultural, which, uh, you know, nothing against Uniswap, it's amazing, but like it's kind of bland, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's not the coolest thing on earth, you know, for most people. So it's so like if you apply that to something cultural and in, on a small scale, I mean, I'm not like a major artist or anything like that. So like, I think that that's a pretty interesting place to go. So my whole approach is let me create a token around the community itself.

Andre (00:52:43):
And, um, basically airdrop it to them, give it to, I gave a token to everybody that supported me over the years. So every patron subscriber, every, every person about merchant, like 2009 from band camp, like, uh, like, uh, they probably got like an email, like, what the hell is this token? You know, it's like, what are we talking about here? So, so, so the idea was like, okay, let me get the people that actually supported me, let me create, try to create a community around it, onboard them, go through those pain points of yeah. Adding custom tokens to MetaMask and like all of that and, and kind of learn from it and then start to develop it into something bigger than that. But the main idea that, that I, the way that I think about is like fan club of the future, where you actually own a part of it.

Andre (00:53:30):
And, um, I mean, actually it's the timeliness of this kind of interesting with discord shutting down wall street bets and, and, uh, you know, discord was one of the good guys and now they're like, kind of like, it's like, Oh, okay. Uh, interesting. Now some hedge funds. So yeah. So, but you know, throughout this entire process and, uh, I'm sure Trevor's experiences as well. Like, you know, I come from the MySpace era, I built an audience there and then that fell apart and then I went to Facebook and that fell apart. And at one point in time, they always switch it on you where it's like, Hey, this audience that you built, they came for you. Um, actually we're going to charge you for that. And now you have to pay to reach them. So I'm like, ah, that's not fun. I don't like that.

Andre (00:54:12):
I, you know, I mean, there's a balance there, of course, like I'm not expecting you to everything for free. Anyway, the whole approach is like, let me create sort of a layer on top of this. And I see the token as, as like a mechanism for that, where if Discord really goes full, uh, you know, full authoritarian, we could just switch to something else and we still have the token, you know...

Anna (00:54:33):
And you have the token, and they have it in their self hosted wallets. Exactly. So they have it forever.

Andre (00:54:39):
So, so that's the core idea and, you know, we're just building from there. So that's the first iteration of it.

Trevor  (00:54:46):
Yeah. I think both of us kind of see this as like connective tissue, this layer and kind of like hold us together. And like, uh, internet was constantly kind of collapsing on itself or kind of like pushing your fans away from you. Um, my, my idea was just kind of simple, you know, there's this kind of like classic Silicon Valley trope of like the only way to make money is through bundling and unbundling. And we kind of go through these loops. Right. And I think we're kind of in this unbundling phase with, with creators where they're all like I'm going to create a sub stack or an only fan or a Patreon or whatever it is. And it was hard to be these diminishing returns for creators where all of a sudden there's so much competition and they're like, this was sweet at the beginning.

Trevor  (00:55:20):
But like, wouldn't it be cool. A bunch of us substack people like came together and we all wrote a sub-sector, I got the magazine, right? Like we're going to come back to the beginning. And so to me, this idea of the creator economy is compelling and really exciting, but we have to build like more collectivist tools if we want these things to sustain. And so the simple premise for FWB you're friends with benefits is that like social networks, uh, create are valuable because of the content the members create, right? Like we post Instagrams, we post tweets or whatever it is. So if we created this gated discord that required X amount of an FWB token, and there was a fixed amount of token over time, over time, as we created value for that network, and more people want it to join, there'll be more demand pressure, which would drive the price up.

Trevor  (00:56:06):
And we all be able to participate in the upside of the value we were creating. And it was just like a weekend. Well, maybe I can ship something like this. And like, you know, what's cool is like the talking Legos are kind of there, right? It's like minted a token on roll. You use CollabLand and Discord, and was like, would anybody be down for this? And like invited some and friends. Now you have this really active community full of everyone from like Holly hurtenin and DJ donkey to, you know, like DeFi folks and you know, everyone in between. And so it's, it's, it's been this interesting community of crypto and culture that are talking about a lot of things that we're talking about day-to-day and trying to solve them for each other.

Anna (00:56:43):
I mean, this sounds like the - it's, it's awesome and crazy and experimental, but I do wonder, like, given what we've seen in the last week, this, by the way is being recorded the week of the GME fiasco. Um, like, are you not worried that like, what if you get pumped and dumped? What if some group of traders come into your community and start to just like play with you and market manipulate these things that are, that like represent your community?

Andre (00:57:14):
That's certainly a concern, I guess. Like, it's not like an immediate concern for me personally, just because it's a relatively small project in the context of a lot of other ones, but maybe that, that would be the prime. Maybe this would be sort of the prime a use case because it'd probably be easy to move things around, but I don't see that. I don't know. I guess, like I'm not too worried about it at the moment. Well, I guess I'll cross that bridge. If it comes,

Anna (00:57:36):
It also sounds like it's still, like, this is still an experimental phase, right? Like this is something that you're both playing with. Trevor when did you actually create this token?

Trevor  (00:57:45):
What is Time in Covid? I think probably like five and a half, six months ago. It could be like three months ago at this point. And we've got, I think, close to a thousand folks, you know, a bunch of really active members. I think the most important piece for me, I think you read a lot of crypto stuff and it's just like align the financial incentives and things go. And like, I think you really have to build a community and establish an ethos. Like we almost never have price discussion about the token in the community. Like it's, it's, it's what other things. And if we were stabbing a hoard of people come in and manipulate the price, people probably be like, I don't know, the utility is I get to hang out with you guys in here. And so like, that's all like tied into me only 25 of these things. So like whatever

Andre (00:58:27):
The same thing kinda happened with me where, um, so I airdropped to, you know, like they got it for free essentially. I mean, I guess it was sort of based loosely on, on how much money they had given me over time with Patreon and whatever. But, you know, there were people that through price appreciation basically, you know, got airdrops like 20 or $30,000. And, and it's like, uh, you know, like, no talk about price. They're like, yeah, cool. Whatever. Like we just, we just want to, you know, we see the value here, we appreciate it. And like, you know, it's, it's sorta like, you know, we want to be a part of the community and like, it's, it's more valuable than just like trying to dump it, you know, and like peace out from the, you know, I think people are starting to realize the value of equity and you kind of alluded to this, but this is, I feel like this is part of a larger movement towards smaller communities, more tight knit communities versus these like large platforms, you know? I mean, those will always exists, but yeah, the, the Discord, the more niche Trevor, what's that, uh, squad, uh, Squad wealth. Yeah. Squad Wealth like that posts or whatever we've talked about before. Yeah. It's just like these smaller groups of people that are kind of aligned around like one thing. And, um, you know, I, I just see that continuing, I guess

Anna (00:59:41):
Totally. I mean, this podcast, this podcast and the community around it, it's pretty narrowed. So it's not a massive market, but there's a really good group of people who want to talk about zero knowledge, proof research, blockchain tech, that intersection.

Anna (00:59:56):
No, I mean, this isn't zero, I don´t know ZKPs completely interact with the NFT world.

Tarun (01:00:04):
Well, getting over the file size lender, getting rid of that's, that's going to be the way to do it. I think

Anna (01:00:10):
You could use the ZKPs for compression in a way, like the proof that the entire thing is accurate, but all you need to submit is the proof, and the proof can be relatively small, depending on the ZKP

Tarun (01:00:26):
I think like competing layer ones and layer twos is probably think of it that way. In some ways I just haven't like actually seen anyone put out a design because like everyone who works in ZKP land is a little, like far away from far from culture...

Anna (01:00:41):
Hey! you´re talking to the ZKP people.

Tarun (01:00:47):
No, I mean, like the researchers isn't like developers, they don't really, like, I feel like they're very, uh, they're a lot more hermit-like the most people in crypto could the cryptocurrency space.

Andre (01:00:57):
Okay. So could you potentially, okay. So like right now we're using IPFS for storage and that's really kind of where the limitation is. So if all you need is a proof, uh, you can sort of proof on IPFS and have the files stored on BitTorrent or like anything, any other kinds. Yeah.

Tarun (01:01:12):
Basically backed up anywhere, any in multiple places.

Andre (01:01:15):
Like, I mean, I guess like, is there a chance that if it's on BitTorrent, we're just going to solve this right now, guys, like, uh,

Anna (01:01:22):
Yep. IPFS too. Wouldn't you be able to skip by IPFS in that case?

Tarun (01:01:26):
You could, you could skip IPFS and, but you would need somewhere where it's replicable. Like you still have this data availability problem of like, it has to be stored somewhere, but the thing that's happening right now is that people are building a ton of like data availability layers, like ETH 2 and Cosmos are both need one. Um, I forget, what, what is John Adler's project called... Not fuel? The other thing, Lazy Ledger, Lazy Ledger. That's Lazy Ledger is like a good way would be... I don't, I don't think I'm a token yet, but, um,

Andre (01:02:04):
Or the meme within our like smaller community of, of like crypto nerds is always like when token, you know,

Tarun (01:02:13):
You know, it's funny because 2018 was like, No token, No token, run away. No kidding.

Trevor  (01:02:20):
And now we're kind of back to tokenize everything. Like, I think there's a world where we like tokenized a Lil Miquela follows and comments, and like, you know, tik toker...

Tarun (01:02:28):
So what does Lil Miquela DAO look like? Like, what can I, what, what, like, walk us through kind of the design process of like what you would want, you know, uh, fans to kind of be able to like, you know, I think the governance tokens have shown that A people are lazy, so governance attacks are expensive and you actually have to end up building another protocol to do the governance attack, which is thing. People need something fun. But also like there needs to be some like game involved.

Trevor  (01:02:56):
This is probably where I should talk to my lawyer before I do podcasts like this. But like, I think the simple answer would be like, I think like there's, uh, the dream of kind of having this giant decentralized community that can like drive a narrative and make decisions and like participate in the direction of the character. Right. And so I think immediately we have this like centralized organization, that's making conscious decisions, but kind of slowly working down the stack to potentially, you know, even like open sourcing the character and the rigs and everything else. And people are like creating the images that live as NFTs first, and then, you know, potentially having like those NFT dollars pass back to a treasury or whatever. And that's where I'll, I'll stop based on, you know, just.

Anna (01:03:41):
To find out more. Is there a place where people can read up?

Trevor  (01:03:44):
I mean, this is like breaking news and we're trying to figure it out if they've been possible right now. Like literally, like, you know, I'm talking about it in public with like my, my, my, my smart friends, like you guys to try to figure out if it's feasible and people listening are interested in kind of solving for this. Like I'm all ears, you know, it's just skeet@brud.fyi. But like, we're trying to figure it out. Like I like taking shots and trying to build the future, and maybe we go up in flames, but at least like people can pick up our like scraps and figure it out for themselves

Tarun (01:04:11):
Lil Miquela is now a resident of the Cayman islands.

Trevor (01:04:19):
You guys were asking, like, what, what is sort of something that can help this further along? I think the regulatory framework around a lot of this is certainly holding us back. I mean, like, like again, I, I'm not promising this at all in any means in any way, but like, you know, I would love to see a future where you could do revenue share with, with token holders. I mean, that's, that's just an obvious, low hanging fruit, you know, for, for, to, to, to share with your community and to use it as a crowd funding platform. Obviously that's not what it is, but, you know, if that was cleared up, that would be an amazing route for artists and for like all kinds of different projects to take. And we're kind of held back by that limitation at the moment, you know, you don't want to do that.

Trevor (01:05:00):
Like, Hey guys, it's available to everybody and, you know, um, you can't buy it in the US or, you know, it's like your entire audiences in the US so anyway, it's, uh, I, I wish, I wish that was clear, I guess, at this point.

Andre (01:05:13):
Yeah. I think, I think, I think, um, the way that Trevor and I was via someone whose company I would say was kind of killed by, is such a, such a, such an endeavor. They were just like two years too early to the prediction market game, you know? Totally. Yeah.

Anna (01:05:30):
I wonder as kind of a last question to both of you, like coming you're in the, you're in the music, influencer media art worlds, but what is the actual reputation of blockchain in these spaces? Like, you're now talking to your fans saying, come on board, join these things. But I know that for the last like year and a half, two years, I've been a bit like I work on blockchain, like under my breath, kind of not necessarily shouting it far and wide. Has that changed or is there still like a, a stink connected to this word or?

Anna (01:06:05):
Um, yeah, I feel like 2017 screwed it up a little bit, but...

Andre (01:06:09):
It definitely didn't, uh, it didn't help for awhile. I think that that has shifted, at least in my perspective, let me put it this way. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for a long time now, and I'm only getting DMS from artists now about NFT stuff. So like, it's, uh, I think the NFT is a format is sort of bringing in a lot of people in a way that just the investing cryptocurrency side of it wasn't so I, I think it's, it's, the reputation has certainly improved. That's my impression.

Trevor  (01:06:41):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say on my end, it went from like, this seems cool to like, well, I don't want to touch this to, like, I feel like there was an era where Dre and I were sending our friends all the information with that, like Kanye, but I don't know though, like could ruin your life. So like, I don't know, but this is how I see it too. Like now our convictions are pretty strong and I think even like NBA top Shot, like a lot of my friends who get that, the appeal of buying a LeBron James shoes, this is cool. Like, how do I do this? And so it's starting to really kind of penetrate

Anna (01:07:11):
That's cool. Well, that's really positive. And I'm happy to hear that. Maybe I can start to say blockchain a little louder when I'm talking about it at dinner parties,

Tarun (01:07:19):
Just happy that the like "blockchain, not Bitcoin" people kind of like the enterprise nonsense shit that all died. That that probably was the best thing that could have happened because I felt like the people who try to capitalize the most off 2017 were like in that camp. And I feel like I don't hear about them anymore at all.

Trevor  (01:07:39):
Like they pillage and left.

Andre (01:07:41):
The one thing that I, I like to this is sort of been like a new motivation for me, is that okay? Like in, in the artist community, capitalism is a really dirty word. It's just like, money is a dirty thing. Like, you don't talk about it. You don't, it's like, Oh, don't eat it. Don't go there. But I see this differently. Like I sort of just accept that this is the world we live in and, uh, I I'm, I'm going to use it as a tool. I'm going to be trying to be as creative as possible and, and try to do something that's relevant to me and my community and fun, you know? And, and I think that, NFTs are maybe an example of that, where, where it's not purely just like buy my token, you know, like there's there's, there's something kind of cool about it, that you're sort of just embracing it at face value. And, and I hope that that comes across, you know, over time and I hope people start to embrace it. And, and I think once artists sort of like embrace that side of it, we'll do a lot better instead of being at the lowest end of the totem pole, like we usually are. So, yeah.

Trevor  (01:08:41):
Yeah. And I got to talk about it in similar ways. Like, I kind of joke about like the nineties, like rap rock moment, where I was like, could you imagine a world where like, rappers and rockers are coming together? Like in my head, it's just like, can you imagine a world where like finance bros and like, you know, Bushwick artists are like, come in. Like, that is the same thing to me. Like, you're going to have to figure out how to build economies around your craft. And I think the artists that are going to win are the ones that are going to be like Dre, and they can kind of build these really cool economies and like, you know, aligning incentives and kind of go into this journey together.

Anna (01:09:10):
Cool. Well, on that note, thank you so much, Andre and Trevor for coming on the show and sharing all of this experience and your perspective as artists working with NFTs and all things blockchain.

Andre (01:09:24):
Oh, thank you for having us, really appreciate it.

Trevor (01:09:26):
That's really fun. Thank you.

Tarun (01:09:28):
I'm happy to see 2020 is a year that, the zero knowledge proofs branch out to meet people who could use them.

Anna (01:09:38):
Uh, yes. The ZKP and NFT crossover is, is on its way. Cool. All right. So thanks again. And to our listeners. Thanks for listening.