Coin Artist on Building *real* Crypto-Games

Marguerite deCourcelle, known by her persona Coin Artist, has been in the crypto space since 2014. Marguerite pushes the boundaries at the intersection of art, games, and crypto, carving out a career for herself as an artist and creator. Although her focus is certainly in crypto gaming, it might not be what you’d expect. Her endeavors have a cypherpunk feel at the protocol level, innovating creative ways for NFTs to interact in our wallets. Alongside discussions of her work at Blockade Games, we explore emergence, embedding data in the blockchain, and the untapped world of meaningful crypto gaming. ------ 📣 OPOLIS | Sign Up to Get 1000 $WORK and 1000 $BANK https://bankless.cc/Opolis ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🍵 MATCHA | SMART ORDER ROUTING https://bankless.cc/Matcha 🚀 SLINGSHOT | LAYER 2 SOCIAL TRADING https://bankless.cc/Slingshot 🏦 GEMINI | TURN FIAT INTO CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/Gemini 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:30 Coin Artist 7:49 Early Days of Crypto Art 12:34 Gamifying the Blockchain 16:50 The Technology Crossover 24:33 Bombing & Bitcoin 30:43 Permadeath & High Stakes 38:05Winning Hearts and Minds 42:30 A Utopian Vision 48:00 Emergence & Complexity 53:17 Blockade Games 57:55 The Motivation for Profit 1:04:10 The Thrill of the Game 1:09:17 Fighting for Crypto’s Soul 1:13:22 New York City 1:16:33 The Crypto Social Game 1:23:47 Curation 1:27:43 Optimism & Advice ------ Resources: Marguerite on Twitter: https://twitter.com/coin_artist?s=20&t=2V5r_ik50UfcZMaCSB0HgA https://twitter.com/coin_artist?s=20&t=2V5r_ik50UfcZMaCSB0HgA Blockade Games: https://blockade.games/ Neon District: https://portal.neondistrict.io/ Skyweaver: https://www.skyweaver.net/ Boys Club: https://twitter.com/BoysClubCrypto?s=20&t=2V5r_ik50UfcZMaCSB0HgA https://twitter.com/BoysClubCrypto?s=20&t=2V5r_ik50UfcZMaCSB0HgA Ethereum: The Money-Game Landscape https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/ethereum-the-money-game-landscape?s=w Conway’s Game of Life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We should be empowering the user to be a participant in the conversation so they can add value to the NFTs they're holding. Their NFTs can become more valuable and not just in a way of like being like devs do something, but literally there's pipelines there and bridges that exist that they can add value to the narrative and content creation process.

• 0:20David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cyberpunk's understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, we're talking with Marguerite Day-Corcel, which you might actually know as CoinArtist. CoinArtist has been around in the crypto space for a very long time, before there has even been as much room as there is today for the intersection of

• 0:59David Hoffman?

  art, games, and crypto. CoinArtist is definitely an artist type, hence the artist in the name, and she's focused on crypto gaming, but not in the way that you probably are hearing crypto gaming with what you think of it today with games like Axie Infinity, where you have NFTs and they do stuff. Marguerite is focused on a much more cyberpunk version of crypto games, as in like, how do we have interactions of the NFTs in our wallets? How does like if two NFTs of the same game end up in the same wallet and interaction happens? Something a little bit closer to Conway's Game for Life, or just something about embedding data in the blockchain,

• 1:40David Hoffman?

  rather than just having like a normal game that has crypto assets embedded in it. So you'll hear us unpack what that means, and it's this very untapped world of gaming that has not yet been built out, that I hope does eventually become built, because it sounds really, really fun. And Marguerite/CoinArtist is one of the people building out this world over at Blockade Games. Then we also talk about the physical center of the metaverse, which is New York City, and what's going on with New York, and what it means to be social in the world of crypto in this day and age. So all these conversations and more are coming your way, right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

• 2:23David Hoffman?

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• 3:07David Hoffman?

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• 3:51David Hoffman?

  head over to matcha.xyz/banklist and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets. Banklist is proud to be sponsored by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system, where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum that lets you trade any token at the current market price. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. The Uniswap Grants program is accepting applications for grants. Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is,

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  you can apply for a unique grant at uniswapgrant.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Banklist.

• 4:46David Hoffman?

  What's up, Marguerite? How's it going?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Hi, David. How are you?

• 4:49David Hoffman?

  Oh, this is fantastic. I think a lot of people will actually know you as your other name, CoinArtist. And I think that's kind of where I want to start this, uh, start this, uh, this talk, is where did CoinArtist come from?

• 5:01Speaker 00

  So CoinArtist, actually, it came in 2014, um, when I was just discovering Bitcoin. And I discovered that there was this place called Crypto Twitter, which was yet to be, you know, called Crypto Twitter. But it was all where these industry thought leaders were expressing, um, their opinions about Bitcoin. And it was the first thing I thought of, because I was an artist, I was a fan artist. And I was like, okay, I'm making a Twitter handle. What is it gonna be? And I was like, well, CoinArtist is really generic and not a cool story at all. But, um, but at the time, actually, also, my, I was known as YT instead of Marguerite or CoinArtist. And YT came from, if you've read Snow Crash, it was like this superhero,

• 5:42Speaker 00

  like, how could I make this, um, character, persona? And so I was, I was that person anonymously, basically, until about like 2016. Like, people didn't even know I was a woman. Um, making crypto puzzles and playing around with creative technology, uh, the intersection of crypto, art, games. Uh, it started really early on.

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  Before you discovered Bitcoin, what, I want to unpack the art side. What, uh, what kind of artist were you? Were you like a painter or, or digital art or what's that?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was a, uh, I was a traditional painter and, uh, and drawing. And for me, I did, so there was a lot of magazines at that time that needed art, cover art. Um, like, even just, like, I remember doing a picture of Andreas Antonopoulos for Bitcoin Magazine, um, for one of their articles. And it was in that process of making those, uh, portraits that I started playing around with different concepts. So one of the projects with Amir Takai and Cody Wilson, they were working on something called Dark Wallet at the time. And Dark Wallet was all about obfuscating Bitcoin transactions, like acting as a little bit of a mixer as a wallet. Um, so I was like, hmm, I wonder if I could hide something in

• 6:54Speaker 00

  this, you know, to like play into that obfuscation. And, uh, that's when I realized that a Bitcoin, like, private key with the, the numbers and characters could be turned into all kinds of pattern making to equate to, uh, to that information. You know, how you can take binary and binary can then equate to ASCII. So then, like, how could you make these different patterns into the art and like basically hide things in plain sight embedded into the artwork? So that's when I had that like little aha moment and I shared it on Bitcoin Talk.org, the Satoshi Nakamoto's forum, and people just loved it. It just became like this big viral thing and as an artist, I was like, what did I do?

• 7:36Speaker 00

  So like I kept, so I teamed up with people along the way and we continued to make these pieces. And it only became more gamified and more complex over the years, but that's how it started.

• 7:49David Hoffman?

  So when people talk about the, let's combine art and crypto, if you tell them those words, they're going to think like, oh yeah, you're talking about like NFTs and Web 3 in 2021 or 2022. But you were an artist that got inspiration from crypto back in 2014, before Ethereum even existed, like before we even had smart contracts. And there's like one level of crypto art where there's crypto and then you can illustrate things about it. But you've, you jumped right into a deeper connection behind like the ethos and values of crypto and being an artist with like the integration of like, you know, private keys in actual art. Can you talk about just like what you saw in the early days of being coin artist

• 8:34David Hoffman?

  as the potential intersection behind crypto and art?

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So I'd say initially the creative started looking at blockchain like a new,

• 8:44Speaker 00

  a new medium and how can we interact with it? And there were some fascinating things like you can, so it's this decentralized ledger, but you could store all kinds of information on it. And so when it was cheaper, people hid images, they hidden ASCII images, they had all kinds of information. And how can you interact with the blockchain in a creative artistic way? There was a lot of people, you know, it's, I can't totally recall at the moment, but there were a lot of fun experimental projects. And Rea Myers is someone who I worked with early on and they were a part of that exploratory group.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Now is the head architect at Dapper. But so anyways, there was just a lot of like, like, what can, and I think we all loved the idea that the technology was so new, so people had to like, and the hiding in plain sight thing and just a Satoshi Nakamoto, like his lore. So it was really inspiring for us to think about how could the blockchain be this new medium? And like Bitcoin itself was maybe as a transfer of value was a little less interesting as far as like the unit, but it was more like things you could embed on the blockchain. That was, that was pretty cool. And like using hashes as and pointing like, we did things like make fake addresses to

• 10:04Speaker 00

  make like trails, digital trails that led to information that if you put it all together, you got something. So it was just kind of this neat process because of the fact that there's no third parties involved and it all just exists out there. So understanding decentralized and distributed networks. It was really a fun, playful time, and I think that's actually a big missing piece right now. Like, for example, a lot of creatives and artists just skip that step. They are now with these, the interface and, and making like minting an image that they feel like is an NFT, but you're missing the whole like deeper meaning and how that ties into the networks that could be way more creative or like artistically driven as an entire process.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  I think, I think you have some people making those steps, but you know, it's interesting. You saw this back with different cryptos that people didn't really care about that, like how interesting the technology was. They really just cared about the user experience. So it's interesting to think about too, these artists that are making extra efforts to make, like for example, Josie Bellini today just launched Cyberbrokers and it's all on chain using SVGs and my CTO at Blockade Games is a part of that, like he helped with that launch. But just this deeper conversation about these assets being on chain and what, and what this art project is. I don't know, I just feel like there's a huge gap in education now.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  And I wonder how we're going to recapture that or if we do recapture that. I, I actually don't know, everything's so financially driven. And that's maybe the bubble that everyone feels, but I don't know if the conversation comes back to the the interesting innovation of the technology behind everything, you know, like it seems like people are just more excited about making money in new ways.

• 11:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think with what you kind of just described where you you kind of laid out this Easter egg like MMO RPG like art hunt using by embedding data straight into Bitcoin where you had like fake addresses that meant something and it'll lead you down a trail. That felt very gamified. That felt like the intersection of like art and games, but using data inside of a blockchain to be the board on which this game is played. Whereas whereas like now in the NFT Web three world is really just like very external to the blockchains. Like, yeah, we just use Ethereum to mint our NFTs, but everything else is external.

• 12:27David Hoffman?

  It definitely has to do with like the rising transaction fees and we can't really play with data on the blockchain in the way that we that we once did. But is my intuition right that you were really interested in kind of making this like this shared ledger that we all have that can host data and turning it into like some sort of like artistic game? Rather than just like, you know, sending Bitcoins around like how important was the gamification of it?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think all of the projects that we participated in since 2014 had some sort of magical moment where we're playing around with blockchain technology to kind of demonstrate something that otherwise wasn't possible. Something that we did in 2019 was called

• 13:08Speaker 00

  I forget the actual title of it, but it was a humans versus zombies headless game in which we sent NFTs, we airdropped NFTs and half were human NFTs and half were zombie NFTs. And then there was this score scoreboard website. All it said was how many humans there were and how many zombies there were. If you sent a zombie to a wallet that had a human in it, then you didn't like transfer your zombie. What happened was you minted a new zombie asset into the human's wallet. And it then turned their human into a zombie. And so then on the scoreboard, the zombies are, you know, gaining a zombie. And you could use an antidote.

• 13:50David Hoffman?

  And then the human gets frozen, the human NFT gets frozen or something?

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Well, the NFTs are non-transferable. So, yeah, so they're in your wallet and then it's like basically a virus.

• 14:00David Hoffman?

  And it's an on-chain virus.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it doesn't use a central application. And so anyways, we just launched this at a hackathon. I think it was like, um, am I maybe Harvard? A Harvard hackathon? I can't totally remember, but um, just this idea that with smart contracts, you can make this entire game just using smart contracts. Didn't, you don't need to have an actual game, like, uh, application. And that was really interesting because there's so much more of that that could be done. But do people care about that? Like, do they care about that game experience? It seems like everything is monetarily driven. So how do we actually, how do we actually inspire people to play? In ways that, just like with traditional games, like how many people just sit down and play games because they're awesome and fun and interesting?

• 14:48Speaker 00

  They're social. How do we bridge that gap with where we are today? With this financial motivation, which is really turning off a lot of gamers, like actual gamers. They think this whole space is going to be a complete scam or is a scam. And then you can see it already that the games that are trying to launch are already angling at that.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Those pre-sale items to have the highest prices as possible to price people out. And then build this toxic community and then you're going to be turning off all the gamers. And then will you ever launch a game? I don't know, but that it feels very ICO. In that way, it's just like ICOs, but with extra better marketing because we brought in all these 3D professional, you know, artists now from the game industry because these NFTs are selling. So how, how long is it going to take for us to actually, or will we ever get over the, this? Probably bad reputation we're about to spin up, just in the same way that ICOs, like ICOs never came back.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  They rebranded, they came up with all kinds of different, you know, acronyms to basically be the same thing as ICO. Uh, but they, they really did, that stigma stuck. And I think that games and NFTs are at the same risk right now. I totally went on to complete tangent there, but.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Anyways.

• 16:04David Hoffman?

  No, no, it makes a ton of sense. I think what I'm hearing is like, there's this domain, this category of crypto games, which are very, very foreign to like the traditional, the traditional, traditional, like the typical crypto games that we see today, like the wolf sheep game, or like Axie Infinity, which are very just like driven by the value of the assets. But I think what you're alluding to is like, there's this category of like on-chain games that are crypto, that are, where the playing field is Ethereum, or L2s, or just whatever is in the blockchain, rather than just like, you know, NFT assets and something

• 16:44David Hoffman?

  like that. Like, how, how big do you think the world of just like on-chain, what do we even call this, this category of game? If we're not calling it crypto games, because that's been co-opted by this whole like NFT number go up, toxic value movement, like, what do we call the, the versions of games that are like on-chain, like the virus type games that you just explained? Is there, have you thought about a name for this?

• 17:08Speaker 00

  No, I mean, but I was using NFTs, right? And I think at the time, we were all saying blockchain games, you know, and if we weren't using NFTs, and no one thought NFTs was gonna stick, as far as an acronym. So it was really interesting that it did, because everyone was thinking, this is terrible, we shouldn't use NFTs, we should say something else. So we all were trying, we're like blockchain games, crypto games, like trying to explore other terminology, but NFTs is what's the, and maybe the mystery, because people didn't know what it was. And I don't know if you're gonna be able to differentiate, assets, decentralized assets, and the different models. Because, well, if you think about gaming, you have all kinds of different types of games, like, you know, you have an RPG, you have a, you

• 17:52Speaker 00

  have a roguelike, you have a, there's just like different ways to label games. I don't know if crypto is gonna really be able to get more finite than, than, than just, and if, I don't even know. What do you think about when you hear games like crypto games? The first thing you think of an NFT game, or do you think of crypto?

• 18:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, well, so like to the virus example is actually something that I have like pondered about or daydreamed about is like what happens when we can have like assets like like can you have like this virus asset that just like naturally people like accidentally run into like damn it I caught the zombie virus now my now my wallet is a zombie wallet like it doesn't meaningfully impacts my wallet like I could still do all my things but now it's got the zombie token in it like damn it now it's I got caught by the virus and like there's stuff like I just have always wondered about like is there this world where just like there's this these assets in our wallets that have meaning inside of a particular

• 18:52David Hoffman?

  context kind of like kind of like you know the game as in the game that everyone just lost because I brought up the game sorry like stuff like that on Ethereum I've thought like does how big of an arena is that because like there's a few examples that I can think of but I'm also not the most creative person but like and I take your point is it like how how like how niche is that like if everyone everyone needs to be good at like using block explorers everyone needs to be able to write their own transactions like it's this isn't up to the wallets this is up to like ether scan and stuff like that and so it's a lot harder of an audience but it's actually what feels like the new thing as we're actually

• 19:32David Hoffman?

  using this technology in ways that we could not have used this technology in different ways like the you know you can play Axie Infinity without having assets right in theory but like with a zombie virus wallet game like that is brand new that is something that like and I think that something that's similar in this category is the dark forest that that zk roll up game I don't know if you've played that so maybe this is one of those things where it's kind of a concept now but maybe maybe we need zk roll up technology to make these transactions super cheap and instant I don't know do you have any thoughts on that?

• 20:05Speaker 00

  So there's like different types of games on different networks that are people are playing with and interacting with but yeah I think that the cost of playing so for example like in with so I work with so I'm with walking games and our one of our missions was to make a free to play game so how do you put everything on the back end so the players just having this experience interacting with decentralized assets that could become valuable over time based on their gameplay? And how do you build for that? And it's true, like even on Polygon, so we, and we launched on Polygon, it's becoming more expensive now. Is it, is it scalable and gonna be sustainable for us to continue that way? So it's gonna be on our roadmap to explore what are alternatives and what is the cheapest way for us to keep that free to play experience?

• 20:47Speaker 00

  But um, yeah, I guess like the different types of games. So there's all kinds of things that I think like remixing of content for memes, for example. Let's say you make a meme and it's like, it's some, it's got composable layers and it's in your wallet. I could see someone sending another like meme to you and it affecting and changing your meme. Like we can remix media and content based on our interactions across wallets. And I just think of this as like being a fun thing to do and for nefarious purposes. As like trying to, you know, if you wanna bomb your friends with something like, I just, I want that to exist.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  And I wanna know how I can, and I love the idea of sending a bomb to a friend, almost like um, like you're trying to sink a ship and they have assets in their wallet.

• 21:39David Hoffman?

  What, what does this mean? What, can you unpack that a little bit?

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let's say you have NFTs that are susceptible to some sort of a bomb that I send and I could blow them up if I send it. Maybe it just costs me, maybe there's some sort of mechanic there that makes me really consider about sending this bomb. Like maybe you have something in your wallet that if I do this, it's actually gonna blow back at me, you know, and

• 21:59David Hoffman?

  Ah, it's a trap.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  And I don't know, and like, and maybe there's, like, there's just ways to think about that. Um, and these different crossovers of NFTs and, and projects that could exist. Um, and yeah, and like just messing, playing around with your friends in ways like that where it's not a big deal, but there's almost an element of permadeath, but it's also just kinda funny. And then there's some sort of retribution that can exist and reward systems that could exist and badge systems that could exist. Um, all on chain. And I think like, I think there's a lot of room to play there and everyone's so focused on trying to make, like if you think about it, everyone's like the next big AAA game and it's gonna have the coolest art and these assets are gonna sell for so much money. But really the fun is like very much more accessible than that.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  It's just how do you inspire people to wanna play? Um, because even, even if you think about it, these blockchain games, no one's actually like Playing them for fun. There's a grind component of can I earn and like manipulate and exploit the system and make some crypto and then go sell it. But no one's actually playing crypto games for fun at the moment. And what is a differentiator between a crypto game versus just a traditional game? As a game company or as a creative, why would you do one or the other? If you're just trying to do something for fun, why wouldn't you just do a traditional game? So if you're going to use blockchain mechanics or game mechanics that are new and exciting, how are you going to leverage them to actually inspire people to want to interact in that way? And will they want to interact with an app, go outside of Open

• 23:26Speaker 00

  C, you know, spend time on a third-party website? We haven't seen that yet. And I don't, I don't know if interactive NFTs are going to be the answer, where you can play the games directly from the Open C website. So you can play things like, like a Minesweeper. There's things that exist right now using iframe support in, directly in Open C is like playing Minesweeper. You could have, anyone could play with this particular NFT that's owned by one person. And then it's, you can be signing the winner and having a leaderboard that everyone's interacted with it. And like with the leaderboard of this particular interactive NFTs, like output, if that makes, makes sense. And you can do

• 24:08Speaker 00

  all kinds of, like from that basis, you can do dungeon crawlers, I could host a raid, I could put assets up for a bounty without people ever leaving Open C, for example. If you think about most casual crypto NFT collectors, they probably do not leave the Open C website very often.

• 24:26David Hoffman?

  Right, right. Because that's not where number go up is, right? That's, that's kind of the trap of where we are right now.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:33David Hoffman?

  So with your, I want, I want to go back to the, the bomb NFT. So I think that's really cool. And just to, just for listeners who are fearful about their like bored ape or their CryptoPunk getting exploded, this wouldn't work like that. All the assets that would interact with like this bomb thing would only be part of the same ecosystem. So it would be an opt-in thing. It's not like your NFTs are going to go explode. But like, the idea is that like, you could have an inventory like you do in a game and you have assets in there. And I don't know, maybe This game is about how many of your, how many assets can you destroy by sending a bomb? But like, you could also, in theory, have like an anti-bomb shield, and you could not host that in your wallet, but you could make a ZK proof that you have one.

• 25:17David Hoffman?

  And then if you get bombed, you can like show your ZK proof that you actually have a bomb shield. And all of these things are like technically possible with cryptography. And the cool thing about Ethereum, or blockchains in general, is that, you know, these things are inherently turned base because they go one block at a time. So every single block is one like unit of time in this blockchain game, because there is no middle time between blocks. And so like the substrate on which we play on, these blockchains, are so conducive to like this turn-based strategy game. And no one's really been able to like fully tap into that power yet.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Totally. Like, I think like making factions and alignments and playing around with decentralized identity and like exactly what you're talking about is so fascinating. Because people will be like, what just happened? And I also love the idea, like you said, your board ape would be safe. But you could allow people to opt in into like wrapping their board ape, or like, you know, making it so like they could submit assets with the fact that the higher value of the asset and some sort of scoring generating system would allow them to have more weight when they hit, you know, versus, and then also reward system and payback if they're successful and defend their base. I think when you think of your wallet, it's really fun to think about it. Like, you could build a tower defense and like defend your base.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  And then also, like, how are you sending resources to help other people? How are you like teammates and how can like you create this ecosystem? Which I think is actually like a part of the future here. It's just, I don't know yet how it makes money. And that's the, like, so- How can you sustainably make money? Because even just a crypto payout reward, it's not really tied to anything valuable, right? But I would like to say this is a big difference. Why gaming and NFTs took off on Ethereum versus Bitcoin is because of that capability to bootstrap. So because Bitcoins are limited, developers have to walk into the space and have their own Bitcoin.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  And then they're holding on to the fact that Bitcoin's going to keep going up. But they had to buy into it. Whereas in the Ethereum space, you can start your project. You can come up with your own tokens, NFTs, your own ERC20 token. And you have this whole economy. You can just bootstrap and launch with value generation and then ride on your reputation. And if you can deliver. So that is such an advantage. So it is potential that you could have these kinds of ecosystems in the Ethereum or similar networks. It's kind of sad to see Bitcoin not actually take off in that same way. But it's also maybe OK that Bitcoin's one purpose is to be sound money. And I think a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts have a hard time with that.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  I think early on when Vitalik was interested in colored coins, in counterparty, I was really listening in that time period because it was creative use cases that I wanted to see happen on Bitcoin. But there were so many challenges because of the fact that a lot of decisions would affect the end goal of, does this make Bitcoin sound money? And if it doesn't answer that question, then they generally said no. And so even with Lightning Network, there's potential here to get creative on top of Bitcoin. But the rate of adoption on Ethereum and other places where you can bootstrap faster and you have more users that don't need to be as technically inclined has a faster rate of adoption. But the downside is that nobody is as technically inclined.

• 28:58David Hoffman?

  Hmm, hmm, hmm, um, and also like there was like a natural schism, right? Like all the, all the sound money people got, I guess for better or for worse, got pushed out of Bitcoin. I guess some people saw that as a disappointment where, um, like we could, we, um, do you feel like particular alignment with Bitcoin like to this day? Cause I, this crypto world is very, very tribal. And when people get into the space, the timing of when they get into the space kind of impacts, um, how they perceive the space, right? So like people that got in in 2013 generally are Bitcoiners more than they are Ethereum's and fewer people make that, the, the pass over to Ethereum later and later in time.

• 29:37David Hoffman?

  Like, do you wish that Bitcoin was a good substrate, uh, for, um, like gaming type activities?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  There's a few, there are a few Bitcoin gaming projects. Um, gosh, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but like, uh, I, I just don't know if, but I think most of the Bitcoin gaming efforts are like playing traditional games with like a Bitcoin kickback, almost like a

• 30:04David Hoffman?

  Right, like a Satoshi every now and

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know how like Lolly rewards work where you have that with your plugin and based on your like purchases, you're earning Bitcoin as a reward? It seems like they're mostly like that, where you can get this reward of Bitcoin, um, based on gameplay, which is pretty, pretty interesting. I think that's, that's interesting still, um, but it's not as interesting in my opinion, like creatively as what we can do with, you know, just the different combinations of smart contracts and interacting with people and, um, the mayhem that could pursue across decentralized networks, but it's

• 30:41David Hoffman?

  You, uh, you, you said the word permadeath.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:45David Hoffman?

  Uh, and I wanna, I wanna go into that. Can you talk about the role of, uh, what permadeath is and talk about the role it plays in gaming?

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Well, permadeath can actually mean a few different things, but, um, in this particular case, I mean, uh, well, are you familiar with like Eve Online?

• 31:02David Hoffman?

  I know the game, I have not played it.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  So in Eve Online, I asked Helmer, who is the CEO of

• 31:12Speaker 00

  of, what is it, CG, CP, CG, I can't remember the acronym of Eve Online. And I was asking him about how he was gonna fix botting. So they have a real economy. And what happened was, they decided to flag players that look like they could be bots, and allow everyone to come and harvest. So they get flagged, and everyone nearby gets a notification, and can go over to them and like, acclaim all of their assets. It doesn't blacklist the player, it just allows their assets up for grabs by the larger community, who can get there first. Which is a really interesting thing, because you can't like necessarily defeat,

• 31:56Speaker 00

  defeat bots, right? But how do you make them a part of, the core part of gameplay? I also, so, in that case, like, permadeath is not necessarily your account dying, but you've lost all of your assets. You've experienced, you know, a huge loss. In NFT space, I think it would be so exciting, I don't know if you've ever played Dark Souls, where you-

• 32:17David Hoffman?

  It's my only gaming series that I swear by.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  So you die, and you totally die, and you have to start over at the very beginning of the game. Which is really infuriating for a lot of people, and some people hate it so much to throw their controller, but at the same time, they love it.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  So like, that for me sounds so exciting, because I can imagine, so even in our current game that we're thinking of, the design that we are building, thinking about horizontal opportunities for people that wanna play at a D-Risk.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  In more of a D-Risk fashion, and then a vertical, where, you know, you, horizontal dungeon crawlers, and then imagine you have a vertical, like dungeon crawler, where the higher you up you go in social class, the higher risks you take, the more you're putting up to lose, and if you lose, you like, you drop. You socially, like, basically kicked out of society to a certain extent, could go all the way down to like, the street level, but-

• 33:14David Hoffman?

  The time that you put into the game is deleted.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, to some capacity, you have to figure out, like, what would people be willing to do, and also, what assets would they wanna put in escrow? To to lose, is it characters? Is it gear? Is it, you know, like, what parts of this is going to be acceptable for people to experience? And honestly, I feel like since people are so emotionally attached to their NFTs, that like putting, like, losing them would be very, like, for me, I'm thinking about this for me. Like, I would love that. I would love the risk of losing my assets. And and gambling in that sort of capacity, but like with a skill-based gambling. So like playing Magic the Gathering. Imagine you're playing a Magic the Gathering tournament and you're playing with your deck.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  And then everything you're playing with is going to be up for grabs by the person that wins the game. That would be pretty cool. Like, because then you can even have this ledger of, let's say, someone is just crushing everyone. They're going to have this history of all these NFTs and who they took them from. And that's like, that's such a flex that doesn't really exist today, right?

• 34:25David Hoffman?

  I think the one of the reasons why a lot of people just hate Call of Duty is because as soon as you die, you just respawn and then you just go and do it again. So you have people like throwing themselves in Call of Duty into just the middle of just a firefight in ways that we, I mean, it's a video game, obviously, but just there's no death penalty. Because like, if you die, you just go do it again. But then there's there's versions of Call of Duty where there is a death penalty, where like you actually die and you have to just sit for 15 seconds. And people's behavior in the game changes because of the penalty of having to wait 15 seconds. Like, people are just like, approach the game a lot more carefully. Like, they really don't want to die. They're, yeah, they don't want to be in timeout. That's a great way to put it. And so like, that's like, but that's just 15 seconds.

• 35:09David Hoffman?

  That's just asking you, like, here, your your penalty is you waste 15 seconds of your life before you wait to respawn. And like the, I think, an amount of just like emotional engagement and emotional captivation that comes when like, if I die here, I lose my NFTs, which are like a part of my wealth, that starts to like mimic a lot of like real life, right? Like, people never run into Call of Duty in the way that they would actually run into a war zone, because that's just not the right behaviors. But then, but then, like, If we start talking about like metaverse games, like blockchain games, if you actually have something to lose, which is why people love and also hate Dark Souls at the same time. Like if you have something to lose while you go and play and there's real

• 35:53David Hoffman?

  value at risk and you actually are putting the time and energy and like blood, sweat and tears on the table while you play these games. Human behaviors around these games are likely going to change.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, and I also think it makes it really exciting to think about how you could. So there's something else I'm thinking about is.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  So for example, the game we've been building is Neon District. It's a 2D game. What if though, as you go up in society and you're having these tournaments and this permanent experience, you have the opportunity to start collecting 3D assets for the future game, like a future expansion of the game. And like, and it's like you're creating syncs of the current assets, the 2D old school game. But imagine this progression, instead of having like, you know, the first version of Final Fantasy 1, 2, 3. What if it was more of a like linear where they're all connected and fluid and you're like progressing out of one game and earning your way into the second, um, into different types of the experience and different types of the game modes

• 36:53Speaker 00

  based on your achievements within the certain like construct from the start and everyone has to go through that funnel. Or you buy into that funnel, but I think that's where you can really protect the integrity of the free to play game with people that put in the work to grind at the beginning, but then also if you want to buy into the cooler versions, you can, but you have to, you're buying from people that played through them. So I don't know, like there's a lot of interesting ways you can think of game progression and the fact that these NFTs can have multiple file types associated with them and the game like game developers have the ability to update, if they designed it this way, update all the metadata and the different files in different ways to create those additional experiences. So

• 37:36Speaker 00

  it really is a whole new, like, that's where I get interested and I feel like those are the places where we win gamers. Is like, because they've never had that. Imagine, imagine playing all of your Dark Souls franchise games in a way where your past work mattered for future experiences. For you, especially when we think about decentralized identities and how important those are going to become. I think that's where you win loyalty with that hardcore fanbase.

• 38:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you've definitely seen a lot of like NFT and crypto gamer hate coming out of like the gaming industry, the gaming community and all the NFT, anti-NFT community. Is kind of what you are, what you're saying with the ethos of which you're building up Lock8 Games, is that like something that you're hopeful can like win over the hearts and minds of these people that currently mostly hate our industry?

• 38:28Speaker 00

  I think like, I don't want to say that we're going to single-handedly prove to all gamers in the game industry that there's value here. What I would like to do is seed the ideas and the creative ideas that with other developers, that there's other opportunities that resonate and that people will enjoy. For example, when I did my Twitter account, right? I hit 50,000 followers and I worked with this company called Linkdrop to whitelist all of my followers, up to 50,000 followers. And if they were whitelisted, then they were, had the ability to claim for free their first NFT ever. And the response to that was huge. It was like a 90% conversion rate of every, like of everyone that clicked it,

• 39:13Speaker 00

  they, it was a brand new wallet essentially. So like if you think about that, how many people are lurking out there and waiting for invitations and wanting to like participate? If you make something friendly and inclusive, people want to participate. So it's more about seed. And I've had a lot of people talk to me afterwards that that was a really powerful moment for them. It was either their first NFT or they realized that, you know, you didn't have to participate. Like, and it just meant a lot because it was this, so in this, in this case, it was this compilation of all of the followers. They were a part of a, an image that, you know, that was like of me and like my history, but they, like I had all my users, the followers on Twitter, they were a part of it. You could zoom in and find yourself.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  They were part of the story. So I think like that's something that we have to realize and like, everybody is a part of the story and how can you appreciate them and honor them and not make it a cash grab? Because the minute you have that separation, you create a toxic environment. And so that's the, I think, anyways, that's the largest challenge I see right now. And I do think that seeding creative ideas, showing people that you can have inclusive activities, that it doesn't have to be high value to start, that you can have a gradual value creation process, is going to be the way to have that loyalty, long tail revenue,

• 40:36Speaker 00

  and also ways to unlock our users to have ownership in the entire universes that are being built. That's something that I'm really passionate about is you have so many creative developers, artists, just how can they participate in this ecosystem? If you're waiting on the developers to ship content, ships in the storytelling and the users just to get to consume, there's no active participation back, there's no conversation back, then that's like basically the same model that exists today with game companies. Which is the difference now with decentralized networks is that, and these open source communities that we've all, a lot of us have come from, is that we should be empowering the user to be a participant in the conversation

• 41:22Speaker 00

  so they can add value to the NFTs they're holding. Their NFTs can become more valuable and not just in a way of like being like devs do something, but literally there's pipelines there and bridges that exist that they can add value to the narrative and content creation process.

• 41:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I definitely want to go into that because that's a big theme that I think we see across the board is that the whole concept of like tokens and communities, tokens can allow communities to have a voice in ways that they didn't prior. Like in the trad world, you would have the artist on stage with a one-way flow of artistic creation out to the consumers of that. But then when you instantiate a community inside of a token or NFT or some sort of commute group or DAO or whatever, the community gets a chance to reverberate what they see as value. Back to the artist and it can become a two-way conversation. We're seeing this with People Pleasers new project Shibuya? I don't know how to pronounce it. That was it?

• 42:18Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 42:23David Hoffman?

  But like the community gets to dictate the next chapter in like a story of an animated series, right? Like it's actually up to the community to determine what happens next. Can you just like paint a picture of like the utopia that's created? When we have a world of games and arts and communities that allows the communities to be a role in its creation?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Well, so like even, okay, so this is a actually huge vision that I have right now.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Everything from in real life experiences, right? So think about Dungeons and Dragons and you have a game master hosting an event and everyone playing this board game and having this experience, right? Like, I honestly feel like we're in a place where if you open up the opportunity to have something like a Star Wars franchise that everyone gets to participate in the core part of the storytelling, which has potentially multiple different veins of that storytelling happening. That's like maybe canon, it's like Star Wars canon in this case. But then you allow people that who are super fans to have guidelines and ways to participate and add on to their own.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Like they understand enough of the context, there's a big enough wiki, people can contribute to the wiki and building the outside stories and side experiences. And then you have the in real life experiences. So currently today, when everyone gets together for NFT events, it's like TVs on a wall and drinking and a DJ. And like, that's the best we can do for in real life NFT experiences. But honestly, what we could take that is things like with a slight game. Like you could have kits that include gamification, in real life NFT minting, how it fits into the overall like universe that everyone has kind of agreed upon. And being able to host these parties, like I think about.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Even the joy that people had in the almost complete pyramid schemes of like makeup companies or other products where people get together and they just love getting together and hearing their friend talk about some sort of makeup and everyone buys it. You know, and they have these like, it doesn't need to be totally pyramid scheme like that, but we can do better than this complete disconnect that's happening right now. And I do think like the universe and the shared vision of this like place of lore is a unifier. And I do think like some core game rules are unifiers. So even just like Conway, I was just showing a friend this yesterday, Conway's Game of Life is this simple rule set that's existed before computers even existed.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  And then it today is still proving out new permutations that are possible within this game. Um, which is very simple. It's like this grid where there's these cells and cell is alive or dead. Um, and like people from this simple rule set came up with things like factories and spaceships and other permutations that are really interesting and excite the entire community. But I think like to peel it back from there with NFTs and art and storytelling, content creation, empowering people around the world to participate in a place where all they need to do is show up, have a little bit of skill and have fun. That like we can, we can access something that maybe we've never done before.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  You know, like imagine Magic the Gathering being a little bit more decentralized, a little bit more accessible, allowing their users to have a little bit more input. You can have your tournament cards, which are official tournament cards that, you know, like these are the ones that we will accept. And then you can have the creative sets, which Magic has always done, the different creative sets and seasonal rendition. So anyways, I think like that community participation and empowering the world through these decentralized technologies is where we all win together because of the fact that we've never been able to onboard everyone in the world into an economy. And this is the first chance to do that. And doing it through a creative lens and a lens that's easy to understand,

• 46:21Speaker 00

  like game rules is the best way to get crypto into everybody's hands. And when you do that, then you have an entire empowered world that is not dependent anymore on the like the success or failure of a nation state, but rather as like a global like humanity as far as like what we think is exciting, what do we want to collaborate towards in the future? So I think it's like this, we're really early, but I think the vision is there and how we can bring up everybody together based on simple, shared loves and talents.

• 46:50David Hoffman?

  The passion is clearly palpable. So I'm already a big fan of this, of this whole vision. Slingshot is a decentralized trading platform that combines the performance and ease of a centralized exchange with the openness and transparency of DeFi. Slingshot aggregates liquidity from all of DeFi in order to find the best price on thousands of crypto assets. Every token on Slingshot comes with a price chart and trade logs to give you insights into the market's activity in real time. Slingshot is available on Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism, saving you from the high gas fees and low transaction speeds of the Ethereum L1. There are no fees to trade on Slingshot and any positive slippage is given to the users. Trading on Slingshot is a social experience. You can even set your chat avatar to your favorite NFT or soon a Slingshot 2099 NFT avatar.

• 47:34David Hoffman?

  Once you bridge your assets to Polygon, Arbitrum or Optimism, go to app.slingshot.finance to trade and use the chat box to share your trades with others and find other tokens to ape into. Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use DeFi and NFTs. Over 250 projects have already deployed on Arbitrum and Arbitrum's DeFi and NFT ecosystems are growing rapidly. Arbitrum increases Ethereum's speed by orders of magnitude for a fraction of the cost of the average gas fee. When interacting with Arbitrum, you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into Ethereum's level of decentralization and security. If you're a developer who wants low gas fees and instant transactions for your users, visit developer offchainlabs.com to get started building your application on Arbitrum. If you're a user, keep an eye out for your favorite DeFi apps

• 48:19David Hoffman?

  or NFT projects building on Arbitrum. Many of your favorite apps are already live with many more coming over soon. You can find these apps at portal.arbitrum.1 and you can bridge your assets over to Arbitrum using bridge.arbitrum.io in order to experience DeFi and NFTs the way it was always meant to be. Fast, cheap and friction free. Gemini exchange has been my exchange of choice ever since I got into crypto. I use Gemini to both buy the dips and also manage my regular automatic monthly purchases of my preferred crypto asset. On Gemini, you'll find over 50 different cryptos, including many of the top DeFi and metaverse tokens like YFI and Axie Infinity. Using Gemini Earn, you can earn yield on your various cryptos, including 8% on the GUSD stablecoin. Gemini is available in all 50 states and more than 50 countries worldwide.

• 49:04David Hoffman?

  So if you're looking to upgrade your crypto exchange, sign up at Gemini with Gemini.com/go-bankless and get $15 of Bitcoin after you trade $100 or more within the first 30 days. That's Gemini.com/go-bankless. One of the other themes that I think that you're touching on that I think is pretty core to crypto is emergence and pushing complexity towards the edges. Conway's Game of Life is like one of my favorite metaphors to kind of explain DeFi. I used it in a relatively old article called Ethereum, the Money Game Landscape, which was eventually a prelude towards yield farming, where we had all these DeFi apps were all competing to get points.

• 49:46David Hoffman?

  And what are those points? They're ether and they have these Conway, anyways, I use Conway's Game of Life for that. Conway's Game of Life, like Ethereum, is a state machine, as in it progresses one state at a time. And what you were saying with like, even though this Conway Game of Life was before computers, but enabled by computers, much more expressive because of computers, you could do more things. But it's such a simple rule set. There's only like six rules for Conway, like if this, then that statement is for Conway's Game of Life. And it creates like this immense infinite playing field for other people to play on it. And they get to create the structures that you listed off, the factories, the spaceships, the gliders, the floaters, or whatever.

• 50:27David Hoffman?

  And it wasn't, what was created is not in the rules, it's a... It's a manifestation out of the rule set itself, kind of in the same way that Bitcoin is supposed to be maximally simple, yet you can manifest so much more on top of it. And Ethereum is supposed to be just a very simple expressive state machine, but so much can be expressed on top of it. And so I think what you're leading into is there's this world of games out there that could, in theory, just have a very relatively simple rule set. But when you design it right, it creates a lot of emergence and allows people to create the stories, rather than the stories being creating, creating the stories. Is this all right?

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Yep, absolutely. And I think like the emergent quality there that you're touching on is the most exciting. That's the thing, that sense of discovery. And I'm actually contributing, like as a user that's participating in this rule set in the universe, and I can, there's a discovery being made and I contribute to that. I think that's one of the most exciting things that I could experience. And I think that's why I also focus on that idea of a magic trick, as us being, using blockchain technology to show people and seed ideas and be like, look what you could do, though. Like, this isn't this interesting, and inspire people. But when you do drive people to being like, oh, wait, we can create these entire ecosystems that perform a certain way that maybe wasn't the

• 51:48Speaker 00

  underlying like, like point, but it did come about. And how do people organize around them? And continue value creation around them is going to be so interesting. And I do think that's where we get it, like, things get exciting. It's just, we're stuck right now in the very early stages of just understanding, you have to understand that digital art wasn't transferable and wasn't even a viable, like, unless you were being like contracted, it wasn't a viable means of income, really, to be just be independently a digital artist. You needed to have some sort of job, like, even just being an artist, it was, is always difficult. But so now that we've unlocked

• 52:30Speaker 00

  this door, that digital art is transferable, that was really exciting. And I think people are hung up on that. But the deeper meanings of where this could all go, it's just, how, how do we bridge that gap? And I think that's up to a lot of us that understand the magic points and these different connections, like you're talking about, the emergent behavior, like, ways to inspire people, inspire to play. It's just, I think Dark Forest actually maybe is touching on that more than a lot of other projects, but that in that specific way, there needs to be more of that, more of that genuinely driven, like, I want to show people it's possible blockchain, I want to show people what's,

• 53:12Speaker 00

  why is it more interesting, and not it be about just monetary only and bottom line only.

• 53:17David Hoffman?

  So with that, I think it's finally time to dive headfirst into what is going on behind the scenes at Block8 Games. So can you give us the pitch of what Block8 Games is and what you guys are building?

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Block8 Games was a, is a game studio that we kicked off January 2019, 2018, sorry. And it was, it was actually the, when CryptoKitties happened, I'd been waiting for a non-communicable token type, so a metadata token, right? Something that could capture a player's experience in a way that translated to value. And that didn't exist really until that moment, or at least it wasn't clear that it existed. There was things like colored coins, there was things like metadata coins, but they weren't,

• 54:11Speaker 00

  you could always like wash them, per se, they weren't like binding, they wasn't using the smart contracts in a way that this was a whole journey progression that creates value over time. And so when that happened, when CryptoKitties happened, we were like, okay, we're gonna launch the game company now, we're done with our side projects, educational side projects, we're ready to go like build this RPG. We wanted to make a cyberpunk World of Warcraft RPG, and use users' interactions and their choices and specializations to create assets that became more valuable over time, and wanted to be free to play. So we had a lot of wants, and it was actually pretty difficult to figure out.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  But anyways, yeah, so we did something called Plasma Bears, which a lot like Gary Vee is really excited about, a lot of people are pretty excited about, except for the fact that we'd launched it on the Loom network, which was early Layer 2 type, it was like Layer 1.5 type network that died. And so what happened with those Plasma Bears is we made this complete free-to-play game. And then we built a bridge from Lumen Network to Ethereum. So everybody that had Plasma Bears and transferred it over to Ethereum had their bear. But there were millions of bears made and crafted and they're composable. They're like Build-A-Bears.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  And we worked with people like X Copy, who is now very famous, like maybe one of the highest selling NFT artists today, which was just because I liked him back in 2018. I was like, oh, we should work together and we made this game. So anyways, of the 1,200 bears that were transferred transferred over to Ethereum, now they're, you know, an X Copy bear sell, you can't buy one cheaper for 100 ETH.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  But it was completely free to play game, you know? Like that wasn't the purpose. So, so we took that tech stack and we innovated on it for Neon District, which is something we're still focusing on, which is that, so it's similar in that Build-A-Bear concept of where you can compose and create a character. And then you play with a party of characters and you take them instead of, in Plasma Bears, it was a text adventure, you know, as a means to not worry about the game mechanics or animations or any of that. But Neon District, it's definitely more about that turn-based battle experience and then the outcome and then how you are accumulating what's called Neon, which is an in-game currency that is non-transferable, that you use to funnel into your NFTs to progress them and turn them into higher level characters.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  So anyways, I guess at BlockA Games, it's still that vision. Everything I'm talking about in this whole conversation is how do we create this experience where people get really excited about what's possible with NFTs? And yeah, I guess just like it's, it doesn't need to start at a high value. You can start with a zero value asset and it can evolve over time to become more valuable based on your choices, your input. So then it becomes a conversation, it's collaborative. And then your decision makings, when you go up another player, you can build any deck essentially you want with your characters. And how do they perform against another party's, you know, characters?

• 57:25Speaker 00

  So. It's just like, it's a little bit different than what exists today. It's not as complicated and deep as what it could be with a triple A game. Like, you know, a Dark Souls game, but it's still trying to prove that the user can be an intimate part of the conversation of the progression of their assets. And then where does the value come from?

• 57:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it seems like you're trying to build an ecosystem of game that uses, that is very, very true to the ethos of crypto and also not trying to cut any corners. As in, we have this technology. We have this way of imparting meaning into this game. We have this way of allowing individuals to have control over their assets and them be the admin of their own story in the game. And that's very admirable. And not cutting corners in crypto is such a difficult thing to do because every time there's a mania, whether it's the ICO mania or the NFT mania, or now the crypto gaming mania, it's because people found a way to cut a corner and like skip to the end where like the assets are trading for $50,000 on OpenSea.

• 58:29David Hoffman?

  Like, that's like the end goal. And some people just realize that they can actually just skip right there via some sort of like scarcity, scarcity Ponzi game. But that's not what I'm seeing out of you. What I'm seeing out of you is a commitment to the bare bones of what this, what the technology has, what, how this technology can enable a game. Has that, has it been like enticing? Have you felt, have you felt like the pull to like sell your soul and try and do some of these like NFT game shenanigans?

• 58:58Speaker 00

  Hold on, let's not forget that I made a crypto puzzle back in 2014 where I seeded that wallet with five Bitcoin when Bitcoin was worth like $250 per Bitcoin. And then that particular puzzle wasn't solved until January 2017.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  Maybe in 2018, I can't remember. And so the puzzle was worth a thousand, a hundred thousand dollars at the time of being solved. And so the motivation there-

• 59:28David Hoffman?

  This is the same puzzle that you talked about earlier?

• 59:29Speaker 00

  This is different. I made a lot of puzzles. This is one of them.

• 59:33David Hoffman?

  You made a lot of puzzles.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  I made a lot of puzzles and this is one of them that just took a longer time to be solved. And the motivation wasn't like, oh, well, I should pull that money out because obviously it's cooler. No, it was really cool to put that money in at 250 dollars, like 250 dollars and it to be a hundred thousand dollars. And to see people like get inspired to solve that and then someone did win it. Like the motivation there is just to like do it. It's, it's, it's, it's not like the mon- And this is where the artists really come into play, right? Like the creatives and artists, they're not necessarily like driven by money. You have a lot of artists that exist in the world that just want to do cool shit because that is like what they want to do with their life. It's not to have a ton of money.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  And that to me was like a powerful moment. And I had a lot of people be like, why didn't you just take the money out? And it's because it was like cooler that I didn't. So and seeing it solved and someone pull, like I like to describe it as a sword from the stone, is so exciting and validating. I did something and it became more valuable over time. Someone took that money and it was an experience for everyone. I want that same feeling with the game and the game assets. I want that same like, I started with nothing. I'm walking through, I'm creating value and like all of a sudden I have something epic and amazing. And it's a part of this huge story and it will only get bigger. Like, and I'm a contributor to that. Like that's, that's what I want because I want that to exist in the world.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  I don't feel like that exists. I don't feel like people have the opportunity to really go like in a way that's pleasurable or a way that feels meaningful. I don't feel like it exists and I want it to be more present.

• 1:01:19David Hoffman?

  How often does, this metaphor is just abused to death in the crypto world, but like Ready Player One, where we have all of these people in this world and the world actually matters, right? The universe, the Oasis universe is like where people like live their lives and they they play their games and whatever. But then there's the meta game that like the Willy Wonka, I can't remember the name of the guy in Ready Player One, but like he's basically Willy Wonka. He leaves like the meta game behind where like if you can find all the Easter eggs and if you can unlock all the puzzles, you get the keys to the kingdom. Like how much of this like inspiration from or just like acknowledgement to like something like Ready Player One, have you thought of?

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Oh, I read Ready Player One around the same time I read Snow Crash and some other sci fi books like Game and Freedom in 2014 when I was going, being red pilled into the crypto space. But honestly, if you're a gamer, it made so much sense that with Bitcoin, it was internet money. And if you understood internet money, you understood like, oh, okay, this transcends all these applications, it's going to be like a currency across the internet. So I would say that those narratives though are inspiring in the way that you think about, when you think about the metaverse, I mean, like Snow Crash coined the term metaverse with Neil Stephenson. But like Diamond Age is another one that's really actually more of a hopeful story.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  And how education could be, so I don't know, like, I guess like the digital treasure hunt Easter egg component of what could exist is definitely like something I would like. It's just the reality is most people and most people in the world, it's such a niche audience. I think games that are more inclusive in a way where it's not just only a few are going to be good enough to get this one prize that exists out there. It's more like your time and value and how you participate can equate to value based on just the fact that you're contributing is that is more of the narrative that is

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  inspiring as opposed to this race to get something at the end that's going to be potentially life changing.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  What happens is you just have too much of a falloff. So actually, I was just talking to a friend the other day about Satoshi's treasure, which was this digital treasure hunt that happened and it had the massive prize. But you just can't inspire people to move, travel around, go to great lengths at this like chance of success. I think the chance of success needs to be way more clear. That the fact that I'm giving in some time, I'm definitely going to leave with something more valuable than what I put in because not everybody can afford to just have an educational experience.

• 1:04:10David Hoffman?

  So like if we're going to have a blockchain game that actually like onboards a million players, it can't be something that requires like a $20,000 NFT to enter first off. And you're also saying it can't like require, it has to be, has to offer some sort of like prescribed path for people to engage with or some, at least some very clear set of rules. And it probably also has to be like free to play, right? Because you can't, you can't ticket entry. I'm assuming these are, are these all like components of how you lead your team over at Blockade?

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And also like whales want to get beaten. Like they don't want to be cool because they have money, you know? They like, having money is cool, but they actually want the like guy that is really skilled to come up and challenge them.

• 1:04:57David Hoffman?

  The people with all the wealth and power want to be dominated? Is that what I just heard?

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  So like, and, and, and they want it to be fun. They want it to be like, okay, I had the money and look really cool, but I also, I can defend myself and I'm awesome because strategically I'm still amazing. It doesn't, it's not about the money. The money just made me look good. They want to have that narrative. And, and the person that has nothing wants to have the narrative where they went and like challenged the person that did have all the money and they just like took it to them. So these are narratives that we want to exist. When you silo your whales and you're like, this is a whales game, to be honest, they're like super bored. Like no one cares. Like, I mean, so great, you've got a high valued PFP.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Now what? Like that's what that's what always happens is like, what do we, what do we do now? So now we're gonna be a part of Board Apes and we're gonna have a Rolling Stones like article and then we're gonna have this like concert and you have to get in based on if you have a Board Apes. But honestly, you can tell it's not this intermixing of personalities and like the thrill of having the high valued assets. That's not being leveraged right now. And sure, access is one thing and access is in community based access is one thing, but it's actually the thrill of being just a standalone individual that's talented or skilled for your own, your own individual reasons that allow you to be a participant in, that's you plus your asset.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  It's not just the asset, right? And that's where you get to leverage that sort of like passion.

• 1:06:30David Hoffman?

  That's, that's really, really cool. What that made me just think of is like, we have, we have all these like blue chip NFTs, right? We got CryptoPunks and Board Apes and I guess those are maybe, there are probably some other blue chips up for interpretation. But then, then there's like the side of the NFT world that like rotates all the time. It's like, right now we're on to like Doodles and Azukis and like a few others. And like, I wonder if the game is like, because as soon as some NFT project gets like higher than like one ETH, it starts to price out like 90% of people. And so then, as soon as it goes, gets too high, the 90% of people have to move on to a different NFT because they got priced out. And then the whales probably try and figure out where all the small fish are going.

• 1:07:15David Hoffman?

  And then they buy the rares out of that pool and then it turns into another whale game. And then the other people have to move on. And so like, I think what I, the, the realization I just had is that like, it's this trap, this like this, there's never any sort of like stable equilibrium because there's always people segregating because we haven't been able to generate a platform where the small fries and the big whales can actually coexist at the same time in the same place.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  Yep. No, totally. And you have your people that are spreadsheet kings, master mining their way into the ecosystem and participating and like trying to start from the ground up, right? So like, that's, how do you do that process? Just make it more fun? Yeah.

• 1:07:58David Hoffman?

  Amazing. It's really, really cool. The other thing that came to mind is I think it's actually really interesting that we've been using Dark Souls as a metaphor here, because like the lore of Dark Souls is that you are one of an infinite number of, depending on the game, the most recent one is Ashen. You are Ashen. You're made of ash. And there's millions of you and you guys are, they're basically like zombies. And if you are the chosen one, it's like a chosen one type story. You will be the one to like rise up the ranks. You will grind through the levels. You'll get more powerful. You'll find a better sword and then you will kill the boss at the end. But like in part of the lore is that there are millions and millions and millions of you and you are just a speck

• 1:08:42David Hoffman?

  of dust inside of a sea of other, other Ashen ones, other tarnished, other, other chosen ones, whatever. But like it's all about the story of like rising out of the ranks and being able to grind, like being on a platform that is equal and accessible by everyone. And it's up to you to actually grind through the ranks and destroy the boss at the end of the game. So I think it's funny that we've been using the Dark Souls metaphor to talk about this and it's kind of like a similar thing.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, no, totally. Like I think that's it. It's the hero's quest.

• 1:09:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Oh, the hero's quest. Love it. Love it.

• 1:09:18David Hoffman?

  Marguerite, do you want to talk about any more game related stuff? Because I also want to talk about New York at some point in time, but I don't want to close the book on, on the, close the book on games too soon.

• 1:09:27Speaker 00

  No, I mean, there's, there's just a ton of like games. I just want us to be able to be proud of our space and what we're doing as game developers. And I want to see, for example, it would be so cool to see blockchain game developers at GDC giving retrospectives on like making a blockchain game and what went wrong and things they learned.

• 1:09:49David Hoffman?

  What's GDC?

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  GDC is a game developers conference. There's, it's coming up actually here at the end of March. But the thing is like, you don't see that. You don't see that in our space. You don't see game developers being like. Taking that sort of like the same level of honesty that a lot of indie game developers take, there's that that game developer conference is so great because it's like salty crusty game developers that like have died really hard like, you know, big deaths of their game and this is what they learn and they're sharing the story with you. And I would love for us to get beyond this marketing hype of trying to be like the best project out there and like sugar coating everything to be like making games is hard and this is this is what we learned and like this is what we were trying to do. This is actually what happened. And like, let's take it to a place of

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  comfort, where us as game developers in the crypto space could actually like learn and thrive. And I don't, I don't know if we're gonna get that. I, I don't know how long it's gonna be.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  But because of this immediate monetary injection that the games experience, it feels like people can't talk honestly.

• 1:10:59David Hoffman?

  Do you think, yeah, do you think that we are just early? And this is the golden age of blockchain games is ahead of us? Or do you, are you concerned that there's like a fundamental values misalignment that might not be overcomeable?

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think it attracts, I think what we have is some, an area that attracts a lot of bad actors. And I think it's going to ruin the integrity of a lot of the people that wanted to play with the technology. And it's gonna be hard to differentiate the two. And I don't know, I don't know how it's gonna go. Like, I wish I could say, well, obviously, we're gonna go over it and like, blockchain is obvious and decentralized assets are the obvious answer. But I don't know if that's true. Like, I truly do not, and I've known a lot of things, I had a lot of North Stars in my life. And I don't know that we're gonna make it through this time period because it's gonna be incredibly exploited.

• 1:11:49David Hoffman?

  Well, I usually leave the call to actions at the end. But if people want to come in and try out Neon District or any of the other games, I don't know if you guys have developed more games other than Neon District. What's the right call to action for people to get a taste of what we've been talking of today?

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  Well, so Neon District, the MVP that was launched in January 2021 is still live, but it's getting a massive update right now with the V2. And then we have the larger game that's coming out with it this year. So it's like if you're interested in a free to play game and playing around with NFTs, definitely NeonDistrict.io and you can see what that's like. But it's definitely a work in progress and it's definitely not user friendly at the moment, but still people are motivated enough to like figure things out. But yeah, it's so, so definitely check out NeonDistrict.io and there's going to be other free to play games that'll pop up, I'm sure.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  So Skyweaver, I love that development team. Horizon Games is the people that have made Skyweaver and similarly they're very passionate about building these experiences with decentralized assets. It's not necessarily about this money grab. So there are some different existing projects out there that are worth checking out and and I think like also inspiring each other to build and create, you know? Like you don't always just have to wait for the next airdrop. You can also get creative and playful in small teams.

• 1:13:18David Hoffman?

  Well, we will definitely get links to those games in the show notes. Marguerite, I want to, I want to talk about New York because about a couple of months after I moved to San Diego, you text message, you messaged me and was like, you should move to New York after, I think it was after like NFT NYC or something. And I was like, Marguerite, I just moved to San Diego. It's too late. But then, then like six months later, I actually do end up moving to New York because of how all the crypto people are there. Can you give to the listeners just the pitch of the crypto pitch for New York? Like, why, why might somebody be interested in New York?

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I thought about this before I had moved here last summer and this is before I fundraised for Blocki Games. I really thought about if we're going to build a metaverse for, for Web3, where's that going to happen? And I thought about Miami, I thought about LA, I thought about London. And honestly, the the highest concentration is here in New York. We have Nifty Gateway here. We have Gemini, we have OpenSea, we have a ton of the Brooklyn artists that are, they're really experimental and in the Coda's art genre. And I think like, this is a great place to come and

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  get centered, grounded, network. So basically, the New York community is so dialed in to international communities. And also, you're in this like VC land, right? Of people that want to invest in you. Not necessarily, do you need VC money? But it's like, even VCs have a lot of knowledge about startups and things that, you know, can go right and wrong. So the community here is just very friendly, it's concentrated, just in the manner, the fact that Manhattan is super concentrated. And it's very welcoming. So also, women here, the women community is, I love like, the Boys Club, which is happening. And I know you've probably done some podcasts recently with the Boys Club. But I love the edge of it. It's not about like, being a woman.

• 1:15:17Speaker 00

  It's not like, the Women's Club. It's just like, the super edgy, like, we're getting together, we're gonna trade some assets, and like, guys can come to you. But it's a friendly space for women that are very entrepreneurial. And I don't know if you get that anywhere else. So I'm really excited about this space in New York in general, and also NFT NYC. This has been an ongoing development for a while. I am personally moving to Denver. But that's for different reasons. And also, the engineering space over in Denver is really great. But as far as like, launching a startup, connecting with content creators, people that want to actually build the metaverse, this is, this is the hub. Contenders would be in London for gaming, for blockchain gaming.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  There's, you know, there's quite a few people out there. LA, if you're a content creator, you just want to be more social, or if you're into that sort of party DGen culture, which is still viable, even if it's not like, you know, building games. So yeah, I would say those are the hubs. And, but New York is the serious, the serious grind. And people here are not going to waste your time, you're going to get connected, you're going to contribute. And, you know, this is, so this, that was my pitch.

• 1:16:33David Hoffman?

  In my head, I've kind of categorized you as one of the crypto socialites. Because I saw you at all the conferences and you were being a crypto socialite before even I got out of my apartment during COVID. But I wonder if you would consider yourself a crypto socialite before even crypto is what it was like today. Like, what about 2017, 2018? What was, if there was one, what was like social, in real life, social life like back before COVID, back before crypto is what it was today? Because the generation of 2020 to 2021 crypto is very, very different than the 2017, 2018 crypto.

• 1:17:15David Hoffman?

  I'm just wondering about the history of crypto socialization, because I only got into it in the 2020s.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, so actually, it wasn't like that. I actually was terribly afraid of even doing podcasts, public speaking. I just wanted to hide in the background and make my art and put it out there and let people experience it. And I didn't, like I told you, I was anonymous, basically, till 2016, 2017. I wasn't wanting to be an individual in the space, I wanted to just participate. And then, I would say, like, in 2017, I started public speaking more. What was I gonna say? I forgot. I forgot what I was gonna tell you, but like, no, the scenes-

• 1:18:00David Hoffman?

  What was socialization like back then versus how it is now?

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  I mean, it wasn't about the parties, right? It was actually about the technology. So you'd go to events in 2016, 2017, you were learning about the tech, and I was seeing artists and what they were doing. The party culture really didn't pick up until maybe that first really great bull run in 2018 with that big consensus conference in New York. And like, I was on a yacht, Anthony DiOrio's yacht, he like helped launch the Ethereum ICO, and he had this huge yacht party, and that's kind of where it would like shifted. But then you had this massive bear market that happened. And then the party culture came back with the NFTs, but it's like-

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  It's, you still have, like, for example, Eat Denver was still a really cool experience in the fact that it's so concentrated with developers, which is why it's one of the most popular conferences. So if you kind of look at that, the fact that people are really hungry to go participate in the developer conferences versus Bitcoin Miami, which is coming up, and it's exhausting. Like, I don't want to go to those things anymore. They clear me out. And so, like, no, I'm not, I'm really not a socialite. Like, I just, like, I was trying to figure out and connect with all the people, but it's not the path. Like, if you were to sit back and be like, did I enter and make these choices because

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  I wanted to go party all the time? Or did I want to go and make something really cool? You know, I think we're just a little lost right now in that conversation because everyone's just really excited and that excitement just translates to parties.

• 1:19:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah. One thing I always, I always notice about you when I see you in real life is you always have the most, maybe vibrant is the right word, expressive is definitely the right word, expressive outfit on. Your fashion sense is like killer. And so it's funny to hear you say that you were kind of shy in 2017, 2018, because I don't get any of that from you now. And it's just funny to watch, because you kind of like, you like, straight up sparkle in your outfit when you walk around whatever conference we're at, wherever a party we're at. Can you kind of go into just a little bit of that, just like, how you decide to curate an outfit?

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, so, in the same way that, like, I think the technology should surprise and delight, I think it's always fun to lean into the fact that, you know, you can play as a character, you can have, bring a little extra sparkle in a way that surprises people. And I like to do that because it breaks this expectation of different stereotypes. So there's times where I even wear a cape. And we saw this in Eat Denver, too, people, like, teams of people wearing capes around. And it's kind of like this, let's be a little different, let's think outside the, the, this...

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  What people would be expecting and like, for example, I have like these glitter sparkle boots and they always light people up when I wear them. And I think that's the kind of thing that people want with their applications and their experiences in general in this space as well. So honestly, at East Denver, I have little boys and I was allowed to bring them in to the VIP and we were all told to wait there for just a little bit. And then the East Denver organizer walked in and he's like, I have a surprise for you. Just one second. And so then comes in the Buffalcorne, right? And the Buffalcorne is there and my little boys are playing with them.

• 1:21:42David Hoffman?

  For listeners that don't know, Buffy the Buffalcorne is the unicorn buffalo mascot of East Denver. So think of just like a guy in like a football mascot uniform.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  Right. So then the little boys are playing with him and then I turn around to get like a glass of water for someone and I turn back and he's taken off the head of his costume and it's metallic. And it's metallic there in the Buffalcorne. So I can say that I'm not the only person that like wants the surprise and delight both with technology and also just in your in real life persona and who you are and the joy you're bringing to the world. Like, I think it's just a narrative about. And also, it's like, it's really good to remind yourself that we're doing this for each other. It's collaborative. What are you bringing to the table? How are you contributing? And I think that that story is more than just walking to a party with a VIP pass and being cool. Right? There's

• 1:22:32Speaker 00

  a difference between doing that and what we have today and then what we want for the future. And I, so I think like, so yeah, that's probably a lot of what I do. What I do is because I think the surprising delight just carries over.

• 1:22:45David Hoffman?

  One of the lines from our Chris Dixon podcast that stuck with me is, Web 3 has made the internet weird again, which was like a big relief to Chris because Web 2 just felt so stale to him. But Web 3 is like weird and weird stuff's happening. When you tell me like people are wearing capes at East Denver, teams are wearing capes at East Denver and you like to like dress as like an avatar of sorts and kind of like stand out in a way that you kind of want your internet avatar to stand out. It kind of feels like- We're trying to bring the metaverse into the real life. We're trying to make the the physical world a little bit more like the digital world. While we're also trying to make the digital world a little bit more like the real world. That seems to be a little bit of what's going on.

• 1:23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's gonna be more like I want more playful. How do you play like inspire people to play? And absolutely, I think that's something I'm actually really focused on right now is. How do we fix some of these in real life problems in a way where we're so disconnected by the work we're doing online? In a way where we're not taking away from our real life experiences, but where the technology becomes complementary to it? So yeah, I think those are all the next big questions to solve.

• 1:23:57David Hoffman?

  All right, Marguerite, the last line of topic that I want to go on involves a sort of a pseudo-vorajak test. So I'm just gonna say one word and I just want to see what comes out of your brain after I say it. Curation.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  Is the aesthetic law.

• 1:24:26David Hoffman?

  Is the aesthetic law. Okay, now can you unpack that for me?

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  I say this because I'm just bringing on in a blockade games, the lead cyberpunk curator. And in his descriptions, I labeled him as aesthetic law of kind of the quality control of the company.

• 1:24:45Speaker 00

  And in that, like if it's we're not hitting his curate like curation. Like acceptability meter, then it's not good enough. And as a company, we're failing, we're below bar. So like aesthetic law, meaning this is what's acceptable and we should be striving above. So and. In other curated experiences, I like I'm sure this. This is the same thing as aesthetic law, like are you are you gonna make the cut? For whatever this criteria is. So yeah, for for us internally, we've brought in someone that's an expert in cyberpunk. Cyberpunk curation.

• 1:25:25David Hoffman?

  How about? Inside of the context of just like your friends, your loved ones, the experiences that you want, both in the metaverse and outside in the real world? How does the how does the? How does the importance of curation impact these things?

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  Um, so I think curation is a form of art, right? Like, you are, it doesn't necessarily have to be exclusive, but in this context, you're thinking of a flow of an experience. You're like, how one thing relates to another and how aesthetically all together, it's this cohesive, um, space or level that resonates. And I think curation has a place. So like, in regards to like, what was the question with my friends and other people? I mean, you can allow yourself to feel left out by not being included in a story, a particular storytelling version of a curated experience.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  But honestly, the curator's job is just to pull the things together they think all belong together and to tell this like experience or offer an experience or tell a story, um, in the best way possible. And that's usually by like threading connections across the mediums.

• 1:26:45David Hoffman?

  And how, how do you do that in your life? Is that a fair, fair, is that too open-ended of a question?

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  How do I do that in my life? Uh.

• 1:26:54David Hoffman?

  What, what experiences do you try and curate for yourself? And what kind of experiences do you try and curate for others?

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, I guess like, uh, even just with, so I am a queen of making playlists. So, uh, I may, I love making playlists and I curate them and I think about the flow and I like get rid of songs, like I don't like that song there. And then, and then I like to share them with people that I think like would experience them in ways that I like, you know, like I, so in curation in my life, like that's something I think about. I also think about quality control of my friends. I think about people around me. I think about, um, projects I involve myself in, um, who am I advising? Um, yeah, there's a lot of curation as far as, you know, curation is just another word for filtering and filtering for what lens?

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  And what sort of desired outcome? So, yeah, it's just like, so, yeah.

• 1:27:53David Hoffman?

  Margaret, what makes you optimistic about the future?

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  Am I optimistic about the future? To think about that, like how you like just said I was optimistic about the future.

• 1:28:04David Hoffman?

  Oh no, are you not? I just kind of assume everyone in crypto is.

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  What makes me optimistic is the fact that I honestly think we're going to be able to create tools to allow people to be creative in environments in which maybe they otherwise would have not had these opportunities. I think that, I think if we look at the inclusive nature of, if you've ever been to an Eat Denver event, if you've ever been to one of these Web three events, you'll see that there's this really like, how can I help you? How can I empower you? Sort of ethos that exists. And I think that's going to extend and spill over to a lot of what we're building. I think it does already do that. And I think as we do that heavy lifting for people, we're going to just create a better future because the more voices at the table, more talent, the more skills, the more empowered and educated

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  people, the like, the better problem solvers you have in the room. And the more people that are going to say no to stuff that they don't like, or things that are against that positive outcome. So I think like, that shift and becoming, having autonomy is going to be huge. Because once you plant that seed, you can't take it away. Like, people will not forget what it feels like to have, like to be autonomous.

• 1:29:17David Hoffman?

  Is there any bit of advice that you follow that has been immensely useful to you? That you think is worth sharing to listeners?

• 1:29:26Speaker 00

  That is a good question. I guess, something that I've thought if you were shy, like I was really, really shy, and you feel like inferior, like you don't have anything to contribute to, you know, the best thing you can do is, especially if you have a skillset like being an artist, and it's really hard to get a traditional job in that capacity. Finding ways to contribute and building up your reputation. How can you support others? How can you bring value? Is a great way to get started with that reputation-based background, which will allow you to have this foundation to build this individuality on top of. It doesn't need to start all at once.

• 1:30:09Speaker 00

  It can be slow over time, but just being a contributor actually is what has unlocked for me some of the best opportunities. And also, you contribute in a way where you showed up and you did something magical and people remember, and then they give you better opportunities. So, looking for those opportunities where there's space for you, where you can contribute, where you can win, and allowing that reputation to build to lead and design your own career. It can seem scary, but honestly, it's so much more freeing than I think trying to work underneath like a corporate structure where things are way more restrictive. In this sort of economy that we have and space that we have, it's like the more you show up and the more you deliver and the more you prove yourself, the more doors that open just left and right. And you get to choose like which one is best for you.

• 1:30:53Speaker 00

  Whereas you don't really get that in the like traditional corporate structure. So, I mean, maybe to some extent, but I've really enjoyed that as a creative. And it's like the minute you trust yourself is when you really start to unlock your potential and stop living out of fear. So, what's surprising is I've been in this space so, so long that I take that for granted. I see a lot of talented people really struggle with that and struggle with that fear and like the doubt and belief in themselves that they can actually catch themselves and they can find ways to create value. So, look at people that are successful, people that are doing things that you're attracted to. Show up, contribute, and like take a leap.

• 1:31:39David Hoffman?

  Margaret, thank you for joining me on Layer Zero.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  Thank you, David.

• 1:31:44David Hoffman?

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• 1:32:26David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.