The Polygon NFT Ecosystem with Frank (DeGods), Zhuoxun Yin (Magic Eden), & Stani Kulechov (Lens)

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Frank DeGods, from the DeGods project, an NFT project that’s recently migrated to Polygon. We also brought on Zhuoxun Yin, Co-Founder and COO of Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace also migrating to Polygon. And last, but certainly not least, we’re also joined by Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO of the Aave companies, which is bootstrapping Lens, a social media ecosystem on top of Polygon. ------ 📣 MetaMask Learn | Learn Web3 with the Leading Web3 Wallet https://bankless.cc/ ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 👻 PHANTOM | #1 SOLANA WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist ------ Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 7:02 Why Polygon? 13:45 Solana vs. Polygon 25:30 NFT Trajectories 35:00 Lens on Other Chains? 41:09 Supernets 43:20 The Lens & Polygon Focal Point 48:10 Ecosystem Metrics 1:00:00 Polygon #3 Community? 1:05:30 Lens, Content, & Metrics 1:12:25 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Frank https://twitter.com/frankdegods Zhuoxun Yin https://twitter.com/ZhuoxunYin Stani https://twitter.com/StaniKulechov ----- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Welcome to State of the Nation, guys. We've got a special episode for you, talking about the Polygon NFT ecosystem. Our panelists today tell us that this is the third largest ecosystem for NFTs in crypto, and one worth paying attention to. David, who do we have on? What are we going to cover today?

• 0:21David Hoffman?

  First and foremost, we've got Frank DeGods from the D-Gods Project, which is an NFT project spawned on Solana, currently migrating to Polygon. So we will talk about some of those decisions and why they decided to move over to Polygon in this day and age. And then second, we've got Z, the co-founder and COO of Magic Eden, which is an NFT marketplace also on Solana, recently migrated to Polygon. So we have two perspectives like this. Last up, we've got Stani Kulikov, who is the founder and CEO of the AVE Companies, which is bootstrapping Lens, a social media ecosystem on top of Polygon, where your profile is an NFT, your content is an NFT, loss of surface area for NFTs. And so, just to recap the projects, we've got D-Gods, which is a PFP NFT project

• 1:06David Hoffman?

  that is in process of migrating to Polygon. We have Magic Eden, which is an NFT marketplace that is also recently migrated to Polygon. And then we've got Lens, which is a social media platform where your profile is an NFT, all the content that you make is an NFT, your interactions or transactions on Polygon. And so, we're going to ask all of these participants on the Polygon ecosystem, why Polygon? What about Polygon brought them there? What about Polygon is unique and different? Is Polygon really the third-largest NFT ecosystem after Solana? So these are some of my questions. What do you want to know in this interview, Ryan?

• 1:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think I have those same questions. And particularly for these two projects, let's remember, Magic Eden and D-Gods both migrated. They're massive projects in Solana, huge successes, and they are migrating and moving to Polygon. And I shouldn't say full migration, because they're continuing to support Solana. But at least the D-Gods Utes project is doing a full migration over to Polygon. So the question is, why? Is there something, are there greener pastures over in the Polygon side? What are the cultural differences between these projects? That's a big topic today as well. One disclosure before we get in. I am an advisor on the Polygon project. I have material exposure to the Matic token. David is not an advisor, but he also owns some Matic.

• 2:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Polygon has also been a sponsor of the Bankless Podcast in the past. We take disclosure seriously at Bankless. We think everyone in crypto should. And so that's why we are mentioning these at the top of the show. You can always find our disclosures at bankless.com/disclosures for more info on that. We update that monthly. All right, we're getting right into the episode. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including Kraken, which is our recommended crypto exchange for 2023. Go open an account today.

• 2:54David Hoffman?

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• 3:37David Hoffman?

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• 4:22David Hoffman?

  Familiar and fully EVM compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees. With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitrum Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before. Visit arbitrum.io, where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app. With Arbitrum, experience Web3 development the way it was meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. Hey, Bankless Nation! If you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free Bankless RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad-free version of Bankless that comes with a Bankless Premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a Premium subscription gets you.

• 5:04David Hoffman?

  There's also the Token Report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the Token Report go into the Token Bible, your first-stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless Premium also gets you a 30% discount to the Permissionless Conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the Airdrop Guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023. But really, the best part about Bankless Premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the Bankless team in the Inner Circle Discord, only for Premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the Analyst's DGEN pit, where you can ask him questions about the Token Report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have.

• 5:45David Hoffman?

  At Bankless, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities, and we're super excited to ship what we are calling Bankless 2.0 soon TM. So, if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to Bankless Premium. It's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. Welcome back, Bankless Nation, to our NFT ecosystem on Polygon show. In the top-left corner, we got Frank DeGods from the D-Gods Project, which is an NFT project, recently migrated to Polygon. While it seems like D-Gods might be his last name, it's not, but it might as well be. Frank, welcome to the show.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yo, yo, super excited.

• 6:27David Hoffman?

  And then in the bottom-left corner, we got Z, the co-founder and COO of Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace also on Polygon. Z, welcome to the show.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Yo, what's up, fellas? Thanks for having me.

• 6:39David Hoffman?

  And last, but definitely not least, in the top right corner, we got Stani Kulikov, founder and CEO of the Aave Companies, which is bootstrapping Lens, a social media ecosystem on top of Polygon. Stani, welcome back to Bankless for like the fifth or sixth time, however time, number of times it's been. It's good to see you again, Stani.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  GM, GM, happy to be back again.

• 7:00David Hoffman?

  So we really want to take this opportunity to really explore why your guys' projects chose Polygon. How has that experience been? What is the NFT ecosystem like on Polygon? And really just get a snapshot, a flavor of the Polygon NFT ecosystem. So we'll start with that, that very basic question, why Polygon? And we'll go in the order that I introduce you guys in. So Frank, we'll start with you. Why did, why did the D-Gods project choose Polygon of all, of all chains to pick?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  I think that there's like a clear traction with consumers on Polygon. And so it's something that we're just excited about being an NFT project. I always, and I might be more controversial in this take, but I just look at all the blockchains as different databases with, you know, different trade-offs. And so for an NFT project, right, like being associated with a lot of really cool brands, a lot of really smart builders, that just excited us. And I'm sure I'll get more into details there, but at a high level, like keep it simple, stupid, like it's a kind of a no-brainer in 2023 to be launching on Polygon.

• 8:05David Hoffman?

  And we're going to take a moment to dive into each of your guys' respective projects and the details behind each one of these. But Frank and Z from D-Gods and Magic Eden, previously, we're both projects on Solana. And so we have some diverse perspectives to bring to this conversation. Frank, when did D-Gods come to Polygon?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So to clarify, D-Gods are going to mainnet ETH. We have two projects. Utes is our second project, and that's the one that's going to Polygon. So we have announced that we're migrating in Q1. So we're looking at around end of Q1 for the actual migration and, you know, working on some pretty cool tech to do it in a unique way that hasn't been done before. So yeah, and like around end of Q1 is what we're looking at.

• 8:46David Hoffman?

  Beautiful.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  For the actual migration. Yeah.

• 8:48David Hoffman?

  And Z, a question to you and Magic Eden. When, when was it decided that Magic Eden would onboard Solana, excuse me, the Polygon network and why Polygon of all chains?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, Frank, I was expecting some spicier takes from you to kick off, man. Come on. Oh, I'll get into it. I'm learning, you know, you keep it simple, lure them in, and then we start giving the hard hitting controversial takes. Yeah, we'll uh, we'll warm up. Um, so Magic Eden, yeah, as everyone knows, we started on Solana. We, we actually launched on Polygon in December. And the thesis for us is really around two things. One is that we can, we can, uh, we want to serve the gaming ecosystem really, really well. And um, clearly, which we can get into as well, it's, it's not like a one chain rules them all from a gaming standpoint. It's clearly, there's some fragmentation uh, uh, across the ecosystems.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  And there's some, some good traction in terms of uh, we're through native games, but also like traditional game studios that have been, been, been working with Polygon. Then the second thing is, obviously, you know, an, an NFT community needs a lot of different things. One is you need some really crypto native, what three native creators, like amazing ones like Frank. You also need experimentation from uh, brands, you know, influencers, whoever else that's in that ecosystem. And that there's clearly some movement and traction that Polygon is making around trying to sign up a lot of those guys. And I think that us being a very, very community centric and, and grassroots uh, NFT platform. Um, we saw a pretty cool opportunity to work with like many, many sides of the market.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  And that's what got us excited to, to go to Polygon in December. So we launched then, we've been doing a lot, um. A lot of like, uh, a lot of our focus has been on Launchpad and, and obviously our marketplace, which is sort of tied in together. It's like we help launch projects and then they obviously are available for trading on Magic Eden. And we have like a massive uh, March coming up in the theme of general March madness. For those of you that are in the US, we have, I think like seventeen launches lined up in, in March. So it's going to be a huge, a huge one. So we're working with guys like, like Frank and the D God team. And there's many others in the ecosystem that I think are feeling pretty bullish. And um, yeah, we're pumped. It's, it's a fun place. Honestly, it's, it's a very different vibe, which we can get into as well. Some of the differences that we've noticed between some of the different NFT ecosystems.

• 11:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's definitely a line of questioning that I have is what is the specific culture that has arisen on Polygon? But before we get there, we gotta, of course, talk to Stani. Stani, I'm sure that you're connected to all of the Layer 2s in the space. And so I'm sure every single Layer 2 would have loved to have hosted Lens. What about the architecture or design choices or relationships with the Polygon team? Made the Polygon network specifically the right network for Lens? Can you talk about that for a little bit?

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've, we started to build originally on the Ethereum community. And we, we feel that we were kind of like a heavily part of that community. And that's also where Polygon has its roots as well. So very early upon, Polygon was the network where, you know, a lot of the bandwidth from Ethereum was, was actually happening. And specifically, Polygon had the gaming community very early. So that was happening before the NFT boom. So there is sort of NFT activity before we saw the NFT summer.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  And obviously, something that is very valuable for a social layer like Lens is that, you know, you, you're able to do a lot of transactioning. And one is that the way Polygon is constructed today, it allows that capacity to transact on a, on a lower transactioning cost. But more importantly, what, what is valuable is that the team and the ecosystem has this kind of like a bigger vision of how actually the scalability will happen. And you can go beyond what, what is the limits of today that, that Polygon has.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  And also, I like the, the, the, the blue color as well. So my, my first car was blue colored. So, you know, that's something that tries, tries attention as well for me.

• 13:17David Hoffman?

  Wait, isn't Polygon purple?

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Purple, oh, I'm a bit colorblind though, so I think for me, for me, it's kind of like a, like very dark blue.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  It's definitely purple. It's definitely purple.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe your first car was purple too, though. So that's like, yeah, yeah.

• 13:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's the difference?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Clip that, clip that.

• 13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Purple is just a cooler version of blue, anyway. Well, guys, I have kind of a follow up question and Z, yours is enticing. It's just like, let the spice flow a little bit here. So, so maybe we'll unleash the spice flow gates here. So both, both you Frank and you Z migrated from, or not fully migrated, you're still on Solana, but also chose to expand into Polygon as kind of the next chain. Could you guys do a quick compare and contrast for us? You know, crypto is so like tribal about things. And so people are mad no matter what chain you, you choose, right? So if you stand in Solana, you're going to piss off people. If you, if you move to something else, you're going to piss off. You're always going to make people mad. That's what, you know, happens in crypto.

• 14:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  But you guys have both been in the belly of the beast now in both of these ecosystems and both these communities. I'm sure you have identified strengths and weaknesses, differences across the two. Let's start with you, Frank. So what's the difference between Solana and Polygon from a culture perspective? Like, what are some of the things that you've noticed?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely getting into the spicier stuff now. So I mean, for, for me, I'm still like a huge fan of Solana. And I think that, I think in the long term, Solana is going to find its core killer dApps. And like, obviously Magic Eden was the biggest killer dap, you know, thus far, so far on, on Solana, but there's going to be more DeFi, et cetera. I think that when I think about it at a very high level, it's just the difference between like EVM and non-EVM chains. And I think like what you see, there's a lot of entourage effects with being on an EVM chain that, you know, growing up and building our project on Solana, we just never got that benefit. So I think that that's the core difference.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll say this, like where the Polygon ecosystem feels today is just a lot less built out, honestly, than where Solana is at, because Solana has been forced to just like. Rebuild everything that existed on ETH in terms of a lot of infrastructure from the early days. And there was a lot of opportunity in the early days to like launch something like, you know, Magic Eden obviously came out of nowhere and has become one of the biggest marketplaces in the world. Even with the Gods, when we first launched, you know, there wasn't like a lot of Solana NFT activity. And now it's a vibrant ecosystem. So I think the biggest trade offs at a high level are just Polygon feels a lot earlier today in terms of the community and culture side of the PFP ecosystem where Solana has definitely gotten its own brand.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  And I think on Solana, projects focused more around utility, more around like builders, has definitely been been the main narrative where I think on ETH, it's more brand and culture. And I think that's just where we honestly fit in more towards. And I think, yeah, it's just that that's where I would start off with.

• 16:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Frank, before you, before you go, so why did you guys decide to move again? So I remember at the, at the time, there were stories like this, kind of breaking that Polygon paid Utes collection $3 million to leave Solana. I don't know if that's true. Was it, is it kind of like a, a, you know, a money type play? Is that, is that part of it? Or I, I had, didn't really follow this when it came out, but can you give us some context?

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it. Um, so the best way to put it is, I think at the time when we made the announcement of migrating the Gods and Utes combined, we're doing, which is our two collections, we're doing about 40 to 50% of all the trading volume on Solana, like for NFTs generally. And right now, the market cap of like the Gods and Utes is almost bigger than the rest of the Solana NFT ecosystem like combined. And so we were just hitting a little bit, and this has been hotly debated on Twitter. But I, I think a lot of people, including myself, believe we were hitting a little bit of a ceiling on Solana in terms of growth, where, I mean, even right now on Solana, the Gods is by market cap, I think the number four biggest PFP project in the world.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Uh, that's come either on ETH or Sol. And so we just thought we were, we felt a little bit like we were capped and we were big experimenters. And we're like, uh, our, one of our core mottos with the community is it's. I W B, which stands for fuck it, we ball. Um, and so, you know, it was one of these things where we were getting offers, honestly, from a lot of chains post F T X. Uh, to migrate, there wasn't like a single blockchain that didn't send us something or was wasn't interested in like youths in our potential migration. Polygon was definitely not the largest number that we were offered, but again, like, that's not the core reasoning behind the decision. There's a lot of entourage effects and a lot of, you know, brand equity that Polygon has spent a lot of time working hard to build.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  And that's what the ultimate decision maker was, but I'm all about transparency. And so I think we're like the first team to actually like announce like, yeah, this is how much we got in our grant. I didn't really care at the time. I still don't care. People know the behind the scenes or the financials behind it, but the honest answer was every blockchain was offering us something and

• 18:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, yeah, so give us that inside baseball. So is that you guys have a super popular N F T collection? Yeah, that's really what happens is other chains want to go compete for for you to deploy in their their platform, their ecosystem. This is pretty common, it sounds like.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm like, obviously biased where I think it's a a the deal of a lifetime, honestly, for Polygon. And I think it would have been a great deal for anyone because I think it's really hard to get. A, like an initial spark of a strong community. B, like really strong I P that's crypto native to launch on your chain. Like, I think every chain is pretty good with getting like big web two brands to a certain degree. Obviously Polygon's crushing, Sauna's had some big deals. A VAX, B and B, they've all B and B had Cristiano Ronaldo. So I think the harder thing is to actually get crypto native projects that are much more in line with what the community is looking for today as opposed to future, you know, to future looking. And so, yeah, I think that that's definitely the inside baseball there is that there was a lot of those conversations that happen uh, constantly.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  And I think the thing that people be surprised on is I do believe we are one of the biggest, if not the biggest official, like Polygon grant. And people have this perception that Polygon's out here strictly pay to play. The reality is, and whether people like it or not, Polygon has gotten so many brands under their umbrella now. Their pitch is actually really easy and they're not shelling out a lot of money because if you're like a big web two brand, do you want to go on another chain or do you want to go on? The chain that Meta, Nike, you know, all these other massive brands are already on, it makes their pitch a lot easier. And so, yeah, like that's.

• 20:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is one thing that everyone, even competitors, kind of, you know, say about Polygon is their business development just absolutely crushes it. And so I guess this can be thought of as a marketing business development expense. But what's your take on the same question, Z? So give us a contrast between Solana and Polygon.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the first thing I'll say, I'll make two like more macro points. One macro point, number one, I think is that this kind of thing, like what Frank is talking about and what D-Gods did, this will become much more normalized over a period of time. And it sort of takes obviously some, some guts and some balls to do it as transparently as they did. So I think that, you know, credit where credit is due there.

• 20:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  You're talking about grants to attract projects is common.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Or just even just like whether it's grants or some other incentive or even no incentives, just to move and do things on different chains. That's hard. That's like objectively just like a hard thing to do. So it's not a, not the easy path, actually. I think it's easier to actually stay on Solana and just be the king, right? That's the easy path.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  So that's like the first point. I think this will become more normalized over time. And I think it's cool to see and it's funny because I was sort of laughing earlier about the us being in the, the belly of the, belly of the beast. Like, I feel like Frank and us, there's no one else that has been in that more than, than us over the last like six to, six to nine months. The second macro point I was going to make was that

• 21:31Speaker 03

  the, a lot of the really interesting things to point out about the Solana ecosystem today is, is that it reminds me a lot actually of, of 2018 on ETH. So as you guys know, I was a DYDX at the time. I was, you know, second employee at DYDX massively into the DeFi ecosystem. And at the time, it was like, it really, that year for me created, it was a tribalism that created, that was really, really good for the ETH ecosystem. It was actually amazing for it. And long-term, that was one of the best things that happened. I really feel like that's happening and has happened in the last three, four months. After all the really negative events that happened on Solana.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  So the thing, the statements around like being long-term really bullish on Sol, but also wanting to do things on different chains in the short term. Those two things can definitely coexist. And we absolutely feel that way, like, you know, we've done over three billion dollars in in in trading volume on Magic Eden on Solana. Right? And we still have a big stable of creators that are wanting to launch things all the time on Solana. So that's that's like not going to go away. But kind of to Frank's point, it's like there's a separate set of opportunities that uh Polygon is trying to make themselves known for. And whether that's brands, whether that's whatever, whatever, they invest a lot of time and effort being a BD engine to sign those deals.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  And ultimately, the bet that they're trying to make, it's it's almost like a different go to market as a chain. The bet they're trying to make is that they want all these brands to coexist and then eventually that ecosystem becomes rich enough that rich, not in the monetary sense, but rich from a cultural sense, that everyone wants to do some shit together. And that's a bet. Whether that actually plays out, we don't know yet. But that's the bet that I think, you know, Frank is making, the bet that we make in terms of we want to have a play there too. Um, and as a marketplace, the role that we have is more being the connector of all those dots. Right? So if there is a brand that wants to do something, they should do it with Magic Eden because we can help them get connected with someone that's web three native, that knows how to be successful in this space.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Or vice versa, right? If a web three native brand wants to do something with a big traditional brand, that can also happen through a lot of the connections that we have and the dots that we can connect. So um, I feel like culturally, that's just a, just to set the set the scene a little bit for everyone. In terms of like day to day, uh, sort of things that are interesting and that we've noticed, Solana obviously has more of a trading culture, I would say. Like, I mean, the roots of it.

• 24:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like more more like a D gen culture, would you say?

• 24:05Speaker 03

  D gen trading culture, for sure.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Oh, hardcore, hardcore.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Hardcore.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Because the fees are so low, right? And so what happens is there's the spread of like a few dollars. It's like a meme, right? People undercut by ten cents, fifteen cents because you can. And uh, so it just makes it a much more, yeah, like people are just down to speculate and talk about these projects all the time. I think the other thing that's really great about Solana is it's a very, and you guys will appreciate this. Because I I'm definitely more on the content creation. I'm really passionate about content creation. I I I believe a lot of the value in crypto, especially NFTs, literally just come from Twitter and like Discord. And like, if you think about it, what would these collections be valued today if there was no Twitter? If there was no Discord, probably closer to zero than anything. And so Solana has had a very strong content creator

• 24:53Speaker 02

  ecosystem that is actually like really hard to bootstrap. And one of the biggest challenges Polygon has, you know, going forward, where we have this thing called DGEN News, where this guy is just like live tweeting, like reality show style tweets about stuff that's beef between random Solana NFT influencers and, you know, people can follow a few accounts and be constantly spewed 24/7 content around specifically what's happening on Solana. And I think obviously ETH NFTs have this, certain parts of DeFi have this, but it's pretty rare to see across crypto where it's a self sustaining.

• 25:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Solana like the TikTok of like, you know, of crypto? Is it like just moves faster, attracts this kind of Gen Z?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Hey, I will say, I definitely think it moves faster. I definitely think it moves faster. Like, all the stuff that we're seeing now with like Open Scene Blur.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Matt, that played out three months ago on Solana.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  We've seen this movie.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Interesting.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  We've seen this. It's almost five, five months ago. Yeah.

• 25:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  How did it play out on Solana?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  I see.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  So, so the attention span on TikTok is 15 seconds and in Solana it's seven seconds, roughly, right?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And honestly, it's a feature. No, it's 100% a feature.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  It's a feature, for sure.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  I'm obviously like, I'm so I'm 23 right now. I'm like definitely a Zoomer. And that's what also attracted us to Solana early days is just, it's just that the bar is so high for no fucking reason. Like, like everyone's spending like $5, $10 on a mint or whatever, but their bar is as if this thing is like, you know, the next coming of Jesus. And so that just makes it a very cutthroat, like intense environment where if you're not delivering something on a day-to-day basis, if you're not showing up every day, you are just like getting lost in this overall content like whirlwind, which is why honestly, like we locked in on doing. Like Twitter Spaces, because if there's what like 10,000, 15,000 daily active traders on Solana,

• 26:47Speaker 02

  or just in NFTs broadly, and we're doing Twitter Spaces that are pulling 500 people, 1,000 people, you know, that's almost like 3% of the entire ecosystem. And so when you extrapolate that out to just all the different types of content that's being made, it kind of like is nice, the whole meme of Solana early days especially is that you go to Solana for engagement. Because because it's so fast and everything is happening so quickly, you have people that are way more engaged on a day to day basis, way more engaged on every random GM post or every random thing that's happening. And I honestly think that even mainnet ETH doesn't have this as much, where you know, you kind of wait for the big official announcements, but you're not following a lot of these creators on the day to day, which is where I think the puck is going, by the way.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  And this is why I think what Z said about Solana being early is very accurate. Because you look at the projects in NFTs today that are popping off even on mainnet ETH. You have Jack Butcher, obviously, and you also like this other project, Kid Call Beast. And a lot of these projects that are new, that are actually outperforming the rest of the market, are very clearly high engagement, constantly things are happening, community is constantly engaged. So this is where the puck is going, because in a bear market, when everything is consolidating, I think everyone has a hard time figuring out what's going to be relevant in the next year, in the next two years. A lot of the narratives that we saw in the bull market are just like collapsing in front of our eyes. And so day to day engagement is becoming, I think, a lot more important of a metric with NFTs. Because otherwise, if you don't have that, you're not going to be relevant.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  And not being relevant means no bids, no bids means the floor keeps going down. The floor keeps going down, the people get more angry. And that is the death cycle now in 2023 for a lot of, a lot of projects.

• 28:27David Hoffman?

  This is a really interesting perspective and actually not the conversation I thought we'd be having so far into the show. Frank and Z, since both of your projects now span both chains, I want to get a little bit more, dive into that perspective a little bit more. The way that you guys are describing this, and maybe this is my Ethereum bias, but it's like Solana is your bootstrapping ground, as in you get tested on Solana, you find user acquisition on Solana. But as soon as you have meaningful adoption and sticking power, you graduate to Ethereum, or at least when Ethereum layer two, perhaps like Polygon. And that seems to be what both Magic Aiden and D Gods have done is that they bootstrapped on Solana.

• 29:07David Hoffman?

  And then with, once they had sufficient network effects and sufficient brand of the, in of their its own right, it found that it could actually also latch on to the Ethereum ecosystem as well because it had grown to that size on Polygon. Is that a fair description of like the trajectory?

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can, I can, I can start. I, I think that's probably a little too, too much of utilitarian kind of view. For us, we, we kind of think about it more like, uh, we want to serve. It's like, we're a product-driven company, so we want to serve different use cases. And the use case that we obviously served on Solana and got, became very successful as a result, was really focused on like, yes, this sort of PFP use case, a little bit of gaming, but it's this like high-velocity content, like, economy, like, I don't know how to really articulate it super, super well, but that's really what it feels like. And I think, just to tie a bow on the previous point,

• 30:08Speaker 03

  I really do think that this is anecdotal, but I really feel that actually the users on Solana are also younger than what we see on EVM. And that, that maybe also marries well with why some of those points that we are making around like attention, speed, all this kind of stuff rings true. Anyway, that's just to tie a bow on the previous point, but the way we think about it is use cases. So on, when we think about going to Polygon, for example, that was a very intentional thing. Like, we knew that the NFT ecosystem there was small. Like, everyone knows that. If you look at the data, it, it's, it's obvious, right? It's objectively much smaller than Solana. And it's objectively not, it doesn't have an organic

• 30:48Speaker 03

  NFT creator sort of ecosystem yet. But you go there because you believe that the way that they are putting the, the pieces together, that there's something probably will end up happening there. And that use case there is going to look a little bit different, whether it's gaming, just like, you know, for example, of the 17 mints that we're doing in March, a bunch of those are actually free mints. And that's like a, you know, the free mint meta for gaming and even for NFTs in general is starting to, uh, take forth a little bit more. And then the second thing I would say is that Because of uh different technological gaps or reasons, because of different needs that creators have or goals that they have,

• 31:31Speaker 03

  they will decide where like they will, they will have a view or they should have a view, they will form a view on whether it makes sense to launch on which chain. Over time, that will again become more normalized where it's like, maybe I'll just do some shit on every chain or I will, you know, maybe marry to one. I I I don't I don't know if we're really at that point yet, but because of that decision, then as a marketplace, we obviously want to work and serve as many creators as possible, right? So if creators are basically making those choices, then we want to absolutely be there to serve them and and the products will will will look different. The vanilla like, you know, icon marketplace, that kind of thing, that is not,

• 32:11Speaker 03

  that's not the end state here. I think a lot of these creators will need different things and we should build the things that serve them. So that's sort of how we see it rather than like a a graduation uh thing.

• 32:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that that's what I was thinking in what you guys were describing there, David. It's like uh what they're describing is not so much a graduation, but just like different sort of medium and culture. It it's sort of the way if we're thinking about it in the content world, the way we think of like a try doing a long form, two hour podcast on TikTok with Vitalik Buterin, right? Like, that shit's not gonna work. No, no one cares. What you have to do is like, I don't know, thirty seconds, some sort of highly memetic, you know, Vitalik dancing back and forth like TikTok style content. And so you have to sort of adapt your project and what you're doing for kind of the culture and the network and what it rewards.

• 33:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you could probably repurpose, like, we can repurpose bankless content into like a TikTok form or a Twitter form. It's the same message throughout it, but the medium and the expression is it's much different from network to network. That was, that's kind of an unlock from what I'm hearing from from Frank and Z about these different chains and and where they um where they uh shine. And it sounds like Polygon is really shining in this ability to kind of bring together all of these like web two brands. You know, you have like Nike, you have Meta, you have like, you know, Instagram there and it's just sort of this meeting place. And that's what you guys are saying is like, oh, these are the early blocks forming. You can kind of see how this ecosystem will differentiate itself.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  I think so- something that that I've noticed when I look at um. The NFT ecosystem and also the the activity that's happening on on across the lens applications, because you see a lot of NFTs being emitted in the the protocol itself, but it's it's basically a distribution channel to to share NFT projects that the users are interested in is that like you you cannot see that all these brands that are on Polygon, they somehow create this symbiosis of brand value to to that to the new brands as well. So it's

• 34:23Speaker 04

  it it it's actually quite interesting to see. It's kind of like looking into, you know, a if you if you go to a street where you have a lot of designer brands and your designer brand is next to some of these brands, it basically elevates. So and not just like elevates, but it it really ties the value together. So for me, it makes quite a lot of senses that if you want to capture that value, getting all these different brands that are excited about Web3 and also the projects that are Web3 native and getting them into the same place. That really is is is something that creates some sort of a new traction.

• 35:05David Hoffman?

  So, Tony, since we're talking about multi-chain conversations, was there ever any sort of analysis about Lens on something like Arbitrum Nova? I don't think Arbitrum Nova was out by the time Lens Lens had come around, but was really the for for Lens specifically Polygon the only game in town at the time of deployment?

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So at that time, even Layer 2, even Arbitrum Optimism burned there at that point. And and when we're deploying on on the testnet already, it was like Layer 2s were very early. And the infrastructure is quite, you know, quite novel. You know, many of the Layer 2s, they're still they're pretty centralized, you know, there's one sequencer. The interesting part about something like Web3 Social is that you might need less Less of the security that you will need in decentralized finance, for example. But but at the same time, like, we had to choose something where

• 36:06Speaker 04

  uh you have a bit more of the scalability that uh you will have, for example, using Ethereum. Um and the the way the protocol works is that um it has this exciting infrastructure that is on chain. Um and then an infrastructure that is off chain. And and based on whatever you're building in the Web three social, uh you're picking different kinds of pieces. And the more heavily you're relying to um on the on chain transactions, you're kind of like um you're you're bound by whatever uh is the security and and block space of a particular network. So, quality in that sense made made a lot of sense. Um but also kind of like the the vision that

• 36:47Speaker 04

  uh we're now in the in the situation where there is this uh proof of stake network and um you have everyone pretty much minting in the same place. I mean, we have a lot of uh issues at the moment because there's a lot of traction uh on Lens and at the same time, there might be something else happening on Polygon. From times that it can be like, where did NFT minting happening? Um but the the bigger vision is that uh from there, you actually go and and scale into uh supernets. And and you kind of have more dedicated bandwidth for uh your project. So that is something that's going to be interesting uh to see down the line.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  And actually, the the the lower transaction fee is is really affects into the audiences and how the actual audiences are built. Because, you know, i- if you mint NFTs on um mainnet, and that's where, you know, a lot of the activity happened during the uh NFT summer and before that, uh being able to mint and even um transact, you know, that has a a cost. So being able to do that on a lower level um and having also this confidentiality. So Polygon effectively, it's not only about and a fee, there's also gaming and, you know, Avagachi is is a big part of the uh uh Polygon community. And and and being able to benefit with the whole infrastructure is is very fascinating.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  So I I think Polygon is just like so progressed and and the branding kind of like a play is is like a the latest app that's that's been happening over the past year. So so that's definitely something that is a value add as well.

• 38:28David Hoffman?

  Stani, you just mentioned supernets. I just want to get a quick definition from you on that. What what is a supernet? I'm looking at the page here. Is this on Polygon?

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, so supernet is, I could say it's a layer three in some ways. So if if you think about it that way. So Polygon is a proof of stake network with certain amount of validators. And that validator amount reflects the cost that will be to operate on that network. And supernet is another network on top of the Polygon network that you can have for your project, for example, and you can use validators from the actual proof of stake network and and have your own validators as well. So that's the the kind of interesting part. And when you have a supernet, you can also decide that you can use a ZK prover, for example,

• 39:21Speaker 04

  to prove actually your state of the supernet periodically on top of on on to Ethereum. So like, sometimes we're we're kind of like segregating quite a lot, you know, what's happening with Polygon, Ethereum, but actually you can use a lot of this infrastructure together. And supernet is one of the examples where you can have more transactioning. On a supernet, you can use the proof of stake validators of the actual Polygon network. But then you can take your supernet state and and and deposit it to the Ethereum periodically to have additional security. So everything can be actually like combined in some some levels,

• 40:05Speaker 04

  depending on the the use case you you have.

• 40:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is a pretty similar to a lot of the the other narratives out of the layer two space, like ZK Sync has their fractal scaling, Optimism has their superchain. I didn't actually know that Polygon was playing in this ecosystem, but it kind of seems inevitable that all layer twos move into this design design case.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  That's what AVAX is doing too, right? With their subnet with.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Subnets.

• 40:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, but subnets, subnets aren't, it's not shared security. The security parameters aren't the same. No, it's different, but yes.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Nevermind, my bad.

• 40:38David Hoffman?

  Sonya, I got a question for you about just the community that's arrived inside of Lens specifically. Lens, in my mind, I picture as like its own kind of contained environment inside of Polygon. As in, when you go to Polygon to do Lens stuff, there's like a boundary around like the Lens community versus the rest of Polygon. Just in the nature of Lens is this big social organization and then you have the rest of Polygon. But I'm wondering if that's even the right perspective to even take here. Like, what is the Lens community and how much does it overlap with the Polygon community? So, for example, are there people talking about Magic Eden or D-Gods on Lens?

• 41:19David Hoffman?

  And just like overall, what is the conversation like and how much Polygon focal... How much of a Polygon focal point is there?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the short answer is there is definitely a lot of talking and discussion. So what the data shows is that how Lens Protocol was actually initiated on mainnet is that we started to list a lot of the NFT communities and DAOs and DAO members that could actually get an early access to their Lens profiles. And also developers and periodically whoever asked for a Lens profile. And they had that eagerness to test the protocol. We basically minted them profiles. So you have, based on the data, and that's the beautiful thing about Web3, is that all this data that is computable is public, right?

• 42:12Speaker 04

  So you have a lot of people from the Ethereum community or in the Polygon community and they're participating in different kinds of NFT activity, DeFi activity, and also DAO voting as well. But there's also a lot of new addresses that just are excited about what they're building and they want to use Web3's social deadline, especially what is happening now in the traditional social media space. The particular thing is that the users in Lens, they're pretty much talking about everything,

• 42:52Speaker 04

  but like, most of the conversations are actually around Web3. So that might be different kinds of NFT projects. They might be sharing Magic Eden links or...

• 43:05Speaker 04

  There are NFTs and people are talking about them, or if they find something. So it's kind of a way to discover things. So you can, obviously, you can, whenever you post on Lens, you can make that content actually as collectible as well, and it will actually show in Magic Eden. And the profiles are tokenized as NFTs as well. And Magic Eden has actually done a lot of great work of showing the, your latest profile picture in that, inside of the NFT, which is very cool. But effectively, the way we see it is that with Lens, you basically own your online profile and the connections you make. And then that's basically your distribution channel to your audience.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  So if I find something interesting, I can basically share it on Lens and amplify my engagement. For example, if I have an NFT meeting happening somewhere, or I want to share the NFTs that I might have to my audience and across the whole Lens protocol. So it's a kind of like an early community of Web3 native users, and we're quite happy about it. So we weren't actually targeting that, you know, Lens is going to be something where everyone's going to migrate from Twitter and Instagram, and it's going to be like the holy grail solution of everything for like future of online presence.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  In fact, our goal is to basically just focus on how we get all the Web3 projects and audiences into Lens and use it as a base Web3 social layer. And then as the infrastructure scales, we can actually open up for larger audiences.

• 44:50David Hoffman?

  So as we move into the second half of the show, I've asked each of you from each of their respective projects to bring some numbers and some metrics to really flex about how awesome each respective project is. Because after that, we want to talk about the future. Stani hinted at some early stages of composability between Lens and Magic Eden, and I'm sure there's a bunch of other, other projects that have more stitching together to do it as this Polygon ecosystem expands. But really, I want to pick your guys' brains as to the future state of Polygon and what you guys see on the horizon there, along with all these hot numbers that we're going to talk about right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Uniswap is the largest on-chain marketplace for self-custody digital assets.

• 45:35David Hoffman?

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• 46:19David Hoffman?

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• 47:03David Hoffman?

  your transactions in a human-readable format with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So, get on the Phantom waitlist and be one of the first to access the multi-chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom.app/waitlist to get access in late February. How many total airdrops have you gotten? This last bull market had a ton of them. Did you get them all? Maybe you missed one. So here's what you should do. Go to Earnify and plug in your Ethereum wallet and Earnify will tell you if you have any unclaimed airdrops that you can get. And it also does PoApps and mintable NFTs. Any kind of money that your wallet can claim, Earnify will tell you about it. And you should probably do it now because some airdrops expire.

• 47:45David Hoffman?

  And if you sign up for Earnify, they'll email you anytime one of your wallets has a new airdrop for it to make sure that you never lose an airdrop ever again. You can also upgrade to Earnify Premium to unlock access to airdrops that are beyond the basics and are able to set reminders for more wallets. And for just under $21 a month, it probably pays for itself with just one airdrop. So plug in your wallets at Earnify and see what you get. That's E-A-R-N-I dot F-I. And make sure you never lose another airdrop. And Bankless Nation, we are back and we're going to start off the second half of this conversation talking about some metrics and some numbers. And so right before, I kind of blind signed it, our guests here, right before we were recording this show, I asked each of our guests to do some research on as to their

• 48:26David Hoffman?

  own project, the numbers and metrics to flex about the current health of their own ecosystem. So Frank, we're going to start with you, D-Gods. Show us some of the numbers. What are the best numbers that you can give us in terms of the vitality of your community?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  I don't have a screen share stuff, but I could share because I've fallen this stuff all day. So I think right now, D-Gods, in terms of 10K NFT projects is number four in the world, right behind Azuki and then CryptoPunks and then Bored Apes. And so, yeah, that's been pretty sick to see the growth there and doing that.

• 48:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is that in terms of like volume or total value or market cap? Like floor price kind of?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, floor price, you know, the basic market cap, I think is like two. It's either average sale times total number and/or floor price. I think on both those metrics right now, we're top five for sure.

• 49:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  How big is that?

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Uh, like 130 mil market cap.

• 49:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  For JPEGs?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, for JPEGs. Yeah. That's exactly it.

• 49:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Be used to this by now, Ryan.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, no, it's a, it, it, you know, super proud. And I think I've been very open from day one. It's kind of one of the things that's rallied our community. So for context, for people that are new to D-Gods and Utes, I remember when we first minted D-Gods, we were one of the more hyped projects on Solana, but that followed a five-month period of everyone kind of shitting on us and labeling D-Gods a dead project. And, you know, we were kind of like, there was no trading volume, super low like floor, all this stuff. And the whole time I was rallying the community and saying, hey, like, we're figuring things out right now. We're fucking around, we're finding out, and, uh, we're gonna try to become the number one project on Solana. And at this time, we were like number 100 or something like that. And, uh, you know, within the next two months, D-Gods grew so quickly and we ended up becoming number one

• 50:08Speaker 02

  and have kind of held that spot for the last year plus now. And so it's been like a big rallying cry for our community. Like, we just wanna shoot for the top. It's we wanna be the biggest NFT projects in the world. And everyone that's in D-Gods and Utes today knows that that's the goal. And, um, yeah, it's been pretty incredible to watch that growth happen with D-Gods. Utes, on the other hand, I believe right now is in the top 10 for anything over, uh, 10K supply. So there's 15,000 Utes. And yeah, I think the thought process here, and this is coming back to the whole numbers and, and the decision behind Polygon specifically is, hey, like, when we launched Utes, we were already really big on Solana, uh, and, and it's now the number two project on Solana right behind D-Gods.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  And both of the market caps of those projects make up almost the rest of the Solana market combined. And so we wanted to give Utes a chance to shine on its own and become like the quote unquote, you know, top dog of the, its own ecosystem. And so that's kind of the goal with, uh, Polygon. And we just wanna help other builders launch on, on Polygon outside of just Utes itself so that there can be a more vibrant ecosystem. And that's how I think about the Polygon. If I'm being the most DGen person on this, uh, panel right now and just being very real, I, I just think that Polygon is extremely early and everyone loves being really early. Crypto because uh it that means that there's a lot of opportunity. And so when I think about the Polygon ecosystem, I think that there's a lot that they can learn, steal and borrow from.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  From all the good stuff that's happened over the last year and start to grow out that infrastructure really quickly. And we just hope to be one of the main catalysts uh towards that happening. And so, yeah, that's kind of where our projects are at right now. Uh, you guys are, you know, if you're gonna be listening to this in 2024 or end of 2023, eh eh, maybe our predictions have come through. And uh, the gods is the number one project in the world and uh, YouTube is also very high up there. So just uh, I like to manifest it in the reality uh, people in the audience that are listening, you you heard it here first.

• 52:03David Hoffman?

  So if you just peaked a a listener, if that was the case, uh, what is the roadmap that they should be excited about with the D gods project? And if that also peaks them, where would they go to to learn more?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff, this is like a strategic thing and I'm pretty open about how we think strategically. I think it just makes more sense to release a lot of information post migration. Because like right now, everyone is kind of just waiting for the migration, which is happening around Q1 uh, end of Q1. So why why like blow our load metaphorically early here uh, and and kind of like talk about it whenever? There's gonna be a lot more attention on it around the migration and then use that to kind of catapult more of the excitement hype and momentum.

• 52:46David Hoffman?

  Um, that's just metaphorical, Frank.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that definitely just metaphorical uh, and that could mean a a variety of things, you know, could mean a gun in a chamber. Obviously, like that's what I was uh, referring to. So, no, I I I I'm very also open about how important to me it is to build hype and excitement around projects. Cause I think that that often gets a bad rap and I've been on the front lines saying like, hey, look, people are mad that D gods is doing so well. People are mad that YouTube is doing so well. They're like, oh, what have you guys built? And I'm like, I think you guys are just looking at the game of NFTs wrong. And one of my more famous tweets was I said, you know, NFT MFers always talking about utility. And then it was like a picture of a infomercial purse that has like a touchscreen on it. And it's like got all these kind of utilities to them, but it just looks super cheap.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Compared to like a simple Louis Vuitton bag, it's just like, oh, it's just a white background. It's just a Louis Vuitton bag. And it's like, NFT MFers would probably pick the purse with the touchscreen on it. Because they're not understanding that so much of this space is driven by, you know, what people value for themselves. And so our job as NFT projects is to make people proud to be a part of the community. And so when I think about the gods and I think about Utes, I think every holder is proud to be a D God holder, proud to be a Utes holder. And that actually scales so much more than any nascent utility could possibly scale. And you've seen this at the top layer with obviously the biggest projects in the space, Sport Apes, uh, you know, CryptoPunks, Azuki. And so, yeah, that's kind of our thesis as well.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  And we just have a much more degenerate, like viral content tilt where we always talk about breaking the internet. And so, um, for me, when I think about the polygon move to wrap it all up in a bow, uh, I just think it gives us more uh, vectors where we can go extremely viral and have everybody in the ecosystem talking about us, uh, constantly. And that's the game plan is just build a lot of content and do things that make our holders proud of, uh, being in the community and watch the results of that.

• 54:44David Hoffman?

  Turning the, turning the conversation to Z and Magic Eden. Z, what, what are the numbers or metrics that you look at in order to understand the vitality and health of the, uh, the Magic Eden ecosystem? And what are those numbers?

• 54:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. I just want to say though, on the map, it brought me back a lot of memories when you popped out that video on, on the D God's website. Just like paper hats bitch tax, tax feels like a long time ago. Unbelievable. It's actually insane.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  It's crazy, bro. It's crazy. Uh, okay. So Magic Eden stuff. There's a few stats that I think are pretty interesting. One is, um, we recently did a bunch of analysis around our creative business. So as you, as everyone knows, like, we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to make products and services and experiences that help creators either get started with entities or make them more successful. Once they, once they decide to launch something, um, that's sort of. Grounded all of our decision making around how we do discovery on Magic Eden. So you'll see like the carousels, you'll see like announcements. Those are announcements that creators can make directly on Magic Eden. So you can see that that's why I'm like really bullish on some of the stuff that Stani was talking about around like

• 55:53Speaker 03

  different ways that social can play out. This is one of those ways where a creator can and immediately make an announcement around something that is very, very uh specific, knowing that the audience on Magic Eden is very, very engaged, right? They they are already on Magic Eden on the collection page, thinking about some stuff. Um, but one of the things that we were looking into was, hey, like, how did creators do on Magic Eden in the last 12 months? And a couple of really amazing stats. One is they made around 250 million on Magic Eden last year. And the second thing

• 56:28David Hoffman?

  What does that mean? That 200, that 250 million dollars flowed into the hands of creators?

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 56:33David Hoffman?

  Due to the art that they created on

• 56:35Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yep, exactly.

• 56:38David Hoffman?

  Wow.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 56:39David Hoffman?

  That's a lot. That's huge. That's a not

• 56:40Speaker 03

  It's huge. So like, I think people, some people don't really realize how big the Slana NFT ecosystem actually is. It's by far the second biggest by far. Um, and obviously there's still a step change to get to ETH, but it's, it's, it's, uh, it stands on its own feet. The second really interesting stat, and this is one that's been more topical for us recently as we've been, you know, as part of us going to Polygon, we've been talking to more and more like web two platforms who are thinking about, hey, how do we use Magic Eden or NFTs as a, as another channel? Or another, another way to engage our community, whether that's whether you're a brand or if you're a, a different kind of creator, maybe whether you're an artist, whether you're an influencer.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  And uh, I'll, I'll keep it unnamed of what, you know, one of the really big web two social media platforms has a goal that's like, hey, we need our creators to make like a thousand bucks a month, right? That's, that's an aspirational goal.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  The average creator on Magic Eden last year who launched our Launchpad and our Launchpad is basically like more of a premium sort of. Uh, we partnered with creators and helped them launch on Magic Eden. We did about four hundred of them last year. And the average creator made uh over three hundred thousand dollars. Damn. Damn. Pretty insane. That's average. It's insane. Average, average. And that to me basically tells me, it gets me really fired up because. This is a creator should think about this as a, as it should not be like a black and white, like let me replace the things that I'm already doing.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  But it should be another way to augment and amplify their existing content, their existing ways of engaging their community and working and. And and and keeping their community happy, all this kind of stuff. And I think NFT, NFTs is a, has a fundamental concept is like a really good way to do that. Um, so it's like one of the really cool things that that we're trying to push on. The last stat I'll tell you, I mentioned the, the three billion dollars stat before, the last I'll tell you is more of a, a product thing, because. As I said, we're like a very, very product driven company. Um, but the average um. Session time on Magic Eden is fifteen minutes. Hmm. So you like our users come and spend a lot of time just discovering new content.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  And um, that, that I think is a really big testament to. Number one, the sheer amount of content that's being created currently on Solana and hopefully what we see on, on Polygon and on, and on ETH, on Magic Eden in the future. But secondly, it says a lot about like. What people are fundamentally trying to do. They're trying to discover new communities. And they're doing their diligence and they're, they're trying to learn about what Frank is doing and what others are doing. And that's a, that kind of browsing and discovery is going to become even more important over time. And um, whether that's through like specific features, but also through.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  Um, you know, if we go to places like Polygon and have to tell like different stories, different narratives, work with different creators. Like these are all just different and new things that we will have to build and have to be built into a marketplace, right? And that's why I think in the, over the long term, um. There will be some sort of verticalization of some marketplaces, but in general, I think people will want places where you can discover a lot of things. And that, you know, if we are successful, it's sort of like, we want to be the home, we want to be the home of entities in that sense. That's the aspiration that we have. So anyway, I'll, uh, I'll stop chilling for that. That's basically some, some high level stats.

• 1:00:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Z, before we get to Stani on Lens, just real quick, I want to ask both you guys. So, um, for you Frank and you Z,

• 1:00:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ethereum clear number one as far as NFTs. Solana, you're saying is actually a clear number two as far as NFT community. Do you think Polygon is the number three? And is your presence there like sort of

• 1:00:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  kingmaking Polygon as maybe the number three community? Or do you think that number three title is, is kind of up for grabs this year?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for me, I definitely think it's a pretty clear number three. I mean, I think, uh, whatever people might feel about it, I remember when the Trump NFTs came out and I watched, uh, them do, I think it was like six or $7 million trading volume on the first day. And I was on like Polygon and I think they're almost at like all time highs even today.

• 1:01:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can I find those on, uh, Magic Eden here?

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Are they on Magic Eden, sir?

• 1:01:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is it.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no, that's not it.

• 1:01:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Different one? Oh.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  If you go to the, go to that toggle, that all chains toggle. Yeah. Hit poly and then you'll, you should, you should see the Trump one.

• 1:01:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here they are.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Trump digital trading. Trading cards. There you go.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's a, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Some quality stuff though.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think when I saw them mint out at the time, it was like a hundred dollars, which at that time would have been, I think, eight, eight soul, which is a pretty high mint price typically for, I think a really high mint price, you know, on Solana. And they did a 45,000 supply. And then they minted that thing out in like a few hours and then it proceeded to do like top trading volume of that week. Um, and it still gets traction today. So I think similar with the Reddit NFT stuff where again, they've like unlocked a part of a market that, uh, Frankly, nobody else, not even main that ETH has unlocked to a certain degree. And so that's where we think the advantages are. And if I'm being totally honest here, I just think that ETH MFers are going to love Polygon once there are more projects on there for them to trade.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Because, you know, I'm friends with a lot of people at this point in the NFT space and especially on the DGEN side, like, people are doing DGEN mints even to this day on ETH. And it's just a little too cost prohibitive to a point where, you know, a lot of them have a much more likelihood of trending to zero, have less of a crazy run up, where I think in a low fee environment, you could see that change. Uh, so yeah, I just think it's gonna be a no brainer.

• 1:02:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Here's the thing though.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a no brainer, yeah.

• 1:02:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  With like, with Ethereum though, with EVM chains, there's so many right now. And there's so many up and coming, uh, layer twos now. So unlike, unlike kind of Solana with, you know, this Solana virtual machine, it's kind of just Solana's the only game in town, but with EVM, it's, it's fairly simple to go from chain to chain to chain. Do you think there's enough of a moat, um, with all this competition coming after Polygon?

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I don't think that the moat is actually, like, to me, the moat is just good IP on the chain. Uh, like, I look at it actually closer to HBO versus Netflix, where, you know, someone might sign up for HBO because they're a big fan of Game of Thrones, or they might sign up for Apple TV because they want to watch Ted Lasso. And I think that, at least, I mean, we are like the prime case study of this, where you'll hear the story very often of D-Gods or Utes being the only Solana NFT that, like, certain people that trade very often on ETH, it's the only one that they hold. It's like the reason that they bridged over, like, capital. And I think we've seen this firsthand, a lot of people in our community, we talk to them a lot about that. And so like, the reason that you try out a new chain is not because of the technology of the chain, but it's actually because of the projects that are on that, on that chain.

• 1:03:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Content is still king, like I just.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  It's always king. I mean, like, I'm, I'm so deep on this thesis, where like, all that really matters to me at the end of the day is like, are we putting out more content? And is that content getting more reach than anybody else? And I think everyone has the wrong approach. A lot of people have the wrong approach to it today, where they're trying to like, branch out and go for this mythical, like, mainstream audience, where to me, I think that the highest value audience is Ethereum. Is the people that care about crypto NFTs today. And if you give them an incredible experience and you give them content that they can follow 24/7 and constantly be entertained with, it'll continue to grow concentrically. And the best example of this is most people that buy NFTs, if you talk to them and you ask them, especially higher ticket NFTs, what made you buy it? They'll say something along the lines of a trusted influencer talked about it.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  A friend told me about it. You know, we were talking about this at work. Like it's usually actually more interpersonal connections than it is like at the Super Bowl or from a massive drip email campaign. It's actually personal connections that drive people to make real purchase decisions when it comes to NFTs. So if you really want to grow smart when it comes to NFTs, our approach has been referral based, like word of mouth type of marketing, because that drives real metrics and real numbers. And I think that's the same approach that we're taking with Polygon where how do we get more high quality? You can't take shortcuts. How do we just get more high quality projects on Polygon? If there are more that have constantly new things that are coming out that are exciting for people to follow, more of the attention will get shifted and diverted over to Polygon.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  And there's nothing a blockchain with their technology can do to change the fact that people just want to be a part of cool communities. And that's what has product market fit with NFTs right now.

• 1:05:25David Hoffman?

  I don't even think I need to ask my next question because this dovetails so nicely into Stani and what Lens is doing with when it comes to just content and conversation in a web three fashion. So like Stani, the, the high level question is tell us about the vitality of Lens. But really I want to hear about like the conversation, like what Frank was saying when it comes to like content is king and how it's routing a bunch of value, uh, using conversations, using community members, talking about stuff. How is this activity arriving on Lens? And what are the metrics that you can show us to just tell us about how, how much vitality that community has?

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I I definitely agree that that it's it's quite a lot about the the the actual content and and distribution. So yeah, content. Uh, I would say like, um. The content is is the is is the king, but also the like the the curation is the layer that is is very, very much that. Actually, um, make some of the NFT projects, um, more valuable, what we heard recently as well. So. For example, that where where you can actually hear about different projects, you know, one, one way is to, you know. Being different Discord groups or Twitter or Telegram groups. But something that is very interesting about Lens is that, um.

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  You can actually incentivize also the the sharing of the the content. So. Uh, Lens, uh, as a social layer, it also has a monetization layer. So for example, how. People are sharing, um, content, for example, uh, and incentivizing other people to share. And amplify that content to to your audience. I mean, in general, the the Lens protocol, it's still, uh, in beta, so we've, uh, we. We we don't have it as as completely open and and permissionless minting yet, but we're going towards. That direction as we're now building the, uh, Lens version two. But out of, uh, one hundred, um.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Uh, ten thousand profiles, uh, that has been given and granted and minted, uh. Uh, roughly, we have, uh, average users of thirty five thousand. Uh, per day, which is quite a high. Number, uh, of users coming back to Lens and and just, uh, talking about different things, uh, different projects, NFT. Uh, communities and and just sharing, uh, content. And also like. When we look at in into the different numbers currently on average profile is is earning roughly seventy five dollars per profile in terms of revenue for just sharing that content.

• 1:08:10Speaker 04

  And I I think that's very exciting in the sense that if you compare it to traditional social media, you really don't get anything like you. You might have like five million views and you earn five dollars at maximum. So the the the curation, I think, is going to be very valuable part. So like who were those influencers? How they're curated, but also seeing the transparency, like how people are getting actually paid when they're share content and distribute to their audiences. And if you see all that activity also on chain, it's very valuable for the users because it brings sort of transparency and accountability. So if someone shares a project to you and and

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  you see effectively that, you know, there's that's content authentication that might be paid. But you might be seeing it because it's valuable for you and you value that particular influencer, for example. So I'm I'm personally super bullish on seeing a lot of NFT stuff happening on on Lens. And also like down the roadmap, what we're trying to also figure out is that, you know, if you create content on directly on Lens, how you could actually mint it directly in in Magic Eden or whatever protocol you want to actually use outside of Lens and and have that kind of like composability there as well.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  So so definitely like it's very early, but at the same time, I I feel that that's that that Lens protocol has created this kind of a layer of sharing and curating content to a web three native audience. And the discussions are very web three native as well. So kind of going back to the point what Frank said, that it's like, it really doesn't make sense now to reach to the whole world at at this point. But actually focusing like how you can, how how you can master the audience of web three native users and and give them the best experience that they could have.

• 1:10:15David Hoffman?

  Stani, if somebody wants to go down the Lens rabbit hole, where do they find that rabbit hole? Where should they get started?

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  So currently, if you want to mint a Lens profile, just hit me a DM on Twitter or through Discord and I can help you out and you can mint your first Lens profile.

• 1:10:34David Hoffman?

  Because Lens has like a terrible bot problem, right? Like everyone's trying to get their bots onto Lens because they're trying to farm an airdrop, right? Is that kind of the idea?

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  Well, basically, in terms of the bots, the Lens profile itself is pure raw data. But actually, how you see that activity on your front end, it depends on the front ends and the algorithms in between. So, for example, you have the ability as a front end to minimize what you actually see. And that can be actually reduced. But, end of the day, like, we want to focus on the idea that Lens should be permissionless in the future and it's available to anyone, so you can mint a profile. But once you minted your profile, you can actually attach any of those identity pieces that you might have.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  That might be your Lens handle, that might be your ENS name. That might be some other piece of identity that is, actually creates a social reputation. It can be also your on-chain balance sheet at the same time. And based on that and your activity and reputation score, we can actually create a reach for you as a user. So, effectively, what's going to be different compared to Lens and traditional social media is that it's basically accessible to anyone. You can create a profile and have ownership of your online presence, follow other profiles and users.

• 1:12:10Speaker 04

  But, end of the day, it's your activities that actually reflects how your content reaches out all the front ends out there.

• 1:12:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, this has been really cool. What a great panel and I appreciated your insights today. I guess my takeaway is we're still kind of finding that content is king. The cool set of tools around Web 3 and crypto is that means creators can be king rather than the aggregators, the Web 2 aggregators. So we've got content is king, creators being king. It seems like Polygon is this new platform for the creator economy. Super bullish. It's this place where it seems like social media is meeting crypto cultures, meeting Web 2, and that's why it sounds like all of you are there. So, thank you panelists for giving us some inside baseball into the NFT community on Polygon, the third largest community.

• 1:13:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Maybe there's a flippening in store. Maybe they come after Ethereum's throne at some point? Who knows? The future is up to all of us in the community. And thank you panelists for joining this discussion today.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  Let's go. Everyone just gave a thumbs up.

• 1:13:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, as always. I gotta tell you, risks and disclaimers, NFTs are freaking risky. They're just JPGs, aren't they Frank? Precisely. Kind of valuable sometimes too. Of course, all of crypto is risky, so is DeFi. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier, and we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:13:38David Hoffman?

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• 1:14:22David Hoffman?

  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.