107 - What's Real About Crypto Gaming | Ryan Wyatt

Ryan Wyatt is the CEO of Polygon Studios and former Head of Gaming at Youtube. Ryan is always on the frontier of gaming, having stewarded a new generation of content creators. He's now shifting his focus to Web3, where the next wave of innovation is set to happen. Ryan presents a number of fascinating takes, including his feelings on Anti-NFT sentiment, the future of games, and the growing influence of gaming content. By building out the Polygon Metaverse, Ryan is colliding games and economies. In this episode, he shares what he's learned — what's real about crypto, and what's not. ------ 📣 NOTIONAL FINANCE | DeFi's Leading Fixed Rate Yield https://bankless.cc/Notional ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask 💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:00 Ryan Wyatt 8:50 Creator Economy Background 12:07 Transitioning to Web3 18:58 Crypto Improves Games 24:51 Whales & Blockchains 31:17 NFT Maxis vs Antti-NFT Maxis 36:08 Why Gamers Hate NFTs 40:05 Will Everything Be Crypto? 49:10 How We Change Minds 54:30 How Web2 Sees Web3 1:01:46 Colliding Games & Economies 1:05:56 What’s Wrong with Gaming 1:09:00 Money, Yield, and Content 1:17:01 In-Game Assets, Real World Value 1:24:45 The Bull Case for Polygon 1:27:48 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Ryan Wyatt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fwiz?s=20&t=TWOdkCxUzoJ-e3DlN9uT_g https://twitter.com/Fwiz?s=20&t=TWOdkCxUzoJ-e3DlN9uT_g Polygon Studios: https://twitter.com/polygonstudios?s=20&t=TWOdkCxUzoJ-e3DlN9uT_g https://twitter.com/polygonstudios?s=20&t=TWOdkCxUzoJ-e3DlN9uT_g Crypto Unicorns: https://www.cryptounicorns.fun/ ------ Related Episodes: The Crypto Gaming Revolution | Arianna Simpson https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/the-crypto-gaming-revolution Web3 Gaming 101 | Amy Wu https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-96-web3-gaming-101-amy-wu Crypto Gaming Panel | Loot Squad, Yield Guild, Illuvium https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/crypto-gaming-panel-loot-squad-yield The Dawn of Crypto Gaming | Robbie Ferguson https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-the-dawn-of-crypto-gaming-robbie The Emergent Metaverse | Sam Englebardt & Richard Kim https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-102-the-emergent-metaverse-sam-englebardt?utm_source=url ----- 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.

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  And I think obviously, games are going to be the biggest funnel for onboarding people into the space.

• 0:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Great episode on crypto gaming today. What's real about crypto gaming and what's not? We have an ex YouTube executive who's joining us. This is the guy that's responsible for some of YouTube's biggest gaming partnerships over the last eight years. Ryan Wyatt, we talk about six things you'll want to listen for. Number one, why there's a brain drain from Web 2 to Web 3 and how that's impacting gaming as well. Number two, why crypto gaming is for whales right now and why that's okay.

• 0:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Number three, why the NFT haters actually have a point? Number four, what the big game studios are doing today in crypto. Number five, how a new generation of content creators are about to propagate crypto games. Number six, how gaming solves crypto's PR issues. David, this is a great episode. Look, 3 billion gamers in the world. This is crypto's next marketplace. Crypto games in real life are becoming like, or gaming in real life are becoming like one in the same thing. Both of these things are sort of fusing together. And this was a great episode, another in a line of episodes that's exploring this topic on Bankless. What were some of your thoughts?

• 1:33David Hoffman?

  Ryan seems to be one of those guys that's always on the frontier. And well, I guess that's also true for you, Ryan, but this is Ryan Wyatt, other Ryan, who joined YouTube when the world of gaming content was very, very nascent. And he takes us through that story, that earlier phase of the internet, where people didn't really appreciate how big gaming content was about to be. And now he's jumping on board Polygon Studios, which is the studio arm of Polygon focusing on, well, right now, gaming, but perhaps later, gaming content, because first you need to make. Make the game so you can have the content later.

• 2:12David Hoffman?

  And in taking that, that, those lessons learned of being on the frontier of gaming content in the web two world. Clearly, Ryan always has an itch that he needs to scratch, which is always being on the frontier of something. So taking these web two skills and bringing them into web three to teach us all how you grow out a gaming ecosystem when it's done on different rails.

• 2:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Super practical episode, great plain speak advice and thoughts. And in fact, some unique thoughts that I don't think we've ever heard coming from Ryan Wyatt in this episode today. So make sure you guys listen to the full thing from the outset. Also, make sure to listen to the sponsors that made this episode possible. We've got some awesome tools for you coming right up. We'll get to the conversation with Ryan in just a moment, but here are the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 3:01David Hoffman?

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• 3:46David Hoffman?

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• 4:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  All with different design choices in order to be optimized for all possible crypto use cases. If you're a developer who wants to build on the Polygon ecosystem, go to the link in the show notes to check out their fantastic documentation. And if you're a user who just wants to experience fast and cheap DeFi, you can bridge over your ETH or other tokens and start playing around with any of the thousands of applications that are available on Polygon.

• 4:41Speaker 02

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• 4:46Speaker 03

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• 4:49Speaker 02

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• 4:50Speaker 04

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• 5:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, we are super excited to introduce you to our next guest. This is Ryan Wyatt. He left his role as former head of gaming at YouTube to join Polygon Studios as their CEO not too long ago, about a month or so ago. Polygon Studios, if you're not familiar with the studios, it's just a division of the Polygon Ethereum scalability and Layer 2 technology that you know and love. We wanted to have him on ever since we heard about his exodus from YouTube to Polygon, from Web 2 to Web 3. Ryan Wyatt, welcome to Bankless and also welcome to crypto, man. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the warm welcome. It's going, it's going well so far. I'm excited and very happy to be in here and jumping in full time into the space.

• 6:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What made you join us crazies? Like, why'd you do this?

• 6:31Speaker 05

  You all, you guys are all crazy. I think maybe I thought of myself as crazy as well, and that's why I did it. Um, yeah, it's a good question. So, you know, last year, um, somebody came up to me and was like, hey, you know, blockchain gaming, you know, is starting to happen and this thing's pretty interesting. And as the head of gaming at YouTube, I was like, this is like a complete blind spot. You know, I took a lot of pride in knowing the gaming industry well as part of my, you know, my role. And so it was like, oh, okay. Um, can you elaborate on that? And so just started having more conversations, particularly with people in venture, right? And how allocation was starting to go towards blockchain games, you were starting to see pretty prominent talent, leaving some of the established studios to come into the space. And so it really just started as, I need to learn about it.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  Right? Like, I don't want to have this blind spot of this emerging category within gaming. And let me tell you, uh, I think like, uh, the red pill thing is a very real thing because, uh, I, I think of the whole space as like a great page turner of a book and you just can't stop. And so as I spent more time learning and, and meeting people in the space, it became very difficult for me to not want to do it, uh, you know, as a full-time thing. That's the, the very short, the short part of it.

• 7:42David Hoffman?

  Was there a particular aha moment where you realized like, oh, I gotta be in crypto? Or was it something slow and incremental?

• 7:49Speaker 05

  I think it was more slow and incremental, but it does like the aha moment kind of shows itself as part of that, right? Um, you know, I really started to look at, I think NFTs definitely, you know, and as controversial as that is, definitely started to be like, okay, you know, I was already personally spending more time fascinated by how COVID had accelerated kind of people spending time in, let's say, digital worlds, metaverse, gaming, whatever you want to call it, right? You could see it very much in the numbers. Um, you could see it along with Gen Z that both found, you know, gaming is their number one form of entertainment and, and also very interestingly enough, gaming is their number one form of like social and community. These are different trends than even millennials, who obviously were a big part of the gaming industry's growth.

• 8:28Speaker 05

  And so this, this idea of just spending more time in digital environments and what comes with that, what's needed in that, what will be asked of that is really probably the aha moment. And, you know, I think centralization really doesn't and can't offer that in the same way that decentralization can. And I think that was probably the real moment where I was like, okay, this, this becomes really interesting to me.

• 8:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tell us a little bit, for those that aren't familiar with what you did at YouTube and like kind of YouTube gaming division, obviously it sounds like it's some marriage between content that's being produced and also the gaming industry, but tell us a little bit about that and some of the experience and skills you're carrying with you to crypto.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, so my whole background has been in the creator economy, really. I started and played esports competitively. I was an esports commentator in college. I came out and started working with Major League Gaming and Machinima, both very focused on gaming video, watching other people's play, which sounds obvious now, today, because of how big the market is. A lot of people, 12, 13 years ago on this subject, were like, I don't know that people are really gonna want to watch other people play video games. It seems like very counterintuitive. People that want to play video games will just play. Why would they ever watch people play? I think that resonated with a lot of people, too, because if you ever had a brother growing up, or a friend, you always wanted the controller. Like, you didn't want to share in this. So I was like, look, I don't know if I agree with that. I

• 9:51Speaker 05

  think it's pretty interesting, and I think there are other people out there like me that will find it interesting as well. So all of my time had been spent in that. I went to YouTube almost eight years ago because they didn't have a gaming division, right? And so they saw like, okay, gaming is going to be this big thing. It already is big. They had seen Amazon acquired Twitch, like, things were starting to get bigger. So Susan Wojcicki, who's the CEO of YouTube, Google started a garage, she came in as the CEO of YouTube and was like, look, we need to, we really need to focus and have a gaming effort. I had written a lot of emails while at Machinima to YouTube about all the things, their shortcomings, about what they should be doing. And so they were like, let's, you know, let's go have lunch with the guy that thinks he knows everything and talk about gaming. That lunch

• 10:35Speaker 05

  turned into, you know, 14 interviews, and then later I came on as the head of gaming at YouTube. I was 27 years old at the time, but there was no, which was interesting. I mean, I definitely had imposter syndrome for a little bit there, because I was actually in over my head for a little bit there. But there was no background of anybody that had creator economy experience, right then. It's so nascent at this time. So, you know, much like, there's a lot of similarities in Web 3, right? Over all these years, it's like, yes, gaming content, it's like, what is gaming on YouTube? It's the vertical and everything that's kind of responsible for it. What products the creators and game publishers do? What licensing deals are you doing? How do you support game developers that care about that ecosystem? Both from their owned and operated content as well as the UGC of the ecosystem?

• 11:17Speaker 05

  How do you take care of creators of big and torso, you know, of all sizes? Put programs in place, processes in place, all of that. So how that carries over into web three is you look at Polygon Studios? And really, what is the studio teams going to be responsible for? Well, you have all these developers that are building on Polygon. Some of them need a little bit more handholding, more white glove, you know, than others. You want to be of service to the technology from a developer standpoint. So you obviously have this great, you know, stack to build on. You don't always need somebody, but think of Polygon Studios. It's what Google Play can do for the developer ecosystem that builds on it. You know, I think there's a lot that we can provide and support. But setting up that internal infrastructure to support, you know, the developer ecosystem is going to be really critical.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  A lot of that has some eerily similar things to what I did at YouTube and was able to do successfully. So I'm hoping that can bring that over, you know, to the organization.

• 12:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's really funny. I know your departure from YouTube made big waves in, you know, crypto media and also web two media. And what's really interesting to me when I hear that story is like, it's the same pattern. All right. So like, you know, eight years ago, when you started at YouTube or when you started doing, uh, you know, live streaming announcing for games? People thought that was crazy. I'm sure like your parents were like, wait, Ryan, what you're doing what? I mean, sorry, that's, that's a career and NFTs I feel like are at the same place right now. It's like, okay, well, you're, you're buying and flipping JPGs. What is, is that real? Like, no, this is a, this is a bubble. This is a meme. It's all gonna go away. And now here you are at, in a very nascent point in the industry where it's proven itself, early product market fit, fit.

• 12:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's just getting fired up. And now you're joining like the, the YouTube, the Google of the crypto scene in this, in this jump over to Polygon. Do you see those parallels there? Is this just like the second act for you and you're playing the same thing?

• 13:04Speaker 05

  I, I think, um, almost identical. Everything you just said is like, was my entire thought process and why I made the jump over here. A lot of it, what is what went into the decision making on why Polygon as well? But yeah, I see it all. And I think, um, You know, on a personal level, I was so proud of like what we all collectively did with the gaming vertical and it's like, you know, one of the biggest ones at YouTube and it's in such a great place now. And I, I still have this like fire and spirit to be a builder. And you know, as things get bigger and bigger, you know, you, you build less and less, right? And that's great, right? That's, that's a reflection of success as part of it. But I have a huge fire still with inside of me to build. And so that, and I didn't know where to take that kind of direction and energy, right? I had, I've had this for a while and was trying to figure out

• 13:49Speaker 05

  what next. And so you couple that with this like massive intrigue and what blockchain development can be, you know, not only just for the games industry, but overall for tech. And then this desire to want to keep building, it really kind of came together. And then, you know, for those that know Sandeep, he has a lot of chip on his shoulder and a lot of fire. And so I think there was a personality match that occurred as well. And so there was a variety of things, but I absolutely saw the parallels, Ryan. And I think that is what encouraged me to jump and, you know, not really think twice about it, if I'm honest.

• 14:22David Hoffman?

  We definitely want to get into the conversation of crypto gaming because that's not only a conversation that the crypto industry is having, but I mean, the, the whole broader web two and gaming and outside of crypto, they're having the same kind of conversation about like, they kind of see the crypto tidal wave coming. They don't know how. So that's going to be like basically the bulk of this podcast. But right, I want to touch on a little bit more of your transition right before we get there. And so you talked about when you were at YouTube, you were like head of content, like it's all content focused, user generated content. How do you go out the gaming, gaming content ecosystem for YouTube? But then when you described your job at your current job at Polygon, it seemed to be a lot more developer relations, a little bit more technical focus, a little bit more business development. Can you talk about just like what

• 15:06David Hoffman?

  your day to day ins and outs are at Polygon and how you're helping grow out the Polygon ecosystem? And also is content still relevant too?

• 15:14Speaker 05

  It's a good question. So I think like at YouTube, it was really more of a general manager role. So I kind of covered a lot, although product wouldn't sit necessarily under me. I think it was all like you're weighing in on all of those things. How you're prioritizing products, how you are working with developers, what product partnerships you're doing with them. So that kind of did touch all of my wheelhouse. It to your point, though, on the Polygon side, I don't, they're really the the content and creator economy part is not at the bulk of it. I'm sure it's gonna have a, you know, that will have a place in all of this world, but it is highly developer focused. So, look, I think at the end of the day, like really what you're trying to do is architect the same thing. It's you have a lot of people that are responsible for your success.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  Those people being developers and creators on YouTube being prominently or predominantly developers on Polygon. And you have to set up an infrastructure internally to make sure that they are properly and adequately supported. Because I think long term, you know, in a couple of years out, you're gonna have all the this optionality across the tech space on how you want to build is gonna be huge. And I really actually don't know that you're materially delineating between each one of those service offerings in the future. And so as you think about the decision making tree of which where you want to build, so much of like people and who you work with and who you partner with will be much more of an emphasis than just the tech stack. And that's why I'm like, I think we need to start right now and building a world class team. So that people are just like, I want to work with Polygon because I know when I worked with Polygon, I've got great tech.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  And I love that studio's team because that's who we're actually partnering with. That's who's gonna ensure after we build and integrate that they're gonna ensure for long term success. And so I'm just very fixated on creating a similar infrastructure like we did with YouTube Gaming to support creators and developers. You're just this time around, it's just it's largely developers. But I do think you're going to start to see creators that are gonna want to build projects on Polygon as well into the future. So I'm excited for that time and place where we'll be adequately supporting them as well.

• 17:08David Hoffman?

  This seems like an order of operations conversation. Like, we can't have content until we have the games.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 17:14David Hoffman?

  So we have to enable, we have to enable the developers to make the games. And then later, when that ecosystem gets its, you know, the ball starts rolling downhill, then perhaps maybe it comes time to build out the content ecosystem later.

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that'll be like, that's gonna be a critical point, too, because you're right. It is an order of operations conversation, because you're really, like, think about how much gaming accelerated because Twitch and YouTube, right? And how much earned media that comes from that opportunity, right? So the same thing will happen, because these big games will inevitably come out. Right now, you know, a lot of the games, they're great. It's very rudimentary, because games take a long time to make. And so you're kind of getting like, the MVP of games out right now, today. But like, if you can see the pipeline of what's about to be deployed over the next couple of years, and the innovation that's happening there, and the talent that's happening there, these are going to just be games people play. They're not gonna have this obsession of, if it's on-chain, NFTs, all this stuff that

• 18:10Speaker 05

  we are kind of focusing on now, really is going to fall to the wayside for a majority of the gaming population. And they're just gonna find that, wow, this is a really cool game. And as part of that, I'm connecting my account, and I'm buying these digital items. And they're not gonna be thinking like, oh, is this an NFT or not? Or what is it, right? They're just, here's the on-ramps to pay. You know, I'm transferring fiat into a token that's actually already exists today in a centralized environment. And so I think like, that's where I started to get interested, that we spend a lot of time and debate about NFTs and what gamers think about it. It's not gonna matter in a couple of years, because it's just gonna be a great game coupled with, you know, a free and thriving economy that allows for more complexity in the game environment, which is exciting.

• 18:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, we're gonna dig more into that, Ryan.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, lots to unpack there, Ryan.

• 18:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, lots to unpack, yeah. So, okay, so you, one last thing, while we're talking, because the other thing that I thought of immediately when I read the headline, Ryan Wyatt's, you know, joining Polygon, leaving, leaving his position at YouTube, was this, oh, wow, this is the tidal wave of the next exodus of talent from Web 2 to Web 3. We've seen this happen in the past with emerging technologies. I'm curious, how right is that? Is this part of, are you seeing a lot of Web 2 builders, Web 2 talent, of starting to come into, into Web 3? And is this a trickle? Or is this a flood, this kind of brain drain? Is, what's happening here?

• 19:36Speaker 05

  I think time will tell. Um, you know, I, I, I, I think that you'll see a lot of people coming over for the same reasons that I kind of outlined. I don't know how you spend time learning about this technology and self identify as a builder and not want to come over. Right. That's the thing. And I think it ultimately comes down to that, you know, brain drain, web two, web three talent, like whatever, you know, that's a little bit of hyperbole. But these people in web two and in big tech right now are looking at this and saying, this is pretty damn interesting. Thus kicking off a trigger of wanting to learn and spend time to, you know, listen to your podcasts and starting to watch videos and pay attention. Right. And then to my point, like you kind of become enamored with it.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  And so I think it becomes very difficult to not make the transition. And when it makes a little bit more clear sense of, you know, where these individuals belong, then I think you will start to see a tidal wave of it. Um, there's, there will definitely, this will be a year, I think, which will be pivotal and known as. I don't know if Exodus may be too strong, but this will be the year that everyone points at. This is the first wave of where we saw people that aren't crypto native, like you two, I'm sure would identify as, start to come into our space. Um, I, I, you know, at least I feel that that's going to be the case. And, uh, you know, I think Polygon is going to contribute to that as well.

• 20:56David Hoffman?

  So Ryan, that, that tidal wave wouldn't happen if there wasn't something real here. And so we want to identify in the show, what is actually real about crypto gaming? So make, make the pitch for us. Why will games be made better because of crypto, because of web three? Like what does web three have to offer gaming?

• 21:14Speaker 05

  I think there's a lot of, um, we deal in absolutes in this conversation too often. And that's what I, I take a little bit of issue with that. And I have a little bit more of a measured approach. I don't think crypto gaming is, is necessary for all gaming or blockchain gaming. I look at it as a subsection of 3 billion gamers. And even if you say, look, it's going to create game experiences and we could talk about that. But at a macro level, it's going to create unique game experiences that 10% of the total adjustable market of gamers will get into. So you have 300 million gamers that want to come over. The thing that I think is really interesting about what's going to happen is when you couple a really great game with like, I'll just say a free economy. We can get into play to earn and all this, but just these like free market and this sense of ownership with a really great game.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  You're going to have people that, you know, are going to be really interested in participating in it. What that's going to do is look at the free to play model, which that was, everybody had a bunch of criticism about that. You know, put a pin in that, but anyway, heavily reliant on people with money and people with time. What I think that 10% of the type of people that are going to get into blockchain gaming are the ones that love a really good game and love participating in a free economy. Which that is going to be whales, for lack of a better term, they're going to pivot over into these blockchain game experiences. That is going to put a lot of pressure on the free to play business model because you are now losing spenders that are completely reliant, like that are very reliant on keeping the free to play economy going.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  This is then going to create a lot of dialogue. So it's like 10% of the player base, but how much of the revenue base, particularly with how many digital transactions are happening and driving that revenue? Is actually going to come over into the space? Liquidity, digital ownership, you know, like I'm a big fan of Valorant. I played all the time. I've always spent probably, you know, I put like 500 bucks into it. If Valorant was on blockchain, had liquidity and all this and governance, I'm probably spending orders of magnitude more, to be honest with you. And so, yeah, not everybody's in that same place. Not everybody wants to have that kind of like, some people just want to play games, not worry about that. That's why I don't think it's going to service everybody. And again, if it's still only, if 90% of people are playing off-chain, that's fine. But the revenue is going to come over and I think that is going to create a lot of pressure on AAA to think about it differently.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  And then start to get into those questions where you hear good topics of, well, look, between SQL and centralized databases, we can kind of recreate some of this and have like faux blockchain kind of product offering. But I think this is what's going to happen and, and this will cause a huge shift in the space over the next, let's say, three to five years. But I don't deal with it as much in absolutes as what I think a lot of the conversation publicly, you know, the discourse around it seems to be.

• 23:50David Hoffman?

  So what I just heard you say is that this isn't going to be like crypto gaming isn't going to replace non crypto gaming. It's not like every single game in the world is just going to magically become a crypto game. It's going to be instead an evolution, an alternative to games. And I think what you just said is emphasis on people that integrate economics with their games, like the with the free to play movement. Those free to play games are kind of like economic games in the sense that like you can take your money, you can take your value, and that can enhance the game. And some people are just more conducive to that style of game than others. And crypto gaming might infiltrate that type of game more than it would the rest of the gaming industry. Would you fair? That's a fair assessment?

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's right. You know, look, and then with inside of blockchain gaming, you have, you have, you know, it's like you can start to talk to, well, who's play to earn really, you know, targeted at what audience is going to participate in that you get into the, some people just want to play for fun. But yeah, in the general spirit of it, I think that's, that's, that's right.

• 24:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  What's really interesting about this idea, and I've, I've never heard it articulated quite this way, but I think there's, there's a kind of, something rings true about the way you just said it, which is actually the whales are going to be the first adoption market for this. It's almost reminds me of kind of the, the axi infinity sort of model, where you have whales that are sort of the, you know, the curator class, the capital class, and then you have workers, which are, you know, people who are like grinding in the games. And it's better than the economic alternatives in their local market. So they're

• 25:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  happy to do it, provides a lot of opportunity for them to do it. It's that kind of model, which is very interesting, because that's, I suppose, an unaddressed market in typical gaming. And your idea is that, like, once the whales, we were talking about an exodus from web two to web three earlier, but an exodus of whales in gaming could actually provide the capital fundamentals and the revenue fundamentals for this. Market. So it's almost like the criticism of, you know, these games are kind of just, just for whales. I almost hear what you, you saying is like, okay, well, let's lean into that. I mean, that's going to be the first market. It's not going to be the, the last market, certainly.

• 26:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  But why don't, why don't we embrace it? I mean, the 1980s, cell phones were big bricks and only the wealthy could afford them. But then the technology improved. Is this kind of what you're saying?

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's funny. It seems like, look, that is the free to play model, right? And, and that has been explicitly so. It's, it literally is as simple as people with money and people with time. Now you need a great game. There's obviously it's higher level of complexity of that. And so, yeah, I think anytime you have like a free economy, people are going to be in a free marketplace. And then allowing that in a player ecosystem, it's going to attract first and foremost whales. But I think at the end of the day, you just have to let like the product speak for itself. You make a really great on-chain game. Nobody's going to be talking about the, the fact that it's a blockchain game or not. It's a great game and it's just part of the experience. And if you think of, um, I really do think we, we overthink a lot of this, even in the conversation.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  If you really look at like, going back to League of Legends is a great example, right? You know, what's the, what is the onboarding experience? Well, it's just a great game. So I want to play it first there. Okay. Now I have taken my Mastercard and I bought a thousand Riot Points for $69.99. Now I have a thousand Riot Points. It's obviously fixed price relative to the dollar to the Riot Point. But the, that like, what is going to really change there? You know, as, as wallets get better, you know, as bridging gets better. That's going to be your experience, right? You're like, oh, I'm just taking Fiat into a token and that token buys this. Now I actually can do more with that token because I can liquidate it. I have governance over it. So it's, to me, I'm like, it's just look at it as product features and get outside of this, you know, on-chain, off-chain thing.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  And what, what you're really talking about at the end of the day is blockchain enables really cool, newer product features that are, are differentiated than the experiences that they are today. Um, and that's kind of, I, I think in the most simplistic terms, that's how I think about it. And because of that, it opens up things like an axi infinity. It opens up things like play to earn, you know, like it does, you know, it's part of that.

• 28:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you, what do you say to somebody, Ryan, who hears that and says, like, you're just saying it's, you know, it's, it's kind of similar to the game experience that we have today. What about somebody who retorts and says, okay, well, Ryan Wyatt, why blockchain then? We already have this, you know, why blockchain? And this idea of faux blockchains that, that you mentioned earlier. They're kind of like, well, we don't need that to do what you're talking about. We can just build on a centralized database and call the thing NFTs. And so they go down a path, you know, talking about blockchain and NFTs as more a meme than substance. It's kind of like, we already have that. Show me the new features. What are the new features here?

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I kind of look at that as like, it's slightly like disingenuous because nobody's really doing it. Right? So the argument, it's like, okay, right? You know, you can use the Diablo three auction house, which everybody likes to go back to as the argument. It's like, okay, yeah, Diablo three is a great game. The auction house absolutely destroyed that game was a tick, you know, because it's already hard to make a game. You add a, like this free open marketplace and economy to it. It does make it very difficult balancing the game. That's already difficult. And so people have stayed away from that. But just be like, what else really exists? There's not great examples. Counter Strike is a perfect example of a game I love that you should be able to do this. You don't know the scarcity of items. There's an implied scarcity based off of the loot that you get and the rules that you get. You can sell those items, but it stays within the steam ecosystem.

• 29:32Speaker 05

  So for me, I look at the argument, I'm like, fine, you know, I don't care. It goes back to, I don't really care how you do it, right? But it's not being done. And so I'm going to embrace the technology where it is the fundamental spirit of the technology to enable these behaviors. Right? And so just because you use the argument that you are technically capable of doing it off chain, but you're really not doing it, you know, I, I really don't care. Right? So I look at this space as like, no, no, no, not only do we want to do it, we want to take it as far as we possibly can go with it. By doing that and embracing the culture and spirit of this entire movement and industry and tech, and however you want to classify it, then this is going to. Enable all of these experiences down the road. So a lot of people are talking too much of what it looks like here and now.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  But I think it's the future of like what what can come from enabling these ecosystems and actually like pioneering them. It opens up all kinds of doors too. Like it opens up its own class of creator economy. Using the Counter-Strike example again, what if you could have some of the most prominent digital artists drop skins of the AK-47 skin in Counter-Strike? All of a sudden, you have now democratized game development within Counter-Strike. The gun mechanics work the same for everybody. It's not like, you know, paying to win. It's just, I love this artist. He did a pack of a thousand, 10,000 skins of Counter-Strike scenes. I can mint that and own it. And all of a sudden, you have this whole new class of digital artists that can plug in any game they want because they're just simply doing cosmetics of items.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  And instead of like the JPEG money monkey, you've got now the board AK-47, right? And I can use that in Counter-Strike. So I think it opens a lot, enables a lot of this behavior and it's, and you could still always argue, eh, we can do that. We could do some of this stuff. It's about really the underlying spirit of the technology and what it's enabling and why people will shift over here.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  I think that's really leaning into what we've already seen work in crypto. Where like it's the arts, it's the, it's the community, it's the people that want to have their way to express what they feel interested in. And what we've seen get a lot of friction is people that think that NFTs are going to come in and impact the mechanics of the game in a way that favor the whales, right? Where if everything about the game is the same, but you get to express your digital identity in ways that are more conducive to your interests, that's, we've already seen that work with NFTs. And that wouldn't trigger a lot of the gamers who are very much of the purists.

• 31:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Do you have any, any reflections on that?

• 32:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, a couple of that. That's why it's like, that's why you, the conversation becomes more nuanced. Okay, look at Clash Royale for a great example. At some point, you are going to have to buy items to start getting further along. And that's okay, right? There's, that's like, you, you sign up and you well understand that. That's the same with like Axie's having a higher win rate like the reptile.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  I think do and class for axes like have a higher win rate and so therefore you're you're trying to buy those or you're trying to breed towards that okay that's all right that's like its own game design I personally that's not the kind of type of game I am personally interested in but that's okay that that ecosystem is created Ryan kind of touched on why that's good and creates some opportunities for people even from a you know an earning potential I I am in a place where like the games I like are Counter-Strike and Valorant and it's the cosmetic side of it that I'd be willing to part like spend a lot of money on and take a huge sense of ownership and pride over some of that stuff so it just depends on what you're looking for I think the NFT argument what bothers people about it is it is too many maxies it's like the anti and the like NFT maxies just speaking past each other there are reasonable

• 33:07David Hoffman?

  extremes

• 33:08Speaker 05

  yeah

• 33:08David Hoffman?

  the extremes of these communities

• 33:09Speaker 05

  exactly yeah it's and it becomes this like very obviously polarizing conversation there are reasons to to to not like what NFTs do today right I think you can make a great um a great argument around carbon footprint and the process a progress that needs to be made there I think a lot of it people don't realize is there is a lot of progress being made there is a desire for carbon footprint to be reduced on some of this stuff and there are technologies that are very focused on obviously polygon being one of them so I I think nobody's really ready to have nuanced conversations around some of these topics yet and so I kind of just say you know I really do believe long-term product will speak for itself on these things

• 33:47David Hoffman?

  a big conversation in in the current world Ryan is exactly what you were just talking about just the hate about gamers not wanting NFTs or finance to infiltrate into their games and disrupt what their experiences are meanwhile on the other side of things we have crypto people who are kind of on leaning into the hyper financialization of everything and they're like oh like our games can pay us money if we design them right how do you see these communities coming together like are they or are we just going to have to figure out how to do we have to compromise or do we just make something new and the people that are on board with that join this new part of the world of gaming how do you see us resolving this conflict

• 34:27Speaker 05

  again it goes back to I think too much extremes right people it's it's that we should take every game and this game that you love like let's take Minecraft right It's like Minecraft, people love it, right? And it's a great game and it's so successful. Why even think about contemplating blockchain? And that's right, that's right, right? Like, I think people should be able to go in and play video games for fun and never have to worry about this stuff, never have to worry about volatility, never have to worry about putting money in and buying stuff and can just enjoy games. Like, they might just want to play a narrative campaign game, which is very old school, but just like, I just want to play a linear progression game and buy that and that's it. I just want to have a free-to-play game that actually just licensed the skin and I don't have to worry about anything. I'm choosing to make a purchase of that skin and that's it. And I think that's great, right?

• 35:10Speaker 05

  So I basically just look at this technology as offering a subsection of players that that do want that, right? And I think you see a lot of players that don't even realize that of about what kind of experiences that they want to participate in. And so I don't like the gatekeeping conversation of like, get it out of our community. Like, I'm going to speak on behalf of all 3 billion gamers and I don't want blockchain games to exist. I think it's bad for the industry. And so that's the part that bothers me because I think we should, there's so much, there's so many different desires. That's the great thing about where the gaming industry has gotten to be, you know, a third of the world gets to play video games and enjoys them. There is something for everybody and I think this is finally something that's offering a new thing and a new format for people to get excited about.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  And I don't know how you can, at the end of the day, like hate on that. I think it's when people think it's going to completely take over the gaming industry and that we're just peddling it to every single game and everything should turn into a blockchain game base is where it becomes problematic.

• 36:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  What do you think about some of their objections, though, Ryan? So like, just to dig into them, I know, I know you touched upon the environmental impact issue and I do feel like there's some fairly easy answers to that question with, you know, proof of stake and either Ethereum's transitioning over, like such that you wait six months and it's not even a valid criticism at all. But there are some other objections as well. You know, things like, it's all Ponzi games, you know, we don't want this game studios taking further cuts, this feels like microtransactions. Did you get a Chance to to watch the whole line goes up video.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 36:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Which is this, um, okay, this is a big criticism. A video published on YouTube, big criticism of NFTs writ large. It made some waves in the in the gaming circle, but in NFTs in general. Anyway, there's a lot of particular criticisms out there. Do you think any of the criticisms are valid? I I take your point to just say, hey, if you, you know, it's a big world out there. If you don't like NFTs, just, you know, don't do the NFT thing. But do you think the where the gamers even coming from? Because as crypto natives, like, we we don't even understand why, uh, why, why the hate?

• 37:22Speaker 05

  So I think there's very valid, uh, hate around them, to be honest with you. Like, okay, so the argument about carbon footprint. Oh, we're switching, we're, you know, our consensus mechanism is switching in the long term. And so therefore it's going to address that. It's like, great, one, not everybody's so well versed on L1, L2 offerings. And so they don't know that, right? They don't know that that needs to be a topic of education. Two, it hasn't happened yet, right? Three, gamers remember when they couldn't get an Nvidia graphic card because Bitcoin miners. And that was all on resale, you know, and, you know, 200, 300% price hike on trying to get a graphics card. So you have to understand there's there's resentment that's legacy and historical that is valid for them to be frustrated, right? And I think a lot of people would be like, great, Ryan, you said everyone's switching, but we haven't. And until we have, it is an issue, right?

• 38:06Speaker 05

  So I think it is very fair to be critical of that. And again, it's like, okay, Ethereum has been talking about when they're switching to this consensus mechanism for a while. And so when it does, right? And then I also think people aren't, um, they're not as in like entrenched as you both are in it, right? So they don't have all of this, like, very clear understanding of like, what is Bitcoin versus Solana? Versus Ethereum, versus Avalanche, versus a layer two, like Polygon and Immutable and sidechains, right? And so that takes time, you know? I mean, even someone like myself, who is now working full time in that, wouldn't be able to hold water in the, you know, multi hour conversation with you all on this topic. So you have to give people time to like, learn this and understand that and appreciate that so that they can really wrap their heads around it. But it's coming. So I kind of look at it as my inch.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  And then also, if you look at, um, you know, the Ponzi nomics conversation, I think there are valid. Conversations in some games where it is problematic. And so you really have to think about it this way. I'm not joining Web 3 for where Web 3 is today. I think it's version 0.5. I am very excited about what Web 3 looks when it's V3, V4, V5. And skating to where the puck is going, if you will. And so I think what happens is people get caught up on the, let's evaluate this right now for where it is today. And people are talking on different timeframes. So like, I kind of just pushed back on you on a timeframe of right now. You know, like, right now, there are problems. There are scams, there are rugs, there are carbon footprint issues. And so if you and I are just talking about in its current state, there are very valid arguments.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  But I am trying to take a three or five year timeframe horizon. And that's why I'm making the jump. That's why I'm optimistic despite all of this backlash and frustration.

• 39:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I totally agree with that take. I think a lot of the arguments, and this is true in crypto at large, are just really arguments of time scale. Like timeline and vision for where the space is going, right? And some people have that vision. You know, others haven't seen it yet and they have to wait and see. But there is something that might be a bit more persistent. This is something that David and I have talked about on previous crypto gaming podcasts. And that is almost the invasion of real world economics into these virtual gaming environments. So, you know, as gamers ourselves, Dave and I are both gamers. Like, we grew up playing all of these games, you know? Part of the fun of games is the escapism. You know, you get to go into a virtual world

• 40:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  and now you're like a level 99 Warlock and you're just, you're just a cool person, like you're a cool dude when you're in that world, right? And you don't have to worry about your day job or your boss. You just log on with the homies and you're just like leveling up together. And you got these awesome items. It's kind of like an escapism. Well, now with crypto, because things are open, we have these open economies. You got three arrows capital with like billions of dollars who can go swoop in and buy up your market and like nerf your character, crush your character, like do all sorts of things.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  Dub.

• 41:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  They get like, right? And it's just like, I don't want all this status and, you know, bling and like all this, you know, the whales to dominate my game. So get that out of there. And I wonder if that's a more sustaining problem with crypto games. What do you think about this?

• 41:22Speaker 05

  It's not a problem. It's choice, right? It's like, then don't play blockchain games. And that's cool. There's going to be so many experiences that are not going to ever be on chain that don't have to partake in that. And I absolutely get it, right? Like, you don't have to stress over this stuff. You don't have to worry about like, you have venture coming in and buying NFTs and buying land, driving up prices, having to rely on guilds in order to get any good items, right? That's cool. Like, that is, those are great, very reasonable and pragmatic arguments. And I would say blockchain gaming is not for you. And you should go continue to play those great games that are not on chain, that don't have those type of game experiences, those types of game mechanics. And that's great. And it's really that simple. You know, it's like, it's like if we're thinking about, you know, music.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  And I'm just like, no, Ryan, like you really like rap is, I can't tell you how motivating rap music is for me. Like, you really need to listen to rap. And you're like, I just like country. It's like, no, dude, but every, everything should be rap, really, you know? And I really think music should just be rap. It's, it's like, that's why I'm like, these are very basic kind of like, human conversations that for somehow get in the mix. It's like, that's totally great. Video games should provide escapism. That's awesome. I am a little bit different. I actually like a little bit of a combination of both. I like playing a game like Valorant that's highly competitive. And I like spending, you know, irrational amount of money on cosmetic items that do nothing to make me better in the game. And guess what? You and I are just different gamers and that's cool.

• 42:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, country and rap, like rap doesn't take anything away from country. Now you get these like, country rap mashups that are really, you know, people like that too.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  Exactly. And then you get games like, you know, Ember Sword that are coming out, caveat, you know, I'm an investor in it. But it's, it's on chain, off chain, right? And so it's like, cool, maybe you never want to do the on chain experience, right? Like, maybe you never want to participate in the marketplace and that's cool too. So, yeah, I think, I think I just take so much issue. It's like, you have 3 billion people that are playing video games. Let, let everybody have whatever they want and create something for everybody. That's why the gaming industry. It got to 3 billion people because instead of just making like hardcore games that appealed to hardcore gamer nerds, they started to make games that became much more broadly appealing and started to feel more inclusive and allowed more people to play and participate. It didn't become a male dominated industry anymore. Mobile gaming changed that, more casual games.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  It's just another, you know, segment of the industry that we should be embracing. And instead, you know, I think people, again, it goes back to just the conversation is an absolutes.

• 43:41David Hoffman?

  Hang on, I actually want to take the other side of this debate. So if I'm going to take the crypto maximalist side of things, I kind of view crypto as like the internet where, you know, one, at the early days of the internet, people thought it was bad. People hated it. It was going to ruin everything. But then the internet came and became the foundation for every other communications platform that's out there. Radio are now, is now podcasts, you know, TV is now YouTube, newspapers now newsletters, etc. And like, and that's how I perceive crypto to be like, it's a foundational platform where if it's an asset, it's going to become a crypto asset eventually. Now, there's plenty of games that do not have assets. There's, there's like,

• 44:25David Hoffman?

  you know, lots of games where I don't know, they're puzzle games or whatever. You don't actually have like an inventory. And so those games I think are irrelevant from this conversation. But I do think that any game that has in-game assets will eventually become crypto assets just by in the nature of they become upgraded and elevated to have properties that they would never ever have before. And they also didn't lose any of the properties that they started with.

• 44:51David Hoffman?

  What's your take on that?

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think you start talking about different games. Like you guys talked about like WoW, right? You can highly disrupt WoW if you put all of those games, you know, the all of those items in that's kind of goes back to the Diablo 3 auction house argument. But you also can play like God of War. And there was never like an ownership element there in digital items where it needs to be. And so I kind of look at like, you made a great example about like YouTube disrupting TV. It did massively, but TV still exists, right? And yeah, it's obviously on the decline, but it's still there, right? Now, people started to say like, okay, I'm coming over here. And it became easier and easier, right? It becomes available on mobile. Internet gets better for mobile, right? Content gets better. You actually have an incentive for creators to create content now with monetization incentive, right? So yeah, I'm not saying that things won't maybe shift more and more over to some of these

• 45:33Speaker 05

  things. And not everything has to be highly disruptive that, you know, three euros capital comes in. And yeah, maybe they bought all the like, the 100 red line AK-47 skins in Counter-Strike. And so now they're like 10 each a piece. But it's okay. It's a cosmetic. They're not playing, they're not, it's not a, you're not paying for that to win. You're just paying for a cosmetic or a unique digital item. So that's the other thing, too. It doesn't even necessarily have to be highly disruptive to escapism either. You just, Ryan, you just might have really shitty, boring skins, and I might have all the crazy looking exotic ones. But at the end of the day, our guns have the same attributes when you and I are playing one on one in Counter-Strike, and you know, you'll probably beat me, right? And it doesn't matter that I have these crazy cosmetic items that I own.

• 46:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  I am such a NFT boomer, that may be more true than you know, Ryan. You may have all the better items.

• 46:20David Hoffman?

  Ryan, you keep bringing up the Diablo Auction House, which is, I actually had a front row seat to the auction house. Diablo is one of the games that I've played the most. And I watched the arc of the auction house come and go. And for listeners that don't, aren't familiar, Diablo is a loop based game. You go around, you play it, monsters drop items, some items are rare, some items are really rare. And then in Diablo 2, they had off chain, like off chain marketplaces, these are the crypto terms, just like third party vendor websites that were actually against the rules of the game itself. But people, the desire to find a really good item was so strong that people would violate the rules, hope that they didn't get caught. They would go on to a

• 47:01David Hoffman?

  third party website and buy an in-game item for actual dollars with like PayPal or whatever. And then they would meet up with someone in game to have the asset given to them. And this was in Diablo 2, and Blizzard made it in Diablo 3, they just instantiated that whole concept right into the game itself. And so you could, you could straight up buy a sword. And I remember, I remember when somebody bought a $70,000 axe or something, and it just blew up in headlines. And this was back in like 2000, and like, you know, 2010 or something. So like $70,000 in $2010, before crypto was around, right? Like, mind blowing. And the community hated it. It just ruined the game. People, for all the same reasons that we're seeing

• 47:46David Hoffman?

  NFT hate these days, we saw, we saw the community just, you know, decide that the auction house was just not good. And Blizzard sunsetted it. They, they took it off of the game.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  But, you know, that's right. But the, the reason why they hated it was in order to try to combat that and fine tune it, they had to change the drop rates of legendary items and so forth. And so now all of a sudden you're playing it. The, the economy got messed up because now you're playing 12 hours and it's all common loot, right? Because it started, and so the auction house actually really did make it a terrible gaming experience. That's why I think it is a fine line of balancing those two, but that, everything else is very correct. But it's like how they had to combat it at first was to tune the drop rate where basically you just play all day long. And it's just like common loot and that's not fun at all either, right? Uh, so then it made it so, well, the only way I guess I can get the loot I want. It like exasperated that issue. It was like, then I gotta buy, right?

• 48:39Speaker 05

  And then as a gamer like Ryan, the escapist gamer is like, this sucks ass, you know? And it did. Um, so that's kind of what happened, right? That's why you gotta be like, that's a, that's a very complex thing to, to balance, right? And I think that people are, there's not a huge incentive for the game publishers to balance it, right? They're like, we make a ton of money anyway. This is a pain in the ass. We could actually ruin our entire game that we spent, you know, nine, 11 years building, all because we wanted an auction house for what, right? So that's the other issue too.

• 49:10David Hoffman?

  And I want to connect this conversation to another thread that we've been, we've been pulling on so far. Ryan, you talked about how you didn't come into web three because of where it is now. You came into web three because of where it's going. And I think one of the reasons why there's so much like, uh, just like vitriol and hate about NFTs. And then there's vitriol and hate about the people that hate NFTs and we're coming out of the extremes. Is because right now largely crypto gaming is mostly an idea more than it is actually games. Like everyone is ideating on potential futures and there's investment about like what it could look like. We have some, we have some, you know, real use cases like the Axie Infinity and some other games. But really the industry that we're talking about, like

• 49:51David Hoffman?

  Crypto itself is actually mostly in our own imaginations. We know it's coming. We just don't know how or when or why. And what we didn't have with the Diablo auction house is a highly adaptive iterative experimentation cycle that we are seeing in crypto. And like the auction house was was legacy tech. It was TradFi rails and you can't experiment like that. It's not open. It's not, you know, Diablo was a single game from a centralized company where Ethereum and gaming is open and permissionless, opening it up to more experimentation. And I'm hopeful that all the NFT crypto gaming haters out there,

• 50:28David Hoffman?

  which are totally justified in their hate today, have their, become convinced about NFT and gamer and in-game assets and this whole ecosystem later, because we've been able to experiment and iterate and actually answer to their very justified qualms that they have today. How do you feel about this?

• 50:48Speaker 05

  I like 100% aligned with everything you just said. I think too, like when people realize it's not infiltrating all games and every game and every game type, they'll be great. Once they have a better understanding of the changes in tech and carbon footprint, they'll be great. Once it's not such a like, NFT isn't in your face all the time, they'll be great too, right? Because what will happen is they're just gonna, like I said before, they'll just start playing and they'll have a great game experience and it'll be on chain and it'll be what it is, right? I think the other thing too, is the games that you see today, you know, if you're into like high polished AAA games, deep development cycles, you know, that those games don't exist on chain right now.

• 51:26Speaker 05

  So when you also look, I'm like, okay, if you are open-minded gamer, right, and you look like, I don't really want to play Zed Run or Axie Infinity, right? Because I like high polished AAA games. And that's fine, because a lot of what you're seeing for these games are, they're focusing on the, the, the economy part first and the game development second. And that's fine, because we're going to learn a ton and we already are. You know, look at everything Axie's learning, you know, with SLP and burning and balancing all that is they had to grow this huge user base over. So ton of learning that needs to happen on this side and it's great. And these are, you know, the first movers to this space and they're obviously benefiting from being. First movers and that information will be shared over time.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  And I think the thing that I'm excited for, that I feel lucky to have the privilege of having some visibility into what games are coming a couple of years out that are going to take a couple of years to develop. And I know that when those come out, there will be a lot of gamers that are going to be like, I want to play that game. They don't even care about this conversation of crypto or blockchain or anything like, I want to play that game. And I guess we have to play that game. I'm going to have to set up, you know, a MetaMask account. That's cool, right? You know, and I'm going to have to transfer fiat into this token. That's cool. I've been doing that for years, you know? And they'll just kind of like all of a sudden become part of crypto. And I think obviously games are going to be the biggest funnel for onboarding people into the space.

• 52:43David Hoffman?

  The layer two era is upon us. Ethereum's layer two ecosystem is growing every day and we need L2 bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a layer two life. A cross is the fastest and cheapest and most secure cross chain bridge. With a cross, you don't have to worry about the long wait times or high fees to get your assets back to the layer one. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. Across its bridges are powered by UMA's optimistic oracle to securely transfer tokens from layer two back to Ethereum. Across is critical ecosystem infrastructure and ownership is being handed over to the community. You can be a part of this story of across by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of a cross.

• 53:24David Hoffman?

  If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets between ETH, optimism, Arbitrum, or Bova Networks. Bankless 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?

• 54:06David Hoffman?

  No matter how big or small your idea is, 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 Bankless. If you're going Bankless, you need MetaMask. This is your tool to unlock the world of DeFi without giving up custody over your private keys. MetaMask is both a secure in-browser wallet and also a secure bridge for your hardware wallet. You can now trade tokens on any DEX or aggregator. MetaMask Swap gathers real-time pricing information across all the DeFi exchanges, allowing you to select your best price while getting all the MetaMask benefits of self-custody, lower gas costs, and increased transaction success rates. MetaMask also has a fantastic mobile wallet that I use when I'm out and about, which I use to collect PoApps, NFTs, and do all my DeFi things while I'm away from home.

• 54:51David Hoffman?

  If you haven't downloaded MetaMask, you gotta try it out. Web3 wouldn't be the same without it. Download MetaMask for desktop and mobile at metamask.io and load up your Trezor, Ledger, Lattice, or Keystone hardware wallets so that they too can get into the world of Web3.

• 55:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  So let's talk a little bit about this, Ryan. So you spent a lot of time in kind of the belly of the Web2 beast, if you will, right? And by the way, I just want to say, going through this conversation so far, I love kind of Web2 builders who are entering this space now, like your cohort and your class adds to some diversity of thought to the existing kind of crypto natives of the world. And what I really see is the strength is that you're just so damn practical. It's just all about like, how can we just get more people into this? Build the utility of these games and like, forget about all of the debates and like, let's just get more users in these games. And I, you know, obviously, David and I are decentralization maximalists.

• 55:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  We very much are here for the values of this space. But the thing is, those values will still persist as long as they're embedded at the base layer. And so now, kind of the game has moved towards, can we get more and more people on these things as quickly as possible? And I think that's why a lot of the Web2 builders of your cohort are going to add a tremendous amount of value. Because you guys are like, just like, let's just do it. We're so practical, like, we're just very practical about it. But let's talk about Web2 for a minute, because we want to get your thoughts on Web2. The Googles, the Facebooks, the Twitters, the Twitches of the world, let's talk about that as an incumbent group first, and then we'll talk about gaming studios. But like

• 56:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  the social media incumbents, the fangs, that sort of thing, do they see Web 3 as an opportunity, or do they see it as a threat?

• 56:39Speaker 05

  I think the answer is probably a little bit of both, right? I think the unique thing, these companies, their user bases are in the billions, right? And so a lot of the question is, how much, when you have billions of users already, how much do you need decentralization, right? How much is it beneficial? How much can you recreate without actually needing to build it on blockchain, right? So like, you know, look at like a Twitch, right? You have a subscription business that, you know, on a channel level, people pay $4.99 a month to, right? Well, they could add utility to that, they could put that on chain, you know? People could then be like, oh, I've had this item for this long, or I'm in this tier. You could do all of that, you could basically make it an NFT, right? Do they need to do that is another question, right? I would argue that there's a lot of good reason to say they don't need to, at least not now, right?

• 57:25Speaker 05

  The nice thing about their size is they have the luxury of being able to pay attention to the space, observe it, and then make decisions on how they want to accelerate and onboard into it. I do think the technology that they will like, it would be in their best interest to lean into it, to better understand it, and to have some subsection of their business operating on the chain. I think it's cool, like you see YouTube posted Web 3 PM rules, right? You know, so, and you're seeing this across the space. So I welcome them. I think, I don't look at it, I think it's like, we should have open arms for all of these major Web 2 platforms to figure out their, you know, what they're gonna do on chain. I'm excited to talk to everybody from Instagram, to Pinterest, to YouTube, to Twitter, to Facebook, and everybody in between, right?

• 58:10Speaker 05

  And figure out what part of their business makes sense to start considering for being on chain. And I think they will, and I think inevitably, they're going to have to address it and have some part of it. And those with bigger user bases and bigger businesses have the luxury to sit back. But I do think this will get, this will heat up over the next couple of years, right? And as, as, as... Blockchain could be potentially threatening to centralized businesses long term. How do they lean in to pivot, right? So these are open ended questions, but right now I look at it as they could be highly complimentary in one validating the technology and two, opening the aperture of users funneling into on-chain experiences.

• 58:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  And how do you think that happens? So we're seeing like, you know, Twitter incorporate NFT, authenticating NFTs into their profile pics, right?

• 59:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  TikTok is doing some things too. YouTube has made some headlines recently. I don't know many of the details there about getting more aggressive, doing more in the NFT space. I'm sure you know far more about that than I do, but like a YouTube or Twitch. How do you anticipate if, if, if you were still in charge of a kind of a YouTube's blockchain and NFT strategy? What would be the first features that you would add? And where do you expect this to evolve first?

• 59:34Speaker 05

  I'll use Twitch as an example to save myself from, from any, any issues, you know, since I was at YouTube. I love what they're doing, but a great example for like what you're already even seeing like, take Twitch, a video platform, right? Twitch has clips, right? There are clips that are super prolific and that everybody knows them and can, and can reference them. Whether it's, you know, Ninja and Drake's moment or an esports tournament. Yeah, awesome to mint those, right? And be able to mint those today and then have ownership over it, right? I think you could start to think about your currency as it, right? They have, they have bits, you know, like what, what does that turn into? If it's like an on-chain token experience and allows for some actual ownership, you know? Obviously it sits under Amazon and these are like tough challenges, but you know, like that would be really cool.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  And if bits had some kind of governance token decision-making on product roadmap, right? You can't obviously build based off of committee. It's a ridiculous concept that you can just like have all of these different topics and deliberate with the community on. But you could also start to make big decisions. I'll give you an example, like say, you know, I was running Twitch and you had governance tokens. What would you put up like, do you want us to focus on VOD? Or do you want us to focus on short form content? Or should we build more live features? Like, take a governance token and put that to, and then let's actually live by that token and not use it as a suggestion, but actually the outcome of that decision making. Let's actually build that way, right? And so I just think these are great examples of things that they could do to integrate over time where,

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  yeah, it's still very centralized in a lot of ways, but they have, they start to incorporate some of these behaviors that are allowing for that and enabling it. This is where I would start to focus. I also think like having an NFT around a creator is really interesting because there's like utility that you can build behind that. You know, whether it's meet and greets and discounts on nurture or whatever it is, right? So, yeah, I think like there, and Twitch has done a great job of getting close to that. If you even look at, you know, there's like channel points, you know? And so, you know, you go into like Ryan and David to be streaming, like who's gonna, who's gonna win this, you know, match? You know, Ryan or David? So like, there's even some of that. So I don't know. I think there's a lot of things that they could start to do that would be really interesting in the space that people would like.

• 1:01:38Speaker 05

  If you just remove the idea of, if you remove the term, the acronym NFT, and you just talked about the technology, I think people would be fascinated by it.

• 1:01:47David Hoffman?

  There's two themes that I think are colliding in this conversation that I want to go ahead and just get right into that, that collision point. The first thing, Ryan, you talked about how Axie Infinity is really good at an economics game. You know, people don't play Axie Infinity because the graphics are AAA plus. They don't play it because it's the most fun game in the world. They play it because there's this really interesting economics element behind it. And it's really the economic element of Axie Infinity is, is what that game is. This, the visuals, the skin is just if minimum viable skin to make that economics game fun. And that's what the crypto gaming, the web three gaming side of this world is really, really good at. Like we are building up the economics side of this thing because that's the new thing that's new.

• 1:02:29David Hoffman?

  On the other side of the spectrum, we have things like Activision Blizzard and EA that are really, really good at making very high fidelity, high graphics, very in-depth, lore-rich games that we are, we all know that exists to this day. And there's, there's, and The promise, the goal of crypto games is that we get to maximize both. And that's something that is completely unexplored. Axie has like definitely pioneered crypto games. EA, Activision Blizzard has pioneered fun visuals, fun stories, fun, fun gaming mechanics. And we're trying to collide these two things while maximizing both of them. Meanwhile, the other, the other part of this conversation that we're talking about is that the, the brain drain from web two to web three.

• 1:03:15David Hoffman?

  Like you are no longer at YouTube because you had to go to Polygon because a lot of the people that get crypto pilled can't stay at their web two trad job because it's not enough for them. The itch isn't scratched enough. And so, and I've seen this time and time again where like even, for example, Coinbase has had to hire non crypto people because they needed to grow out the company to become large enough. And there just wasn't enough crypto people around. And so Coinbase got just kind of like lagged behind because there wasn't enough true native crypto people to make Coinbase the crypto native company that everyone wants it to be. And so I'm worried that like games like or companies like Activision Blizzard or EA just won't be able to find

• 1:03:57David Hoffman?

  the crypto people to add good economics into their games because all the good crypto people went to the, the teams like Axie Infinity or like Polygon. So how, how do we collide these two worlds? How do we get the, the traditional legacy incumbent gaming studios to have really, really good economic elements to them? And how do we have all the good economic games become like extremely vibrant and rich? Is it going to be like mergers and acquisitions? How, how is this going to happen?

• 1:04:26Speaker 05

  No, I love it. That everything you just described, I agree with. And this is exactly what I want Polygon Studios to be, right? Because I think what you're going to have at, at this point is you're going to have a, you, you are going to have this huge gap in talent. So you're going to want to figure out how to tap into people. I would like a part of our studios team, particularly the game design team, to have a mixed background of traditional game development and also understanding of like tokenomics and game design imbalance and have that as a service. So that when they are thinking about game development, so Activision Blizzard, it's like not like, they're not going to just like. Turn all their games into blockchain games, but when they, the day comes, and I think it will, that they knock on our door and they're like, look, we got a new IP coming out. We want to make a new game, a blockchain-based game.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  Everything David just said is true. We don't know, like, we don't know where these people are. We don't have anybody that's like great with tokenomics. Like, we don't understand what's working, what's not working. We'll be like, not a problem. Like, we got you covered. We have some of the best people in tokenomics. We have people that have made, you know, call duties in the past. We actually are going to sit in a room and we're going to help you along the way. And that goes back to the beginning of why I said, like, what studios value prop is, is it's not a tech conversation at that point. They're like, yeah, yeah, solidity, polygon, done, right? Not a problem. But how do we actually make it a great game? So that people want to be on it. And that's, I think, will be a huge offering of studios. So it is hard, right? You're going to have to find this mix of people. You're going to have to be patient with people that are interested and need to learn, right?

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  Um, and, you know, web two folks that will come over, but I think if like, we can offer it as a resource, we will be able to help, um, kind of bridge the gap between the space.

• 1:05:57David Hoffman?

  One, there's one thing I've noticed in the gaming conversation is, um, a frustration about the, the current state of, uh, the gaming studios, the big ones. The ones I've already mentioned, Activist and Blizzard, EA, um, some of the ones I can't, like, they're, they're kind of in that, like, too big to fail type state of, like, they are so big, they are so consolidated. And they've become like misaligned with their communities where their communities want them to like innovate and pioneer and take new risks. And instead, what they get are like microtransactions and loot boxes. Uh, and, and so like, there, there's, seems to be like a bunch of, uh, desire for disruption and innovation. That's not coming from the current gaming ecosystem.

• 1:06:39David Hoffman?

  And I'll, and that's leaving room for a lot of these newer studios to, to show up, but they don't really have the, the edge needed to really compete with them. But I think that might not be true. Once we start to talk about web three crypto games. Do, do you think there's a room where these, these newer crypto-enabled, crypto-funded, uh, games, uh, gaming studios of the future are the, like, the renaissance in gaming that we are actually looking for?

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  It might be a little much to like say Renaissance, but I think there is a macro level issue here that there's a ton of capital being deployed across the game space. Like, and we've never seen anything like this before. On top of the acquisitions that are happening, which we've also never seen before. I think at the end of the day, gamers are going to have a ton of optionality. And that is, that in itself will fragment the entire industry in a good way. Right? So yeah, there's consolidation of these big games and big entities. But there's so many different games coming out that appeals to such a broad user base that I actually am not as concerned about this like consolidation that maybe others are, because I see all these games on the horizon that are funded by big venture and so forth. Right? I think what will be really interesting is what everyone's go to market strategy is.

• 1:07:47Speaker 05

  And I think the go to market strategy for blockchain based games in the creator economy is going to be really interesting versus, all right, traditional publisher. I have to write David a check to go play or stream my game for a month. Well, if all of a sudden I'm like, David, I got you tokens that you can participate in the upside. You know, they have a lockup period. I have NFTs that I'm going to give you. And actually, that's how I'm going to tap you as far as leveraging you as a creator and doing your brand deals and going to market. I think that gives you a unique advantage, both as a creator and both as the developer, which I think will cause a disruption. And I'll tell you what, I'm a huge believer that the gaming content creators, the YouTubers and Twitch streamers disproportionately drive the thought share around like what games to be able to play. And I think they are going to greatly benefit from go to market strategies

• 1:08:32Speaker 05

  that Web 3 games offer the creator economy that the Web 2 can't. Like, you know, it's like Activision Blizzard with Call of Duty. It's like, they can't be like, ah, here's, you know, well, Microsoft shares, but Activision Blizzard shares, you can participate in that way, right? It's like very different. So anyway, it's a little bit long winded that I actually think, although you see consolidation, I think you're going to see a bunch of disruption over the next couple of years. And Web 3 will be a contributor to that, also with the user base shifting of whales. But yes.

• 1:08:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say, because that was always my. My gut take that the content producers and streamers have a massive amount of influence in terms of like the tastes and preferences and which games are successful and which aren't. And it's funny to me that they haven't yet tapped into crypto economics, okay? Because like, a lot of other crypto YouTubers certainly have when they're talking about projects that they're investing in, that they're excited about. And maybe I want to touch on this, this content point really quick because we had Chris Dixon on the podcast a couple of months ago and we discussed this, this idea that Web 3 can

• 1:09:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  happen a lot faster than Web 2 because Web 3 has Web 2 to propagate itself.

• 1:09:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  And that is such an asset that I think we have right now with all of the YouTubes and Twitches and all of the social media that are already up and active and live. What do you think content's relationship is between like crypto, with crypto gaming? Do you think that content will be and streamers will, will start to propagate crypto gaming? And is that a bull case for it? Do you think that's a reason why it maybe happens sooner than people expect?

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  I don't know that if it's something, if it will happen sooner because I think at the end of the day, a content creator doesn't want to stream a game that they're not passionate about and they won't just shill games, right? Like, it's very obvious, you know? So it's not like NFT projects where people are just like pumping NFT projects because they're a content creator, right? You don't, you don't want to stream 100 hours a month, a game you don't like. You don't want to upload 30 videos in a month of a game you don't like. So right, first and foremost, there has to be quality games that come over.

• 1:10:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  But do you think, let me ask you though, Ryan, do you think that changes if they're getting like very wealthy on these crypto games? Right, I know that's the case now.

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  I don't think, so there's a lot to unpack even in this conversation, right? Because then all of a sudden, when they're streaming games that have like volatility and are ongoing, like free economies, it's like almost you're playing a video game, but it's also like somebody that's streaming trading live, right? At the same time, you know? I think it's really like, once they get into a game, there, then it's easier to talk about how they actually stay within that game because the, you know, the economics that the developer offers them to participate. anticipate in it long term and that's you know a lot some people are like oh you can't do that I saw you know like GHO getting crap about and I wrote back I'm like it's absurd all the top creators are getting deals from game publishers to play their games you know when they launch and market them and so forth I think the thing that creators haven't so content creators when they look at it it's really daunting to learn about crypto right it you

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  know it's I think you guys for your background and how long you've been in it really take for granted how deep your expertise and knowledge is and how daunting it is to get into the space and understand all these things it's very very intimidating and the learning curve is really really steep right and so I think you need two things to happen you need time to learn and I don't think the I don't think the desire to learn is going to happen until there's a game that they're really interested in now all of a sudden they have to care and they want to care about it right and then all of a sudden they're going to figure out they'll have the agents and managers that are going to help them understand like your deal is a token deal it's not a check you know for marketing right and this has a lockup period what the heck is a lockup period right like what does that mean for me what kind of disclosures do I need to have as a content

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  creator right this is just gonna take time but it's gonna happen all this is gonna happen it's like very clear to me all this is going to happen but you need time and something needs to be a catalyst for wanting to learn you know mine was like general intrigue creators when they find a game that's blockchain and their economics change because of it in a good way and yes they'll learn but that's my that's the that's the biggest issue there

• 1:12:37David Hoffman?

  another thing I want to collide in this conversation I'm about to bring up right now I joke with on the on the on the show a number of times that there's three things that I know for a fact that crypto has produces products one is money we're really good at producing self sovereign money another one is yield defi is really really good at making yield and the third is content crypto people love content there's just never ever enough content they just want more of it they want more of it and we were talking earlier about how like once upon a time the the gaming industry was perhaps like or the the the rest of the world was like oh we're gonna make content about people watching people play video games like that's not never gonna work and like it seems like that ecosystem that side of gaming is like almost as big

• 1:13:22David Hoffman?

  Is the gaming ecosystem itself, as it turns out, gamers also love content. So when we, when we collide these two things, uh, what, what do you think the future of crypto gaming? Content intersection looks like, like how big of an industry, how big of a TAM do you think this is?

• 1:13:38Speaker 05

  Oh dude, the inflection point of what will happen in the space, like when a good game comes online and creators start creating content around that is going to be like significant. Think about, um, you know, the one thing I even look back in the YouTube days, it's like, you know, no one really watched mobile games, you know? Like it wasn't really a big thing to watch mobile games. Now you look at it, it's like you have PUBG mobile and green of free fire and all these different games that kind of come up. And it creates like another leg up in this industry, right? And mobile games in this, uh, in this particular instance. So I think there's two good things about that. One, as somebody who is recently learning, right? Relyed heavily on YouTube as a way to learn, right? There is some great channels, podcasts, whiteboard crypto, your podcast, right? Where all of a sudden, if you're interested, there's no excuse on not to get brought up to speed as quick as possible.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  So that's great. The same thing is going, now when it's like, you have to be kind of into like web three, early days, DeFi to like care about some of this shit, you know? What's going to happen is like, when it's gaming, you know, and all of a sudden you go back to like, oh, this is awesome new game that came out. I'm a big streamer. I'm playing it right now. Here's how you set up your wallet. Here's how you buy, here's how you get into it. All of a sudden you're like, oh, we just got another hundred million, you know, people into crypto and I don't even know if they really realized it. And so I do think content is, you know, key, right? To use the cliche saying, and it will be the, the next big inflection point. So I think we see a lot of experimenting the next 12 to 24 months, and it's only going to take one game. Look what Minecraft did to YouTube. You know, Minecraft has been the largest game for a decade on YouTube, never been dethroned, right?

• 1:15:05Speaker 05

  You know, just hit a trillion views on the platform. That game materially changed the entire course of history in the games industry, both playing video games and watching video games. You get one game that's blockchain like that. It, it'll, it'll, it'll absolutely change all of what we know about the space in a material way. And I think we're like, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire and I'm seeing a lot of smoke in the space right now and I'm excited for it.

• 1:15:30David Hoffman?

  I think that's probably going to be how we solve crypto's PR issues with the anti crypto gamers, the anti NFTers. It's gotta be through user-generated content. If we can get, because there is no, like Ryan and I, we're gonna do our best to promote NFTs, but we're crypto natives, right? Like, people aren't gonna trust us because we're not, we're not gaming streamers. But I think when we find a way to make a crypto game that can also produce crypto gaming content around it from the gamer side of things, that PR, the positive PR, that's going to be what educates people to get more private keys, to open up MetaMask, to be more okay with NFTs, to lean into it. I think that makes sense, sense to me as like the best, most viable way to like solving crypto's

• 1:16:15David Hoffman?

  PR issues with all the anti crypto people these days.

• 1:16:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, and going up that funnel, it's when you have great products, right? They'll speak for themselves. Like, it won't be a PR issue because great products will tap, will be tapped by content creators, which will then be amplifying that great product that other people will dive into as well. And so, the PR issue will stop when we're talking about the actual PR issue and we're talking about like, hey, we're on, I'm on this podcast in three years, and we're talking about like, this awesome game that came out, how many users are playing it, how many people love it, and we're not even having these conversations. And I think that's the inflection point. And we're close, man. I think, you know, look like, we're not, we're not too far out. That's why I don't really engage in the topic too much. But great products will solve for all of this, and we're, we're very close to having great products in this space.

• 1:17:01David Hoffman?

  You touched on this a little bit, but I wanna head on this topic, I wanna take this topic head on. The cool thing about assets in games, or crypto assets in general, is that they can transcend ecosystems. You know, you can take your one DeFi token and go into a different DeFi protocol with that. And you can all, and that's, this is the magic of crypto games, you can, you can play your game, and then you can take your assets elsewhere, outside of the ecosystem. And do you see a world, how, how do you see the world of like, There's assets inside of games, like some games' gold that's native to that one particular game, could in theory be connected to the content ecosystem around that same game. So like you're grinding in the game, you get the gold, but then there's content around

• 1:17:44David Hoffman?

  that game that also could use those same economic assets as compensation, referral fees, referral links, I don't know. Like, how big, how important do you think the link between the financial compensation or financial rewarding of content producers about the game itself? Do you see this as part of the future world of crypto gaming?

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  I do. I think, you know, I think the incentive model for creators to create content around the game is going to change, right? And right now, it's very basic. It's like, I like this game, this game gives me viewership, so therefore it equals money. Or I got a check written to play this game and it's good enough for me to not feel like I'm shilling it, right? It's pretty much your monetization right now in the creator economy. I think what you just discussed will happen, but the complexity is like tenfold, right? When you start to talk about all of that, right? Like accruing tokens because of content you created or viewership that you generate and all of that. I think it will happen, but that complexity is so high that it's going to take a long time for people to really understand that.

• 1:18:47Speaker 05

  But I do think it is inevitable because the incentives are better aligned for everybody.

• 1:18:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have this other primitive that we've developed in crypto, which is somewhat interesting, called a DAO, right? Decentralized Autonomous Organization. But it's just, to me, you know, from World of Warcraft and Diablo days, it's like a guild. It's just kind of like, you know, a gaming guild that where you might earn loot and treasure and prestige with your friends. Do you think that this is going to be important for us? What do you think about DAOs and how does that tie into crypto gaming?

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, spending time thinking about guilds and DAOs and so forth, as, you know...

• 1:19:24Speaker 05

  I think with that, yes, a certain part of it is, you know, like some of it though, you know, of guilds of being like asset ownership, particularly beneficial to play to earn games, because it helps with like yield generation and so forth is a whole different topic. I mean, DAOs will be interesting. I mean, it's like the hot, you know, leaving ETH Denver. It's like apparently everything is now a DAO. So we'll see what their place is. But I agree, right? Like if you think about like going back to World of Warcraft, you know, you have this group of people, you're making group committee based decisions on things that you should be doing, how you want to represent yourself, how you want to invest, how you spend time. I can see, you know, DAOs coming together, having tokens across a variety of games, making decisions based off of it. So yeah, I think it's like, it has a place,

• 1:20:06Speaker 05

  and it has a place in this world. I'm still kind of seeing what it is and what the value prop long-term is, both with guilds and DAOs, and delineating between those two and what that means for the space. I also think it almost warrants even another like follow-up conversation the other day of like, okay, we said Botchan Gaming is a subset of the gaming industry. Well, within that, there's like, you know, a pie chart of different types of games that will evolve over time. And, you know, guilds and DAOs will mean different things to some of those different games, like a play to earn game, or something that has that, you know, crafting or breeding into it and so forth. I'm an advisor for a company called Breeder DAO, right? And they have like a tech stack that just does a really, really good job of helping facilitate breeding. And, and I think that will have like, there's

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  gonna be like a whole tangential industry of businesses that are propping up in the games industry around this because of it. So it's, it's interesting space.

• 1:20:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it's super cool. And it's, you can tell something's organic when it, when it gets really weird. And crypto gaming is like really weird now. Breeder DAO, like, that sounds very strange. But, you know, that's what you get when you have something like Minecraft, which is sort of an open, open landscape for, for creators to build things on. I'm curious about this. So just tying off the, the established gaming industry incumbents, the existing game studios. So what do you think they do as a reaction to all of this? Because it seems early on that we have maybe three different reaction archetypes. Like the first is you attack crypto, maybe some are sort of doing this a little bit like Steam. Maybe they're blocking some crypto games. You're seeing a little bit of that.

• 1:21:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Then you've got the ignore crypto, which has seemed to be sort of the status quo for a lot of existing traditional gaming studios. And then you've got the embrace crypto, which I don't think we've seen any game studio come out and fully embrace crypto, right? Like, maybe they're dabbling. So what do you think? How do you think this is going to shape up? Do you think we'll get those three strategies? And how is this going to evolve?

• 1:22:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a couple of things to unpack there. I think the Steam thing, until you have clarity and feel like your users are

• 1:22:17Speaker 05

  are safe in the games that they play in, it's best to just take a ban to all of it until you have a more nuanced understanding of it. So I don't like it, but I certainly can appreciate it because there are games that you just don't want to enable because they're actually games that are malicious or bad behaviors. It's too much volatility and it's best to just actually, you know, rule with an iron fist until you have a better understanding of it. Actual set a rule set and guideline of what games you're allowed on the platform so that you can ensure the safety of your users on it. So I'm okay with Steam. My hope and optimism for Steam is that's what they're going to do long term. They're going to be like, these are games that we feel are safe. We've looked at them. We understand them. We understand the economy of the games. We know how they work. We know how they're positioning themselves to players. We actually feel safe with this being on store. So that's, that's one.

• 1:23:03Speaker 05

  The other thing is you ask like, kind of how they should look at it. Look, if I'm running a big games publisher right now, I'm right now putting a team together of saying, we should launch a new IP, a new blockchain based game, completely new IP. Put the whatever web two game developers that we have that are super interested in the space. I'm going to retain that talent. I'm going to put you all, spin you all up to work on a game. So I'm like, everybody who likes web three that is a game developer, tell me who you are and I'm going to let you come work on a team. Right now, instead of going to actually formally going to web three. And I put them on a project to start working on a game and a new IP. It's good for retention. There's only benefit of learning, right? Like all of a sudden, we're going to build out this great competency of what a blockchain game base is. We're going to actually probably learn a lot about games economy as well.

• 1:23:47Speaker 05

  That will help us with our off chain games, you know, and probably get smarter about what we can do there. Can we create some faux, you know, blockchain like experiences and so forth over there? And that's what I would do. So I'm hopeful they do that. I also think there's interest like, you know, with. Like, look, I think if you, if you think long term, there's an opportunity to generate more revenue off the game because it's a blockchain-based game. It's like, it's good to go explore that on a new IP and understand and better learn against that. And they have the resources to do it now with all this consolidation. I would rather be doing that, especially if you believe in like my free-to-play whale shifting thesis, right? That you would get ahead of it and mitigate that. So obviously I'm biased here because that's kind of what I believe long-term is the shift of whales.

• 1:24:31Speaker 05

  So you could hedge a little bit if you believe that in your, your, a studio by doing something like this. So it's like employment retention, it's knowledge and it's also, you know, this, you know, new foray into the, the games industry of trying something different.

• 1:24:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  This has been really cool, Ryan, and you know, thank you for spending so much time with us. As I said, like, uh, your cohort is injecting a whole lot of capability and energy into the space, right? This, this practicality that I feel like we need. You've got a lot of, Bagless has a lot of listeners who are very excited about scalability technologies, layer twos, like, you know, polygon, the polygon ecosystem in general. And you've signed on to develop the polygon ecosystem, not, not as much from a technical perspective, but just from like a, a community perspective, right? Enriching the, the ecosystem as a whole. So, uh, give us the pitch for, for why, why polygon? What do you think that this does for the ecosystem?

• 1:25:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're seeing more layer twos, uh, spend more time on their community in the ecosystem and less on the tech these days. What makes you so bullish on polygon? Why do you, why did you decide to, to sign up?

• 1:25:42Speaker 05

  So I'm pretty, so there's, thank you for asking that, actually. There's a lot of reasons. Um, I think one, you know, Ethereum is here to stay long-term, like full stop, right? Okay. So then you have this desire to want to develop on Ethereum. And I think Polygon is going to be and is the best way to do that. You know, with the tech stack that we have and will have in the future. And you also have to go back to kind of what I said earlier on. If you're like, what's the long-term Polygon bull case, if you will, is you've got to believe that in the long-term. People value the like the biz dev side, right? And the actual developer relationship side so much because the tech stack doesn't have a lot of, it's not highly differentiated from other opportunities, other offerings, right?

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  And so I feel like what we're going to be able to do now is the tech stack's already in a great place. We've spent a billion dollars on acquisitions in the last year on different ZK rollups and like Hermes and Zero and so forth, you know, that are inevitably coming online. That just enriches our developer tech stack long-term solidity, no brainer. Like, come on over, you know? But then I think it's going to be like, okay, but I want to work with people that are going to actually help me enrich my game, that are going to help me understand how to go to market, who are going to really help me build this big ecosystem, who are going to help me understand the creator economy and are going to be able to leverage all of those resources. And that's where the studios team is going to come in place. So I think of it as like this two-pronged approach of world-class tech and this world-class kind of development arm or studios arm, those two things merging together is really what's going to be really

• 1:27:10Speaker 05

  interesting. And I thought for me of like, well, then why do you join? It's great to be on a platform where you have horizontal visibility across the entire industry. I'm like learning about music and entertainment and, you know, we had doing something from Adidas to Prada to Ubisoft to Zedrun, right? You know, the crypto unicorns and everything in between, right? And so you get this great visibility of the space. And I appreciate how much they've invested and spent on acquisition of tech. And the thing that they're missing right now is truly that developer support. And so I think once we bring that into play over the next 12 months, you just have a really, you know, you're just really well positioned to work with everybody then.

• 1:27:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Ryan, we love to get practical at the end here. So tell us, are there any games we should check out on Polygon or, you know, in crypto in general? Or anything upcoming that we should watch out for in the in the gaming industry, like in the gaming ecosystem?

• 1:28:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I kind of threw crypto unicorns out there a couple of times because I'm actually pretty impressed by what that team has been doing. But I'll tell you, I'm already, I'm already in a lot of conversations with people that I think, that's why I'm like so bullish long-term. There's awesome, awesome games on the horizon. And that's all, you know, and they just happen to be games that are going to be built on blockchain. And I'm excited for all gamers to get their hands on that and what that means for the Web3 movement. But that's exciting. I appreciate you all having me on. It's been fun to talk about this. We probably could chat for hours on end about this topic.

• 1:28:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome. Yeah, we'll definitely have you on again, Ryan. I can't wait to see where this space evolves. You guys are doing a lot of the business development and the onboarding to crypto that I think the industry needs right now. So thanks for spending some time with us.

• 1:28:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:28:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listeners, got to end with some action items. We'll include a link to the Crypto Unicorns game that Ryan mentioned, also a link to Polygon Studios. And I think be on the lookout for some awesome games in the future is the message here. If you haven't tried some crypto games, then get your hands dirty. We have two other episodes on crypto gaming that we'll include in a link in the show notes as well. Of course, risks and disclaimers, none of this has been financial advice. ETH is risky, Bitcoin is risky, so is crypto gaming. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:29:28David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where

• 1:30:11David 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.