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Ada Jonuse of Lympo, The First-Ever Sports NFT Minting Platform, Plus: Dog Coin Boom, 1inch Crypto-Themed NFT Series, Doja Cat NFTs, And More...
Most people have heard that sports stars care about NFTs and crypto but most still don’t understand why. Learn more about NFTs in action as your hosts talk with Ada Jonuse on how she came up with the idea for her startup and how it achieved the success it has today. Lympo is a gamified sports NFT ecosystem that she co-founded in 2016. Ada’s an enthusiastic founder whose inspiration comes from many sources, including meditation, science, and art. In this episode, she discusses what it’s like to start out, identify where to pivot, and create deals that work. Join in as the crew explores the business side and the human element of how NFTs are changing sports.
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Ada Jonuse of Lympo, The First-Ever Sports NFT Minting Platform, Plus: Dog Coin Boom, 1inch Crypto-Themed NFT Series, Doja Cat NFTs, And More…
Welcome to another exciting episode. Stay tuned for how Lympo is upping the game for sports collectibles and fan experiences, details on which MMA fighters are taking big steps into NFTs, and the beautiful family story behind our guest’s most prized possession. All this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
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This episode features Ada Jonuse, a startup founder and women’s empowerment agent. Ada is the Cofounder and CEO of the blockchain company, Lympo, a gamified sports NFT ecosystem, including NFTs with IP rights of world-famous athletes and clubs. Lympo was acquired by Animoca Brands. After leaving European politics, Ada worked with high-tech startups in the US, later became an entrepreneur and startup advisor herself. Ada is also the Cofounder of Womenat, a network for women professionals. Ada’s aspiration is to work with great people on meaningful projects. Her inspiration comes from many sources, including meditation, science and art. Welcome, Ada. It’s great to have you here.
Sports NFT: Ultimately many stars and brands are going to interact with their fan base in this way.
Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.
It’s cool to connect with you through our friend at Animoca Brands, Yat Siu, who is one of our favorite episodes. It’s fun to learn about what that whole team is doing. I feel fortunate to have you here. Let’s dive right in. I know there has been some iteration that led you to this point with Lympo. How did the idea for Lympo come up? How did it get you to where we are?
We’re not a new team in blockchain terms. We started in 2017. In the summer of 2017, I started working on the first idea. Although years have passed but in crypto space terms, it’s like many years because so much has happened since then. The first idea that we had with Lympo had to do with sports and a healthy lifestyle more. We launched in 2018. We incentivized people to provide their health data and at the same time, get healthier with tokens. We did that for some time and then it didn’t go exactly as planned in terms of the business model.
Also, we’re not quite there yet. With the whole blockchain space, I believe that people should be rewarded for their data. This is going a little bit slower than we expected that the users would jump to decentralized applications, decentralized browsers and so on to take ownership of their data. We’re looking at like, “What happens very often in the startup life? Where can we pivot? What can we do with our knowledge and expertise? What is the next step?”
We met Animoca Brands in 2018. They were also investors in our company. We spoke about the situation. It turned out that Animoca was ready to acquire Lympo. Since then, we stayed with sports and athletes but we turned to the NFT space. We’re also following the philosophy of Animoca Brands and look a lot into gaming. We believe that gaming could be or is already the industry that is going to be affected by this emergence of the new technologies.
This is how it all came about. We’re at our first stage. We have our NFT minting platform live and various athletes were joined already. The sets have been dropped. Our users are getting the NFTs, selling on the secondary market. We’re working on the second stage where we’re creating our first game and working with various partners to enable our users to participate in play-to-earn games.
I wanted to follow up here. I know you’re doing things to merge the physical and digital worlds through the NFTs that Lympo produces. How exactly does that happen?
We believe that NFTs are more than only digital collectibles. When we release our NFTs, we think about how they’re going to be used in the ecosystem that we’re building. One of the first things that are going to happen is the holders of our NFTs will be able to stake them and get token rewards for that. The NFT is becoming like an asset that you can utilize further with the DeFi elements added to them. The next step is also going to be Star Tokens like social tokens of the athletes that we will release further on play-to-earn games.
We’re running our Lympo Auctions. This is where we thought it was nice and cool to get a unique, one-of-a-kind NFT. We have an auction of six cards so far and the next are following but in order to make it exceptional and more engaging because we believe in this engagement of the big fan base of sports fans, we thought that we could add some extra benefits and perks to those NFTs. Depending on the price for which the NFT was sold, the athletes are ready to meet the owner of the NFT, call them to interact, do some social media shout-outs or send some signed memorabilia.
People should be rewarded for their data. Click To Tweet
There are perks that go up to some kind of private poker event with a progress bar and go into a game to see the athlete. Some of these perks are valid for a number of years. If you want to sell the NFT, then these rights to get these perks are going to be transferred to the new owner. We believe this also increases the value of NFT. We’re excited to see how this works, what people appreciate and what they’re excited about. We want to address this audience.
It sounds like, as a means of comparison outside of the blockchain industry, a cameo on steroids with the true fan to athlete experiences in a lot of ways that aren’t even possible without blockchain technology. How has it been to convey these ideas to the athletes and their managers? I’m curious how they’ve responded to these possibilities. Were they like, “Stop, you’re blowing my mind?” Was it very easy for them to ingest what’s possible here?
It’s part of the challenge. Everyone has heard of NFTs but still how exactly this is going to work, what the lifetime royalties are, how the contract is going to look like, how the social token will look like and what their athlete is comfortable with because we’re going to host votes where the fans decide ultimately what they do in uncertain questions. The value in crypto is changing and that’s the reality. Sometimes you sign a contract with a certain value in USD of crypto. You fix the price on that day and then it can be more or less. Explaining all of these details is part of the journey.
Generally, the space is very receptive but then sometimes the devil is in the details. It comes to smaller things that we try to explain with other examples, show how other companies work and convince that this is pretty amazing to have royalties, for example, on every sale of the NFT forever, things like that and how valuable the fan token will be, the Star Token of that star and so on. We have great people working in our team. Also for some other athletes, we negotiate on behalf of Animoca Brands so that these IP rights can be shared with various projects. They have projects that have been along for some time where it’s a bit easier to explain what we’re going to do.
Is there a particular athlete or two that become a BFF where they’re super pumped about what you’re doing with the ecosystem and what you’re creating that you could speak to?
Josh may be asking, “How many steps away are you from Tom Brady?” I’m not sure but that usually comes up in an episode.
I’m going to make a prediction. I’m not going to tell it though on which athlete based on Ada’s background, but we’ll let her answer that.
It depends. I come from Lithuania. We have a strong background in basketball. I spent my childhood watching NBA games at nighttime because it was night in Lithuania. It was such a big thing and everyone was talking about that in school. When I was watching The Last Dance, it was so amazing to see all the history unfolding. I’m excited about the basketball players. For example, we have worked with a number of MMA fighters and also some women power so the latest auction was Rose Namajunas, an MMA fighter. She herself and her managers are excited about what we’re doing and about the space and get involved a lot. This is cool when we have people like that on board.
Rose is a badass. I have a feeling that her opponents are crying the night before each of their fights with her. She is a tornado. Tell us a little bit more about the actual Star Tokens. What are they? How can users engage with them? Are those related to the perks that you were talking about that can be staked for? Can you go into that a little bit more detail for us?
It’s a new project. We haven’t released any Star Tokens yet but it will work as a token of a personal athlete. The holders of that token can do various things. They can vote on certain decisions. Voting is also going to work like staking a token. If a user is voting, they will get a part of the reward pool that is associated with that vote and also even more tokens if they guess what the outcome is going to be.
We want to involve the community. We want them to talk about their votes, to get their feelings, to build their reputation. What we often see in our organization is that many people are following someone who has built their reputation over time and following their decisions, knowledge and expertise. We want to do that.
There are going to be various polls, lotteries and questionnaires where owning the token, you can enter those and qualify to get some prices. Especially for the Star Tokens, we have amazing prizes that include this direct interaction with the star because this is what this is all about. We want to make sure that fans have an influence on the stars.
We believe that ultimately many stars and brands are going to be interacting with their fan base in this way. Everything is going in that direction. We’ll see whether that’s in blockchain or not but it’s a super cool technology for that to verify the votes to have a decentralized organization. We’re going to launch the first Star Tokens in the upcoming months.
Is there a consideration to egalitarianism in terms of people that maybe don’t have as much disposable income to stake on their favorite stars being able to participate? How have you tried to balance that with also recognizing super fans that are willing to put their life savings into meeting, for example, Tom Brady or someone like that? What has been your thinking on that balancing act?
When designing the voting mechanisms, we were thinking about the maximum number of tokens that you can stake to vote. It’s more about the number of people who can participate in the vote. That’s also going to be limited to have some gamification elements there but even holding a smaller number of tokens, you will be able to cast your vote and be heard. We don’t want someone holding a lot of tokens to always decide the outcome because this is boring for everyone. Everything in the blockchain space, it’s quite often you do things for the first time. That’s the interesting part of it.
Sports NFT: If the token is doing good and things are running, then everyone is happy.
We’re ready to adapt to see how the audience reacts to what happens what our user base is like. We did the polls on the NFT designs. We asked what designs people like the most. We want to slowly transition to more and more DAO elements in the whole NFT ecosystem that we’re building. We are opening applications for athletes so athletes will be able to apply themselves to be on Lympo.
We want to let the community vote whom they want to see next. Maybe in the future, even crowd-fund for some IP rights that they’re super excited about and then have also community designers to design the NFTs. We’re going to be slowly transitioning to that because we think that the biggest power is the power of the community.
What’s so interesting about what you’ve shared with us are the elements of traditional lean startup philosophy that have been accelerated by blockchain technology and what’s going on in the NFT space. Jeff and I were doing lean startup events together. You might iterate on your company in a meaningful way every few months and that’s aggressive.
With the way technology has advanced and the ability to engage your community, you can make some micro-decisions by the hour that sends you on the right trajectory with this concept. Having the solution at the end of the road isn’t so important anymore as it is having that ongoing dialogue with your community and being as responsive as possible. It’s cool how you’re going about not gripping the wheel too tightly here.
I must admit. It has both nice moments and difficulties. Normally, when you create a product, you’re there sitting with your team. If you have delays, you go to the board and say what happens. You don’t have 10,000 people watching you in progress. In crypto, you have to deliver on the promise but sometimes maybe you have to test more or do something else.
I’ve felt a lot of pressure given the fact that there is a community around. They’re super curious, watching our every step and ready to say what they’re thinking. At the same time, these are the people who are supporting us and who keep on believing. We have community members who have also been around since the beginning of 2018. If the token is doing good and things are running smooth, then everyone is happy. During the crypto winter, not too many people are happy. There are a lot of emotions in that space.
You’ll appreciate this, Ada, because of the background you shared. We’re going to make sure that you hook up with Roman and get a DinoMonks. When you’re having these difficult days, you can go on their Discord and participate in a mental wellness session that is redeemable from your DinoMonks.
DinoMonks don’t hibernate during crypto winter. I saw some indications there was something special going on for Halloween with those.
The community side of it is so important. I was at a talk with this guy, Alex Sheen. He runs a nonprofit called Because I said I would, which is all about keeping promises and how important that is. We’ve lost that a bit in the age of technology and things moving so quickly with over-commitment and things of that nature.
I wanted to ask back on the topic of the greatest of all time drops and all these fun things you have going on. Have you looked into historical figures of the historical GOATs? Are you doing anything on the horizon from that context, maybe past greats like the Muhammad Ali’s of the world or these types of characters?
We have looked at some sports legends. We hope we’ll be able to announce something soon. I don’t want to over-promise and name names. There are names that we’ve known forever and they’re still active in the space. There’s just this emotion that is attached to whatever famous football or basketball player or fighter. NFT is also a great way to continue engaging with the fan base for these stars that are not even active in the sport.
The biggest power is the power of the community. Click To Tweet
It’s funny that one of the things that we haven’t seen as much of in this realm of digital collectibles via NFTs is that nostalgic throwback. When you think of collectible cards or figurines and things like that, it’s really, in most cases, rooted in these historical sports legends or other people of this ilk, not so much the latest stars that are coming and making an impact.
NFT has been the opposite. We’ve started with the new stuff, whether it’s new music or new moments with NBA Top Shots like the latest and greatest. I feel like we haven’t seen a major impact of where fans’ true nostalgia influences them. I’m excited to see it. Maybe you will have a deep impact in that category.
I think about Larry Bird. How cool would it be to do something with him in the basketball world? I ran into Chuck Liddell at an event. What you’re saying is so true. The energy I felt towards this man that I had seen knocked out so many people and paved the way in the MMA fighting world, UFC in particular is totally a different experience. If you can channel that for fans, that’s very special what you’re doing.
We hope to do our best.
I want to go back to some ongoing auctions and upcoming NFTs to be launched. What other launches are on the horizon for you all?
Many things are happening at the same time. We’re running our auctions until September 20th, 2021. Every few days, we announce a new athlete. They’re earning both on the Binance NFT Marketplace and others on OpenSea. This is an ongoing effort that is happening. At the same time, we’re working on new pools on our NFT minting platform. We’re looking forward to launch an eSports pool. We’ll see how quick we can be on that. That’s the audience that is excited, both about gaming, crypto and collectibles. For some people who are a natural fit for that, this is going to be the first thing.
We’re working with various partners on joint NFTs. We did cooperation with another Animoca company and game, REVV Racing. In this case, our users were able to get the key to the car, get the car, go and play. This way, we can deliver our promise to have NFTs and play-to-earn games earlier than our own games around. We’re looking into doing more with Sandbox a few more projects. These are the next things on our own map.
Do you race your Lympo car? Did you try that? It was super hard but fun.
I tried a few times but I admit I have to get better.
You need some extra hardware for that one. Some of the gamers have the steering wheels, gas, brakes and everything set up right there. I feel like that had to have been a requirement to kick ass at this game.
There has to be some work invested in that. I know my Cofounder, Tadas, started racing on F1 Delta and in the end, putting a team and the players together and sharing the resources. Cooperation is the key also.
I need someone to be like, “Let me hit the break while I’m working on the gas pedal because I just have cleaned the walls.”
We need an Edge of NFT pit crew.
We had a car in that game as well, the Edge of NFT race car. Ours was pink and cool. I’m sure yours was awesome as well.
We’re going to do some more with REVV also on some special cars and adding some of the IP rights that we have to transfer to their game and fans as well.
I’m excited about everything that you are doing. We’ll keep an eye on it. Taking a step back and looking at the NFT ecosystem as a whole, what excites you in terms of what’s existing or hasn’t yet been formed as game changers in the next wave of NFTs outside of your project and partners?
There is a general agreement that it’s hard to price the NFTs and various tools to do that. What I’m excited about is the various ways to utilize the NFTs further either owning a part of NFT, wrapping for a certain period of time, putting NFTs alone and stabilizing for a part of the price. It’s okay. We all get a lot of pictures where our ownership of that is registered on blockchain and this is a cool thing but for me, the question is like, “What’s next? What can we do with this asset class?” That emerged and that is huge.
Maybe one day.
That was fun.
Let’s hit some hot topics.
I love that show. That was the best.
Important Links:
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Doja Cat – Article
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Medium – Lympo
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Twitter – Ada Jonuse
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iTunes – Edge of NFT
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@EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
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Telegram – Lympo
About Ada Jonuse
Co-founded 3 startups and one international startup community. Exited Lympo.com to an Asian unicorn Animoca Brands. Released two crypto tokens and went through numerous crypto hypes. Excited about technology innovations with positive impact. // 2018 Women Technology Leader of the Year (Lithuania) // 2017 Emerging European tech star (by Google, Financial Times and other partners of the New Europe 100 list)