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August 16, 2023

Edge Of NFT At FWB Fest - Jeff Staple & Benny Giang

These conversations at the FWB Fest bring us to an engaging exploration of various topics, offering insights into our guest’s experiences in the world of NFTs, collaborations, and the evolving landscape of Web3. In this episode, streetwear pioneer Jeff Staple shares his initial encounters with NFTs, revealing his journey from tentative exploration to full immersion. Jeff discusses his authentic approach to collaborations, emphasizing the importance of careful vetting and meaningful partnerships. He delves into the concept of merging physical and digital goods within the NFT space, acknowledging the challenges while highlighting the exciting possibilities. Meanwhile, CryptoKitties co-founder Benny Giang, talks about the evolution of NFTs, the challenges and opportunities in different industries like sports collectibles and fashion, the concept of “token-bound accounts,” and how this new standard could empower NFTs to have greater functionality, including co-creation and interactions with AI models. He also discusses use cases across gaming, DAOs, infrastructure, and social platforms. Tune in for more!

Listen to the podcast here

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Edge Of NFT At FWB Fest - Jeff Staple & Benny Giang

We are at FWB FEST. It’s day one. I already meeting some awesome folks like Jeff Staple, who we’re going to chat with.

Thanks for having me.

It’s good to have you on the show. Most of you probably know who Jeff Staple is, but a little bit of background. He’s a creative visionary with work encompassing graphic design, fashion design, footwear design, and brand marketing. He’s the Founder of Reed Art Department and has worked on creative projects ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

He founded STAPLE in 1997, the New York-based pioneering streetwear brand and the infamous Pigeon logo that we all know and love. Mike Tyson loves it. He founded the lifestyle boutique, REED SPACE in 2002. He’s also the Creator and host of Hypebeast’s most popular podcast, Business of HYPE. He is one of the most prominent teachers on Skillshare. There’s a lot more, but let’s jump into it. I haven’t asked this question for a while, but it’s a question I like to ask you in particular. I’m curious. What was your first encounter with NFTs and what made you decide to jump in?

It is more widely like Web3. My first experience was I encountered through a friend Steve Jang, who’s a dear friend in San Francisco. He’s a partner in Kindred Ventures. He introduced me to a guy named Jacob who was starting a thing called Zora. That was my first interaction. He was trying to explain to me what Zora did, and I was having a hard time understanding it. I said, “Let’s drop something on Zora.” After I released a physical shoe on Zora, I began to understand the power of what Zora was doing.

You jumped right in.

That’s still in my mind like a pinky toe in the water because I have all these different things that I do. Doing one item release on it was a fairly low lift on my part and experimental. After Zora, my first experience with an actual NFT project was Gary Vee’s VeeFriends. In his VeeFriends collection, he has a couple of Pigeons, a Perspective Pigeon and a Persuasive Pigeon. When he posted the Pigeons from his VeeFriends collection, many people were tagging me like, “Your Pigeon needs to meet Gary’s Pigeon.”

That night, Gary and I got on a FaceTime call. We talked about how could the Staple Pigeon and the VeeFriends Pigeon do something together. We released what I think is probably one of the first physical apparel drops with an NFT project. Holders of the Persuasive and Perspective VeeFriends Pigeon got exclusive access to a Staple collection that we created that had both of the Pigeons on. That was bananas. As you know, Gary has an incredible community. They all flocked to us. It was crazy.

I’m an early VeeFriends holder and a big fan of what he’s done. I missed the memo on that. When did that go down?

I had the Bold As Fuck Bat. That’s so Gary. It’s definitely a favorite.

Those are my shepherds, then I have to shout out the one immediately after that, which is the Artifract guys. Right after the VeeFriends drop, I got in touch with Artifract, literally through the DMs. We began working on what would become the Meta Pigeon, which is where it stopped being like, “Am I going to do this? Should I trial and error this?” I went all in after that.

You had some great collaborators based on your pedigree and background, but I thought there might’ve been a little bit of apprehension, “Is this going to work?”

I went for it. I believed enough in the technology and the promise of the future. I’ve mentioned that in my talk. Creator royalties were a big part of it as well. As Benny was saying, everything on the blockchain is the present. It’s the now. It was scary. I was trepidious going into it. I’m a fairly cautious person in the sense that I didn’t dismantle my physical world stuff to go all over. I didn’t announce to my entire staff like, “Everyone, drop your t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies. We’re going in.” I did it strategically, but by and large every month that I see this experience go by, I know more and more that I made the right decision to go in.

The word phygital has some lovers and haters. Your reaction was pretty visceral. I get it. What do you call this world of mixing physical merchandise and digital collectibles?

I’m down to keep them separate, to be honest. I don’t like to say NFTs. I’m trying to train myself to not say that because when you say NFTs to certain people, you get, to me, two reactions outside of people who love NFTs. It’s either like, “I don’t know what it is. I don’t get it,” or like, “That’s a scam.” I’m trying to reverse out of saying that and more so calling it digital goods and physical goods. I don’t need to necessarily link them together with the word like phygital because I know what I’m seeing is that we’re going to do projects that are digital only.

There is no physical component to it. We’re obviously going to continue to do physical-only things, and then we’re going to do projects that are fun where there’s a digital component first and then a physical component after. I did another collaboration with Gmoney 9dcc. That was physical first, digital after you get the physical. I love the malleability of all of that. That’s what makes this super fun. I don’t need to be like, “We’re doing only physical projects from now on.” It’s dumb.

I try to force these two worlds together with some words that don’t make sense to anyone but the person who came up with the word.

Also, sounds terrible.

Let’s take a little bit of a broader perspective. The Staple Pigeon, I did a little recon on you. I was curious about it. It has to do with grit. I’m a Boston guy. You’re Jersey. Grit is such a critical part of the entrepreneurial journey. They don’t tell you how much grit you need in the good and bad times. I’m particularly curious how grit has influenced your creative process, independent of your entrepreneurial perspective.

It’s probably one of the biggest fuel contributors to what I’ve been able to accomplish. Sometimes I wish that I came from a family that had more money or more access. I wish my mom and dad made smarter investments when they were growing up and it would’ve been easier for me, but it is what it is. What I gained from that is what you call grit, what I often call hustle. It’s the ability to know that if you don’t work and get out of bed, you don’t eat.

Some people can stay in bed and eat. We’re not blessed to be in that situation so we have to hustle. A pigeon, strangely enough, was not only was it the same in the sense that it had the hustle to survive and eat, but by and large, most people hate pigeons. They’re pests and nuisances. They want to get rid of them. They want them to stop. When I was starting out in streetwear, creating my own line or painting sneakers and stuff, most people in my circle were like, “You are wasting your time. Stop. This is stupid. Why are you doing this?” I felt that dynamic of what a pigeon was going through. That’s why I adapted it as my mascot.

I can totally relate. I was the first guy in my family to go to college. I lived in a poor neighborhood outside of Boston when growing up. I went to a public university.

It’s all about public school.

People have said over the years, “You’ve got a lot of hustle and grit.” I didn’t know if I felt like it was a compliment or not, but I appreciate the word grit now more than ever because this is a bear market. The people that I relate to the most are the people who are still pushing boundaries in spite of market conditions.

I don’t think we’re in a bear market. I know this is a crazy stupid hot take, but where we came from at its height, it is down obviously. What’s Ethereum now in the US?

It is $1,800 or $1,900.

If there was a country in this world that gave you $1,800 of its dollars to $1, you’d fucking be on a plane to that country now with the things that you can consume in that country.

Bitcoin is hanging out at $30,000 for a long time. It was not at $30,000 in the previous bear market. It was at $3,000, $5,000 or $6,000.

We came from an era for the last few years where no one went outside. We were inside the whole time. The only thing we could consume was literally digital goods. Guess what? Your restaurant opened back up. You’re going to want to go out and eat, take a road trip, and go on vacation. All of that time and energy that you spent consuming and learning about digital goods is now being diversified and spread back out into the real world. This is not a collapse. This is a normalization of what it would’ve been if we didn’t have COVID. That’s my theory. I could be totally off-base and wrong. What I see is that if COVID didn’t happen, we would be right here it would’ve grown gradually to this point.

NFT Jeff Staple & Benny Giang | FWB Fest

FWB Fest: All of that time and energy that you spent consuming and learning about digital goods is now being diversified and spread back out into the real world. This is not a collapse. This is a normalization of what it would have been if we didn’t have COVID.

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I appreciate the take. I have not heard that perspective, but it makes a lot of sense. I’m going to process that.

Think about the currency thing. If the Yen offered me $1,800 to $1, I’d be in Japan, living there and eating great sushi now.

I’m going over to Korea and Singapore soon for Career Blockchain Week. I’m heading over there. Let’s talk a little bit about STAPLEVERSE. You started a long time ago. How has your vision of STAPLEVERSE evolved over that time based on what you’ve seen and what you personally have done in the space?

I always try to push the envelope and innovate. When I see everybody making a left, I try to make a right. I try to zig when everyone else zags. One of the things that I over-indexed on was a need to push the envelope and innovate where if I dropped a $10,000 Pigeon project at the height of the market, I probably would’ve made a shit ton of money, but instead, I tried to do innovative and different things. We did a burn toss mechanic.

We had different tribes and storylines in STAPLEVERSE. We’re doing it again. Frankly, with doing this ERC-6551. We’re the first project to ever embody that and have token-bound accounts. What I’ve learned is it could have cool technology, but the way you market it and story tell it needs to be dumb and simple. One analogy that I always think about that I tell my team is even though the iPhone has all this crazy new tech and built-in ability when you look at a billboard for Apple, it says, “Yellow. We dropped a new color,” even though they did all this crazy R&D built-in. All they talk about is yellow.

Yellow, the color or the thing is the low-hanging fruit to get you into the community. After that, you start watching YouTube videos like, “Did you know if you triple tap the Apple logo on the back, you can activate it to do certain things?” “I didn’t know that.” You start going into the wormhole. What I’ve learned with STAPLEVERSE and our project SAPIENZ is that we have to make it desirable to people who don’t have a wallet and don’t currently have an NFT. It’s something that is cool that they want to be a part of. Once they’re in, they can learn about token-bound accounts, ERC-6551, and all the goodness. We got to put a cherry on top of that cake before they get in.

You got to spark the curiosity.

It’s marketing 101.

Speaking of lessons learned, you’ve done many different collaborations with We2 and Web3 brands. I remember you talking a little bit about this at IRL Alpha in Venice, my hood.

That was fun.

That was a good night. A lot of good conversations and good people. I wanted to ask you. When you’re working with many different people, there’s always this potential collision with authenticity and what authentic means to you. I’m curious. If you’ve ever gone down a path with a brand or a collab that didn’t feel right and you had to hit the brakes, what was that like for you?

It hasn’t happened. I can tell you why because my early stage vetting process is quite long and drawn out and deep. I know other friends that shoot first, then ask questions later. What I mean by that is they’re like, “Let’s do a collab. Let’s do it. Let’s get in there and start doing it,” then six months in they’re like, “You’re like an asshole. I don’t want to work with you. Let’s back out of this contract.” Instead, I spend the six months having coffees and lunches with you to see if we can vibe then it’s like, “We should do a collaboration.” I have friends that are, “I’ve known you for years and we haven’t worked on something together.”

There might be a reason.

It’s like, “I love hanging out with you too. We are collaborating. We’re doing it over dinners, but when the timing is right, we will lock in and figure out how to do something.” Another streetwear NFT legend in the game is Bobby Hundreds. I 100% respect everything he does. We get along great. We are in the same world, but we’ve never done a collaboration. When we do, it’s going to destroy the internet, but until then we’re trying to figure out how we lock in. I take a long approach and figure out partners before we get into a relationship.

I appreciate that. I had another question around the long perspective on Web3. You talked a little bit about how it’s impacted your perspective on how you would launch projects and how you’re going to be launching projects but has your thinking on the potential of Web3 evolved in particular around this creator royalties thing, which is a real drag for all of us? Did that shift your perspective on the potential here that we’re working with in any way?

It was a real drag and I feel for artists that rely on that for their livelihood.

The ones that jumped in because of that possibility, It was one of the biggest. It’s the rug full of rug poles.

I happen to be in a place where the creator royalty for me is more the tip jar money and not the pay-the-rent money, but it still sucks. In terms of Web3, what I would try to do is be much more open-minded to the prospect of collaborating with people. I rely on my team a lot because they tell me like, “This guy’s legit. This guy is in it for the right reasons.” We did a Magic White T-shirt Project with literally a no-name guy from New Jersey and now he’s collaborating with Jeff Staple, where I think if I only had my web2 brand on, I’d be like, “Who are you? What’s your brand? Call me in five years and we’ll see.”

Be much more open-minded to the prospect of collaborating with people. Click To Tweet

Give folks a little backstory on this because it’s pretty cool how this got set up.

This is the power of SAPIENZ. We dropped essentially a blank white T-shirt NFT. This white T-shirt could be equipped with SAPIENZ, which is our PFP project. Your SAPIENZ could now be wearing a blank white T-shirt. We dropped it for $10. We sold over 900 of them in a very short amount of time. We said, “Those who own the Magic White Tee are now eligible to design the shirt.

You could take a pen, a silk screen, or AI. You can do whatever you want and design the shirt as you wish. Submit it on the internet and social media. Tag us.” We got hundreds of submissions of incredible art. I narrowed it down to my top 32. All of the community Discord, Twitter, and Instagram voted on Sweet 16, Final 8, 4, 2, and 1, champion. That one champion we were able to change the metadata on the blank White Tee. All those hundreds of people who own the blank White Tee, overnight, their shirt turned into the winning design.

What’s the tech behind that?

ERC-6551 token-bound account.

It’s all connected to the actual shirt.

The shirt is an NFT owned by your NFT, the SAPIENZ. It’s sick. I don’t want to confuse people with that. I don’t want to talk about that shit. I want to talk about this Magic White Tee versus the ERC-6551 token-bound account. Do you wake up one day and it’s like, “My shirt is now the winning design?” If you’re the creator of that design, your design is now on 900 bodies overnight. You also get the revenue from that as well. The big kicker is now that guy, JRR, and I are going to design the next thing together. Overnight that guy’s now doing a collaboration with Jeff Staple.

You should check this out. That’s awesome that that type of co-creation, which Web3 Is all about. One last question for you. We start a new show, Edge Of AI. This is the Edge Of NFT. We’re curious about AI and want to learn together with some of the leaders and pioneers in that space. You’re a curious guy. To what extent have you dabbled with AI personally and then how are you looking at it from a creative perspective in the types of projects that you work on?

I am less using it for art. I’m playing with it in the art space, but not doing anything that I would release. I’m basically learning the language on the more ChatGPT text-based side. I’m using it much more to help with improving my writing, helping with responses, and things like that. The contract is awesome. Also, I’d be like, “Can you write this speech in the style and tone of Jeff Staple?

How does it do?

It does it too good because it almost takes bites of information that uses it too much and it makes it cringe. If I say one catchphrase in a talk, it’ll keep using that. I’m like, “Stop doing that. It’s corny.” I have been using it for that. Even though some people might think that the things that I do are innovative. I’m a middle-to-late adapter. I’m not bleeding edge first to market to stuff. I’ve been into NFTs for a few years, but not many years ago when the first ever thing was on the chain for the Ethereum network. I like to wait, see people jump in first, make sure it’s not a complete scam, make sure I’m not endangering myself in everything I’ve created, and then dabble a little bit, and be strategic about it. I’m proud of the mini-empire that I’ve built in fashion footwear and creating creative weight.

I don’t know if it’s mini. Everyone knows what you’re up to.

I’m very cognizant of not dismantling the whole thing that I’ve built because of one knee-jerk reaction to some shiny new object that I encountered.

You are still dabbling. While we were talking, I asked ChatGPT, which I’m in love with, “What is one question you’d ask Jeff Staple that never gets asked?” I don’t want you to get bored here.

What ChatGPT asks?

“Throughout your career in designing streetwear, you’ve had a significant impact on the industry. Looking back, is there a particular lesser-known or behind-the-scenes moment or decision you made that you believe had a surprisingly profound influence on your brand in the streetwear culture as a whole?”

One thing that rarely gets asked of me that has nothing to do with street culture, and I know this is going to sound weird, I’ve had the honor and blessing of going through two separate near-death experiences. One, very fast and instantaneous. Meaning I got hit by a truck in Japan while I was in a bike head-on collision. The other one was very long and drawn out. I was on a six-hour hike in the Chilean Andes Mountains and I got lost. a rescue team had to come to get me.

Thank you.

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CryptoKitties

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Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

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