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Favio Velarde Of Sologenic — The Platform That Is Revolutionizing The Trading Experience, Plus: Supermoon Camp, Bitski Crypto Wallet & More!
Sologenic is disrupting the asset trading industry by offering tokenized securities, crypto assets and NFTs in a decentralized ecosystem. Leading the pack as the company’s Growth Manager is Favio Velarde, an experienced marketing specialist with a background in technology and owned-media growth in the entertainment industry. In this episode, Favio discusses how Sologenic is guest is on a fast track to tokenize about everything you would want to. The idea of tokenizing all kinds of different digital assets has been around for a long time, but there hasn’t been an easy way to do it. Favio and his team are working on changing that. Tune in and learn how they’re doing it! Plus, we have not just one but two Hot Topics for this episode. Stay tuned to get the latest about Supermoon Camp, how Bitski is taking crypto wallets to the next level, and more!
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Favio Velarde Of Sologenic — The Platform That Is Revolutionizing The Trading Experience, Plus: Supermoon Camp, Bitski Crypto Wallet & More!
This is Favio Velarde from Sologenic, the platform that is disrupting the asset trading industry. I’m here on the Edge of NFT, the disruptor podcast that brings you everything you need to know about Web3.
NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how our guest is on a fast track to tokenize about everything you would want to, perhaps even including your grandma and your dog, get an enticing glimpse into the musical side of our guest and finally, find out how Supermoon is putting on an incredible event in the Denver Clock Tower and beyond during ETHDenver.
Finally, NFT LA 2022 was a blast. It was also a blast-off in a giant plume of bright burning rocket fuel. Web3, NFTs, blockchain, decentralization and a suite of immersive new tech developments have exploded onto the canvas of life. Outer Edge is the theme of 2023’s event dedicated to those of you building with us at the outer edges, making the future happen.
The community-centric gathering returns to Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023 to uplift creators and technologists through interactive experiences, a wide variety of discussions and presentations and entertaining surprises that transport participants to the outer edge of what’s possible when we co-create a new paradigm, embracing the decentralized web, artificial intelligence, extended reality and more. To register to attend or learn how to co-create an experience on the Outer Edge, head over to OuterEdge.live. The event is being organized by the Edge of Company and the founders of the Edge of NFT show. See you there.
This episode features Favio Velarde of Sologenic, the leading platform for tokenized securities on demand. Favio Velarde is an experienced marketing specialist with a background in technology and owned-media growth in the entertainment industry. As Sologenic’s Growth Manager, Favio manages multi-channel campaigns as well as B2B and B2C partnerships that leverage both Sologenic and Coreum technology, including the Sologenic NFT marketplace cataloged as the largest in the XRPL. Prior to Sologenic, Favio started an independent record label to bridge the gap for artists seeking authentic expression and sustainable marketability to the mainstream.
This piqued his interest in the intersection of decentralization and NFTs, allowing him to cultivate meaningful relationships with artists, content creators, influencers and brands. Additionally, Favio led a Latin American expansion effort for the top-five Brazilian gaming company, Sherwa, cultivating the creation of new communities rallying around a common interest in disruptive and engaging technologies. Sologenic is disrupting the asset trading industry by offering tokenized securities, crypto assets and NFTs in a decentralized ecosystem. The Sologenic Development Foundation is formed by independent developers who maintain, build and expand the Sologenic ecosystem. Favio, welcome.
Thank you for the intro, Eathan. It’s nice to meet you, Jeff and Joshua. I’m happy to be here to be sharing some of the core values that we’re trying to put up together with Sologenic and Coreum. I like the intro. It sounds like it’s far more than talking about technology. We’re talking about the human element of NFTs. I’m overall excited to dive deeper into that route as well.
It feels like you’re at the edge of a lot of different emerging technologies, which is what we love to discuss. It’s great to have you in the mix as well.
There’s a big event coming up. It’s amazing to partner with you. Let’s talk a little bit about the origin of Sologenic. We have had the opportunity to tokenize all kinds of different digital assets as a background possibility for a long time. There hasn’t been a particularly easy way to do it. It sounds like what you’re working on is already changing that. How did this idea come about? How did the project come together? How did you get involved with it?
Let me start by saying the main aim of Sologenic. The main use case of the SOLO token was tokenized securities but overall being able to facilitate this in an easy-to-use and secure-to-use decentralized self-custody way to the retail users. The first component that was launched was the DEX, which is currently the largest on the XRP Ledger. The DEX offers you tools for experienced traders as well as some tools for new people to blockchain technology. You have an organic order book. Compared to other decentralized exchanges, for example, Uniswap, that’s one of the core advantages.
The aim for this DEX from the beginning was so it works in a hybrid model with the tokenization platform. Users at some point can send their tokenized securities, for example, a Tesla stock, into the DEX. They can trade it against other cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. To touch on your question on how is this possible that Sologenic has two arms. One of the arms is regulated NTT which has to do KYC and AML-compliant to allow users to undergo that process. Once their account is whitelisted, they can go into the decentralized branch, which is live and trade these assets. I hope that makes sense but fundamentally, that’s the hybrid model we were trying to put together.
I can trade Tesla’s tokenized stock for Dogecoin and play all the different angles of the Elon Musk saga. Is that what you’re talking about?
The goal is to get there at some point but let’s talk about what you can do now. You can already trade all of the XRPL tokens, stablecoins and also NFTs because we have an NFT marketplace on the same web app. It’s decentralized. Self-custody is in control of all of your assets. The aim here is to have the same experience you would have when you’re trading on Binance, for example, a centralized exchange to have that experience in the decentralized realm.
However, the tokenized securities part is already ready. It’s tested. You can tokenize that Tesla stock. We are fetching data from the NASDAQ and the New York Exchange and working together with Saxo Bank. That’s our broker in Europe. You can do dummy trades, tokenize the security and then send it on the test net, which is pretty cool. It gives us a glance at what the features are going to be, for example, fractionalized ownership, being able to trade after hours and many more in that line.
There was a certain company that doesn’t exist anymore that was trying to do this with synthetics and derivatives. They didn’t do it in this sophisticated way that you are doing it. It was fun for a lot of people. I imagine that the crowd will appreciate what you’re doing, which is being done in a more regulatory-compliant and less-leveraged manner. That’s exciting, especially these owner-exclusive content features within the platform and other token-gated features. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
First off, it made sense to start with a decentralized branch as we are obtaining a license because that way, you can test any surface. It’s better to test that out with NFTs or assets that would not have a repercussion from a regulatory standpoint because if you do that with stocks and people lose access to them, it’s a very different problem than if someone does not have access to an NFT and you can assist them. We kicked off the NFT side of things at Sologenic. I was the one that was leading the deployment of this new platform. We were the first ones to do it on the XRP Ledger before the XLS-20 amendment was pushed.
The XLS-20 amendment is the amendment that allowed native minting functionalities on the XRP Ledger but before that, we worked around it to do it as tokens. Once this was launched, then the full potential of the marketplace was released, meaning we had automatic royalty settlement and very low-cost minting. That was the main reason why we were doing it. The XRP Ledger has cheap fees at 0.0000 XRP. It’s fast because they’re all about cross-border payments. They were trying to solve that problem. That’s why we saw an opportunity there.
No NFT marketplace was taking care of that front. With that, we focused on tools. Token-gated is one of the fronts we’re tackling through owner-exclusive content. We did a collection of 3D avatars for gaming. When you purchase the NFT, you get access to an asset package that you wouldn’t be able to get access to if you weren’t the NFT holder. We’re trying to handle all of these on-chains so it’s more secure and reliable for users. Usual NFT projects do it through a Discord server or using Web2 platforms. We wanted to provide the tools within the Web3 platform that we’re building.
You announced the launch of your flagship NFT collection for Sologenic. How are you going to be using avatars here to help the holders customize their characters and show off their personalities? What does that look like?
The first step of this project was to release the first batch of avatars that already give you AAA gaming quality rig models that you can have access to. The asset package, if I’m not mistaken, included an FXB file and three other types of files that are commonly used on metaverse gaming applications but we haven’t seen the potential because their interoperability is something that metaverses are struggling with. I see them as games because a metaverse that is not interoperable is a game that has in-app cosmetics and customization levels. We wanted to give the asset to the users so they can do whatever they want with it but in the future, we will be announcing partnerships with more metaverses as they come along.
Let’s take a step back for a moment and look at broad market conditions and where we’re at in this given moment in the world of Web3, dealing with this bear market. There’s a lot of stagnation when it comes to the view of the outside world looking in but the reality is we got people in there that are persistent and building and making progress heads down with resources and capabilities, willing to continue the charge. What’s your view on that? How do we get more people across that bridge if they’re not quite there yet in the space? Maybe they’re getting ready to punch out and bail on something that might have potential. What do we do for those folks?
Let me answer this in two parts. The first one is to address the problem and my perception of the effect of the bear market. There was a shift in the way people perceive NFTs. There’s a stigma to it that a lot of people still see, especially when we were trying to do high-profile partnerships. It was tricky to navigate that and get them to understand that we’re trying to promote the utility of an NFT instead of promoting a collectibles collection that has no value. That’s the first point.
Sologenic: There was a shift in the way people perceive NFTs. There’s a stigma to it that a lot of people still see, especially when we were trying to do high-profile partnerships.
The way we addressed that is by framing the NFT marketplace as a marketplace that provides you the tools to transact and provide value to the users or the holders of our collection. We have even seen some NFT collections doing staking rewards as being backed by a validator node, which I found pretty interesting. That’s a way of providing direct value to the holders of a collection. To address the solution or the main touchpoints that need to happen to push the mass adoption of not just NFTs but tokenized assets as well, that’s funny because I have seen this in all industries.
People are framing more NFTs as part of the tokenization talks because, in the end, NFTs are one type of asset. You can still put them in the pool when you talk about tokenized assets. Wallet activations are one of the touchpoints that we’re working on to solve to push mass marketing campaigns because if you are familiar with the XRP Ledger, you know that you have to have 15 XRP reserved on your wallet to own NFTs and transact tokens. We’re working on a way to have a fiat-to-NFT activation rail so users can be onboarded quite easily.
I still think that’s one of the main problems, not just in the XRP Ledger but in using onboarding. Every time I talk with people from other blockchains, they’re all working on the same entry point. There are some initiatives, for example, in the Cosmos space. That’s why we are building on that space. I’ll touch on that later. It’s ease-of-use and ease-of-entry barrier-wise. For example, minting an NFT on Sologenic is costing you less than $1. That’s how we are addressing the bear market conditions and facilitating the entry points.
I was on a call. It’s not a bear market. It’s a builder’s market.
We’re using that time to expand. For example, for our securities market team, we hired a couple of new leaders there to make sure that regulatory frameworks are met. That’s an extensive research process. It’s building. For the NFT front, we have built more updates because usually, when you have a great user flow, then you are perhaps more concentrated on addressing bugs or direct use of capabilities. You’re directly addressing problems but when you have perhaps fewer users, you are able to test out new features. We rolled out a notification system, for example, and some social components into the marketplace. It’s a builder’s market.
When you’re building, you have to work hard and play hard. We hear there’s some exciting stuff going on in Vegas, which is the play-hard capital of the world. You were over there. What was happening there?
We did a meetup during the summer of 2022. We saw that there was a big Apex convention for the XRP community. As we built on top of the XRPL, we worked closely with Ripple and all other projects that are also building on that same blockchain. We saw an opportunity to do an event there. It was quite interesting how the community got together. They helped us organize. There was a big turnaround. There were 300 people at the MGM Grand.
That was the beginning of also another NFT collection that was called the Sologenic OG holders. The Club collections were trending. We wanted to do our own to provide some value. They got pretty much free access to all the events and open bars. They also got the same thing for Coreum in that event. These are our core community members. We value what they do for the project. We thought this event was a good way to kickstart that relationship. Given that Apex what happening in the same week, we got to interact with more people. More partnerships arose from that event as well.
There’s nothing more powerful than that in-real-life experience of meeting up, talking and collaborating. That’s why we love IRL events. That’s cool.
We should put on our event sometime. I’m kidding.
Are you going to be in LA? It was funny to match the Twitter handles with the faces. Sometimes they would be like, “My name is this.” I’m like, “I don’t know your name,” but they will be like, “This is my Twitter handle.” I was like, “I’ve seen you in a lot of spaces there.” It was quite funny.
“You don’t look like a JPEG in real life.”
Although some people show up with their JPEGs strapped onto their faces.
That’s a good strategy.
That’s not uncommon. It was gmoney. He doxxed himself. We had gmoney and G. Love on the same episode. He doxxed himself but it was an interesting case because various people knew him in the community and saw him around. You could recognize him but this is something different officially to let the world know, “This is me. This is what’s going on.”
At this point, I’m not going to say that leaders in this space have to be fully doxxed but transparency overall is quite key. We have always been like that. Bob, our CEO, has quite a reputation for being super doxxed. Everyone knows where he is and who he is, in general.
It’s safe to say that Jeff, Eathan and I are very doxxed at this point.
You didn’t know but Eathan is an alias. I’m a wholly different guy. I always think of it as Mardi Gras, a carnival or something like that. It’s fun to dress up and be somebody else for 1 day or 2 of the year but in the long run, it works to be yourself and carry your reputation. We have heard of this term in context with what you’re doing with industry-agnostic NFTs. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that is, use cases expanding beyond avatars, collectibles, gaming and stuff like that? What does this mean?
It has to do with what I was saying about interoperability. At some point, NFT freedom is limited to a blockchain because the whole point of them being unique in a blockchain is deterred but what we’re trying to do up front is to become interoperable. Coreum is one of the rails that we are using to make this happen. I was talking about Cosmos. Cosmos is an interesting ecosystem because it’s super easy to build applications within other applications. Overall, IVC interoperability opens the door to a lot of different chains that are built on the same SDK or Software Development Kit but they can easily switch a node and be interoperable.
We have seen this also on wallet applications. For example, Citadel.one is one of the wallets that are going to support Coreum. They have embedded in their wallet Osmosis. Osmosis is a popular DEX if you’re aware of the Cosmos ecosystem as well. That’s where we’re trying to reach more interoperable opportunities. The first one we are doing is from the XRPL to Coreum. That will be a bridge through multi-chain. Hopefully one day, we hope to see the NFT marketplace also be interoperable with that.
Thanks for the clarification.
Interoperability is a foundational layer to every form of blockchain product and its evolution of it. It’s foundational but what’s also foundational in this space is to have this layer of enterprise functionality. From what we were looking at, it sounded like the inclusion of the Coreum smart token is going to help with that, in particular, as it relates to NFTs. What’s the story there? What’s your push? How is Sologenic thinking about the enterprise layer of this equation?
Let me tell the story of how Coreum came to mind. There was an early stage of research first, two years trying to nail down what is the problem that needs to be addressed from Layer-1 blockchains. From the Sologenic perspective, the tokenization platform was built to, at some point, be utilized with smart contracts because that allows us to be more efficient and also comply with regulatory frameworks. In that sense, we came up with Coreum. The first marketing phrase that we had for Coreum was, “One blockchain for all,” but then we realized we need to tackle something more specific first.
That’s when we did more research for a year and decided to build Coreum for enterprise solutions. It’s a blockchain that was specifically designed for companies of any size to utilize blockchain technology with a specific emphasis on regulated financial companies. The reason I say this is that we built on top of Cosmos SDK but some transactions are unique to Coreum. One of them, for example, is the ability to have an optional KYC feature. They can automatically adopt the system into their current workflow and be able to have that feature without having to require a third party, an integration or anything like that. To have it on-chain on a Layer-1 is a game-changer.
Will you be joining us?
I’m excited about it. Let’s do it.
My drum kit.
How old?
Five years old. I’ve always been into music.
Are you still drumming to this day?
Every day. It’s a morning routine.
Do you have a favorite drummer?
Taylor from Foo Fighters passed away.
An old DJ mixer to buy a new one.
Len’s Coffee right before this.
Always be closing.
Top of my mind, I would go skydiving in Italy.
You’ve skydived elsewhere?
No.
The sky is warmer there.
Have you ever skydived, Jeff?
I’ll beatbox because I’m terrible at jokes.
The Real World.
It’s great to be here. I’m excited.
Thanks for having me. It has been great.
We will talk soon.
Should we move on to our shout-outs?
Important Links
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gmoney - Previous episode
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@NFTLAlive - Twitter
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@SupermoonCamp - Twitter
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@RealSologenic - Sologenic
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Discord - Sologenic
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Spotify - Edge of NFT
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iTunes - Edge of NFT