Fresh episodes right off the griddle each and every week — get your web3 edge here »
Listen Now

Top Podcasts

Outer Edge Twitter Space: Coming To The Outer Edge

Outer Edge Twitter Space: Coming To The Outer Edge

NFT Coming to the Outer Edge

‍

Josh Kriger and Benjamin Noble of Howl Labs lead this Twitter Space conversation leading to the Outer Edge 2023. He is joined by Nytmare and Decryptolorian (WHALE Members), Daniel Killeen and Dominic Carbonaro (Ava Labs), Ken DiCross (Wire Network), Genevieve Thiers (Entertainmint), Tony Bravado (NFTCLT), and Bdice (Bdice Arts). They share what each of them has to bring to this incredible event that brings together the industry’s leading experts, builders, creators, and founders. Tune in now and find out what to expect at the Outer Edge.

Listen to the podcast here

‍

Outer Edge Twitter Space: Coming To The Outer Edge

I wanted to get a little spontaneous for a second. Zach and I were texting as we do 2,000 times a day. He’s like my second wife/husband but we are going to talk all about what’s going on with Outer Edge. We have some of the incredible people that are going to be part of it speaking at this last pre-Outer Edge Twitter Space.

I know there are people here that have not yet gotten a ticket. They are last-minute people. We have a fun little thing that we are going to do. If you haven’t gotten your ticket and you decide to jump in, there’s going to be a code that we are giving you called NOFOMO. Zach’s going to generate it and it’s going to be for 25% off.

On top of that, if you buy a GA ticket, you are going to get invited to the VIP dinner reception, which is some incredible Italian foods and jazz. Sammy Arriaga is performing. It’s going to be lit and that’s going to be Monday from 6:00 to 9:00. You can skip the line and the very expensive VIP ticket. Buy a GA ticket and use the code NOFOMO. Save 25% and get invited to the VIP dinner with all these crazy cats in the house.

That’s a big deal. I remember last year some of my favorite contacts and people I ended up vibing with and have continued to stay in touch with whom I met at that VIP party. I’m looking forward to it.

I will be there at 5:00 setting up but the dinner is from 6:00 to 9:00 on Monday night.

We have some great guests in the house. This is the space before the main event. My plane ticket’s booked. I’m flying out there. I know a lot of you as well. Adding some more of our guests up on stage but why don’t we do this? Let’s go around and introduce ourselves a little bit. Nobody needs to hear from me anymore but I want to shoot over to Decryptolorian because it’s such a fun name to say. Decryptolorian, do you want to say what’s up and talk a little bit about your project? We will then throw it to Nytmare.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited about this. Honestly, I’m going home. I’m a California native but I have moved out to the East Coast and I have been here for several years in East Coast. I grew up in California for about twenty years. I would say I’m a half and half. I have been in this what we call the Web3 space. It wasn’t called that a few years ago. I started in the late-2019 and then in 2020. I joined WHALE early on. That’s a great project that we started with our Founder WhaleShark. Nytmare speaks way more eloquently than me so I will have him give the rundown of what the project is.

I have been with WHALE since almost conception and it’s been a wild ride. We have done a lot of great things. We have one of the coolest and most expensive NFT vaults in the space with some of the artists that are amazing like XCOPY. I could go on and on. I started writing and then I went to video editing. I’m the Head of Art over here at WHALE. I have consulted with several different projects around the space like gaming and art projects. I have been having a blast this past few years being in the space and that’s a little bit about me. Thanks for having me.

That’s some big beluga energy. Throw it to Nytmare to talk more about WHALE. Tell us about you, Nytmare and what is WHALE in your words.

DC is just being humble. He’s an artist himself and in doing so, he was able to help shepherd our project from inception. WHALE, we are a community that came together early. Arguably one of the first, if not the first, social token and community that was formed around NFTs. Our Founder is WhaleShark. Many people are familiar with WhaleShark and OG Collector in the space.

We are fortunate to have amassed an incredible vault of NFTs from the early historic days, when people were minting from artists like DC mentioned, Pak and XCOPY. The value proposition is from a ton of one of the ones early from these creatives. Also, we have something like 3,000 parcels of metaverse land, some of the absolute most valuable. We have the most valuable collection on NBA Top Shot, all the legendary collectible cards on Gods Unchained and gaming assets.

Our community aggregated, came together and amalgamated around what we thought Web3 could be, the power of interoperability and building community and what this unique smashing of tech and culture could do. This was around 2019 and 2020. With that, we had a unique community with a lot of creatives, artists, collectors and enthusiasts, people that were hyped up and excited about what this could mean for the future. A lot of the people that went on to build platforms and some of the marketplaces we use were hanging with us all talking about what we were excited about.

It’s a very cool historic community. We are there. We steward that vault and do a lot of cool things with it. This is one of our first forays into an IRL presence in North America. We have done a lot of things throughout the world so we are pretty hyped up about that but that’s a bit about our organization, our historic proponents of creatives and people that are enthusiasts for the space and everything that Web3 can be from decentralized social media to DAOs to tokenization, which is what we are. We are a social token. We like to integrate all that cool stuff, smash it up and be here in the heart of it.

Are you the ones that got the mythic Gods Unchained cards?

We do. We have two.

You monsters. I hate you. That’s so great. I have the entire Genesis set minus any of the Mythics so thank you for playing that thing I will never be able to obtain. Which ones do you have, Prometheus or Hyperion?

We do have Prometheus. I’m going to check with our Gods Unchained expert, Zorro who’s in the crowd. He’s our Gods Unchained master. He’s good at the game so I will check with him.

Twitter faces are getting a little wonky. I see people come in on and off the stage. We will deal with it as we always do. As an FYI, if you are having trouble, leave and come back. Sometimes that helps. Are you going to be looking to collect more art while you are out there? That’s what every artist in the crowd is thinking. “These guys are vaulting grails. Are they going to vault my grail?”

We love to empower creatives and do everything we can do to platform the space but we are not trying to throw out chum there in the water. We are here to support everybody.

I was trying to get you mobbed at the thing like all the other people.

We don’t like to make any promises and that’s not what the organization is about but we always have open arms to help any and every creative or builder in any way possible. As an aside, I wanted to throw this out there. We have an offshoot, a sister company that works in eSports. We are working on getting them to use the Mythics live in games. I’m working on that too.

I did not know that. You probably didn’t know. We have an eSports event. One of our premier community events is from 12:00 to 5:00 at the Future Factory, which is one of the original founders of Temple Nightclub building it. They have come on to host an eSports event for us. If you are still in town, that sounds like your jam.

I heard that in a space and was trying to look up the details. We might come through to that. It’s all facets of Web3 from decentralized social media to DAOs and tokenization. The concept of when you guys said, “This isn’t NFT LA anymore. This is Outer Edge,” couldn’t be more synergistic with what our mission is and what we want to represent.

We say that we are the home for the natively digital. Like many people, we believe that tokenization is inevitable and it’s what you can do with this tech to expand it from community building to altruistic things to cool stuff that collectors want to do and creatives in the space. There’s so much more that you can wrap around with this and so enriching that it can be for culture. We get hyped up about it and was right in line with what you guys did for your changes.

It’s so great to have you as a partner. You could have been the voiceover or launch video. You said it so eloquently. That’s what we believe too. That’s what we talk about in our show every day. We have the space recorded. We can go back and pull the quotes. It’s going to be a great time. We got that content. That awesome statement was captured. Speaking of the progression of this future, into the new age, I want to talk about Entertainmint with Ms. Genevieve. Genevieve, are you with us?

I’m here. How are you doing? Also, AJ Salmen is here from our team too. He’s down there with the cool glasses.

The 3D glasses are a staple. I don’t know how that became a staple of the memed Web3 culture but it is.

It did. It’s a hallmark for sure.

“We are not Netflix anymore, Toto.” That’s the website tagline. Can you explain that?

Our very snarky tag. We have got a whole bunch of those queued up and it’s starting to rotate through them but mostly I’d say our tagline is that we are for artists. Fans want to collaborate more with creators. We help that happen. Entertainmint is a ticketing platform. We help creators sell tickets to fans for collaborative creation events. If you look at our beta, it’s Entertainmint.com. We are on the Ethereum chain. You will see we are mostly targeted with video. It’s cool. We have got all these awesome projects. We have the Frenchie Ballers, CrashPunks and NFT animated series but we have also got a comedy show and mini-series.

Our fans are helping the creators make the work by buying NFTs that are essentially collaborative experiences. They can be in a crowd scene or pictures on the wall of the set. They can put their NFT in as a certain role but we are excited. It’s working. We are expanding a little bit more into music, graphic art, graphic novels, poetry and anything collaborative. We want to help the ticketing system with that. I’m looking at you Tree Poetry and a couple of you in here, you fabulous creators. Come find us. We can help you with grants and help get your fan base ticketed into doing something collaboratively with you.

I saw in one of my side chats somebody saying, “I have never applied for a grant before.” Get familiar because there are a lot of Web3 grants to be had out there and there are amazing projects like yours where it’s like, “Come get this money. We want you to create. We are baiting you in.”

We gave out $150,000 in grants in 2022 and more in 2023. We are determined to help creators go around gatekeepers. It’s particularly hard to be a creator in the video area. There’s not a lot between TikTok and Netflix. What we are trying to do is help make all that easier by providing a bridge to fans but grants are everything.

Creators need all the support they can get, especially right now when it is particularly hard to create video content. There’s not really a lot between TikTok and Netflix. Click To Tweet

We don’t have a fancy crazy process. It’s just, “Come on in. If you have got a great project, you are a creator and you have fans, we will help you.” Instantly snap your fans into something collaborative with a ticketing system. Since Stoner Cats and Project Iceman and all of those, old creators are interested in like, “I can be maybe a little more collaborative than I was before.” We are riding that vibe and helping everybody snap the two sides together.

A guiding force is needed. I run into amazing creators all the time. Where do I start the question is always the first one out. It’s wonderful to have Entertainmint involved. I’m sure you will be out there and meet amazing people. We have also got some great infrastructure here, some of the pioneers of the backbone of the future of Web3. I want to touch on that a little bit by throwing it to Wire Network. Wire Network is a Layer-1 if you are not familiar but I’m going to allow you guys to explain that. Ken, do you want to give it a go?

Thanks for the introduction. To give you a little background about me, I have been in the space since 2013. I have got the witness 3 full bull markets and 3 full bear markets since we are in the last one. It gave me a lot of experience as to what was needed to take this entire space to the next level as far as blockchain.

We created Wire Network back in 2020. We wanted to figure out what exactly in each vertical was needed for these mass adoption moments that we keep talking about that we are trying to get to. The first one was you needed a fast blockchain. We created Wire which is a Layer-1 that has 112,000 TPS. It’s built for NFTs and gaming or anything else that needs fast transactions and throughput. That’s what we built it for.

We believe that gaming is going to be that event that allows everybody from the traditional markets to come into the blockchain space. It’s the easiest way to get everybody in. We needed the fast blockchain. If we are trying to get everybody in, you need a nice registration process but it has to be Web3.

Think of how Google has its sign-in or Facebook has its single sign-on. We created a Web3 registration process that functions like that which allows username email and password to generate your Web3 identity to provide you name service like your .ETH but it will be your .WIRE. It has something else that’s new in the space that we are rolling out. It has an account recovery tool. If you forget your password, if you are on Instagram, TikTok or your bank account, in Web3, your identity is also where you store your assets in your wallet.

You need an account recovery mechanism, trustless and fully decentralized. We have that already rolled out. That will be part of a bigger release in the spring and summer of 2023. The last thing was we create a fast blockchain. We have this registration process. What do we do for the rest of the blockchain space, which is very siloed? You have a lot of liquidity in users on Solana, Ethereum, Tezos and Cardano, you name it. We created a universal interoperability protocol. We are rolling this out in late spring of 2023 and it’s going to unite all L-1s and L-2s without a bridge so that all assets, coins and NFTs can all interact with each other.

This is huge what you learned. Ken, when did you announce this to the world?

The interoperability protocol is called UPAP for Universal Polymorphic Address Protocol. We released that in an article but we are releasing the alpha of it of the actual protocol here in April 2023.

We have all been asking for this, wanting this and talking about this. I have tried some of the ones that tried to do this and have gotten my tokens stuck in some black hole. It’s amazing what you are doing here. The whole industry thanks you and benefits from this. I wanted to give you a special shout-out because we talk about co-creation and curiosity as some of the tenants of Outer Edge LA.

Ken came to us and said, “I want to be a real partner. I want to help you guys get off of Web2 technology like Umbrella and create a means for your whole community to connect and use some of our cool technologies. The WIRE team sprinted this built-in app that’s getting launched in the Apple store and the Google store or Android store momentarily. It’s going to give everyone a chance to network their butts off at Outer Edge LA and for perpetuity.” We couldn’t be more delighted and thank you for building that for us.

It’s quite the opportunity. It’s not for us. It’s not just about telling everybody to regurgitate what I said. I want to show proof of concepts. I want to show our technology and action. I thought that there was no better avenue to do that. I’m from LA so to have this event be right on my doorstep to create a Web3 version Umbrella since this is the space that we are going and provide that to Outer Edge so that you can utilize all those features I thought was a perfect partnership.

Everyone that comes to Outer Edge will have the ability to stay in touch with each other. I have been to 30 to 40 conferences and it’s not easy to keep that connectivity. You meet people and then you are off to the next conversation to get those meetings scheduled. It’s valuable. We shared with Ken what we wanted in an app based on our experience as media, conference attendees and conference hosts. You guys will all get to benefit from that.

The last thing I will say about that is what you are getting with us is when you are registering, your ticket will be inside of the app like as an NFT. Also, with your registration, you will get name service on Wire Network and that is the foundation for the universal interoperability protocol itself. That will already get you in the game. When we do the full release of the universal interoperability, you already have your identity inside that mechanism.

NFT Coming to the Outer Edge

Outer Edge: When you register with Ken DiCross’s app, your ticket will be inside the app like an NFT. But the registration will be name service on Wire Network. That is the foundation of the universal interoperability protocol.

‍

By coming to Outer Edge LA and getting this app, you are getting your .WIRE name service and permanent account started.

That’s a solid onboarding move right there. I can honestly say. I will be getting my .WIRE for sure. We also need to address the other guys that have been doing a great job building infrastructure in creating digital access points for Web3 focused on creating that blazing flash and low-cost blockchain with Avalanche as well. I have seen some great projects coming out of Avalanche. They are pushed to tokenize and create Web3 worlds for us. Who wants to take it? Dominic or Daniel? We will cover both of you but Daniel, it’s on you. You got this.

It’s going to be hard to follow the Wire guy but let’s do it.

You are going through your folder. What are our updates?

Jokes aside, Avalanche is a third-generation blockchain. What that means is it’s an advancement in consensus technologies. There are three forms of consensus and distributed systems history. First is systems like Visa or MasterCard classical systems likely what the majority of the blockchain world sits on. Came Nakamoto, your Bitcoin and Ethereum of the world and then finally your Avalanche.

What big component of Avalanche that separates us from everything else is finality. A lot of focus in the industry is on TPS and how many transactions you could process but we are also keen on having that instant transaction functionality. Our latency is from the second you click it, it will be in your wallet.

There’s another fun feature that Avalanche has which is called subnets which allow for limitless porting of a blockchain. We can do about 22,000 blockchains on top of our network that sits on top of our consent layer and allow you to transfer and settle assets across them. We are about 55 blockchains live but the long-term vision, the subnet vision is that you can have thousands upon thousands of application-specific blockchains for whatever use. It’s what I envision to be a long-term sustainable approach to offset gas fees or the issue of block space.

We can dive a little bit more on the NFT side of things with some questions but we are very focused on the NFT initiatives here. We are a team that’s been around for a few years. 2023 is going to be our biggest year yet. We have had some great partnerships lined up in the past, MCs on the gaming side but also with events like Avalanche Park in the Los Angeles area as well with Ed Balloon, which is a great use case of bringing Web3 worlds into the Web2 world.

‍

Get that NES. That’s dope.

‍

I brought up Matt Gavin.

I know you have got my Liquid IV.

‍