Welcome everyone to session 3 of META-511, NFTs and the Metaverse.
This week we're going to talk about PFPs and this week we're going to be doing something
different in the prior two weeks and so there'll be a little experimentation as we go
along and what I mean by different in this case is how we're going to pull together
the material for this week.
Last week if you remember Ellie and I and George did a session together and that was the
week session.
This week I'm going to present some material about PFPs today.
Yesterday I recorded a session with Garga, Greg Solano from Yuga Labs where we covered
a lot of these same topics and in more depth and that we will play on Thursday and have
Q&A on Thursday and the reason we're holding that back is because in order to have I think
a good understanding of that session it's good today to cover some of the more background
material because that session implies some good understanding of the topic already.
And then hopefully the next few days I'll have a similar discussion with punk 4156 where
again for that discussion it is useful to have had the context both of today's discussion
and the one with Garga because in many ways one builds on another on another and so they've
actually left some slides at the end of this presentation, the conclusions, unconcluded
yet.
What I'd like to do is fill them in after we've done all three sessions, fill in the further
reading because I want to incorporate feedback from the other sessions because we got into
some real depth on some of these topics, topics that we'll cover for a few minutes today
we covered for an hour and a half in the session with Garga.
So we'll see exactly how this works.
I think it's a new format for this week and I think it's going to be the format that
we're going to increasingly have the following weeks because the pace of guests is going
to pick up and so we're trying to find the model where we balance what I think is going
on with the course audience is we have everyone from extremely sophisticated users of NFTs
to people who are new to the space.
And so if you're an extremely sophisticated user of NFTs or in the NFT field you'll
probably find some of today's session fairly straightforward and things that are quite
obvious to you.
On the other hand what is going to come on Thursday I found super interesting and sophisticated
and I'm I think a sophisticated user of NFTs.
So the overall week is going to touch upon is going to touch upon both basic intermediate
and advanced issues in one week and I'd like to stage it and phase it so that particularly
for the folks who are newer they can pick up some of the basics so they can stay in touch
with the discussion that happens in the more advanced discussions with the guests.
So I guess I view my job today as giving the groundwork so that everyone not just our
sophisticated students, everyone can get the most out of the more in depth discussions
that are going to happen later in the week.
And like everything else we are learning in progress as we're doing this.
So we'll see exactly what works we'll find unit for next week and then we'll I think
figure out a good model for the upcoming weeks.
There's a lot of interesting guests coming up and I'm really excited about.
So the other thing we might try today and I say this with some trepidation but we don't
learn until we try.
I'm going to try and do the Q&A in home.
So instead of maybe here in StreamYard it's a streaming platform that I'm using to
stream into home after I finish presenting the slides.
I'm going to try and answer the questions directly in OM using OMS audio feature and
the really interesting question is how are we going to manage moderation in that model.
We have audio turned off because I think with hundreds of people we could we might lose
folks.
I will see what's helpful to it.
I think there might also be some issues of people in different rooms, there are messages
like it was.
So we'll see how it is at the end of the session.
I might be conservative and just handle this week's session once again in the StreamYard
model.
We'll make it the end time decision of the session.
So with that let me get into the slides and let me cover some basics.
Let's make sure we get everyone on the same page so that we're good for today's Q&A
and we're good for later in the week.
So we're in session three, we're going to talk about PFPs and we're going to put it
in three buckets, PFPs and virtual identity in general, PFPs in an NFT context and a few
quantitative methods.
This is what I had mentioned earlier today.
We have the first session on Thursday at one thirty Eastern time.
I think in Eastern time or one thirty New York time, we're going to do the session with
Darga and we're still working on logistics for one five six, it will come later.
So please follow the UNIC metaverse Twitter account about keeping posted with all the
logistics.
All right, I'll start with the absolute basics because I do find that sometimes people
who are not in the NFT space are little.
What does PFP mean and I'm going to laugh here because I remember when I asked someone
about that and I actually gave them the, what does it mean and they explained it to me
and it means profile picture.
Sounds very fancy actually just means profile picture and profile pictures obviously predate
and if keys profile pictures are a key component of every single social media.
You see them in different styles.
I would say the typical, I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone here, the typical profile
picture we'll see.
I'm like then it might be different in the typical profile picture you'll see on Instagram,
even though Gates feels he needs to put on his nice business casual for profile picture
as does every one.
And what do people use as their profile picture?
Absolutely anything.
The normal model where I think people used to, what people used to do historically and
still most people, is they put a picture of themselves, actually the literal picture of themselves.
And this is nothing new than a key, so people put a picture of them and sure everyone
in the group here has social media accounts and often has a picture of them.
Some people put an illustration of themselves, Tyler Hobbs, an amazing generative artist,
but his profile picture is an illustration of himself.
Naval is an amazing generative investor and a very abstract picture of themselves.
Some people put a picture of something else that's important, a special place of each.
Sometimes they're spouse, their children.
And over the last, and it hasn't been very long, last one and a half to two years,
there has been a different spread where people are putting it as a PFT and NFT.
And even here, there's kind of two models.
People who are using an NFT from a collection that is specifically oriented to be a PFP collection.
And then people who are just putting it as a PFT and NFT that might just be a piece of work.
So, it's interesting that PFPs even predate the Internet.
Your high school yearbook has PFPs.
And I was thinking about the slides for this session.
And I remember how Facebook started.
And Facebook literally started on this concept.
Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore, I think, a Harvard.
And Harvard had a Facebook where you could see your classmates that can come and classmates.
And open it and look for their pictures.
And he said, well, this is 2004.
We have the Internet. Why do I have to look at a physical look?
And I put this online.
And over to the right is what early Facebook was like.
It's not the work online as opposed to Internet. And you could check it on your Facebook.
It is fundamental to social media.
It is fundamental to how we organize ourselves in social media.
Because social media is about people, about community, about identity.
And sure, there's a variety of technological platforms that are underlined.
But the human needs are the same.
It is a social media platform without any people in it.
It's absolutely worth it.
And I say that in the universe and say, well, that's obvious, but it's not obvious.
You know, not all software is like that.
Global search engine is very valuable to me if it was the exact same global search engine
or was that there wasn't anyone else using it.
It's perfectly valuable.
I need to find direction somewhere I need to look up and find the article from the crimson in 2004.
It was very useful, even in a solo usage case.
Social media is not.
Social media is pointless in the social media of the solo usage case.
And this is actually an important part, and it's one we need to keep in mind,
the what the web to social media companies have successfully done is tap into core human desires.
See their classmates or their friends or their family or people they hope to meet or people they admire or people who they think they're interesting.
Or in some cases, use the people they dislike.
And the social media platform gives you the mechanism by which you can find the communicate with them, yell at them online that we like to.
And they're built.
They're only value is, in fact, people who are using it.
And in a way, they've done an excellent job of capturing value that is latent and pre-existing in humans.
And then in some cases, you know, selling it back to you.
And the general model of a social media company is you want to go look at other people's profile picture.
And this is the basic thing, or what it is.
See what Mark is saying or George is saying or Tim Kardashian is saying.
And that attention, that human attention of yours is then being partially monetized with certain, certain post coming in that are advertisements.
So, PFPs were interesting at the level of your printed high school yearbook.
I think they still have minds for it.
But now we're near as interesting as they became when you can take them online.
So they became there much more interesting online.
And I think we should note because virtual identities are not only two-dimensional.
We have had a long history of avatars.
And avatars primarily came out of the gaming world.
And they have become progressively more three-dimensional.
It started off as fairly two-dimensional as well, you know, 1990s era video games.
And avatars had characters you played as a character in that game.
And some of those graphics today were, would give you this quite low resolution and that interesting.
But it didn't actually matter.
They still became engaged.
You still felt you were a football player.
You were a football player, you were a football player, or the player or the fighter or the warrior.
And you inhabited that identity.
Even on a very basic, not very high resolution, not particularly three-dimensional.
And avatars, well, as Mr. Moore, Moore's Law, Moore's Law is the version of Moore's Law for GPUs that wasn't even given it.
Help us have more graphic processing capacity.
The characters became more complex, more three-dimensional.
And in time, more customizable.
And so, there is a gigantic gaming economy.
Based on people, having an avatar in some type of game,
you're going to grab the creator, module, and read the lectures.
This happens in dozens of games.
And people customize their avatar to reflect what they'd like it to be.
And largely, those gaming economies are driven by the companies selling new features for your avatar,
a skin, or a piece of clothing, or some object to carry, and some of these are gigantic businesses.
Based on this fundamental human need to represent yourself in that context,
in that context, might be a game or a mental field.
You can call some of those games for the metaverses.
And the reality is, for the same reason that in real life,
we don't all wear the exact same state-issued set of packet pants,
and the state-issued white t-shirt, and everyone does not wear the exact same clothing.
This appears to be true in virtual roles, because we're still the same people who are virtual roles.
And on the whole, people do not want to just have the exact same avatar as everyone else.
And depending on your interest in that world, or in that game,
and your budget, and how much money you have available,
and the dynamics, how many customizations you can earn by playing versus buying,
you might customize more or less, you might spend more or less,
but very obviously, the cases that people want to express their identity,
want to express their identity, whether it's in TV or in TV,
whether it's on social media, whether it's in gaming,
all of this predates NFTs.
None of this was invented in 2021.
Arguably, almost all of the largest technology companies in the world,
the social media companies, the gaming companies, I leave aside in a Google search,
actually Apple, the new Tardews, but most of the Web2 slash gaming companies
have this concept at the heart of their model.
And one of the things that I find very interesting is there's a lot of pushback
from non-NFT people, so I don't know. I can't believe people using these silly avatar
or the silly PFPs, they're paying money for them.
What's wrong with them? Harding would pay money for them.
There are the largest tech companies in the world,
the largest gaming companies in the world are baseless of that type of content.
And we'll talk later what this means in the NFT context,
but this was not invented in 2021.
It's key to human nature, it's key to human identity,
human identity will express itself regardless of the exact mechanism
by which we interact with others.
And that's what we've been saying with them.
So I keep saying the word identity.
To me, that's the most important word in this session.
And identity can mean multiple things.
First of all, there's personal identity,
and people might feel that they are a certain way,
they're not feeling a certain way,
and they want to express it in a certain way.
But I would not look at the parenthesis there.
I think people can and do have multiple identities,
talk about the translation, slide or two.
The first form of identity is expressing yourself as an individual.
I'm Tyler Hobbs.
I view myself in this way.
This is how I view myself literally.
It is the illustration of Tyler Hobbs.
But in a certain artist's style,
it reflects something however I think about himself.
And this is how I'd like to present myself to you all.
That's a personal identity.
People, of course, don't just have personal identity.
Because they have a wide variety of communities.
You might think of yourself as an Italian.
You might think of yourself as a physician.
You might think of yourself as a graduate
from the University of Alabama.
You might think of yourself as a fan of Chicago most.
All of these are artists communities.
Everyone belongs in multiple communities.
And people have a long history of also expressing
in visual form.
They're commitment to that community.
You drive around the American countryside and suburbs.
You see a lot of American fights.
You go to a football game,
a good chunk of the people in the football game,
and the stadiums,
grown adults,
have went and brought clothing
that reflects the identity of their team.
You take this for granted,
like the people will buy
a Le Bron James shirt.
But it's not 100% obvious that makes sense, right?
If you were, if a athletic brand of athletic care
didn't exist,
and someone came and said,
well, we're going to,
I'm going to charge people 80 bucks
to have a LeBron James number on their back
and they go to basketball game.
Some of them are logical,
come on,
who wants to do this?
These are grown adults.
These are grown adults,
even while they even want to do this.
People don't do it,
and they do it at scale,
and it's very common.
And now,
if you walk around American University campuses,
which I think probably
have done the best job
among university identities.
There are days you walk around the campus
on the SCC
and asserted the student population
is wearing some type of,
yeah, you're related to,
well, I didn't do that community identify them.
By the way,
I'm saying all these things,
always as anything wrong with it.
I think it's definitely normal.
I think this is how humans are organized.
Humans like to belong to groups,
all the groups,
all the tribes,
like it's,
it's fundamental to our nature.
And it's cross-technology.
It's cross-analysis.
It's something fundamental to the nation.
And then I think the third one,
which might be a little bit more abstract,
a little bit more sophisticated.
But I do think it exists.
Let's call it branding.
Let's call it recall.
Having symbols,
symbolic thinking,
mimetic thinking,
is easier to remember.
Every single person
and visualized instantly
the making solution.
If I ask you to visualize
the face of the CEO of Nike,
I bet almost nobody can.
And this is why,
Nike shows,
always come with a solution.
As the Nike teachers,
as the Nike ads,
and they never come with the face
of the current CEO of Nike.
Partially it's because,
you know, less than a CEO's change.
That's part of it.
That's not the whole part of it.
The main part of it
is that logos,
and dense information.
Good logos are simple.
A picture of the CEO of Nike,
is very rich.
It's very detailed.
It contains a lot of information.
It's hard to remember.
The source is very simple.
It's easy to remember.
And there is something like this
growing on with PFPs.
A crypto-punk PFP
is lower resolution than the average
length in photographs.
And in some ways,
in some capacitors,
some people say, well, there's a lot of them.
They look the same.
You know, there's 200-something hoodie
folks, they all look the same.
And that might be true.
But there's also, like,
you know, several tens of millions of people
in their office casual,
isn't as casual and length-in,
and they all look the same too.
So, I think there's something
about the installation of information
that happens with this.
This is part of this.
This is a more sophisticated point.
Everyone naturally understands,
personally, then,
to the community belonging.
But I think this part of this,
and I think this drives part of this.
I think it's why community belonging
tends to rally around something.
It doesn't tend to rally around individuals
on the whole.
And, I mean, this is,
PFPs send a message not only about
the individual,
and their values,
they're happening with...
I think that also the values of the
broader community, right?
So, this is someone who
reflects both some personal values
and the values of the
surfing community.
Now,
we mentioned identity's plural,
and we'll come back to identity's plural.
Everyone has multiple identities.
Everyone plays multiple roles,
so you are
a scientist
and a mother
and a golfer
and a Roman Catholic
and a lover of
obscure sashimi,
all of those are part of your identity
and your personality.
And some people,
many of you,
blend them together.
Here is me,
a rich,
capitalist-favor-person.
I'm very interested in science
as well, right?
sashimi from
obscure waters of New Zealand.
That's absolutely fine, right?
Those are people who,
many people,
none of these women say it's good or bad,
but for ways people express it.
People will express it as one identity.
But other people,
in fact, I think,
probably more people,
separate those women.
And then,
it might be because of practical reasons,
but I'm also happy for other reasons.
So,
it's very common,
that people use different
PFPs on different social media platforms.
On LinkedIn,
where, earlier,
we discussed the practical reason, right?
On LinkedIn, you might have your serious foot.
And that photo
is there to
demonstrate to a recruiter,
a fixed employer,
and have a serious professional
you're going to come to work and do the job.
On an Instagram,
where maybe you're
really only targeting it to your friends
or broader community,
you might have a more fun photo.
And on
a platform,
you might have a more
sexy photo,
because there you're trying to
attract
a worker,
and you want to
send a different message.
This is called practical reason.
But there might also be
not exactly practical reason,
but you'll worry that the process
will see the certification
not acted.
So,
ways that you can
express one event to be more fully,
if you're not mixing it
with another event.
So, let's say you are
in the 1990s,
you're heavy
into the voting boards of
Doom,
who was a video game back then,
you can mod it
in a user community,
and let's say you were
a doctor,
but this is what you did
to blow off steam,
you designed
custom Doom boards
you went around,
shooting rockets with monsters,
whatever.
In that world,
the things that are interesting
in that world,
because people are going to care about
in that world,
they'll be topics like
23 patients today,
and they told you about their
shorts rolled,
and their flu
would have you.
It's not that interesting.
It's not relevant to that
content,
and you wouldn't be as effectively
as sharing that content.
If you talked about those things,
and so there's
a model
that is not based on practical
concerns, like you have
the GPS isn't concerned
with video games,
it's a good problem,
not a problem at all.
Nonetheless,
when he goes to work,
he kind of
uploads one program
to how he makes about his day.
When he goes and plays a Doom,
it's a different thing,
and when he's in the Doom community,
a different person.
This is very common and very normal.
And I think most people
we're going to see
with PFP's and
metaverse experiments
is a lot of people
will become
more distinct
version of this.
Related and unrelated,
but related,
is unanimity.
That doctor
on the bulletin board
is going to be
unanimous.
Username
might be
monster_slayer_1997,
not
Mike Smith,
general practitioner.
And it was all
a look at this weird
thing that's happened
on the internet,
early comfortable with it.
What does it mean?
Empowered history
of
pseudanonymous
writers and people.
I pull one example of many,
here, which are the federal
papers, which were
a series of essays written
in support of the
Constitution of the United
States, were published in
newspapers and
pulled together.
And they were written
and they could have
absolutely written them under
their own name.
But they wrote them under
a sheet of them.
And for a variety of reasons
they didn't want to feel
they were self-promoting
themselves.
Or maybe they wanted to
put the focus on the ideas
a variety of reasons
someone might do this.
But it's a known
way for the internet.
And so you
put this together,
sometimes,
an identity
might not just be
a focus area.
Oh, and this is my talk
about you.
It might be a way to have
some synonymity.
And to
separate a certain area
from a certain other area.
And i used the the word
synonymity.
Because I think that's
basically we have
a anonymous people online.
And we have
synonymous people online.
And we rarely have
purely anonymous people.
Anonymous would mean
something like there is
no anonymous.
It's not anonymous.
It's synonymous.
6529 It's synonymous and 6529 shows evryday on Twitter with
the same profile picture.
There is a continuity
in one day to the next.
And clearly anonymous
or someone who would
be logging in
one day as
and on
6778-1112-14.
Posting something
gone.
Going back to the
different account.
Posting something gone.
But that's very rare.
You don't see very
much of it.
I can't even imagine
the time for
imagining an example
in the NFT Twitter
network.
And what's really
what the choices are
between
the
anonymous.
You go and say
portrait
no instructor has
and the
photo is
one for sure.
And you go there.
And it's
towards your place.
And looking at his
PFP, it's a picture of him.
This is me.
I'm talking about
the number of people.
Again, I'm saying this thing.
I'm talking about. 6529 is synonymus but just as consistency
...
Well,
you can mentally model
that person.
And
this is also nothing.
I remember
bulletin boards.
And I'm 15 and 20 years ago.
Most people
did not put their
whole name
and social security number
go post the bulletin board.
I remember being
on different bulletin boards
or had those usually
something made up.
And it was fine.
You kept seeing that
anonymous person
come back every time
and say things.
And you can develop
a consistent understanding
of what that person was.
And how you want
to interact with
them was
quite less
interesting.
I also want to note this
briefly.
I don't have much to say about this
because this was something
wrong.
I was shared with
me by one of the
unique things.
And I don't have
depth of knowledge.
Everyone thinks
of it.
The relationship between
me and my person
I want to express this
why part of my
personality with this
avatar.
It appears
this is fascinating
that the effects
are violent,
that the
avatar can
impact you back.
There is a faculty
number at the University of Nicosia
You can see
in this photo
avatars that look
like normal people
and avatars that look
super strong.
And it turns out that
if you put
your goggles on people
and you show them
themselves as
a normal person and you
ask them to do a test
against you.
They are
only in their
visual field
division and then
ask them to do the hand
test again and get
charmer.
It's actually
wild.
And I suspect
we're going to learn
a lot.
I didn't put
my goggles on people
who
were burned victims,
burned victims who
were virtual reality
goggles and
were put in a
snowy ice cold environment
at
lower perceived
pain levels than those
with them.
But again, it's weird
because you think of
pain or hand strength
and it's going to be very
interesting as we have
over the course of the
decade more
VR and
AR environments
better and more robust
avatars.
What does bilateral
relationship
is going to look
like and hopefully we'll
get some experts
towards the end of the
course.
I know to stop
a better than the end.
I'm not an expert.
But it's
I find it interesting to
just put that
concept out.
The relationship
between you and your
avatar you and your
PFP might not be 100%
unilateral.
It might be
to some degree bilateral.
But I think
we're going to
discuss in
NFT collections.
Here I'm linking to a slide
from last week's session
where we were talking
about IP issues
in
NFTs and specifically in
PFP's.
And one of the things
that I'm going to take
with us because today
we're going to talk
about IP issues.
And the first
model is
PFT collections that
give you commercial rights
to avatar
and PFT collections
that say your
avatars in the
domain if
anyone can use it.
You can also use it
anyone else can use it.
You can also use it
around
everyone's
moral
as my credit.
I just say this we're
talking to read
discuss last week's session
but keep that in mind as we
discuss some of the things
discussed today.
But also when we speak
to
Arda on Thursday
4156
they're not accidental guests.
model and the public dream market. So that's what we're going to talk to them and ask them why they think
not say, good model for their collection and what the process of minuses are. So I think that's
it's important to keep this in the back of your mind. Now one of the things again is it'll be known
by the older people in the NFT space but less known as less known by the newer people. I put
up on what you're viewed as the definitive initial original PFP collection. And not strictly speaking
start as a PFP collection. Larvalabs, the founders, Matt and John did not come out and say, hey,
everyone needs profile pictures that look like low-res cartoons. And so here come picture profile
pictures you can use it on Twitter. This wasn't at all. They were designed as a whole project
where you could claim them for free. The traits for generative, what I mean by that,
you're going to know in advance what you get to be some combination of the traits that
were probability adjusted. And you can get an alienate as long as you win. And it came along
with as a project and the founders definitely thought of this as a complete project, not just to be
at the point itself, but the overall system, which included the front end website that was
created, allowed you to trade them, allowed you to trade them for tier of fees, make offers, list them for sale.
It was a very sophisticated project for its time. It has done more, it comes, it came on day one
with more complete infrastructure than almost every PFP project you want today. But I believe the
mental models on what the puncture, where is it art or is it collectible? It wasn't then,
is it a PFP? And this quote here is from an interview that the larval abs Team
did with art known who's a true expert in the NFT space. And he asked them is there what,
what is it? Is it digital art or is it a collectible project? And their answer was basically,
it doesn't really matter. You don't care what people call it, we just thought it was really
interesting. And we want to emphasize that part of the project wasn't just the point in
the art, but also the contract and the marketplace that's all built in together.
What's really interesting when you look at this, you know, what's not there is PFP.
Because that's on how they were thinking. The use of crypto-punk as PFP was emergent.
It happened on the community, it was not designed. It was not necessarily obvious
as it is now. It didn't happen right away. The project was launched in 2017. And I'm not saying
these are the first times that people used a crypto-punk as their profile machine.
But they were the first times I know, which doesn't mean I'm trying to happen before,
but these weren't seminal events. And the first was in January when key money paid,
I think $100,000 is the punk gave us back that was a gigantic record.
And then made it his profile picture. And then a few weeks later, 4156,
made a higher money, a little more of Hanter, is the pump gave. And also made it his profile picture,
and also encouraged a lot of derivatives to be made of his profile picture. And we're going
to speak to both 4156 and G-Money. Of course, we're going to ask them directly how they thought
of why they did it, what it meant. But I remember both of these thinking in my mind,
I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And over the next few months, a lot more people did.
There's a lot more crypto points to it. And then a lot of people with other PFP collections.
From my perspective, it seemed like this agreement I'm proud of hearing about it on Twitter.
But I think NFTs as PFP was a 2021 funder. And I think it is a unbelievable fund.
We'll talk about what that might mean, but it's an incredible fund.
It's certainly impacted my thinking about 6529, that it became very obvious to me in 2021,
early 2020. That's the idea that you can have an NFT in that NFT to represent your virtual identity,
whether it's a 2D PFP or whether it's a 3D avatar. And the models are going to change
a hundred times over the next few months. But the idea that you're going to have a
visual presence for presenting yourself is not going to change. And that there is something
interesting in representing that as NFTs. And that this is how that if there is a broad open,
decentralized, metaverse, internet, the internet with persistent digital objects,
well, that it makes sense to do it this way, as opposed to just uploading the cover itself.
It made a lot of sense to me. And that was my exact logic, nine, six, five, two, and I'm going to
still go personal for a second because I think it's wrong. I'm doing six, five,
tonight is one of the better known PFP NFTs now. Why did I do it? Why did I not just start
tweeting about NFTs? My professional question. Well, the first is I like to do things by doing
things. And I thought, this is how I think this is the native of the way it's going to be done.
In NFTs, I started wanting to live in a space the way it's how I think it's going to play out.
You'll be able to learn by doing it personally. The second one was fun.
The third, I thought it would clarify the message that I wanted to say and also help me test
the message that I wanted to say. So I have a reasonable professional reputation,
including in crypto. And I could have said like, oh, I thought these new things about NFTs
and I would tell you what, we will get some feedback and audience views. But I started
subscribe to that. I was zero followers as a brand new account, but with the six, five, nine,
PFP. Because I was about to talk about NFTs. And this is now part of my identity. I want to talk
about NFTs under that identity. And I don't actually want to mix it up with what I forget
the last. I would just matter. I don't think you know what I want to talk about is the open
network and how it's very socially important that we succeed at it. And you know, in no way,
am I comparing myself to the federal speakers? Imagine if I had a joke, we have no idea what
the readers of the federal speakers have no idea what Alexander Hamilton had for them or that
like, why should they, right? Would anything have been improved if they did? I doubt it. So the
area was all of the things mentioned. It was an identity where they community, in this case,
the community of NFTs holders. And they went to sharpen the message and stand a focus
message. And I think it's working. And I think it's not just something that you would say,
oh, well, this is very unique to subscribe tonight. Other people won't use it. I've spoken to a
lot of people. A lot of people, my professional network, who are fascinated and kind of frightened
by this type of thing. And what I tell them is, oh, this is, oh, first of all, this is just a
long time pre-NFT to discuss with nothing new. But also, I don't think my experience
is going to be some weird one-off experience. I think my experience and everyone's experience,
I think most people will present multiple identities online, like they sort of do now,
but a little bit. And so this, I think it's very interesting. I think
PFPs do have at some level product market that that level means that people will want, need,
it personalized, customized for what were their values and interest in identity,
virtual identity online. Now, this doesn't mean that
you can date your worth thirteen years, whatever is a totally different question, or how the
projects are trying to find their position in the marketplace. It's very complicated,
interesting question, but not today's question. The question is, there is not this point.
There was one, I believe, people will use the PFPs in this way. And it's a fairly obvious
and truly obvious usage case in virtual worlds and for NFTs.
Really, for a good friend brought on a slide, I think this is a little bit more of the same that,
what happens, I'm saying this more for people for not even the space, what happens when I see
this NFTs? What is it done before I get to know Bharat? What messaging is he saying?
What is it saying when he's contentative? That's what, that's kind of the messaging of the
punks. And the crypto native comes one of two ways, right? Either you were early enough to
own a punk early, because probably really, really contentative, not because you were good idea
to buy one of them. Or if you're in relative journey completely, it means you are willing to sacrifice
a lot of capital to own one of them. Anyway, I tell what people are just doing this, for example,
solves the way that they're not. We try that with some people, but on average, on average,
statistically, someone who was holding a punk, and they could instead be holding tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or a few cases where it's not. Is it making a decision
that a punk is more important to them than tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars, or millions
of dollars? So statistically, you will know something about it. It is highly unlikely, for example,
that they hate crypto assets. It is quite likely that they like crypto assets, that they believe
them, that they're willing to sacrifice, yeah, assets, and yeah, in some humans in order to make
this thing. And so while you might not know anything about, or not specifically, you will know
something in an aggregate, across the 10,000. This leads to two, right, where there's no
punks followed, punks, I think that has died off a little bit, but you know, the punks discord was
very popular, and people thought they had shared values, and I think they do have shared values,
and the word, it's the sport, that's a different sort of shared value. That's true, and the
moon words discord has a different share of shared values, not all pretty similar at this age,
right? We haven't, they're all quite similar people, anyone who's currently buying a
PFP on a fee, but there are differences between those community, and they're being expressed,
and this is where collections of PFPs possibly mean something, because they're a way,
very short hand, to see what something is for us, has made a random drawing of
himself and presented it. But we're, you know, a fantastic collector, an excellent writer,
and so it has forced to come, someone we respect to follow, in any case. However, there's a
cognitive short cut, he's sending a message to something, a cognitive short cut that I
express these types of values, not perfectly not completely, you know, you don't, if you wear
University of Alabama t-shirt, it doesn't mean you would have your social University of Alabama,
but you're doing some type of cognitive short cut. And of course, it allows for
pseudonymity in a way that is a cool photo, that's it. Now, to talk about this a lot,
yesterday, we'll talk about it on Thursday, the time to introduce another concept,
a very controversial concept in PFPs, which is the concept of utility. And utility was,
I believe, and this is not to say that there weren't some utility aspects in prior collections,
this concept is an important concept in the PFP culture. I think it was largely popularized by you,
Liga, which founded the Bordips.com PFP culture. It was very ambitious,
post-minting, in offering all types of benefits, buddies, fun features to their community.
Which is very different from the cryptopart, that the Marvel abs team, after they minted
the PFPs, did something that approximates to nothing. And then there's a lot of criticism of
the state, and people go back and forth, which was better. But they did not organize parties for
punks, they did not make a game for punks, they did not make t-shirts for punks and minerals.
I said, oh, this is an interesting, digital art collectible project. We have done it,
and then what happened with the punks was quite emerging. Yuga was a little different.
Yuga started off with access to a virtual yacht club, and you could make them walls,
but then they helped parties in New York, they air-dropped, additional NFTs,
they're now building a game called, or a Metaverse, or a game Metaverse, called,
other side. And so Yuga, the company, does an awful lot of things. And they also copyright
a different concept, a concept of commercial rights. And if Optimus was very good to illustrate,
it was, the logic wasn't necessarily that every single
or they pulled or launched an aggressiveness, but if this is going to be your identity,
you should be able to do it every while. And crypto-punks from our labs were not totally clear
what you could do with your crypto-punks. And Yuga said, no, if you're on this 48, you could do it
every while. And you don't have to ask this information, it's your identity. Almost the idea of
that commercial rights was just as important as commercial rights. And whatever reason,
maybe it was these things that they did, or maybe it was a moment in time, or maybe it was
the minty model. Whatever the case was, the board had got up to very, very well economic,
it was mint of the point zero, repeat from you. At some point, it crossed a hundred
meters per PFP. And I know this isn't just a question, and no idea what that price was for, or any
interesting thing is to follow. Because it did well, and because it had a lot of utility,
a lot of other collections followed this effort. And so the typical election, you know,
the punks have the benefit that they were first, early, have heritage in history and provenance.
And so it's plausible to believe that the crypto punks are the Andy Warhol shoot cans of PFPs.
They were the first people in the original, they were extremely well-fought out, they were very
comprehensive, they had a form of artistic thinking in them. They are just between the fact that
there's simplistic, probably actually even helps them in terms of, you know, being less
impacted by fashion trends. And so, that opportunity was unique to the punks.
What has happened with the BFB culture, because the first one that managed to make real
inroads against the punks, and today is probably the same market capacity for it. And this heavy utility
focus, this space shift there, because obviously people are saying, oh my gosh, the great business
opportunity is like, people like having an NFT, there are PFPs, there's 10,000 punks, people can
do a very quick check, check if there's more than 10,000 people know. You know, all you have,
maybe there's not 10,000 people who want to spend a lot of money in the PFP. And I think this is
probably also incorrect. The most amazing stuff that I read in the last couple of months,
is the Rolex, which a lot of people think it was a luxury league product. So it was one million
watches a year. And over the last, I don't know how many years, three decades have sold 40 million
something watching. And so, the Rolex is, of course, an identity object. It is not an object that
whose goal is to tell you the time, certainly not in 2022, you have a phone on you that'll
watch with the Zillion features for a couple hundred bucks. You're buying your Rolex for
identity reasons, many belonging reasons, especially. And the average Rolex is under $12,000,
$13,000, which is still a reasonably priced PFP. And there's a million of those a year, right? So,
a lot of people in the post-based NFTs phase with an entrepreneurial line and in this lab. Well,
obviously, there's going to be more demand for PFPs in a thousand. And in which case,
we should make some. And how do we get people to be introduced not already to do things for
them, you tell anyone. And this, I would say, is one of the very big interesting and outstanding
questions about this. Because in a lot of products, there will be so far in watches near an Apple.
I don't think you can replicate the
birth of different components anymore. And then I think the interesting question,
where you're telling a question, really boils down to, is anyone actually want these things?
Are these things interesting? You know, you can get physical builds, you get air drops,
you get access to market reports. When we get cover rolls on here later, we're going to ask
them why in something so funny, but not previously, I think I wanted to funny that, right? And so,
some of them are saying we're going to make cows, we're going to make metaphors, we're going to make games.
And I think in some cases, it is a bit, a solution looking for a problem, as opposed to necessarily
a problem that is very obviously solved by these solutions. I think to me, what has happened
to certain collections generated the high market value. And then people kind of look around and
say, well, why does it have this high market value? Well, we need to do things justified and
it's not necessarily, if those things are the right things, some of them might come out to be the
right, some of them might not. And the reality is we don't know you, right? NFTs as a PFP concept
is not even two years old. Utility-oriented PFP collections are maybe a year and a half old.
Most of you are still in the orange of PFP, or should something up for a few months. Is there
any doubt in my mind that people will use PFPs, isn't? If you want them to be
or fiably yours and take your identity across different applications, all they should be in,
NFTs, they are done. Is it clear in my mind that it's good that there is a company that has
issued those NFTs and that company is going to do interesting activities for you, though.
Make your physical clubhouse, the whole party is going to solve your t-shirts, go to special shows
with actors. Or maybe I think some people will figure it out. I can do some of those in work,
but some of them will not. In fact, most of them will not. And we're at the beginning of a vast
process of exploration of which models do work. In which models don't work. In which models work
for which communities, it's going to be different. But some communities are going to value.
You can just see this very clearly between the proximity and the more interesting,
the more interesting and many, very much, values. It's best to meet other people. They'll learn
the joy of having the time instead of why they're going to be out party on the Pearson.
And then if the folks did something similar, but how far the psychological profile of
the company goes, what's interesting about that? Neither is right. Neither is wrong. There's
going to be different things for different types of people. So when this experimentation phase,
and I'll mention the nouns here, because the nouns are another take on the same model,
because we're going to talk about these. The nouns are the step beyond commercial rights. They
like the crypto tools and the city needs and the NFRS are collections that say,
we're building a collection that is meant to be a network oriented collection. What do I mean
by that? I need to think of it in phases. If I'm a company and I don't give commercial rights,
I'm a company. I'm starting a lifestyle company, a street work company. I have five or ten people
at my company and make you products. Hopefully, my people are talented and smart and have
tasted people like it. And if I'm a commercial collector, too, maybe there'll be
thousands of people who have commercial rights, and if there's a few hundred or dozens,
we'll do some interesting things. So I get some number. The idea behind nouns,
there's many of those names, but the relevant idea here is, I don't know why, there's a whole world
to that force. Why should it just be the people who happen to hold a noun? Maybe someone
in Japan who turns out to be super talented and wants to be a project with these famous nouns
ones. You can just go it. It doesn't need to ask a more permission. And the only thing that's
good is that good is that bad. Well, the model there, and the underlying theory there, is
in an attention economy, in a networked attention economy, really the only thing that's
going to drive long-term now is long-term tension. I think this would be the less-case serve now,
if they become some type of global brand. Then through some mechanisms somehow
still unclear, owning an actual noun tough and will show a level of provenance and
its need, and it should be valuable. It is the far edge of PFPs experimentation in life.
You now would get into this at all, and get to deep into this, I would love a whole session,
like with 411Xs, about this office.
Also, you know, we had mentioned avatars, avatars, of course, coming. They're coming to PFP world.
They're summarizing the needs of the cybercalls. There's more coming. Will there be
avatar-based collections for moving around in virtual lands, of course? There's 100% happening.
With the agency of this, I will expect a lot more of this, and they'll be an interesting question.
What's better? Do you keep two? Do you have one? Do you have one? Do you have only one?
In which case is it a 2D render than 3D? Is it 3D render than 2D?
I don't know, but we're going to find out of the next five to the end of the year.
Now, I'm going to go highly abstract, or something, a whole lot.
I want to inject into your thinking. One of the things that fascinates me about PFP collections
is this idea that they are a publicly readable community database.
What do I mean by that? We talked about the particulates.
You don't have to know who any of the
crypto-punk holders are in real life. You don't need to know their mailing address,
the social security number, their email, where they live,
to be able to address them. What do I mean by address them? Well, you can airdrop them
a token of any type by airdroping it to the addresses that have crypto-punks.
You don't need anyone's permission to do it. It's right there. It's easy to find if you know it.
You can create an application, where someone who has a crypto-punk
is in with their web3 blog, and can enable features in their application.
Now, if those features were, it could be things like,
our own against your crypto-punk, because you know, you feel you know how much
your crypto-punks's are worth, and you're willing to take a crypto-punk as collateral,
and extend a blog against it. It could be
signing a licensing degree with the crypto-punk's world bought by Yuga.
And so they now have commercial rights, and so let's say I wanted to sell coffee mons with
crypto-punks on them. I could make an application and say, hey, I want to
sublice them some the way you can express to me that you're interested. I don't have to
email your call. You need to come here and sign something crypto graphically,
with a non-exclusive sublice. You could say in another verse environment,
and OM, and say, oh, here's a neighborhood, and this neighborhood is only available to
crypto blog holders, and how will we know your crypto blog holders? Because we'll check
your wallet when you log in. If you haven't crypto, then you can come in, and if you can't,
you could make a game. So if you're in this game, now it's very interesting. Everyone,
nine to seven, how they want to do it, everyone under making games, once they've grown game assets,
they can monetize it, but people will make games that would use existing PFPs.
You can say, oh, look, I made this whole game, and if I have a crypto-punk,
then I get a special org of power, and if there's something in the game.
You can even go into the first of the world. You can sell it down,
actually running a physical blog in Manhattan, and it's token gated, and you can come in,
you can, there's different models now on a mobile device, demonstrate ownership of the token,
and I was not just for bugs, maybe it's for a different type of blockchain, because people who are
generally into NFTs, NFT club, NYC, right? It's a cool bar. You only want NFT nerds,
so you can talk about NFTs all day long, not saying it's necessarily good business,
I don't understand, you can in fact do. And if you think about this concept,
it's saying shine normal psychic, because there are all types of community databases in the world.
They are all held in fact from twice the end of it. They all have a variety of personal information
involved, right? And, hey, you can't easily get access to them, and need to get access to them
for someone to give you access to them. Usually, they're going to handle
where people's personal information, right? So, let's say,
I wanted access to a database of a Catholic church network. I haven't done that, I'm
trying to deal with a Catholic church, and I don't think they would, but let's say they did,
I certainly couldn't do anything directly, because I would expose everyone's personal information,
so you could do some lot of work out here, include a mailer to their house, or what have you.
But, none of these things are easily made. None of these things are particularly interesting
in 2022. Whereas, should it be the community to start forming new NFT collection?
And, those NFT collections mean something. And, by mean something, actually, not that there's
a whole t-shirt or a game, mean something and they have distinctive value, distinctive psycho-demographies.
It's going to be very interesting, because you can then have the world large
developing things for your community, regardless of which model you are, like you don't have
you can get a commercial model, or you can get a CC0 model, someone can still make an opt-in service
for your community. I think this idea is underappreciated. I think I need to work on it and develop
more. I think it's a very large idea. And, much more interesting idea than most of what is going
on on the Internet. I always say everything, but most of what is going on. Next question,
I want to ask this for the new people. Why do people pay so much to people? It is almost
like the generic first argument that people at all, NFTs are a scam. I can't believe someone paid
100 grand for this one to pay. Well, of course, some of what's going on is speculation. Of
course, some of what's going on is, of course, prices go up and prices go down a lot, which
happens a lot in particular, and it's the most directly monetized space on the Internet.
Now, some of it is just, you know, something that's definitely going to get some popular
price goes up in a place like that. And, of course, some of it. Why isn't the price for all
these things like 10 bucks? Let's start with the particular punch, which is where the logic
started in the long time. We have the particular punch meant something natively importantly,
artistically, as the first of its type in the particular world. Well, certain people,
myself and readers, want to express my identity through owning a part of that culture,
just like I've expressed my identity with a person or a people's story, but I do it because
to me, it's the exact same thing. I express my identity by owning and or ultimately.
It says something about it. I like that type of thing.
And it turns out the net market dynamics of how many people feel that way and how many
crypto-punks they offer. And given the crypto-punks that in a somewhat special place in the
hierarchy, and given that the people who tend to feel that way and to have a lot of
crypto assets and have gotten fairly rich over the last few years. The market
clears at whatever price of the people. What point today is 99?
Does it mean it should be 90 and not 10 or 90 and not 900? Nobody knows. We all discover this
over time. But it is no different conceptually to why a tomato soup can cost whatever it can
be. This is how the hell the logic starts. And they all want about these utility miscollection.
Not the same thing at first, right now, and everyone's trying to, you know, the project promoters
are trying to replicate in short circuit the pathway of crypto-punks. Make the same thing you have
in crypto-punks. And this is where some of the mismatch happens. There are a lot of people
and look at the auto-quote utility and say, well, I'm not sure that's worth it.
Why is it worth it to be there? If everything is going to be an interesting question,
most utility miscollections, I believe, will fail at all. Now, ones that work
are the ones who managed to build a broad ecosystem, but the original PFPs are not highly
deadly. I spoke about this one earlier. They hope that someday the boarded ecosystem
is as large as some of the major life-stover internet. And if that's the case,
when there's only 30,000 PFPs, it is likely that the demand for those PFPs to be sufficient
of the prices will be, you know, not zero, significant. We don't know these things,
and because, like, most startup ideas, most collections will fail, price will not be high.
You're going to have this continuous tension with non-crypto people, non-NFT people.
Those are like, oh, come on, this is like all-time-some-type scale and some-type problem.
And, you know, the leading investment of the PFP might get out of this,
but some of them will, I think, create a strong social construction. And for those,
I think you will hold on. If there is continued demand for a million roles in the year,
there is going to be more than 10 or 20 or 30,000 valuable people.
A valuable, I don't know, which ones I don't know. I'm not sure if you've ever given
the rest of the question, you know, but I think it's fair to say that most PFPs will not be
expected, in expected. And if you will have value, and the fact that they have value is not
some type of a priori takeaway that there's a scam going on. It's not an input.
A thing of quite sloppy thinking, even if a lot of these things don't actually hold value.
Now, some questions that I want you to think about, as we talk about,
as we go through the next two interviews, discussions will start in 4156.
There are things that happen, that I have in the back of my mind when I'm chatting with them,
and you'll see them come out, and I want to let you know the question that I'm thinking.
The first is valuation that was discussed. You're telling me, what does it mean?
It doesn't mean anything, right? This is what people actually want. What do people want?
As it present, this is a kind of an excuse question. I'll talk about this more later in the course
when we talk about security and legislations, and I want to get it deep into it now.
As it presents some risks, I hope this will be classified as security. We'll see.
I mean, it's not for today. What are the trade-offs between commercial licenses versus
CC0 public domain licenses? Are these really communities, or are these customers
or companies that need? Are these art Christmases, or maybe the social construction that is
global, or are they fashion businesses, or are they, it's fashion, it's not fashion.
What are the revenue models, you know, is it from primary sales,
from ongoing royalties? How is this impact to move the current debate happening in royalties?
These are the types of things I want to dig into with, for example, 4156,
and get into the more hard-hitting question. I think you now have the basis covered. You have
some basic frameworks and models covered, and then we'll get into some more hard-hitting question.
Now, I want to share a couple of just numbers, and then we'll go to Q&A. I pulled this from
the NFT valuation team. What's interesting, so far they've tracked PFPs in generative art,
and one of one art, probably in the next few months, I don't think one of one art is likely
to be bigger than generative art. And what's interesting so far is the market value of PFPs
is higher than the market value. I suspect we'll see the other categories that have PFPs.
There's a couple of reasons you can imagine. One, because maybe it's easier,
it's the easy way to get started. It's understandable what, which ones are more valuable,
less valuable, more rare, or lesser. It's understandable what you do with it, just a hundred profile.
So that's one idea. The other idea, maybe it has product market fit. Maybe this is a thing that
everyone is going to want. Everyone. And maybe whereas owning a piece of generative art is
something only a few people are going to want. So we don't know the reasons, but today,
they're a large percentage, the largest percentage of the NFT market capitalization.
Eight, over the top ten collections, by market capital, 15 collections, more of those,
or the top five, or you've been five of the top ten, or you've been. So it is quite concentrated.
I think I was in a semi-debate on Twitter about this.
Does someone ask it? Is this an apple? No. NFT is of the furthest thing from an apple,
right? There's no barriers to entry them, none zero. I can go out this afternoon and mint 1,000
PFP collections until it happens. So I think it is more of a reflection of the maturity of this
space than one company who calls the IP for 50, 60 percent of the market capital, 50. And
really, this really happened because they were able to buy the crypto points IP. But I'm all
about 100 percent certain that this number will diminish over time because there's people who
will be launching new PFP collections. And some of them will shift some vein of interest
along the public. And there's no reason to believe that only you'll get to do it.
Many communities, artists, companies, etc. will come after this space. So I think that number
isn't that kind of, but it also will go down over time, natural, because unlike how you think
about classes from Apple, your utility company, they've literally run the pipes to your house
and class from Apple. You'll get does not have a class from Apple. Anyone can launch a PFP collection.
What they've done is very good execution. So I do think that number will match on from now.
And then the last data point, this is volume from, you know, I hate lectures from all time,
basically before January 2021. It was in, in barely even see it on the chart.
And there were big spikes in fall of August and September of 2021. A huge spike in April is the
other side of mint. And today I'm going to down quite a bit. Crypto volume in general,
and I'm talking. And given this is the least established part of the crypto asset
field, it's logical to expect that they'll be down even more. This does not have priority
bothering me. I think this is going to be very, very large field. And this reminds me of what
was happening early, but it's like selectivity and then long periods of much less activity.
I think that's how it's going to happen here as well. And so this is what I wanted to cover
today. What I'm going to do is I don't want to mint presentation yet. I want to finish the
chat with the others. Also information from those chats and share it once it's fully complete
towards the end of the week. Now, I don't know if George or Valentino's can tell me,
are we in one room in which case I can maybe drop down and try and do voice chat and all,
or are there multiple rooms in which case I think we need to be able to display for now several
information. Okay, well, nobody's replying to me here. So I am going to assume, assume we're,
I'm going to take a section and just answer questions here. So let me stop here.
Okay. Why don't you feed questions to the team in
OM? I'll try and answer them here. And the team I'm looking in the live channel, the final of the
live channel, looking for a question. I'll assume I will see them there. I see three of them so far.
I assume they're more than three questions, so we should feed them into them. I'll take this
question to basically not take this question. What is the best way to do marketing for your
PFP project? I'll tell you the worst way to do marketing. Send me DM on Twitter and say, hey,
what's your, what's your rate card for marketing my PFP project? I get that, I get that the 10 or
15 times every single day. Needless to say, I don't even bother replying to these. And
needless to say, this is unlikely to be a model that is going to be successful.
Right. The idea of hoping some people with reach will for some reason take your money and say,
wow, this is a full PFP collection. And people are going to care about that or care about that in
the long term. It's a terrible one. I'm almost 100% certain that this will not work. The things that
I can have work that's what I'm going to say is this one. That's how it steps. You'll have to
find a core of people who have a shared ethos. The punks are to share ethos around the idea of
the more dates. For sure, early on had a shared ethos around the idea of
taking themselves less seriously and less expensively than the punks. The CDVs have a shared ethos
of taking themselves extremely non-served. And it's one of those, you know, anti-branding,
anti-status ethos. You're willing to use a CDV as your PFP. You don't care about status. It's an
anti-status, status flex. The nouns have an ethos. The ethos has what they're trying to test.
This idea of an extremely decentralized PFP project. In fact, I don't do anything. This one is
pretty free from the project. Ethics is building a better home. Let's go to that and see if you think
that through it on. It certainly will get me. What is not likely, so to me, you have to start with
that question. Who wants to be a part of it? Why do they want to be a part of it? Ask yourself
if these people would want to be together for any other reason. What tends to be the default
case of a new PFP project, which is why the default new PFP project is it starts off with the
needs of the creator. The perceived needs of the creator ends up in some of the more lines of
I want to make a lot of money and have no interest in the actual needs of the people from whom
you're hoping to make a lot of money. So the starting point has to go, who are you addressing?
Why are you addressing? Why are you addressing those people? What are you helping them for in
their lives and start there? It's hard to have any ideas. I just want to make 10,000 generative
problems. Well, this is not like there are other people who have made some money in this. So I can't say
I'm in favor of it, but it has happened. You have to start always thinking about the questions
in community that people start there, not when you're working. If you start a project and then ask
yourself why does someone want it? Well, weird model. Okay, next question.
PFP identity can be tied to the cultural object framework perhaps. Yeah, so this is something
I tweeted about. The cultural object framework is something that I just completely made up.
But I still think it's something that everyone knows a bunch of cultural objects. Those cultural
objects might be make you or the Mona Lisa or Donald Trump or Donald Trump is a cultural object
as much as you can be. I can put your call tips on ideas. What about? There's a bunch of global
cultural objects. There's a bunch of national ones. Italians have different ones in America
and then you have local ones in your community, local high schools, local cultural objects.
Nobody else cares about it. And at any point in time, people have maybe a few thousand cultural
objects they remember. I think it's just a limitation from the number. You just sit down
and find the right amount. Every cultural object you can think of. I know you're good. I think
people come to themselves. The ones that have made it as global cultural objects. They're
everyone in planet Earth and Earth. By my side, I'm the goal. I'm the goal is super valuable
not because you know, physical water is super valuable. It's super valuable because several
billion people will recognize that bottle and say, oh, that's very specific. Very specific
physical water. So this has
a background and I think some PFP projects are currently in the competition and become global
cultural objects. How many will make it? No more than a handful. Why? Because how many global
cultural objects are there? 200, 500 to 1000 and not 50 health. So how many of those are going
to be PFPs? Not a lot. But somewhat, somewhat. And part of my logic of why I think was super
early in PFPs is you don't see national or local, like the normal example I get is France.
France is a big country. It's a piece of an economy. It has something million people.
It is extremely proud of its language and culture. We have a whole
institute set up to protect its language. And as far as I can tell, I have yet to see
a meaningful PFP collection where the names of the traits are in French.
By the way, I'm not sure if you should do this as a visual idea because
probably the reason it hasn't happened is on of French people now still working with NFTs.
Some other will be. And it seems totally obvious that the average French person who on average speaks
French will want the PFP in his or her native language. And how many PFP collections in French
of 10,000 France support? Well, quite a few. Or maybe fewer collections, but larger numbers of
PFP. So I don't think we even hit national level PFP. We have, I don't know, 30, 40 meaningful PFP
collections, all of which are competing on a global basis, all of which are super
rudimentary, like the numbers are tiny. When you think about all large communities,
well, Facebook has three and a half billion people. Oh, the Bored Apes have
linked to a lot of NFTs, depending on if you count the crotos in or not in other side.
The board apes either have 30,000 or 40,000.
30 or 40,000 is not a large number either as a brand or as a social media company.
And so we're still super, super early, super, super niche. And I think thinking through
the cultural object framework, so thinking factfully that there will be outcomes of
a national at a global level, the national level of community level, will actually help maybe
help you find gaps in the marketplace. In fact, the gaps in the marketplace are literally
everything. Everything's happening. But you have to ask yourself, do you understand this group
well enough and are they online enough and are they crypto enough now that you can fill that?
I do think the archetype of PFP is going to be replaced since temporary. I assume this means
the 2D profile picture. But we'll definitely have 3D avatars. You might have other things.
The 3D avatars are probably the end state right because they'll work 3D in the browser,
they'll work in virtual reality, they'll work in augmented reality.
I don't think the end state in any of those 3 is going to be 2D image, it's going to be the most
natural view. So I certainly expect a lot more 3D avatars and NFT collections.
How does that interact with 3D spaces? I don't know, I mentioned this earlier.
Are you going to have one PFP for Twitter and a different one for running around OM?
Are you going to have the same one, and if you're going to have the same one, is it
like in OM, am I going to have you some brand new 3D PFP and then I'll use that on Twitter or
am I going to make a 3D s5 to 9 to run around on? I don't know. I think it's
I think it's true early to know this. Of course there's one of those questions where the answer is
yes, all of the above, right? There can be people open different things. But
we're sure as much as 3D PFP and NFTs are early, 3D ones are certainly on the market beginning of the
people. I don't know what comes after that. I don't think that the 3D ones have a lot of rooms
to run and there's a lot of technical issues to solve to make them work well. Facebook
has spent tens of millions of dollars and they're still working on having their 3D avatars,
have the legs in VR, you know, why is it hard to have legs? I can do them in an afternoon
alone. Have legs in VR and not make the user nauseate. The legs have to actually work in a
naturalist way that people don't get nauseated. So a lot of work that needs to be done by do
think that's probably the end state. Does a PFP with no utility have a chance in the future? Yes.
I think it is an open question how much and as we've ever housed,
both models work, but how much the model is going to be? I want to own this NFT
because there's a team of people at the company behind that are a bunch of cool stuff for me.
They're organizing parties, they're making a special house for me to stay in when I'm in
San Francisco, they're air dropping me a t-shirt, I mean all of this stuff is one model. And then there's
one of the other PFP's that are pure culture. Crypto-punks are a bunch of pure culture. The CDB is
pure culture. There is no centralized security team, there is no one organizing on behalf of the
project. It's just a cultural part. I think cultural ones are harder to do because you've got to
figure, you've got to really get the meaning of a certain culture. They're harder to do,
but if you do them, if you do them, I think that easier to be successful. If you get it right,
the pathway to success is easier, you have to do fewer things. The ones that are utility-based,
I think you do end up in a bit of a grind as the operator of the project, one of the project,
that expectations are set that you're doing something for the holders on an ongoing basis.
I'm going to say, I'm going to say what's bad, big companies operate effectively forever,
like Nike isn't saying, well, gosh, I'm really exhausted thinking up of new shoes, so next
year we're not going to make it. It's a normal corporate thing, but if you end up in that model,
that is the model. You have to keep coming up with new things every year for the developing
existing things, and managing to stay tuned with the values and interests of your group,
and continue the bunch of other groups. So, the utility model, it does imply a lot of work,
if it works. A culture model, all of the hard works on a fund end, if you make something that's
cultural irrelevant. If you make something that's cultural irrelevant, and they're an initial pickup,
it might be self-sustaining with much less work on the project. So, there's no free lunch in
life. This is another no free lunch type, conclusion, that both models I think do.
All right, what is your most optimistic and pessimistic outlook on PFPs three to five years from now?
Also, what are your thoughts on PFPS for professional groups? Like, what knowledge of surgeons or trade
unit? Well, let's start with the second question. I think they're a great professional group for
definitely making them, and they're definitely used. I don't think that's tomorrow. It's maybe
three to five years from now, as it's us, and certainly by the end of the day. So, my most optimistic outlook
is also like the follow-up, which is, everyone is going to have many NFTs with them.
Everyone, the first population, I mean, people with an internet connection, and
as far as following the computer and access to at least a little bit of mud groups, two, three billion
people, definitely. And, I mean, everyone probably don't mean every single grandmother in the world,
right? I mean, actually, everyone, but everyone in the world is internet active, of course,
can include them. But, so, and they'll have all types of NFTs. And the median NFT that we're going to have,
is not going to be very expensive, because the median person doesn't have a lot of money to buy
an expense letter, but the same reason the median person isn't buying the levitton person,
for the same part, the median person globally is not owned, and we're saying these men's.
But, the median person still has a person, and they might have a car, or a motorcycle, or a bicycle,
or have some means of transportation. So, I would expect the distribution of the prices of NFTs,
and PFPs, to reflect the distribution of income and wealth, and wealth.
If this sounds totally obvious, they haven't been in the other way.
In which case, there's going to be a gigantic number of people.
I don't know which I get. Most of them are called failure and economic terms. Maybe even
most of them are called failure and engagement and utility terms, because you don't need to do
very much to launch a PFP collection. The permissional system can be done itself. Of course,
a lot of people will do a lazy effort, and very much work into it, and then be surprised
not to work. But there will also be some valuable quote-unquote in the enterprise collections.
There will also be collections that are much much larger than today, and so the average
price of a PSP might be much lower than some of these kinds of collections, but the total value of
the collection can be seen. And more importantly is, people are using, people are using them to
organize social activity online, organize community activities, make their social and community
equipment interoperable with other social and community groupings and applications. That's
going to be a very happy outcome, and it would also be my fault out there, I think, as well. What's my
personalistic outcome? It's the same personalistic outcome for everything in the end of the
incompatible space. That being in the United States, in the European Union, the effectively
losing freedom to have our own goals, that we can have the freedom to transact in crypto
directly on the chain. That we are forced to go to centralized providers, that you cannot hold
an NFT unless you're holding it in a centralized custodian like one base. You are pulled into a
permission system. Once you're pulled into a permission system, an iteration is going to die,
interesting ideas are going to die, there's going to be someone keeping, and it's going to get very,
very boring, you know. To me, this is the number one important thing, not just for the
success of the crypto space and the key space. My views are this is very important for human
freedom in general, because the ability to transact conditionlessly off-chain is coming to an end.
There will be a continued pressure of cash, and if we lose the ability to run applications
non-custodially permissionlessly online, which a good chunk of the regulatory system would like
that to happen. It means our whole economic activity as individuals, as organizations, as
societies, can be switched on and off by a specific individual and a specific individual
or central bank, president or administrator, and none of that is helping to decide.
There is, I am not, you're going to hear this over and over, I am not naive, there are bad people,
there are criminals in the world, there are people who should have law enforcement chase around,
but because I'm not naive, I also think that if we centralize
these hard-like hours in a handful of governmental positions, some of those criminal minds
will work very hard so they get an episode, and when they get an episode, they'll be closed on stop.
So a sophisticated understanding of this, a sophisticated understanding of
bad people and criminality, isn't just we need to catch all the bad guys, it is also
let's not create a gigantic crisis that a bad guy can grab, because someday, in the history of time,
in some countries, someone's going to manage the world and it's inevitable.
A sold-bound NFC's PFP wouldn't be an identity model, if I sold out PFP, someone means a PFP
tied to a wall, from a topic, I don't think we can cover it in depth today. My short answer is
I think tying a PFP wall is basically done. We are at the beginning of the beginning of wall
technology, everyone's going to want to change wallets many times like this, and the only way
to both enable that and have a sold-bound is to effectively centralize that if you have some
place you can go, say, prove to them, I no longer want to use this wallet, I want to move it to
another wallet, or I've lost access to this wallet, it's a point of centralization, I don't like it.
What the sold-bound NFT is actually trying to solve is proof of humanity, civil resistance,
the ability to say this person is the same person that this wallet and that wallet are still one
person. It is one of the great unsolved problems in crypto and more generally in decentralized
identity, people have been trying to solve this for a long time. It may be solvable, but 100% sure.
It may not be solvable, but 100% sure. But I'm pretty sure it is not solvable by saying
something as simplistic as you can't move your PFP from this wall,
it doesn't solve anything, unless you actually verify the types of things you'd have to do for this
to be a useful outcome. You'll have to KYC the person before him, otherwise someone could go
to get a sold-bound token for six lives, and I have to follow it. The claim to be six lives
in our battery system. We have to KYC, and then you need a process permanently to authorize
movements to new walls. By the time you've done that, you might as well just run a database.
I mean, this is not better than a database. This is actually very complicated and
painful to implement a commission database. So to the degree that there's going to be a useful form
of decentralized identity, a useful form of civil resistance, it's not easy to do. It's very
hard to do a lot of great lines of fail to solve and solve. It might be solvable, but it's not
solvable in this simplistic way. It's not solvable in this industry. It's been solvable and tokens
as they're currently described to me are not fit for the purposes I'm going to describe. All they
actually do is make life annoying for everyone with no actual practical purpose.
Okay, let's see. Do you think a physical-backed token recently tested by, as you might be
rather than used case for corporate company? I am skeptical about the confusion and
the reasons to you think they have this issue. So, as you can announce something yesterday,
and I don't think as you can. As you can see, they're using it in their project, a little physical
device, all of the being. It can be embedded in a physical product and generate it to you.
And so that when you have a hybrid, physical, digital token combo,
there's actually a linkage through the physical device. The physical device is a blockchain.
I'm glad people are experimenting with this. Things are very useful and fruitful area for people
to experiment. I'm not only 100% convinced how useful this is. A big part of the reason that
tokens are interesting is their instincts around the world,
the possibility of mobility, etc. If there's a physical object,
well, obviously, you can't move that physical object from them or,
so, basically, they're back in the world and shifting a new PS and a challenge to be
sure and to be verified because what it is, when it wasn't managed, obviously,
those are not solved by a better linkage between the token and the physical object.
Now, what if, now, is it possible, do I believe there will be a world that I can scan a
physical object on an LA carton of eggs? And that carton of eggs will tell me that they were
hatched in this farm and the tokens were of organic grain and I can interact where that grain came from.
And they lived through, oh, that's a tricky little, but they were packaged on this day.
They were entrusted with these many other days and now they're in like, it shouldn't
be waiting to become an omelette. Now, we'll have that and doesn't make sense that that type of
tracking information is put on a blockchain so that if I'm an ex-applier, a neural ex-applier,
a neural action, a new supplier, and I'm a lead supplier, we all write some type of standardized format
on the blockchain so people can make applications for this type of user, yeah, but also sounds
different from seeing up. Even things for a very long time, no one's actually done it yet, but
it's conceptually one of those things that make sense for blockchain. Blockchain makes sense
when you have large groups of disparate people that are otherwise part-organized and
food producers and food distributors and food consumers are good examples.
All of this is a physical object with a blockchain piece that can be something that is a
blockchain that can be used in some of the other ways. It's like, this thing represents this
information. All of this sounds really good, and the fact that I'm not 100% sold on
is that the linkage to the token doesn't. You wouldn't, if I gave you my carton of eggs,
allows you to transfer some token, of course this is not the usage case of people,
talking to people talking about it. I give you my attack mate, and it also comes with token,
and the token goes along with it, and that has information. I'm not saying there won't be some
use of blockchain goods or this type of thing, but I am saying that the nature of a physical object
inside you, an NFT, takes away a lot of the actual entity. It drags you into the extremely
non-skillable thing, and I'll give you a practical example. I think the psychological
end is in a couple thousand years, and the fund has it from one of the other ones, and among those 25
100% are three or four of them, and we've gotten also a physical good, a physical installation,
and they're great, they're amazing, and I have no objection to physical things. I don't so, but
we have some more time going through and thinking about how we're going to store
the physical piece of work, and how we're going to store them, and what's the right model,
and how are we going to keep them safe, and how we're going to cost, and how we're going to ship them,
and the ball of these things, that are these five NFTs, and the other 2495 combined by a factor of
what, and every time I think about these hybrid physical digital, and there's my mind immediately
goes to what, just to tell you that, well sure, but some things are going to just the physical world
anyway, if you want to buy a fancy watch, and you're going to have it in the physical world,
regardless, it's not a choice, not to have it in the physical world, and there'll be some useful
things, yes, are they going to be, is the problem solved? No, I don't think so, oh my God,
people are in experiments, yes I am, I really like people, okay, I think I'm going to wrap here,
this has got a long time, or on exactly two hours, so I want to keep it to some reasonable length,
the next session, on the other side,
I'm 30 each time, you know, quite a worse thing to suppose, I think that's right,
there's going to play the interview, Q&A discussion I have with,
or then, then a 3PM Eastern one, our dual login, and we can ask questions, I'm not going to ask
questions, do I spend an hour and a half asking questions on Monday, so you'll have a chance for that question,
and then, 4156 to some physical, so we do that as well, and with that, we will then also finalize
anything in the presentation, the UNIC team was making some progress thinking about now,
then things are going to work out, displaying them, of course people are going to work,
I'll let them announce them, they're ready, but it seems like progress is being made,
my guess is another week or two, and we'll have the process down, down time, so thank you, everyone,
once again, it was a pleasure and we'll see you in a couple of days.