The Exchanges

Q I don't see how that's going to be done unless you have every company in the world agreeing to use a single sign on method that obviously, you know, metaverse or meta was trying to create or, uh, you know, Microsoft might be trying to create, but, but I think that that's. A goal for the metaverse that may struggle to come to fruition. What do you think about that?

A The buzzword interoperability is one that people throw around a lot in the web three space. And the intention there is what you're describing of people will be able to fluidly move between these worlds. But ultimately I think that this is going to be more of like apps on your phone. When you look at your phone, you don't have one login for all these different applications. You have a separate login for each one of these applications. Applications. Cause each of those are private companies. You know, you're able to actually go in and, and develop content in Instagram. You're able to go into TikTok and develop content there. And these are all siloed. And I think that this plays out the same way because that's what we know. The idea of being able to fluidly move between the two is great. And it's a beautiful concept. And there are cool innovations like Ready Player Me that are focusing on at the avatar level. Being able to get you through all the different types of virtual worlds using like heavy, heavy tech in the background to kind of get a root of value from each world into the next one. But I think it plays out more so as these silos where you have individual logins, you're able to seamlessly log into each one of these, but separately. And I think brands are also playing this card as well, where They don't necessarily want their brand represented in certain worlds. They want i…

AI assessment note: “it plays out more so as these silos where you have individual logins”

Q you for the introduction. I appreciate it. As you were talking about your story, I just started going, oh yeah, I've got question, question. Okay, great. I've got like a bunch of questions now. The one most relevant to what you just said was why would web two brands want to build for the metaverse and spend millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars getting there?

A Off the back of this pandemic that we all got experience, uh, you know, pretty quickly working remotely or just communicating with relatives. If you don't work remotely, um, everything got pushed. It was just a shove into this virtual experience where if you're on Zoom or how we're talking to each other right now, there became this question Where it became a little bit more prevalent in the virtual world of talking to each other, and people were kind of challenging these young people who were in Minecraft all day and Roblox all day. But the question that was posed to a lot of people was, what makes this shirt valuable that I'm wearing on Zoom? And what makes it more valuable than one that I would buy and wear on my avatar in Minecraft or Roblox or one of those? Like, what is the difference? It's self-expression. It's me sitting here talking to you and, you know, we can do that in an avatar setting in a virtual experience, and I can actually wear way cooler things and look like a, you know, however I want to look and, and change it around in all these different cool self-express ways. So brands have, you know, they're savvy. They picked up on, on this pretty quickly that self-expression and fashion, uh, were at the forefront of this. So last year, You saw a lot of big name companies like your Gucci's and these household kind of fashion brands coming into things like Roblox and t…

AI assessment note: “brands have, you know, they're savvy. They picked up on, on this pretty quickly”

Q know, as you said, um, realistic versus, uh, versus cartoony, what if you buy something that's cartoony? Is it going to become hyper-realistic in that next version? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. Maybe you would need, you know, uh, Pointy from OpenAI to potentially help you to, to transcode these things, but like, It just sounds fantastical to a point that I don't think it's ever going to happen.

A There's a lot of, of people working on, at least on the protocol level as to how interoperability works, where you actually move assets between different blockchains and stuff like that. So the decentralized infrastructure, it underneath all of it is, is where people are really trying to develop and move assets between the different chains. So I think that word being focused on the protocol level, and we're talking about what's being built on top. Where these, these virtual worlds are. So you got a couple different layers there. And I think that from the virtual world perspective and moving like .glb or .vox file formats across these different worlds, I think is, is gonna be very, very, very difficult to do. And my take on this with Sandstorm is I think the builders themselves are the ticket. If Nike comes to Sandstorm and says, I need a shoe, a builder is gonna be able to deploy that across five different virtual worlds, five different formats, and allow them to, you know, tap into all of those communities. Like all five of those different communities. And that is the, the approach that I think is how if we, if we get to some world where people are locking arms and they're fluidly moving across each other in, in avatars, maybe that comes from the protocol level where assets sit. And if, as long as they're built on the same blockchain, they can render in, in that, in that world…

AI assessment note: “moving like .glb or .vox file formats across these different worlds, I think is, is gonna be very, very, very difficult”

Q Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to add?

A I mentioned that we were early and that the technology is going to move into the background. And there are these very, very speculative, um, booms and busts that happen. These cycles that come through where everybody with a project is coming out and saying like, Hey, Check this out. We have a million transactions per second. We're the future and people go in and they buy into it and it's a speculative, uh, rush up and then rush down. And this just happens time and time again with all different types of technology. And I would just encourage everybody out there to, you don't have to buy anything. You don't have to, uh, you know, go and invest. Not everybody should just be a day trader or anything like that. When you When you experiment around and when you look at different things, just try to read white papers and read what these people are building and just try to think through some of the logic that they're bringing to this tech, because somebody listening to this show could Completely change how you and I just walked through all this, Sean. I mean, it, I like to always be very open with that. It's experimental and that people are tinkering, they're playing around, they're taking shots or taking risks. And I think you as the, the builders and the listeners and the consumers and the players and the creators and everybody have a role, which is just. Try to try to break things, t…

AI assessment note: “I would just encourage everybody out there to, you don't have to buy anything.”

Q no guarantee that is what it's going to be like. So, you know, what do you think the metaverse will actually look like? How long will it take to get there? And is people spending money right now just kind of like trying to get PR basically to say, oh, look at us. We're hip. We're, we're trying to be part of this movement. That's not ready for mainstream yet.

A First, we should lay the groundwork of, of what metaverse really kind of is. And it's, in my view, a spectrum. A lot of people would agree with it. It's a spectrum of your centralized metaverses that are your Minecraft, your Roblox, where they're controlling experiences of millions and millions of people, where you have these concerts taking place where millions are showing up with Travis Scott and Justin Bieber and all that. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have these fully decentralized experiences that are empowering users to have ownership over not only the assets within the world, but also, you know, the world itself in many of these cases. So you have this full blown spectrum from your centralized world that is, you know, a powerhouse of getting these big name people in and doing these big experiences that are very much centralized and all that own ownership Is by one big company, and then you have your decentralized owned by the players. So I'm more of a believer in the future being digital ownership within these worlds for the players. And there hasn't really been any Innovation on that front in gaming for a decade, you know, buying skins that are owned by the, the publisher doesn't count as ownership because I, I don't own them. You know, it's just me sinking money into the game, the game company. So I think that what we're watching now is, is a shift ove…

AI assessment note: “I think the metaverse itself is here, uh, as it is today in all these different forms”

Q to be able to use this asset in this world? Right. So there's so many difficult steps, even in the protocol levels. And then, and on top of that, once you get, once you handle the technical difficulties, getting the companies themselves to tolerate this and to make it profitable for them, it just seems really difficult. Do you have any insight into how that could potentially be dealt with?

A There's a lot of different swings that have been taken at interoperability on the protocol level. One company in particular, Um, that I've been working with closely and know quite well is called Axelar. And I know that attempts previously with different bridging, meaning I want to send one ETH to, uh, avalanche or one of these different blockchains out there, the way that bridging worked traditionally, as far as I understand it, I'm not like programming on the protocol level daily here, but. It would effectively lock up my whatever I'm trying to transfer. It would lock it up into a smart contract and give me something that was wrapped on a different chain. And for everybody listening to this, um, this is getting into the weeds as to how assets move from one network to one network in five years from now, this is all gonna be in the background. Like, this is just going to be something that operates in the background, just like a database. And for example, when I type in www.google, I don't know exactly all the different layers that are required in the backend, like HTTP to be pulling me to that website, showing me all these things. And you don't need to know that in five years, what chain is being used in the background. And the goal here is in the backend to actually have it be fluid in some way. So what, what you're bringing up, Sean, is valid, you know, uh, concerns about the …

AI assessment note: “There's a lot of different swings that have been taken at interoperability on the protocol level.”