>>Welcome back everyone to the Cube's extended coverage here at the yacht club here in Monaco with prince Albert and the cube, great coverage, big gala event around blockchain and, and crypto we're here at tally Friedman creative director at NFT basil. Great to see you again. Great >>To see you again. Thank you so much for having >>So what's going on? What are you doing here? What's up. >>So I am here helping put together this incredible event, helping to raise awareness, spread education about all the amazing innovation that's happening in the tech in the NFT space, hoping to encourage mass adoption and bring more passionate and talented minds to the space. And that is my main goal of everything that I do. Well, >>You can appreciate the, the agenda here, all the influencers, top dogs and, and, and finances are here, entrepreneurs, but big metaverse vibe, obviously NFTs kind of bundled in cause NFTs are becoming quite part of everything. Absolutely. And as a creative director, you gotta love the creativity coming out of the, the meta metaverse right >>Now. You know what? It kind of feels like anything is possible. And as someone who has that ability to contribute to a space and directly see the impact that the work you have, you know, has as an outcome on, on not just the industry, but the, the rest of the world, and to have the ability to start creating a legacy that other people will soon follow suit on is, has been pretty incredible to experience. I must say, >>You know, tally's been a cultural movement as well. A lot of the younger generation, a lot of gen Z wants this. I mean, I, I could see the in alignment, but certainly true. I mean, you can see nobody wants the old way, inadequate, antiquated ways of email and web surfing webpages. Well, the social media, >>The funny thing about the metaverse is, is that it's actually existed for quite some time. I'd say the term has almost resurfaced in popularity, in association with the blockchain. So now when we think of the metaverse, it's obviously associated with web three cryptocurrency NFTs, but the original term was actually coined in a 1980s novel about it was a science fiction novel. And it, it's funny to see how that term just really encompasses everything that we've predicted. And I have this thing with science fiction where I think humanity almost reflects our fears, but our hope simultaneously, when we talk about dystopia, it's what we're seeing unravel before our eyes. And what we predict and almost know will be the ultimate outcome, but because there's so much uncertainty, what's that gonna look like? How's that gonna affect our day to day lives? And I think we're witnessing right now, the, you know, all the incredible directions, >>Tally, have you dabbled in some of these metae Metasphere environments because this bar, if people are playing music, people are getting together and there's quite the self-expression. >>Absolutely. So I plan a lot of events in the metaverse I'm a metaverse event planner. I helps build our NFT gallery for NFT basil in the metaverse. I think it's really interesting to bridge the gap between fi physical and digital worlds. And when we host a physical exhibition simultaneously host that metaverse exhibition for people who aren't able to attend in real life, >>How do they do that? Is it software? >>So for the most part, what event, I mean, yeah, for an event I work with decentral end a lot. I find it has the best user interface for people who aren't so familiar with, you know, setting up a wallet, getting onboarding onto web three, using cryptocurrency newbies. Exactly. >>So I can't fly the event, but I want to experience the event. >>You type the web address into your browser, NFT, basil.xyz. You can walk around and explore, create your own avatar, have fun. It's gamified life. >>What's the feedback been from some of the attendees, what do they end up doing? What's the pattern they end up, they end up like chatting or mingling, or is it, does it match like life or they just kind of high-fiving each other. Is there a lot of shitter chatter smack being toed around? >>So I think the thing with the metaverse is that a lot of people who are critical of the metaverse are, are saying, why would I replace a real life experience with a digital one when I can talk face to face like we're doing right now. But I think the purpose isn't to replace physical experiences, because there's nothing quite like, you know, having an in-person interaction, but it's about enhancing the digital experience. >>Well, but here, here we're face to face. Okay. We're having a first time experience together. And it's lovely. I have friends, you have friends, we have social grant, people who are instantly online, why can't there be a first class citizen, me connection between our meta version and maybe a friend pops as a hologram right here and chance to chime into the conversation. And you know, that's not far away, >>It's it's happening right now. And the, the beauty of metaverse events and hosting metaverse conferences is an event such as the one today requires so much coordination. People flying in from all over the world, booking hotels, changing time schedules, jet lag. There's so much that goes into it. When you can connect people and have such a similar level of immersiveness. And if not more immersiveness than you would in real life, you have audience members who are able to actively engage with what you're doing. Ask questions live without having to raise your hand and come up on stage and without the technical barriers of, >>And being part of a group. >>I mean, community's >>Organism is everything. It's everything. It's an organism. It's connective tissue. It's not a software mechanism. Absolutely. It's a group thing. Absolutely. All right. So I gotta ask you, what's the coolest thing you're working on right now that you can share with folks. >>I am so passionate about what we're building out at NFT basil. I, I could talk about it for hours, but we really specialize in transforming luxury. One of one physical assets into digital NFTs. And I think it's a different approach than most people take to web three in the NFT space. Because when you think of NFTs, you think of, you know, generative drops, PFP projects, but we're taking real world tangible value and enhancing it through technology. >>Awesome. Tally, thank you for coming on. Dinner's being served with the prince. Thank you for coming on the Q. I really appreciate. Thank you so >>Much. It it's >>Been a pleasure. Thank you. Okay. We're here. The extended edition of cube coverage late night. Now the dinner with the gala event, the cube and prince Albert here in Monaco for an exciting evening. I'm John furrier with the cube. Thanks for watching. >>Thank you.

>>Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage here in Monaco for the MoCo crypto summit. I'm John fur. You're host of the cube. We got a great guest Dustin plant Boltz who is a crypto advisor, but also the crypto editor for Forbes Monaco here. Seeing the official event, the AAL event of the Monaco crypto summit in Monaco, your coverage area for Forbes, your MCing. Welcome to the >>Cube. Thank you for having me. And it's, it's always fun when I get to have an event in our backyard, cuz I get to hear what others know. And to me I'm very curious. Yeah. Always >>Learning. So you're on the MC on the stage here, you know, queue in the program online great program. So it's innovative event, inaugural event, great name by the way. Crypto summit and mono crypto >>Summit. Yeah, the MoCo crypto summit. >>That sounds like I want to attend every year. >>You're you're more than welcome to attend next year. >>Well, I hope so. Either way. I'm at the Al event with you. So gimme the take on what's on stage. What's been the program, like what's your observations going on here at the event today? >>So what we're starting to see globally is this digitization of things and the people that are part of the innovation side. And so that's what we've been able to see this morning. We're we're now at the break is what sort of companies are out there, the good ones and what are they building? Is this innovation? Is it even innovative and figuring out how they're gonna do it and the roadmaps to getting there from the metaverses to NFTs and even to decentralized finance. >>Yeah, it's the number one question I get is what's legit. What's not legit. And then you're starting to see the, the, the wheat and the shaft separating here and you know, something called crypto winter. But I don't see it. I mean, I see correction for some of the bad things going on in terms of not having the right underpinning infrastructure, the creative ideas are amazing. We're also seeing like digital bits and other platforms kind of coming together to enable the creators and, and the NFT side for instance has been huge. What has been your observation on that enablement? Because you have two schools of thoughts. You have the total nerds we're up and down building everything. Then you have artists and creators, whether it's music, tech apps building, they don't necessarily want to get 'em to the covers. They don't want to deal with all that. Yeah. Have you seen, what's your, what's your take on that? >>So I I'm seeing that a lot of these major brands, you know, they they're striving for excellence. You know, they're being more careful of who they partner with and the types of companies and you know, they, they look at it from reality and a little tough love to figure out should they align their brand. So what we're seeing here is is that there is so much inertia moving forward. That we're just at the beginning of this thing. Yeah. McKinsey recently said that the ecosystem will be over $30 trillion. So when you recognize that we are so early and it's those right now, or some might say are the risk takers. But to me there, aren't taking risk. They're being a part of making history. >>Yeah. You get the pioneers and you get the financial. So as they come together, how do you see the market? Cause what I've noticed with crypto and here in, in this, this market is international. One lot of international finance us is kind of lag behind. You got all kinds of rules, but you got the, the combination of the, the future billionaires. Sure. Okay. The pioneers and then the financeers yeah. Coming the money, the money and the power coming together. What's your reporting show you that's going on right now? What should people know about on how this is evolving? What they shouldn't >>Expect? Well, so you have a group that wants to become cryers they're seeing these individuals globally. They're making lots and lots of money, but what they don't realize is that not everybody is gonna have that outcome, but looking at the technology aspect of it and how it's going to improve a system that many can agree is collectively broken legacy just can't move beyond. It was never designed to you'll see people take shots at certain card companies and I go, but you recognize they developed the assembly line. And so I'm seeing that the smart money they got in long ago, believe it or not. And those now they're looking out for their errors are the ones that saying, I will not have an excuse when my, my grandkids or my, my nieces or my nephews, when they come and ask, where were you when the greatest transformational shift in human history, from both education to jobs, to careers and even wealth was being shifted to a digital world, why were you on the sideline waiting? And so I think what we're gonna see is this tsunami coming, and it's gonna start with one big player and then two and five, you go, go alone. You go far, go together. You go further. And that's what we're seeing is that this collective is moving forward >>And the community, we just had Beth Kaiser on, I've known Beth for many, many years. And she's what she's her journey has done. She's had a great mission and then gets she's a data scientist and came to Analytica. Now she's doing work with Ukraine and the rallying support around it has been impressive. And it's a community vibe, but the community's not just like sympathetic they're hands on together to your point. >>Yeah. It, but it also takes courage. I mean, you look at Britney Kaiser and what she had, and to me, courage is not, not having fear. Courage is not allowing the fear to stop. You, you know, recently asked my executive coach, who's 85 and I'm turning 39. This question of, do you let fear stop you? How do you decide? And he said, you know, you can either let, you can either ride the dragon. And I said, or let the dragon chase you. And Brittany has been one of these that made a decision to do what was right. And it came down to integrity. Yeah. >>So what are you have to these days what's going on in your world? >>What is going on in my world? So I moderate events all over and I connect and I like to ask people questions. So I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna turn at the interviewer on the >>Interview. It's good. Natural. >>What are you learning? >>I mean, I'm learning, I mean today or this week or this month or this year. Well, I was just talking with Brittany about this. The security world is converging cloud technology, cloud computing. That revolution has just been amazing. Amazon posted their earnings yesterday. They blew it away as far as I'm concerned. So they kind of show there's no tech recession. I've learned that this recession, that we're so called in is the first downturn in tech where there's been cloud players as hyperscalers as an economic engine. Okay. So from a, from a business perspective, Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure now Google cloud, Alibaba's now in, in international version. This is the first time at downturns ever happened with cloud computing as an economic engine. And so therefore what I'm seeing is the digital transformation that's happening across the world for enterprises and entrepreneurs is not stopping. >>It's actually accelerating. So although the GDPs down in inflation is down, you're seeing a massive shift continuing to accelerate, spending and transformation with cloud technologies and decentralized. So you can almost see it kind of in the, this event and other events, even some of the bigger events, the best smartest people are working on it. The applications in all the categories are transforming. If cloud is step one, decentralized gonna be step two. So I see that kind of bridge going from cloud computing, cloud native to decentralized native. And I think a D DAPP market's gonna just explode. I think NFTs are just scratched on the surface. I think that's kind of, I won't say gimmicky, but I think no, but you're right, much more of a much more of a, an illustration that there's more coming. >>There is a lot more coming because people are seeing that there's more to an NFT than an ugly luck and J you know, ugly and JP image that there's, that there's data in there. And that your avatar will be stored as just that as an NFT. And I learned today from go of sing, that decentralization is, is the key to innovation. And I agree with that statement. Holy. >>Yeah. I mean, I think access to stuff is gonna be multidimensional. Like you think about the NFT as, as an ID, whether it's him or UN unstoppable domains is that company just got financing another round where the billion dollars, their concept is like, Hey, one NFT is your access for all of your potential identities in context. >>And isn't that exciting that we're now gonna be at this stage where you travel with you. Yeah. Instead of someone else traveling with you, you get to decide who you will be. And to me, everything you're doing in this world, this reality is now becoming part of your digital asset as a whole. >>I remember when I started my podcasting company in 20 2004, early pioneers, Evan Williams was there with Odo and you had, you know, the blogging revolution going on that whole democratization wave actually didn't happen right then. But all the people that were involved in that web two oh, kind of CRAs was all about democratization. It's kind of happening now. I mean, 15, 20 years later at web services is transformed cloud the democratization for own your own data, putting users in control. And I think in the middle of that, the Facebook's the world, the world garden data, you know, manipulation kind of took it off track a little bit. So I think now I'm, I psych to see that it's back on track to where it was. I mean, Facebook made billions of dollars. Now you got LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn's great for your resume, but it's also become a wall's garden with no data export. >>Yeah. And then >>No APIs keep >>Changing. Think about this. That if you wanna apply for a job, just change something quickly. Yeah. Ah, now you're the senior VP. Yeah. Before you were, you're an office manager >>Like to see the immutable block change, >>You don't get to see when did the record change. Yeah. >>Reputation data. You're a digital exhaust people gonna wanna reign that in. And I think the user in charge message that Brit Kaiser was talks about is hugely a mess under, under, under amplified concept. Digital assets are key, but the data ownership is something that I think is, is >>Powerful. So I'm gonna be launching a brand new company in and around September called cryptos. And it's a crypto career center. Think of it like the, the crypto for LinkedIn, that it's an aggregator becoming the industry standard for education, becoming the industry standard for crypto ships, with partners like ledger and moon pay and Casper labs. >>Look at this, we got an exclusive scoop on the cube. This >>Is the first time I will tell you this the first time in, in an environment like this. Yeah. That I'm excited to, I'm excited to talk about, right. Because it's time to be part of the change. Yeah, exactly. You know, as a father, I look at, I know where it's headed in the world of business. I know in the world of this, that we're gonna call the internet of connected things. Yeah. That it's gonna require you to have a certain talent skill or a certain certification. And to me, it's important to have an industry that supports one >>Staff and also, and also history on misinformation, smear campaigns can happen and ruin a career >>Overnight. Can you imagine that one little thing and because the internet never forgets. Yeah. It stays around indefinitely. >>The truth has to come out. Dustin. Great to have you on the queue. Thank you so much. Final question. What have you learned in there is MC what's your takeaway real quick? >>What I've learned is I never tire of learning. Thank you again, to learn more. Dustin plan.com. >>All right. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Cube coverage here at Monaco. I'm Shawn furry. We'll back with more coverage after this short break.

>>Okay, welcome back everyone. This is the Cube's coverage here. Monaco took a trip all the way out here to cover the Monaco crypto summit. I'm John feer, host of the cube, a lot of action happening presented by digital bits and this ecosystem that's coming together, building on top of digital bits and other blockchains to bring value at the application. These new app, super apps are emerging. Almost every category's gonna be decentralized. This is our opinion and the world believes it. And they're here as well. We've got Oscar ballet CEO co-founder of Agora verse ago is a shopping metaverse coming out soon. We'll get the dates, Oscar. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>We were just talking before you came on camera. You're a young gun, young entrepreneur. You're a gamer. Yeah, a little bit too old to miss the eSports windows. You said, you know, like 25. It's great until that's you missed the window. I wish I was 25 gaming the pandemic with remote work, big tailwind acceleration around the idea of this new digital VI virtual hybrid world. We're living in where people want to have experiences that are similar to physical and virtual. You're doing something really cool around shopping. Yeah. Take a explain. What's going on when the, I know it's not out yet. It's in preview. Yeah. Take a minute to explain. >>Absolutely. So a goers really is a way to create those online storefront environments, virtual environments that are really much inspired by video games in their usage and kind of how the experience goes forward. We want to recreate the brand's theme, aesthetic storytelling or the NFT project as well. All of that created in a virtual setting, which is way more interesting than looking at a traditional webpage. And also you can do some crazy stuff that you can't do in real life, in a real life store, you know, with some crazy effects and lighting and stuff. So it's, it's a whole new frontier that we are trying to cover. And we believe that there is a real use case for shopping centric S experiences and to actually make the S a bit more than a buzzword than that. It is at the moment. >>Okay. So a Agora is the shopping. Metaverse a Agora verse is the company name and product name. You're on the Solona blockchain. Got my notes here, but I gotta ask you, I mean, people are trying to do this right now. We see a lot of high end clients like Microsoft showroom, showroom vibes. Yeah. Not so much. E-commerce per se, but more like the big, I mean it's low hanging fruit. Yeah. How do you guys compare to some other apps out there? Other metaverses? >>I think compared to the bigger companies, we are way more flexible and we can act way more quickly than they can. They still have a lot of ground to cover. And a lot of convincing to do with their communities of users metaverse is not really the most popular topic at the moment. It's still very much kind of looked at as a trend, as something that is just passing and they have to deal with this community interaction that is not really favorable for them. There are other questions about the metaverse that are not being talked about as often, but the ecological costs, for example, of running a metaverse like Facebook envisions it, of running those virtual headsets, running those environments. It's very costy on, on, on the ecological side of things and it's not as often mentioned. And I think that's actually their biggest challenge. >>Can you get an example for folks that don't are in the weeds on that? What's the what's what do you mean by that? The cost of build the headsets? Is it the >>Servers? It's more of the servers, really? You need to run a lot of servers, which is really costly on the environment and environmental questions are at the center of public debates. Anyways, and companies have to play that game as well. So they will have to find kind of this balance between, well, building this cool metaverse, but doing it in an ecological friendly manner as well. I think that's their toughest challenge. >>And what's your solution just using the blockchain? Well, an answer to that, cause some people say, Hey, that's not that's, that's not. So eco-friendly either, >>That's part of it. And it's also part of why we're choosing an ecosystem such as Lana as a starter. It's not limited to only Salana, but Salala is, is known as a blockchain. That is very much ecological. Inclined transactions are less polluting. And definitely this problem is, is tackled in the fact that we are offering this product on a case by case scenario brands come to us, we build this environment and we run something that is proper to them. So the scale of it is also way less important that what Facebook is trying to build. >>Yeah. They're trying to build the all encompassing. Yeah. All singing old dancing, as we say system, and then they're not getting a lot of luck. They just got slammed dunked this week on the news, I saw the, you know, FTC moved against them on the acquisition of the exercise app. >>It's it's a tough, it's a tough battle for them. Let's say they >>Still have, they got a headwind. I wouldn't say tailwind. They broke democracy. So they gotta pay for it. Right. Exactly. I always say definitely revenge going on there. I'm not a big fan of what they did. The FTC. I think that's bad move. They shouldn't block acquisitions, but they do buy, they don't really build much. That's well documented. Facebook really hasn't built anything except for Facebook. That's right. Mean what's the one thing Facebook has done besides Facebook. >>I mean, >>It's everything they've tried is failed except for Facebook. Yeah. >>So we'll see what's going on with the Methodist side. >>Well, so successful, not really one trick bony. Yeah. They bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp, you know, and not really successful. >>That's true. They do have the, the means though, to maybe become successful with something. So >>You're walking out there, John just said, Facebook's not successful. I meant they don't. They have a one product company. They use their money to buy everything. Yeah. And that's some people don't like that, but anyway, the startups like to get bought out. Yeah. Okay. So let's get back to the metaverse it's coming out is the business model to build for others. Are you gonna have a system for users? What's what's the approach? How do you, how are we view viewing this? What's the, the business you're going after? >>So we are very much a B2B type of service where we can create custom kind of tailor made virtual environments for brands, where we dedicate our team to building those environments, which has been what we have been at the start to really kickstart the initiative. But we're also developing the tool that will allow antibody to develop their own shop themselves, using what we give them to do something kind of like the Sims for those that know, building their environment and building their shop, which will they, they, they will then be to put online and for anybody of their user base customers to have a look at. So it's, it's kind of, yeah, the tailor made experience, but also the more broader experience where we want to create this tool, develop this tool, make it accessible to the public with a subscription based model where any individual that has an idea and maybe a product that is interesting for the metaverse be able to create this virtual storefront and upload it directly. >>How long does it take to build an environment? Let's say I was, I wanna do a cube. Yeah. I go to a lot of venues all around the world. Yeah. MOSCON and San Francisco, the San convention center in Las Vegas, we're here in Monaco. How do I replicate these environments? Do I call you up and say, Hey, I need some artists. Do you guys render it? What's the take us through the process. >>Yeah. It's, it's basically a case by case scenario at the moment, very much. We're working with our partners that find brands that are interested in getting into the metaverse and we then design the shops. Well, it depends on the brands. Some have a really clear idea of what they want. Some are a bit more open to it and they're like, well, we have this and this, can you build something? >>I mean, I mean, I can see the apple store saying, Hey, you know, they're pretty standard apple stores. You got cases of iWatches. Yeah. I mean that's easily to, replicateable probably good ROI for them. >>Exactly. It's it's is that what you're thinking? Their team. Exactly. Yeah. It depends. And we, we want to add a layer of something cuz just replicating the store simply. Yeah. It's it's maybe not as interesting, you know, it just, oh, okay. I'm in the store. It's white, everywhere. It's apple. Right. It's like, oh I'm in at the dentist, but we want to add some video game elements to the, to those experiences. But very subtle ones, ones that won't make you feel, oh, I'm playing one of these games, you know? It's yeah. Very supple. >>You can, you can jump into immersive experience as defined by the brand. Yeah. I mean the brand will control the values. So you're say apple and you're at the iWatch table. Yeah. You could have a digital assistant pop in there with an avatar. Exactly. You can jump down a rabbit hole and say, Hey, I want this iWatch. I'm a bike mountain biker. For example, I could get experience of mountain biking with my watch on I fall off, ambulance sticks me up. I mean, all these things that they advertise is what goes >>On. Yeah. And we can recreate these experiences and what they're advertising and into a more immersive experience is what we're trying to our, our goal is to create experiences. We know that, you know, why does someone is someone spend so much at Disneyland? It's like triple the price of whatever, because you know, it's Mickey mouse around you. It's, that's the experience that comes around. And often the experience is more important than the product. Sometimes >>It's hard. It's really hard to get that first class citizen experience with the event or venue physical. Yeah. Which is a big challenge. I know the metaverse are gonna try to solve this. So I gotta ask you what's your vision on solving that? Okay. Cause that's the holy grail. That's what we're talking about here. Yeah. I got a physical event or place. I wanna replicate it in the metaverse but create that just as good first party citizen like experience. >>Yeah. I mean that's the whole event event type of business side of the metaverse is also a huge one. It's one that we are choosing to tackle after the e-commerce one. But it's definitely something that has been asked a lot by the brands where like we want to create, like, we want to release this store for an event that is in real life, but we want to make it accessible to the largest number. That's why we saw with Fortnite as well. All those events, the fashion week in the central land. And >>Sand's a Cub in the Fortnite too. >>There you go. And so the, the event aspect is super important and we want those meta shops to be places where a brand can organize an event. Let's say they want to make the entrance paid. They can do an NFD for that if they want. And then they have to, the user has to connect the NFD to access the event with an idea. Right. But that's definitely possible. And that's how we leverage blockchain as well with those companies and say, you know, you're not familiar with >>This method. You're badging, you know, you're the gaming where we were talking earlier. Yeah. Badging and credentials and access methods. A tech concept can be easily forwarded to NFTs. Yeah, >>Exactly. Exactly. And brands are interested in that. >>Sure. Of course. Yeah. By being the NFT. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I gotta ask you the origination story. Take me through the, the, how this all started. Yeah. Was it a seat of an idea you and your friends get together? Yeah. It was an it scratch. And when you're really into this, what's the origination story and where you're at now. >>So we started off in January really with a, quite a, a different idea. It was called the loft business club. It's an NFT collection on the Salina blockchain. And the whole idea beyond it is that NFT holders would have access to their virtual apartments that we called the lofts. It got very popular. We got a really big following at the start. It was really the trend back in January, February. And we managed to, to sell out successfully the whole collection of 5,000 NFTs. And yeah, we started as a group of friends, really like-minded friends from my hometown in, in, met in France who are today, the co-founders and the associates with different backgrounds. Leo has the marketing side of things. A club has the 3d designing. We had all our different skills coming into it. Obviously my English was quite helpful as well cause French people in English it's, it's not often the best French English. Yeah. And I was, the COO has been doing amazing on the kind of the serious stuff. You know, the taxis lawyers >>Operational to all of trains running on time. >>Exactly >>Sure. People get their jobs done. >>Yeah, exactly. So >>It's well too long of a lunch cuz you know, French would take what, two hour lunches. Yeah. You >>Have to enjoy it. Yeah. >>Coffee and stuff. That's wine, you know about creative, >>But yeah, it's, it's a friend stuff that started as a, as a passion project and got so quick. And today I'm here talking to you in this setting. It's like, >>You're pretty excited. >>I mean it's super excited. It's such a we're you know, we feel like we're building something that's new and our developer team, we're now a team of 15 in total with developers based in Paris, mostly. And everybody is, is feeling like, you know, they're contributing to something new and that's, what's exciting about it. You know, it's something that's not really done or it's trying to be done, but nobody really knows the way >>It's pioneering days. But the, but the pandemic has shifted the culture faster because people like certainly the gen Zs are like, I don't wanna reuse that old stuff. Yeah. And, but they still want to go to like games or events or go to stores. Yeah. But once to go to a store, I mean, I go to apple store all the time where I live in Palo Alto, California. And it's like, yeah, I love that store. And I know it by heart. I don't, I don't have to go there. Yeah. Walking into the genius bar virtually I get the same job done. Yeah, >>Exactly. That's that's what we want to do. And the other pandemic is just it's it's been all about improving, you know, people's condition, life conditions at home, I think. And that's what kind of boosted the whole metaverse conversation and Facebook really grabbing onto it as well. It's just that people were stuck at home and for gamers, that's fine. We used to be stuck at home playing video games all day. Yeah. We survived the pandemic fine. But for other people it was a bit more of a new >>Experience. Well, Oscar, one of the cool things is that you said like mind you and your founding team, always the secret to success. But now you see a lot of old guys like me and gals coming in too, your smart people are like-minded they get it. Especially ones that have seen the ways before, when you have this kind of change, it's a cultural shift and technology shift and business model shift at the same time. Yeah. And to me there's gonna be chaos, but at the end of the day, >>I mean there's fun and >>Chaos. That's opportunity. There's a fun and fun and opportunity. >>It's fun and chaos, you know, and yeah. Likeminded people and the team has really been the driving factor with our company. We are all very much excited about what we're doing and it's been driving us forward. >>Well, keep in touch. Thanks for coming on the cube and sharing, sharing a story with us in the world. We really appreciate we'll keep in touch with you guys. Do love what you do. Oscar ballet here inside the cube Argo verse eCommerce shop. The beginning of this wave is happening. The convergence of physical virtual is a hybrid mode. It's a steady state. It is not gonna go away. It's only gonna get bigger, more cooler, more relevant than ever before. Cube covering it like a blanket here in Monaco, crypto summit. I'm John furrier. We'll be right back after this short break.

>>Hello, welcome back to the cubes coverage of Monaco, crypto summit presented by digital bits. It's a conference where a lot of the people using digital bits and the industry coming together around the future of crypto in the applicates got a great guest garage, rod cot, founder, and CEO of an innovative company. Love this co I love this company, Luke mogul, Rob, thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Oh, >>Thank you for having >>Us. Yeah. So I checked out what you guys are doing. You've got the sports metaverse angle going on with super valuable, cuz sports is super entertaining. Uh, people are engaged. There's huge fan base, huge online now, digital convergence going on with the physical, you know, you see all kinds of sports betting going on now everything's going digital. There's a whole nother consumer experience going on with sports and the game is still the same on the, on the field or so to, or the court. That's correct. Yeah. Now it's going to digital take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. >>Yeah, so yes, we are building out a sports ERs where we are bringing athletes, whether they're NBA stars, NFL stars, w N B a many of those athletes into meows giving them the ownership of the entire, um, meows commerce along with gameplay. So that's something from our perspective, this, uh, this is something that we're focused on. We're building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums. Athlete can create their own training centers, media hubs. Um, and imagine Lisa, Leslie for example, is building out a woman leadership sports academy, right? We have Michael Cooper building out defensive academy. So those are all the brands. We have 174 NBA w N B stars. And, um, and we are building out this, >>The brand is the brand, is the platform that's correct. That's the trend we're seeing. And it's, it's also an extension of their reach in community. So there's, they can convert their star power and athlete with owner's approval. If they probably write it on to the contracts, he, they can imagine all the complications, but they bring that online and extend that energy and brand equity yep. To fans and social network. Yeah. >>And many of these athletes are tremendous successful in their web two careers, right? Yeah. Um, some are current athletes, some are former athletes, but they have built such a brand persona where people are following them on Instagram. For example, Carlos Boozer. He has like almost 6 million followers between Twitter and Instagram and those kind of brands are looking or how do I give back to the community? How do I engage with my community and web three? And especially with our platform, we are giving that power back to the players. >>So you guys got some big names booers on there. You mentioned Carlos Boozer. You mentioned that Lisa, Leslie others among others, Michael Cooper throw back to the old Lakers, uh, magic. Johnson's kind actually here in crypto. We just saw him in the lobbies and in dinner and the other night, um, at Nobu, um, you got a lot of NBA support. Take a take, take, even explain how you're working this angle. Uh, you got some great traction, uh, momentum. Um, you got great pedigree, riot games in your career. Uh, you kind of get the world, the tech world, the media world, as it comes together. What's the secret sauce here? Is it the NBA relationship combination of the team explained >>It's really focusing on what, uh, we are building on me was focusing on players first, right? So players are literally, we call our platform as, uh, owned by the players, made for the players. Uh, and engagement is really all done through the players, right? So that's our key sauce. And when we worked out with NBA, we, we are part of the NBA BPA acceleration program for 2022 that is funded by a six Z, uh, and, and many others. Um, and our partnership with league is very critical. So it's not only partnered with player association partnered with leagues, whether it's NBA, w N B a NFL. So those are the venues. And this becomes almost a program, especially for athletes to really generate this lifetime engagement and royalty model because some of this famous athletes really want to give back to the communities. So like for example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but Lisa, Leslie really wants to empower women leadership, leadership, and really help, um, women in sports, for example. Right? So those are the angles that, um, that really people are excited about. >>Well, for the people watching that might not understand some of the ins and outs of sports and, and rod, your background in your team, it's interesting. The sports teams have been on the big day to train for many, many years. You look at all the stadiums. Now they've got mobile devices, they got wifi under the chairs. They use data and technology to manage the team. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> manage the stadium and venue and operations suppliers, whatnot. And then also the fans. So you, they, they got about a decade or so experience already in the digital world. This is not new to the, to the sports world. Yeah. So you guys come to the table kind of at a good time. >>Yeah. Especially the defi of the sports, right? So there's a defi of the finance, but this is the really, uh, a, a decentralization of the sports is something that there's a lot of traction. And there are many companies that are really focusing on that. Our focus obviously is players first, right? How do we give power to the players? Uh, and those are really driving the entire engagement. And also the brands >>How's the NBA feel about this because, you know, you got the NBA and you get the team, you got the owners. I mean, the democratization of the players, which I love by the way that angle kind of brings their power. Now's the new kind of balance of power. How is the NBA handling this? What's some of the conversations you've had with the, the organization. >>Yeah. So obviously there are a lot of things that, uh, people have to be careful about, right? They have existing contracts, existing, digital media rights. Um, so that's something that, uh, we have to be very tactful when we are working with NBA and NPA, uh, on what we can say, we cannot say. So that is obviously they have a lot of existing multimillion or billion dollar contracts that they cannot void with the web because the evolution of web three, >>You know, I love, uh, riffing on the notion of contract compliance when there's major structural change happening. Remember back in baseball, back in the days before the internet, the franchise rights was geographic territory. Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, if you're the New York Yankees, you're doing great. If you're Milwaukee, you're not doing too good, but then comes the internet. That's good. That's no geography. There's no boundaries. That's good. So you're gonna have stadiums have virtual Bo. So again, how do they keep up with the contracts? Yeah. I mean, this is gonna be a fundamental issue. >>That's >>Good. Good. And I think if they don't move, the players are gonna fill that void. >>That's correct. Yeah. And especially with this, this an IL deal, right. That happened for the players, uh, especially college athletes. So we are in process of onboarding 1.5 million college athletes. Uh, and those athletes are looking for not only paying for the tuition for the colleges, but also for engagement and generating this early on, uh, >>More okay. Rod, we're gonna make a prediction here in the cube, 20, 20 we're in Monaco, all the NBA, NHL, the teams they're gonna be run by player Dows. Yeah. What do you think? A very good prediction. Yeah. Very good prediction. Yeah. I mean you, I mean, that's a joke, I'm joking aside. I mean, it's kind of connecting the dots, but you know, whether that happens or not, what this means is if this continues to go down this road, that's correct. Get the players collectively could come together. Yeah. And flip the script. >>Yeah. And that's the entire decentralization, right. So it's like the web three has really disrupted this industry as you know. Um, and, and I know your community knows that too. >>Of course, course we do. We love it. >>Something from sports perspective, we are very excited. >>Well, I love it. Love talking. Let's get to the, to the weeds here on the product, under the hood, tell about the roadmap, obviously NFTs are involved. That's kind of sexy right now. I get the digital asset model on there. Uh, but there's a lot more under the coverage. You gotta have a platform, you gotta have the big data and then ultimately align into connecting other systems together. How do you view the tech roadmap and the product roadmap? What's your vision? >>Yeah. So the, the one thing that you had to be T full, uh, as a company, whether it's LUT, mogul or any other startup, is you have to be really part of the ecosystem. So the reason why we are here at Monaco is that we obviously are looking at partnership with digital bits, um, and those kind of partnership, whether it's fourth centric, centric are very critical for the ecosystem in the community to grow. Um, and that's one thing you cannot build a, another, uh, isolated metaverse right? So that's one thing. Many companies have done it, but obviously not. >>It's a wall garden doesn't work. >>Exactly. So you have to be more open platform. So one things that we did early on in our platform, we have open APIs and SDKs where not only you as an athlete can bring in your, uh, other eCommerce or web, uh, NFTs or anything you want, but you can also bring in other real estate properties. So when we are building out this metaverse, you start with real estate, then you build out obviously stadiums and arenas and academies training academies, but then athletes can bring their, uh, web commerce, right. Where it's NFT wearables shoe line. So >>Not an ecosystem on top of Luke Mo. So you're like, I'm almost like you think about a platform as a service and a cloud computing paradigm. Yeah. Look different, not decentralized, but similarly enabling others, do the heavy lifting on their behalf. Yeah. Is that right? >>So that's correct. Yes. So we are calling ourself as the sports platform as a service, right. So we want to add the word sports because we, uh, in, in many contexts, right. When you're building metaverse, you can get distracted with them, especially we are in Los Angeles. Right. >>Can I get a luxury box for the cube and some of the metaverse islands and the stadiums you're doing? >>We, we are working >>On it. We're >>Definitely working on, especially the, uh, Los Angeles, uh, stadium. Yeah. >>Well, we're looking for some hosts, anyone out there looking for some hosts, uh, for the metaverse bring your avatar. You can host the cube, bro. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate. What's the, what's next for you guys, obviously, continuing to build momentum. You got your playful, how many people on the team what's going on, give a plug for the company. What are you looking for share with the audience, some of the, some of your goals. Yeah. >>So, uh, the main thing we're looking for is really, um, from a brand perspective, if you are looking at buying properties, this would be an amazing time to buy virtual sports stadium. Um, so we are, obviously we have 175 stadiums in roadmap right now. We started with Los Angeles. Then we are in San Francisco, New York, Qatar, Dubai. So all those sports stadiums, whether they're basketball, football, soccer are all the properties. And, uh, from a community perspective, if you want to get an early access, we are all about giving back to the community. Uh, so you can buy it at a much better presale price right now. Uh, so that's one, the second thing is that if you have any innovative ideas or a player that you want to integrate into, we have an very open platform from a community engagement perspective. If you have something unique from a land sale perspective yeah. Or the NFD perspective plug, contact us at, at Raj lumo.com. >>And I'm assuming virtual team, you in LA area where where's your home. >>So, yeah, so I live in Malibu, um, and our office is in Santa Monica. We have an office in India. Uh, we have few developers also in Europe. So, uh, and then we are team of 34 people right now >>Looking to hire some folks >>We are looking for, what >>Are you, what are you looking for? >>So, uh, we are looking for a passionate sports, uh, fanatics. >>It's a lot, not hard to find. Yeah. >><laugh> who knows how to also code. Right? So from blockchain perspective, we are, uh, chain agnostic. Uh, but obviously right now we are building on polygon, but we are chain agnostic. So if you have any blockchain development experience, uh, that's something we, we are looking for. Yeah. >>RA, thanks for coming out. Luke Mo check him out. I'm John furry with the cube here in Monaco for the mono crypto summit presented by digital bits. We got all the action, a lot of great guests going on, stay with us for more coverage. Um, John furrier, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage in Monaco. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. Monaco Crypto Summit is the event and there's a big conversation later at the yacht club with Prince Albert and everyone else will be there, and it'll be quite the scene. And Rachel Wolfson is here. She's with Cointelegraph. They're the media partner of the event, the official media partner of the Monaco Crypto Summit. She's also MCing the event on stage, presented by DigitalBits. Rachel, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, John. >> So I know you're busy, thanks for taking the time cause' you got to go jump back in and moderate, and keep things on track. This isn't an inaugural event. So DigitalBits has exploded on the scene. I just saw a thing on YouTube news around this soccer player in Rome, has DigitalBits logo on their jersey. They're a big to do cause everyone's popular and they got a couple teams. So real world, kind of, assets coming together, what's going on in the event that you're MCing? What's the focus? What's the agenda? What's some of the conversations like? >> Yeah, definitely. Well, it's a great event. It's my first time here in Monaco and I'm loving it. And I think that Monaco is really becoming the next crypto hotspot. Definitely in terms of Metaverse and Web3 innovation, I think that we're going to start seeing a lot of that here. That's what we're seeing today at the Summit. So a lot of the presentations that we're seeing are really focused on Web3 and NFT platforms, so for instance, obviously what DigitalBits is doing. We watched a video before the break on Ecosystem and the Metaverse that people can join and be a part of, in terms of real estate, but we're seeing a lot of innovation here today with that. I moderated a great panel with Britney Kaiser, Lauren Bissell, Taross, I'm blanking on his last name, but it was about blockchain and how governments are implementing blockchain. So that was also really interesting to hear about what the Ukrainian government is doing with blockchain. So there's kind of a mix, but I'd say that the overall theme is Web3 and NFTs. >> Yeah. Britney was mentioning some of that, how they're going to preserve buildings and artifacts, so that in case they're looted or destroyed, they can preserve them. >> Right. I think it's called the Heritage Fund. And I just think it's such an interesting use case in terms of how governments are using blockchain because the best use for blockchain in my opinion, is recording data, and having that data be permanent. And so when we can have artifacts in Ukraine recorded on the blockchain, you know by being scanned, it's really revolutionary. And I think that a lot of governments around the world are going to see that use case and say, "Oh wow, blockchain is a great technology for things like that." >> So DigitalBits had a press conference this morning and they talked about their exchange and some other things. Did you attend that press conference or did you get briefed on that? >> I did not attend the press conference. I was prepping for my MC role. >> So they got this exchange thing and then there's real interest from Prince Albert's foundations to bring this into Monaco. So Monaco's got this vibe, big time. >> Rachel: Right. There's a vibe (John chuckles) >> What does it all mean, when you're putting in your reporting? What do you see happening? >> So, I mean, I honestly haven't covered Monaco actually ever in my reporting. And John, you know I've been reporting since 2017, but the vibe that I'm getting just from this summit today is that Web3 and NFTs are going to be huge here. I'm speaking, I haven't... You know, there's a panel coming up about crypto regulations, and so we're going to talk a little bit about laws being passed here in Monaco in terms of Metaverse and digital identity. So I think that there are a few laws around that here that they're looking at, the government here is looking at to kind of add clarity for those topics. >> I had a couple guests on earlier. We were talking about the old days, a couple years ago. You mentioned 2017, so much has changed. >> Yes. >> You know, we had a up and down. 2018 was a good year, and then it kind of dived back and changed a little bit. Then NFTs brought it back up again, been a great hype cycle, but also movement. What's your take on the real progress that's been made? If you zoom out and look at the landscape, what's happened? >> Right. I mean, well, a lot has happened. When I first entered the space, I initially came in, I was interested in enterprise, blockchain and private networks being utilized by enterprises to record data. And then we saw public blockchains come in, like Ethereum and enterprises using them. And then we saw a mix. And now I feel like we're just seeing public blockchains and there's really... (John chuckles) But there's still our private blockchains. But today, I mean, we've gone from that in 2017 to right now, I think, you know, we're recently seeing a lot of these centralized exchanges kind of collapsing. What we've seen with Celsius, for instance, and people moving their crypto to hardware wallets. I think that the space is really undergoing a lot of transformation. It's really revolutionary, actually, to see the hardware wallet market is growing rapidly, and I think that that's going to continue to grow. I think centralized exchanges are still going to exist in custody crypto for enterprises and institutions, and you know, in individuals as well. But we are seeing a shift from centralized exchanges to hardware wallets. NFTs, although the space is, you know, not as big as it was a year ago, it's still quite relevant. But I think with the way the market is looking today, we're only seeing the top projects kind of lead the way now, versus all of the noise that we were seeing previously. So yeah, I think it's- >> So corrections, basically? >> Right. Exactly. Corrections. And I think it's necessary, right. It's very necessary. >> Yeah. It's interesting. You know, you mentioned the big players you got Bitcoin, Ethereum driving a lot. I remember interviewing the crypto kiddies when they first came out, it was kind of a first gen Ethereum, and then it just exploded from there. And I remember saying to myself, if the NFTs and the decentralized applications can have that scale, but then it felt like, okay, there was a lot of jocking for under the covers, under the hood, so to speak. And now you've got massive presence from all the VCs, and Jason Ho has like another crypto fund. I mean, >> Right. you can't go a day without another big crypto fund from you know, traditional venture capitalists. Meanwhile, you got investors who have made billions on crypto, they're investing. So you kind of got a diversity of investor base going on and different instruments. So the investor community's changing and evolving too. >> Right. >> How do you see that evolving? >> Well, it's a really good point you mentioned. So Cointelegraph research recently released a report showing that Web3 is the most sought after investment sector this year. So it was DeFi before, and Web3 is now leading the way over DeFi. And so we're seeing a lot of these venture capitalist funds as you mentioned, create funds allocated just to Web3 growth. And that's exactly what we're seeing, the vibe I'm getting from the Monaco Crypto Summit here today, this is all about Web3. It's all about NFT, it is all about the Metaverse. You know, this is really revolutionary. So I think we're definitely going to see that trend kind of, you know, conquer all of these other sectors that we're seeing in blockchain right now. >> Has Web3 become the coin term for Metaverse and NFTs? Or is that being globalized as all shifted, decentralized? What's the read on it? It seems to be like, kind of all inclusive but it tends to be more like NFT's the new thing and the young Gen Zs >> Yeah want something different than the Millennials and the Xs and the Boomers, who screwed everything up for everybody. >> Yeah. (John chuckles) No, I mean, it's a great question. So when I think of Web3, I categorize NFTs and the Metaverse in there. Obviously it's just, you know the new form of the internet. It's the way the internet is- >> Never fight fashion, as I always say, right? >> Right. Yeah. Right. (John chuckles) It's just decentralization. The fact that we can live in these virtual worlds and own our own assets through NFT, it's all decentralized. And in my opinion, that all falls under the category of Web3. >> Well, you're doing a great job MCing. Great to have you on theCube. >> Rachel: Thanks. I'd like to ask you a personal question if you don't mind. COVID's impacted us all with no events. When did you get back onto the events circuit? What's on your calendar? What have you been up to? >> Yeah, so gosh, with COVID, I think when COVID, you know, when it was actually really happening, (John chuckles) and it still is happening. But when it was, you know, >> John: Like, when it was >> impacting- shut down mode. >> Right. When we were shut down, there were virtual events. And then, I think it was late last year or early this year when the events started happening again. So most recently I was at NFT NYC. Before that, I was at Consensus, which was huge. >> Was that the one in Austin or Miami? >> In Austin. >> That's right, Austin. >> Right. Were you there? >> No, I missed it. >> Okay. It was a very high level, great event. >> Huge numbers, I heard. >> Yes. Massive turnout. (John chuckles) Tons of speakers. It was really informative. >> It feels like a festival. actually. >> It was. It was just like South by Southwest, except for crypto and blockchain. (John chuckles) And then coming up, gosh, there are a lot of events. I'll be at an event in Miami, it's an NFT event that's in a few months. I know that there's a summit happening, I think in Turkey that I may be at as well. >> You're on the road. You're traveling. You're doing a lot of hopping around. >> Yes I am. And there's a lot of events happening in Europe. I'm US-based, but I'm hoping to spend more time in Europe just so I can go to those events. But there's a lot happening. >> Yeah. Cool. What's the most important story people should be paying attention to in your mind? >> Wow. That's... (Rachel chuckles) That's a big question. It's a good question. I think most, you know, the transition that we're seeing now, so in terms of prices, I think people need to focus less on the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum and more on innovation that's happening. So for instance, Web3 innovation, what we're seeing here today, you know, innovation, isn't about prices, but it's more about like actually now is the time to build. >> Yeah. because the prices are a bit down. >> Yeah. I mean, as, you know, Lewis Hamilton's F1 driver had a quote, you know, "It takes a team. No matter who's in the driver's seat, it's a team." So community, Wayne Gretzky skates where the puck is going to be I think is much more what I'm hearing now, seeing what you're saying is that don't try to count the price trade of Bitcoin. This is an evolution. >> Right. >> And the dots are connecting. >> Exactly. And like I said, now is the time to build. What we're seeing with the project Britney mentioned, putting the heritage, you know, on the blockchain from Ukraine, like, that's a great use case for what we're seeing now. I want to see more of those real world use cases. >> Right. Well, Rachel, thanks for coming on theCube. I really appreciate it. Great to see you. >> Thanks, John. >> And thanks for coming out of your schedule. I know you're busy. >> Thanks. Now you get some lunchtime now and get some break. >> Yeah. Get back on stage. Thanks for coming on. >> Rachel: Thank you. >> All right. We're here at the Monaco Crypto Summit. Rachel's MCing the event as part of the official media partner, Cointelegraph. Rachel Wolfson here on theCube. I'm John Furrier. More coverage coming after this short break. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)

okay welcome back everyone we're here live in monaco for siliconangle thecube's coverage of the monaco crypto summit i'm john furrier your host we're here with al berger the founder of the digital bits blockchain digital bits is presented it's an open ecosystem they're the main presenters bringing everybody together al burgia is the man of the hour al great to see you cube alumni great to see you again john thanks thanks for having me back on the show it's been this is an inaugural event yeah you you and your team put together the digital bits foundation um the digits blockchains enabling technology the proof is in the pudding as i always say now you're seeing companies building on top of the ecosystem why monaco this is inaugural event what's going on here what's the motivation what does all this mean all this stuff coming together share uh why monaco i mean there's uh it's part of this next chapter for us things are happening in monaco and and um um we've yet to unveil that and we thought you know what better place to unveil what we're doing in monaco other than to do it in monaco so that was really the genesis of what gave birth this idea to have the monaco crypto summit um but that evolved beyond just sharing the nexus of it all there are organizations that here that have come from all over the world and will be sharing for the first time how they're also utilizing the digital bits watching not bad to come to monaco in the summer though it's pretty pretty nice area beautiful views yeah summer time in monaco is always great but this inaugural event first of all i love the name so congratulations on the name i think it's got a lot of legs to it i think this will be something that's going to be around for a long long time so it's a good good call there there's a lot of other dynamics going on prince albert's got some involvement he's interested in crypto we're going to hear more about that in the yacht club presentation later tonight you got startups companies building on top of the capabilities of digital bits you know you and i have talked in the past on the cube about the technology um your technologists uh followed a lot of your adventures to success and exits multiple exits in tech silicon valley knows you everyone knows you know around the world it's kind of like a cloud game but it's decentralized you've got infrastructure platform applications um there's super applications and decentralized device to all kinds of new stuff going on so you have a stack kind of going on here in a decentralized way and been validated by all the big names jumping in and changing their business models and horowitz you name it now a global financial markets converging on this huge opportunity around crypto and d-apps everything's happening so what's your reaction to someone who's been through many cycles built companies and sold them and been successful what's your analysis i mean this journey is then different and you has a unique some similarities but definitely some unique characteristics in prior journeys uh in in you know venturing off to found a company and so forth and for me it's been obviously the traditional way um you know prior to this obviously it was in the valley and and had uh uh quite the journey um what i would say this time is um with all that's happening in blockchain and cryptocurrency it's the amount of say capital formation the amount of people involvement in into an early technology into an evolving technology and there's various subcategories now across nfts metabours and um and all things fungible um there's a global stage immediately and um and it sort of creates these sort of mini vortexes of getting more people involved um it's it's kind of some semblances of like the dot-com bubble in a sense but with a much bigger ecosystem um in comparison to what we saw in the 90s um the thing about blockchain is that it it needs to the more successful blockchains out there need to evolve into becoming as decentralized as possible and so as to use your analogy of stack i mean it is incredibly important to have contributors at all layers protocol layer application d app layer in many corners of the world but it all starts with an idea so it's really hard to go from point a to point b um like any other new opportunity and so for us it's been a journey we're evolving in this next chapter um and a lot of that will be evident today throughout the course of the summit we'll start to see and start to feel even more so how uh the digitalbits ecosystem is is becoming more and more decentral we're going to see a bunch of folks coming on us off stage are going to come here sit down on thecube and chat with me about their opportunities how would you describe for the folks watching now what's going on on stage here all day and then obviously there's a vip gala tonight at the yacht club with prince albert in attendance and his team and a bunch of big power players what's happening here what's the what's the vibe what's the purpose what's being presented can you just quickly share uh take a minute to explain what's going on so relative to to the summit um it's you know organizations uh platforms um there's there's uh a few metaverse uh platforms here that will be um i mean they've been in in existence but they'll be unveiling um their connection and how they're leveraging the digital business watching for the very first time and so um but also other categories as well even um soon here massive multi-billion dollar real estate development all coming to um the digital blockchain so this is the physical world massive uh resort um real estate development completely being tokenized you just had some success in digital assets obviously the roma team i saw the announcement on on youtube was pretty big um you get digital bits on the jersey a new player so caught my attention you got sports teams you got here you got applications people building on top of digital bits why for us it yeah vision is needs to be supported by a strategy um from inception it was finding ways to take an enterprise go to market strategy and and uh some of it may be a bit of trial and error in the early you know onset from 2017-18 when it when the journey kind of began for the digital biz blockchain but um also part of it is timing and one of the things that we saw more recently again kind of like the journey and the stack you're referring to before nobody foresaw the pandemic nobody foresaw that the whole world would be at home staring at a screen um and figuring out what to do with their time and many of the world for the first time began to learn about blockchain and cryptocurrency for the first time in the onset of this pandemic and so that became a huge accelerant for the space and so um another quote you know i've i'll take away from you that i you know recall you saying many years ago um you need to have a horse on the track to be in the race yeah we're very fortunate to have a horse in the track by having already a number of years of development um awareness so that when there's kind of like these market shifts that can become an accelerant we're in a position to to move with the industry um and so it's been an incredible couple of years i mean it was great for you guys yeah and so there you know there's different contributors in the ecosystem some some that i'm affiliated with that have done things in the sports space um and other things that i'm not affiliated with there's a lot of things that again are emerging today that are happening in different categories or themes of metaverse for example um and i'm humbled by it just simply by the virtue of the fact that they're utilizing the digital that's watching but i had no um stake in building what they've built in terms of this is enabling technology so just to kind of pivot off you said yeah the pandemic was a tailwind now for um this movement for many reasons one people sitting at home boy hey this is technically vegas work on the blockchain two the future of work or the future of how things are organized is was remote work remote work is like next door neighbor to decentralization like i mean come on you're talking about people going this is not the future is not where it used to be that kind of galvanized a lot of people and also the business models have shifted so now post pandemic everything's hybrid which is virtual physical so that's the perfect storm so total acceleration agree um and we're seeing the traction now what's interesting about what you guys are doing is you're enabling people to build apps on it that's the platform and and that's that's again what i want to ask you is i had people always ask me what's digital bits so i'm going to ask you what is digital bits well digital bits is both the name of a blockchain it's also the name of a cryptocurrency the native cryptocurrency of the digital bits blockchain and so um it began 2017 as a fork of stellar in terms of the original repository um and you know there's a question i was asked earlier today in a press conference of like oh there's all these blockchains well we're still in this like early stage uh this early part of this uh evolution and so i i don't necessarily see a lot of what's happening out there as competitive but rather complementary because in unison you know there's different use cases different categories uh where kind of a blockchain can find its array of adoption in in this sort of phase of it all um for us um we've been referred to as a few different things one of which is you know the aspiration become this blockchain for brands i think today we'll learn that it's become much bigger than that in terms of its capability it's not necessarily that um it's as a result of new technology it's the tech a lot of this technology has been there it's just how it's being exploited and used um we're unveiling today for example and part of now this chapter for me is working with um community um developers hold on before you get there so okay i see digital bits i love the name by the way so thanks for that you kind of get to the news now you have a press conference take me through the press conference what's the news what are you guys announcing here today so the press conference we we did share not everything uh there's more um uh likely in store by the end of today that's not on the agenda uh and and maybe i'll be back on the show later today um we will have you back we'll find out come on but in terms of in terms of what we shared so far at the press conference um uh it was centered around two key themes i wanted to um obviously talked about the array of things to come today but focus on some of the things i'm directly involved in one of which was nico swap and the other are the number of things involved here within monaco so in terms of nico swap um by way of nane nico and in the spirit of decentralization nico in ancient greek means victory for the people so we thought that was a fitting name for the platform it's a decentralized exchange platform on uh the digital bits blockchain um filled with liquidity pool technology automated market making technology it's it's but by way of comparison digital bits is version of let's say a uniswap but lower cost faster and so forth and there's a number of organizations here today that will uh are announcing that they're deploying on nicos bringing their token to the digital bits blockchain and and launching um on on nicoswap so we're i'm super excited about that this is you know part of evolution and part of fostering decentralization um and so what that enables is by virtue of uh being able to again help helping other organizations getting their horse on the track the common denominator for us is digital bits it's um you know the fact that every application every utility token every nft you know does require digital bits including the digital bits currency to provide that security to to be used for gas fees and and and so on and so forth so um the blockchain itself the cryptocurrency it's kind of a common denominator beneficiary uh the one way you can kind of think of it um but yeah we shared a lot around an ecoswap um uh what it looks like and um its key functionality and and who are some of the organizations that are uh on on board day one the other part of the press conference today we shared um was more monaco centric digital bits in monaco and this journey is just beginning uh it's super humbling it's super exciting for me to be a part of it um there is again no real particular order there's a an ecampus that's focused around cyber security and blockchain education for both private sector and public sector so um academia so skills government issues solve some skill gap correct right it's an organization a financial institution a whole department needs to know more about blockchain how they can leverage it um digitalbits um is the blockchain um that is forming the first part of the curriculum for this ecampus that's launching here in monaco with uh uh an organization called amvini the other thing uh that we shared and announced uh today is that um the first sov first and only sovereign cloud in europe is the monaco cloud as recently launched what makes it soft and in essence is a few aspects of its characteristics but digital bits blockchain nodes are being deployed in the monaco cloud um and so beyond the nodes that already exist it's um the network is further being let's say hardest to bring your scale in resiliency you know the whole thing around censorship resistance right the more nodes there's a huge strategic aspect to obviously deploying nodes in in sovereign clouds um and so in europe the first for that is the monaco cloud so we're really honored to be working with the team there and mvne and so forth for that and then um and then as well um a number of months ago we began a journey with the prince albert of monaco foundation um the the chair president is uh prince albert and um the uh vice president ceo is olivia windham who was in attendance at the uh at the press conference as well and um and we unveiled um the foundations uh platform entirely built on the digital bits blockchain uh utilizing the digital bits cryptocurrency um as well as uh nft ticketing and so forth uh so we unveiled that we showcased that for uh for members of the press um how it will be used and and so forth some of the questions you got um i mean it went everywhere from um there was a regulatory regulation question related to europe um to questions around decentralization what are what are we doing how do we compare to uh proof of work you know why why digital bits a big part of that is i think we have a lot of common values with um the foundation of prince albert foundation uh around the environment being eco-friendly and so on and so forth and so um um questions of that sort you know how what do you know what's the next chapter look like and and how how um is more and more decentralization in my view going to be fueled and you said you got some announcements you can't talk about um coming okay so is that what's that going to be related to you get a little bit of teaser on that is it going to be something how big we be massive is it the grand finale or is it it's not a finale the unveiling it's an op unboxing of a new deal what's what's what is it a deal is it technology um it is uh um it's it's um large uh organization um that um is is leveraging uh both um the digital bits watching and digital body swerve that one okay good well al thanks for coming on and congratulations we will catch up with you either at the end of the day here on the live program or we will be at the yacht club in monaco yacht club tonight for the big event we hope to be live there but if not we will report on that yeah thanks for having me john all right congratulations digital [ __ ] really rocking the world here in monaco love the name digital bits makes tons tons of sense platform to enable applications this is the future you're going to start to see this decentralized model that kind of looks like cloud computing but not it's a technology enabling the creative and the and and the application transformations to decentralization it's coming almost every single category will be centralized we'll be covering a blanket on the cube i'm john furrier thecube thanks for watching [Music] you

>>The cube presents, Dell technologies world brought to you by Dell. >>Welcome back to Dell technologies, world 2022. We're live in Vegas. Very happy to be here. Uh, this is the cubes multi-year coverage. This is year 13 for covering either, you know, EMC world or, uh, Dell world. And now of course, Dell tech world. My name is Dave Volante and I'm here with longtime Cub alum cube guest, Steve Kenon, the storage Alchemist, who's, uh, Beckett, Dell, uh, and his data protection role. And Tony Bryson is the chief information security officer of the town of Gilbert town in Arizona. Most, most towns don't have a CISO, but Tony, we're a thrilled, you're here to tell us that story. How did you become a CISO and how does the town of Gilbert have a CISO? >>Well, thank you for having me here. Uh, believe it or not. The town of Gilbert is actually the fourth largest municipality in Arizona. We serve as 281,000 citizens. So it's a fairly large enterprise. We're a billion dollar enterprise. And it got to the point where the, uh, cybersecurity concerns were at such a point that they elected to bring in their first chief information security officer. And I managed to, uh, be the lucky gentleman that got that particular position. >>That's awesome. And there's a, is there a CIO as well? Are you guys peers? Do you, how what's the reporting structure look like? >>We have a chief technology officer. Okay. I report through his office mm-hmm <affirmative> and then he reports, uh, directly to the town executive. >>So you guys talk a lot, you I'm sure you present a lot to the, to the board or wherever the governance structure is. Yeah, >>We do. I, I do quarterly report outs to the, I report through to the town council. Uh, let them know exactly what our cyber security posture is like, the type of threats that we're facing. As a matter of fact, I have to do one when I return to, uh, Gilbert from this particular conference. So really looking forward to that one, cuz this is an interesting time to be in cyber security. >>So obviously a sea. So Steve is gonna say, cyber's the number one priority, but I would say the CTO is gonna say the, say the same thing I would say the board is gonna say the same thing. I would also say Steve, that, uh, cyber and cyber resilience is probably the number one topic here at the show. When you walk around and you see the cyber demonstrations, the security demonstrations, they're packed, it's kind of your focus. Um, it's a good call. >>Yeah. <laugh> I'm the luckiest guy in storage, right? <laugh> um, yeah, there hasn't I in the last 24 months, I don't think that there's been a, a meeting that I've been to with a customer, no matter who's in the room where, uh, cyber resiliency, cybersecurity hasn't come up. I mean, it is, it is one of the hot topics in last night. I mean, Michael was just here. Uh, Michael Dell was just here last night. He came into the showroom floor, he came back, he took a look at what we were offering for cyber capabilities and was impressed. And, and so, so that's really good. >>Yeah. So I noticed, you know, when I talked to a lot of CIOs in particular, they would tell me that the pre pandemic, their cyber resiliency was very Dr. Focused, right. They really, it really wasn't an organizational resilience. It was a, if there's an oh crap moment, they could get it back in theory. And they sort of rethought that. Do you see you that amongst your peers, Tony? >>I think so. I think that people are quickly starting to understand that you just can't focus on, in, on protecting yourself from something that you think may never happen. The reality is that you're likely to see some type of cyber event, so you better be prepared for it. And you protect yourself against that. So plan for resiliency plan with making sure that you have the right people in place that can take that challenge on, because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when >>I would imagine. Well, Steve, you and I have talked about this, that, you know, the data protection business used to be, we used to call it backup in recovery and security, which is a whole different animal, but they're really starting to come together. It's kind of an Adjay. I, I know you've got this, uh, Maverick report that, that you want to talk about. What, what is that as a new Gartner research? I, I'm not familiar with it. >>Yeah. So it's some very interesting Gartner research and what I think, and I'd be curious to, Tony's take on, especially after that last question is, you know, a lot of people are, are spending a lot of money to keep the bad actors out. Right. And Gardner's philosophy on this whole, um, it's, it's, you're going to get hacked. So embrace the breach, that's their report. Right. So what they're suggesting is you're spending a lot of money, but, but we're witnessing a lot of attacks still coming in. Are you prepared to recover that when it happens? Right. And so their philosophy is it's time to start thinking about the recovery aspects of, you know, if, if they're gonna get through, how do you handle that? Right. >>Well, so you got announcements this week, big one of the big four, I guess, or big five cyber recovery vault. It's been, you're enhancing that you guys are talking things like, you know, air gaps and so forth. Give us the overview of the news there. >>Yeah. So there's, uh, cyber recovery vault for AWS for the cloud. There is, uh, a lot of stuff we're doing with, uh, cyber recovery vault for, uh, Aw, uh, Azure also, right along with the cyber sense technology, which is the technology that scans the data. Once it comes in from the backup to ensure that it clean and can be recovered and you can feel confident that your recoveries look good, right? So now, now you can do that OnPrem, or you can do it through a colo. You can do it with in the cloud, or you can, uh, ask Dell technologies with our apex business services to help provide cyber recovery services wherever for you at your co at yet OnPrem or for you from the cloud. So it's kind of giving the customer, allowing them to keep that freedom of choice of how they want to operate, but provide them those same recovery capabilities. >>So Tony, give us paint us a picture without giving away too much for the bad guys. How, how you approach this, maybe are you using some of these products? What's your sort of infrastructure look like? >>Yeah. Without giving away the state secrets, um, we are heavily invested in the cyber recovery vault and cyber sense. Uh, it plays heavily in our strategy. We wanna make sure we have a safe Harbor for our data. And that's something that, that the Dell power protect cyber recovery vault provides to us. Uh, we're exceptionally excited about the, the development that's going on, especially with apex. We're looking at that, and that has really captured our imagination. It could be a game changer for us as a town because we're, we're a small organization transitioning to a midsize organization and what apex provides and what the Dell cyber recovery vault provides to us. Putting those two together gives us the elasticity we need as a small organization to expand quickly and deal with our internal data concerns. >>So cyber recovery as a service is what you're interested in. Let me ask you a question. Are you interested in a managed service or are you interested in managing it yourself? >>That's a great question, personally. I would prefer that we went with managed services. I think that from a manager's perspective, you get a bigger bang for the buck going with managed services. You have people that work with that technology all the time. You don't have to ramp people up and develop that expertise in house. You also then have that peace of mind that you have more people that are doing the services and it acts as a force multiplier for you. So from a dollar and cents perspective, it's the way that you want to go. When I start talking to my internal people, of course, there's that, that sense of fear that comes with the unknown and especially outsourcing that type of critical infrastructure, the there's some concern there, but I think that with education, with exposure, to some of the things that we get from the managed service, it makes sense for everybody to go that >>Route and, and you can, I presume sort of POC it and then expand it and then get more comfortable with it and then say, okay, when it's hardened and ready now, this is the, the Def facto standard across the organization. >>I suspect we'll end up in a hybrid environment to begin with where we'll some assets on site, and then we'll have some assets in the cloud. And that's again, where apex will be that, that big linchpin for us and really make it all work. How >>Important are air gaps? >>Oh, they're incredibly, incredibly, uh, needed right now. You cannot have true data of security without having an air gap. A lot of the ransomware that we see moves laterally through your organization. So if you have, uh, all your data backed up in the same data center that your, your backups and your primary data sources are in odds are they're all gonna get owned at the same time. So having that air gap solution in there is critical to having the peace of mind that allows the CISO to sleep at night. >>I always tell my crypto and NFT readers, this doesn't apply to data centers. You gotta air back air, air gap, your crypto, you know, when you're NFT. So how do you guys Steve deal with, with air gap? Can you explain the solutions? >>So in the, in the cyber recovery vault itself, it is driven through, uh, you've got one, uh, power protect, uh, appliance on one, one side in your data center, and then wherever your, your, your vaulted area is, whether it be a colo, whether it be on pre wherever it might be. Uh, we create a connection between between the two that is one directional, right? So we send the data to that vault. We call it the vault and, you know, we replicate a copy of your backup data. Once it lives over there, we make a copy of that data. And then what we do is with the cyber sense technology that Tony was talking about, we scan that data and we validate it against, with a whole cyber sense is built on IML machine learning. We look at a couple hundred different kind of profiles that come through and compare it to the, to the day before as backup and the day before that and understand kind of what's changing. >>And is it changing the right way? Right? Like there might be some reasons it it's supposed to change that way. Right. But things that look anomalous, we send up a warning when we let the people know that, you know, whoever's monitoring, something's going on. You might want to take a look. And then based on that, if there's whatever's happening in the environment, we have the ability to then recover that data back to the, to the original system. You can use the vault as a, as a clean room area, if you want to send people to it, depending on kind of what's going on in, in, in your main data center. So there's a lot of things we do to protect that. Do >>You recommend, like changing the timing of when you take, you know, snapshots or you do the same time every day, it's gotta create different patterns or >>I'll tell you that's, that's one thing to keep the, keep the hackers on their tow, right? It it's tough to do operationally, right? Because you kind that's processes. But, but the reality is if you really are that, uh, concerned about attacks, that makes a lot of sense, >>Tony, what's the CISOs number one challenge today? >>Uh, I, it has to be resilience. It has to be making sure your organization that if or when they get hit, that you're able to pick the pieces back up and get the operation back up as quickly and efficiently as possible. Making sure that the, the mission critical data is immediately, uh, recoverable and be able to be put back into play. >>And, and what's the biggest challenge or best practice in terms of doing that? Obviously the technology, the people, the process >>Right now, I would probably say it's it's people, uh, we're going through the, the, um, a period of, of uncertainty in the marketplace when it comes to trying to find people. So it is difficult to find the right people to do certain things, which is why managed services is so important to an organization of our size and, and what we're trying to do, where we are, are incorporating such big ideas. We need those manager services because we just can't find the bodies that can do some of this work. >>You got an interesting background, you a PhD in psychology, you're an educator, you're a golf pro and you're a CISO. I I've never met anybody like you, Tony <laugh>. So, thanks for coming on, Steve, give you the last word. >>Well, I think I, I think one of the things that Tony said, and I wanted to parlay this a little bit, uh, from that Gartner report, I even talked about people is so critical when it comes to cyber resiliency and that sort of thing. And one of the things I talked about in that embraced the breach report is as you're looking to hire staff for your environment, right, you wanna, you know, a lot of people might shy away from hiring that CSO that got fired because they had a cyber event. Right, right. Oh, maybe they didn't do their job. But the reality is, is those folks, because this is very new. I mean, of course we've been talking about cyber for a couple of years, but, but getting that experience under your belt and understanding what happens in the event. I mean, there are a lot of companies that run things like cyber ranges, resiliency, ranges to put people through the paces of, Hey, this is what have happens when an event happens and are you prepared to respond? I think there's a big set of learning lessons that happens when you go through one of those events and it helps kind of educate the people about what's needed. >>It's a great point. Failure used to mean fire right in this industry. And, and today it's different. The adversary is very well armed and quite capable and motivated that learning even during, even when you fail, can be applied to succeed in the future or not fail, I guess there's no such thing as success in your business. Guys. Thanks so much for coming on the cube. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks very >>Much. >>All right. And thank you for watching the cubes coverage of Dell tech world 2022. This is Dave Valenti. We'll be back with John furrier, Lisa Martin and David Nicholson. Two days of wall to wall coverage left. Keep it with us.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE special presentation of Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got a great conversation talking about the future of the infrastructure of Web3, all around domains, non fungible tokens and more. Two great guests, Charlie Brooks with Business Development of Unstoppable Domains, and Michael Williams, Product Leader and Advisor with Unstoppable Domains. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on theCUBE, Partner Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks John, excited to be here. >> So I love what you guys are doing. Congratulations on all your success. You guys are on the leading edge of what is a major infrastructure. Shift to Web3 is being called, but people who have been doing this for a while know that you see the blockchain, you see decentralization, you see immutability all these future smart contracts. All the decentralized applications are now hitting the scene and NFTs are super hot as you can imagine, you guys in the middle of it. So you guys are in the sweet spot of what I call the Pragmatic pioneers. You guys are the building solutions that are making a difference, like single sign-on you have the login product, let's get into it. What is the path to a digital identity beyond the web? 'Cause we know what web identity is. But now that the web is being abstracted a away by this new Web3 layer, what is digital identity? >> I can take that one. So I think what we're really seeing is this transition away from a purely physical identity. Where your online identity is really just a reflection of the parts of your physical identity. Where you live, where you go to school, all of these things. And we're really seeing this world emerge where your online identity becomes much more of a primary. So if you have a way that you represent yourself in the online world, whether that's an Instagram account, or TikTok, or email address or username, all of these things together make up your digital identity. So congrats, if you have any of those things, you already have one. >> We see that all the time with Linktree, people put their Linktree out there and it's got the zillion handles. We all get up to Instagram. Everyone's got like zillion identities. Is that a problem or an opportunity? >> I think it's just a reality. The fact is our identities are spread across all of these different services and platforms that we use. The problem with something like Linktree is that it is owned by Linktree. If I won the lottery, purchased Linktree and decided I wanted to change your personal website, John, I could easily do that. Moving to the architecture that we have and NFT architecture, changes that significantly. It puts a lot of power back in the hands of the people who actually own those identities. I do a lot of CUBE showcases with folks around talking about machine learning and AI, and the number one conversation that they bring up, the number one issue, is data. And they say, when data's siloed and protected and owned, it is not optimized for machine learning. So I can almost imagine, as you bring NFTs to the digital identity, you mentioned you don't own your identity if someone else is managing the service like Linktree. This is a cultural shift, and infrastructure software shift at the same time. Can you guys expand more about what you guys are doing with the NFT and unstoppable domains with respect to that digital identity, because is that power shifting to the users now? And how does that compare to what's out there today? >> Sure, I think so. Our domains are NFTs, so they are ERC 721 tokens. And if you think about in the past Web2 identities are controlled by the platforms that we use. Twitter, Facebook, whatnot. There's really a lack of data portability there. Our accounts and data live on their servers, they can be deleted any time. So using an NFT to anchor your data identity, really gives you full control over your identity. It can't be deleted, it can't be revoked or edited, or changed without your permission. And really even better, the information you store on your entity domain can be plugged into the services you use, so that you never have to enter the same data twice. So when you go from platform to platform, everything can be tied to your existing domain. You're not going to a new site, entering their ecosystem and providing all this information time and time again, and not really having a clear understanding of how your data's being used and where it's being stored. >> So the innovation here is the NFT is your identity. And a non fungible token NFT is different than say a fungible token. So for the folks out there that's trying to follow the bouncing ball, Michael, what's the difference between an NFT and a fungible token? And why is that important for identity? >> My favorite metaphor here is baseball cards versus dollar bills. So a dollar bill is fungible. If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, we can trade dollars and none of us is richer or poorer. If I have a Babe Ruth and you have a Hank Aaron, and we swap baseball cards, we have changed something fundamental. So the important thing about NFTs is that they are non fungible. So if I have a domain and you have a domain, like I have that identity and you have that identity, they are unique, they're independent, they're owned by each one of us, and then we can't swap them interchangeably. >> And that's why you're seeing NFTs hot with art and artists, because it's like a property. It's a property issue, not so much- >> Absolutely >> Interchangeable or divisible kind of asset. >> Yep, it is ownership rights in digital form, yes. >> All right, so now let's get into what the identity piece. I think find that interesting because if I have something that's an NFT, it's non fungible, it's unique to me, it's property, my property my login, this sounds compelling. So how does login work with the NFT? Can you guys take us through that architecture, what does it do? How does it work? And what's the benefit? >> Good, so the way our login product works is it effectively uses your NFT domain. So Michael.crypto, for example, as the authentication piece of a login session. So basically when I go and I try to log in with my domain, I type in Michael.crypto, I sign it with my wallet which cryptographically proves that I am this human, this is me, I have the rights to log in. And then when I do so, I have the ability to share certain parts of my identity information with the applications that I use. So it really blends the ease of use from Web2 of just a standard like login with Gmail, SSO experience, with all of the security and privacy benefits of Web3. >> How important is single sign-on? Because right now people are used to seeing things like log with your GitHub handle or LinkedIn, or Google, Apple. You seeing people offering login. What's the difference here from those solutions and why does it make sense for the user? >> Sure, the big difference is what we're building is really user first. So if you think about traditional SSOs, you are the product. When you use their product, they're selling your data, they're tracking everything you do. Login with unstoppable handles not only authentication, but data sharing as well. So when you log in a domain owner can choose to share aspects of their online identities, such as first name, preferred language, profile picture, location. So this is a user controlled way of using a sign-on where their permissioning these different of their identity. And really apps can use this information to enable new experiences, such as, for example, website might automatically enable high contrast mode for someone visually impaired. It could pre-populate your friends from a decentralized social graph. So, what we're doing is taking the best parts of Web2 SSO and combining them with the best of Web3. So, no more losing your password, entering in the same data hundreds of times depending on other services to keep your information safe. Login with unstoppable really puts you in complete control of your data. And a big part of that is you're not going to have 80 plus usernames and passwords anymore. We have these tools like password managers that exist to put a bandaid on this issue, but it's not really a long term solution. So what we're building is really seamless onboarding where everything can be tied to your domains so that you can navigate to different apps in a much more seamless way. >> Michael, I got to get your thoughts on this because in the product side, it's interesting, my mind's connecting some dots. If I have first of all, great convenience to reduce all those logins. So, check their little pain reduction. But when you just think about what's different, I can now broker my data as well as login. So let's just say, hypothetically, I'm cruising around some dApps and I'm doing things in earning reputation, or attention, or points, or whatever utility tokens. There could be a way for me to control what I own. I'm the product, I own the data. Is that where this is going? >> I think it's definitely a direction it could go, say, for example, if I'm a e-commerce platform and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to place a new billboard. One of the things that I could request from a user, is their address. I can figure out where they live, what city they're in, that will help inform me the decision that I need to make as a business. And in return, maybe I give that person a dollar off their purchase. We can start to build a stronger relationship between the applications that people use, and the people that use them. And try to optimize that whole experience, and try to just transfer information back and forth to make everyone's lives better. >> What's the roadmap on the business side Charlie, when you see companies adopting it, they're probably taking babies steps they're crawling before they walk, they're walking before they run. I can see decentralized applications in the future where there's FinTech or whatever, having new kinds of marketplaces that take advantage of the paradigm where the script flips to the user first. Okay, so I see that. How do people get started now? What are some of the success momentum points that you're seeing companies do now with unstoppable? >> Sure, so a lot of Web3 apps are very sensitive about respecting the information that their users are providing. So, what we're doing is offering different ways for apps can touch with their users in a way that is user controlled. So, an example there is that a lot of Web3 companies will use WalletConnect to allow users to log in using a wallet address. An issue there is that one person can have hundreds of wallet addresses, and it's impossible for the app to understand that. So, what we do is we use login, we attach an email address, some other pieces to a wallet address so that we can identify who our unique user is. And the app is able to collect that information, they don't have to deal with passwords or PII storage. They have access to a huge amount of new data for an improved UX. It's really simple to maintain as well. So one example there is if you are a DeFi platform and you want to reward your users for coming to their site for the first time, now that they can identify unique user, they can drop a token into that user's wallet. All because they're able to identify that user as unique. So they have a better way of understanding their customers. They enable their customers to share data. A lot of these companies will ask users to follow them on Twitter or Discord when they need to provide updates or bug bounties, all these different things. And login if unstoppable lets them permission email addresses so they can collect emails if they want to do a newsletter. And instead of harvesting data from elsewhere and forcing people to join this newsletter program, it's all user controlled. So each user saying, yes, you can use my email for your newsletter. I'm supporting your project, I want to be kept up to date with bugs or bounties or rewards programs. So really it's just a better way for users to share the data that they're willing to with dAPPs, and dAPPs can use it to create all sorts of incentives and really just understand their users on a different level. >> How is the development Michael, going on the smart contract side of the business? Ethereum has always been heralded as being very developer focused. There's been created innovations, you still got gas fees out there. You still got to do some things. How is the development environment? How are the applications coming? 'Cause I can see the flywheel kicking in as the developer front gets more streamlined, more efficient. And now you got the identity piece nailed down. I just see a lot of dominoes falling at the same time. What's the status on the DEV side. What you're doing. >> Good. The fascinating thing about crypto is how quickly it changes. When I joined Ethereum there was pretty reasonable still for transactions. It was very cheap to get things done very fast. With a look at last summer that things went completely out of control. This is a big reason that unstoppable for a long time has been working on a layer two. And we've moved over to the polygon as our primary source of record, which is built on top of Ethereum. Of course, I think saved well over a hundred million in gas fees for our users. We're constantly keeping an eye on new technologies that are emerging, weighing how we can incorporate those things. And really where of this industry is going to take us. In many ways we are just as much passengers as the other people floating around the ecosystem as well. >> It's certainly getting faster every day, I'm seeing a huge uptake on Ethereum. I heard a stat that most people at the university of California, Berkeley, 30% of the computer science students are dropping out to join Web3 companies. This goes to show you this cultural shift and you're going to see a lot more companies getting involved. So I got to ask you Charlie, on the BizDev front, how are companies getting started? What's the playbook? Are they putting their toe in the water? They jumping in full throttle? What's the roadmap? What's the best practice for people to get started with unstoppable? >> Absolutely. We're lucky that we get a lot of inbound interest from companies Web2 and Web3, because they first want to secure their domains. And we do a ton of work on the back end to protect trademark domains. We want to avoid squatting as much as possible. We don't think that's the spirit of Web3 at all. And certainly not what the original tension of the internet was. So, fair amount of companies will reach out to us to get their domain. And then we can have a longer conversation about some of the other integrations and ways we can collaborate. So certainly visiting our website, unstoppabledomains.com is a great starting point. We have an app submission page where apps can reach out to us, even request a grant. We have a grant program to help developers get started, provide them some resources to work with us and integrate some of our technology. We have great documentation as well on the site. So you can read all about what it takes to resolve domains, if you're a wallet and an exchange, as well as what it takes to integrate login with unstoppable, which is actually a super easy integration as well, which we're really excited about. So yeah, I'd say check out the website, apply for a grant if you think you're a fit there, then of course, people can always reach out to me directly on Twitter, on Telegram, email. We're very reachable and we're always happy to chat with projects and learn more about what they're doing. >> What's the coolest thing you see going on Charlie, with your partners right now? What's the number one use case that's cool that people are jumping on right now to get in and get some success out of the gate? >> Maybe GameFi play to earn is huge. It's blowing up and the gaming community is really passionate, vibrant, just expanding like crazy. Same with DeFi, there's all this cool new stuff you can do with DeFi where no matter how big your portfolio is, you're able to stake and use all these interesting tools to grow your book. So it's super exciting to see and talk to all these projects. And, there's certainly an energy in the community where everyone wants to onboard the general public to Web3. So we're all working on these school projects, but we need everyone to come over from Web2, understand the advantages of DeFi, of GameFi of having an entity domain. So, I'm lucky that I'm one of the first layers there of meeting new projects and helping get access to more users so that they can grow along with us. >> I remember the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we were giving it away. The community mantra was, give a Bitcoin to someone. That was like, >> Right. >> When you can actually give a Bitcoin to someone. What's the word of mouth or organic viral? I won't say growth hack 'cause that's got negative connotations. But what's the community's way of putting forth the mission for unstoppable? Is it just more domains? You guys have any programs got going on? Is it give it away? Obviously you can get domains on your site, but what's the way to get people ingratiated in and getting comfortable? >> So much of what we do is really to solve that question, answer that question. We spend a ton of time and energy just on education and whether that's specifically around domains or just general Web3. We have a podcast which is pretty exceptional, which talks to Web3 leaders from across the space and makes the project that they're working on more accessible. I think we passed over a hundred episodes, not too long ago. There's a ton of stuff that we do that other people do. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to talk about our resources, of course. >> The pod, I think you guys are up to 117, but that's a deep dive. You guys go deep on the podcast. So that's where you go in. What else is new on digital identity? Where do you guys see the future going? Now that you get the baseline identity with the NFT. Makes a lot of sense, create innovation. Good logic, makes sense. Solid technically, what's next? >> I think this really boils down to the way that the internet has grown. Doesn't really feel like the way that the internet should be. Like our data shouldn't live in these wild gardens, controlled by these large companies. Ultimately people should be responsible for their own identities. They should have control over of things that they do online. The data that's shared, the benefit of that data. It's about the world that we are working towards, is very much that. Where we are giving people the ability to be paid for sharing their data with companies. We're giving applications the ability to request information from the people that use those applications to improve their experience. We're really just trying to make connections across the ecosystem through these products, to enable a better experience for everyone. So whether that's the use cases that I mentioned already, or maybe viewing reviews on something like Yelp or Amazon, that just confirm that the person that you are you're looking at is actually a real person, not some bot that's been paid to load a review. The interesting thing about these products is they're so universally applicable. There are so many different ways that we can try to plug them in. So we are- >> A bots is a great example, double-edged sword. You can have a metaverse image and have pre-programmed conversations with liquid audio and the video application. Or it's a real person. How do you know the difference? These are going to be questions around who solves that problem. Now there's time for bots and there's a time not for bots. We all know what happens when you get into the game of manipulation, but also it can be helpful. This is where you got to be smart. And identity's critical in this future. Charlie, what's your reaction to the future of digital identity? So much to look at here on the trajectory. >> I think a big part of it is data portability. If you go to a site like Instagram, you're giving them all this content that's very personal to you, and you can't just pack up and leave Instagram. So we want a future where most of these apps are just a front end and you can navigate from one to the other and bring your data with you. And not be beholden to the companies that operate centralized servers. So, I think data portability is huge and it's going to open up a lot of doors. And just going back to that thought on cleaning up Web2 for a better web three. When I think about the Amazons, the Yelps of the world, there are all these bots, there are all these awful fake reviews. There's a lot of gamification happening that is really just creating a lot of noise. And I want to bring transparency back to the internet where when you see a review, you should know that that's a real human. And blockchain technology is enabling us to do that. And certainly FT domains are going to play a huge part of that. So I think that having an experience where you know and trust the people that you're interacting with is going to be really powerful and just a better experience for everyone. And there's a lot of ramifications with that. politically speaking, we've all seen all the issues with attacking communities and using bots and fake accounts to hit people's pain points, it's sad and certainly not something that we want to see continue happening. So, whatever we can do to give people their digital identity and help people understand that this is a real person on the other end, I think is huge for the future of the internet and really for society as well. >> That's a great call out there Charlie. Cleaning up the mess of Web 2.0, Web2, actually it was 2.0 technically, now Web3 is no point zero in it. But I saw on or listened to the podcast with Matt. This recent one, he had a great metaphor that went back to when I was growing up in the internet, you had IP addresses. And the mess there was, you couldn't find what you want to look. And no one could remember what to type in, 'cause you could type in IP address in the browser back then. And then DNS came out and then keywords that's web. Now that mess, now is fraud, misinformation, bot manipulation, deep fakes, many other kind of unwanted time to innovate. And every year, every time you had these inflection points, there'd be an abstraction on top of it. So, similar thing happening here, is that how you guys see it too? >> I think we're going back to some of the foundational architecture of the internet, DNS. And really bringing that forward about 30, 40 years in terms of technology. So loading in some more cryptography and some other fancy things to help patch some of those issues from the previous versions of the web. >> Awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for coming on and the spirit of TikTok, Emily summarizes asking, can you guys give us a quick TikTok moment, short comment on where this is all going, where is login, single sign-on mean and what should people do to steps to secure their digital identity? >> Sure, I'll jump in here. So, it's time for people to secure their digital identity. The great first step is going to sample domains and getting an NFT domain. You can control your data. You can do a lot of cool different things with your domain, including posting your own website that you will own forever, no one can take it away from you. I would certainly recommend that people join our Discord, Telegram communities, check out our podcasts. It's really great especially if you're new to crypto Web3. We do a great job of explaining all the basic concepts and expanding on them. So yeah, I would say, the time is now to get your digital identity and start embracing Web3 because it's really exploding right now. And there's just so many incredible advantages, especially for the user. >> Michael, what's your take? >> But not, have said it better myself. >> Like we always say, if you're not on the next wave, you're driftwood. And this is a big wave that's happening. It's pretty clear guys, it's there, it's happening now. And again, very pragmatic implementations of solving problems. The sign-on, the app integration. Congratulations and we got our CUBE domain too, by the way. So I think we're good. >> Excellent. >> So, we got to put it to use. Appreciate it, Charlie, Michael, thanks for coming on and sharing the update. >> It's pleasure. >> Welcome. >> Okay, this is theCUBE, with Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase I'm John for your host, got a lot of other great interviews. Check them out. We're going to continue our coverage and continue on with this great showcase. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to this CUBE Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've been showcasing all the great content about Web3 and what's going around the corner for Web4. Of course, Unstoppable Domains is one of the big growth stories in the business. Brad Kam, the Co-founder is here with me, of Unstoppable Domains, Brad, great to see you, thanks for coming on this showcase. >> Thanks, pleasure for having me. >> So you have a lot of history in the Web3. They're calling it now, but it's basically crypto and blockchain. You know, the white paper came out and then, you know how it developed was organically. We saw how that happened. Now you're the co-founder of Unstoppable Domains. You're seeing the mainstream, I would say mainstream scene, Superbowl commercials, okay? You're seeing it everywhere. So it is here. Stadiums are named after cryptos, companies. It's here. Hey, it's no longer a fringe, it is reality. You guys are in the middle of it. What's going on with the trend, and where does Unstoppable fit in and where do you guys tie in here? >> I mean, I think that what's been happening in general, this whole revolution around cryptocurrencies and then NFTs and what Unstoppable Domain is doing. It's all around creating this idea that people can own something that's digital. And this hasn't really been possible before Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first case. You could own money. You don't need a bank, no one else. You know, you can completely control it. No one else can turn you off. Then there was this next phase of the revolution, which is, assets beyond just currencies. So NFTs, digital art. What we're working on is like a decentralized identity, like a username for Web3 and each individual domain name is an NFT. But yeah, it's been a crazy ride over the past 10 years. >> It's fun because, you know, on siliconangle.com, which we founded, we were covering early days of crypto. In fact, our first website, the developer want to be paid in crypto. It's interesting. Price of Bitcoin, I won't say that how low it was. But then you saw the ICO Wave, the token started coming in. You started seeing much more engineering focus, a lot of white papers coming out, a lot of cool ideas. And then now you got this mainstream of this. So I got to ask you, what are the coolest things you guys are working on, because Unstoppable has a solution that solves a problem today, and that people are facing at the same time, it is part of this new architecture. What problem do you guys solve right now that's in market that you're seeing the most traction on? >> Yeah, so it's really about, so whenever you interact with a blockchain, you wind up having to deal with one of these really, really crazy public keys, public addresses. And they're like anywhere from 20 to 40 characters long, they're random, they're impossible to memorize. And going back to even early days in crypto, I think people knew that this tech was not going to go mainstream if you have to copy and paste these things around. If I'm getting ready to send you like a million dollars, I'm going to copy and paste some random string of numbers and letters. I'm going to have no confirmations about who I'm sending it to, and I'm going to hope that it works out. It's just not practical. People have kind of always known there was going to be a solution. And one of the more popular ideas was, doing kind of like what DNS did, which is, instead of having to deal with these crazy IP addresses, this long random string of numbers to find a website, you have a name like a keyword, something that's easy to remember. You know, like a hotels.com or something like that. And so what NFT domains are, is basically the same thing, but for blockchain addresses. And yeah, it's just better and easier. There's this joke that everybody, you know, if you want to send me money, you're going to send me a test transaction of, you know, like a dollar first, just to make sure that I get it. Call me up and make sure that I get it before you go and send the big amount. Just not the way of moving billions of dollars of value is going to work in the future. >> Yeah, and I think one of the things you just point out, make it easier. When you have these new waves, these shifts, we saw it with the web pages. More and more web pages were coming on, more online users. They called it the online populations growing. Here, the same thing's happening. And if the focus is on ease of use, making things simpler to understand, and reducing the step it takes to do things, right? This is kind of what's going on and with the developer community, and what Ethereum has done really well is, brought in the developers. So that's the convergence of all the action. And so, when you (John chuckles) so that's where you're at right now. How do you go forward from here? Obviously, there's business development deals to do, you guys are partnering a lot. What's the strategy? What are some of the things that you can share about some of your business activity that points to how mainstream it is and where it's going? >> So I think the way to think about an NFT domain name is that it's meant to be like your identity on Web3. So, it's going to have a lot of different context. So it's kind of like your Venmo account, where you could send me money to brad.crypto, can be your decentralized website, where you can check out my content at brad.crypto. It can also be my like login kind of like a decentralized Facebook O oth, where I can log into DApps and share information about myself and bring my data along with me. So it's got all of these different things that it can do, but where it's starting is inside of crypto wallets and crypto apps, and they are adopting it for this identity idea. And it's the same form of identity across all your apps. That's the thing that's new here. So, yeah, that's the really big and profound shift that's happening. And the reason why this is going to be maybe even more important than a lot of, you know, your listeners think is that, everyone's going to have a crypto wallet. Every person in the world is going to have a crypto wallet. Every app, every consumer app that you use is going to build one in. Twitter just launched, just built one. Reddit is building one. You're seeing it across all the consumer finance apps. So it's not just the crypto companies that you're thinking of, every app's going to have a wallet. And it's going to really change the way that we use the internet. >> I think there's a couple things you pointed. I want to get your reaction to and thoughts more on this concept of DApps or decentralized applications, DApps or depending on what you call it. This is applications. And that take advantage of the architecture, and then this idea of users owning their own data. And this absolutely reverses the script today. Today, you see Facebook, you see LinkedIn, all these silos, they own the data that you are the product. Here, the users are in control. They have their data, but the apps are being built for it for the paradigm shift here, right? That's what's happening. Is that right? >> Totally, totally. And so, it all starts. I mean, DApp is just this crazy term. It feels like it's this, like really foreign, weird thing. All it means is that you sign in with your wallet instead of signing in with a username and password, where the data is stored inside of that app. Like inside of Facebook. So that's the only real, like, core underneath difference to keep in mind, signing in with the wallet. But that is like a complete sea change in the way the internet works. Because I have this key, this private key, it's on my phone or my device or whatever. And I'm the only one that has it. So, if somebody wanted to hack me, they need to go get access to my device. Two years ago, when Twitter got hacked, Barack Obama and Elon Musk were tweeting the same stuff. That's because Twitter had all the data. And so, you needed to hack Twitter instead of each individual person. It's a completely different security model. It's way better for users to have that. But, if you're thinking from the user perspective, what's going to happen is, is that instead of Facebook storing all of my data, and then me being trapped inside of Facebook, I'm going to store it, and I'm going to move around on the internet, logging in with my Web3 username, my NFT domain name, and I'm going to have all my data with me. And then I could use 100 different Facebooks all in one day. And it would be effortless for me to go and move from one to the other. So, the monopoly situation that we exist in as a society is because of the way data storage works and- >> So that's a huge point. So let's double down on that for one more second. This is a huge point. I want to get your thoughts. So I think people don't understand that in the mainstream having that horizontal traversal or ability to move around with your identity in this case, your Unstoppable Domain and your data allows the user to take it from place to place. It's like going to other apps that could be like Facebook, where the user's in charge. And they're either deciding whether to share their data or not, or they're certainly continuate their data. And this allows for more of a horizontal scalability for the user, not for a company. >> Yeah, and what's going to happen is, as users are building up their reputation. They're building up their identity in Web3. So you have your username and you have your profile and you have certain badges of activities that you've done. And you're building up this reputation. And now apps are looking at that, and they're starting to create social networks and other things to provide me services because it started with the user. And so, the user is starting to collect all this valuable data, and then apps are saying, well, hey, let me give you a special experience based on that. But the real thing, and this is like the core, I mean, this is just like a core capitalist idea, in general. If you have more competition, you get a better experience for users. We have not had competition in Web2 for decades because these companies have become monopolies. And what Web3 is really allowing is, this wide open competition. And that's the core thing. Like, it's not like, you know, it's going to take time for Web3 to get better than Web2. You know, it's very, very early days. But the reason why it's going to work is because of the competitive aspect here. Like it's just so much better for consumers when this happens. >> I would also add to that, first of all, great point, great insight. I would also add that the web presence technology based upon DNS specifically is, first of all, it's asking, so it's not foreign characters, it's not Unicode for the geeks out there. But that's limiting too, it limits you to be on a site. And so, I think the combination of kind of inadequate or antiquated DNS has limitations. So if... And that doesn't help communities, right? So when you're in the communities, you have potentially marketplaces that could be anywhere. So if you have ID, I'm just kind of thinking it forward here. But if you have your own data and your own ID, you can jump into a marketplace, two-sided marketplace anywhere. An app can provide that, if the community's robust, this is kind of where I see the use case going. How do you guys, do you guys agree with that statement and how do you see that ability for the user to take advantage of other competitive or new emerging communities or marketplaces? >> So I think it all comes down. So identity is just this huge problem in Web2. And part of the reason why it's very, very hard for new marketplaces and new communities to emerge is 'cause you need all kinds of trust and reputation. And it's very hard to get real information about the users that you're interacting with. If you're in the Web3 paradigm, then what happens is, is you can go and check certain things on the blockchain to see if they're true. And you can know that they're true 100%. You can know that I have used Uniswap in the past 30 days, and OpenSea in the past 30 days. You can know for sure that this wallet is mine. The same owner of this wallet also owns this other wallet, owns this asset. So having the ability to know certain things about a stranger is really what's going to change behavior. And one of the things that we're really excited about is being able to prove information about yourself without sharing it. So I can tell you, hey, I'm a unique person. I'm an American, I'm not an American, but I don't have to tell you who I am. And you can still know that it's true. And that concept is going to be what enables what you're talking about. I'm going to be able to show up in some new community that was created two hours ago, and we can all trust each other that a certain set of facts are true. And that's possible because- >> And exchange value with smart contracts and other with no middle men involved activities, which is the promise of the new decentralized web. All right, so let me ask you a question on that. Because I think this is key. The anonymous point is huge. If you look at any kind of abstraction layers or any evolution in technology over the years, it's always been about cleaning up the mess or extending capabilities of something that was inadequate. We mentioned DNS, now you got this. There's a lot of problems with Web2, 2.0, social bots. You mentioned bots. Bots are anonymous and they don't have a lot of time in market. So it's easy to start bots, and everyone who does either scraping bots, everyone knows this. What you just pointed out was, in an ops environment that was user choice, but has all the data that could be verified. So it's almost like a blue check mark on Twitter without having your name, kind of- >> It's going to be 100s of check marks, but exactly. 'Cause there's so many different things that you're going to want to communicate to strangers, but that's exactly the right mental model. It's going to be these check marks for all kinds of different contexts. And that's what's going to enable people to trust that they're, you know, you're talking to a real person or you're talking to the type of person you thought you were talking to, et cetera. But yeah, it's, you know, I think that the issues that we have with bots today are because Web2 has failed at solving identity. I think Facebook at one point was deleting half a billion fake accounts per quarter. Something like the entire number of user profiles they were deleting per year. So it's just a total- >> And they spring up like mushrooms. They just pop up, to think that's the problem. I mean, the data that you acquire in these siloed platforms is used by them, the company. So you don't own the data, so you become the product as the cliche goes. But what you guys are saying is, if you have an identity and you pop around to multiple sites, you also have your digital footprints and your exhaust that you own. Okay, that's time, that's reputation data. I mean, you can cut it any way you want, but the point is, it's your stuff over time, that's yours. And that's immutables on the blockchain, you can store it and then make that permanent and add to it. >> Exactly. >> That's a time based thing versus today, bots that are spreading misinformation can get popped up when they get killed. They just start another one. So time actually is a metric for quality here. >> Absolutely. And people already use it in the crypto world to say like, hey, this wallet was created greater than two years ago. This wallet has had transactions for at least three or four years. Like this is probably a real, you know, this is probably a legitimate user. And anybody can look that up. I mean, we can we go look it up together right now on Etherscan, it would take a minute. >> Yeah, (indistinct). Yeah, I'm a big fan, I can tell, I love this product. I think you guys are going to do really well. Congratulations, I'm a big fan. I think this is needed. What are some of the deals you've done? blockchain.com is one and Opera. Can you take us through those deals and why they're working with you? Let's start with blockchain.com. >> Yeah, so the whole thing here is that, this identity standard for Web3 apps need to choose to support it. So, you know, we spent several years as a company working to get as many crypto wallets and browsers and crypto exchanges to support this identity standard. Some of the largest and probably most popular companies to have done this are, blockchain.com, for example, blockchain.com, one of the largest crypto wallets in the world. And you can use your domain names instead of crypto addresses. And this is super cool because blockchain.com in particular focuses on onboarding new users. So they're very focused on how we're going to get the next 4 billion internet users to use this tech. And they said, usernames are going to be essential. Like, how can we onboard this next several billion people if we have to explain to them about all these crazy addresses. And it's not just one, like we want to give you 10, 40 character addresses for all these different contexts. Like, it's just no way people are going to be able to do that without having a user name. So, that's why we're really excited about what blockchain.com's doing. They want to train users that this is the way you should use the tech. >> Yeah, and certainly no one wants to remember. I remember how writing down all my... You know, I was never a big wallet fan 'cause of all the hacks I used to write it down and store it in my safe. But if the house burns down or I kick the can who's going to find it, right? So again, these are all important things. Your key storing it, securing it, super important. Talk about Opera. That's an interesting partnership because it's got a browser that people know what it is. What are they doing different? Almost imagine they're innovating around the identity and what people's experiences with what they touch. >> Yeah, so this is one of those things that's a little bit easier and I strongly encourage everybody to go and try DApps after this. 'Cause this is going to be one of those concepts, it can be a little easier if you try it than if you hear about it. But the concept of a wallet and a browser are kind of merging. So it makes sense to have a wallet inside of your browser. Because when you go to a website, the website's going to want you to sign in with your wallet. So having that be in one app is quite convenient for users. And so Opera was one of the trailblazers, a traditional browser that added a crypto wallet so that you can store money in there. And then also added support for domain names for payments and for websites. So, you can type in brad.crypto and you can send me money, or you can type in brad.crypto into the browser and you can check out my website. I've got a little NFT gallery. You can see my collection up there right now. So that's the idea is that, browsers have this kind of superpower in Web3. And what I think is going to happen, Opera and Brave have been kind of the trailblazers here. What I think is going to happen is that, these traditional browsers are going to wake up and they're going to see that integrating a wallet is critical for them to be able to provide services to consumers. >> I mean, it is an app. I mean, why not make it a DApps as well? Because why wouldn't I want to just send you crypto, like Venmo, you mentioned earlier, which people can understand that concept. Venmo, let me make my cash. Same concept here. But built in to the browser, which is not a browser anymore it's a reader, a DApp reader, basically with a wallet. All right, so what does this mean for you guys and the marketplace? You got Opera pushing the envelope on browsing, changing the experience, enabling the applications to be discovered and navigated and consumed. You got blockchain.com with the wallets and being embedded there. Good distribution. Who are you looking for for partners? How do people partner? Let's just say theCUBE wants to do NFTs, and we want to have a login for our communities, which are all open. How do we partner with you? Or do we? We have to wait or is there a... I mean, take us through the partnership strategy. How do people engage with Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think that if you're a wallet or a crypto exchange, it's super easy, we would love to have you support being able to send money using domains. We also have all sorts of different kind of marketing activities we can do together. We can give out free stuff to your communities. We have a bunch of education that we do. We're really trying to be this onboarding point to Web3. So there's, I think a lot of cool stuff we can do together on the commercial side and on the marketing side. And then the other category that we didn't talk about was DApps. And we now have this login with ensemble domains, which you kind of alluded to there. And so you can log in with your domain name and then you can give the app permission to get certain information about you or proof of information about you, not the actual information, if you don't want to share it, because it's your choice and you're in control. And so, that would be another thing. Like, if you all launch a DApps, we should absolutely have login with Unstoppable there. >> Yeah, there's so much headroom here. You got a short term solution with exchange. Get that distribution, I get that, that's early days of the foundation, push the distribution, get you guys everywhere. But the real success comes in for the login. I mean, the sign in single sign in concept. I think that's going to be powerful, great stuff. Okay, future, tell us something we don't know about Unstoppable Domains that people might be interested in. >> I think the thing that you're going to hear about a lot from us in the future is going to be around this idea of identity, of being able to prove that you're a human and be able to tell apps that. And apps are going to give you all kinds of special access and rewards and all kinds of other things, because you gave 'em that information. So that's probably, that's the hint I'm going to drop. >> You know, it's interesting, Brad. You bring trust, you bring quality verified data, choose intelligence software and machine learning, AI and access to distributed communities and distributed applications. Interesting to see what the software does with that. Cause it traditionally didn't have that before. I mean, just in mind blowing. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Great stuff. Brad, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the insight. The Co-founder of Unstoppable Domains, Brad Kam. Thanks for stopping by theCUBE's Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks for having me. (bright upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's special showcase with Unstoppable Domains. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California. And Matt Gould who's the founder and CEO of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, great to come on. Congratulations on the success of your company, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for kicking off this showcase. >> Well, thank you, happy to be here. >> So first of all, love the story you've got going on here. Love the approach, very innovative, but you're also on the big Web3 wave, which we know that leads into, metaverse unlimited new ways, people are consuming information, content, applications are being built differently. This is a major wave and it's happening. Some people are trying to squint through the hype versus reality, but you don't have to be a rocket science to realize that it's a cultural shift and a technical shift going on with Web3. So this is kind of what's happening in the market. So give us your take. What's your reaction? You're in the middle of it. You're on this wave. >> Yeah, well, I would say it's a torrent of change that got unleashed just over a decade ago with Bitcoin coming out and giving people the ability to have digital items that they could actually own themselves online. And this is a new thing. And people coming, especially from my generation of millennials, they spend their time online in these digital spaces and they've wanted to be able to own these items and you see it from, you know Gaming and Fortnite and Skins and Warcraft and all these other places. But this is really being enabled by this new crypto technology to just extend to a whole lot more applications, from money, which everyone's familiar with, to NFT projects like Board Apes or CryptoBucks. >> You know, I was listening to your podcast. You guys got a great pod. I think you're on 117 episodes now and growing. You guys do a deep dive, so people watching check out the Unstoppable Podcast. But on the last podcast, Matt, you mentioned some of the older generations like me, I grew up with IP addresses and before the web, they called it information super highway. It wasn't even called the web yet, but IP was generated by the United States Department of Commerce and R&D, that became the internet, the internet became the web. Back then it was just get some web pages up and find what you're looking for. Very analog compared to what's now today, now you mentioned gaming. You mentioned how people are changing. Can you talk about your view of this cultural shift? And we've been talking about the queue for many, many years now, but it's at actually happening now where the expectation of the audience and the users and the people consuming and communicating and bonding in groups, whether it's gaming or communities are expecting new behaviors, new applications, and it's a forcing function. This shift is having now, what's your reaction to that? What's your explanation? >> Yeah, well, I think it just goes back to the shift of people's where are they spending their time? And if you look today, most people spend 50% plus of their time in front of a screen. And that's just a tremendous amount of effort. But if you look at how much of their assets are digital, it's like less than 1% of their portfolio would be some sort of digital asset compared to literally 50% of every day sitting in front of a screen. And simultaneously what's happening is these new technologies are emerging around cryptocurrencies, blockchain systems, ways for you to track digital ownership of things, and then kind of bring that into your different applications. So one of the big things that's happening with Web3 is this concept of data portability, meaning that I can own something on one application and then I could potentially take that with me to several other applications across the internet. And so this is like the emerging digital property rights that are happening right now as we transition from a model in Web2, where you are on a hosted service like Facebook, it's a walled garden, they own and control everything. You are the product, they're mining you for data and they're just selling ads, right? To a system where it's much more open. You can go into these worlds and experiences. You can take things with you and you can leave with them. And most people are doing this with cryptocurrency. Maybe you earn an end-game currency, you can leave and take that to a different game, and you can spend it somewhere else. So the user is now enable to bring their data to the party. Whereas before now, you couldn't really do that. And that data includes their money or that includes their digital items. And so I think that's the big shift that we're seeing and that changes a lot in how applications serve up to users. It's going to change their user experiences for instance. >> I think the script has flipped and you're right on. I agree with you. I think you guys are smart to see it. And I think everyone who's on this wave will see it. Let's get into that because this is happening. People are saying, "I'm done with being mined "and being manipulated by the big Facebook "and the LinkedIns of the world who are using the user." Now, the contract was a free product and you gave up your data, but then it got too far. Now people want to be in charge of their data. They want to broker their data. They want to collect their digital exhaust, maybe collect some things in a game, or maybe do some commerce in an application or marketplace. So these are the new use cases. How does a digital identity architecture work with Unstoppable? How would you guys enabling that? Can you take us through the vision of where you guys came on this because it's unique, you had an NFT and kind of the domain name concept coming together, can you explain? >> Yeah, so we think we approach the problem for if we're going to rebuild the way that people interact online, what are kind of the first primitives that they're going to need in order to make that possible? And we thought that one of the things that you have on every network, like when you log on Twitter, you have a Twitter handle, when you log on Instagram, you have an Instagram handle. It's your name, right? You have that name that's on those applications. And right now what happens is if users get kicked off the platform, they lose a 100% of their followers, right? And they also, in some cases, they can't even directly contact their followers on some of these platforms. There's no way for them to retain this social network. So you have all these influencers, who are today's small businesses, who build up these large, you know profitable, small businesses online, being key opinion leaders to their demographic. And then they could be deplatformed, or they're unable to take this data and move to another platform if that platform raises their fees. You've seen several platforms increase their take rates. You have 10, 20, 30, 40%, and they're getting locked in and they're getting squeezed, right? So we just said, "You know what, "the first thing you're going to want to own "that this is going to be your piece of digital property "is going to be your name across these applications." If you look at every computing network in the history of computing networks, they end up with a naming system. And when we looked back at DNS, you know which came out in the 90s, it was just a way for people to find these webpages much easier instead of mapping these IP addresses. And then we said to ourselves, "What's going to happen in the future?" Is just like everyone has an email address that they use in their Web2 world in order to identify themselves as they log into all these applications. They're going to have an NFT domain in the Web3 world in order to authenticate and bring their data with them across these applications. So we saw a direct correlation there between DNS and what we're doing with NFT domain name systems. And the bigger breakthrough here is that NFT domain systems all of these NFT assets that live on a blockchain. They are owned by users. They're built on these open systems so that multiple applications could read data off of them and that makes them portable. So we were looking for an infrastructure play like a picks and shovels play for the emerging Web3 metaverse. And we thought that names were just something that if we wanted a future to happen, where all 3.5 billion people with cell phones are sending crypto and digital assets back and forth, they're going to need to have a name to make this a lot easier instead of these long IP addresses or hex addresses in the case of crypto. >> Yeah, and also people have multiple wallets too. It's not like there's all kinds of wallet, variations, name verification, you see the link tree is everywhere. You know, that's essentially just an app. I mean, doesn't really do anything. I mean, so you're seeing people trying to figure it out. I got a github handle. I got a LinkedIn handle. I mean, what do you do with it? >> Yeah, and then specific to crypto, there was a very hair on fire use case for people who buy their first Bitcoin. And for those in the audience who haven't done this yet, when you go in and you go into an app and you buy your first Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever cryptocurrency, and then the first time you try to send it, there's this field where you want to send it and it's this very long hex address. And it looks like an IP address from the 1980s, right? And it's like a bank number and no one's going to use that to send money back and forth to each other. And so just like domain names and the D apps system replace IP addresses, NFT domains on blockchain systems replace hex addresses for sending and receiving cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. And that's its first use case is it really plugs in there. So when you want to send money to someone, you can just instead of sending money to a large hex address that you have to copy and paste, you could have an error, or you could send it to the wrong place, it's pretty scary. You could send it to johnfurrier.nft. And so we thought that you're just not going to get global adoption without better UX, same thing it worked with .com domains. And this is the same thing for Bitcoin and other crypto. >> It's interesting, look at the Web2 or trend one to two, Web1 went to two, it was all about use, ease of use, right? And making things simpler, clutter, more pages can't find things that was search, that was Google. Since then, has there actually been an advancement? >> Hmm. >> Facebook certainly is not an advancement, they're hoarding all the data. So I think we're broken between that step of a free search to all the resources in the world, to which by the way, they're mining a lot of data too, with the Toolbar and Chrome. But now where's that Web3 crossover? So take us through your vision on digital identity on Web2, Google searching, Facebook's broken, democracy's broken, users aren't in charge to Web3? >> Got it. Well, we can start at Web1. So the way that I think about it is if you go to Web1, it was very simple, just text web pages. So it was just a way for someone to like put up a billboard and here's a piece of information and here's some things that you could read about it, right? And then what happened with Web2, was you started having applications being built that had backend infrastructure to provide services. So if you think about Web2, these are all websites or web portals that have services attached to them, whether that's a social network service or a search engine or whatever. And then as we move to Web3, the new thing that's happening here, is the user is coming onto that experience and they're able to connect in their wallet or their Web3 identity to that app and they can bring their data to the party. So it's kind of like Web1, you just have a static web page, Web2, you have a static webpage with a service, like a server back here, and then Web3, the user can come in and bring their database with them in order to have much better app experiences. So how does that change things? Well, for one, that means that you want data to be portable across apps. So we touched on gaming earlier and maybe if I have an in-game item for one game that I'm playing for a certain company, I can take it across two or three different games. It also impacts money. Money is just digital information. So now I can connect to a bunch of different apps and I can just use cryptocurrency to make those payments across those things instead of having to use a credit card. But then another thing that happens is I can bring unlimited amount of additional information about myself when I plug in my wallet. And as an example, when I plug into Google search, for instance, they could take a look at my wallet that I've connected and they could pull information about me that I enable that I share with them. And this means that I'm going to get a much more personalized experience on these websites and I'm also going to have much more control over my data. There's a lot of people out there right now who are worried about data privacy, especially in places like Europe. And one of the ways to solve that is simply to not store the data and instead have the user bring it with them. >> You know, I've always thought about this and always debated it with Dave a lot and my co-host, does top down governance privacy laws outweigh the organic bottoms up innovation? So what you're getting at here is, "Hey, if you can actually have that solved "(laughing) before it even starts." It was almost as if those services were built for the problem of Web2. >> Yes. >> Not three. >> Right. >> What's your reaction to that? >> I think that is right on the money. And if you look at it as a security, like if I put my security researcher hat on, I think the biggest problem we have with security and privacy on the web today is that we have these large organizations that are collecting so much data on us and they just become these honeypots and there have been huge breaches. Like Equifax, you know a few years back is a big one and this all your credit card data got leaked, right? And all your credit information got leaked. And we just have this model where these big companies silo your data, they create a giant database, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to be attack. And then someone eventually is going to hack that in order to pull that information. Well, if instead, and you can look at this at Web3. So for those in the audience who have used, a Web3 application, one of these D app, to trade cryptocurrencies or something, you'll know that when you go there, you actually connect your wall. So when you're working with these web, you connect, you bring your information with you and you connect it. That means that the app has none of that stored, right? So these apps that people are using for crypto trading cryptocurrency on apps or whatever, they have no stored information. So if someone hacks one of these defi exchanges, for instance, there's nothing to steal. And that's because the only time the information is being accessed is when the user is actively using the site. And so as someone who cares about security and privacy, I go, "Wow, that's a much better or data model." And that gives so much more control of user 'cause the user just permissions access to the data only during the time period in which they're interacting with the application. And so I think you're right and like we are very excited to be building these tools, right? Because I see it like if you look at Europe, they basically pass GDPR and then all the companies are going, "We can't comply with that." They keep postponing it or like changing it a little bit and trying to make it easier to comply with. But honestly we just need to switch the data models. So the companies aren't even taking the data and then they're going to be in a much better spot. >> And GDPR is again a nightmare. I think it's the wrong approach. I always said it was screwed up because most companies don't even know where stuff is stored and nevermind how they delete someone's entry in a database. They don't even know what they're collecting. Some at some level they become so complicated. So right on the money there good, good call out. There question for you. Is this then? Okay, so do you decouple the wallet from the ID or are they together and is it going to be a universal wallet? Do you guys see yourselves as universal domains? Take me through the thinking around how you're looking at the wallet and the actual identity of the user, which obviously is important on the identity side, wallet is that just universal or is that going to be coming together? >> Well, I think so. The way that we kind of think about it is that wallets are where people have their financial interactions online. And then identity is much more about, it's kind of like being your passport. So it's like your driver's license for the internet. So these are two kind of separate products we see longer term and actually work together. So, if you have a domain name, it actually is easier to make deposits into your wallet because it's easier to remember to send money to mattgloud.crypto. And that way it's easier for me to receive payments or whatever. And then inside my wallet, I'm going to be doing defi trades or whatever. And that doesn't really have an interaction with names necessarily in order to do those transactions. But then if I want to sign into a website or something, I could connect that with my NFT domain. And I do think that these two things are kind of separate. I think we're going to... Still early, so figuring out exactly how the industry is going to shake out over like a five to 10 year time horizon and maybe a little bit more difficult and we could see some other emerging... What you would consider like cornerstones of the crypto ecosystem. But I do think identity and reputation is one of those. And I also think that your financial applications of defi are going to be another. So those are the two areas where I see it. And just a note on this, when you have a wallet that usually has multiple cryptocurrency addresses, so you're going to have like 50 cryptocurrency addresses in a wallet. You're going to want to have one domain name that links back to all those, because you're just not going to remember those 50 different addresses. So that's how I think that they collaborate and we collaborate with several large wallets as well, like blockchain.com and another 30 plus of these to make it easier for sending out and receiving cryptocurrency. >> So the wallet basically is a D app, the way you look at it, the integrated. >> Yeah. >> Whatever you want, just integrate in. How do I log into decentralized application with my NFT domain name? Because this becomes okay. I got to love the idea, love my identity. I'm an my own NFT. I mean, how this video's going to be an NFT soon. We get on board with the program here, but how do I log into my app? I'm going to have a D app and I got my domain name. Do I have to submit is there benchmarking? Is there approval process? Is there APIs and SDK kind of thinking around it? How are you thinking about dealing with the apps? >> Yeah, so all of the above. And what we're trying to do here is build like an SSO solution, but it's consumer based. So what we've done is adapted some SSO protocols that other people have used, the standard ones, in order to connect that back to an NFT domain in this case. And that way you GET the best of both worlds. So you can use these authorization protocols for data permissioning that are, you know, standard Web2 APIs, but then the permissioning system is actually based on the user-controlled NFT. So they're assigning it that with their private public key pair in order to make those updates. So that allows you to connect into both of these systems. We think that that's how technology typically impacts the world is it's not like you have something that just replaces something overnight. You have an integration of these technologies over time. And we really see these Web3 components and net two domains integrating nicely into regular apps. So as an example in the future, when you log in right now, you see Google off, Facebook off, or you can type in an email address, you could see NFT, Unstoppable Domains or NFT authorization. And you can SSO in to that website. When you go to a website like an e-commerce website, you could share information about yourself, 'cause you've connected your wallet now. So you could say, "Yes, I am a unique individual. "I do live in New York and I just bought a new house." And then when you permission all that information about yourself to that application, you can serve up a new user experience for you. And we think it's going to be very interesting for doing rewards and discounts online for e-commerce specifically in the future because that opens up a whole new market. 'Cause they can ask you questions about yourself and you can deliver that information directly to the app. >> I really think that the gaming market has totally nailed the future use case, which is in game currency, in game end engagement, in game data. And now bringing that to kind of a horizontally scalable like surface areas is huge, right? So, you know, I think that's a huge success on the concept. The question I have to ask you is you getting any pushback from, ICANN, the International Corporation of Naming and Numbers, they got dot everything now.club, 'cause the clubhouse, they got dot, party.live. I mean the real domain name people are over here, Web2, you guys are coming out with the Web3. Where is that connect for people who are not following along the Web3 trend? How do you rationalize the domain angle here? >> Yeah, well, so I would say that NFT domains are what domains on DNS were always meant to be 30 plus years ago. And they just didn't have blockchain systems back in the nineties when they were building these things. So there's no way to make them for individuals. So what happened was for DNS, it actually ended up being business. So if you look at DNS names, there's about 350 million registrations. They're basically all small business. And it's like, 20 to 50 million small businesses who own the majority of these.com or these regular DNS domain names. And that's their focus. NFT domains, because all of a sudden you have the wallet, you have them in your wallet and your crypto wallet, they're actually for individuals. So that market, instead of being for small businesses is actually end users. So instead of being for 20 to 50 million small businesses, we're talking about being useful for three to four billion people who have an internet connection. And so we actually think that the market size for NFT domains is somewhere 50 to a hundred X, the market size for traditional domain names. And then the use cases are going to be much more for individuals on a day to day basis. So it's like people are going to want you on a use them for receiving cryptocurrency or receiving dollars or payments or USCC coin, where they're going to want to use them as identifiers on social networks, where they're going to want to use them for SSO. And they're not going to want to use them as much for things like websites, which is what Web2 is. And if I'm being perfectly honest, if I'm looking out 10 years from now, I think that these traditional domain name systems are going to want to work with and adopt this new NFT technology, 'cause they're going to want to have these features for the domain names. So like in short, I think NFT domain names are domain names with superpowers. This is the next generation of naming systems. And naming systems were always meant to be identity networks. >> Yeah, they hit a glass ceiling. I mean they just can't, they're not built for that. And having people, having their own names, is essentially what decentralization is all about. 'Cause we, what is a company? It's a collection of humans that aren't working in one place, they're decentralized. So then you decentralize the identity and everything's been changed. So completely love it. I think you guys are onto something really huge here. You pretty much laid out what's next for Web3, but you guys are in this state of growth. You've seen people signing up for names. That's great. What are the best practices? What are the steps are people taking? What's the common use case for folks who are putting this to work right now for you guys? Why do you see, what's the progression? >> Yeah, so the thing that we want to solve for people most immediately, is we want to make it easier for sending and receiving crypto payments. And I know that sounds like a niche market, but there's over 200 million people right now who have some form of cryptocurrency, right? And 99.9% of them are still sending crypto using these really long hex addresses. And that market is growing at 60 to 100% year over year. So first we need to get crypto into everybody's pocket and that's going to happen over the next three to five years. Let's call it, if it doubles every year for the next five years, we'll be there. And then we want to make it easier for all those people to send crypto back and forth. And I will admit I'm a big fan of these stable coins and these like... I would say utility focused tokens that are coming out just to make it easier for transferring money from here to Turkey and back or whatever. And that's the really the first step for NFT domain names. But what happens is when you have an NFT domain and that's what you're using to receive payments, and then you realize, oh, I can also use this to log into my favorite apps. It starts building that identity piece. And so we're also building products and services to make it more like your identity. And we think that it's going to build up over time. So instead of like doing an identity network top down where you're like a government or corporation, you say, oh, you have to have ID, here's your password, you have to have it. We're going to do it, bottoms up. We're going to give everyone on the planet and up to you domain name, it's going to give them some utility to make it easier to send, receive cryptocurrency. And we're going to say, "Hey, do you want to verify your Twitter profile?" Yes. Okay, great. You just attach that back. Hey, you want to verify your Reddit? Yes, Instagram? Yes, TikTok, yes. You want to verify your driver's license? Okay, yeah, we can attach that back. And then what happens is you end up building up organically digital identifiers for people using these blockchain naming systems. And once they have that, they're going to just... They're going to be able to share that information and that's going to lead to better experiences online for both commerce, but also just better user experiences in general. >> Every company when they web came along first, everyone pro proved the web once. Oh, it's terrible. A bad idea. Oh, it's so, unreliable, so slow. Hard to find things. Web2, everyone bought a domain name for their company, but then as they added webpages, these premalinks became so long, the webpage address fully qualified, permalink string, they bought keywords. And then that's another layer on top. So you started to see that evolution in the web. Now it's kind of hit ceiling. Here, everyone gets their NFT, they start doing more things. Then it becomes much more of a use case where it's more usable, not just for one thing. So we saw that movie before, so it's like a permalink, permanent. >> Yeah. >> Excellent. >> Yes indeed. I mean, if we're lucky it will be a decentralized bottoms up global identity that appreciates user privacy and allows people to opt in. And that's what we want to build. >> And the gas prices thing that's always come out always an objection here that, I mean, blockchain's perfect for this 'cause it's, imitable, it's written on the chain. All good, totally secure. What about the efficiency? How do you see that evolving real quick? >> Well, so a couple comments on efficiency. First of all, we picked domains as first product to market. 'Cause you need to take a look and see if the technology is capable of handling what you're trying to do and for domain names, you're not updating that every day. So like, if you look at traditional domain names, you only update it a couple times per year. So, the usage for that to set this up and configure it, most people set it up and configure it and then they only have a few changes per year. First of all, the overall you, it's not like a game. >> An IO problem. >> Right, right, right. So that part's good. So we picked a good place to start for going to market. And then the second piece is like, you're really just asking, are computer systems going to get more efficient over time? And if you know, the history of that has always been yes. And I remember the 90s, I had a modem and it was 14 kilobits and then it was 28 and then 56 and then 100. And now I have a hundred megabits up and down. And I look at blockchain systems and I don't know if anyone has a law for this yet, but throughput of blockchains is going up over time and there's going to be continued improvements over this over the next decade. We need them. We're going to use all of it. And you just need to make sure you're planning a business makes sense for the current environment. Just as an example, if you would try to launch Netflix for online streaming in 1990, you would've had a bad time because no one had bandwidth. So yeah, some applications are going to be wait to be a little bit later on in the cycle, but I actually think identity is perfectly fine to go ahead and get off the ground now. >> Yeah, the motivated parties for innovations here, I mean a point cast failed miserably that was like, they tried to stream video over T1 lines, but back in the days, nothing. So again, we've seen those speeds, double, triple in homes right now. Matt, congratulations, great stuff. Final, TikTok moment here. How would you summarize in a short clip, the difference between digital identity and Web2 and Web3. >> In Web2, you don't get to own your own online presidence, and in Web3 you do get to own it. So I think if you were going to simplify it, really Web3 is about ownership and we're excited to give everyone on the planet a chance to own their name and choose when and where and how they want to share information about themselves. >> So now users are in charge. >> Exactly, you got it. >> They're not the product anymore. If you got to be the product you might as well monetize the product, and that's the data. Real quick thoughts just to close out the roll of data and all this, your view. >> We haven't enabled users to own their data online since the beginning of the internet. And we're now starting to do that. It's going to have profound changes for how every application on the planet interacts with their users. >> Awesome stuff, Matt, take a minute to give a plug for the company. How many employees you got? What are you guys looking for for hiring, fundraising? Give a quick commercial for what's going on Unstoppable Domains. >> Yeah, so if you haven't already, check us out at unstoppabledomains.com, we're also on Twitter at Unstoppable web. And we have a wonderful podcast as well that you should check out if you haven't already. And we are just crossed a hundred people. We're growing, three to five hundred percent year over year. We're basically hiring every position across the company right now. So if you're interested in getting into Web3, even if you're coming from a traditional to background, please reach out. We love teaching people about this new world and how you can be a part of it. >> And you're a virtual company. You have a little headquarters or is it all virtual? What's the situation there? >> Yeah, I actually just assumed we are 100% remote and asynchronous and we're currently in five countries across the planet in mostly concentrated in the US and the EU areas. >> I heard a rumor too. Maybe you can confirm or admit or deny this rumor. I heard a rumor that you have mandatory vacation policy. >> This is true. And that's because we are a team of people who like to get things done. But we also know that recovery is an important part of any organization. So if you push too hard, we want to remind people we're on a marathon, right? This is not a sprint. And so we want people to be with us long term, and we do think that this is a 10 year move. And so yeah, do force people. We'll unplug you at the end of the year, if you- >> That's what I was going to ask you. So what's the consequence of, I don't take vacation. >> Yeah, we literally unplug you. (both laughing) >> You won't be able to get into slack. Right, and that's (indistinct). >> Well, when people start having their avatars be their bought and you don't even know what you're unplugging at some point, that's where you guys come in with the NFT saying that that's not the real person, it's not the real human. >> Yeah, exactly. We'll be able to check. >> NFT is great innovation, great use case, Matt congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story to kick off this showcase with theCUBE. Thanks for sharing all that great insight. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, John had a wonderful time. >> All right, this is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains showcasing. We've got 10 great pieces of content we're dropping all today. Check them out. Stay with us for more coverage. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation with Unstoppable Domains. It's a showcase we're featuring all the best content in Web 3 and with unstoppable showcase, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great guest here, Matt Mickiewicz who's the Chief Revenue Officer of Unstoppable Domains. Matt, welcome to the showcase, appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me. >> So the theme of this segment is the potential of the Web 3 marketplace with Unstoppable Domains. You're the Chief Revenue Officer, you guys have a very interesting concept that's going extremely well, congratulations. But you're using NFTs for access and domains, Of course through the metaverse is huge. People want their own domains, but it's not just like real estate in the sense of a website. It's bigger than that it's a lot going on. So take us through what is the value proposition and what is the product? >> Absolutely, so for the past 20 years, most of us have been interacting on the internet using usernames issued to us by big corporations like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, et cetera. Whenever we get these usernames for free it's because we and our data are the product. As some of the recent leaks in the media have shown incentive individual in companies are not always aligned. And most importantly individuals are not in control of their own digital identity and the data, which means they can economically benefit from the value they create online. Think of Twitter as a two-sided marketplace with 0% revenue share back to its creators. We're now having in the creator economy and we believe that individuals should see the economic rewards of what they do and create online. That's what we are trying to do in** support of domains is provide user own and control identity to four and a half billion internet users. >> It's interesting to see change that's happening with Web3 and just in cultural terms, users are expecting to be part of the creator the personality of the company, there's this almost this intermediation of the middle man whether it's an ad network or a gatekeeper of any kind people going direct, right? So if I'm an artist, I can go direct to my fans. >> Exactly, so Web3 really shifts the power away from a aggregators. Aggregators and marketplaces have been some of the best business models for the last 20 years onto the internet. But Web3 is going to dramatically change all over the next decade. Bring more power back in the hands of consumers. >> What type of companies do you guys work with and partner with that we see out there? Give us some examples of the kinds of companies you're doing business with end partnering with. >> Yeah, so let's talk about use cases first actually. Was the big use case that we identified initially for NFT domain names was around cryptocurrency transfers. Anyone who's ever bought cryptocurrency and tried to transfer it between accounts or wallets is familiar with these awkwardly long hexa decimal strings of random numbers and letters, or even if you make a single type of money is lost forever. That's a pretty scary experience that exists today. That 2 trillion asset dollar as a class with 250 million users. So the first set of partners that we worked on integrating with, we're actually crypto wallets and exchanges. So we will allow users to do is replace all their long hexa decimal wallet addresses with a single human readable name, like John.NFT or MattMickiewicz.crypto to allow for simple crypto transfers. >> And how do the exchange work with you guys on that is it a plugin, is it co-locating code together? What's the relationship between exchanges and Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, absolutely great question. So exchanges actually have to do a little bit of engineering list to work with us and they can do that by either using our resolution libraries or using one of our APIs in order to look up an Unstoppable Domain and figure out all the wallet addresses that's associated with that name. So today we work with dozens of the world's top exchanges and wallets ranging from OKX to Coinbase wallet, to Trust wallet, to bread wallet, and many many others. >> I got to ask you on the wallet side, is that a requirement in terms of having specific code and are the wallets that you work well with? Explain the wallet dynamic between Unstoppable Domains and wallets. >> Yeah, so wallets all have this huge usability problem for their users because every single cryptocurrency held by every single one of their users has a different hexadecimal wallet address. And once again every user is subject to the same human fallacies and errors where if they make a single type their money can be lost forever. So what we enable these wallets to do is to make crypto transfer simple and less scary than the current status quo by giving the users an Unstoppable name that they can use to attach to all the wallet addresses on the back end. So companies like Trust Wallet for example, which has 10 million user or Coinbase Wallet. When you go to the crypto transfer fields, there you can just type in an unstoppable name It'll correctly route the currency to the right person, to the right wallet, without any chance for human error. >> When these big waves coming out I got to ask this question, 'cause a lot of people in the mainstream are getting into it now. It reminds me of the web wave that hit the big thing was how many people are coming online, was one of the key metrics and how many web pages are being developed was another metric, which meant that people were building out webpages. And it's hard to look back and think, wow, that was actually a KPI. So internet users and webpages where the two proxies 'cause then search engines came out and everything else happened. So I got to ask you, there are people watching, they're seeing it on commercials on TV, they're seeing it everywhere stadiums are named after crypto companies. So, the bottom line is people want to know how NFT domains take the fear out of working with crypto and sending crypto. >> Yeah, absolutely, so imagine we had to navigate the web using IP addresses rather than typing in Google.com. You'd have to type in a random string of numbers that you'd had to memorize. That would be super painful for users and internet wouldn't have gotten to where it is today with almost 5 billion people online. The history of computer networks we have human readable naming systems built on top in every single instance, it's almost crazy that we got to a $2 trillion asset class with 250 million users worldwide. 13 years after the Satoshi white paper, without a human readable naming system other Unstoppable Domains in a few of our competitors, that's a fundamental problem that we need to solve in order to go from 250 million crypto users in 2022 to 5 billion crypto users a decade from now. >> And just to point out, not to look back and maybe make a correlation but I will, if you look at the naming system of DNS, what it did to IP addresses, that's one major innovation that enabled the web. Then you look at what keyword navigation has done on top of DNS, what that did for the industry, and that basically birthed Google keywords basically ads. So that's trillions and trillions of dollars. Again, now shifting to you guys, is that how you see it? Obviously it's decentralized, so what's different? Okay, I get, so if you compare here Google was successful, keyword advertising industry for the last of 25 years or 20 years. >> What's different now is? >> yeah >> Yeah, what's different now is the technology inflection points. So Blockchains have evolved to a point where they enable high throughput high transaction volume and true decentralized ownership. The NFTs standard, which is only a couple years old, has taken off massively around trading of profile pictures like CryptoPunks and the Bored Apes Yacht Club where the use cases extend much more than just a cool JPEG that goes up in value two or three X year over year. There is a true use case here around ownership of identity ownership over data, a decentralized login authentication and permission data sharing. One of the sad things that happened on the internet the last decade really was, that the platforms built out have now allowed developers to build on top of them in a trustless comissionless way. Developers who built applications on top of them, the early monopolies in the last decade, got the rules changed on them. APIs cut off, new fees instituted. That's not going to happen in Web3 because all permission list. Once an NFT is minted, it's custody in a user's own wallet, we cannot take the way it will continue to exist in eternity, regardless of what happens to Unstoppable Domains, which gives developers a lot more confidence in building new products for the Web3 identity standard that we're building out. >> You know what's amazing is that's a whole another generational shift. I've always been a big fan of abstractions when innovation is needed when there are problems that need to be solved, messes to be cleaned up, a good abstraction layer on top of new architecture is really, really phenomenal. I guess the key question for I have for you is, theCUBE we have all this video where's our NFT how should we implement NFTs? >> There's a couple different ways you could think about it, you could do proof of attendance protocol NFTs, which are really interesting way for users to show that they were at particular event. So just in the same way that people collect T-shirts from conferences, people will be collecting NFTs to show they were attending in person cultural moments or that they were part of an event online or offline. You could do NFTs for our employees to show that they were at your company during certain periods of the company's growth. So think of replacing their resume with a cryptographically secure resume like this on the Blockchain and perpetuity. Now more than half of all resumes contain lies, which is a pretty gnarly problem as a hiring manager that we constantly have to sort through. There's where that this can impact that side of the market as well. >> That's awesome, and I think this is a use case for everything we appreciate that. And of course we can have the most favorite cube moments, it can be a cube host NFT at Board Apes out there. Why not have a board cube host going on and then.. >> We're an auction for charity and OpenSea. >> All right, great stuff, now let's get into some of the cool tech nerd stuff, which is really the login piece which I think is fascinating. The having NFTs be a login mechanism is another great innovation, okay. So this is cool, 'cause it's like think of it as one click NFTs, if you will. What's the response been on this login with Unstoppable for that product? What's some of the use cases, can you get some examples of the momentum intraction? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we launched a product less than 90 days ago and we already have 90 committed or integrated partners live today with a login product. And this replaces login with Google, login with Facebook with a way that it's user owned and user controlled. And over time people will be attaching additional information back to their NFT domain name, such as their reputation, their history, things they've done online and be able to permission to share that with applications that they interact with in order to gain rewards. Once you own all of your data, and you can choose who you shared with . Companies will incentivize you to share data. For example, imagine you just buy a new house and you have 3000 square feet to furnish. If you could tell that fact and prove it, to a company like Wayfair, would they be incentivized to give you discounts? We're spending 10, 20, $30,000 and you'll do all of your purchasing there rather than spread across other e-commerce retailers. For sure they would, but right now when you go to that website, you're just another random email address. They have no idea who you are, what you've done, what your credit score is, whether you're a new house buyer or not. But if you could permission to share that using a log and installable product, I mean the web would just be much much different. >> And I think one of the things too, as these, I call them analog old school companies, old guard companies as referred to in theCUBE talk here. But we always call that old guard as the people who aren't innovating. You could think about companies having more community too, because if you have more sharing and you have this marketplace concept and you have these new dynamics of how people are working together, sharing will provide more or transparency but yet security on identity. Therefore things are going to be happening organically. That's a community dynamic what's your view on that? And what's your reaction. >> Communities are such an important part of Web3 and the cryptos ecosystem in general. People are very tightly knit, they all support each other. There there's a huge amount of collaboration in this space because we're all trying to onboard the next billion users into the ecosystem. And we know we have some fundamental challenges and problems to solve, whether it's complex wallet addresses, whether it's the lack of portable data sharing, whether it's just simple education, right? I'm sure, tens of million of people have gone to crypto for the first time during this year's Super Bowl based on some of those awesome ads they ran. >> Yeah, love the QR code, that's a direct response. I remember when the QR codes been around for a long time. I remember in the late 90's, it was a device at red QR code that did navigation to a webpage. So I mean, QR codes are super cool, great way to get, and we all using it too with the pandemic to ordering food. So I think QR codes are here to stay, in fact, we should have a QR code on all of our images here on the screen too. So we'll work on that, but I got to ask you on the project side, now let's get into the devs and kind of the applications, the users that are adopting unstoppable and this new way of things. Why are they gravitating towards this login concept? Can you give some examples and give some color commentary to why are these D-application, distributed application, dApps guys and gals programming with you guys? >> Yeah, they all believe that the potential for what we're trying to create around user own controlled identity. Where the only company in the market right now with a product that's live and working today. There's been a lot of promises made, and we're the first ones to actually delivered. So companies like Cook Finance for example, are seeing the benefit of being able to have their users, go through a simple process to check in and authenticate into the application using your NFT domain name rather than having to create an email address and password combination as a login, which inevitably leads to problems such as lost passwords, password resets, all those fun things that we used to deal with on a daily basis. >> Okay, so now I got to ask you the kind of partnerships you guys are looking at doing. I can only imagine the old school days you had a registry and you had registrars, you had a sales mechanism. I noticed you guys are selling NFT kind of like domain names on your website. Is that a kind of a current situation, is that going to be ongoing? How do you envision your business model evolving and what kind of partnerships do you see coming along? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're working with a lot of different companies from browsers to exchanges, to wallets, to individual NFT projects, to more recently even exploring partnership opportunities with fashion brands for example. Monetarily, market is moving so so fast. And what we're trying to essentially do here is create the standard naming system for Web3. So a big part of that for us will be working with partners like blockchain.com and with Circle, who's behind the USDC coin on creating registry such as .blockchain and .coin and making those available to tens of millions and ultimately hundreds of millions and billions of users worldwide. We want an Unstoppable domain name to be the first asset that every user in crypto gets even before they buy their Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin. >> It makes a lot of sense to abstract the way the long hexa desal stream we all know, that we all write down, put in a safe, hopefully we don't forget about it. I always say, make sure you tell someone where your address is. So in case something happens, you don't lose all that crypto. All good stuff. I got to ask this the question around the ecosystem. Okay, can you share your view and vision of either yourself or the company when you have this kind of new market, you have all kinds of, we meant the web was a good example, right? Web pages, you need to web develop and tools. You had HTML by hand, then you had all these tools. So you had tools and platforms and things kind of came well grew together. How is the Web3 stakeholder ecosystem space evolving? What are some of the white spaces? What are some of the clearly defined areas that are developing? >> Yeah, I mean, we've seen explosion in new smart contract blockchains in the past couple of years, actually going live, which is really interesting because they support a huge number of different use cases, different trade offs on each. We recently partnered and moved over a primary infrastructure to Polygon, which is a leading EVM compatible smart chain, which allows us to provide free gas fees to users for minting and managing their domain name. So we're trying to move all obstacles around user adoption. Here you'll need to have Ethereum in your wallet in order to be an Unstoppable Domains customer or user, you don't have to worry about paying transaction fees every time you want to update the wallet addresses associated with your domain name. We want to make this really big and accessible for everybody. And that means driving down costs as much as possible. >> Yeah, it's a whole nother wave. It's a wave that's built on the shoulders of others. It's a shift in infrastructure, new capabilities, new applications. I think it's a great thing you guys do in the naming system, makes a lot of sense. It abstraction layer creates that ease of use, it simplifies things, makes things easier. I mean was the promise of these abstraction layer. Final question, if I want to get involved, say we want to do a CUBE NFT with Unstoppable, how do we work with you? How do we engage? Can you give a quick plug on what companies can do to engage with you guys on a business level? >> Yeah, absolutely, so we're looking to partner with wallet exchanges, browsers and companies who are in the crypto space already and realize they have a huge problem around usability with crypto transfers and wallet addresses. Additionally, we're looking to partner with decentralized applications as well as Web2 companies who perhaps want to offer logging with Unstoppable domain functionality. In addition to, or in replacement of the login with Google and login with Facebook buttons that we all know and love. And we're looking to work with fashion brands and companies in the sports sector who perhaps want to claim their Unstoppable name, free of charge from us. I might add in order to use that on Twitter or in other marketing materials that they may have out there in the world to signal that they're not only forward looking, but that they're supportive of this huge waves that we're all riding at the moment. >> Matt, great insight, chief revenue officer, Unstoppable Domains. Thanks for coming on the showcase, theCUBE and Unstoppable Domains share in the insights. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Okay, this CUBE's coverage here with the Unstoppable Domain showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto. Got some great guests here on this panel to talk about DeFi, the relevance of it, the importance, and all the major things happening in the changing world of finance and decentralized web, which is Web 3. Great wave here going on. We got Jaime Rogozinski, founder of WallStreetBets and strategic advisor of WallStreetBets app. Great to have you on. We've got Michael So, Partner, Head of Business Development, Cook Finance, and Mike Morhulets, CEO of DeHive. Gentlemen, thank you for coming. I'm super excited about this panel conversation here in the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks for having us on. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, first of all, it's been a crazy ride. Even just go back from... Just go back eight years ago now, and then go to you had the big ICO craze, you had now the operationalizing of crypto, applications, blockchain. I see the price of Bitcoin has been going great. Everyone's been making a lot of money. But it's really about the fundamental change of users and DeFi, decentralized finance has been one of the tip of the spears here from terms of change 'cause money's involved. and that's the shift here. So before we get into it, I want to get you guys to help me define what is DeFi? If someone says, "Hey, what's DeFi?" And everyone wants to know, "What's DeFi? What does it mean?" What is DeFi? >> Well, I think it's still being defined to be quite honest with you, right? Like it stands for decentralized finance, but for the most part, it's figuring out a way to use these crypto coins, tokens assets, Dallas Dap, this, that, the other to try and integrate this worldwide transactional parallel ecosystem to traditional finance, right? So I'd say for the most part, you're able to transact, send money, buy things, invest it, generating interest rates, et cetera. >> So is it a new money system, is it an architecture? How should people think about this 'cause, you know, to me it seems like a whole another stack, if you will, I had to use the word stack, tech stack, but it's really more of a different thing. People still scratch their heads. Does it help me, does it hurt me? How would you explain it to someone who's like saying, "Hey, I got a bank, got my app on my phone." What's the difference? >> Yeah. To me, there are three things that define DeFi. You know, one is the fact that it is non-custodial, meaning there is no counterparties who take hold of your money and decide when they want to release it back to you. You own it, you hold assets, you know, on your own wallet. You know, that's one clear, you know, defining moment of DeFi. Second is the fact that, you know, where the value of transfer happens. And TraFi, traditional finance. You know, you would see how the actual transfer may not even happen, actually outside of a particular location, such as for example, a centralized exchange. However, on DeFi, you can clearly see how the value of transfer happens on chain, on Ethereum, on other lines, you know, on other chain as well. And third and last, you know, to me is how the organizations define what decisions, what setups are to be made within, right? For example, you know, DAO, you know, the centralized autonomous organization, they will actually use the communities to define how things can be decided. So that's one way to see it. >> Yeah. It's interesting. I saw these protocols and the tokens and infrastructure, Mike, there's a complex system going on here. It's the plumbing, right? I mean, it's a money system. You know, how decisions are made, you got communities involved in there, you got actually mechanisms for immutability and security. You got application developers. So you got to kind of think of like an operating system here to make it all work. What's your take on this whole impact of what is DeFi relative to what people see on their phones as just an app or just some finance app. There's a lot of stuff going on under the covers. >> Yeah. I want to totally agree with Michael because it's all about one point of entering to Web 3, yeah? I have just my personal key, and can use all my wallets, get access to my funds from different point in the world. And I just have enter to all these applications, all these huge amount of services and monies. Second general part for me that is all about smart contracts and not intermediate here. Then people want to cooperate on many ways to each other on stable coins, yeah. And this is just smart contract. And one person from another side and another person from other side, that's it. It's all about DeFi ecosystem, you know, into words. >> I mean, this idea of disintermediating the middle man is a huge part of this. I mean, smart contracts is critical to this. You got to have the infrastructure, you got to have the user behavior. This is why it's important. Can you guys weigh in on some of the things on the importance of DeFi and where we are right now relative to progress? Because even just in the past two years, the cultural shift of DeFi has changed a lot. Where are we right now in DeFi? Can you guys share your perspectives on kind of, you know, progress compared to the evolution of where it will go? >> No, I think that DeFi has DeFinitely made a lot of progress with regards to adoption. Not only by retail participants, but also by institutional ones, right? They're warming up the idea of these first stops from Bitcoin or whatever these larger ones that have more proven track record. And they're starting to experiment more and more from taking crypto transactions, et cetera. But from the retail standpoint, it's also made a lot of progress. I'd say the biggest benefit to the DeFi world is community, right? It works because it's decentralized, which means one of the requirements is a lot of participants. But one of the hindrances, which is one of the biggest ones that's kind of been in the way is the usability, which although it's improved a lot, it's still not ready for the mainstream user that's used to just one click, buy it, whatever, don't care to understand how things work. But those two worlds are starting to bridge, right? People getting comfortable, institutions getting comfortable, as well as retail participants not being scared away by the process. >> Yeah. I mean that... I will just ask you to follow up on that Jaime, if you don't mind. Is that that community user piece is huge. A lot of people in the old guard will dismiss things as meme stocks, if you will. You know, we've seen a lot of the traction. But when you have communities moving at massive forces, that's in a way infrastructure, right? So you have behavior changes, whether you got some peer to peer community happening, it can't be dismissed. I mean, yeah, this is my arbitrage and a little bit of a, you know, I won't say crypto vandalism or kind of fun, but at the end of the day, that's a behavior. That is specific change. That points to... It can't be dismissed. What do you guys react to that? What's your reaction to that? >> Right. Actually, at my firm, Cook Finance, we are actually at the forefront of seeing that movement. So at Cook, you know, we label ourselves as compostable finance. And one thing that we've seen is that our communities, consistently we propose very interesting strategies, connecting different DeFi protocols together to basically execute on a portfolio execution that allows them to achieve a certain objectives. And we have to say, you know, if you were to define Web 2 as read and write and Web 3 as read, write, and create, you know, then this is really, you know, where the difference lies. We are now at this point where we are simply providing an infrastructure, as you said before, but allowing, you know, the creativities, you know, from everybody to come together and let the crowd wisdom everywhere, you know, to decide exactly, you know, what should take home from a product perspective. So we're very excited about that. >> Yeah. And these are new protocols that need to built. I mean, what does that mean, right? So how does software adapt to that? This comes into the question, I think, why it can't be dismissed. Jaime, what's your reaction to that? Because you're in the middle of it, you see all these behaviors, and Wall Street certainly is an environment where there's a lot of activity 'cause there's finance all this money there, right? And then again, a lot of that is old money, old systems. Now moving to the new, now, global, et cetera. What's your take? >> Well, I mean, first of all, I don't think that one is going to move over to the other one. I believe there's going to be elements where they coexist, right? Traditional finance still has a lot of merits to it and it has a lot of use of practical applications, but they can feed off of each other. There's a lot of things that DeFi can learn from traditional finance and vice versa. So I think that we're just going to start seeing this convergence of these two different worlds. And I think it's extremely powerful, right? Because the way that you think about sequential and transactional systems that are centralized, right? Like it requires all sorts of mechanisms. For example, I know I'm speaking arbitrary, but like you have a market with an exchange in an order book with limit orders and then you have the guy come in there and push market buy or sell, pushes the price, right? That's the mechanism by which you see something flash on your screen. In the world of DeFi, there's additional mechanisms that have previously been impossible, like automated market makers, right? They don't have order books and there's no counterparty. I mean, there is, but they're distributed. So the risk profile is really different. So like it's just a matter of rethinking and looking at all the advantages and all the benefits that DeFi has to offer. >> I love that whole point there. 'Cause that's basically refactoring existing markets in the new way. And this becomes the next question is, is that okay, if you have like say Unstoppable, where they got this access through an NFT, which is super cool with kind of like an identity, the development environment is really key in all these big ways. Because if you think about what needs to happen next, does you need more software developers or developers in general on this new paradigm, right? So with that in mind, how do you guys see the market of more innovation being developed on top of where we are now? 'cause that's the next key flywheel in this equation, which is, I need simplicity, I got to make ease of use, and reduce the time it takes to do things. And that's just going to come from development. So what's you guys reaction to with the wave coming in from a development standpoint? You mentioned smart contracts earlier, Mike, what do you guys think? >> Yeah. At that moment, I'm thinking about Web 3.0 identity. It's very close to Unstoppable Domains doing, because they're doing that you can connect by your domain to different apps, to different projects and so on. And the next step after that will be Web 3.0 identity. I think there will be some custodial service when you will put your passport or verification service and we will get NFT identifying you. And then with this NFT, you will go to every service which should be identified. For example, tomorrow SEC will create new law that all users for U-Swap should be identifying and you'll use this identity NFT for using this UniSwap. And I think it will be huge amount of works for all Web 3 applications and always that. >> Michael, what is Unstoppable matter? Why does Unstoppable matter to DeFi? What's your take on that? >> Yeah. Yeah. First of all, you know, I have been a big fan of Unstoppable both since day one, you know, from the NFT domain, you know, rollout. But one thing that I'm super excited about Unstoppable is the fact that it provides a digital identity, exactly like what Mike said. And the fact that, you know, you can leverage Unstoppable. And the fact that the digital identity can be use in a different way than where we see the traditional finance data such as owning all your PII, you know, all the personal identifiable informations, you know. The NFT aspect allows, you know, only certain informations to be transferred, but at the same time, allow all the participants in the ecosystem, DeFi or even TraFi institutional alike, you know, to only pick certain pieces such that they can still live within, you know, the existing framework. So I think that really is powerful in a way, it bridges in a way, the existing money or value transfer happens, to a way in the future, how people can use the different infrastructure to perform the very same actions. >> Jaime, what's your take on the Unstoppable position here relative to DeFi? >> Look, I think Unstoppable is in a really great position, right? The whole spirit of DeFi is to removing bottlenecks, right? Removing kind of choke points, which can either be, you know, by some people choose to label that as the government, but I choose to think of it as more as a technological, right? Like you have this distributed naming system and this idea of identifying yourself has uncalculable benefits, right? I don't think we're at the point yet where we can just imagine it. Right now we start off by associating it with, I'm going to sign into a website with my username and password. And this is the new version of that. That doesn't have any huge feel to it, right? But what's under the hood is what actually allows people to do a lot more things such as like being able to port these things across and into connectivity on different websites. And being able to have control over your data, right? Like to actually be able to open up markets for even being able to monetize your own data, right? So that when you sign into a thing, you can just decide what things to share and whatnot. Like there's so many ways that we can't quite yet imagine the use for this, and I think that Unstoppable's in an incredible position to take advantage of that. >> That's awesome insight. That's a great way to talk about it. I mean, you look at distributed naming system, first of all, it really has not been done at large scale. I mean, the traditional naming systems have been centralized. So if you look at that as an enabling platform, I mean, it's limitless possibilities. Again, you start initially with some problems, but there's real technical enablement here. So in the last few minutes, I'd love to pivot on that point, and go, what's possible with this DeFi going forward? Because if you take that premise that you have this enabling system, that people are going to kind of align with defacto and then ultimately maybe standard, what does that enable? 'Cause you're now in a growth mode for the sector. Okay. Which is innovation coders. And when you start seeing protocols start to become defacto, that's a good thing. So let's talk about in the last few minutes, what's next for DeFi? Jaime, will start with you. What's your take on what's next? 'Cause you kind of teed it up. Take us through the... Walk down that path. In hypothetical of course, but you know, let's take a road. >> So, you know, I think that for starters, DeFi gets more powerful the more that people use it, right? So we're going to just start by saying there's going to be more adoption, so this thing is going to be more robust. And more things can actually live on this decentralized platform. One of the biggest benefits of decentralization is its robustness. You think about like the worldwide web, it's really not a web, it's more like just like a pipe of data that's owned by a handful of companies and the internet and the servers that host it and all these different things. We're already starting to see decentralized storage or servers. We're already starting to see decentralized networks, right? So that you're actually able to slowly start reducing those choke points. You're going to have this entire system where the world is interconnected, where people can communicate without these choke points, without being able to worry about censorship. You'll be able to have... The world that's able to transact, interact, and where you live is no longer going to be as much of a factor as it is today. >> Awesome. Michael, what's your take? What's possible? Where's it going? >> Yeah, I would take what Jaime said earlier. You know, I mean using the AMM example, the automated market making example. From our end, you know, I think one of the defining moment was, you know, when UniSwap first roll out, you know, in the big way, it allowed many individuals to become market makers for the first time in their lives. And I think that's very powerful, you know. It changes the dynamic as to where the, I guess, you know, the forces and the power of finance, you know, lies. In addition to that, you know, like I said before, I think many people would start to come up with their own ideas as to how things, you know, can be executed from a finance perspective to achieve many different risk reward profiles. So from that sense, you know, I think it is only the beginning that now we are seeing how, you know, digital identities, you know, can be linked, you know, to an individual. And at the same time, also the value creation side of the story. >> All right. Mike, your take. What's next? >> Yeah. I believe in two things. First, this is cross-chain and will it chain liquidity? Because right now it's not simple way for transferring, for example, USDC or stablecoin from polygon to cosmos network. But I believe in common liquidity for cross-chain. And the second one is more user friendly interfaces like hybrid interfaces and connecting DeFi and traditional financial startups like near ecosystem building now. Then you have layer one, blockchain solution, and then layer two, application with who are connected to our one application. More user friendly and more common useless applications. >> Great stuff, guys. Amazing content. Great panel. You guys are awesome. Great on the front front range of this whole wave. We got one minute left. So quick lightning questions. So in one quick statement, what one thing should people pay attention to in DeFi as we look at the next, you know, year or two as we go forward? What are the key innovations? What should people look at? It could be an area that's obvious, it could be an area that's not obvious that people should look at, pay attention, that's super important. That is the most important area. Mike, we'll start with you and we'll go across. >> Sure. I would say one thing is composability. I really am excited about the fact that everyone are starting to generate ideas on their own and simply leveraging the existing DeFi infrastructure to allow that to happen. So that's one thing I would say. >> Jaime? >> Sorry. I think NFTs, right? NFTs, I'm not talking about the JPEGs or the pictures. I'm talking about the use of these technologies in much the same way that we were talking about being able to identify yourself online or buying actual real estate or whatever it might be. I think that we're unable to imagine what's going to be some of the biggest uses and I'm very, very excited about seeing what's going to happen. >> Okay. Mike, final statement. What one thing should people pay attention to? >> To my mind, we don't know what market will be next year. And I will recommend to pay attention for stable strategies, for stable core and projects, for stable rates, and always stable coin farming sphere for DeFi market. >> Guys, thanks so much for sharing your insight on this topic. Really appreciate your time for coming into theCUBE here in Palo Alto for the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. Really thankful. Thanks for sharing. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. This is theCUBE conversation here. I'm John Furrier with theCube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE, "Unstoppable Domains Showcase." I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We got a great discussion here called the influencers around what's going on Web 3.0. And also this new sea change, cultural change around this next generation, internet, web, cloud, all happening, Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Founding Part of Kaleido Insights. Jeremiah, great to see you thanks for coming on I appreciate it. Ren Besnard, Vice President of Marketing and Unstoppable Domains in the middle of all the action. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on on theCUBE for this showcase. >> Wow, my pleasure. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Jeremiah, I want to start with you. You've seen many ways refer in all of your work for over a decade now. You've seen the Web 2.0 wave now the Web 3.0 is here. And it's not, I wouldn't say hyped up it's really just ramping up. And you're seeing real practical examples. You're in the middle of all the action. What is this Web 3.0, can you frame for us? I mean, you've seen many webs. What is Web 3.0 mean, what is it all about? >> Well John, you and I worked in the Web 2.0 space and essentially that enabled peer-to-peer media where people could upload their thoughts and ideas and videos without having to rely on centralized media. Unfortunately, that distributed and decentralized movement actually became centralized on the platform which are the big social networks and big tech companies. And this has caused an uproar because the people who are creating the content did not have control, could not control their identities, and could not really monetize or make decisions. So Web 3.0 which is a moniker of a lot of different trends, including crypto, blockchain and sometimes the metaverse. Is to undo the controlling that has become centralized. And the power is now shifting back into the hands of the participants again. And in this movement, they want to have more control over their identities, their governance, the content that they're creating, how they're actually building it, and then how they're monetizing it. So in many ways it's changing the power and it's a new economic model. So that's Web 3.0. Without really even mentioning the technologies. Is that helpful? >> Yeah, it's great. And Ren, we're talking about on theCUBE many times and one notable stat I don't think it's been reported, but it's been more kind of a rumor. I hear that 30% of the Berkeley computer science students are dropping out and going into to crypto or blockchain or decentralized startups. Which means that there's a big wave coming in of talent. You're seeing startups, you're seeing a lot more formation, you're seeing a lot more, I would say it's kind of ramping up of real people, not just people with dream is actual builders out here doing stuff. What's your take on the Web 3.0 movement with all this kind of change happening from people and also the new ideas being refactored? >> I think that the competition for talent is extremely real. And we start looking at the stats, we see that there is an enormous draft of people that are moving into this space. People that are fascinated by technology and are embracing the ethos of Web 3.0. And at this stage I think it's not only engineers and developers, but we have moved into a second phase where we see that a lot of supporting functions, you know, marketing being one of them, sales, business development are being built up quite rapidly. It's not without actually reminding me of the mid 2000s, you know. When I started working with Google, at that point in time the walled gardens rightly absorbing vast, vast cohorts of young graduates and more experienced professionals that were passionate and moving into the web environment. And I think we are seeing a movement right now, which is not entirely similar except faster. >> Yeah, Jeremiah, you've seen the conversations of the cloud, I call the cloud kind of revolution. You had mobile in 2007. But you got Amazon Web Services changed the application space on how people developed in the cloud. And again, that created a lot of value. Now you're seeing the role of data as a huge part of how people are scaling and the decentralized movements. So you've got cloud which is kind of classic today, state of the art enterprise and or app developers. And you've got now decentralized wave coming, okay. You're seeing apps being developed on that architecture. Data is central in all this, right. So how, how do you view this as someone who's watching the landscape, you know, these walled gardens are hoarding all the data I mean, LinkedIn, Facebook. They're not sharing that data with anyone they're using it for themselves. So as- >> That's right. >> They can control back comes to the forefront. How do you see this market with the applications and what comes out of that? >> So the thing that we seen out of the five things that I had mentioned that are decentralizing. (Jeremiah coughing) Are the ones that have been easier to move across. Have been the ability to monetize and to build. But the data aspect has actually stayed pretty much central, frankly. What has decentralized is that the contracts, the blockchain ledgers, those have decentralized. But the funny thing is often a big portion of these blockchain networks are on Amazon 63 to 70%, same thing with (indistinct). So they're still using the Web 2.0 architectures. However, we're also seeing other forms like IPFS where the data could be spread across a wider range of folks. But right now we're still dependent on what Web 2.0. So the vision and the promise Web 3.0 when it to full decentralization is not here by any means. I'd say we're at a Web 2.25. >> Pre-Web 3.0 no, but actions there. How do you guys see the dangers, 'cause there's a lot of negative press but also there's a lot of positive press. You're seeing a lot of fraud, we've seen a lot of the crypto fraud over the past years. You've seen a lot of now positive. It's almost a self-governance thing and environment, the way the culture is. But what are the dangers, how do you guys educate people, what should people pay attention to, what should people look for to understand, you know, where to position themselves? >> Yes, so we've learned a lot from Web 1.0, Web 2.0, the sharing economy. And we are walking into Web 3.0 with eyes wide open. So people have rightfully put forth a number of challenges, the sustainability issues with excess using of computing and mining the excessive amount of scams that are happening in part due to unknown identities. Also the architecture breaks DAOn in some periods and there's a lack of regulation. This is something different though. In the last periods that we've gone through, we didn't really know what was going to happen. And we walked and think this is going to be great. The sharing economy, the gig economy, the social media's going to change the world around. It's very different now. People are a little bit jaded. So I think that's a change. And so I think we're going to see that sorted out in suss out just like we've seen with other trends. It's still very much in the early years. >> Ren, I got to get your take on this whole should influencers and should people be anonymous or should they be docs out there? You saw the board, eight guys that did that were kind of docs a little bit there. And that went viral. This is an issue, right? Because we just had a problem of fake news, fake people, fake information. And now you have a much more secure environment imutability is a wonderful thing. It's a feature, not a bug, right? So how is this all coming down? And I know you guys are in the middle of it with NFTs as authentication. Take us, what's your take on this because this is a big issue. >> Look, I think first I am extremely optimistic about technology in general. So I'm super, super bullish about this. And yet, you know, I think that while crypto has so many upsides, it's important to be super conscious and aware of the downsides that come with it to, you know. If you think about every Fortune 500 company there is always training required by all employees on internet safety, reporting of potential attacks and so on. In Web 3.0, we don't have that kind of standard reporting mechanisms yet for bad actors in that space. And so when you think about influencers in particular, they do have a responsibility to educate people about the potential, but also the dangers of the technology of Web 3.0 of crypto basically. Whether you're talking about hacks or online safety, the need for hardware, wallet, impersonators on discord, you know, security storing your seed phrase. So every actor influencer or else has got a role to play. I think that in that context to your point, it's very hard to tell whether influencers should be anonymous, oxydemous or fully docked. The decentralized nature of Web 3.0 will probably lead us to see a combination of those anonymity levels so to speak. And the movements that we've seen around some influencers identities become public are particularly interesting. I think there's probably a convergence of Web 2.O and Web 3.0 at play here, you know. Maybe occurring on the notion of 2.5. But for now I think in Web 2.0, all business founders and employees are known and they held accountable for their public comments and their actions. If Web 3.0 enables us to be anonymous, if DAOs have voting control, you know. What happens if people make comments and there is no way to know who they are, basically. What if the DAO doesn't take appropriate action? I think eventually there will be an element of community self-regulation where influencers will be acting in the best interest of their reputation. And I believe that the communities will self-regulate themselves and will create natural boundaries around what can be said or not said. >> I think that's a really good point about influencers and reputation because. Jeremiah, does it matter that you're anonymous have an icon that could be a NFT or a picture. But if I have an ongoing reputation I have trust, to this trust there. It's not like just a bot that was created just to spam someone. You know I'm starting to getting into this new way. >> You're right, and that word you said trust, that's what really this is about. But we've seen that public docs, people with their full identities have made mistakes. They have pulled the hood over people's faces and really scammed them out of a lot of money. We've seen that in the, that doesn't change anything in human behavior. So I think over time that we will see a new form of a reputation system emerge even for pseudonym and perhaps for people that are just anonymous that only show their potential wallet, address a series of numbers and letters. That form might take a new form of a Web 3.0 FICO Score. And you could look at their behaviors. Did they transact, you know, how did they behave? Were they involved in projects that were not healthy? And because all of that information is public on the chain and you can go back in time and see that. We might see a new form of a scoring emerge, of course. Who controls that scoring? That's a whole nother topic gone on controling and trust. So right now, John we do see that there's a number of projects, new NFT projects, where the founders will claim and use this as a point of differentiation that they are fully docs. So you know who they are and in their names. Secondly, we're seeing a number of products or platforms that require KYC, you know, your customers. So that's self-identification often with a government ID or credit card in order to bridge out your coins and turn that into fiat. In some cases that's required in some of these marketplaces. So we're seeing a collision here between our full names and pseudonyms and being anonymous. >> That's awesome. And I think this is the new, again, a whole new form of governance. Ren, you mentioned some comments about DAO. I want to get your thoughts again. You know, Jeremiah we've become historians over the years. We're getting old I'm a little bit older than you. (Jeremiah laughs) But we've seen the- >> You're young men. You know, I remember breaking in the business when the computer standards bodies were built to be more organic and then they became much more of a, kind of an anti-innovation environment where people, the companies would get involved, the standards organization just to slow things DAO and mark things up a little bit. So, you know, you look at DAOs like, hmm, is DAO a good thing or a bad thing. The answer is from people I talk to is, it depends. So I'd love to get your thoughts on getting momentum and becoming defacto with value, a value proposition, vis-a-vis just a DAO for the sake of having a DAO. This has been a conversation that's been kind of in the inside the baseball here, inside the ropes of the industry, but there's trade offs. Can you guys share your thoughts on when to do a DAO and when not to do a DAO and the benefits and trade offs of that? >> Sure, maybe I'll start off with a definition and then we'll go to, Ren. So a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, the best way to think about this It's a digital cooperative. and we've heard of worker cooperatives before. The difference is that they're using blockchain technologies in order to do three things, identity, governance, and rewards and mechanisms. They're relying on Web 2.0 tools and technologies like discord and Telegram and social networks to communicate. And as a cooperative they're trying to come up with a common goal. Ren, what's your take, that's the setup. >> So, you know for me when I started my journey into crypto and Web 3.0, I had no idea about what DAO actually meant. And an easy way for me to think of it and to grasp the nature of it was about the comparison between a DAO and perhaps a more traditional company structure, you know. In the traditional company structure, you have (indistinct), the company's led by a CEO and other executives. The DAO is a flat structure, and it's very much led by a group of core contributors. So to Jeremiah's point, you know, you get that notion of a cooperative type of structure. The decision making is very different, you know. We're talking about a super high level of transparency proposals getting submitted and voting systems using (indistinct) as opposed to, you know, management, making decisions behind closed doors. I think that speaks to a totally new form of governance. And I think we have hardly, hardly scratched the surface. We have seen recently very interesting moments in Web 3.0 culture. And we have seen how DAO suddenly have to make certain decisions and come to moments of claiming responsibility in order to police behavior of some of the members. I think that's important. I think it's going to redefine how we're thinking about that particularly new governance models. And I think it's going to pave the way for a lot of super interesting structure in the near future. >> Yeah and that's a great point. >> Go ahead, Jeremiah. >> That's a great point, Ren. Around the transparency for governance. So, John you post the question, does this make things faster or slower? And right now in the most doubts are actually pretty slow because they're set up as a flat organization. So as a response to that they're actually shifting to become representative democracies. Does that sound familiar? Or you can appoint delegates and use tokens to vote for them and they have a decision power. Almost like a committee and they can function. And so we've seen actually there sometimes are hierarchy except the person at the top is voted by those that have the tokens. In some cases, the people at the top had the most tokens. But that's a whole nother topic. So we're seeing a wide variety of governance structures. >> You know, Ren I was talking with Matt G, the Founder of Unstoppable. And I was telling him about the Domain Name System. And one little trivia note that many people don't know about is that the US government 'cause the internet was started by the US. The Department of Commerce kept that on tight leash because the international telecommunications wanted to get their hands on it because of ccTLDs and other things. So at that time, 'cause the innovation yet was isn't yet baked out. It was organically growing the governance, the rules of the road, keeping it very stable versus melding with it. So there's certain technologies that require, Jeremiah that let's keep an eye on as a community let's not formalize anything. Like the government did with the Domain Name System. Let's keep it tight and then finally released it. I think multiple years after 2004, I think it went over to the ITU. But this is a big point. I mean, if you get too structured, organic innovation can't go. What's you guys reaction to that? >> So I think, you know to take the stab at it. We have as a business, you know, thinking of Unstoppable Domains, a strong incentive to innovate. And this is what is going to be determining long-term value growth for the organization, for partners, for users, for customers. So you know the degree of formalization actually gives us a sense of purpose and a sense of action. And if you compare that to DAO, for instance, you can see how some of the upsides and downsides can pan out either way. It's not to say that there is a perfect solution. I think one of the advantages of the DAO is that you can let more people contribute. You can probably remove buyers quite effectively and you can have a high level of participation and involvement in decisions and own the upside in many ways. You know as a company, it's a slightly different setup. We have the opportunity to coordinate a very diverse and part-time workforce in a very you a different way. And we do not have to deal with the inefficiencies that might be inherent to some form of extreme decentralization. So there is a balance from an organizational structure that comes either side. >> Awesome. Jeremiah, I want to get your thoughts on a trend that you've been involved in, we've both been involved in. And you're seeing it now with the kind of social media world, the world of the role of an influencer. It's kind of moved from what was open source and influencer was a connect to someone who shared, created content enabled things to much more of a vanity. You update the photo on Instagram and having a large audience. So is there a new influencer model with Web 3.0 or is it, I control the audience I'm making money that way. Is there a shift in the influencer role or ideas that you see that should be in place for what is the role of an influencer? 'Cause as Web 3.0 comes you're going to see that role become instrumental. We've seen it in open source projects. Influencers, you know, the people who write code or ship code. So what's your take on that? Because this has been a conversation. People have been having the word influencer and redefining and reframing it. >> Sure, the influence model really hasn't changed that much, but the way that they're behaving has when it comes to Web 3.0. In this market, I mean there's a couple of things. Some of the influencers are investors. And so when you see their name on a project or a new startup, that's an indicator there's a higher level of success. You might want to pay more attention to it or not. Secondly, influencers themselves are launching their own NFT projects. So, Gary Vaynerchuk, a number of celebrities, Paris Hilton is involved. They are also doing theirs as well. Steve Aok, famous DJ launched his as well. So they're going head first and participating in building in this model. And their communities are coming around them and they're building economy. Now the difference is it's not I speak as an influencer to the fans. The difference is that the fans are now part of the community and they literally hold and own some of the economic value, whether it's tokens or the NFTs. So it's a collaborative economy, if you will, where they're all benefiting together. And that's a big difference as well. >> Can you see- >> Lastly, there's one little tactic we're seeing where marketers are air dropping NFTs, branded NFTs influencers wallet. So you can see it in there. So there's new tactics that are forming as well. Back to you. >> That's super exciting. Ren, what's your reaction to that? Because he just hit on a whole new way of how engagement's happening, how people are closed looping their votes, their votes of confidence or votes with their wallet. And the brands which are artists now influencers. I mean, this is a whole game changing instrumentation level. >> I think that what we are seeing right now is super reinvigorating as a marketeer who's been around for a few years, basically. I think that the shift in the way brands are going to communicate and engage with their audiences is profound. It's probably as revolutionary and even more revolutionary than the movement for brands in getting into digital. And you have that sentiment of a gold rush right now with a lot of brands that are trying to understand NFTs and how to actually engage with those communities and those audiences. There are many levels in which brands and influencers are going to engage. There are many influencers that actually advance the message and the mission because the explosion of content on Web 3.0 has been crazy. Part of that is due to the network effect nature of crypto. Because as Jaremiah mentioned, people are incentivized to promote projects. Holders of an NFT are also incentivized to promote it. So you end up with a fly wheel which is pretty unique of people that are hyping their project and that are educating other people about it and commenting on the ecosystem with IP right being given to NFT holders. You're going to see people promote brands instead of the brands actually having to. And so the notion of brands are gaining and delivering elements of the value to their fans is something that's super attractive, extremely interesting. And I think again, we have hardly scratched the surface of all that is possible in that particular space. >> That's interesting. You guys are bringing some great insight here. Jeremiah, the old days the word authentic was a kind of a cliche and brands like tried to be authentic. And they didn't really know what to do they called it organic, right? And now you have the trust concept with authenticity and environment like Web 3.0 where you can actually measure it and monetize it and capture it if you're actually authentic and trustworthy. >> That's right, and be because it's on blockchain, you can see how somebody's behaved with their economic behavior in the past. Of course, big corporations aren't going to have that type of trail on blockchain just yet. But individuals and executives who participate in this market might be. And we'll also see new types of affinity. Do executives do they participate in these NFT communities, do they purchase them or numerous brands like Adidas to acquire, you know, different NFT projects to participate. And of course the big brands are grabbing their domains. Of course you could talk to, Ren about that because it's owning your own name is a part of this trust and being found. >> That's awesome. Great insight guys. Closing comments, takeaways for the audience here. Each of you take a minute to share your thoughts on what you think is happening now where it goes, all right, where's it going to go? Jeremiah, we'll start with you. >> Sure, I think the vision of Web 3.0 where full decentralization happens, where the power is completely shifted to the edges. I don't think it's going to happen. I think we will reach Web 2.5. And I've been through so many tech trends where we said that the power's going to shift completely to of the end, it just doesn't. In part there's two reasons. One is the venture capital are the ones who tend to own the programs in the first place. And secondly, the startups themselves end up becoming the one-percenter. We see Airbnb and Uber are one-percenter now. So that trend happens over and over and over. Now with that said, the world will be in a better place. We will have more transparency. We will see economic power shifted to the people, the participants. And so they will have more control over the internet that they are building. >> Awesome, Ren final comments. >> I'm fully aligned with Jeremiah on the notion of control being returned to users, the notion of ownership and the notion of redistribution of the economic value that is created across all the different chains that we are going to see and all those ecosystems. I believe that we are going to witness two parallel movements of expansion. One that is going to be very lateral. When you think of crypto and Web 3.0 essentially you think of a few 100 tribes. And I think that more projects are going to be a more coalitions of individuals and entities, and those are going to exist around those projects. So you're going to see, you know, an increase in the number of tribes that one might join. And I also think that we're going to progress rapidly from the low 100 millions of crypto and NFT holders into the big hands basically. And that's going to be extreme interesting. I think that the next waves of crypto users, NFT fans are going to look very different from the early adopters that we had witnessed in the very early days. So it's not going to be your traditional model of technology adoption curves. I think the demographics are going to shift and the motivations are going to be different as well, which is going to be a wonderful time to educate and engage with new community members. >> All right, Ren and Jeremiah, thank you both for that great insight great segment breaking down Web 3.0 or Web 2.5 as Jeremiah says but we're in a better place. This is a segment with the influencers. As part of theCUBE and the Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrie, your host. Thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Hello, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of the Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE. We're here talking about the metaverse and what it all means, what it brings to the table. We've got two pioneers here in the metaverse breaking it down, doing great stuff. Both co-founders of companies, Noah Gainer, co-founder and CEO Parcel. And CJ Hetherington Co-Founder of Atlantis World, digging deep and doing all the great stuff in the Midwest. Chill and thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, first of all, I want to say congratulations for the work you guys are doing. This is one of the biggest waves we've seen coming on. It's a changing user expectations, it's a changing architecture, it's real technology involved, there's a lot of action. 30% of people at University of California, Berkeley are dropping out of the Computer Science program to get into Web3. This is the biggest technological change, business model change, user experience change. And we've been seeing going back multiple inflection points. This is a big deal. So the metaverse is real. Some people say, "Well, you know, it's not com..." It's coming it's just a matter of time. So let's get into it. What are you guys doing? Tell us about your company's Parcel and Atlantis World. Noah, start with you. >> Sure, so Parcel is a marketplace for virtual real estate. So you can think of something like OpenSea, which everyone is familiar with, but we solely focus on virtual land and virtual real estate in a number of virtual world, maybe part of decent land or the sandbox. So we feature those on our platform and, you know, we take it the next level with the user experience. So we have fully interactive maps. We have price estimates. You can think of it like a estimate on Zillow and in general, we're building the fully verticalized solution for virtual real estate users. And that will extend into rentals, like Airbnbing out your virtual condo or getting a mortgage on your virtual home, as well as, you know, cultivating the community around it. And especially helping empower creators and architects and builders and getting them work and getting their work on display. >> I'm looking forward to digging into that, that sounds very cool. CJ what's Atlantis world doing? What do you got going on? >> Yeah, exactly. So at Atlantis world, we're building the Web3, social metaverse by connecting Web3 with social, gaming, and education in one light web virtual world, that's accessible to everybody. So by going with actually a light web first and a pixel approach so that you can play on mobile or a really old device, because the problem with existing metaverses is that they set an incredibly high cost barrier to entry and also tech isn't necessarily readily available globally in terms of things like VR headsets and gaming PCs. Like for example, when I was in Africa, I travel a lot. If my book would break, it's not even that I couldn't necessarily afford to buy anyone, it's actually not available there. So we're ruling out a lot of the global kind of population from a metaverse experience. And we're building something which is like 3D pixel and super light weight, to kind of bridge that gap and build something which is ready to be massive up till now and onboard billions of users into Web3. So they'll all basically be using Web3 applications in a gamified way and going really hard on connecting that with social features, like voice chat and talking, getting, and virtual events and vaulting and all of that stuff. >> You know, I love what you guys are doing, you're pioneering a whole another area, but what's great about the whole crypto area, is that, since you know, 2017 onwards you saw Ethereum set the developer market started coming in strong. So you start to see that development. And now we got the metaverse. So I got to ask you guys what's the current definition of the metaverse. I mean everyone's... I mean, since Facebook changed their name to Meta, it's been a hype cycle and everyone's like, "Woh..." First of all, you know why they did that. But they're actually putting a lot of DAO in this. This is a wave, we talked about that. But what is the metaverse? How do you describe it? Why is it relevant? Virtual real estate, that sounds cool. What does this all come together? Explain it for the people out there that might not be getting it right. >> Yeah, I feel like for me, the critical difference between an ordinary gamer, what one might think of as game and a metaverse is actually Web3. For me, Web3 is metaverse. And for me it's really because Web3 enables real world utility, but inside of a virtual environment. So for example, inside of Atlantis, you might run into a DeFi bank and understand by interacting with other game characters, which are programmed to teach you about DeFi and like, what is Avel, how to deposit. And so you're actually getting a real world utility out of doing something in a virtual environment. And for me, that's what really bridges the gap into metaverse. Yeah, I'm really kind of bullish on that. (chuckles) >> Noah, what's your take? Define the current state of the definition of the metaverse? What is the metaverse? >> Yeah, to me, it's the 3D internet. And I do agree with what CJ's saying, how, you know, what makes it the most compelling and will ultimately the most successful is that addition of a blockchain and essentialized, you know, tributed ledger technology. Because you can have the closed metaverse, which nobody wants that future. And I don't believe that will be the future. you know, versus the open metaverse, which is blockchain-based, the users are the owners of the assets and the land and everything around it. And it's really foreign by the people. But I see the metaverse as just an extension of the internet we're already using today but we're going to have hardware that makes it 3D and more immersive like AR and VR. >> Yeah, I think- >> Yeah, definitely- >> Go on CJ. >> Around kind of like eight or nine months ago when we started to build Atlantis, we decided that the metaverse was a virtual world where you could live, work, play, and earn, and that's what we've been building. It started off as like building the metaverse that has DeFi and over the kind of time it's gone on our community has grown, we've started to understand the future of our product and our mission and values. It started to become the Web3 metaverse, right? And then on top of that, the Web3 social metaverse, so it's a combination of what all these things. >> You know, it's interesting. And I'm a little bit older than you guys, I wish I was your age, but when the web came along, people were saying the same thing. That the web's terrible. It's a stupid thing. It's never going to be real. And yeah, there was problems. It was slow to dial up back in the day. But yeah, now with gaming, I got to say, I had to look at the gaming evolution being a gamer myself, old school, I guess, but the gaming culture is proxy to what I see kind of happening in the metaverse. And let me get your reaction to that. I'm not saying directly, but you saw what gaming did, right? In game currency, some, you know, pockets of the same kind of dynamic where a lot of value is happening, the expectations were different for users. So how does the metaverse... How does gaming cross over? What's the ecosystem of metaverse? Obviously it's a cultural shift, one. Infrastructure, two. But I can just see this new generation of thinking. It's a whole nother level. Can you guys share your thoughts on that riff? >> Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's like for us, we really believe that we can enable a social revolution, where workers from impoverished and remote regions can actually be onboarded into these digital player to earn economies and also learn to earn economies. So it's about leveraging Web3 and blockchain gaming, whatever actually you want to call it, to enable this revolution and actually onboard new people into a completely new working and dynamic. One of the other things we envision for Atlantis, imagine like you run around this game world and you complete quests inside of the game. And these quests basically involve talking to the non-player characters, the NPCs, which are basically pre-programmed. I don't know if anyone's ever played an MMORPG before, but it can be super fun. And they'll actually teach you how to use different crypto applications. Whether that's a DeFi bank, NFT marketplace, kind of digital asset exchange. And once you all do that, the kind of end goal in vision is that you'll be rewarded with tokens. So users will earn crypto for learning about crypto. And if anybody wants to do that right now, they can actually go to rabbithole.gg. It's a different project to Atlantis, but they building learn to earn, and you go on you complete quests and interact with different crypto applications. And it's so crucial for onboarding. And yeah, it's going to be really powerful, the kind of revolution that play to earn and learn to earn will enable. >> I'll check out the rabbihole.gg sounds awesome. What's your take on the reaction to that riff on this convergence of culture tech, gaming, vibe that's kind of divine the metaverse what's your take on that, Noah? >> Yeah, I mean... I think gaming will be the on ramp for maybe the first billion people, you know, into blockchain. It's something people already do and are already paying for, and they now have the opportunity to get paid to play. So the incentives are extremely strong and I think that will be a great way to usher people in, teach 'em about blockchain without realizing that they're using blockchain. And then once they're already in it and have already used it, then it becomes much more natural to user than other applications. >> It's funny, people always talk about, "Oh, user experience!" You know, expectations drive experience, right? If you expect something and if they're used to gaming, I see the great, great call out there, good point. Well, let me ask you guys a question, 'cause I think this is comes out a lot in terms of like the market shifts and metaverse, as an old expression, "Great markets pull the products out of companies or out of the industry." What organic growth have you guys seen in the metaverse that's been either a surprise or a natural evolution of just success and just growth, because the market's hungry for this and it is relevant. It's new, what's pulling out? What's coming out of the organic aspect of the metaverse? >> I think a lot of art and architecture and design. And, you know, it's empowering a lot of independent creators and allowing 'em to stretch their skills in a way that they maybe couldn't do before, but now can do and get compensated for. Like, we see really see the rise of the creator coming in the next couple of years in the open metaverse and finally they will be the ruling class. They won't get the short end of the stick, which artists have for... I mean all the time. >> Yeah, some of the wall street bet skies in the same way, feel the same way. CJ, What's your take on... What's getting pulled out on the organic execution growth of the interactions and metaverse evolution? >> Of course, yeah. I would, first of all love to go back to the previous point on gaming and just kind of like, definitely agree with what Noah said. And the thing is that gaming is 3.4 billion user market, and they're typically an experimental by nature people and group of users, right? So it's definitely a huge onboarding opportunity for teaching users about Web3 and using Web3 in a gamified way and making that kind of inherently fun and engaging. And again, in terms of organic growth, Web3 is incredible for that. We place a huge emphasis on, I think, collaborate versus compete and try to enable network effects for everybody who is involved in Atlantis and becoming part of our fast growing ecosystem. Like we have eight blockchain, more than 10 DeFi apps, like Aave, Yearn, Balanced, 1inch, Perpetual. All of the DAOs like The Exile, MetaCartel, lobsterdao, PizzaDAO, all of the NFT communities. Like we're actually building a yacht for bought yacht club on the beach in Atlantis. So that's fun. But yeah, we grew our community. We're very early stage still. We've been building only for eight or nine months, but we grew our community to like 20 to 30,000 community members across social channels. And we recently raised over a million dollars from our community and we're fully bootstrapped and taken no private money. So the ability to actually do that and to coordinate both kind of community efforts and fundraising and resources is really testament to Web3 and what it's becoming in the community aspect of that. And also its future and the kind of dawn and domination of the Metaverse. >> Well, I got to say, I just got to give you props for that. I think that fundraising dynamic is a real entrepreneurial new thing, that's awesome. You've got active community vote with their contribution and whether it's money and or other value, right? You got social value. This is the whole thing about the metaverse, there's a new community culture going next level here. >> We believe in community and we believe in Web3. And we know we don't understand why most leading metaverses are focusing fully on huge IP and actually ignoring Web3. So we're actually trying to build the infrastructure layer for Web3 applications and for Web3 driven utility inside of the metaverse. And what we mean by that imagine that any developer or any project or any team or any company could occupy a plot for free inside of the metaverse, customize it by branding and then effectively set up shop, whether that's a Web3 integration, so it's a DeFi Bank, or it's an exchange. Or whether that's an NFT marketplace or a music venue or a coworking space. We're really excited about that. And we really believe we've designed the value capture mechanism for virtual land in the metaverse and we're approaching it in a different way to land in the real world. >> That's awesome. Well, let's get that infrastructure conversation, unstoppable domains obviously there having the partner showcase here. You guys are partners. This NFT kind of like access method is a huge... I love it by the way. I think it's phenomenal. I love the value there, but it's also digital identity and it's distributed naming. So you kind of got this enablement vibe, you got solve a problem. How is it working with you guys? Take us through what does unstoppable metaverse... Why does unstoppable matter to the metaverse? >> Yeah, unstoppable is very great mostly for identity and having a kind of crush chain identity inside of the metaverse and just kind of in Web3 in general. And unstoppable, we enable log in with unstoppable. So if you have, for example, an unstoppable domain which is like a human readable kind of crypto wallet address, but you can also do some incredible, stuff with it, and there is a lot of fun and exciting utility, effectively, like if you would have, I don't know, like unstoppable.dao you would be able to use that to log in to the Atlantis metaverse and it would represent some of your identity and social graph in game with your peers. >> Awesome, Noah, what's your take on the unstoppable angle on this? >> Yeah, I mean, it makes it social. So, instead of you can have a feed, you know, something we're thinking about at Parcel is like a feed of all the real estate transactions, and you could follow certain people, you can follow your friends and see a feed of everything that your friends are doing in English or human readable terms that are not just like a wallet address. So, that's obviously a big one and they're also giving people more options in terms of, naming and top level domains if you want to be something.wallet or .nft, or hopefully eventually .metaverse- >> John: Yes. >> Will help expand that ecosystem much more. In addition to like on our... Like backend being able to capture email when they login and to provide better marketing for our users. >> What would you guys say to other metaverse partners looking for work with unstoppable domains for their login and digital identity, what would you recommend? >> It doesn't make sense to- >> I believe- >> Connect with the best DAO and integrate that if you want to keep shipping stuff for your community and keeping it exciting and engaging and enabling user choice in how they choose to display their identity in virtual environments. >> Yeah, there's practically no downside and plenty of upside, again, having those users who are already using unstoppable domains quickly, you know, log into your site and plug in. >> All right. That's awesome. Good stuff with unstoppable. I got to ask you guys give an example of on your products, I love the metaverse progression. I love the pioneering work you guys are doing. And again, the funding things are different. The user expectations are different. The technology experience are different. Billions of people going to be in enabled for it. What are the cool things you guys got going on? CJ, we were talking before we came on camera about the tree thing you got going on. Take us through some of the things that are exciting that people may not know about or may know about. What should they pay attention to share, share some insight? >> Yeah, of course. So one of the fun things, actually that we're building on that on these sites together with our full team and also some outside contributors from the community and two kin protocol, which is a regenerative finance protocol. And I'll get into that a little bit in a minute. Effectively what we're actually doing is planting a carbon capturing virtual forest inside of the metaverse that will in future also be bio diverse. So how we're approaching that is imagine that you can plant NFT trees inside of the metaverse, providing that your will deposit X amount of kind of USD stablecoin or Ether or some digital asset. You can actually use that to deposit inside of the tree. And we will use some, probably something like super fluid, which is like a kind of smart projecting infrastructure platform. And we all essentially enable every single second funds being sent from the contract and actually purchasing real world carbon credits. So legitimate, you know, government bags to carbon credits from the voluntary kind of public market that have actually been bridged on chain, transformed into a crypto asset, and they will be locked away inside of these trees inside of game forever. And in future, we also hope to have like user on animals, roaming the great forest of Atlantis, which will have biodiversity and endangered species credit, locked inside. And we hope to support a variety of different kind of sustainable assets and things like that to really populate this ecosystem. >> So it's you're doing climate change good for real, as well as rendering it as an asset for everyone to see and enjoy. >> Absolutely. And for me, that's what makes the metaverse the metaverse, that's what I talked about. It's how Web3 enables the metaverse to cross over into our real world, ordinary life from URL to IRL and actually provide some incredible positive impact for all of humanity on the planet. >> And Noah, you have some action going on there. I mean, I would be like, "oh, virtual real estate, isn't it unlimited real estate?" But when you have users come together, this value, we've seen this in gaming, what are some of the cool things you got going on over there at Parcel? >> Yeah, I think one thing that stands out, which maybe not enough people are thinking about are AR virtual world. So, right now a lot of people are focused on the VR types, central and sandbox and, and Atlantis, but there very well may be a billion people using augmented reality before there are a billion using virtual reality just because of the nature of the hardware development and apple may come out with their AR headset by the end of the year. So there are a few projects there they've taken the real world to map and Parcel it out into hexagons, and you can actually buy that, and you own that, that piece and you can put your own custom content there. And on that social impact point, we have heard about a few projects that are trying to use it for good. And like one project is bought up some land in the Amazon rain forest and some of the proceeds go to conservation of the rain forest. So, you know, we're all about using blockchain for good and right, coming together as a globe. >> I can't wait to see the commercial real estate division of your group with all the work from, a remote coming on. Guys, great stuff you got going on, again, you guys are pioneering an area that is coming big. It's coming strong, its got a lot of... A momentum, vitality, and energy to it. Put a plug in for your companies. Noah, we'll start with you. What's going on with Parcel, share a plug for the company. What you're looking for, do some key highlights, news, take a minute to, to give a plug. >> Sure. Yeah, great. We are the destination for virtual real estate and that extends well beyond just the buyers and sellers. That's everyone across the whole chain with property managers and property developers, but then also the builders and creators and artists, and we are working right now on aggregating the best creator directory in the metaverse. So you can think of it as a place where artists can come showcase their work and get hired. As well as just generally like bridging this knowledge gap that is much wider than we even expected. So we have our Parcel learn product coming soon, which is a fully fledged, knowledge base with education, informational content and lots of rich data. >> Where can people get involved? What's the channels? Are all channels open? Where can we find you? >> Yeah, our websites Parcel.so on Twitter, you can find us at ParcelNFT and you can link to our discord from either one of those. It's the best way to get involved. >> All right, CJ, put a plug in for the last world, I know you got a lot of action to share. >> Yeah, of course. I would love to see everybody there. Thanks so much for having us. And thanks for listening. Like I said, at the start of the call, we're building the Web3 social metaverse and we're connecting Web3 with social gaming and education, in one light web virtual world that's accessible to everybody. We're also doing some crazy stuff like planting their cabin, capturing virtual forest and all of that, and trying to be the infrastructure layer for Web3 driven real world utility inside of the metaverse. And we believe that we have designed the critical value capture mechanism for virtual learn. I we'll be sharing more all of that very soon and continuing to integrate the best apps from across the Web3 ecosystem and showcasing them at the center of Atlantis. You can go to discord.gg/atlantisworld. If you would love to learn more about us, you can go to wiki.atlantis.world. And there is some documentation now, which includes back story and team and some of our milestones and achievements so far from winning hackathons to raising grants and launching our Alpha belt, soft launching it. And we all have the public free to play coming in March. And where most active, I would say on discord and Twitter. On Twitter you can find us atlantisOx, or just search Atlantis world. And it's the first one that come up. >> All right. CJ, thank you. Noah, thanks for coming out. I really appreciate you spending the time here, and unstoppable showcase and being a partner. Again they got the great digital identity, great plug there for them here. Thanks for sharing that and thanks for sharing the time. Appreciate you guys are pioneer of some good stuff. Appreciate it. >> Thanks so much man. >> I so appreciate that. >> All right, theCUBE's unstoppable domains partner showcase. Thanks for watching. (bright music)