PoolTogether Community Podcast #28 with Tom from Prysm

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I'm Hot Mike, AKA Spicy Mike, AKA Tim, AKA what's for lunch because I haven't had anything to eat yet, and I'm here with Tom from Prism, Prism, and we are in a WeWork conference room, and this is my first time. I feel so pro, I don't know why.

Thanks for having me, Tim. Yes, we are in fact in a WeWork. I have both an Equinox membership and a WeWork membership, and it'll get you very far in life when you're traveling to New York.

Dude, you are like the millennial. Are you a millennial?

I am a millennial. I'm a self-hating millennial. Yeah,

nice flagellation. Yes, great. Self-hating millennial. We're in a WeWork, we're just living that life. And we're— the reason we're in a WeWork is we are at NFT NYC, which is itself an incredible spectacle. And I've never seen so many people in one space in my life, and I live in New York City. How's it been for you so far, Tom?

Well, I will tell you, you will find more people in that space, uh, exactly a year ago, uh, because the conference was completely bonkers last year. But this year it's a little, uh, slower. But

really,

yes, but at the same time it's much more real, right? So the people that stuck around are, are the real builders. It's the people that don't really look at the price, uh, they're here to actually bring forth, uh, the NFT movement and, you know, um, actually grow the ecosystem. So I'm having much more wholesome conversations than I was last year, and it feels a lot like the first NFT NYC. It's been a while, so I think that was like 2018 or '19, I forget now, but it feels a little bit closer to that than it did the conference last year.

So that's crazy. So it's not as busy. Were you there yesterday? You were there in the At the conference?

Sort of. I was walking around visiting partners at the booths.

Got it. Okay, okay. Yeah, I like walked in, no one checked anything. Like, I just walked right into the VIP lounge. Yeah. And I was supposed to speak, and I just, it was all messed up as far as scheduling goes or whatever. But I was just like, there's food lines and everything in the Marriott, and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's like New York City space, but like the normal amount of people at a crypto conference now. And I was like, this is not a good combo. Interesting that it would be like more crazy last year, but that makes sense because of the market and stuff.

Yeah, and it completely smells different. Marijuana is legal now, or decriminalized or something like that in New York, and you know, you know when you're on the lobby floor.

The other smell— this is so great that we have a smells edition of the Pool Together podcast— the other smell that I smell is this like, I think it's like a prescription deodorant, but it is the strongest deodorant I've ever smelled, and it's like rampant. It's not Axe body spray, it just smells like, like Pine-Sol or something. I don't know. Anyway, you'll smell it. You're gonna smell it and you're going, oh, Tim told me about the deodorant. Totally. So, uh, Tom, I am an avid user of Prism and I use— and we have a group, NF Together, uh, of poolers who put money in together and we buy NFTs through Prism. And it has been really cool to both group buy NFTs, but then also build a platform, like build an app with you. Like, it's been really fun to like shoot over requests, product requests and everything, um, and, and just see the Prism team be so responsive, so kind. It's like we're buddies. So I want to meet it. I, I see you here now. I want to meet all the other Prism squad, you know, as they're, as they're roaming around. So, um, it's been a real— it's an honor to interview you. We hung out back at ETH Denver at a taco joint. And that's where this whole beautiful relationship started. So can you give me your origin story as far as you getting into the crypto space?

So first of all, thanks for being an avid user. We can't build a platform without our customers. We're obsessed with our customers. We want to solve their problems. We want to bring delight and joy to their lives through this experience we're creating together. So I couldn't have done it without you. Wind back then, Prism origin story, right? kind of very intertwined with, uh, my background as well. So I, um, I'm an immigrant from India. I moved, uh, to the US with my family in 1999. Um, my dad is actually an OG, like, hardware engineer. He worked actually for the Indian Space Research Organization, equivalent of NASA. So he's a bona fide— Rocket scientist, right? And he actually came to the States being recruited by software development companies, you know, in the dot-com era. So he transformed his career from the hard tech side into internet, right? And much like how I've kind of transported my career, looking back on it, like traditional finance into decentralized finance. So I really looked to my dad actually for almost like guidance in this transition. And it feels like from what I've witnessed him go through, it feels like history is kind of rhyming here again, right? With my own transition. So walking you through exactly how that happened. In 2016, I found myself on Wall Street. I was a, I was selling different kind of derivative products to really rich people at Citi, and I ended up there being a bit lost with what to do with my career. I was a smart guy, so, you know, this is what smart people do when they're lost in their career. They end up at a law firm or consulting, right? I

didn't know that. That's good intel. So when somebody tells me they're consulting, I'm like, oh, you're lost.

And you know they're double lost when they're going to tell you they're going to go get an MBA next. So, so I found myself there, and the game plan then was, I have this engineering degree in bioengineering, I can understand that sector pretty well. Now I've taught myself finance, perhaps I can go trade different kinds of biotech stocks and end up in some sort of like long-short hedge fund that focuses on that sector. So that was the game plan then. And as I was studying for those interviews, learning more about, um, just, just trading, investing in general, I started knocking around different online communities, right? And this is my way of kind of educating myself. So I found myself on things like WallStreetBets. I found myself on this more nuanced community called Quantopian, which ended up, um, which ended up leading to this even more nuanced community called Numerai. So Numerai, um,

and this is on Reddit.

This, yes, I found, I found about all, found out about all this on Reddit and then ended up, uh, Numerai's like native community on their own web platform. So Numerai is effectively the oldest form of like an investment DAO. It's, um, a way for groups of traders to come together make predictions on the stock market and run an underlying pool of capital. So it was very different than a Quantopian or a WallStreetBets because the core difference is you're not just talking about investing, you're actually investing together, right? And that led me to look at the underlying technology to see how this is possible because being at Citi, I knew that the traditional financial system is so geographically siloed and, you know, not interoperable. And I stumbled onto the underlying technology, which is Ethereum. And Ethereum back in the day was— it wasn't really clear what it was going to be or the kind of applications that would pop up. But this was an application that I discovered that really, really resonated with me. And I thought to myself, If this is what potentially a hedge fund could look like in the future, why should I go work for a traditional long-short hedge fund when I could be creating this future, or at least participating in it?

So let me ask you, like Numerai, they're using Ethereum, but they're investing in the stock market? Is that what you're saying?

They're making predictions on the stock market and allowing for these traders to make predictions and kind of like mask their own identities. And those are all submitted on Ethereum, and then the decisions are made in an off-chain format, and that ends up running a quantitative hedge fund.

Wow. What year was this?

2016.

Wow. Okay, keep going.

Yeah, so that, that is how I started stumbling down the crypto rabbit hole. And then by 2017, I was designing my own DeFi protocols, really thinking more deeply about the space, and started getting back in touch with my now co-founder, Shelby Thomas. Shelby and I are childhood friends. We've known each other since we were 8 years old, right? So we grew up playing like MMORPGs, learning how to code, and, you know, we've always had this like fascination of perhaps starting a company. together. So I pitched him this really like kind of emergent idea at the time, and let's forget about the idea for a second. He was interested in working with me, but his feedback was it felt like for a 50/50 partnership that we want to establish, I wasn't bringing that 50% quite yet. Right. Because I would be, you know, de facto The business guy, the product guy maybe even, and then he would be the guy building it. He comes from a technical background. He was getting his PhD in computer science at the time. And I didn't know anyone in crypto. I had no way of raising money or no plan around that. I was very not a product thinker at all. So it didn't feel like I was bringing that 50% to the table quite yet. So that was like a harsh criticism only like one of your best friends could tell you. So I decided to solve all that by joining Wyre. So Wyre is a Stripe for crypto company. They allow different developers to weave in fiat on-ramps into their crypto-native applications.

So you joined the team?

I joined the company. Initially, I effectively had a Wall Street-like job there. I was the head of trading, running their market-making desk. And—

I love how you're just like, oh, there's a challenge, I'm just gonna go get a job. Like, that's so awesome. Yeah.

That's so great, yeah. Yeah, and I figured I can try to be someone in the industry if I just started working in it and then started networking, and I can figure it out, right? So I joined Wyre, and about like 9 months into that gig, the business itself, the over-the-counter trading business, was doing extremely well, creating tons of revenue for the company. But I walked into the office on a Friday morning and there were people like kind of exiting the building en masse, and some people had like tears running down their eyes. And I was like, what the hell is going on? What am I walking into? And it turns out that they were effectively letting go of 80% of the workforce. So they were shrinking From 40 people to 14 people that day, and they were also axing different business lines, right? Including my over-the-counter trading business. And I was one of the lucky 14, so I had an opportunity to stick around. But and the opportunity was to start being the guy that is facing the Ethereum market. So let's lead. So backing up just a second, Mike and Yanni, the founders, decided to. Focused just on this fiat-to-crypto API business. And at the time, it was facing centralized exchanges. They're like, why don't we start facing DeFi and NFTs instead? So similar product but different market. And effectively, like, they gave me an opportunity to run GoodMarket facing the Ethereum world. And that was— it was a decision that was like made for me, but one of the best decisions that I've ever happened in my life, right? So the rest is kind of history. Like, we got product-market fit immediately. Everyone needed this product to onboard the mainstream market into their decentralized application. So, and I started becoming someone in crypto by leading these partnerships, talking to the different founders of these applications. We were also networking quite extensively with the venture capital community.

So you're just talking to like protocols or, you know, anything like NFT project, whatever. Yeah, it's like, hey, just let people buy with a credit— buy crypto with a credit card. That's what you're talking about. And then be able to spend it right there, like be able to—

Exactly. Like just— Exactly.

Oh, pop some Ethereum in your wallet through wire, buy your product.

So one of the more partnerships that we closed was OpenSea. Yeah. So, so, you know, you, you You buy an NFT with a credit card. Yeah, and that's powered by Wyre. So we, we grew that business significantly, and it felt like my mission there was starting to get complete. And, um, I also started to feel like I was someone in the industry. And—

Sorry, is that— but is that on your link or whatever, your LinkedIn profile? That's so web 2. Yeah, I, I created the pay with credit card button on OpenSea.

No, it's not. I mean, I can't take all the credit for it, but, um—

But I want to give it to you. But yeah,

okay, got it. We had a fantastic team that was behind all of that. I was just a very small part of it. Yeah, but by the end of 2019, my mission there was complete. I had been thinking about ideas very much adjacent to Prism this entire time. I was learning how to code all over again. You know, I come from like a quantitative engineering background, but even if you learn to code like that in college, that doesn't necessarily mean you know how to build JavaScript. client-facing applications, right? So I was teaching myself all of that, and this time around I was able to reapproach Shelby, right? And I had a new card to show him, which was, I think we can get funding for this almost right out the gate, right? So I'd already been pitching folks, folks like Paradigm, Polychain, so on and so forth, and we had an opportunity to join Polychain's entrepreneur-in-residence program called Genesis. So I approached, reapproached Shelby with a lot of different, you know, opportunity than we had last time. And this time around, he agreed to join as my 50/50 partner in starting this new venture together. So we started working on Prism officially in January 2020 out of Polychain, and then very officially nailed down the exact idea, the company, and incorporated in July 2020.

So, but your original idea when you were not 50/50 was not Prism. It wasn't that idea, right? You were saying you were creating protocols, or you were thinking about different stuff in DeFi.

Yes.

So how did you get to, hey, let's do NFT group buy with Prism?

Yeah, well, there was a— there was— so There was ideation around different protocols, and the world was very protocol-y back then. Consumer-facing applications were not— it wasn't sane to build a consumer-facing application then. So a lot of protocol-y ideas, that was more experimentation and learning. By the time we approached Polychain, the idea was a lot closer to what Prism is today. It was effectively Web3 eToro. So the thesis then was these influencers like a Carpe Noctem or a crypto, like a Kobe or someone, are the new investment advisors. We can arm them with the ability to effectively sell, co-create different financial products with their fans. It was effectively creator economy meets like DeFi. kind of play. And that was the original idea that we pitched to Polychain. 2 things happened as soon as we raised seed funding in December 2020. So 2 things happened in 2021 when we really started building things. One was this thesis around creator economy kind of got crossed out and got replaced with community economy. So Web3 is collaborative software. It allows for creators to actually collaborate with their fans and create value together. And then a second thing that happened was instead of focusing on ERC-20 tokens and even like yield farming and things like that, we started focusing much more on NFTs because NFTs are social investing in a sense. I wouldn't call them an asset class, but the phenomenon, the file format is very viral in nature. It's very linked to culture. NFTs are oftentimes like a node for communities to form around. So interactive ownable media felt like a much better focus area for us instead of focusing on, you know, like creators, copy trading, copy trading creators, and maybe following like trades around Uniswap or different kind of ERC-20 tokens.

So you pitched Prism You got it, and then you moved toward that, that new idea of like NFTs. How's it been? How's it been since then?

Yeah, we— it was almost a shock to me, um, how broken the ecosystem was without Prism. So users were having this experience of collecting NFTs with their friends by using tools like Notes2Safe while connecting into different NFT marketplaces. There's oftentimes a lot of Google Sheets involved, and it felt like the administrators behind these groups are really tired, like tracking all of the contributions and stuff for the members in the group. From an ecosystem and connectivity standpoint, multisigs are really hard to use if you even want to make like a simple purchase on OpenSea while connecting into OpenSea. You're gonna get all sorts of different problems making very simple transactions on OpenSea if you come with a multiplayer wallet like that. So the, the whole, um, the, the immediate, like, problem, uh, product problem was, was pretty tangible, and second-order problems around the actual ecosystem were also quite palpable. So it was just a shock that no one was there solving all this. I think there are people talking about solving this, but not actually building products. So just like us being customer obsessed and building the product and getting to market kind of first and executing well has really led for— led us to be in a very strong position right now. And we're quickly becoming the de facto brand for any sort of multiplayer capital in Web3. So I would say things are going extremely well. One sort of like challenge, I would say, it's not a Prism-specific challenge, but of course like the market has changed dramatically over the past couple months. So we've had to shift our persona that we focus on to be a little bit more crypto-native and advanced. So instead of helping, you know, we call them like iMessage chats of crypto natives and IRL friends co-buying NFTs, we focus more on crypto native DAOs that are going to weather through this cycle. You know, they want to buy the bottom, collect this internet native art. So we're starting to focus much more on the crypto native persona. I would say that's the major shift in thinking that had over the last couple months, but we continue to grow really, really fast and are putting up record weeks even despite them.

There's been a lot of like CryptoPunk buying, right? There's been like massive volume on blue chip— blue chips right now because of the discount, I guess, right? Um, so it's very cool to be in the Prism Discord and see the new squads that show up, and then also like the, the purchases, like congrats on you know, grabbing that Bored Ape, or congrats on getting those CyberPunks and stuff. And then I'm just kind of like, it really encourages me as a squad leader to be like, man, we got to get in gear. I mean, yeah. But it's interesting to see, like, even, you know, moving from that normie, more, more, you know, like I— like you said, iMessage crowd to the— and I wanted— when you were talking about, I was thinking builders, but it's really like community builders. It seems like what, what the target is now, people who are already in community They're weathering the storm, they're building together, even if it's community and not necessarily an app or something. That's really cool. And as we've been using Prism, there's been different things we've submitted to support and seen, like, there are just these really cool things that Prism has. Like, one of them, my favorite thing, is to see all the mice on the page. So when you have an action— The cursor. Yeah, the cursor. So when you do something and you're like, I need everyone to confirm, I can see all the cursors coming up on the page. There's these cool little Easter eggs and little features. But one of the main, I guess, animals to wrestle down or something is this split thing. Like, how do you work out when, especially as these groups grow, these squads grow, there's more and more capital going into it. Yeah. And then it's like, okay, what, what are, you know, who got in when? And like, you know, if you put in an ETH now and then we go buy a Bored Ape, do you have— do you get a whole cut of the portfolio or do you just get that Bored? So, so how has it been, um, with Prism figuring that out? Like figuring out how, how, like that's such a, a ball of knots or something. How do you untie all of that? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the simple answer is, um, it's effectively a new kind of like accounting treatment for, um, multiplayer funds, and we've had to kind of step back and figure out what that looks like and make some decisions for our users, uh, to get to this end format. So Effectively, where we net it out is we want to treat these like they're investment clubs where any sort of capital you're contributing to, you're buying an underlying piece of the fund, right? So you are buying a piece of the fund and going to be in this cap table with the other members. So it's not like you get to pick and choose different deals. that the fund is doing. You are— it's like you're a general partner of this fund, right? And that's been— once we made that decision, then the path became much more clear, right? And now it's just math, right? It's unsexy. It's back-office work that we can automate with code. And now we've gotten to a place where, as members are contributing capital, we're able to easily tell you how much ownership stake you have, at least in the backend. So we call them like Web2 representations of shares. But where we're going is ownership tokens.

Yes. Give me that alpha.

Yes. Yeah. So we're gonna start— we're actually thinking about 2 different models. This is I'll share our latest thinking. Our latest thinking is, as members contribute capital into— we work on Gnosis Safe, so the underlying Gnosis Safe, it's going through our own fundraising contract, and the fundraising contract knows what the value of the underlying fund is. And the contract, as contributions come in, will print you different membership NFTs, and those NFTs act as your membership card for the underlying fund and also have different metadata for your voting power in the underlying fund. So that's where we net it out, is these membership NFTs with different kinds of metadata that equate to your status and voting power.

But that's now, you can do that now, right?

That's coming in a month or two.

Okay, so when I see these groups minting their own Because we were on the Genesis, like we're the OG squad. But then now I see these new groups come in and like you go there and you mint your own group thing. That's different than what you're talking about.

That's different. That's different. That's an access pass to Prism, the platform.

Yes. Yes.

Right. It's a bit of a growth hack that we're running right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So what's on the horizon for Prism?

Yep. So I told you about this fundraising. Module, right? Just to step back, we think the fundraising module is just our opening act into a larger community ownership protocol. So the protocol looks like this. It kind of tracks what users are trying to accomplish on our platform. So users are coming together, they're pooling capital, they're raising funds from existing members and new members. Tokens and membership cards need to be printed to designate ownership. Then all the funds land in some sort of multi-signature wallet, and then users need to like vote on different transactions, typically financial in nature, NFT transactions, things like that. And then they need to actually purchase those NFTs, right? So all of that, all the different smart contracts, net new smart contracts and kind of like different glue smart contracts that need to be built. We're building all of that and calling it Prism's Community Ownership Protocol. That's all coming down the line over the next 9 months or so, starting with the fundraising bit. I think if there's more than smart contract infra that makes it easy for groups to co-buy NFTs, I think really simple features are coming out on the product side too. So imagine getting notifications delivered when different NFTs are proposed. These softer features end up speeding up coordination, which ends up making it much easier for groups to actually accomplish their end goals, right? So imagine also like a Discord bot, right, where you can operate your Prism account directly from where these groups are already hanging out. So those coordination tools are also coming down the pipe. And then the third thing, so I've talked about the community ownership protocol, different coordination tools, right, and experiences we're going to bring to the platform. The third thing is our own developer platform to bring Prism's multiplayer capital to end consumer experiences. So imagine A great example would be Web3 games. So we're seeing a lot of activity around different kinds of like centralized guilds that are popping up in and around the— or I would say around the gaming ecosystems for some of these games like Zed Run, for example. Ice Poker is another one. We're wondering why aren't those guilds native to the game, right? Web2 games have native guilds to Multiplayer is a big deal in Web2 games. Why isn't that easy in Web3 games? So we think of what we're building as a primitive that could power guild treasury management, right? So our developer platform is going to be launched very soon, facing end use cases that are a little bit more niche that we wouldn't want to exactly service on the core consumer product. So that's what the roadmap looks like for the next

The subtext that I'm hearing though as you're talking, Tom, is I feel like there's also like a financial product as well. You're talking about multiplayer capital and, um, and investing in— I, I'm just thinking, why not also invest in like tokens or invest in— so I'm also thinking about NFTs. Like, could— and we're seeing this with like Uniswap. Like, you'll, you'll mint an NFT based on a liquidity pair that you have or something like that. So I'm thinking like, could that also be on the horizon? This is— I mean, you're, you know, leading a— leading an app or leading a protocol. Like, there's so many different ways you can go. There's so many— like, there's so much scope creep that just tempts you.

Yeah.

What if you did this? What if you did that? But I hear that kind of in what I'm like, oh yeah, that could actually— like group buying into Optimism or governance, like group governance. That's another thing, you know. So I just don't know if you have— do you have any temptation to go into that land?

Definitely some temptation. Um, we, we think we're starting to see, we're starting to see, uh, kind of like co-creation happen after users purchase assets. So a great example, um, that, that feels directionally like along those lines is as these groups are buying different NFTs that represent their own shared identity, they're oftentimes launching their own Twitter accounts, right, where they're starting to, um, just meme about what they're doing. And right now it's just really simple tweet content, but what if that becomes different kinds of more like intricate content? It could be videos, it could be, um, you know, at the end of the day, maybe you buy 10 Bored Apes with your group and then you're making a TV show from it, right? Right. So through ownership comes the ability to use those assets in any sort of format and create value together. Right. So we're starting to think a little bit more about that. That's where, if we should weave the ability to kind of work together, right, our product. But that's, I don't know if that's scope creep or if that's the future, right? So I'll need to let that one play out a little bit and get back to you on a decision there.

How has it been going from biz dev with like B2B with Wired to now you're— I mean, it's kind of B2C, right? You're talking— I mean, I was part of PoolTogether. I mean, I am part of PoolTogether, but I'm not like— I'm a community contributor. Like, I'm not part of Inc. And the same thing like with these other squads. Like, you're really dealing with consumers, I think. How has been that switch for you?

I think our product, the execution side, looks actually a lot closer to B2B than it does B2C. So we end up facing a lot of end communities directly. We think, we think of ourselves as core infrastructure for communities to co-own different kinds of assets, right? So it feels a lot closer to what I was doing at Wyre than you would think. So we are, you know, pounding the pavement, talking to different kinds of partners, seeing if those partners want to like launch Prism to their community, maybe even spin up like a more formal subDAO that has blessing from the community's leadership team. Right. So it does actually feel a lot closer to B2B. There's certainly a lot of B2C elements as well, and we, we, we like to keep that pretty product-led. So a good example would be some sort of like viral loop on the platform. So let's say, let's say kind of a crazy stat is 60% of groups, after they actually purchase an asset, they go and talk about it on Twitter, which is really, really cool. So we could— that's a viral loop that could be productized on the platform. And that feels more like a B2C growth area and not a muscle that I'm like used to flexing as much. But that's where, you know, I'm not the only person running the show here. We have tons of— we have a great team with a lot of consumer native talent as well. So they're able to like figure out those elements and plug in those gaps. So it's, it, it's like a hybrid of B2B and a hybrid of B2C right now.

I know that you're pretty tied— I mean, you're hand in hand, arm in arm with Gnosis smart contract wallets, right? So your Gnosis Safes, you, you kind of rely— you're contained by them-ish. So what do you, what do you So for example, I was going to ask when Layer 2, when, you know, non-mainnet stuff, but then I'm like, oh, but you're tied to— like a Gnosis Safe, you can only have it on one layer. Um, I'm not sure if there are other like ways to like stack Gnosis Safes or something. So, so yeah, if you could speak to that because of how, how multi-chain How cross-chain everything is right now. How do you how do you navigate that as Prism?

Yeah.

I mean, you could just be mainnet maxi also. Yeah. It's just like no, we believe.

Yeah. Yeah. We we see a lot of demand for Polygon and Solana. We're definitely going to go to Polygon. I almost said.

Amen. Woo! What did you almost say? Polana?

Yeah, I said almost said Polana. Polygon is going to be much easier to roll out to because they're structurally an EVM and Gnosis is already live there. So we're going to go there next. And we are trying to figure out Solana, but to your point, we would have to build a lot of net new infrastructure to get there, or Gnosis would get there first, right? And we would just keep building on top of them. Those are, those are a couple, couple options that we're figuring out. But We certainly envision a, you know, multi-chain future, and so do our users. So that's certainly where we're headed. I think we don't want to build it all ourselves because we are really focused on the end consumer and creating those experiences, and whether it's through our developer platform or the actual consumer product. So there's only so much we could do with the limited resources. So we do want to rely on Gnosis a little bit to solve that problem for us.

One of the things that I've been involved with is the Nouns community, but I'm part of like a derivative called NARS, which is a— I've heard of it. Yeah, Skate or Die. But it's a really cool cause where we as NARS holders, we help fund extreme athletes. in their sport, but also want to support them past like injury. Or we want to support them like where Red Bull might pull out a sponsorship. We want to keep supporting them and paying for like travel and that sort of thing. So it's really cool, but like I'm kind of— I'm nouns adjacent, but this whole like CCO mint forever kind of mentality has been, you know, rattling around in my brain. And being at PoolTogether, I'm like, well, I would love to see mints where NFT holders, that all of that ETH goes into pool together, and then actually there's prize yield that goes back into the treasury. And by holding these NFTs, you actually have a piece of that. So as people mint and then the resale percentage, it all goes piles back, piles back, piles back. And it either the prizes get delegated, like you claim it in that pool and it just keeps growing and growing, or it can go out to, um, to the NFT holders and that's what you get. You almost get like a What is it?

Dividend.

Thank you. Yes, financing. Yeah, so that's my idea. What do you think about that as the expert of all group multiplayer capital NFT? Boy, is it— did I just create another Ponzi?

I'm really excited about the nouns primitive. I'm also excited about the PoolTogether primitive. So I could see that happening. Um, I'd probably need to get a better understanding of it just to make sure I'm not signing off on a Ponzi.

Sure, sure. But I love that, like, one NFT is one vote, and then, like, it's one share, and, like, it mints forever. I mean, it keeps going, but, like, there's obviously, like, time creates, like, this— you're only gonna have so many, right? A couple, you know, years or something. Yeah, yeah. The other idea, the other thing is this poolie. So the Poolie NFT, where PoolTogether was able to raise money to contribute toward this legal battle that they're having. And now you've got a whole community. We just had the PoolTogether party last night, and we had a whole bunch of people who didn't even know about PoolTogether. They just saw— they love DeFi, and they saw an opportunity to push against the forces that are trying to hurt DeFi. And they see this case as one of those landmark cases. And so it was weird to be at a party that was PoolTogether, but people were like, yeah, I'm a Pooly holder. That was it. So also, we see the power of NFTs now as a cause, actually going into a cause. And now we've got this huge Pooly community that at NFT NYC, there's so many parties, they chose to come to this party, they made space in their schedule, there's a community. So we're like, we have friends at Pooly, and it's like, what do we do with this now? 'Cause it's not PoolTogether. Yeah. And it's so crazy to me. It's like yeast. It's this budding of like different things. And now it's like, okay, now this is like something. What do we do with this? Yeah. So, and then Prism, I feel like, is like also doing that too. You've— we have this NF Together community that's budded off of Pool Together that's now Prism. And right, so it's just such a beautiful picture of, of what— I don't know how to wrap my mind around it. I don't know what— there's not a question here. Yeah, I'm just like pitching this to you and I want you to vibe off of it. I don't know.

I, I think, I think the way I see that is these, these DAOs, if you will, are actually composed of many different kinds of constituents that are part of that DAO for several, uh, different kinds of interests. So one I'd like to paint this example with is Friends with Benefits, right? They are the hub for, uh, emergent culture, period. And they have many different kinds of communities within the Friends with Benefits ecosystem. So there's people that are there for the music, there's people that are there for different kinds of art forms, whether it's painted art or NFT generative art, things like that. Um, they're also geographically in many different places, right? I think big hubs are LA and New York, and it feels like These are actually a lot of different communities within a larger community with a cohesive mission, right? And our form ended up really appealing to their NFT, what they call the NFT general chat, which is really just their NFT collecting community. They've spun out effectively a subDAO that they're calling the Squad Wallet. Squad Wallet. that, that, that is investing and collecting different kinds of art by, by creators within their own ecosystem. It's really exciting. So what I'm trying to get at is from the FWB community, there's like this subDAO kind of that formed, right? There's, there's people that are going to be joining the FWB community mostly to just participate in this subDAO, and there could be many, many other subDAOs that are going to be formed within FWB that are serviced by other kinds of DAO platforms. Imagine something like a Myco is really good at social DAOs, right? So that could be a DAO platform that ends up spinning out another more formal subDAO within FWB DAO.

What's Myco?

It's kind of like Prism but for social DAOs. So it's like a consumer-facing application plus framework for more Or yeah, more creator-oriented, uh, DAOs where people are kind of like hanging out. Oh,

okay.

Creating content and co-creating.

Will it cut down on my— the amount of Discords I'm in if I just— if I look that up?

It might, it might actually increase the amount of this.

I need a Discord strategy.

Yeah, so my point, yeah, Tim, is like, um, many sub-DAOs within these DAOs, there's going to be kind of like Venn diagrams of these sub-DAOs, uh, as well, and People, you know, I don't know if like the, the NFT general chat from FWB, they might end up forming their own community even one day that isn't even under the FWB moniker, right? It's all going to be really, really fluid, in my opinion.

What's your— what are Tom's picks in the NFT space? We've talked all about business and all, whatever. This is where it's at. I want to know, like, what are you vibing with? What are you really excited about? Or can you do this? Is this like playing favorites with all of your babies? You know,

it— yeah, I tend to not. I personally actually don't really make time for taking care of my own personal account or focusing on NFT collecting. You know, I just love creating products that customers are obsessed with and building companies that make that possible. So I would say like most of my hours in my day are pretty accounted for. So, but that said, like, there's a few categories that I'm— if I were to like invest over the next 12 months, I'm really excited about. I would say particularly the OG kind of like formative projects around the NFT ecosystem. Things like CryptoPunks, I think, have a lot of staying power. Um, so I would definitely, I would definitely, uh, you know, if you, if you're able to like afford one in this cycle, maybe take a look at that. I think they're here, they're here to stay. Um, I'm also really excited about NFT like generative art. Um, I can't name too many collections that are favorites of mine off of my head. Anything out of the Art Blocks ecosystem, I'm a big fan of. I think that's a great community and collection to get involved with if you're just starting to learn about the generative art space. But anything with like true provenance where it was clearly kind of first or one of the first in its category, I think that's going to have a lot of long-term staying power and thus value. Let's see, any other projects or Things I'm excited about, I'm always excited about, you know, anything, anything the Proof community puts out. I think K-Rose and team are executing really, really well. Um, but that profile picture projects are a category generally like, um, I would be a little bit more cautious of just because the sheer amount of them. I think—

What are the— what's the Proof team like? What are they putting out?

Yeah, Moonbirds.

Oh yeah. Oh, got it.

So they're executing I think, I think maybe there are only like 1 or 2% of Moonbirds that are even available for sale on OpenSea. So a lot of the float's kind of been taken up by their nesting program, and I think there's much more to come there. So I'm excited about that project as well.

So interesting, you're talking about OG projects. Uh, the new stuff, did you— did you— you're not really dipping in on the new stuff? I guess the generative art, that would, that would be more like— so if any generative art project came out that was new that you'd be excited about that, or you could be?

I could, I could be more excited about it.

What about music NFTs?

Yeah, I—

Everybody's like, 2022 is the year of music NFTs. Koopa Troopa is like, yeah, this is great.

Yeah, I think perhaps like there needs to be, um, more iteration done there till they have like true product-market fit. I think, um, There seems to be like a trade-off that's made right now with music NFTs, where the NFTs themselves, they're exclusive by nature. They're going after this, you know, true superfan that wants to purchase the NFT, which is great for creators, artists making money. They're certainly gonna have perhaps more financial upside than they would on a platform like Spotify. But I think artists are— the best artists are probably not as motivated by money as they are by fame and being cool. I thought

you were gonna say art.

Yeah, and also, yeah, their underlying passion, right, of creating great music. And what I'm trying to get at is they really like They want a lot of eyes on them. They want the right eyes on them, right? And have built up like a truly more like larger fan base that is, um, pretty feverish on its own. So I, I feel like that the trade-off right now between distribution and exclusivity leading to like actual profits for the creator is a little, little weird. Yeah. I wonder if there's a model where you can get both or have some like in between. So I think the exact model needs some iteration right now, but I'm excited about the category.

I presented yesterday on improvisation and NFTs because before crypto, I was really into modular synthesizers. I still am, but I am now full-time crypto, focusing on that right now. But I had applied back in February to perform a modular synthesis piece and split out stems and everything. And now being involved in the space with PoolTogether, and I do these silly songs for Wossies, it kind of shaped my thinking in this. But I still wanted to see the power of community being involved in music creation. Currently with music, I'm thinking it's like track, artist, album, Mixtape. It's like it's the standard stuff that we've had in music, and I'm maybe I'm just bummed because I got burned on the Snoop mixtape, and I'm just waiting for Snoop to airdrop something. Come on, Snoop! But but I really want to see. I really so what I wanted to do, I just made like a little synth piece yesterday, and it was like people pop people people, and then I ran around the room, and I got people to like do their own part with the synth thing. And they did. It was really cool. People were just like, wait, I get to be a musician? It was something like my thesis statement was, I want to unlock the latent musician in you. No matter if you— because the talk before me was like, who's a musician? Who's in the music biz? Who's a fan? And I was like, no, you're all musicians. Let's try it. And so it was really fun to run around in real time and get people to participate.

How did it sound?

I don't know. I got to finesse it. My synth thing was weird because But I think it's gonna be awesome. I actually think it's gonna be really cool. And I would go up to somebody and they'd start vibing. I could see them getting into it. I was just like, keep going, keep going, keep going. And then they'd kind of chill out and then I'd move on. But it was really fun. And this kind of goes to your art generative thing. It's like, how does the NFT change music? How do music NFTs look if the NFT, the technology, changed the music? Yeah. What does that look like? And I don't think it's necessarily AI. And I think what you're about with Prism is community and the power of community. It's like this core thing that Web3 talks about community all the time, but I see Prism actually unleashing the power of that in this multiplayer capital way. So it's really cool to just talk to you, Tom. Yeah. And also just think about what does that look like? You even said it, what does it look like when the community starts creating stuff? their own content derivatives based off of the CCO stuff, or the rights that they now own. Right, right. You know, so interesting to see. Like what Prism TV shows, is Prism the new Netflix?

Perhaps. Okay, that's a new one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening to me on that. Yeah, that's my whole diatribe. So time's wrapping up. What do you think, anything else that we need to cover that you wanna talk about that you think would be good to get out to the PoolTogether community?

I would say we're really excited about launching some sort of PoolTogether collaboration. Mm-hmm. So as we— I think one of the biggest problems with users starting accounts in crypto period and on Prism is the initial capital base. So we're thinking about how we can leverage PoolTogether to allow for different kinds of raffles Where different users, users can, you know, submit their own profiles and, and effectively like have a chance of winning some initial capital, um, so that they could sit— so that they can start playing the whole multiplayer game, right, uh, with some— with a few friends as well. So we're excited to get into that and would love for the Pooltheater community to participate when

PoolTogether is my favorite way to onboard normies where I just am able to delegate them my prizes and now they've got some USDC on Polygon that they can go. It's really fun. Play-to-earn is another way. I think that, or the play, now it's play-to-own. They keep changing it, but like, you know, being able to get like a little bit of a little piece that you can now, you have in the system, maybe a little piece of that house money. That you can move around. Um, what we had talked about, Tom, was the, the multi-delegator tool that PoolTogether has, where we have these NFT projects, these communities, these protocols. There's all these stables, especially now with the market volatility and the churning and all of that. Um, there's all these stables that are just sitting there, non-yield-bearing stables, and, um, and you can put it in a PoolTogether, and then you can delegate those stables, the prizes, to to your NFT holders. You can delegate it to a cause if you wanted to. You can delegate it to another project. You can delegate it back into a treasury or something like that. So, and I know we've talked about this, so yeah, I would just love to hear your thoughts on how MultiDelegator— just some tips for— you're the B2B genius. So as I'm pitching to other B2Bs, do you have any suggestions? Yeah, I mean, I think, let's see, so

different suggestions. I'm

getting— I can't believe I'm getting free coaching from you right now. This is so good.

Well, I think with B2B, it's always really clear if your product is working, 'cause businesses can be quite blunt about what they're looking for. And if it's close to working or, you know, it could use some iteration, I would say definitely ask them for feedback on how you can improve the product. So treating them as like someone you'd want in your product org, right? Kind of like driving the end state of what you're effectively selling to them. I would say that's been the biggest learning that I've had in B2B. Mm-hmm. So what you have is, I think a great idea, great primitive. The end use cases make a lot of sense for these platforms. But then when it comes down to actual integration for how this is all going to work and the specifics, that's when you could really collaborate with that end partner and get it to this iterated state where it's going to start selling better. Totally. Yeah, to the next partner, you know, that you want to get involved.

So what do you do when you get like all these verbal commitments and like really good, really good vibes, like really good karma? Like people are just like, this is great, really excited, pumped about it, but then it's like nothing, things don't happen. I guess it's not immediate, but it's— this is— and this is not— this is just like, maybe it's patience, but I feel like in crypto, I feel like if you don't get the— you get the verbal commitment, if you don't get the immediate thing Then it's like, ah, it's kind of gone, because the whole thing will change. So I'm not— I feel like in B2B recently, in my experience, I'm not getting necessarily the feedback. I'm getting like really strong vibes, people are pumped, and then, uh, yeah.

I think there's the next step, which is, um, a little unusual for crypto but very typical for just, just B2B, is, uh, signing some sort of contract, right? Um, Which is you'll know who your real commitments are at that point, right? So, and for you, I don't know if there's like a SaaS fee or something that you're charging, or if it's just like a free product, but some sort of like commitment to the integration that is a bit more on paper. Hmm. I think that's a good way to make things Maybe there's like a rev share or something that you could model in there, uh, for, for to make this deal a little more enticing for partners. Papering all that up, the exact like specifics there, um, will, will get you closer to the finish line.

Nice. Well, Tom, thanks for joining us on the PoolTogether podcast. This has been fun.

Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me.

All right, everybody go out and get a squad on Prism. Let's go.

Yeah, let's do it.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the Pool Together Discord and let us know.