PoolTogether Community Podcast Episode #1 with Oops

All right, we're off.

Hey, so this is the show. We don't have Richard. So we have Oops back back with us, and then myself, Smart Investor. So we're going to just. I don't know, just talk, see what Oops has been up to, maybe pick things from the random channel. I'm not sure. So, Oops, why don't you tell us what you've been up to since? Because we haven't seen you a lot recently.

Yeah, so I went to Miami and to Puerto Rico for a couple of events. That was really cool. So I went to Decentral Miami, Art Basel, and then Metaverso in Puerto Rico. Got back, bunkered down, and kind of like quarantined for a bit. Ended up asymptomatically testing positive for COVID. So now I'm just kind of like chilling hard, kind of like locked in a guest room. It's not too bad. Hey, I got no issues. Can't complain. I'm in the most comfortable spot I could be, and I have no actual symptoms. So like, Man, I certainly can't complain. So now I've just been chilling for the last few days trying to like stay sane and get caught up on everything.

That's cool. What was the— what were the highlights?

Um, well, always there's the meeting of the people. Um, so when I go, I go with my sister and we print out some POAPs, like physical POAPs with unique claim codes on the back of each one.

Cool.

And then I walk, I walk around and I hand them out to each individual person. And it's awesome. It's like the best experience. Um, you meet so many fun people. And I, I'll just go on a quick rant because it's pretty jokes, but I was kind of saying while I was there, like, what I, I gave out all the POAPs, like I ran out at most events. Um, And I remember sitting there after and just being like, man, like with POAPs, I am Iron Man, but like without them, like I'm just Tony Stark. Like those POAPs are my suit for sure. Because you can just walk up to anybody, anybody you'd like, doesn't matter how fancy or famous or whatever they are. You just be like, hey, I have a POAP for being here. And they just love it and they take it. And then if you wanna talk, you can, But like normally I don't, I just move on. I'm not trying to be invasive. And man, it's so much fun. You meet everybody that way.

How many POAPs did you give out?

Just probably just under 2,000 over the course of like the— I met a lot of people. Yeah, I walk around in like a Pikachu onesie and I hand out POAPs to people. It's a quite— hopefully it's a memorable experience for people while they're at the events. And it was kind of cool because I did the same thing while I was in New York for NFT NYC. And so while I was handing out POAPs to people in Miami, some of them would come up to me and be like, hey, like, you gave me a POAP in New York. And I'd be like, here, have another one. And it was just, I don't know, that was such a fun experience. There's going to be people that we're going to see all over the world and we're going to be like, have a POAP. They're like, you gave me one here and here. So that's pretty sweet.

That is so cool. And then tell me about like what— let's see, is there print? They were physical ones. What, what do they look like? I mean, like, um, was it like—

Well, so they're, they're like, they're drawn by my sister, um, and they're kind of, I guess, in, in part a series. I'll post the pictures in the Richard Show channel so you guys can see it, but basically it's, it's for like landscape photos style thing of the places that you were. And so we give one out at each of the events and we try to kind of keep them to a theme. So one sec, these are the 4. So Soggy Apple Pie drew those.

Oh wow. So just for everyone listening, um, oh, they look fantastic. I mean, they're like, uh, Look really good. There's one from Basel, one from Decentraland, one for Metaversa. Oh, I mean, they're fantastic, beautiful.

Yeah, she did a really good job. So we're going to keep to this theme and we're going to keep going to more events and handing out POAPs to people and making friends this way. And there's a few people that I've bumped into it. There's some, there's some people that have all 4 of these and I've bumped in, I've seen them at all 4 events. I think that's really cool.

Wow. Wow. Uh, were you the only one doing that? Like, who was that with other people?

No, no, there's— POAPs are the winners of like any physical event. It's incredible. There's like dozens and dozens of people with POAPs. Um,

no, but I mean like giving them out physically like that.

There are people who do. Yeah. In, in different ways. Um, we have a supplier that we know personally. that, like, like a local one who we give them the POAP information and the image and he prints us out like physical discs. Like, they're like cardboard, like a decent cardboard stock disc essentially with the picture on the front and then a QR code and the claim code on the back. We're going to move to stickers and then eventually, hopefully, like sewn patches that you could like claim and then peel off the back and apply to something.

Um,

but that starts getting much more expensive, and this is pretty reasonable right now. It's pretty fun. For a couple hundred dollars, I can walk around and meet like everybody at the event. It's like my own VIP ticket.

That is, uh, so creative. And so, but I mean, the work that's been done on these, um, I'll put these in the— if it's okay— in the, uh, Email. Yeah, sure. So on the Substack post, people will be able to see them, but just really—

Yeah, I'm sure Sagi would like that. That'd be kind of cool. It's fun that people get to enjoy them. That's kind of the whole point.

I think that's really creative. Instead of just being a sort of attendee, you're actually sort of giving value as well. So we, for the Substack, we have— we've been doing, uh, sort of weekly interviews with different members of the community. So everyone from Chris K, Leighton, I think Andy Kaufman also did one which was really well received about his work with Axie Infinity. And then the Portuguese community. So we've got now 5 different languages of, uh, of the Substack, and we have Noxy on, on the call as well who covers the French one. But the Portuguese community, they decided to set up a pop-up for all the interviewees. So really great job. I think it was Pedro. I think Pedro did it.

That's cool. Yeah, yeah.

It's really nice. And yeah, I think everyone who received them were really delighted. So I think pop-ups are just something really nice. Everybody loves pop-ups. Yeah, have you seen the ones from Alchemix? they're doing at the moment.

They've got some good graphics on that team, so yeah, I bet they're pretty sweet.

Yeah, yeah, they've got this, uh, 12 Days of Alchemists, and so depending what

you— I know,

they're beautiful. I mean, they apparently spent— I think the guy, the artist, spent hundreds of hours developing them. They've got like sort of physical element. But to get them, you have to have done different things in the community. And like, and there are different levels of rarity. Like, for example, the widest one's like 5,000, and there's one legendary which is 50. It was so funny because just by complete coincidence, I was on their Discord and I was asking something crazy because just for people who don't know, so Alchemix is this protocol where you You deposit either DAI or ETH, and then you can borrow up to 50% of that, and then it repays itself because they, they take the deposited, uh, um, asset, and then they, you know, they use Yearn or Compound or whatever that is, and then they get the, the interest, and then they repay whatever you borrowed. So it's basically like a free loan, although it can take years. So I was basically asking, like, what, what is the potential to use some ETH to buy a TV? So if I put some ETH in and then I take, I borrow some of it and then I buy a TV, like, would it make sense? And they said it wouldn't, because by the time you have all the gas fees, it would be more than what you borrowed. But what, at the time I was asking these questions was the time that the people who are running this NFT campaign said the fifth— I don't know, 50 people, the first 50 people in that time zone would receive one of these legendary NFTs. And that was— I received it, it was just complete chance. But anyway, really beautiful. Um, but yeah, so, um, um, okay, so are you— have you got any plans for 2022? Any other events you're planning to go to?

The list of events in 2022 is just madness so far. Well, I'm not going to attend all of them, but we're looking at ETH Denver, maybe ETH Rio.

Whoa.

I'm not too sure on the moment, but there's one in Montreal coming up, so that's exciting because that's kind of close to home.

Yeah.

Easier to get to, I guess, than some— than like Rio and whatever. But yeah, the list of events that I'm looking at is like, there's probably 1 or 2 a month, every month. Yeah. Yeah, 1 in January, 3 in February, 3 or 4— 3 in April. Yeah, 3 in March, 3 in April. Like crazy. There's no way I'm going to attend all that, but the list is very full. I can't believe there's so many events. So you can basically pick and choose when you want to travel at this point. It's like, well, this week, where should I go? And like, the list will tell you.

And are you able to— how do you, um, with all the different protocols you're working for, are you able to like connect the visits with the things you're doing for them, or is it just you just going for yourself, or how does it Well,

no, I do my best to like kind of like talk about anything and everything and help out where I can. And if there's other people there from the groups, I'll just— I'll meet up with them and hang out. And I don't really take like the day off per se because I can still hang out on my phone, or if I need to do something, um, or when I get back to the hotel, I can do work that night and like things like that. So I, um, I just kind of fit it in.

Yeah, yeah, because there's flexibility.

I might miss the calls that I'm supposed to be on, um, but like, that's— yeah, but like, if I miss the calls but still get all the work done that I'm supposed to get done, it's not— it's usually not too big of a deal. Don't miss like an all-hands, but even then, like, sometimes I'll like wait and miss the first couple hours of the event To like get actual calls in and stuff at the hotel, and then I'll go. Really, I'm there to like make friends and hand out POAPs. I'm not really there for the events, to be honest. Like,

yeah,

I find— Yeah. I've found that like in some cases the events were very much like a trade show. In other cases, it was just kind of like very surface level. I guess, which is cool. I mean, that's good for a lot of people, but like, I'd rather walk around meeting people than listen to some entry-level discussion on like 5 reasons why NFTs are the future or something.

Yeah, I think you're— you're probably one of the more advanced people in a lot of these, uh, a lot of these events, aren't you? Because you're actually living it rather than just, uh—

In a way, I guess. I don't— I certainly don't think I'm advanced because, well, I mean Ah, that's a tough subject, right? Because you don't want to like say you're advanced because obviously everyone has a lot to learn still, and I definitely have more than the average person to learn. Um, but I at least know why I'm here. I have a very clear image in my head of why I'm here, and I have for years. So that I don't need to be told.

Do you mind sharing what that is?

Well, just like, I don't know, I think one of the first things, I don't know exactly how to word it, but it's just Like, I know that this is going to happen. Like, since the moment I saw this years ago, like everything becoming an NFT and tokenizing everything, just everything becoming a token. I saw that like almost immediately when I saw Ethereum and I just— the light bulb went off and I've just known that, known the whole time that this was coming. I was just kind of like waiting for it and didn't know how.

So how can— actually, one thing I forgot to say on the last, uh, on the last, um, uh, podcast is that whatever everything we talk about, for everyone listening, is not financial advice. It's, uh, information education purposes only.

It's financial non-advice. Don't listen to anything I would say about money.

Well, also, you know, everything's unregulated, risky, all that Et cetera, et cetera. So just just be in mind. But so this is really interesting. This is really interesting point that you talk about because I was listening to Tim Ferriss and Chris Dixon from another rather counter from from I think Chris Dixon's from A16Z, a like a venture capital thing. But they all they all you know they're really so heavily you know talking about NFTs and and that's the future. But like what's so I guess the biggest issue that people have is if they don't understand it or So someone's just brand new to NFTs, and whether it's for investing or just to learn about it, what's— I mean, it's overwhelming, the choice, you know, it's difficult to know what to look at. What's your suggestion for where to start?

Um, probably play a game, I guess, at this stage. Like, back when I was starting, none of this stuff existed, so it's kind of hard to Like, I don't— I won't be able to take the same path that people get to take now.

Um, because like, previously, when you started, there wasn't— was it before OpenSea was there?

Yeah, yes, I think so. Yeah. Um, like,

I mean,

so the NFTs were still kind of like a thing, like CryptoKitties were a thing, I guess. Or at least they became a thing at some point during when I was starting. Like, I think I learned about everything like late 2016.

Whoa. So really, really? Yeah. So, well, I mean, I got—

it certainly wasn't early at that time, like, but that, you know, is what it is. Everyone's early to some degree. You would— everyone's early 10 years from that point.

Yes.

But yeah, early enough that like this stuff wasn't around yet. So I was like, I mean, I would have said go to Reddit, kind of like read what people are saying in the different groups that you want to follow, sign up for some centralized exchange and do some trades, that kind of stuff. That's certainly not what you're supposed to do now. Now it would be like play a game. Or, right, like play a game and get an NFT for it, or throw $10 if possible into some sidechain and then just bang it around in a couple of silly protocols, or, right, drop it in V4 and watch them just check on your prizes or do some quests on Zapper or something, right?

Like, now before NFTs, like, what would you specifically for NFTs starting right now when there's just so many options, like where can one start? Because some of like Andy Carvin's obviously Axie Infinity Expo, but the prices for some of those are just really quite expensive. And who knows if you're getting the right types and so on. So where could someone start like relatively modestly, if you like?

Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of games on other chains that you can get into that aren't Too expensive. And if you wanted to try Axie, like, you could do what Andy's kind of doing but not, right? Where you could do the scholars, but you could be the— you could be the person who's playing for us as a scholarship. So that's certainly an option. Um, and but there's, you know, there's also other things like I, I really like Skyweaver. We've talked about that before. Um, basically because it's free to play and all the things, all the paid stuff is cosmetic. But like, you can do a tournament and if you win a game, you have to buy the tickets for the tournaments. I think they're like $1.50. Um, but if you win, then you get a card and those cards are worth something. That's kind of cool. It was not totally free to like earn, but it's, it's fun. I have a good time playing the game. Um, I guess my friend's looking into this thing called Karastars or something, which is like an xDai—

Oh yeah, I heard of this.

Yeah, like an xDai equivalent of Axie to some degree. And it's still not like— I certainly don't endorse it. I don't know anything about it, but he seems excited, so that's cool. I sent him some xDai so he could go give it a try. Um, I don't know, like, I just really think there's so many games now, like There's a lot of them. I think Splinterlands or something. I think that's a really popular one. I haven't played it myself, but I've heard of it. I see it in the App Store too, which is kind of cool. So yeah, I think that's kind of where people should start at least, because then people understand digital collectibles in a game. They understand in-game items. Seeing that hit their wallet, would be like a whole new kind of paradigm shift for them. And then they'd be like, oh, okay, I own this. And like, they can visualize that, which like, that totally didn't exist prior. Also, you could just like get some free coins and go play some DeFi stuff. Like, I mean, another good option would be— I'm kind of working on setting this up shortly where it'll be like you can go into a space where they'll send you like a faucet essentially of coins. And you can learn how to bridge them to a new network and then zap them into some LP and then stake that into a farm or something, or like deposit it into V4. We'll see, like some, some kind of system that would encourage people to basically like onboard by getting something and then just like playing with it. And what do you care if you pay 5% slippage? Like, you don't. It's free money. Yeet. So in that sense, so they just go play the game.

That's pretty much— so that's actually— so it's not— you're not talking about testnet, you're actually talking about proper, actual real, you know, proper tokens or—

Yeah, yeah. Like, no, no, no, we're not giving them testnet tokens. Then the incentive's kind of off, but then they feel like they're testing, you know. You have to give them real money so they still have that idea that like, oh, this is my money, and if I lose it, like, that sucks. But they also have the thought that like, it's not really my money. Like, I just got this to play with. So like, and I'm supposed to play with it, so I'm going to kind of thing. It's like this funny middle ground where you still have the ball in your throat. Like, you don't want to, you don't want to send to the wrong address or something like that. You're just right, you're burning that money. It's your money at the end of the day, but it's free money. So

yeah, that's— You can do what you got to do. Yeah.

So some kind of a— I think that's a system that'll make more sense to people. And that, or like, it already exists. Um, like Banana is a great example of that. For years they've been just giving away coins and saying—

Yes.

Uh, I'm a big proponent of the educational stuff that they've been doing over there. So like, right, like you just, you can go in there if you've never heard of crypto or whatever, you could just be like, hi, what, what is this? And someone will be like, here, have some. Try it out, and then boom! You have some. And then you withdraw it. You're right. And and then what? You withdraw it to your wallet. And so then you have to learn what the process of like setting up a wallet and withdrawing out of a tip bot on Discord to a wallet. And like that's common, right? Like thousands and thousands of people have gone through that process now of learning how to withdraw from a tip bot to to dis like to their actual wallet, which they've. had to set up. And then they learn about what a private key is and what a receiving address is and all that stuff. Um, and it's like, it's right, it just makes sense. There's so many ways why, like, it's like the best onboarding tool ever for people because they have no risk. They're still just like, they're beaming money around, they're using wallets, they're actually doing on-chain transactions. They can check the explorer and see them. Like,

I've got quite a few people I think I need to, uh, teach about crypto from scratch. So, uh, I might have to do that, or I'm not—

I've onboarded every one of my, every one of my friends and family to Banana. That's not a claim that people can make with Ethereum or other things, generally speaking.

So, so literally every—

everybody.

So just Banana, their main website, just go there and then you can The website's banana.cc.

Yeah, so there's there's simple ways to get it, but the easiest way is to just go into the Discord and say hi and say like, "Hey, I'm new." And if you're a real person and you're actually new and you want to learn, someone will send you some ban, and then boom! There you can start learning. Like no one's gonna ask; they're not gonna grill you. They're just just like that's just that's the tipping culture that's there is that tip them, flip them, give them away, end up with more at the end of the day is basically the slogan.

And is this— can you use that MetaMask, uh, for that, or is it—

No, it's its own wallet, which is like part of the fun, is you have to go through the process of learning how to make a wallet and then like writing down your seed phrase. And it's its own chain, which makes it free and it's instant to use. So it's like kind of like a testnet, but it's not, right? The coins are actually worth money.

This is really good because I— because I mean, I was just shuddering like to Like, to explain to someone brand new, okay, go to a centralized exchange, go through the KYC, get some Ethereum, okay, get a MetaMask wallet, you know, and then, oh, I mean, and then, yeah. So I think that's a, that's an easier way of—

No, this is so much, yeah, this is so much easier. You basically say go into this Discord and say hi, or I mean, technically you should just have some and then you can send it to them, right? It'd be like you download a wallet And then you scan their QR code and like it's instant and it's feeless. So you can like send them 10, which is like cents, and they'll get 10. They'll be like, oh, I got 10. And you'll be like, hey, send it back to me. And then they'll ping pong it back to you and you get— and then you'll send them more and then they'll ping pong it back to you and you'll send them more. And it doesn't even matter.

How do I like— so if I want to just buy some, how do— where do I do that?

It's on exchanges, but you can also just like play games and earn it and stuff. Like it's got free distribution. That's kind of how people— yeah, you can go like do something, honestly pretty much anything, like make a meme, write an article, um, hang out, just literally just hang out and be friendly and exist. If you chat in the server, there's these things called rains, and it's basically a tip split that hits everyone who's active. So if you're hanging out, if you're literally just hanging out and chatting, Banano can just like fall from the sky on you.

Okay, that's really cool.

Yeah, it's a great learning environment, so that's kind of why I'm a huge proponent of it. They have a bridge and a wrapped token on Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, so like you can— that's kind of what I'm going to plan on doing is I'm going to onboard people to DeFi by like and make them go through the steps of learning by sending them something on some random chain forcing them to like learn how to bridge it and then go to like SushiSwap or Zapper or something and then zap into a pool or do a swap or something, and then they can complete a quest and whatever. Now they're kind of like off to the races, right? They've already done more of DeFi than what the average person would have done. They've bridged, they've swapped, they've provided liquidity, they've, they've used multiple protocols.

And you can do this all with Banana?

Yeah. Well, yes. And wrapped Band, right? Like, and it's wrapped token equivalent, but yes.

Okay. Right.

You would need a small, right? You'd also need a small amount of MATIC or BNB for whatever network you're using. I guess there's also that to be said, but yeah, that's easy to figure out too, right? Like you send them 1 MATIC and 100 Band and it's like, boom, now you have $3 in your wallet and you're ready to play. Like, it's $3 or like even less.

That is pretty cool. I think, uh, if I can— I just need to set myself up with these, with these, with some— a bit of MATIC. And I think I've already got probably more than enough MATIC. Just need to get the Banana. And then, um, yeah, then I can just like onboard so many people. Because it's quick and you can just do it there and then. You don't need to, uh, have them do the KYC, you know, go through the centralized exchange beforehand and all that kind of stuff like I had to when I was onboarding.

So yeah. That really reduces the barrier to entry. There's no KYC, there's no— you literally are just making wallets that you have no need to make accounts on anything anymore. That's probably my favorite part about the fact about onboarding to crypto now is that people are using wallets as logins and not logins to wallets. Because in 2017, it was logins to wallets, like it was custodial. You logged in to some protocol that stored your IDs and your identity, and then they gave, they gave you a wallet that they owned that you sent to. And now it's you have a wallet and that logs you into everything that you need to. It's such a cool transition to have watched happen.

What, uh, on a related subject, what, what, what's the best thing for you between now and 2016, 2017? Like, what's the best, uh, change that you've seen?

Probably largely that. That is actually probably largely one of my favorite changes, is that like people are starting to understand that like if you own the keys, like that's your account. You You don't need a password and all this information stored and all that stuff. You don't need to KYC. You can just— this person owns this wallet guaranteed because they have the keys. So let them in. I think that's really cool. It's going to come with some problems. Like, what if your wallet gets compromised? Did you just lose your accounts to everything? So, you know, it's never going to be perfect. That's going to come with some questions. But I think that's one of my favorite parts so far. Here's a cool example: .xyz, like the the domain or the DNS or whatever. I'm not I'm not very technical in that sense, but I think it's a DNS provider. You I'm sure you've seen links with .xyz at the end. Yeah

yeah, like proapp.xyz.

Yeah exactly. So they just did a thing with ENS essentially where now you can take any ENS. So if it was smartinvestor.eth or Richard.eth or whatever we have, right? And you just took that and then just add a .xyz at the end and it takes you to some profile that'll view like your ENS portfolio and your NFTs.

So like an actual website?

Yeah, like there's essentially a .xyz website set up for every single ENS that displays the person's NFT collection. And their avatar and ENS name. And I think that's it. It's pretty cool. It's not as good as Zapper's. Yeah, it's not, it's not nearly as good or thorough as Zapper's. And it's not— or like Rain— and it doesn't look quite as nice as like Rainbow Wallets, but it's cool. It's a very cool start. Like, it's, it's just a fun feature that like you can literally just add .xyz to the end of any ENS name in your search bar and it'll just produce a page. Sweet. Like, we're getting there, right?

That's pretty cool. I didn't know about that. So I'll have to look at— because I have actually got smartinvestor.eth.

Oh, I'm going to go to it right now. Let's see what it says.

I haven't connected it to my wallet yet because the problem is I used the gas too because the gas was quite cheap recently. So I bought the ENS. I went through all the steps and then the last step, you have to keep paying gas for different things. You have to connect it to your wallet. And I'd run out of ETH. Yeah. But I wanna connect it because, because, um, as I read on Bankless once, you know, they were talking about, um, you know, your wallet is your resume. Uh, and, um, uh, you know, people can just look at your wallet and then they can see all the things you, you do, you've done. Um, and in that article they were, they had some like degen test or something. Like, so you, you put your wallet in, it gives you a score. Um, but I just got a low score even. Yeah. Degen score. Yeah. But I mean, I don't think that was fair because I've done a reasonable, reasonable number of different things which they don't count. And so, um, uh, but yeah.

The things that you're counting on degen score, like times you've like been rug pulled or lost money or done something really like It judges like how outrageous your decision-making is. Not— at least that's what I—

No, no, there was one. I don't know if it's the one that Andy just put the link. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. I'll put the link into the— it's degenscore.com. D-E-G-E-N score.com. So what you do is if you connect your Ethereum wallet, digital wallet to that, and then it'll just give you, it'll just calculate how, uh, how— I thought it's just how good you are, but maybe, maybe, maybe you— maybe the lower the scores, but the better. I'm not sure.

It depends on how— it's basically how risky you play, I think.

Oh, it's not really like—

it's not really about how knowledgeable you are. It's more of like,

okay,

just how outrageous is your decision-making.

Okay, so maybe maybe it's not because I was desperately trying to get my score high, but then I just kept kept a low thing and I thought I need to do more things in DeFi. But I think I completely misunderstood what that is.

No, man. Truthfully, truth be told, if smart investor had a high degen score, I'd probably actually be almost hesitant.

Oh, what we got Andy's Andy score is oh wow. So, so his score is 115, which is ape. Uh, what does this mean? No, no, it gives you like +40 for Uniswap, Hipster AMM.

They've added a good amount. Yeah, most of my activity is on other chains, so I don't see much on this website.

Yeah, I think it's just Ethereum. Yeah, I,

I'm big on, I'm big on POAPs for this reason. Like, my POAP collection is a resume. I've got like almost 130 of those things now.

Whoa, whoa. Um, what do you see as the future of POAPs? Because they're not that— they're relatively new, aren't they? POAPs, it's not that— it's just how old is other POAPs? No,

they're pretty OG. They've been around for a few years.

Oh, right. Okay.

Patricio is a legend. Like, that man has been traveling and handing out POAPs for years. Yeah, the whole team is actually—

Yeah. Can you tell us more? Because I don't really know much about them. What's

the

big thing?

It's free on-chain memories. I think it's just a huge idea, right? Like, every concert, Every event, every conference. You could use them for basically anything. It's— you could be— you could do performance-based ones. Like we're looking at, for example, GitPoApps popping up, and that's pretty cool, which is basically like if you contribute to a GitHub repository, you can earn PoApps, which is like the recognition badge that you did. Open source tech was already kind of like about contributing for recognition and not so much financial incentives. So why not throw them a non-financial incentive NFT, like a PoApp as well, and give them like a badge that they did it. Like, I, I do see PoApps and coordinate allocations and times you've been tipped and etc. That could all eventually become like an on-chain resume of some degree.

So with PoApps, what do you see as the future? Is it literally just like an on-chain resume? Do you think that that's got more Like a wider application than that?

Well, POAPs are NFTs at the end of the day, so there's a ton of applications just like there would be with any NFT. Um, it's just POAPs are super, super accessible in a form that most other things are not in the NFT space, so it puts itself in a unique position where like you can claim a POAP with an email address. Like, that's for totally free. Like, that, that's a level of onboarding that the most, most protocols and NFTs just don't have yet. So very

nice. Very nice.

Very unique position where like you can— I can walk around handing out POAPs and it's like I can hand them to literally anybody. Like at Art Basel, when I gave people the POAPs, they looked at me so confused. I was like, well, just throw in your email address and it's just a little symbol that you were here.

No, that's, that's, that's nice. And they can be quite, um, yesterday again, this Alchemix, uh, it was day 9, and what they did in their newsletter, which is on Substack, they hid the link to the claim day 9 power-up. And I think I spent like an hour going through the, um, going through the, that page. And, uh, I said, I said on Discord, can't, it's not there. And then they said, no, the other people found it. Let's say it's there. And then I said, oh, I found it. Then they said, that's not— that link is for something else, it's not the PoAP. But so you can get creative with that. But, um, but just to go back to NFTs, like, can you tell us more about what are some of the other applications that maybe are not being looked at now but which could be coming, which could be huge? So apart from just art and apart from you know, tickets, you know, what are some of the other things that—

You can get pretty creative once you can prove who like actually owns something and it's authentic. You can get as creative as you'd like with it really. Like you could host giveaways. In PoApp's case, for example, they have raffle. I think it's poapp.raffle.xyz or just maybe just poapp.raffle. I think it's just— yeah, I think it's just that basically you can host a giveaway and people enter using their POAPs as the tickets. They don't lose them, of course. It's just like, that's their badge of entry. Yeah. You can use them for token gating things. So we've seen— but like we've seen before, like we have the Hodler's Hangout channel here that's only accessible for people who hold POOL tokens, or like it's kind of derivatives, if that's the appropriate term. Yeah. Yeah, so you can do the same thing with PoApps, and that's totally free. So that's just a fun, accessible thing for people, is that anybody could deploy a Discord server, anybody could make a PoApp and give it to the first people there, and it could make a private channel for them, and that whole system and flow is free. So

yeah,

that's kind of cool. That's a utility, right? There's snapshot voting for POAPs, so that's cool. You can use those as like your, your ability to vote. Maybe they'll be used in games. Some of them are like, did you hear about the Adidas Confirmed app?

Yeah, it was It was something, uh, I'm not quite sure. It was sold out. I know it was sold out quickly. Can you tell— can you just tell us more?

Basically, Adidas launched an app where they're going to be doing merch drops, um, but to stop like scalpers and people from, yeah, taking more than what they're supposed to, they implemented a thing where the— you have to have a POAP, a special like Adidas Origins POAP to be able to purchase, and that limits you to like one purchase per POAP kind of thing. And those POAPs go for like— the last one that sold sold for almost an ETH. I think it was actually a whole ETH. So

they're given away for free?

Yeah, they were given away for free. Um, you can sell POAPs like if you want to, and some of them are worth money, but that's not what I collect them for. I collect them because I actually want them. for the memories. So I just kind of don't really pay too much attention to that. But in this case with the Adidas one, like, I wasn't able to get one, and I, I did look at the market and was tempted to buy one because I, I mean, hey, that's just cool. That's like, as someone who's a big fan of POAP, big fan of NFT utility, like, this is a piece of like history in essence.

Like,

this is like one of the first major brands doing a legitimate like mobile app that's token gated with a NFT to— like, it just makes sense. So

that's on OpenSea, is it?

So you can get behind that?

Uh, yeah, yeah. Well, or any other like NFT platform per se, but POAPs are for sale. Um, but if—

so if you, uh, mint your POAP in xDai, can you still, uh, like sell them on OpenSea, or is that only for Ethereum?

It's only for— I'm pretty sure it's only for the Ethereum ones because OpenSea only supports, um, Ethereum and Polygon right now, from my understanding.

So, right, so you'd have to bridge it from NextEye to Ethereum.

Yeah, but there's a migration process like on the PoAP website that you can use.

Yeah, so there's gas. No, it's just that like, so with one of these Alchemix ones that, you know, is there's only 50 legendary, uh, um, status.

But the thing is, it's not the point about those, uh, this Alchemix, that there's 12 days of, uh, power-ups or NFTs. It's, it's about because they're about to launch DAO. And so depending on which ones you have, you'll be able to do certain things and that sort of thing. So that's the kind of aim rather than just trying to get them and stuff like this. The community, just like we've got here and pulled together. Where every time you come to a community call, you get a POAP, which Gups has designed some incredible ones for.

So, um, I wonder if any of those have ever sold. I've never actually looked.

Well, I don't know if anyone's— hopefully no one sold them because, uh, uh, hopefully, uh, people are there. But we do get a lot of bots, don't we? That's one of the things. And some of the calls now, we get a crazy number of Attendees, and I think a lot of them are bots just trying to get them.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of standard now across people like PoApps a lot. And it's also worth noting though that a lot of those, like, a lot of those people that we may assume are bots might actually just be people who are like— I, I kind of learned my lesson. I reached out to somebody at some point who I thought was a bot and they were a real person. It's just like our calls are not conducive to everybody's time zone.

Yes.

So they had fallen asleep with the call on.

Yes, because I remember sometimes people are on there for hours after the call, but that's because it's the middle of the night, bedtime or whatever.

Yeah, for some people it's like 3 or 4 AM when we're doing the call, like leading up to 5 AM. So if they fall asleep during it, I'm like, well, fair, I would, right? So I'm trying to be more understanding with that and just say, okay, you know, the fact that they even attend is actually impressive. So whatever.

No, no, no, that's, that's good. Um, all right, have you got some, uh, some other, any other interesting things or topics that we, uh, sort

of,

especially in 2022, what's, what's going to be big in 2022?

Apart from NFTs and perhaps—

Well, I think music NFTs are going to be really big. I think they're going to take off in a way that people aren't really prepared because like the framework's starting to get set up. And I think that's really exciting.

This is really— yeah, um, so just cut you off. There's a guy, Cooper Trooper, on Twitter. I don't know what

his real name is, but he's a very tall man. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I gave him a POAP in Puerto Rico. I might be wrong.

Oh, he's— I mean, the guy, I saw an interview with him on YouTube and the guy is, I mean, so intelligent.

Yeah, seems very friendly.

Yeah. So tell us about music NFTs. Like what exactly is a music NFT and What— so how does one get engaged with them, that kind of stuff? Yeah, and which platform?

I'm not gonna sit here, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a huge understander of how music NFTs like work on the back end. I mean, in truth, like, I really just started streaming music recently because I was very much the kind of person that loved going through and finding like maybe some more low-key stuff and downloading the files and going through the albums and I was very much about like downloading MP3s and like I collected MP3s essentially growing up. I loved it. I loved finding like unknown music and sharing it with my friends and making these playlists and all that kind of got taken away with streaming.

Hmm.

And I never really had a platform that I wanted to use and I never paid for a premium subscription or anything. So like, you know, in truth, I just kind of like stopped listening to— I still listen to music, but like If I'm listening to my iPod, it's like the same stuff from like before streaming started. Yeah,

so we've got some suggestions here from in the chat, like Audius. Yeah, I know, uh, Poolside. I'm not sure if that's the one. Uh, I know, so Cooper Trooper was talking about— oh gosh, I can't remember the names. He kind of did mumble them a little bit, so it was difficult to hear, to understand them, but there was, um, I've got them somewhere, but I was trying to look into them.

There's a few, like there's actually quite a bit. Yeah, there's Audius, Catalog. Um,

oh yeah, that's the one, Catalog.

Yeah, we're seeing other things pop up on other chains too, like on Wax for example. There's one called Yoshi Drops that I've been helping. They're kind of like, what they're doing is pretty cool. It's music NFTs. Wax is pretty, pretty NFT friendly, so it works out quite well. And they do partnerships with artists and they release content as NFTs. And I still think, yeah, there's— I still think there's a ton of room for that area to grow. I'm kind of looking forward to the idea of an app where I can get NFTs in the same way I used to get MP3s. Hmm. I can go to SoundCloud or one of these other fringe music websites that has download links like back in the day. And even though I know you're not supposed to like download stuff anymore because it's spoopy, um, you know, there must be some way where I can purchase an NFT and then use that NFT on some platform and it lets me listen to the music.

That's, that's, I think so. So when you say music NFT, is that like a song that— or what exactly is Yeah, I

guess. Or I'm still kind of like, I mean, maybe someone will invent some kind of special NFT standard that's not ERC-721 or 1155 or something that has like the ability to hold an album, right? Right. And then you could upload like multiple songs in the form of a single NFT or something. I don't totally know. I just, something's gonna happen, right? Like we'll have this like epiphany moment. And then people will start listening to music in the form of NFTs. And I don't know what'll drive it, but I'm excited for it. I think that's pretty cool. Movies is another thing I think we'll see. But like, movies, like in the same sense, like you might be able to like get NFTs of the bonus content or that random stuff. Um,

that's, uh, that's the thing that's Absolutely. So I think with music NFTs, after I watched this video, I was trying to explore it more, but I just find it quite challenging, challenging to understand, you know, even on catalog, like what I'm looking at. And because there's just a lot of stuff there. So yeah, movies, I think, I think especially for— there's 2 options, isn't there?

There's like obviously the big Marvel and Getting NFTs of, uh, you know, Spider-Man or whatever, but then also potentially the possibility for, uh, you know, independent producers and directors to, to use NFTs to, I guess, have people participate in the funding of the films, I guess. Is that, is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, I mean, naturally, like, the mainstream will flow towards the big stuff, but I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity In the area of like independent artists getting funded through NFTs to continue. Like, I'm like, exactly what we did with the Pool Together NFT pool, like that you could just literally have people depositing into a pot that draws weekly chances to win albums and the prize money goes to Instead, like, the prize money instead of going to winners goes to the artist, and his job is just to produce new songs or new albums that go into that prize pot to be won out every week or every month or whatever they want to do. Like, it makes sense from a creator's perspective. It's just like no one loses their money, you can live off of it, and you could sustainably just keep doing what you want to do.

It's, uh, but what— so how did that go? Because we don't do that anymore. Was it a success, or—

It wasn't a success in terms of the, the rate at which we were giving out work wasn't sustainable for the yield that we were earning. Um, also partially due to the fact that like we didn't promote it on the main website and stuff like that, and like there was just There was ways it could have been done better, but potential-wise, like the potential of the NFT or just the potential of that format of pool, it doesn't have to be NFTs. It can be literally anything of the yield going to something else and people winning some other thing that isn't the yield. That's a wild concept.

So you're saying in it, um, I think it— okay, so you're taking something like the, the, um,

composability element. So it's not necessarily just pulled together, but people can— yeah, exactly— win whatever it is, NFTs, music NFTs, movie NFTs, whatever. And then I'd whoever's running the pool or, you know, the protocol, whatever, they would use the yield to pay for the running, but also to pay for the actual creation of the NFTs, for example. As an example, is that what I think you're talking about?

For everything. Like, basically the money would go to the artist and they can do with it what they want. They can live off of it, but they obviously have to maintain the pool. Because that's what they live off of. So there would have to be that, right? But like, like genuinely that, like, let's just give a crazy example, but I'm not going to say for like, if I, if people were willing to deposit money into a pool, I could in theory just be on the hook to draw an image every week. Like a one of, and then I would make it a one of one NFT and whoever won the prize that week would win that image. Or I could make it a 10 of 10 and 10 people win. Or I could make 2 images or, you know, whatever it is. Or I could make a song or it really genuinely doesn't— I could produce video content and give you access to it. Like, it really doesn't matter. You can come up with anything and then you can be like, okay, we're going to raffle off that to people who are deposited into the pool. And so those people aren't losing their money. They're just, they're not gaining yield on their money. they're not losing anything. Um, and you're living, you're able to live off the yield while supplying all of these people with what they wanted without them having to actually spend money.

I see. Okay.

They are spending their yield, but yeah, like that is in—

yes, actually I didn't. Um, okay. Let me, for everyone who's listening, doesn't quite get it. Let me just explain. So The point is that let's say there's an artist that you like, uh, independent artist, and they're, you know, they're not, you know, just, they're not like, if they're starting today, probably would not have much money, that kind of stuff. You could give them money like through Patreon or something like that, or by, you could put all this money into, for example, a pool to get a pool or something else on a different protocol. You let's say you put in 100 USDC or 100 DAI, whatever, $100. If I know 100 people put in the same amount, the interest which would then be put into I don't know Aave compound, whatever, that could be used to pay for the to the artist. You keep your money. Everyone who puts their money keeps their money. So the artist basically could have quite a good living without anyone actually giving them. their— any money directly. Uh, or not just artists, you say it could be music, it could be, uh, teachers, you know, teachers, um, doing stuff for children, uh, you know,

in— Yeah, making teachers who make online— teachers who make online content like YouTube channels and stuff, this would be a great way to get fun. And like maybe the person like ships them custom merch, or I don't, I don't know, like you'd have to have some kind of reward that the people are winning. But that's something that could happen.

Yeah. That is really sort of insane stuff.

So I think we should probably aim to wrap it up in a few moments, but I think it's been fantastic today.

Unfortunately, we missed Richard.

The show without Richard? I don't like

it. So today's just the show, not the Richard Show. So the Richard Show, we will hopefully be back. But I will be actually posting, uh, well, this is— this will be next week from when I post this. But, um, hopefully we can have both yourself, Oops, and Richard back again because your, your guys' chemistry is unmatched. Um, but, uh, so to wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to mention as we, as we head towards the end of 2021? Any other— Big thoughts about the year or the year ahead, crypto, NFTs, anything else?

Not so. I think I kind of I've done my ranting. You're very nice. Yeah, I try. I stay tame. I promise.

Yeah,

I guess my big takeaway is like, or at least for now, like the one thing that I would like to kind of like reiterate before the end of the call is that the idea of like. yield going to someone and no one spending their money is a wild, wild concept. And if people actually figured out what that meant, because it's a little bit complicated to explain.

Yes.

That's a crazy DAO concept, really. Is that like, imagine if a DAO had a treasury where they committed to never spend any of the contents of the treasury, only the yield earned. Like, you could basically only go up.

I mean, that could literally— that could be, uh, you know, fund community. Basically, that, that's a way of funding community projects, you know, which, which are very, you know, really worthwhile things, but creative and, you know, just social, social care, which are difficult to get the funding for.

Uh, but, um, it's like Kickstarter on a whole other level. Yeah,

that's actually— I did ever— I, I did think about that. Like, I, I thought about like, you know, something like a crowd— crowdfunding, uh, crowdfunding using the, you know, using the yield. Um, you know, that's, that's something which you— I don't think we have at the moment. And, uh, the, the— what we tried and pulled together, so that's PTIP 8, uh, um, and the company just posted this, pulled together NFT implementation marketing company. So we did try it here in Portugal. That's quite a while ago. P2P, we're at like 50 now, something like that. So it didn't really take off, but the concepts there and the— you're right. I think people don't— I think we would just think about the NFTs. We weren't thinking about the actual idea, which you've articulated much more clearly. So I think that it could literally be game changer for so many industries and people and probably starting with artists, you know, probably ties in really well with music NFTs and the art side.

Creators of, yeah, creators of all kinds, writers.

Yeah.

Right. Like you could run a paid subscription Substack or something. And, but the pay is not the pay. The pay is just the yield from people depositing into a prize pool.

I'm gonna have to look into this more.

Yeah, like, for creators, this opens up a whole world of opportunities. I think it's really, really cool.

Yeah, and that's what— so, so that's what, what, um, what Cooper Trooper was talking about. He was saying, you know, the, the value is— you know, he's talking to all the listeners, so I guess that's us— the value is in you being able to educate others and help. Basically said, find a musician in your local town and help them, you know, help them get into Web3, get into these, you know, the music side, and then that's your way of learning. And, you know, maybe you might be rewarded, maybe you won't, but that's not the point. And that's what he's talking about in general with Web3 and this kind of area is that you by educating, helping others, you know, I guess I don't know what the right term is, reach their goals or, you know, express themselves artistically and also be able to live well rather than just be just surviving is a way for you to grow.

And, you know, you would be rewarded somehow, but not necessarily necessarily anything. But that's the best way to add the value.

So I think that ties in what you've said as well. So yeah, so okay, I'm gonna, uh, let's wrap it up there. So thank you everyone for listening, and thank you so much to Oops for standing in, and to

Andy and everyone else for hanging out to the show.

Yes, yeah, so, so yeah, that's another thing actually. If you, um, obviously most of you listening to this on the Substack, but if you ever— we, so we record this live on the, in the PoolTogether Discord on the PoolTogether live. So what we'll do, what we usually do is we put an event. So if you join the Polkadot Discord and go to the events thread, we'll have an event for the Richard Show usually, and you can just join and then it will alert you at the time. So yeah, if you ever want to join us live, like we have some people on here live, you can do that. Otherwise, yeah, we look forward to the next show. Thank you so much again, Ox.

Yeah, yeah, we had Tim and Andy post some messages in the chat. All was good. Thanks, guys. Cheers.