Introducing Fungible Times | Mad Realities: Proof of Love with Devin Lewtan and Alice Ma

Hi everyone. Welcome to Grey Matter, the podcast from Greylock, where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I'm Heather Mack, head of editorial at Greylock. Today I'm moving aside to make room for a special broadcast of the brand new podcast Fungible Times, which was created and hosted by Greylock investors Sarah Goa, Christine Kim and Mike Dubeau. Fungible Times covers all things Web3 and showcases a wide range of guests operating in various roles across the ecosystem. You can find fungible times on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple and YouTube, and you can also follow them on Twitter ungibletimes. We'll also be sharing some future episodes through the Gray Matter channels. In this very first episode, Sarah and Christine sit down with Devin Luton and Alice Ma. Devin was behind the Clubhouse show NYU Girls Roasting tech guys. And Alice ran operations for Constitution Dow, which raised more than $45 million worth of ETH in a bid to buy the U.S. constitution. Now Devin and Alice are working together on an interactive reality dating show powered by crypto called Mad Realities. Now let's turn it over to Fungible Times.

Welcome to Fungible Times, our podcast on all things web 3. If you have been looking to learn about crypto, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and the worldwide decentralized web, then you have come to the right place. Each episode will have conversations with builders and founders at the forefront of this revolutionary movement. But before we begin, I want to introduce the hosts, myself, Mike and Sarah. We are three friends and collectively lead Web3 investing at Greylock, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. I'm Christine Kim and I know for me it has been an insane journey diving deep into the world of web3. So I'm excited to share all my knowledge with you and learn from the incredible guests that we bring on the show. Now for Mike and Sarah. Hi, I'm Mike. I'm one of the partners at Greylock.

Focused at the intersection of commerce and crypto.

Before Greylock, I was running growth and.

User acquisition functions at other e commerce and consumer startups.

I'm Sarah Guo and I'm excited about programmable money. I've been excavating deep down the rabbit hole, thinking about all things developer services and enabling infrastructure for web 3. Crypto has been a sucking sound for talent and creativity for the past few years and I'm super excited to welcome two of those creative minds to our first episode. Devin Luton and Alice Ma, the co founders of MadRealities.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Fungible Times. I'm your host, Christine we have Sarah here. We're super excited for this episode because we have Devin Luton and Alice Ma. Devin was behind the Clubhouse show that took over the Internet. NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys, which we like to say is one of the hottest bars on the Internet. It really blew up overnight and I.

Feel like was one of the most.

Popular shows, definitely one of the most fun shows on Clubhouse during peak pandemic. And then Alice Ma ran operations for ConstitutionDAO, which very famously raised $45 million worth in ETH in seven days too. Bid for the Constitution. Famously lost. Got huge coverage. I mean, another huge historical moment for DAOs and Web3 and the Internet in general. And they're both here to talk about both those moments on Clubhouse as well as ConstitutionDAO. But now they're working on a new interactive reality TV show show powered by crypto called Mad Realities. And we're here to talk about that new show. They're all working on all exciting things. I feel like these are the two coolest girls on the Internet. So Sarah and I are super excited to have you on. Thank you for coming on and welcome.

Thank you.

Teach us how to be part of the culture.

By the end of this, hopefully you feel like you are. I think you guys very much are.

You definitely are.

You guys are pretty cool.

Yeah. Sarah and I will be furiously taking notes about how to be cool and get Internet famous.

Love it.

Amazing. Well, maybe to kick things off, Devin and Alice, tell us a little bit about yourselves and your journey into Web3 and how you got to where you are now.

Cool. I can start and then Alice can go into it. I think our stories match pretty nicely together. So I'm Devin. I am from the Boston suburbs. I grew up in the Boston suburbs. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial house. In my house. My parents had met in College and at 23, started a company together. And they ended up bootstrapping it and working on it for 18 years together. And that was kind of like the house I grew up in. Everyone in my family is very entrepreneurial. Uh, and I first really had my own experience with startups when I was in high school. Um, When I was 15, my sister showed me her friend's beta app. She was, like, working on a social app. I think it's like, 2012 or 2013. Uh, and I liked it. And I showed some friends, and I ended up getting offered an internship because I had spread it to a thousand kids in the Boston area. And she was like, why are all my users 15 year olds? Um, and so that was like the first moment where I was working on something that was a startup. I was like, huh, I'm pretty good honestly at spreading the word about things on the Internet. And so that led me to going to NYU for college. I graduated in 2020. I was in Gallatin, which is the School of Individualized Study. So I was essentially creating my own major, taking classes at all of the schools at NYU and then having a central thesis that was my area of passion and expertise. I called my concentration the Power of Conversation. So it was essentially what makes a good conversation between people, regardless of how well you know each other. And then how do you build that into the products we use? It was a combination of linguistics, computer science, philosophy, design. I was working at a chatbot at the time in college and was really into conversational interfaces. That's actually where I ended up teaching myself how to code. I had a mentor there that was very supportive and I ended up learning how to code. And then that brought me to working at a company this past year post grad called Clay, which is a low code internal tools company. I was doing product and engineering while I was there, as well as support sales, a bit of design. Towards the end, did a lot of different things. Early stage startup, you wear a lot of hats. And while I was there in February this past year, my friends and I accidentally started a popular show on Clubhouse. As you introduced Shoot yout Shot NYU Girls Wrestling Tech Guys. It started entirely accidentally. It was the night that. Or should I go? Should I keep going into this right now or do you want to.

Yeah, we'll definitely get into it. So maybe we'll table it.

Maybe.

Alice, tell us about yourself. Devon. I definitely want to talk about Clubhouse and its beginnings and all the highlights.

Hey, I'm Alice. I grew up in New York State and I went to school in California at Berkeley, where, you know, I discovered that nowadays on the Internet you can just build anything from scratch. And it's honestly like really awesome. The era of the Internet we live in. In school I studied a mix of computer science, political economy and Arabic. So I've also always been interested in like economics, governance, society. In school, I started this company called Archer with. We eventually recruited 20 of our friends who were also engineering students. And we built software that helped citizen journalists crowdsource, like fact checking as well as investigations that would contribute to breaking news. So people used our tools to, you know, crowdsource investigations and they got published in major publications and we also got a medal from the Department of the treasury because they Use. They liked using our tools, you know, and that was a really eye opening moment. Just like what, what you can do when you can like build and ship good software and also laser target what users need and how they use interfaces. So that was like me going down this entrepreneurial path. Always loved building things and putting them in people's hands and kind of seeing that moment when someone's like, oh, this is just going to make my life 20x better. And then also worked at a startup after that in a mix of product engineering. It was a startup called Enigma. It was like, and then two years ago left that basically pursuing this thesis of like the future of content was going to be totally multiplayer, very social, very gamified, and that the digital generation would have a totally different set of behaviors than the ones that came before. And I quit my job my last day. My job was literally a week before the pandemic. So that was awesome. Life throws you curve balls and you roll with it. And I'd been building and experimenting with various different social apps, including an audio social app that Devin mentioned. And that was how we met. The first night that NYU girls ever popped off, I remember just seeing some activity on Twitter and I was like, oh, this is an operation. Who are these business ladies? I want to be friends. I want to get to know them. And so we started hanging out, FaceTiming, coming up with ideas. And then back in August, that was when we started going down the crypto rabbit hole together and landed on the idea for Mad Realities.

Okay, so rewind for a second to first night of NYU girls roasting tech guys. Like, what happened? Were you just screwing around? What did Alice see? What were these business ladies doing?

I love the term business ladies.

For the record, the NYU girls are powerful business ladies. I just want that to be known.

Yeah, no, so the first night, okay, so basically the first night that our show started was the night that Elon Musk was being interviewed on the Good Times show. And so there were a ton of new people on the app. His room was filled, the overflow room was filled.

Remember that?

Like looking for content. And my friends and I were literally drunk on the clubhouse, hanging out like it was. There was no plan to do anything. And we were running a room called Shoot yout Shot. At the time it was like we had seen some TikTok boys doing a Shoot yout Shot room. And we're like, haha, that would be funny if we did this. And they're wait for our audience who.

Is not aware what is Shoot yout Shot?

Oh, we'll get into it. We'll get into it. So basically my friends and I were just like, screwing around, hanging out. The app crashed, and there are 800 people listening to us, just basically roasting people. It was like. It was kind of this, like, crazy room where we were just not thinking anything about it, but people were tweeting about us being like, who are these NYU girls Roasting Tech guys. And so the next night, we had run the room called shoot yout Shot. NYU girls roasting tech guys. There were 5,000 people listening to us talk. We were running what essentially we called a bar simulation. And so in our room, people in the audience would raise their hand, come up on stage, and shoot their shot at someone else in the audience. So they'd be like, oh, hey, Christine, I saw you in the audience and you look great in the Color Purple from your Instagram. Like, can I slide into your DMs? And then my friends and I would basically roast bad pitches from tech guys. So that night was definitely a crazy thing where we were like, oh, my God, this room, there's 5,000 people. What is happening? Like, we couldn't really believe it, but at the same time it was like, oh, shit, there's something here. And so we ended up running it for six months. We had celebrity guest judges on it. We had like, Cody Co tinx, Justin Khan. We would have, like, reoccurring characters. Flostradamus, once released unreleased track that he was supposed to play at LIV in Miami on our show, Dib was on our show and we would do giveaways for the best pitches. So one time with Logan, Paul and Blau, we gave way 0.65 Bitcoin to the best pitch. And it was a crazy experience. But I think one of the things that was really interesting about what we were doing was that we had created this insanely engaged community and really high value community where people were coming back. Every time we did the show twice a week. People are creating memes and content online, and it was really hard for us to capture the value of what we were doing. I think one of the reasons that we ended up deciding to stop doing it was because it really fell on us as the creators to take it into our own hands to figure out a way to own our audience. We ended up working with an engineer to build out our community layer where we could capture people by phone number. And in like our private little Discord type thing called Spore, we had to figure out our own decisions or figure out our own distribution on other channels as Clubhouse's audience was changing and it wasn't necessarily aligning with the audience demographics that we had. And so, yeah, a lot of the learnings that we had from that show are very much inspiring. What we're doing with MadRealities now.

Awesome. I love Tinks. She's like one of my favorite creators. I found her on TikTok. For people that don't know, Tinks is like the millennial TikTok. Just like overall she's like, she bridges, I think Millennial and Gen Z. She's so funny and I love watching her online romance with Diplo play out. That's just like a. I feel like we all, as an Internet ship them as a couple. And also I have to say Seth, who's another investor here at Greylock, also shooted his shot on the show. He had a girlfriend at the time. I think he was just trying to get some clout, which I think is hilarious. He begged Sarah and I to come on the podcast to shoot his shot again, but we declined.

We love you.

That came up. I remember one of the things that was so funny about that was that Seth was on stage and I think someone was like, oh my God, Seth Rosenberg is on stage. And then my friends were like, who is that? And that was a very funny moment. But we became friends with him and he was written up in the Business Insider article that first night.

Claim to fame. I think it's such a funny moment.

I feel like.

Yeah, you guys were just. It was this moment during like the pandemic. Everyone was on Clubhouse, everyone was listening and like Clubhouse had gotten very popular for this kind of tech auditorium style interviewing. And like that content was super educational and super fun. But it was really fun to see some of this like more light hearted humor start to emerge on that platform too.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely think we, we took the position of like the counterculture content and the tech industry particularly. Like there were a lot of shows happening in other parts of Clubhouse, but I think also you couldn't really see things outside of your network. And so our show was basically the space that people would come and hang out on stage with like a bunch of 22 year old girls when they retired, talking about what like the future of cities looks like or talking about Clubhouse. They're like, okay, yeah, I'm probably going to go be a judge on the dating show.

So what do you think resonated about this? Because people were obsessed.

Oh yeah.

Oh, there's people being me.

But like, I think, I mean, I think I'M a pretty self aware person and I can recognize some of the things that were themes in the beginning. We didn't know what it was like in the beginning. We were hooked on the format. We were like, okay, this thing is great because it, you can come in at any time. It doesn't matter if you missed the beginning. You're able to jump right in. You could participate. There's emotional feeling of like, oh, maybe I get called on, like I don't want to leave because what happens if someone calls on me? It's kind of like actually a bar simulation and the fact that you could hang out there and potentially get hit on. So that was one thing. I think honestly this part's like a bit weird, but very self aware that our audience was a lot of people in tech. And I think people were really curious what goes on inside of like a group of 22 year old women's group chat. It was basically like very intimate format where people could hear us talk and understand the way we think. So that part to me is funny, but it definitely resonated. But I really do think that people were excited by the new format and it was entertaining, it was real. It wasn't like just watching a bunch of fake people on stage. Like this was very much a representation of dating and you basically either were like, like this is like me or this is not. But everyone felt like a personal story. The last thing I think really too is the power of the notifications were like very, very important to our show. I think in some reasons, we might even be the reason some people turn them off. But every time someone went up on stage, there was a notification sent out. And so usually if you look at other types of shows in this other format, you're explaining where it's just kind of a podcast. You'd have people go up in the beginning and it would boost everyone in. And then throughout the show you'd listen and at the end maybe some people come up for questions for hours. Every like two minutes or so, someone else would come up. And so rather than seeing something being like, oh, John is talking about how to grow your Instagram account for your business. Ours was like, oh, Nikita, beer is on. Shoot your shot. And why you girls wrestling tech guys? Like, what's happening? So I think there were a lot of things that were very much like social and spoke to people's feeling of like wanting to know what's going on in people's lives in like a particularly niche community that had a cult following. I completely, I've written like 15 pages on this. I'm like, I could talk about this for hours.

There's like this simple take on it and then I'm sure there's like actually a very deep thesis about like, what. Why these things catch on fire and why they become like, you know, why they become huge Internet moments. And I mean there's like a power of the simp. Like it's so like what's going on with Irene Gal?

Yeah, we've been talking about it.

Hot Asian model that's like NFT ing herself. And, and it's like. No, it's. There's. There's kind of more than that. It's like this really layered thing, which is crazy.

The funniest things on the Internet are definitely the ones which like, you just hear it and you're like, oh, that's, that's funny on its own, that's hilarious. But then you like keep digging deeper. You like peel back the layers and you're like, oh wait, this actually makes so much sense. It has a lot of depth. I do want to.

Is really important.

I want to throw one more theory in the hat, which is that I think a lot of the big social networks or platforms actually started with something dating related as a niche, like Facebook was hot or not. And so I think for a lot of people who are just watching clubhouses rise from the side, myself included, it was like, wow, this is like, this is a networking use case. You know, it's like, it's a networking use case. It's starting and then you see the first like dating show and it catches on fire and you're like, oh yeah, like nature is healing. That kind of feeling.

Nature is healing.

Yeah.

And it's a common theme in so many things. I mean, so many things that we're talking about today with like the Clubhouse show to the Constitution piece, which I want to get into to mad realities. And like even just at a macro level, if you look at what's going on with Web3, people have been working on NFTs and DeFi for years. But it's so interesting to see like what are the moments that really bring the masses in. And I would give a lot of credit to like NBA top shot being that moment earlier in 2021 for a lot of people. And so it's, it's simplistic, entertaining things. It's often rooted in things that. I think you're totally right, Alice. There's a lot more complexity and depth to it. It looks entertaining. It looks like a joke. It could be dating on the surface. But those are the things that in our human nature are interesting to us and pull everyone in.

Totally, Sarah.

And I really want to know about ConstitutionDAO as well. So let's shift gears into that and talk about one. Let's explain that movement for the audience, for anyone that might not know, and how you were involved. I would love to know more about that.

Yeah, totally. I also want to just comment on that last part too, because it's also related to how I got into the whole area of Web3 or blockchain in general, which is back when Archer. That was like, we had, like, a bitcoin analysis tool for citizen journalists. And we also had a proof of concept using IPFS as, like. As like a document directory for human rights researchers to resist censorship. And what's really funny about IPFS is if you think about what really drove adoption of it, a lot of it's related to, like, storing JPEGs of apes on the. You know, for. For like an NMC use case. And so I think that really does speak to media, like, culture driving adoption. And that brings me a little bit to ConstitutionDao, which I got involved in completely spontaneously. It was like seven days of my life total. And, well, it was essentially started as a joke, as a group chat on the Internet. And we put together $48 million in seven days via DAO to bid on a paper copy of the Constitution in this dramatic live TV showdown. And that is Constitution Dow.

Okay, so most of us, when we, like, practical joke for people who may not be as familiar, like, where did the money come from? How did you recruit people? Like, what happened?

Yeah, so there were several Twitter group chats that thought it was. That someone was putting together, like, going around DMing people being like, I'm putting together a DAO to bid on the Constitution.

I think start even like a second back about how there was one copy, like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's like 13 or something. And there's one. I think that's a good part of the narrative.

That's true. I think that's. I think the reason that it actually ended up. We actually ended up raising all that money is because of the narrative. So basically, at the time, there were only like 11 known copies left over of the Constitution from the original printing. And this was the last one that was in private hands, and it was going on auction at Sotheby's to the highest bidder, which, you know, it's the kind of story, like, when I tell my family and friends who aren't involved in Web three either. Yeah, there's a copy of the Constitution in private hands going to the highest bidder, to other private hands. They're always like, wait, what that's allowed? Like, I thought, I thought documents like that should all basically just be in public museums. Like, why is that happening? And this is kind of, this is kind of what we're getting at too, with, like, sometimes the funniest things that also work really well are the ones that have this, like, surface level meme that's hilarious. Like, it's just when you say to someone, I'm buying copy of the Constitution with my friends, with my Internet friends, it's funny on its own. But then you start digging a layer deeper and you start getting to questions like, okay, well, why is it in private hands and why is it going to the highest bidder? And do we actually want that? Like, as a society, do we want that and what can we do about that? And so for a Constitution dao, like, it's this multi layered thing. Like, you know, on one hand there's this like, National Treasure inspired Nicolas Cage meme, because everyone's seen National Treasure. And there's something funny about us conducting a heist, almost conducting a heist, intercepting it from private hands as a degenerate group of Internet friends. That's a fun thing to be a part of. But then on a deeper level, I think it does kind of pull at some broader philosophical questions about should these kinds of public goods be in private hands? And how does the primitives of Web3 allow a group of people to organize in a really, really shockingly fast way? I think the thing that's the most shocking is that all of this was end to end, seven days from the first idea and the first person's head to the bid. And there's several aspects of that that are interesting that we could dive into. But yeah, I think it was a proof point that, like, with these primitives, there's just unlocked a new world of potential.

Yeah. And just for the fund is to explain a little bit about the mechanics of this. As a former contributor to ConstitutionDAO. Like, this was a. And you should talk about, like, what happened in the marketing effort as somebody who was leading operations. But it was something that really blew up as a narrative across different social networks and group chat. Like, you know, if, if 2019 was like the year of the meme and 2020 was the year of NFTs, I feel like 21 was the year of the group chat.

Yeah.

Find out about 22. But it was people talking about this incredible narrative over the Internet and saying, like, you can contribute. Like, yeah, yeah, a crypto wallet and some Ethereum and like, join the party. We're going to own the Constitution. And I think that was like an incredibly comp idea to people who could anonymously or not be part of a movement. But you weren't just, you weren't just a contributor, like what? Or a capital contributor. Like, how'd you get involved?

Yeah, I, I didn't. Or we didn't have anyone leading operations and I was just one of the team members on this. I literally saw, or I remember that, that lunch, that, that day at lunch, I was having lunch with my friend Tina and we had seen someone tweet about this. Like it was actually kind of a joke. It was like a screenshot of, oh, I'm putting together a bid to buy the Constitution. And then the person was like, okay, wait, we need to stop all the dao people. We need to pause and figure out what's going on. Like, is this real? And me and Tina, and she's also an engineer, we're both engineers. We basically pulled that up at lunch. We're like, haha, this is really funny. Like what is going on on the Internet. But also this is interesting. It's like, how would you bid for an item in the real world and then figure out whether or not it succeeded? Like, how would you end up trusting that the end result was accurate? We were actually talking about doing a little hackathon project together on building a way to have an oracle about real world events for NFT auctions. But then later that night, I think she had posted it in one of her group chats or started talking about it with her Internet friends. And then they pulled me in and then I was in this group chat with 20 other people and there was already a Discord server running. And I think that first night people were like, okay, there's a lot of energy here. There's something here that makes sense. There's a narrative that we care about. But it was extremely unclear that it was like we would have given ourselves the odds of like 1% chance of success. And so that's how that's how we got started.

So I think one of the interesting things, if you weren't familiar with crypto and web three is like, you could just be like, I don't understand, like crowd fundraising has existed for a while, right? You can collect money on the Internet and send money on the Internet prior. But I think one of the Things that really struck me about this entire effort was that there are really interesting things that can happen when you have a community that's open to experimentation. There needs to be some sort of early adopter crowd. And then there are mechanisms for. Clearly, the crypto world is still figuring this out, but there are mechanisms for building trust and then allowing for governance or the ability for a group to make decisions. Right.

So, like, you know, if.

Despite your many Internet friends, I feel like if Constitution Dao was just Alice or just Tina or just one person saying, like, I'm going to do this. Like, I think the likelihood of some of a huge number of people saying, like, have my 40 plus million dollars feels lower. But when it feels like a social movement that is committing to, like, you know, best efforts and a refund and there's social trust built into the contribution, like, it makes new things possible, which is really cool.

Totally. And I think. I mean, from the beginning, the message of it was like, okay, by the Constitution. It's both funny and it makes sense. Like, there's like a purpose or mission to this and then actually, like, put it in public museums, but have it governed by the people who contributed. And that would mean, like, our plan was basically put together a short list of museums that we were talking to at the time and that were expressing interest and then let people vote and decide where it actually went. Because it turns out that the existing copies of the Constitution are in, like, major city hubs. Like, they don't, like, you know, random museums in the middle of nowhere don't get the chance to actually host them. And so I think that narrative around, there's like a collective process here around deciding what happens to the document just in terms of, like, even. Even in, like, the more limited sense of rotating through museums.

What locations.

Yeah, yeah, locations. Like, it really, like, it spoke to people on a deeper level. And yeah, it gets. It gets even more layered because there's something. There's something about it that, like, increases the artistic value of the document. It's like, yeah, there's like every good meme. Yeah, yeah, every good meme has 10 layers deep going down. And a lot of them to your point about, you know, NYU girls and we'll get into with mad realities too. There was like. There was a lot of, like, embedded meaning in it. And I think one thing that's interesting, when everyone feels like they are kind of a stakeholder, it's like people would put their own spin on it. Like, Constitution Dao meant different things to different people to some. And that was honestly fascinating because it's like this idea of like infinite stories, people. It just had different meaning to everyone who participated in it.

Okay, so I know Christine and I want to ask you about Mad Realities and like, what you guys are working on together.

So let's do that. Okay.

You guys have to explain what Mad Realities is. Like, what is the concept of a dating TV show? Reality TV show, Powered by Crypto. What does that even mean? I mean, I'm sure people in the audience have watched Love island and the Bachelor and we all know and love these guilty pleasures, but what does it mean to be taking it to interactive? What does it mean to be powered by crypto? Tell us about everything that you're working on with this project.

Yeah, so madrealities is actually something much bigger than the dating show itself. The dating show is called Proof of Love. And so to give you the whole picture really of like, how we're thinking about what we've learned from both of the things that we've been working on in the past, essentially, MadRealities is like, it's a decentralized media platform where at its core we're focusing on shared experiences, co creation and ownership at the community level. So what that really means is you could imagine a content platform like Netflix or like YouTube. So essentially crypto Netflix or crypto YouTube. But behind every show on the platform, there is a community behind it that's both co creating and also bootstrapping distribution. So the relationship between the audience and the creator is a lot closer and more just blurred as you move more towards web 3. We really think that the thing that's going to bring the next 100 million people into crypto is going to be content. And so rather than trying to go straight into building this type of platform and this thing that doesn't really exist, we think this is supposed to happen in phases and it's supposed to be very intuitive in the way you bring it to a more mainstream market and just really like build something that people want. So we think of it more as like a web 2.5 entrance is what we want to start with. So essentially what we're building as the first phase is, is what we call like the first reality TV channel on the platform before the platform exists. And so we're starting with a dating show, which is called Proof of Love. That was actually a name that someone in our community came up with when we did our first. So we launched a crowd sale. We minted 172 ETH worth of passes for this first show. And then we had opened it up saying, what should we call this show? Like, we want this to be the first thing that people decide on. And so Proof of Love is our first show where people can. Who hold our pass, can vote on the cast each week, can interact with the show live as it airs, and then can have a say in what happens in the finale and who's there. But you could really imagine taking a lot of the formats of hit reality TV shows that just work and shifting them into this new paradigm. So what does it look like if you do American Idol and you have the winner have their first song released on a music NFT platform? Or we joke about, like, Judge Judy for canceled people. Or there's so many different ideas. Like, really infinite ideas, infinite stories. You would watch that. I feel like, so funny.

Web3 or the crypto world needs that show. There's constantly drama.

I have people that are like, I want to be Judy. It's so funny. But really, yeah, we see, like, this is the first way to really figure out what does it actually look like. How can we figure it out ourselves with this first use case? And then if this feels like something that's working, which we're starting to see it work, like, we have a Discord server of a thousand people who are thinking about this dating show. That was also a thing we learned from the clubhouse show. Everyone had ideas of what an interactive dating show was supposed to look like. So, like, why not put them all in a space where they can actually think about it together? But so basically, when we figure out what this looks like with our own content with this first show, then we can take the reusable layers and productize them to actually create the tools and network and resources that other creatives need to eventually shift into a more web3 native way of creating and distributing content.

Amazing. Yeah. I think there's so many things that are exciting about taking it, making it live, allowing everyone to vote. Like, there's something so powerful when we all feel like we're collectively experiencing something at the same time. Like, I mean, even with things like wordle, which is just like taking the Internet by storm. And I was explaining it to some people, like, they're like, what is going on with wordle for so many people? It clicked when I was like, and every day everyone plays the same word. Then they're like, oh, I get why this is, like, so fun. Because it's not like I'm just going to do my crossword off to the side. It's like, we're all collectively on the Internet, living through this, like, moment and this experience that's not going to be here forever. You have to tune in now. So there's just so many things for entertainment and content where that ethos, I think can really play out super beautifully. And so I'm so excited to see how this all shapes up. So you guys are casting for the audience that's listening. The casting begins on Valentine's Day, February 14th. And then the show is going to start rolling in March. Tell us what it's like to actually produce a show, A decentralized show. Right. You're going to have like a distributed, decentralized cast and crew. Like give us a glimpse behind the scenes of what the actual production is like.

Yeah. Alice, do you want to start by talking about casting? Then we can also talk a little bit? I can jump in with the rest of production.

Sure. So the casting game is really fun because basically Valentine's Day, we open up the our casting website where people who hold the Genesis membership pass can vote on who they want to see on the show. And they'll be selecting three stars, like the first three stars who will each star in their own episode. So you can picture their like the Bachelor Bachelorette of their. Their like their segment. One thing that's going to be fun about it is like everyone can swipe left and right in this like dating app, like interface and watch a 15 second video of the person. We've already started seeing people cast themselves on Twitter submitting these like really funny videos that are honestly content themselves. It reminds me of the American Idol auditions in the first episode. But it's like actually just distributed across the Internet. And then. But then our rose holders will also be able to literally give someone, one person, a rose every week. It's like a super light that represents 100 votes. So we're like, we want tens and we want twos and threes. Like we want really strongly preferenced contestants to get voted in because that is entertaining and everyone deserves a shot. And so what's gonna happen after that is the season airs.

Wait, I'm gonna jump in.

You jump in. Okay. Cool.

One of the things that's really cool about our casting product is that anyone can nominate someone to be on the show. And so one of the things that I think this is pulling on from the Shoot yout Shot, like the NYU Girls Wrestling Tech Guy show is the first interaction that you're going to experience at the show. Doesn't necessarily, like, you don't necessarily need to be on the show. You don't necessarily need to even watch the show, but if someone nominates you, this is your first interaction with the show. And so it's like the thing that's going to remind you about the brand. But so essentially, yeah, anyone can nominate their friend to be on the show and people can upload that nomination or the ticket holders will be able to swipe in this like dating app UI on who actually makes it on. But we want this to be essentially like an Internet wide challenge where people starting in New York and in the crypto community really are nominating their friends on Twitter, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok in person. And it's kind of that thing where it's like, should I do it if people are actually telling me to? And so that's what Alice is getting out where it's really funny. Like we haven't even launched this game yet and people are starting to campaign to be our host on Twitter. We haven't even. It's all organic and I think that's pretty cool that once you start to feel like people are down for this thing that people are like, yeah, I want to make some content. This is funny. And so we're really excited for that first thing because it's going to be so funny to watch all these people like auditioning in these modern day versions of the auditions.

Yes.

We'll have to think about some characters to nominate for you guys. I definitely have those zany friends in.

My group that I'm like, everyone has one.

And if there was just. There's so many, you know, there's like moments where like some drama is going down or some funny conversation is happening. I'm like, where is the reality TV camera crew? Because this just needs to be captured.

Yeah.

If we all crowdsource that, it would just be so entertaining.

It's really all have that. I'm sorry.

Oh yeah, you go, yeah. Basically we always talk about how everyone has a friend that would be funny on a show. And what's so funny about this is it's not like, oh, this is a real reality TV show that's casting people. Like, no, we're some tech people putting on a dating show in New York and like you should be a part of it. It's. I think the narrative is pretty strong, similar to the way we were talking about it with NYU girls, Risk guys, the Constitution dial. This is a funny story that there's a dating show that you can get voted on to that you get crypto for participating in. Or like there's crypto involved somehow. And also the show itself, like the format which we can dive into in the rest of production too, also is getting at this before. But essentially the show is called Proof of Love and it's going to be six weeks long starting March 6th. And every episode except for the finale has a star who gets voted in by the pass holders. And then there's six contestants who are trying to essentially prove their love to the star in order to win. Winning really means either getting to go on a date with that person or they can choose to run away with a crypto prize. It's kind of like a funny commentary on the fact that a lot of dating shows are so ridiculous and are like, I love this person. Like I've only known them for 24 hours but like I see forever with them. We think that's really funny and it's kind of like a play on that. But really the show is supposed to similar to the way NYU Girls worked. Every episode is standalone. So if you get, if you first hear about the show on week four, it doesn't matter if you know what happened. Weeks one through three, you can jump in at any time. And then we're going to have a very fun social element around it where we're going to have an in person watch party in a gallery in Soho where people can come watch the episode. There's going to be a live after show where we have influencers and guest judges on who are basically like, that was pretty cringy, like tell us about your day, how did it go? And then the community can come hang out and like have a space to meet each other and really like get a firsthand experience of behind the scenes too.

Amazing. Well, we are so excited you heard it here, here. So casting begins February 14th. Nominate yourself, nominate your friends and the show will be dropping in March. We will definitely be tuning in and watching, chiming in on Twitter, wherever people are commenting. And I'm so excited for both of you ladies for the show and for the mad realities TV network that this could become. You know, Sarah and I really only invited you so could do a docudrama of like VC selling sunset. That's our angle. Yeah, I'm so excited for. Wait.

It would be really good. I see it.

My sister was like, I want a show where I'm Oprah and we're assessing people's real time, their value in real time. And then someone gets a car. We're like, okay, we'll come up with a ton of talk show ideas. We'll come up with A ton of you get year. You can be in the programming in year two.

I love it. It's like, what's your dream job, Oprah?

You guys are gonna get a sizzle reel from me and Christine about the next channel any day now.

It's gonna be so funny. Seriously, like, the content that's gonna be created from this thing, we laugh about it all the time. It's like the biggest meme. But this, we really think that this is actually the way that it's gonna make me.

It goes like 10 layers deeper. Like all, all the best memes. It's like Surface Layer one. Haha. Crypto dating show. And then there's like, you peel back the layers and you're like, wait, this actually is the future of tv.

Yes. Yeah. Amazing. Well, let's wrap things up. So we always love to wrap up our show with a super quick lightning round. We just ask you really quick questions and then we'll kind of sign off from there. So first question. Actually, I'll just kind of. I thought of this one now. I'm so curious. What is your favorite Web2Dating show?

I said this in a meeting the other day, and I feel like this is like, not necessarily, like, appropriate in the way I'm gonna quote it. I loved Next from mtv. I don't know if you guys remember this. I remember that one. Yeah. They would have these like, insane introductions where it'd be like, I'm Kyle, I'm 21, I work at a grocery store, so I know my way around some melons. It was like the funniest productions. They were so cringy. But we honestly, it's like very much inspiration for the way we want to produce this show. Yeah.

Mine is Love is Blind.

Nice.

Mine is honestly, like fan fiction. My favorite is, like, when people write fan fiction shipping characters.

You have to recommend some good ones. I haven't gotten deep into that world yet. Yeah. Last lightning question is, what is your favorite NFT project outside of Mad Realities? Are there, you know, projects, profile picture projects, anything in the space that you guys are fans of?

I love Crypto Coven. I think that I'm really sad that I sold some of mine early. They were so pretty. Like I would look at. They're like Barbies. But it's also, they have a really cool roadmap behind it. I think they did a great job onboarding a bunch of women. That's something that we care about a lot. We pay attention to a lot of the projects in the. The space of like, women led projects. So I think they crushed it and it's sick to see how well the project has done.

I liked Zorbs. It was a fun little experiment, I think. I just like that they got a little creative with it. Like, it. It's a different color in everyone's wallet. So you feel this attachment to your own zorb or like it's your spirit animal or something.

I love it.

I love it.

Dropping some alpha in our. In our episode. I have a crypto cover and I haven't seen a zoo Zorb yet, so I will check them out.

I try not to, like, I try not to show projects that have, like, financial decisions behind them. Zorbs are kind of. They were kind of this just like, fun little trinket.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's good to find the ones that are not like. And it costs thousands of dollars. So those are. I think it's fun to find projects across all stages, but yeah. Thank you, Devin and Alice both for coming on. This was an awesome, super fun chat. Yeah, it's been great to get to know you. Get to know your stories and everything that you're working on with Mad Realities. Last piece of tidbit is like, where can people follow you? Drop your social media handles or you know, where. Where can people tune into Mad Realities and all that.

Cool.

Well, for starters, for MadRealities, we are mad Realities across most things. So Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, although we have not started TikTok content yet, but there will be some good stuff. And we also have a mirror page where we sometimes do updates. And then myself personally, I'm Devin Lutan across everything.

I'm alicemamaw15 on Twitter.

Awesome.

Well, if you're listening, give them a listen or give them a follow, I should say. And thank you everyone for tuning into this week's episode of Fungible Times.

Yeah, have you guys back when you're web? Three media moguls so excited about it.

For MadRealities, by the way, it will launch on both our platform and then we're also going to air it on YouTube. So you'll be able to watch it on either. When you watch it on our platform, there's a second screen for interactivity that we'll have for ticket holders, but you can watch it live on both decks. YouTube, Madreality's platform. And then it will exist on the Internet after.

Whoa, I cannot wait. So I'm definitely putting a countdown for that, booking it in my calendar.

Awesome.

Until next time. Great to meet you.

Thanks, guys.

That concludes this special broadcast of Fungible Times featured here on the Gray Matter Channel. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled Gray Matter programming next week. In the meantime, be sure to tune in to Sarah, Christine and Mike's podcast about all things Web3 by subscribing to Fungible Times on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple or YouTube. And be sure to follow them on Twitter ungibletimes. I'm Heather Mack with Gray Matter. Thanks for listening.