Soren Wrenn on Creativity and Cryptomedia

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Infinite Money Glitch. I'm Zach, I'm here with Martin, my co-host, and today we have another very special guest, Mr. Soren Wren, founder of Titles.xyz. Soren, welcome to the show.

What is up everyone? Excited to be here, um, and stoked to hang out with 2 other Uh, big brain crypto folks. This is fun. So I'm excited to chat.

It's, it's our favorite thing to do. And, um, I could say the same thing about you. Um, I'm really excited to dive into all of your thoughts on the internet and crypto and everything around that more broadly. But I guess to start, uh, we like to start all of our shows with the same question to see how it changes across guests. What was your first memory of the internet? And how would you say that that ties into what you're doing today?

Yeah, I mean, first ever moment kind of using the internet was definitely like a dial-up moment. And so I don't know if that moment is specifically kind of the most profound, but I do remember sitting at my grandma's computer, kind of listening to that noise kind of get going and then really not having much of a memory after that because it was I was actually kind of a young, like I was so young at the point, but something that was, I think really shaped kind of my reality of kind of interacting with the internet was a few years later when I started playing competitive Call of Duty and kind of the entire ecosystem around that. So I started playing competitive Call of Duty with a bunch of friends and we built a team together and these are all people I didn't even know, by the way, you just meet them on PlayStation Live and then you start playing with them and then you make a YouTube channel together, and then you start uploading videos to that, and then you start playing against other teams, and then you meet those people, and then they, you know, you start switching between teammates and all that. Um, and so I think, you know, my most formative moments on the internet were definitely kind of the intersection of gaming and kind of YouTube and content creation and like what that all looked like, and then how you formed friendships kind of with these people competing. Um, just a weird era to kind of thinking about what esports became to be as well. So yeah, I mean, I think that's it.

And how does that tie into what you're doing today? I mentioned in your intro that you're the founder of a new company called Titles. What exactly is Titles? How did that come to be? And how does that relate to your early memories of the internet? Yeah.

So I think, you know, one thing or I think this is common with both of you guys as well, in that everything that you have done growing up has kind of in one way fed into what you're doing now as a founder of a company or what you like to work on with your side projects. And so I think with titles, what we're kind of asking the question around is like, what do creative composition tools look like for kind of crypto media creation? And like, how does Ethereum change the way that we create distribute and monetize our work online. And so, you know, I think if I were to connect it to what we were doing with the competitive gaming scene, I think you just learn a lot about kind of new internet mediums and how, you know, how much opportunity there is to just kind of create things that you're really interested in and then put them out in the world and then see what comes back to you from that. And so with the gaming space specifically, it was very much that, right? We were just doing things that we really enjoyed and we did them a lot. And then we put that content on the internet and then all of a sudden you start to create an entire ecosystem around that. And with crypto media specifically, it was like we looked at it and we said, hey, there's this massive population of people with a very specific kind of worldview that are all contributing assets to this thing that is called Ethereum. And We looked at it, we said, well, let's build tools that let you reach into that database and contribute to it and remix those things and create with them and then see what the outcome of that looks like. Right. And so Titles is really trying to explore that question overall.

Yeah. And you have something that the, this term that you keep using, and I noticed this on the Title website and you use it in your explanation there of crypto media. And I feel like I've loosely heard that before, but not as much as you use it. Could you elaborate on what that is, what that means to you, and why you're using that term?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, like we look at media on the internet and we had, you know, kind of version 1, which was kind of like these gated systems for publishing and sharing information. And so, you know, we had, you know, a lot of publications come online, right? And say, hey, what would it look like to share my newspaper, right?

Online.

And then we had the social internet, right, come along and kind of, you know, allow more bottoms-up approach for how we share kind of creativity or perspectives or content online, right? And I think, you know, both of those kind of were different kind of changes in the architecture of how information is shared. And so what's happening now with Web3 and crypto media specifically is it's a new infrastructure for how we put media online, and then how does it exist online as well? And so, and what I mean by that really is that, you know, when I share, you know, let's say a photo on Ethereum, right? It is now in association with my wallet address. And it exists in that substantiation throughout all applications that sit on top of Ethereum, which is a lot different than what we see with the traditional social web. And so that's why I kind of give the word crypto media very specifically, is that it is a new type of online media that deserves its own name at this point in time. Because it has a bunch of interesting unlocks that come from that. I don't know if you guys resonate with that, but that's kind of how I've thought about the evolution of what it, and why it deserves its own word.

It feels like a differentiation from like an NFT. I think a lot of times, like I've been associating like most media that is on Ethereum, on the blockchain exists through the medium of an NFT, but that's just kind of like how we're doing it right now, right? Yeah, media could be a contract or an address or any other, or just an event on the blockchain. It doesn't have to be specifically an NFT. So that's kind of a cool way to shift. And I think, yeah, just changing the term of something can completely change how you view it. So yeah, I appreciate that thoughtfulness.

Well, I think like language is so important with all of this. And like, I think too, with emergent technology, it's like, I mean, this is one of the reasons why building in the crypto media space is, and Ethereum overall is so exciting, is that you get to define what the technology means to the world moving forward, right? And so I think like, you know, language is really important in terms of how we push forward narratives specifically towards the future that we want. And like with NFTs, right? I don't have anything against the word NFT, right? Or, you know, like It's not a bad thing. I just think that people kind of associate that with PFPs, right? And like these little characters that we have in our profiles. And I think that's an incredible medium for storytelling and expression and all that. But I think it's very closely associated there. And I think the world that I'm most interested in entertaining and building around is what can Ethereum do specifically with the NFT file format itself? How is that a container for self-expression that is outside of what we put in our little kind of profile picture spaces on our Twitter profiles and all that, right? So, and that's back again to like what we're thinking about with titles, right? So language is super important if we want to continue to define like, what the hell does Ethereum mean to the world, right?

Sure. And so I hear you talking a lot about expression and talking a lot about how we communicate and media more broadly. Zooming out a bit, I know, Soren, that when you were younger, you worked on a lot of different side projects that somehow tied to media. I know we talked about like a YouTube channel that you were running, and you also wrote here in like our early notes that you had a music promotion business and got 50 million views in 6 months curating EDM. That's sick. I'm a big EDM fan. And then you also built an app that was an on-demand video and photo marketplace around the time of like UGC. How do you think user-generated content changes over time as we move into this world filled with crypto media? Do you think that there's a new behavior that gets unlocked with crypto media? Or do you think that it's a different file format to use that terminology? And that unlocks something new? How do you view that kind of shift in the user-generated content landscape?

Yeah, I mean, I think UGC, like both, I mean, the word UGC is hilarious to me and EDM, both of those like acronyms are hilarious to me because EDM is no longer really a prevalent way that we describe electronic music in that it's so prevalent. And so many like deep, deep kind of genres exist within EDM as a range. And so I think that's hilarious and a good thing, right? That it shows the evolution of like, how do we talk about this? And back to the language stuff. And then UGC alone, right? I remember when I was, this is like my entire foray into like technology was I was reaching the end of my time at Oregon State and I had been studying finance there. I thought I was going to go be go kind of work in finance with my family doing investment management, money management, all that. And then I got to the end, I was like, oh my God, I'm about to go just do this. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. And so I took a step back and I was like, well, let's just do fun stuff. And I was like, all right, let's make an app. Right? And so it's funny, I got up there and I pitched an app to this group and then they're like, this is really cool. And all of a sudden I find myself on a stage talking in front of 400 venture capitalists and Bend, Oregon of all places and being like talking about UGC and how it's the next wave of marketing and all that. And how that word and that acronym, right, is completely different now as well. And that, you know, it is, UGC is everything that we consume online now. It is not a subset of marketing, right? So anyway, I think, you know, this points to your question, right? Which is like, what is crypto media? What is You know, creativity in Ethereum, right? And I think, you know, the way I like to break this up a little bit is kind of like, I think most new kind of ways for storytelling, creativity, self-expression, all the kind of consumer social experiences that we have today are interface-level kind of progress, right? They are new constraints, kind of new methods for content creation. And so if we're going to look at like a lot of what's happening with the AI stuff going on right now, I think that's going to breed a ton more creativity in terms of formats and new mediums for storytelling and all of that. And when we look at crypto and like Ethereum and crypto media and all the words that we can use around that, I think about it much more of an infrastructure level kind of approach to how do we improve the current ways that we create media. And so, you know, I always think, you know, Something I don't hear a lot with a lot of the founders that are building in crypto is like the word customer a lot, which is like, how do you improve your customer's life in terms of saving them time, making them money, giving them distribution, right? Letting them do the things that they really want to do. And Ethereum maps beautifully to that in a lot of different ways. It has some constraints, don't get me wrong. But, you know, if we just look at Ethereum as a tool for distributing media, across a bunch of different interfaces that all have their own different way of interacting with that media. That is an incredibly powerful mechanism for the customers, right? The creatives. And so, to answer your question around like what happens with media and crypto media specifically as like new kind of new forms of creativity, I don't know if it changes that much. I think more about constraints that sit on top of these ways that we share. But This kind of gets into a question, which I think is very interesting, which is, is capital a means of, or is it, is capital a new mechanism for a constraint for creativity? Like, does it output different types of content? I think that's a really fascinating question that everyone is kind of exploring with crypto media today.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Can you say more about capital as a means of curation? I know that you You've thought a lot about kind of the application of what capital means in the future of media, when a lot of the media is programmatically generated. But then you also talk a lot about, you know, capital as a means of curation. Can you unpack what that means? You know, why it's important? Why should we be thinking about that?

Well, let me just ask you guys a question. Like, do you think that like, if it cost you $10 to share a photo on Instagram, you'd probably share less photos, but probably better ones?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I don't know, maybe that's a leading question, but like it does. No, no, no.

But it's, but it's true. I think if there's a, if there is a constraint that is financial, it definitely changes my behavior. I don't know if I could predict which way it would change it in every scenario, but I think directionally, yeah. Like if you attach a financial component to something, it changes your behavior.

So we have constraints, right? Like, hey, you can only send this long of a video, right? With 10 seconds. Or we have a constraint that is you can only post videos that have music on them, or you name, you can only share a tweet with this many characters, right? These are constraints that we have defined across time, across space, right? Capital is another form of constraint that I think is really fascinating in the context of creativity with crypto media and that. I think we only see certain types of media make it on-chain that people, like, for some way or another, they've rationalized that that is going to be valuable in that ecosystem, right? And so that's why we see access passes, right? With products, right? That's why we see these like PFPs, right? That I'm going to share 1,000 of them, right? So that I can distribute to like a broader range, right? So I think capital is a really interesting question for constraints for what do I want to put out into the world?

Right.

And playing around with that as a mechanism is, I don't know, it's, I just find it interesting overall to kind of explore that as like, as a kind of a benefit to what, like, what are you going to put out into the world from a creative composition perspective in the crypto media space? I don't know if that resonates with you guys, but I'm just curious, like, I don't know if we hear that that much, right? That like, that this is actually one of the benefits that will come through crypto, which is that only the best content as we build better tools for sharing is going to make it on this. But meanwhile, on the other side of things, we have these AI tools that are proliferating more and more media where I can take a selfie now and then it can generate 15 AI like iterated versions of that that are in different cartoon formats. And then I share all of them. And now are we in a world where there's so much media in our feeds that none of it is actually any that good, or we haven't actually, we have no kind of, um, it's like eating, it's like eating without the idea of calories in a way.

That's interesting.

I guess that's kind of my perspective on like capital as a means of, capital as a constraint for kind of creativity and how that can benefit us overall as well.

That is fascinating. I guess I never thought of it in that way before. But what I'm hearing is that there's now the AI force that is essentially creating what is trending toward infinite number or infinite amount of content. But at the same time, the quality of that content is trending towards zero. Whereas in crypto, what you are arguing is that crypto media could actually be the opposite model, where the quantity trends downward, maybe, but the quality of that content trends upward. And so I guess the question that I would pose back to that is, you know, how do we rationalize those 2 competing forces when there is one that may directionally push down the quantity of content and one that is pushing up the quantity of content? Do you think they coexist? Do you think they are opposing forces? How do you see those 2 things playing together?

Yeah, I mean, I think like another, you know, if we just kind of continue to zone in, right, then of like capital as a means, if we remove the idea that like there is capital as a constraint for good content production, right, like remove that, let's not even think about that anymore. But let's rather think about like where we're headed with programmatic media proliferating our timelines. And then like, how do we actually Kind of get to a place where we can actually see the things that are actually good in this ecosystem. And so I'll rewind a little bit to get there, which is in like right out of college, I had this server in my bedroom and I had about 1,000 Instagram accounts running on it. And each one would essentially look at Instagram in specific niches, and then it would grab the most performant content that was like on any point in time there. And it would just grab them and then put them into my server. And then I would essentially run new captions on that. And I would post the highest performing content back on Instagram. Some days I would do 25 million, 25 million impressions. And it was just this little thing. And I used about, and it spent about 3 to 4 hours of my week was kind of maintaining this. And so if there's one thing that this really kind of really teaches you, it's this power of kind of APIs and the internet, and then 2 social signals that are aggregated through these applications. And so if we look at what's happening with like generative media overall is that tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion and all that, they're allowing us to produce content at rates that like we've never really been able to see before. And so again, back to that example of like AI profile photos, people don't just post one, they post, they post, they post like 15 of them, right? And it's kind of insane, right? Because traditionally you'd have to like do it all by hand drawing on your iPad and then you'd post one and people would love it, right? But now we're at a point where we don't even appreciate that anymore. Yeah. And so I think like the question is like, why does that matter?

Right.

And it's, and it's, I get to the point, which is like, we're having this exponential increase in content with one, the creator economy and how many people are producing content. And then 2, how are all these, uh, how all these platforms actually cascade into one another? So I don't know if you notice, right, with all these podcasting clips, it's like they cut them up and then it's just your entire TikTok feed is just podcasting clips. And so all of these things now, like people have figured out how to make these cascade into one another. And then they also connect them with APIs. And so we're getting to a place now where it's just the growth curve of content is incredible. And so, but there's one thing that remains the same in all of this, which is our attention. And the way that we actually curate media today is through these algorithms that say, hey, you know, we're going to show this to 30 people. And then if you get enough likes, then we'll show it to 30 more people. Right. And this is crazy to me because like our attention is, is a finite resource, right? But it's also a scarce resource. And so the question that I kind of started to arrive on, which is, do we actually need a new mechanism for value signaling in a world where there is now so much media flowing through these timelines that we actually have no idea how to essentially say that this is good content or bad content because we don't have enough attention to apply to it? And so we need a new mechanism to say, hey, that this piece of content is truly valuable. And so that's where I got into the idea, which is like, hey, Like, is capital actually also a finite resource, but it also has the benefit that it has a kind of unbounded value application in that, you know, $1, me giving you $1 is a lot easier versus me giving you $100, right? And so on. And so what that says to me is it's kind of like a like in a sense where it's like, hey, I meant this, right? And it costs this much, right? It shows you how much I actually care about that thing. And so it's a broad question that I end up on, which is what happens when our timelines are just completely proliferated with media and how do we actually start to say that this is a good piece of content? I don't know. That's kind of where I arrive at the end of this. And I think it doesn't really have an answer because you could also make better AI models in theory. But it is a fun question to have, which is what is the benefit of capital as a means of curation? Right. Um, and I, I think, you know, you arrive on some interesting points from there.

That's pretty interesting, actually. I kind of want to go deeper on that. Like, what do you think does happen? Because I, I think that that's, that's the question is like, as we get more and more media, it's easier to produce more and more media, to copy past media, to, to get more things. It seems like your, your take is let's use capital as a way to like restrict basically what people interact with. Like, where do you think that ends up? Is like our social media feeds are Or whatever we use to interact with people and consume content is just more heavily curated and limited? Or yeah, I guess, where does this go, I guess, in 5 years if this vision that you're kind of putting out there becomes reality, just to help paint a picture a little bit?

Oh man, it's such a big question. I don't know. I mean, I think the short answer, I resolve to with this is that like the big question that crypto media asks, or like just, you know, crypto overall, like I guess NFTs and crypto media, they ask is what happens when markets meet media, right? Or what happens when finance merges with content, right? And I think you start to kind of point towards a world where more and more of this, of kind of the world that we interact with media looks a lot more like potentially what happens down on Wall Street. And that, you know, it's like there will be these people that really understand the nature of media from a financial perspective and how there will be a profession around people that can find underperforming or under— like people that can find stocks that are undervalued, right? There will be people that find media that is undervalued and can allow you to Yeah, it's mispriced assets, right? And so I think, yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of where we point towards is there will be kind of a new form of kind of curator of sense that looks a lot like kind of a stock analyst in a sense. I don't know, it's such a big question that I don't know what it looks like, but you could probably allude to that. It looks a little bit like what we have today, but in markets.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the role of like curation and finding great things to share with people and is— becomes— yeah, the role of curator becomes more important, which is very interesting. It kind of leads to this other thing that we want to talk about, which is you have this theory on DJs and the DJ to crypto founder pipeline, which it seems like you are an instance of that phenomenon. Can you tell us a little bit about that theory?

Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily Like a theory that I came up with in the idea that like someone had, people had been noticing the idea that, you know, there was this big crypto founder to DJ pipeline and vice versa. Right. And the more I saw that joke, I started laughing because I was like, well, goddamn, there's gotta be some truth to it. And like, why is that? Right. Because, you know, while I find myself grinding, you know, 80-hour weeks out trying to make titles, you know, happen, On the other side, you know, during the weekends, like one of my biggest hobbies is going to, you know, the recording studio and mixing, right? And so I was like, okay, this is, you know, it's like looking at the mirror when I see this joke pass my Twitter timeline. And I, you know, so, but then I started thinking about it a little bit more and I want to throw this back and forth between you guys because I think it's a fun thing to workshop a little bit. But yeah, I mean, some of the ideas that I had around this was like functionally, you know, like You know, my Rainbow wallet on my phone, like it reminds me a lot of like when I purchase an NFT or, you know, I like swap a new token or whatever. It reminds me a lot of the function of like loading up my USB that I then plug into CDJs, right?

Yep.

And that it's this, like, it feels like, like my crypto wallet feels like a hardware wallet. And even though I know there are Ledgers and all that, I don't really use those. But my point is, right, it doesn't feel, it feels like you're loading something up specifically that really represents who you are, right? And so that's like the first thing that I found pretty interesting. But then, right, it's like the wallets that you have as well, you bring those to the applications that then take those assets that live within them and allow you to compose those assets in new ways, right? So like Uniswap, right? It's, I give this token and I get that token out or whatever, right? But then like DJing, right? It's like I bring my tracks and then I plug them into the CDJs and then I mix them together and I get a new output out of that, right? And so the function of interacting with these products feels very similar to me. And I don't know if I'm just kind of reaching there, but it does feel like it's the same thing, right?

It makes sense. I mean, I'm also drawing the conclusion that like, you know, CDJs, for those that aren't familiar with DJing, are literally the decks that you, you know, mix the songs together on. And you have to bring your own USB stick to plug into them. And so It also sounds like, Soren, what you're saying is the CDJs are almost like the different interfaces that we interact with different smart contracts. So just as the smart contracts stay the same for Uniswap, there's still many, many interfaces for the Uniswap protocol, just like there are many different CDJs that you could plug in your same USB stick with your same songs, i.e., tokens, and still go use the tool to interact with them. I love that. I think it's great.

Yeah. I mean, it is, I mean, you said it so well there. Now that you say it back to me, I'm like, yes, it is exactly the same thing. Right. But so then there's another idea that I had, which I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, Martin, which is just like the amount of NFTs that interact with, it seems it's like, you know, when you see a new mint happening, it has to appeal on kind of like a It has to appeal kind of like on a new novel level in a sense, right? The NFT has to have a concept that really appeals to you in terms of visual asset, right? Or like it has a new kind of like smart contract novelty or it unlocks a new thing, right? And everyone kind of plays on the social capital of kind of the value of that new thing that they're representing in the space. And then meanwhile, like the job of a DJ in a lot of sense is to listen to a hell of a lot of music, right? And figure out what sound is being played today in the market and how can I tap into that, but then do that small derivation that represents who am I as a DJ, right? And then you take all of these tracks, right, that you listen to and then you put them together into a USB that represents kind of like who you are and then you play them back and people kind of resonate with, you know, the synthesis of what you presented to them, right? In terms of how those things are different. And so the act of being a DJ is a lot like, to me, that being, it's really similar to being a really NFT trader, right? And I'm not saying that I'm a good NFT trader, and I'm probably not that great of a DJ either. But like, but the act of doing those is very similar to me.

Yeah, it feels almost closer to like a— what I was thinking when we were talking about earlier is almost more like an NFT creator. And I think we're seeing a little bit more now with kind of this like open edition kind of meta that's happening right now, which I think is a really great, actually a really great development for this space, because Yeah, it doesn't feel like you need to have like a project. You could just like have an image and you just like, you know, throw it up on Zora and like mint it and get people to interact with it. And there's like a whole wave of people that are kind of like, a good example is like Jack Butcher's like Checks NFT, right? Which like the open edition, which that in itself is like a derivative of 2 things, right? It's like the Damien Hirst, I think, dots and the Twitter checkmark, right? So he's taking 2 concepts, putting them together. Then there's like, he's putting in like the Pepe like meme onto it. And then people are taking that and like doing something with nouns with it. And, and I think there's this other variable that we haven't touched on yet, but it's kind of like something that, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of, a lot of it in nouns, but I think it's happening across the spaces like CC0 and kind of like the, the, the ability to take people's like media and remix it in your own ways, um, is a really interesting development. And that's where I see kind of the DJ stuff also mixing in is like, Yeah, like let me take this, this, this trend that's happening right now and this trend that's happening right now and create something new. And, and right now it still feels a little bit, if I'm being honest, it feels a little bit gimmicky. Like I think the people that are doing this really well, like when I look at the output, I'm not like, whoa, this is, this makes me feel something. It's just like, oh, you remix these things like pretty interestingly in terms of the NFTs. But that's kind of how I think about it is like kind of the more like CC0 and like just like minting stuff by combining random like concepts.

Well, I think you allude to a really good point, like interesting point about the nature of crypto media today. And that like something I always say about Ethereum and the NFTs that exist there is that like, you know, when we look at the content that you see in TikTok versus the content you see in Instagram Reels, they are virtually the same product, right? But they're sourced from both its own population of individuals, right? That have their— and so, you know, Instagram is very Gen Z or millennial, right? Versus TikTok is very Gen Z, right? And both of those pop— there are generational differences between those groups of people and they have different ideas about how the world should be and all of that. And they find different things funny, right? And so the product of that, right, is a vastly different kind of like asset database that people draw on and create from, right? And so while these 2 different products for video seem like they're going to get the same thing out of them, what you get actually in aggregate is completely different content experiences. And so when you go over to Ethereum and what your point is, right, about like checks, a lot of content you see there is relatively uninteresting, right? To someone that like doesn't know about the culture that is Ethereum, right? And that is crypto media in that, you know, like checks is an inside joke that is going on and it is an inside joke that is continually redefined by reaching into this asset database that is completely closed off from the rest of the world, right? And so just like we see different content on all these platforms, right? When you go on these interfaces to look at crypto media, you're like, what the hell am I looking at? Why is this cool? And that's one of the biggest problems, right? That I think I see in the space, which is there's no real narrative content that like competes on the same level of like what we're seeing in the, like in Web2 essentially. And I think like companies like Zora are doing a good job, which is they're just like approaching it, let's tell stories about the individuals, like, like are doing cool stuff and we'll put it on chain and so you can read it or view it on chain. And then, you know, then you can start to do the interaction methods that happen from there. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's kind of fascinating to look at Ethereum as its own idea, like population of people that are contributing to it. And then the product of that as kind of its own kind of remix culture that sits on top of it.

So I think that all of that makes sense, Soren. And I think you're hitting on a really interesting point that the way you build products in crypto is fundamentally different than how you build them in Web2. And I think that although we, you know, I think all 3 of us agree, Zora does a great job of showing off individual creators and telling the story of the human behind the technology. I think that's all well and good. I think one thing beyond that, though, that Soren, you and I both agree with, is that from a product standpoint, showing data on-chain isn't that interesting. You already made that point. It's the contextualization and curation of that data that's interesting. And so I think what Zora does well in this regard is curating the human stories behind the data. I think, you know, we share this interest in Dune. You know, Dune is answering questions that people want in a crowdsourced way. So therefore, it's curating and contextualizing the data that way. How do you see this, like, shift in how products get built and shift in product strategy evolve from Web2 to Web3 through this lens of curation and everything you've been talking about?

Yeah, I mean, I think like one of the coolest parts about building in the space is that there is this corpus of data that already exists, right? And that people are always contributing to and it's always updating. And it makes it a little bit mind-boggling. Right. But it's this thing that you can reach into and allow, build tools for like synthesis of such data. So you mentioned Dune, right? Like the reason why Dune, I find Dune so fascinating is that, you know, it's SQL querying tool that looks at a corpus data. Like it's effectively like what Retool is. Right. And that, and if people don't know what Retool is, right, it's just, it's SQL querying tools that let you reach into these databases. Right. But it goes on top of a unique data source that doesn't really exist anywhere else, like I was just saying, right? And in aggregate, right, they build these presentation tools that give you the opportunity to tell stories about that data and say, hey, this is what's happening in this dataset. And we gave you the tools to go grab that data. Now all of a sudden you get stories that you can't find anywhere else, right? And so more broadly, I think the point I'm making here is that Ethereum is pitched as the world computer. Like that was one of their OG taglines. And like, I don't know if Vitalik's still using that necessarily. I'd hope so, 'cause it's pretty sweet. But the thing that I think is interesting about like that and its application to what we built with dApps and how we build on top of it is that there's this quote about the value of computing isn't actually showing the data, it's the synthesis of such data. And so I think like when building products in the space, the big unlock, and this is not all products, right? But the big unlock that we can continually hone in on is how do we allow individuals to take this unique corpus of data and expose new surface area to find value against it, right? And so Dune does a really good job at that. And it's something that we're exploring at the media side of things in terms of like NFTs and crypto media with titles. And I think, Zach, you know, you're thinking a lot about, right, in terms of how does, you know, these things interface with one another across multiple data types, right? And so I think overall, I think that's a really interesting area to explore that I think a lot of people aren't really focusing in on enough. And I may be wrong about that because I'm just, you know, always heads down about it, but in terms of product building, but it's an inversion about how Web2 product building works, which is Web2, right? Like, you know, if I were to build a, like a creative composition tool in Web2, I have to essentially say everyone has to bring all of their data and then they have to do everything inside of that product. Right. And so the way that, like, or an example of this would be if Zach and I want to do Snapchat each other, I'd have to, he'd have to be on the app. I'd have to be on the app and I have to take a selfie. Then I have to send it to him. He'd have to open it and then, and then he'd have to respond for that to create that feedback loop.

Yeah.

And I think with Web3, right, it's, you can build a specific use case and because of on-chain data, right, you can reinforce that use case with products that are generating on-chain data to kind of reinforce what your user is doing in your product because it's a shared database. So I don't know if that entirely makes sense to you guys, but I think like, I think that's a special opportunity from a product building perspective.

100%. I think that we share a lot of views of where the world is going from that sense. And I think that that summed it up pretty well. I know we're getting to the top of the hour here. So to, to tie us up, I want to synthesize these ideas in a, in a framework that people can walk away with. And Soren, I think that you do a really good job of this in one, how you name your products at Titles, but also just the general kind of creative process and how Ethereum maps to that creative process. So I think as a place to wrap up, can you talk a little bit more about Source, this new product that you launched, and how sourcing into publishing into monetization is that sort of creative process and how Ethereum maps to that?

Yeah, I mean, I think I appreciate the kind words on product naming. That's always a good sentiment to receive. And like with titles, right? Like, you know, what we're trying to do, right, is make it really easy for anyone to create and remix crypto media and publish on-chain all from your phone, right? So when we build it, when we started building kind of creative composition tools, I wanted to map the entire process to specifically the creative process. And so I took a, you know, look at myself and I said, what do I do, right, in terms of producing anything that's creative? Yeah. And the first thing I looked at was, well, you know, I sit down and I ingest the world around me in terms of that medium that I want to create. And it's the act of kind of sourcing inspiration, right? And so, you know, with Titles, you know, we asked, okay, well, let's build a product for sourcing inspiration, but with the bridge into the idea that all of the materials that you source on Ethereum are also raw materials that you can compose with. And so Source maps to that first part of the journey in that we aggregate all of the crypto media and then let you save those assets that you find compelling that then you can use in creation tools from there on forward. And that bridges into kind of the second point of the creative process, which is just creative composition tools, right? How do we let you compose with these raw assets? And I think a lot of it looks really similar to what we see today, right? In that we have video editing, we have 2D canvas tools, right? We're not really in the music space, right? But we have like DAWs for audio production, right? There are a lot of kind of really cool, powerful tools that let you compose with existing assets and then create new creative compositions with those. And so with Create, right, the thing that we're exploring is, okay, how do you— what is specific about crypto media in terms of composing these things together? And then how can we continue to expand that? With a lot of the cool stuff that's happening around AI models and making kind of manipulating media with those, how can we do that in new and novel ways? But then lastly, right, it's like as you create things that are really interesting, there's the opportunity to publish those, right? Instead of saying, hey, we're going to publish those in our application, let's publish those on-chain and let's kind of get the benefits from that. And that these assets become one automatically distributed assets where they may exist in products like mint.fun, They exist in marketplaces like Blur versus the old OpenSea, right? But then they also become financial endpoints, right? And that people can collect these things and they can create markets, can arise around them. And so if I were to back out entirely, right, we look at this entire opportunity with creative composition tools to say, hey, let's let people source, create, and publish all these, their work on-chain in a simple kind of connected toolset. And see the benefits that come from actually sharing your work on Ethereum.

I love that. I feel like that is like a total mic drop moment and a perfect place to wrap. Soren, before we leave, where can people find you online? What's your Twitter? What's the website? Where can they find titles? How do they get on Source? Plug everything you need to plug.

Well, the good thing is I'm the only Soren Wren on planet Earth. So it's just Soren, S-O-R-E-N-W-R-E-N-N, and you can find me on every social platform and ENS right via that. And that's a pretty good place to kind of move into the Titles universe from there. But, you know, Titles is T-I-T-L-E-S-X-Y-Z on every single platform as well. And that's where, you know, I think we're excited to talk to more and more creatives and people that, you know, are interested in curating excellent media on Ethereum as well. and bringing them into our world to kind of work on building really cool creative outputs, right? And building tools for them to kind of expand what is media on Ethereum. So I'll leave it at that. And thank y'all for having me. We went all over the place and we dove into some really interesting stuff. So I don't know, I had a lot of fun.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

I love it. Thank you so much, Soren. We're so glad that we could get you on the show and yeah, we'll have to do this again soon.