The Delphi Podcast
The Delphi Podcast
Daryl Xu: Building B3, The Next Evolution in Crypto Gaming Infrastructure
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Join Piers Kicks as he hosts Daryl Xu, founder of B3, for an exploration of how they're building the optimized Layer 3 solution for gaming on Base, creating the homepage for on-chain gaming, and revolutionizing gaming infrastructure through innovative economic incentives.
🎯 Key Highlights
▸ Evolution from Coinbase and Base to B3
▸ Deep dive into game chain strategy
▸ Analysis of B3 token utility and economics
▸ Discussion of regulatory impact on gaming
▸ Insights into developer incentives
▸ Vision for on-chain gaming infrastructure
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🧠 Follow the Alpha
▸ Piers's Twitter: @pierskicks
▸ Daryl's Twitter: @darylX24
🔗 Connect with Delphi
🌐 Portal: https://delphidigital.io/
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/delphi_digital
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/delphi-digital
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-delphi-podcast/id1438148082
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:09 - Career Background
02:54 - Gaming Focus
05:08 - Team Structure
08:47 - Infrastructure Vision
12:25 - Product Overview
17:08 - Game Chain Strategy
21:26 - Developer Relations
26:12 - Token Economics
31:38 - DAO Governance
34:16 - Foundation Strategy
42:12 - Regulation Impact
48:27 - Building Philosophy
54:46 - Market Outlook
59:32 - Digital Experience
01:03:09 - Book Recommendations
Disclaimer
This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host and members at Delphi Ventures may personally own tokens or art that are mentioned on the podcast. Our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle, and/or the end of the episode. These sponsorships are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to use any product, service or token.
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SPEAKER_01Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Delphi Podcast. Today I'm delighted to introduce you all to Daryl. He is the founder of B3. Daryl and I go back many years now, actually, you know, regular sinks and catching up and sort of exploring different different areas of overlap. And so super excited to see him now in the driver's seat of his own project, uh, which I'm you know proud, proud angel investor in and very excited for the sort of upcoming token launch. Daryl, thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me, Pierce. Yeah, I just want to say huge, huge pleasure, super pumped to be here today. As Pierce was saying, I think when I was first exploring the crypto gaming space, you were one of my first calls. So I can say, you know, in a lot of ways, like you kind of brought us to where we are today on this journey. So super grateful to be here today. Excited to chat and share more about B3 in our background.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Appreciate that, man. Um, yeah, let's kick it off then. We'd love to hear, yeah, give us a bit of context on sort of like, yeah, journey into the industry, what you've been up to, you know, prior to B3, and obviously sort of Coinbase-based uh trajectory and kind of how that's uh yeah, anchored things for what you're focusing on now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I won't bore your listeners with all of the detail, but I'll give you guys the quick and dirty. I've been working in crypto since late 2015. I first began experimenting with I think more enterprise blockchain applications at the time. If you folks remember, that was like the meta at the time where Fortune 500s were gonna take, you know, payments, a supply chain, and make that more efficient on-chain. And I think actually we've come full circle. Some folks are actually doing that in a meaningful way, but that was my first entry point. And then I worked on a venture studio with a few partners, business partners of mine. And we did that in you know, 17, 18, bear market hit pretty hard. So we went our separate ways. I found a home at Coinbase, joined as one of the earlier members of the go-to-market and ecosystem teams. And I think from there was my real you know crash course into crypto. And at Coinbase, I helped to bring a lot of our crypto native products to market. Et2 staking, helped to, you know, position our thinking around gaming. And the last tour of duty, you know, I and my co-founders, we worked on base. So we helped bring that from testnet all the way to Mainnet and grow the you know initial base of builders and ecosystem participants. So that was what we did, and then made our way to B3 because we saw an opportunity to really help scale gaming on base. And that yeah, landed us to where we are today.
SPEAKER_01I love that. And yeah, maybe you could give us a bit of flavor in terms of like, you know, why gaming, as in, like, you know, on a from a personal perspective, like uh yeah, would love to know a bit more about why that was why you naturally sort of like gravitated towards as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like that comes to basically like elementary school, Daryl. Like I've always had, I think, uh deep, deep passion and just been drawn to gaming almost as like an outlet. For for me, it was like when Elon said gaming was like therapy, it resonated a lot with me actually. Cause you know, I just love back in the day, you know, plugging into Diablo 2 or you know, Starcraft. Blizzard was basically my home. I lived in Blizzard for the longest time and just kind of you know, checking out and just playing and grinding. And so I've always had like a deep, deep affinity for gaming. And for me, when I saw Axi, right, and Ronin and let's call it the first cycle of gaming really take off. I felt like there was so much opportunity. That's why I was so insistent on, you know, working with Coinbase at the time to figure out how we can really scale gaming, right? Coinbase had this pool of 120 million, 100 million users. How can we bring all of those on-chain to play crypto games? Right, because there was very, very strong overlap in terms of demographics. And so I think for me, always felt like there was a natural tie-in between gaming and crypto. And I just think back to the early days, like if you know, I was playing Diablo and I was doing bail runs and grinding for hours on end, and you know, I could actually make some money from that, right? And keep ownership in that, that would be incredible. That would be like, I probably wouldn't even be in crypto today. I would just be, you know, a lifetime gamer because you could just play and earn, and that could be your entire life, right? So I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to do that. You know, we had a few false starts in the industry, but this time it feels like we're ready for the main show.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love that. I love that framing. Um, I uh hadn't quite reflected on if I was actually getting material dollar value out of the games I was grinding on growing up, whether I would have ever ended up doing you know other things, probably not. It's a it's a good point. But uh so yeah, maybe you can give us a bit of an overview. Like obviously you mentioned um some of your co-founders. Like, tell us a bit about you know who was the original kind of founding team, like what's the kind of company structure look like right now. Um, yeah, I would love a bit of a bit of an overview.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, of course. So we're a team of all, you know, ex Coinbase space. So the founding team, myself, one of my co-founders, Victoria Hying, and our third co-founder and CTO, Sean Gang, all worked at Coinbase together. You know, Victoria and I helped to bring base to market. Sean was an engineering leader on the wallet side. And I think for us, we all had just this similar passion for gaming. You know, Victoria's favorite game is like the Sims. Her dream is to bring that on chain one day. So it's not GTA actually for her, it's Sims. And Sean was like a RuneScape maxi. So actually, he's building just as a side quest, this like RuneScape open world that you know we'll be sharing more in the coming weeks. But basically, we all bonded over like gaming and how we can bring gaming on-chain. And so the idea of B3 really came about when we had like so much demand, and Pierce, you remember this, right? Like, so much demand from large studios to come and build large gaming worlds and ecosystems on base. I think the problem at the time was, you know, twofold. One, base was too expensive as a blockchain. So these studios that wanted to, you know, run marketplaces, right? Run a lot of AAA grade titles on-chain, they would have paid like hundreds of thousands of dollars in compute cost per year. That just doesn't make sense as a studio when your margins are super thin, right? And then two, I think they were looking for publisher-like support. And what I mean by that is they're looking for an ecosystem chain partner that's gonna help them along with marketing, distribution, and also financial support to scale the games on UA, right? Once they're ready. And I think at base, we were doing as much as we could, but usually it was an in-out feature or a tweet, right? Which moves the needle, I think, for a lot of projects, but not for a game that's looking to onboard hundreds of millions of users. So that's how we came together and said, hey, you know, why don't we build a layer three ecosystem on base and we launch it just as a gaming focused ecosystem? So that way, you know, transaction costs are super, super low. It's about one one hundredth of the transaction cost of base. And from a support perspective, we're able to offer publisher-like support. So support across marketing, tech, and you know, financial as well. So that's how we came together. Team is pretty lean today. So we only have, let's see, 12 folks full-time and around eight contractors. So similar structure to how we launched base back in the day. We want to keep things like really, really lean and really mean. And I think you can accomplish a lot with, you know, just a handful of folks. And I couldn't think of a better team to be building with.
SPEAKER_01Love that. And then, yeah, would love to get a bit of a view from your perspective, right? You touched on some of these core needs of like uh the developers that you were speaking to. Um, like, you know, a lot of that kind of like publisher support, like maybe some of the sort of um, you know, more esoteric know-how about launching economies on chain and things like that. Like, sort of beyond beyond some of these uh dimensions to what you're talking about, like what do you think it really takes to kind of differentiate in a pretty saturated infrastructure landscape right now, right? Like we see everyone and their mother launching chains and like um putting the cart before the horse, I think, before really the demands there. Like, um, obviously the kind of base centricity and your experience working around that is like you know, hugely valuable. But yeah, how do you guys think about you know what what these people are looking for and what's actually gonna like sort of stand out from the as I say, the the pretty saturated kind of infralandscape?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think for gaming it's going to come down to and and I feel like everyone has beat this dead horse, but really it's gonna come down to fun, engaging content. And I don't think necessarily it's a bad thing that everyone's building their own chain. I mean, I think sure you're gonna get some chains that are, you know, ghost chains, let's call them, right? And maybe some chains that are actually just vaporware, right? But I do think that for any large game, you know, whether it's in the casual genre like a Candy Crush or, you know, the amazing off-the-grid Godzilla team, right, that's building in a more sophisticated genre, right, you're gonna need your own chain because the amount of throughput that you're gonna be running through, right, even Candy Crush, right? Millions and millions of DAU, right? It makes sense to run your own chain because if you're putting that activity on chain and you're doing it on, you know, let's say like layer two, right, or layer one ecosystem, you're literally gonna bankrupt yourself and just compute costs, right? And if you actually run your own chain, then the fees that you could accrue, right, you could put it back into the ecosystem, invest in growth, or you could almost become a publisher yourself, right? And onboard third-party titles. So I think this idea of a saturated like infrastructure landscape, I feel like it's a point-in-time issue. Like right now, we think there's too many, but that's because the content and the apps haven't caught up yet. I think like fast forward two, three years, like we'll see amazing applications and amazing games, and people will naturally say, like, hey, we're finally here. We don't, you know, that's not an issue. Um, I think when it comes to differentiation, like right now, because we don't have that many apps yet, I think it's really around the community that you can build. I think Abstract, just to give them a shout-out, they've done a great job, right? Like, that's a good example along with base of building this like culture and community where you're bringing in awesome builders to build those apps. So that's what we're trying to do here, just like we did back at BASE, where we're building this culture and community and publisher-like support. So then we're bringing in these like amazing AAA developers that you know built some of the biggest titles of your childhood, and they're gonna be building those games. And the idea is even if just a handful of those games hit, right? Like that's gonna be, you know, the millions of users that we've all been waiting for. And I think gaming is the best way to do that. Like, out of all the consumer applications and use cases, gaming is the best way to onboard millions of users.
SPEAKER_01Couldn't agree more on the last point, of course. Uh, still fighting the good fight. And yeah, yeah, strong believer. I think a lot of us on the Delphi team, you know, share that view that in terms of yeah, that big kind of consumer-facing onboarding funnel, like uh still feels like games are incredibly well placed for that. Um, to your point around it being a sort of point-in-time issue, I also love that as well, right? That uh yeah, need more of the apps. I guess the the only place where I tend to have reservations is we see so many people like you know just building info and tooling without a clear path to engaging like actual pedigree apps, games, products, developers that are actually gonna come and drop this stuff. And so um that's the stuff that I expect to see, you know, uh gonna have a trickier time with. But um, I guess taking a bit uh uh a bit of a step back, like would love for you to give us an overview of like, you know, what are the core products you've got on B3 right now, right? You kind of have this flagship with Basement, which I'd love to hear um your thoughts on, and then talk us through what like the next pillars are in terms of engaging these big devs and like what that looks like and how it fits into the overall kind of uh offering, if you like, uh, or ecosystem here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the the way that we're building out the B3 ecosystem is very similar to how we built out base and how you know Jesse envisioned base back in the day, right? So there's a couple layers to this. I think base was the blockchain, right? But you have apps, right, that are being built on top of the blockchain. And you also need basically a discovery surface for those apps. So we're taking that same framing and same framework and trying to apply it to gaming. So if you think about the B3 ecosystem, there's two parts. There's B3 Mainnet, which is layer three that sits on top of BASE that transactions can run on, super cheap, super fast, right? And then there's also basement.fun, which was actually a core problem that we found like early in the day when I was at base, where a lot of people would ask me, like, hey, you know, what are some of the consumer apps on BASE besides FriendTech, right? Besides some of these meme coin launch pads, like where can I find them? There's literally no place to do that. I would send them to like base.org and just like, hey, check out the website directory and see like the links, right? That's a really terrible user experience. So I think for us, the first thing we wanted to do in addition to building mainnet was build what we're calling like the homepage of launching gaming. And you go there, right, as a new user that maybe is interested in discovering crypto games, maybe not as familiar with crypto, you can go in and just start playing the games. And I think that's where the mini clip experience really resonates with some folks because you just go in, jump in just like you did, you know, in the HTML days, go in and start playing. And you reach a certain level or you get a certain amount of rewards, then you get prompted to create a wallet, right? So I think for us, we want to make the experience super accessible and also start to build up this, you know, roster of games that are featured that are the highest quality. So then new people that come in can just go and check it out. So basement.fun, that's like the Discovery app, right? The home page for on-chain gaming. And then when it comes to B3 Mainnet, so our mainnet right now, we have about 6 million wallets and we have about 200 million transactions. So in six months, I think we are, you know, one of the top, if not the top, L3s now in the ecosystem. And the next phase of the roadmap, which I'm really excited about, is this idea of bringing game chains to market. So I think, you know, the the concept of a game chain, I don't think is actually that new, right? Avax subnets, right, and you know, Polygon SuperNets, I think other people have eventually this idea in their own ecosystems. But what we're trying to do different and what we're trying to solve for is actual interoperability between different game chains. So I think one example that I usually bring up is, you know, Godzilla, right, is going to onboard like a crazy amount of users. So is Maple Story. They're both technically in the AVAX ecosystem, right? And they both have their own chains and they're both building massive user bases. I think one of the promises of this like larger super chain ecosystem is supposed to be this idea of like chains working together and being able to interoperate. I think it's great from a technical perspective. We have gigabrains out there, they're gonna solve that. I think what's missing is the economic incentive for these chains to actually work together. Right. And so, you know, even if Maple Story onboards like a million users, are they really gonna go out of their way to send that to another AVAX chain in the ecosystem without an economic incentive? I don't think so. So for us, like we have, you know, amazing studio partners launching these game chains. We're gonna have five, you know, very soon here. And the difference between our ecosystem setup, our stack, and another ecosystems is this idea of referral incentives. So if you're, you know, on Prime Chain, for example, which we announced a couple months ago, right, and your user on Prime Chain and you go to a new chain and you, you know, buy an NFT that's on chain, right? Or you trade or you swap something, a little bit of that user's revenue is gonna go back to parallel the developer. So there is this referral incentive/slash affiliate fee model where we're encouraging the different chains to actually work together because they both benefit. Ends up being like a win-win. So from a tech perspective, I think you know, a lot of what we're building is super cool. But I do want to highlight that, you know, we are really excited about this super chain for gaming vision because we have this like economic incentive for everyone to work together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I love that. I think it makes a ton of sense, right? You're sort of like everyone's encouraged to maximize like LTV of these users, no matter where exactly the interactions or whatever's happening, right? Because you have that kind of attribution and like participation, you know, whoever onboarded and what whatever they end up doing. I actually think that's one of the beautiful parts of like doing things on-chain in general, right? Like um, is the ability to build these sort of like pretty rich like user graphs, player profiles, but obviously all subsequent transactions you can basically see yeah, where they originally came in, where they end up going, and like, yeah, as you say, allow people to participate in in those economics broadly. I think that's uh yeah, super strong. Um, very excited to see some of that like uh in action um and see how things I think our diagnosis, exactly what you said.
SPEAKER_00I think our diagnosis was, you know, I think we have a decent chunk of users in crypto today that are active, right? Maybe in the low millions, if you include, you know, meme coin traders and snipers, right? But I think if we don't create this broader economic framework and incentive, everyone's gonna be competing for like the same users, right? And so we want to find a way where we're growing the pie, not you know, just competing for the same user pool every time.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Um, yeah, makes makes a lot of sense, as I say. Very excited to see how all of that uh all of that piece evolves. Um, and then yeah, just wanted to double click as well, right? Like I love this framing of like on-chain mini clip, you know, basement the basement's already like a really dope place to go and check out all of these mini games. Like, definitely hits the sort of nostalgic element of you know, logging in in 2005 on mini clip and seeing what things are like. Like, um yeah, what uh curious just like what the like evolution of that is to be, like what um what you guys have seen sort of resonate with users already so far. Like, yeah, I would love a little bit more color on there for people that maybe haven't jumped into the product yet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a thousand percent. I think nostalgia is in just generally, right? And I think there's an interesting play here where we can make the crypto user experience super seamless, abstract away as much as possible, and also just play on like new and old IP, remix it and bring it to life, right, on-chain. So I think that's really the strategy on the mini clip side. And a lot of the games that we've seen where we're bringing them back to life, right, giving them a breath of fresh air on-chain have done really well. So they've been some of the top games that are played on basement today. We have around 300K active users. And if you look at the user breakdown, right, some of the top games are those nostalgic games that we've been reviving. They have the most playtime, the most hours played, which is a metric that we track on basement.fun, just again, trying to move us in the direction of like better attribution and higher quality users. So yeah, super excited about that. And if you guys recall, like there were a few massive hits back in the day on MiniClip. And, you know, we will be bringing some of those back to life on chain. So we actually, you know, had the fortune opportunity to talk to a lot of those game developers that, you know, built some of those OG games back in the day, and they're gonna be launching crypto versions of those games that will be available to play on Basement.fun really, really soon.
SPEAKER_01That kind of stuff I'm very excited to see taken a step further. Like, I don't know whether we, I mean, I'm sure we touched on it in conversation at some point, but I still think, you know, stuff like those super fun old school like co-op games like Bubble Trouble or whatever. If you had an ability to set like um, you know, uh stuff like Fraser, right? Where you know you were trying to crack that smart contract, you got one prompt per day, but obviously it's like the the the cost per prompt scales, things like that, right? Where basically you can uh with a friend group can basically wager to like you know, pay an entry basically to take a shot at uh getting on the leaderboards amongst a friend group that's like everyone's opted into. And basically whoever takes the K you know in terms of high score after X period gets like everyone else's entries and stuff. I think those old school super casual, fun, like nostalgic games and allowing people to sort of uh yeah, like I know it's like a trivial amount of money, maybe if it's amongst friends, but it would be like a really fun kind of engagement loop that I'm excited, uh excited to see people like try and implement. So I'm curious, is there any any aspects of that that you guys are are looking at in terms of like yeah, additional stuff around just bringing bringing these games back?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah. I feel like there's so many things that crypto is uniquely enabling, right? And I think you know, payments, cross-border payments is obviously one of them. But even game-specific things like what you just mentioned around multiplayer experiences and more real time wagering, I feel like that's one of the key like pieces we can unlock through crypto, right? So just one simple example, you know, one of the I can't mention the name just yet because we're announcing it pretty soon, but one of the games that I think was top three on Mini Clip. Right, where it's like a side scroller, you're able to play, right? That was just a single player experience back in the day. But what the game developer wants to do is do like a multiplayer experience, right? And do wagering on-chain. And so, you know, wagering can take many, many different forms, right? But it could be, you know, wagering a high score, right? Or wagering against, you know, an outcome, right? Tied to the game. And I think you can do that on B3 uniquely in basement because one, like our chain is really fast, high throughput, and also just really cheap. So microtransactions just make a ton of sense, right? So you don't have to wager that much. And so, yeah, those those are things I'm super excited about. And also think the social element, too, is really why like gaming to me is gonna be able to exponentially scale, right? From like one million users. If we just find that breakout hit, it'll go very quickly to like 50, right? Or 100. Because like if you find that viral loop, like you're saying, right, you're you're gonna be able to bring in like not just the folks that played the game initially, right? But all the folks that you know are in that person's network. So very similar to like Zynga back in the day, right? We just gotta find maybe Farcaster Frames is it, because I know you know Dan's doing a lot, but we just gotta find that platform to unlock it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh, totally, totally agree. Um, I think that kind of social viral uh aspect of things is is really cool. And um, I don't know, a lot of these things were as I as I say, even if they're trivial stakes, but you you know, like the the wager aspect just makes engagement and retention, like it's it's so much more fun when that's involved. And um, especially some of these ones where you have like yeah, runaway pools of money as people come in and like you know, one person takes it home. Um there was some app that got huge in the UK a few years ago, I forget the the name of it, but it was like basically everyone uh would watch adverts to get like a lottery ticket entry, and there would be a portion of the ad revenue generated over like a fortnight where it basically the amount of tickets you had like gave you some uh chance of obviously winning it, and it was like you know, whatever teenagers playing it and like university students, but every two or three weeks someone would get like a £20,000 payout, and obviously, like even though it's so few people, it's just the prospect of it is uh is really cool. Like we saw similar stuff with things like pool together, right? Of like people wanting to get engaged in these things, so yeah, very keen to see how that evolved.
SPEAKER_00Even crypto versions of it, right? Like crypto the game was another partner I work with back in the early days of base. I think what they did where you had like Survivor on chain, right, was super interesting. Put in a little bit and you know, have a chance to win like the gosh, I think it was like 20, 30 eighth prize pool or something like that. That was cool, right? And yeah, I'm still like my wife in general is bearish on crypto, right? But I think there's gonna be two things that could convince her to be, you know, mildly bullish. Let's just put it that way. One is if you know the Bitcoin strategic reserve happens, I think that's gonna be a big, you know, um thing that could move the needle. But the second would be if we somehow brought HQ trivia on-chain, like a version of that. Uh, because she freaking loved that game. Uh, she would play it at work with all of her friends. Like it just feels like a natural fit to me where if we can make you know the payout experience pretty smooth, right? Like that that's a natural fit for like an on-chain game.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Uh yeah, let's see. I think there's tons of those that would that would uh qualify. And it's not hard to do, right? And again, like the kind of viral social loop when you have these more casual experiences are so easy for people to opt into and on board through that uh yeah, I think it's uh think it's a very strong fit. I'm curious as well. Um, obviously, the whole AI agent gaming, all sorts of stuff going on. Like uh, is there anything going on in your ecosystem that you're excited by or trends that you'd like like to see perhaps either around basement or elsewhere? I feel like um yeah, there's like almost more experimentation on that front happening in crypto than outside of it. And uh again, the ability to speculate on that is part of the allure. And so um, yeah, definitely something I'm tracking quite closely this year as that continues to evolve. But curious if there's anything standout so far on your side.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think AI is top of mind for us, but we want to make sure to do it in a way that you know enhances either the products that we're building or delivers more value to you know B3 token holders, right? We announced our TGE that's happening pretty soon last week, right? We want to make sure that we continue to deliver value for everyone in the ecosystem, particularly the token holders. So when I think about AI, it still feels like it's pretty early days, right? And like, like you said, a lot of the you know experimentation, I think is happening more with crypto devs that are plugging into AI tooling than actual kind of AI researchers, right? Plugging in crypto tooling, let's say, the vice versa of that. But I think some natural low-hanging fruit and entry points for us, which we've already started. Number one is building games that can embed these AI agents, right? And so taking some of their models that are existing and evolving, putting it into a game, like a casual game, and then have that feed into the gameplay itself, right? That's something that we're experimenting with at the moment. We'll be launching a few games with some of the AI agents, I think folks already know, where basically you can play as the AI agent, right? And the output from the agent is going to dictate the outcome of the game. So I think that's the super interesting thing we're excited about because you never know like where the game could end up. Like, for example, a simple text-based adventurer, right? Like if the you know, adventurer game is changing based on how the AI agent interacts with it, like the outcome is never, never the same. So I think that's one thing we're super excited about. And then the second is you know, building an AI agent launch pad where you know some of these game chains, right, that are launching these like big titles, if they want to launch agents associated with those games, like is there an opportunity to do those through a launch pad that you know B3 is working closely with? I don't think we'll build something in-house. There's you know a ton of launch pads out there that have built, you know, really, really vibrant ecosystems. So the idea there would be to partner with one of those, right? And have them be, you know, a strategic partner of ours to launch and grow AI agents from B3.
SPEAKER_01That's interesting. We'll uh we'll keep an eye out for sure. Um, so you kind of touched on obviously like uh a few of the kind of old school nostalgia games that are um yeah, sort of being drawn towards basement. And I'm excited to see all the stuff that's sort of unlocked around that as well to make them more engaging and when they are brought back. Um, but yeah, maybe you could talk us through a bit, like what is the kind of strategy on the game chain front right now? Like, you know, what does the sort of ideal client look like? And what are some of the kind of key ways that you're trying to sort of pitch this setup to them as well? Would love some more color on that front.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the ideal client is, you know, someone who has experience building games, you know, Pierce, you and I know that games are incredibly difficult to build. I think anyone who like is building games as a career has to have a deep passion for it. Otherwise, they're just torturing themselves because it's not the it's not an easy moneymaker, if you will, just go launch like you know, an AI agent token or something, right? But I would say, you know, we're looking for someone with a lot of gaming experience, but also a real understanding and belief in crypto, which I think is like the big change from like the last cycle where all the tourists have left, right? And the folks have stayed, like truly believe that you know, crypto can enable new experiences like wagering on chain, right? And also, you know, I think crypto, I said this earlier today. I think crypto is going to be the anecdote to a lot of the problems facing traditional gaming today, right? Because I feel like the traditional gaming industry that we're calling big gaming, the problem is, you know, innovation has stalled, and a lot of the newer titles that you're getting out right now are just like remixes and sequels, right? Like there's no, you know, Final Fantasy, there's no Diablo, there's no even like on the casual gaming front, right? Everything that trends on the app store is just like a derivative. And so I feel like crypto, you know, along with what you guys are doing, right? Because you guys are a major, you know, fundraising partner in crypto, we're like backing these builders that are gonna try really crazy and really wild ideas. But that's the kind of spirit that it takes to actually bring like new titles to market, right? Riot and Activision and Rockstar, they're not gonna back these guys, but we will. And like who knows what could come out of it, right? It could be a new genre, it could be a hybrid genre, but like that, I think that innovation is just gonna be driven by crypto. Like it's not gonna come from traditional gaming. So that's that's what I'm excited about, just working with like top builders that have like this passion. Um, and when it comes to the tech, like we don't index too much on like you know, smart contract or tech capability, because we can do that in-house, right? Like we can, like they can build a game and we can build tech for them, right? If they have crazy ideas around smart contracts, like we'll just build in and ship it for them, right? Our CTO and the entire edge team is you know pretty cracked here. So like we we can build and ship pretty quickly for them. I think it's just finding like these builders that you know have experience building games and are super passionate about crypto.
SPEAKER_01I really love that framing. And uh I feel like it's not a point that's emphasized enough, is like not only do well, obviously, in terms of traditional funding avenues, a lot of people that are like got a finger on the pulse, if they do have a good vision to build something, it's like, you know, generally speaking, uh it has been a better source of funding within crypto, you know, thanks to the last run, all that kind of stuff. But also something I feel like a lot of people underestimate and don't fully appreciate is like due to the headwinds faced by big gaming, as you say, and kind of the atrophy that we've seen in terms of all of these layoffs, and like there's insanely strong developer talent that's kind of been like, you know, uh out of a job that a lot of the big studios like or teams that have raised within crypto have basically been able to hire. And like whether these people were ideologically like you know, crypto inclined to begin with, like lots of people are actually now supporting a lot of these teams, and so we have some really crack game devs as well that are that are working on projects in this space. So I'm excited to see what comes. Um obviously, speed of iteration, feedback loops of games uh takes takes some time, but yeah, I uh just wanted to kind of echo echo that excitement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Same, same year. I think I always use my nephew as a barometer for what's cool and upcoming. He's about to he's about to turn, gosh, he's about to turn 10. And so last year he asked me for Roblox gift cards, or I guess not just last year, but like, you know, the last many years. And this year he asked me for Genshin Impact. I actually showed him basement. He was like, this is so cool. Because to a young kid, right, like he's never seen miniclip or addicting games back in the day. So he's like, wow, this like flash experience playing on browsers is like so new and novel, right? But I going back to what I was saying earlier around Genshin Impact, I think like we're really trying to like find the builders and support the builders that are gonna build like these kind of titles, right? And I think it's gonna take a massive amount of capital, massive amount of community support, and and that's what we're building at B3. You know, we we raise a ton of money and we are going to deploy that capital towards building this ecosystem that's going to encourage these builders to come and build that massive breakout hit.
SPEAKER_01Looking forward to it, looking forward to it, sir. Um, I wanted to touch, you know, you touched on earlier, obviously, around very briefly just on approach to kind of token holders and whatever, but I I wanted to, yeah, kind of hear the overview on the B3 token, like how's that woven into all of this? Like, what are the the key pieces that people need to know about this sort of heading into launch?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So launch is coming up. We announced that early last week. So launch is imminent, and we're working very closely with the foundation right now to basically publish these tokenomics and what you know as a user you can do. There's a few core elements. We divide them into two buckets. So one is for users and gamers, the other is for developers. On the gamer and user side, you'll be able to stake the B3 token and get rewards right from what we're calling this open gaming ecosystem, which is basically all these game chains that are launching with us. So Prime Chain and many others that we'll be announcing pretty shortly. So you'll be able to stake and get a gosh, for for lack of a better word, get a stake in these game chain ecosystems that are coming out and being built. That's one thing. The second would be, you know, it is your ticket essentially into the basement ecosystem as well. So as a B3 holder, you'll be able to vote on games that are published on basement, so featured and really pushed by the basement team. And then also you'll be able to get you know early access to games and early access to like new features like wagering that could happen on basement. So that's another avenue. And the last one will be governance, because we still are this you know B3 mainnet and protocol ecosystem, right? We you can think of us almost as like the optimism of gaming in a sense, because we're building the super chain ecosystem, but we're doing it specifically for games, right? And as a governance, you know, participant, you'll be able to vote on the direction of the protocol. So where some of the treasury goes, right? What new game studios will be funded, and how we think about like technical upgrades. So, you know, what stack we're using, where we're settling, like all of that you'll be able to play an active role in as a user as well. And then as a developer, um, it's broken down into a few buckets. So the first is there's all these like tooling and different services that we've built for the ecosystem. As a developer, to use those, you'll pay for a B3 token. So that's a sync for the token as well. And then this idea of referral incentives that I mentioned earlier, right? Where you know, if a user goes from prime chain to another chain, the revenue from that user, a portion of it gets paid back to Parallel, the developer, that is going to be paid for in B3 token. So again, this B3 token is like the currency for developers to actually pay for services and also to receive revenue from the ecosystem. Those are the two primary, you know, buckets today. And you know, the one thing we're scoping out very, very, you know, closely right now is the idea of, okay, we have the content and we have the users, right? What's next? And you know, we think part of that is going to be, you know, enabling this like DeFi ecosystem and building DeFi primitives. So then when these game chains launch tokens, right, and when these game chains launch assets, there's like a place to go and trade these. So that's that's next on the roadmap. And you know, ideally, right, the idea is you know, fees from those, right, would go back to B3 token holders in an indirect or direct way.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, feels uh feels better baked already than than lots of stuff that that comes across the desk. So excited for excited for all those things. I think in particular, one that that kind of stood out that I'm curious for the sort of imminence of is um the like governance aspect around actually voting on like which games get funded and whatnot. Because obviously, on the one hand, you obviously want to curate games that are coming in and you guys want to try and um you know provide some degree of like filtering. And on the other, I think it's actually really cool that like early, you know, community and and like the people that have been there day one um have some say in yeah, what does get grants, what gets like fully funded. Like uh yeah, just wanted to get your view on like is that something that's like downstream or like when when do you anticipate that kind of uh functionality coming online? Because I think it's something that would resonate with people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that kind of functionality we expect very, very close to launch. And so, you know, maybe the UI won't look like super fancy, like a Kickstarter, right? But you'll be able to go to our governance forms and make proposals, right, on which games and game studios you want to fund. So there's basically going to be two pools where you know financial support and grants could come from. One is the B3 Foundation, but the other is the B3 DAO, right? And B3 DAO is what I'm referring to when I'm saying, hey, like DAO members and token holders can go out and vote on like which games they want to fund and which games they want to publish. So it'll be available. I think I am, I think I'm bullish on both, you know, established talent and new and upcoming talent. And I don't think, you know, with the team that we have, it would be crazy to say that like we can go out and find all the talent in the world, right? A lot of it is grassroots, a lot of you know, talent is you know hidden and we we don't know who they are today. And maybe this route through the community could be a way to uncover those, you know, diamonds in the rough, those gems. Maybe the next Minecraft, you know, because that was like that was just out of nowhere, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, 100%. But I totally agree, right? I think also more so than ever on a more zoomed-out view of like not just AI tooling, but where these game engines have got to, right? Like solo devs, like tiny teams with little funding, or like being able to do the craziest stuff ever now. And I think um, yeah, uh allowing you know community to drive more of that discovery aspect is really cool. There's uh non-crypto. I mean, I I tried to shill him on it several times, but there's a game called Out of Action being built, which is like a ghost in the shell inspired sort of anime like FPS with all these crazy like time dilation properties and stuff like that by this solo dev called Doku. And it's like it's one of the coolest, like freshest shooter ideas I've seen in a while. And uh, I mean he had a Kickstarter app for like 70k, and it was like no one bid a single thing, basically, and it almost like on the last day he managed to get it across the line. But I think um finding you know ways for uh you know community out on the web to be aware of something like this and try and drive someone like that, for example, towards maybe alternative funding that's not Kickstarter but for indie devs that like uh you know might um might actually um increase curiosity around the sort of on-chain, whatever, like maybe let's explore this stuff. So I really like that.
SPEAKER_00Um 70k, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_01That is that's all he needed. I was like, dude, just sell one NFT. You'll be fine.
SPEAKER_00But uh fun and he'll get that in seconds. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, um, you know what? He stayed true to his guns and it's working well. We'll see. Maybe we'll get him, maybe we'll get him to do something in this space longer term. Um but yeah, I wanted to double click. Obviously, the DAO aspect, really cool. Great to know that that's gonna be live pretty early on. Um, on the foundation front, like you're at this amazing stage where you know, uh super robust, like infastack, really strong engineering team, like obviously pretty business business oriented and business minded as well, around executing all of these different pieces alongside each other. Um, the token itself, right, is this huge, like in the same way games give out incentives and emissions, right? In terms of attracting devs, nailing like you know, who's gonna be doing what early on. Like, um, can you maybe talk us through how you're thinking through the grant and like funding aspect with you know B3 from the foundation as well? Like, how are you guys looking to sort of like structure and like market that or or yeah, because I've I've seen teams do this well and teams do it really poorly. And I think as a as a space, as like the gaming side of this industry, we've learned a lot around you know how these sort of incentives and grants should be given out. But I'd um yeah, love your love your two cents on this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think when it comes to the exact structure, the foundation is leading a lot of those discussions. So, you know, we're at the LabsCo, so we typically work, you know, hand in hand with the foundation to make sure that we're finding the right partners. But I would say like the exact details are usually handled by the foundation. But from what I've seen in crypto gaming today that I don't think works is this idea of very, you know, very detailed and very complex milestones, because I think those don't align the you know incentives of the developers with the incentives of the ecosystem. So what I mean by that is one simple example, if you let's say, you know, put in a milestone that, hey, like you'll get some financial support if you hit a hundred million users, I'm taking a very extreme example, right? Like you'll get you know the vast majority of the financial support you need. Like to me, that is one, I think very, very unattainable in the near term, right? And two, it doesn't actually meet the developers where they are. Because I think for these game developers, right, if through the alpha or beta, like you start to see some signals, right? Then the idea should be to actually give them the money that they need to scale and take the bet and see if this works, right? And I think as a publisher, right, that is your job to take on some risk, right? But I think in the traditional conventional, you know, grants that we've seen, I think the ecosystems are trying to transfer all of the risk onto game developers themselves, right? By putting these like crazy milestones. Because if they hit the milestone, then it's like no risk to the publisher in the chain to give them the money, right? But you know, by by doing these milestones that are like crazy and Very, very stretched out. They're passing all the risks on to the game developer, where I think, you know, the risk should be like shared, if not even a little more weighted towards like the publisher chain, just like you know, MVC, right? So I think for us, like the way we thought about grants historically is more developer-friendly and giving more upfront capital to game developers that need the capital to scale and build their games. There's obviously going to be risk involved, not everything's gonna work out, right? But I think it gives you know us the best opportunity to produce those breakout hits.
SPEAKER_01Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Well, yeah, excited to see which uh which of the sort of early cohort that have uh been backed by the foundation, you know, where they where they get to. Um I was also curious for your perspective. I mean, obviously you guys uh you know know the drill with Coinbase and base, and obviously the market's kind of starved for these like base proxy tokens. I'm curious like uh how you guys sort of reflect on this whole notion. Like, obviously you're very well positioned from that perspective. Like, um, yeah, what's your view on this? Is this something you guys are like actively looking to leverage? Uh yeah, I would love to understand the team's thoughts because um, you know, uh punters are already suggesting things to this effect.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I think it's hard to control people's perception in general. I think we at V3 focus on what we can build, and that's building, let's say, you know, a great product experience in what we think will be, you know, the largest gaming ecosystem, you know, for many years to come. I think we can't escape the fact, right, that we are from base. And a lot of the momentum, let's say, too, has been, you know, the growth of the base ecosystem as well, right? So myself, right, Victoria, she led, you know, creators on the base ecosystem, our head of foundation, Sammy Kim, she led DeFi on base. So we have a lot of like think the know-how and expertise to really connect with the base ecosystem. And that's what we've done to date, right? So we have six million wallet addresses. If you look on-chain, a ton of those actually are from kind of base folks that you know have assets, have done stuff on base, and they want to like play in earth, they want to check out more games and more engaging content. So I think there's naturally a lot of synergy with the base ecosystem. And in some ways, I think because there's such strong user overlap, right? Like the growth of the base ecosystem will translate into growth for us as well, and vice versa, right? Because we want to make that bridging experience really seamless. But yeah, I think it's, you know, something we can't escape from. Like we we are the base team. We we put out a post the other day, you know, once base, always base. And yeah, we're here to scale gaming on base. And you know, I think Jesse always says, like, hey, we want to onboard billions of users. You know, we think the way to do that is is through gaming.
SPEAKER_01I like it. I like it a lot. Um, yeah, all makes sense. And yeah, I must admit, I need to need to tinker a bit more and and and see what that kind of um UX of you know shifting between the two is. Like I know base sort of proper has a few um game projects they're working closely with. So excited to see all those sort of synergies in in full flow.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, yeah, I think just to touch on one thing there. Like we, if you go to basement.fun today, I think you brought up a great point of like what's the experience right between B3 and Base. If you go on Basement today, basement is not just you know indexing and showing games on B3. It's meant to be the homepage for all of on-chain gaming. So you can go and you can play base games and you can play you know games on you know Solana eventually, right? So we will be adding support for basement from other chains as well. So yeah, for us, it's not just you know B3 and B3 mainnet. Makes sense to add chains from other ecosystems.
SPEAKER_01Cool. I like that. Um, yeah, I mean, I uh obviously think it's a hugely exciting thing to to go after the home page for on-chain gaming. Um, you know, there's uh a few people, you know, uh taking a swing at such things, but obviously early days in terms of uh yeah something becoming fully entrenched. So I like that a lot. Um yeah, I wanted to ask as well, like um, you know, all these years sort of building in crypto, working in crypto, obviously proximity to Coinbase and base as well. Like, um yeah, curious what some of the kind of key learnings are. What what what like what do you wish you knew then that you know now?
SPEAKER_00Man, great question. Gosh, I would say it feels like we've aged like a shit ton. Apologies for cussing, but um yeah, I think when people say like you know, crypto is like dog ears, it's so true. It's just you know, so much innovation and volatility. And I think my main takeaway from that is not to just jump on the new narrative and new meta. I think have conviction in what you're building for us, that's gaming, right? And when you make it a reality, that will be the new meta, right, for crypto. And and those create the most, you know, outsize opportunities, right? When you're able to create your own meta, just like kind of back at base, you know, the the chain was launched in gosh, the depths of the bear market. If you look at like the charts, right? Like that was, I don't know if you remember, that was like bad that that summer, that August, right? And and that was the thing that lifted, I think, us out of the bear market. It made consumer crypto, right? An actual narrative and something that people were building, right? Made Farcaster grow like tremendously, right? And so I think, you know, a lot of the new metas are gonna pop up here and there, right? I think for us is just staying put and just focused on what we're really passionate about and what we think is gonna move the needle, and that's that's gaming. Um gosh, the other thing is like find like an amazing team. I mean, you guys have an amazing squad over there. I would say for us, we you know are equally fortunate to have found each other, like at Coinbase. Um, and I think like amazing teams, even if small, can just make like awesome things happen. Um and yeah, there will be problems along the way, but like if you have a good team, you'll be able to figure them out. I think that would be my two main takeaways. Um and then also just yeah, amazing supporters like like yourself, like thought leaders in the space like yourself. I think that's that's very important because I think for us, like we're focused on building a shipping product, but sometimes, you know, that um that's like a little bit narrow, right? Like we always want like the macro view of where things are going, and I feel like you guys always have the best pulse on that. So it's like combining kind of the day-to-day and also like long term of where like people think things are going.
SPEAKER_01Well, appreciate that, sir. And uh yeah, I love the first point, right? There's uh nobility and stay in the course, uh, especially in an industry like this where it can be very difficult to do. So I um I was giving a talk last weekend and I was saying exactly that. I think, especially in gaming, right, where you have these super long feedback loops, even product milestones, like delivering a game. Like to be the kind of person that not only understands crypto and loves crypto and wants to build something with crypto and games, but also understands game development and that world. And to be able to come in and manage a team every single day for years on end, especially if you've got a liquid token out in the market where, like, like it or not, when shit gets rough, people are checking this stuff. Obviously, it's true across many sectors, but I think, especially in gaming, uh, where maybe you know a lot of the people, as I kind of touched on earlier, like didn't like maybe have come from traditional games, development, whatever, and they're like not dialed into the uh mystery and magic and terrors of the market in crypto yet. Like uh that's a super difficult thing to do, right? To get people to maintain morale, keep the head up, and just keep shipping when it feels like you know uh everything's on fire around you. And so, yeah, totally, totally agree on that point. And um, no, uh as I say, blessed are the teams that are able to do it, you know. Um it's uh it's cool.
SPEAKER_00I also think you hit on such an interesting point there. Like you you have to really love crypto to be like a long-term builder in this industry. I would even go a step beyond that and say not just love, but I think some of the most successful builders are addicted to crypto, like for better or worse. You know, they wake up, right, they they check Twitter, right, to just you know figure out what's going on during dinner, during, you know, there's that meme of like you with your girlfriend in bed and you're just checking crypto. I think like that that meme is freaking real. I mean, at least for me sometimes it's it's real. Like all I think about is you know, like how crypto can enhance gaming, like 24-7. You know, and so like I think you have to have that kind of mindset to be a long-term builder in crypto. It's proven to be successful in DeFi, right? Now everyone wants to tokenize everything. Larry Fink is super on board, right? But I think it's up to us on the gaming side to to make that same reality happen. And it's gonna take you know those folks that are like the most addicted to crypto to really make that happen.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. There's also that meme that like none of us are ever leaving, kind of thing, right? Like, even if you think you are you're always gonna be drawn back in. Um I I can see why, right? Like um, I feel like the any any other avenue of time is spent in terms of whatever the dopamine hit that comes with all the trials and tribulations of crypto, the um, yeah, probably tricky to match. But uh yeah, let's see. I'm I'm feeling yeah, I'm feeling very excited about where we're at with the the gaming side of things in particular, right? We've got a ton of insanely cool products, we've got lots of people, some pretty cool new approaches to the whole token side of things in terms of you know maximizing bang for the buck on each like token emitted, whether that's airdrops or these other sort of incentive campaigns. And so um yeah, excited to see what comes this year.
SPEAKER_00Do you think the regulation piece is going to be a game changer as well? It's something, you know, they the SEC commissioner posted out some new guidelines and focus areas yesterday, right? And I was thinking that one of the biggest blockers for crypto gaming today has been the, let's say, negative sentiment and posture from app stores, right? Because that's obviously one of the, you know, not the right, or not one of the, but the biggest distribution channel for mobile games, um, which is obviously the biggest pie of the gaming market. And so I'm thinking like if there's more clarity around the regulation side, not only will it encourage game developers to be, you know, more bold, I think, with their ideas, but also these app stores to relax some of their rules so then more crypto games can be distributed, marketed, published, right? So I feel like it's net beneficial, but curious for your thoughts.
SPEAKER_01No, I absolutely agree, right? I think um even something as simple as having clear, like stablecoin support and integrations with these things, like you know, one of the points that uh Gabe Leyden was making on that brilliant piece that he did with uh on on Invest Like the Best ages ago when he was getting into the space was just like around even something as simple as like spend ceilings, right? We always talk about how like crypto is like the most important and ultimate consumer class on the sp on the planet, right? Because you have people that spend a million bucks on NFTs, but it's true, right? Like um you look at App Store like spend ceiling, right? In terms of I think it's like a thousand bucks, whatever, in single transactions. The same is true on stuff like Steam Marketplace, like loading up your wallets and stuff. Even something as simple as integrating that and like uh increasing the appetite to do so on behalf of the app stores, I 100% I think it's gonna be amazing. I also just think um, you know, like even prior to the app stores fully embracing this stuff, like what's happening right now in terms of the you know US centric kind of momentum, like people that were maybe kind of on the fence. I mean, we've got some um teams in our portfolio that have like you know been super focused on products, and they're like, okay, we'll figure out exactly what we want to do in terms of like some kind of founder's past, the on-chain loops like downstream. They're like, for now, there's a lot of uncertainty around it, but we'll revisit this because we do really want to do it when the time's right. And now it really feels like you know, the pendulum is swung, the time is right, people are looking, you know, more actively at like, you know, let's implement this stuff now. And so yeah, I think that's that's hugely exciting. Um, I think there's right now I see it as almost more like uh narrative than substance, if you know what I mean though, which is kind of true of lots of crypto, but lots of people like, you know, very sure that that will be the case, but it's still a bit unclear how, in terms of, you know, what what does the regulation look like, how's it gonna get implemented, what does this materially mean on, you know, the you know, for a game developer. I definitely think there's a lot of stuff as well around like, you know, the money transmission stuff, the way that like, you know, uh someone like Forte was positioning, getting all these licenses of different states and whatnot. Like, I think as there's a more active embrace from a big government that, like, okay, actually running stuff on stablecoin rails, running stuff on on-chain economies, like that's gonna remove a ton of the friction that a lot of people were kind of pussyfooting around for a while out of fear that they were gonna get you know done done in sort of like you know, state jurisdiction or whatever. Um, so yeah, I mean, there's no way to frame it negatively at least. So let's see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think you made a great point there. And I think even something as, you know, gosh, I don't want to say non-sexy, but you know, sometimes, you know, people don't think of payments as like the most sexy thing, despite the fact that it's like mission critical to a game, right? Like getting Zola, for example, which I know they're building, you know, on ZK Sync, right, in the blockchain space, but getting them to really adopt um stablecoin payments the same way that Stripe has, right, with their acquisition of bridge, that would be like massive too, right? Something as simple as that, right? And I think that, yeah, that point around, hey, like let's punt tokenomics and let's punt on-chain primitives until later, that just is a formula for like disaster, right? The fact that people are bringing that up and like you know, focusing on it now as the game come out, comes out, I think that's yeah, that's super, super encouraging to hear.
SPEAKER_01100% right. I I I agree. Um, uh generally, even though even people that haven't wanted to obviously encourage this stuff needs to be weaved in all together. It's very hard to sort of retroactively or later in the person to do it.
SPEAKER_00It's super complex. I think people underestimate the amount of work required to really, you know, build, and I know you guys have like actually been the thought leaders on this, so I'm sure you guys resonate, but build like a really balanced token economy if you have like a lot of NFT assets, maybe some of those NFT assets tied to tokens later down the line, right? Like if you don't, if that's not a full product and that's just like a marketing initiative, like you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Like that needs to be its own product, uh, in and of itself, right? And uh the fact that people are thinking about it that way is very encouraging.
SPEAKER_01Totally, totally. I mean, I've been saying for years that the kind of people we're looking for is that intersection of the crypto experience, crypto dev, token oriented, and proper game dev. Like that Venn diagram has been very slim for very long. Um, but it's you know expanding, and it is all the time, and stuff like the regulatory aspects and app stores, and as we get more and more proof points of this kind of thesis is only going to draw more people in. So hopefully expanding.
SPEAKER_00You guys are ahead of your time, as always. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's hope. Let's see. Uh got got lots of projects we're excited about, but um, big year for sure. Lots to lots to sort of prove and deliver on. Um, I wanted to ask you as well, as someone that's very into games and obviously digital things, what would you regard as the most impactful, impactful digital experience you've ever had?
SPEAKER_00Digital experience, okay. Can that be a game? Or is that a good idea? It can be a game, it can be anything.
SPEAKER_01Anything to do with the web and the internet and the stuff that we all live and breathe.
SPEAKER_00I think Diablo, I mentioned that earlier, but Diablo 2 was my I mean, I played a lot of Pokemon back in the day too, right? Played console, played, you know, played like anything I can get my hands on, but Diablo 2 was really my first experience, like getting super addicted and like grinding for days on end. And also I didn't buy like the full price version. Like my parents wouldn't let me buy any games. So I actually had a bootleg copy from China where Battlenet was like super funky and sometimes didn't really work. But I would invest like hours, hours on end into that game, maxed out all my characters, you know, got all of the legendary items. And I think one day I just like grew out of it, you know. But like I would go on eBay and like sell, you know, my my characters through my cousin's account because I was still underage, so I couldn't do it myself. But um, I think that was one of my most formative experiences. And it feels like it's come full circle, and that like if I could give you know the younger version myself that opportunity to like, you know, actually monetize his time, maybe his life would be different. Maybe he would be a game developer himself, right? Because he's just, you know, so passionate about kind of what he was able to create. So that that was definitely my most formative experience. Um, I was too slow, like at StarCraft. So I never was that good. I think that was like the second thing. Um and I made a lot of internet friends through Neopets. That was another random one. Yes, I I played literally anything you can get your hands on. I also think I have ADHD sometimes, so I would just like bounce from thing to thing. But Diablo was like the one thing I could like literally sit there for like six hours and play for in one session.
SPEAKER_01There's no better feeling. I love it when I find a game these days where I'm capable of doing that. Obviously, don't do it in quite the same way anymore, but crypto man, crypto's a game, dude. Yeah, or I feel like I've been putting in the hours and off the grid though. I love that game, man. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 300 or something hours already, which is good fun. But now there's nothing like the magic of like, yeah, first falling in love with an MMO or something like that, and just put it in the everything about it, just like triggers a dopamine hit for you.
SPEAKER_00Like the music, I think the even some of the NPC like names and responses, like all of that.
SPEAKER_01If I if I still hear it today, it's still like it's insane how it left such a strong imprint on the mind. Uh for me, that's uh 100% RuneScape and all my brothers. Uh it's oh amazing.
SPEAKER_00Okay, dude, you and Sean, our co-founder, would get along so well. Uh you guys definitely have to meet one day, but he was big RuneScape maxi. Um secretly, he's also building a RuneScape-inspired open world, uh, basically like this open world marketplace where you can go and you can like trade and you can swap.
SPEAKER_01The grand exchange. I like it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I uh I'd love to check that out. When you mentioned it earlier, I was definitely piqued the interest, so you have to shoot me something over on that. Um I was gonna ask as another question what your favorite game ever is, but I feel like you just touched on on probably Diablo or yeah, no, definitely Diablo.
SPEAKER_00I think Diablo 2 is my favorite game. Um yeah, probably the game I put in the most hours on to. Probably the game that yeah, my mom hates the most too.
SPEAKER_01Good man. All the other things. Um I wanted to also ask, sort of in closing, um, what would you say is the most important or sort of impactful book that you've ever read?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. Wow, I love that question. Okay. The most impactful. It's gonna be a little bit philosophical here, unless like because I I don't really like reading those, you know, business books, right? Like I feel like, you know, a lot of it is not applicable and it's very, you know, like sometimes it's generic advice. I think there's definitely a good set of business books out there, right? But I think for me, like one of the books that's been most impactful is actually a non-business book, and that was When Breath Becomes Air. And that that was a book by, you know, it won't pull a surprise, but it's the story about this um surgeon that I think had, you know, really, really strong aspirations to be the top of his field, which he was on the path to. And then all of a sudden one day he got like a devastating cancer diagnosis. And, you know, the book is about his journey dealing with that. His I'm not gonna spoil the book, but like, you know, his learnings from that. And I think my takeaway from it was like, yeah, like life is pretty short, unexpected things can happen to you. So if you have conviction in something, right, like really go out and um try to make it happen. Right. And I think for us that's you know, on the gaming side, and that's why we're taking such a big bet here. Um, so yeah, that's that was kind of yeah, that's one of the most like um inspirational books I ever read, and also emotionally moving too. Great book if you haven't read it.
SPEAKER_01I've been recommending it. I must uh must give it a go. There's a book that I read uh years ago called Tuesdays with Maury, which seems to have struck a similar vein uh for me, but about a similarly sad story and and the key takeaways were somewhat similar. So maybe uh maybe post-launch you should give that a read someday when Scratch is a little less heck. Yeah, yeah, I will.
SPEAKER_00We have some time back.
SPEAKER_01Um, Daryl, I appreciate you making the time. Uh very excited for you guys heading into launch and all things come with the ecosystem. Looking forward to learning more about uh which the studios, which the other game chains are. Um, looking forward to yeah, people being able to get get engaged, um, you know, help sort of vote on what gets funded, how the ecosystem evolves, and uh yeah, excited for it. And um once again, thank you for the time.
SPEAKER_00Amazing man, thank you for having me.
