Our L.A. based colleague Elgin Kim recently went through three weeks of conferences, brainstorming, and partying, networking, co-creating, and more partying & partying…
We wanted to share Elgin’s stories with you as well — so you’re up2date on some Web3/NFT talk of the town. It’s all about … the chain!
Find Elgin’s write-up here. Happy reading and learning…
In the past three weeks, I went to three conferences. Let me first say how awesome it was to meet people IRL while traversing the halls and floors of the three different conference centers. It was like 2019 but not!
GDC2022 SF, …the chain and no Steve Aoki
It all started at GDC2022 in San Francisco. I hadn’t been to Moscone (home to so many news breaking tech conferences) in years, so it was almost nostalgic coming back.
There were a lot of announcements but what caught my attention was FTX’s announcement that they would acquire Good Luck Games, the creators of Storybook Brawl. I had the chance to go to the Storybook Brawl booth and talk to Good Luck Game’s founder Matt Price.
He mentioned that they were not immediately doing anything different to their game but seeing that their booth was shared with FTX and Solana, it had me speculating.
Conferences, of course aren’t conferences without side parties like the Axie Infinity Party.
NFTLA, …the chain, and Steve Aoki
Next stop was back home to Los Angeles for the first ever NFTLA. Standing in the security line felt right at home with one of the folks from Praise Pals.
I knew I was at the right place.
The first day brought a panel discussion with Mark Cuban, the always funny Charlie Sheen, and the people involved with Entourage. Pretty much an infomercial for Cuban’s Fireside, still informative on how web3 business models will do away with the middlemen.
Later in the day, a really great one-on-one with Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu. Just off the news that Axie had been hacked for $600mil, Yat Siu had a really positive outlook with universal basic equity in the DAO and talks how the most powerful force for humans was the idea of hope.
Day 2 ended with Neil Strauss and Steve Aoki talking about NFTs and the metaverse.
Steve talked about his migration from collecting to creating. He’s always collected comic books, cards, vinyl, books, shoes so natural to get into NFTs. In most cases, collectors don’t often happen to be creators. A Nike shoe collector is not likely to create a new Nike shoe. But in the NFT world, a collector can also be a creator…voice of the secondary.
And he’s learning not to get sucked into fomo as a collector and avoid buying at the top.
Aoki says Web3 is a relationship you have with people, two way conversation. Web3 is innovation and maneuverability. Versus web2, which is merely fandom, a one way street.
This new relationship will change how artists think. With that in mind, A0K1verse is not a fan club. And “verses” will be connected as a multiverse which allows you to amplify your feelings and make the communities larger.
And day 2 continued with a killer party with no other than an upfront and personal show with Steve Aoki!
Day 3 — Sir Mix-A-Lot talked about using NFTs a way to give back to the talented disenfranchised artists by creating NFTs for the Bit Butts community and metaverse.
And Macy Gray talked about using NFT and blockchain as utility because Spotify dumbs down the sound quality where all the efforts in sound engineering goes unnoticed. Music on the chain will allow to bring back the sound fidelity and a purer version of the song. Current streaming services also took away the album cover artwork and the thank you credits in which she plans to bring it back for her album via NFTs.
I missed a lot of the closing session but so glad that I least caught the tail end of Andrew Yang talking about his GoldenDao project and how it will empower the AAPI community. A key takeaway from his talk was how helping others make money creates an instant bond and community describing it as a “magical thing”.
So true. I really believe web3 will allow everyone to benefit whether it’s through play-to-earn, create-to-earn, engage-to-earn!
Miami Bitcoin Conference, .. the chain and more Steve Aoki …
After my transcontinental flight from west to east, I went straight into (probably) the defi capital…Miami for Bitcoin Conference.. A totally different crowd from LA, the bitcoin diehards were just as passionate and bullish about the future.
The four days in Miami had some memorable announcements and a killer concert lineup. Lightning must have struck twice, maybe even thrice. It was like Lightning in a bottle. The Lighting Network made headlines with Robinhood, Strike, and Block. For the second year, Jack Mallers made another passionate announcement, this time about integrations with Shopify, NCR, and Blackhawk making crypto payments easier online and physical retailers.
The next day, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming (Rep) talks with Coinbase’s Marco Santori about crypto legislation. It was cool how she talked about working across the aisle with Sen Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (Dem) to bring common sense legislation to be more crypto friendly here in the US.
And check out Peter Thiel’s 1999 Paypal pitch.
And more music! And more Steve Aoki. Along with Killer Mike and Big Boi and Deadmau5!
This time around, I wanted to see Aoki from a distance.
But up close and personal with Killer Mike and Big Boi and Deadmau5.
What an amazing three weeks of conferences. When I look at the crowd behind me and synthesize my thoughts about the future, I can’t help but think of a common theme, a common thread if you will. Blockchain. We at Movi made the pivot to web3 and committed to building on the chain about 18 months ago.
Common keywords that floated around these different conferences were community, metaverse, play-to-earn, engage-to-earn, cocreation, collaboration, ease of use for people, speed.
Based on what I observed and heard these past three weeks, it was validation that we at Movi were truly onto something. We are on a mission to create a canvas where creators and fans can connect and collaborate to create derivative NFTs. This will be a place where we encourage two way conversation and the minting of new and remixed rich media NFTs between creator<>fan and creator<>creator.
We call it Sagaverse. A place where visual stories will be told through richly layered verses where everyone will be credited for their creative contribution.
A place creators will call home.
