Navigating the Metaverse

A sneak peek with Dean Takahashi and Dirk Lueth as they reflect on their interviews with trailblazers of the immersive web and share their perspective of the Metaverse and the Web 3.0 Era.

Guests:

Adam Simmons is the Chief Strategy Officer at Radix, the only decentralized network that lets you build fast, rewards everyone who makes it better, and scales without friction.

Richard Hobbs is the Founder & CEO of Brand New Vision, the first blockchain-validated marketplace for NFTs in the apparel, footwear, and accessory worlds. BNV is a gateway for luxury brands and fashion designers looking to enter the metaverse. They take fashion beyond physical reality and into the metaverse, defining new spaces where virtual fashion can thrive.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Breana Teubner is a Venture Partner at Alante Capital, a series of funds that invests in fashion tech with a climate lens. She is focused on investing in companies using digital ownership and immersive experiences like 3D, gaming, and metaverses to make fashion more sustainable.

Mohamed Ezeldin is the Tokenomics Lead at Animoca Brands, a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. Animoca Brands is a Deloitte Tech Fast winner and ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021. Their portfolio includes The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes.

Will Weinraub is the Co-Founder & CEO of OnChain Studios, a new digital studio on a mission to empower, educate, and entertain the next generation of collectors around the world. Their platform allows users to buy, sell, and collect toys, and also lets consumers play with them inside an immersive world built on the blockchain.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Evin McMullen is the Co-Founder & CEO of Disco.xyz, a self-sovereign identity platform designed for Metaverse. Disco lets users create profiles that fairly represent their on-chain, off-chain, Web2 and Web3 financial and non-financial traits. This could be their favorite music artist, university degree, or credit history. 

Justin Banon is the Co-Founder of Boson Protocol, a venture-backed protocol for enabling any app or dapp to transmit and consume products and services in digital form, as non-fungible voucher tokens. Their vision is to enable a decentralized commerce ecosystem by funding and enabling the development of a stack of specialist applications to disrupt, demonopolize and democratize commerce.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Brian Trunzo is the Metaverse Lead at Polygon Studios, a global, sustainable Web3 infrastructure on Ethereum. Polygon is a decentralized Ethereum scaling platform that enables developers to build scalable user-friendly dApps. Stripe, Instagram, Adidas, and Prada are among those who have launched their NFT and crypto projects on Polygon.

Marisa Lam is the Head of Marketing and Communications at OliveX, a fitness metaverse that enables real-world fitness to merge with the digital universe. Their vision is to develop and invest in a number of move-to-earn titles in order to contribute to creating a fully open and interoperable metaverse in collaboration with strategic partners such as Animoca Brands.

Trey Pezzetti is the Director at Vayner3, a consultancy that partners with the world's top intellectual property owners to develop market-leading NFT programs. Their experience working with some of the biggest global companies in the world enables them to move groundbreaking NFT initiatives within the world of Fortune 500.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast

Guests:

Paul Biondich is the Community Lead at Axie Infinity, one of the leading names in the play-to-earn universe. The game runs on the Ethereum blockchain and in-game items are represented by NFTs. Axie Infinity has surpassed $4 billion in all-time NFT sales. Currently, it is the 3rd-largest NFT project.

Mohan Kuldeep Ponnada is the Co-Founder & CEO of Metapolis, the first ‘Metaverse as a Service Platform’ (MaaS) built on a world-renowned technology stack and powered by a leading L1 blockchain, Zilliqa. Metapolis gives you a data-centric and fully customizable XR experience accessible through web/AR & VR with the vision of bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds.

Sandra Helou is Head of Metaverse & NFTs at Zilliqa and CO-founder at Metapolis. You heard that right. We have Mohan the Co-Founder & CEO of Metapolis which is powered by Zilliqa AND the Head of Metaverse and NFTs at Zilliqa, Sandra Helou! Zilliqa is a high-performance, high-security blockchain platform for enterprises and next-generation applications. In 2019, Zilliqa became the first public blockchain platform to be built on sharded architecture, with smart contracts written in the platform’s secure-by-design programming language, Scilla. 

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Liko Subakti is the CEO of ProjectSEED, a mobile-focused blockchain gaming ecosystem that utilizes Multi Blockchain and integrates Governance, GameFi, and NFT. Project SEED is a group of over 50 entrepreneurs, designers, artists, and developers with rich experience working on popular titles like Call of Duty, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Tekken, Marvel Vs Capcom, Soul Calibur, and Dreamworks. Liko is also an Angel Investor with over a decade of experience working in companies like Binance and Crypto.com.

Luke Barwikowski is the Founder and CEO of Pixels, a play-to-earn MMO game built around the NFT assets you already own. The progress you make in Pixels is tied to your NFT and stored on the blockchain forever. You can take full ownership of your progress in-game and reap the rewards.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast

Guests:

Yannick Folla is the Head of DataHub at Figment, one of the world’s leading providers of blockchain infrastructure. Figment’s development platform, DataHub, allows developers and entrepreneurs to use the most powerful and unique features of a blockchain without having to become protocol experts.

BC Biermann is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Immuse.xyz, a Web3 Platform and Augmented Reality App for audio-visual NFTs in the Open AR Metaverse. Backed by Animoca Brands, Immuse is a new creative paradigm for musicians, artists, and fans to engage, co-create, and build community.

Andy Chorlian is the Co-Founder & CEO of The Fractional Token Company, a decentralized protocol that enables collective ownership and governance of one or more NFTs. Fractional provides ownership of the world’s most sought-after NFTs! They unlock liquidity, reduce entry costs, and enable for synergy with other DeFi primitives. Fractional is a decentralized protocol where NFT owners can mint tokenized fractional ownership of their NFTs.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Daniel Mironov is the Principal & Games Expert at vgames, a venture fund for game entrepreneurs. With over 7 years of experience in the gaming departments of Facebook (Meta) and Google, Daniel now helps support companies in the crypto and NFT world.

Dennison Bertram is the CEO of Tally Governance, a venture-backed startup focused on making on-chain governance for decentralized protocols work. Dennison is an early block-chain technologist having founded the first Bitcoin Exchange for Czech Crowns (BuyBTC.cz), a technologically advanced physical bitcoin wallet (Aeternum Key-Vault), and a PayPal like digital currency wallet (Terrawallet).

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast .

Guests:

Stella Xu is the VP of Foresight Ventures, an investment institution focusing on blockchain technology and the crypto industry. With nearly 80 million dollars in assets under management, they plan to set aside between $100-$200 million in venture capital for a range of crypto assets, NFTs, blockchains, and metaverses.

Benjamin Larcher is the Developer at Cyberbrokers and Former Developer and Product Lead at Cryptovoxels, a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain where players can buy land, and build stores and art galleries.

Carlos Pereira is the Principal at BITKRAFT Ventures, a global investment platform for gaming, Web3, and immersive technology. BITKRAFT Ventures is the #1 Most active lead investor in gaming in 2020 and 2021 with 90+ investments made and 25 global team members.

🦙 This podcast is brought to you by Upland - The Earth’s Metaverse where you can play-to-earn NFTs in an immersive Metaverse experience built around real-world neighborhoods while connecting with like-minded players. Download Upland on iOS, Android or sign up through our referral link to earn 6k UPX (2k more than normal) https://discover.upland.me/metaverse-podcast