The Roadmap by Benzinga

October 20, 2021 Art Blocks: Exclusive NFT Interview Snowfro

How To Buy NFTs

What is a Non-Fungible Token NFT

How To Make Your Own NFT

Best NFT Investments

Episode Summary

Joining us today! Erick aka Snowfro, Founder of ArtBlocks. Creator of the Squiggle.

Follow ArtBlocks on Twitter:

Erick/Snowfro: https://twitter.com/ArtOnBlockchain

Artblocks: https://twitter.com/artblocks_io

Art Blocks is a first of its kind platform focused on genuinely programmable on demand generative content that is stored immutably on the Ethereum Blockchain. You pick a style that you like, pay for the work, and a randomly generated version of the content is created by an algorithm and sent to your Ethereum account. The resulting piece might be a static image, 3D model, or an interactive experience. Each output is different and there are endless possibilities for the types of content that can be created on the platform.

https://www.artblocks.io/

Hosts:

Chris Katje

Maz

https://bitclout.com/u/maz

Follow The Roadmap on Twitter!

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

What's up everyone. It's Chris we're live Benzing as new NFT show the roadmap. We've had some great projects already on our episodes. We've talked to the teams behind the Vogue collective robotics, the dos pound Oni force. Oh, dads, dizzy dragons, sub doc, pixel vault, and also an NFT giveaway. Stay tuned. We got more NFTE giveaways coming up soon, and we've got a big, exciting show today.

Uh, following up our interview with G funk from pixel vault on Tuesday, we are, we'll be joined today by another huge, uh, you know, well-known project. We are talking art blocks with the founder. Project. Uh, let me go ahead and bring on mass. My cohost mass. What's going on, buddy? How you doing today? Yo, what's up Chris?

I'm so excited for this episode, man. I'm glad to be here. I know you've been looking forward to this one. We've been trying to get the team on. We've had some, you know, scheduling issues on Benzinga and, and we were able to finally nail down, you know, a date and again, mass talk about a big week, right? We had pixel vault, G funk on Tuesday.

And now Eric, from art blacks today, two of the most well-known projects out there in the same week on the roadmap. Exactly. Yeah. And one of the first projects that I was into when I got into NFTs has been art blogs. I've been a big fan ever since, and I love the work that they put out. So I'm super excited for this episode.

So yeah, without further ado, man, let's play the trailer. Let's get.

Love that love those trailers, our creative team. You know, we, we had a cool one earlier this week and now another specific trailer for this interview, mass. I think it's time. Let's go ahead and bring on Eric. AKA snow fro the founder of art, blacks. How we doing Eric? I'm good. Thank you guys for having me.

That trailer was like, it made me blush. That's awesome. Well, we're glad, we're glad you like it. Yeah. Our creative team has been doing these trailers and we love it. Brings some great personality for our show here. Um, you know, So I think we're going to have math kick off the questions here. If you're ready to go, Eric, super excited.

You guys are. Yeah, let's do it. So, Eric, first question for you, man. So how did you get involved, you know, into the NFT world? You know, tell us a little bit about the backstory. Um, you know, we know crypto punks have something to do with that. So for people that may not know, just tell us a little bit about how that started.

Uh, uh, okay. Yeah. So dinner of art 10 years ago, I started coding, creating art with code. I was using projectors and writing really weird scripts in a software platform called touch designer. Um, it's just something that kind of blew my mind when I saw it live at Coachella. And I was like, oh, I want to do something like that.

So that's kind of how I got into generative art. Um, fast forward, like six years, uh, I was reading Reddit and I ran across a link that the creators of larva labs posted, I assume it was them that posted and said, Hey, come check out our project. It might've just been another Redditor, uh, to the, to the claiming of the crypto.

Uh, what I thought was really cool was that it was a generative art project. Um, and also for the first time being able to prove ownership of a digital asset felt really special, uh, as well. And, uh, I think something kind of interesting is that I, by no means had come up with the concept of an NFT or even like the formation of it.

But I had spoken to friends and be like, man, there's something here where like, maybe you could have like a magic together in card on like the blockchain or some way of proving something that has rarities. And, uh, but of course it was all kind of speculative. Uh, and then I got that link to claim the punks and I was like, holy crap, this is it.

Like, they nailed it. This is exactly what the world needs. And I got real excited about claiming crypto punks. Um, I attribute 95% of everything that's happening now to the Matt and John from our larval labs. They, they lived the fuse. Uh, we wouldn't be here today without them. And that's kinda like where things where things were.

That's awesome. And how much was it to claim a crypto punk when you claim them? In my mind, it was 35 cents or the gas, but I also was feeling kind of foolish for spending money. And I don't know that I would've felt foolish spending 35 cents. So maybe it was like 35 bucks or $3 50 cents. In fact, I guess I can just check ether, scan.

I know exactly how much it was, but I did claim 30 for crypto punks. And during that process, um, you know, I, I realized I was being incredibly selfish cause I claimed all the zombies that were left. And of course, if I didn't like the next person would have, but, uh, it was actually during that process that I thought, man, like the Ethereum blockchain can actually decide for me whether I get a super rare zombie or maybe even an alien or an ape or just to a floor crypto punk.

Right. And so that, that was actually one of the very first moments where I was like, oh, I want to, I think it'd be fun to build a platform that presents you with rarities instead of you getting to. That's awesome. And you said you claimed 34 crypto punks. Do you still hold them all to this day? Or tell us a little bit more about what happened today?

Yeah, so early on, um, a couple other things happened that that kind of gave me more inspiration for our blocks. And then eventually I was like, okay, let's do this. And when I did finally pull the trigger, uh, I, I've never really kind of been in a financial position to just like spend 10, 15, $20,000 on development.

And so people were starting to place bids on my zombies and I was in utter shock. The first time someone offered to pay me $200 for this digital thing that I had, you know, especially because in the early days of NFTs, you know, like the true, some of the, some of the innovators beyond that were like no origin, for example, that, that had marketplaces.

Things felt expensive. If they were 200, 300 bucks back then it felt very expensive actually, compared to like, you know, a lot of pieces were like 20 bucks and 30 bucks. And so the fact someone was willing to pay me 200 bucks was significant. And so I, um, decided to hire a team of really brilliant developers, a company called block rocket tech, uh, to help me ideate the original version of our products, our box version one, which is very, very different than what our blocks looks like today.

Uh, and I was selling crypto punt zombies to pay that habit, uh, the developer habit. So, you know, I remember on at least one occasion, I was like, okay, I'm going to have to accept this offer for, for 300 bucks or 200 bucks. I will give you this zombie for $200 with the credit, but like, trust me, like. I don't want to, like, I shouldn't have to accept this offer.

Like it's worth way more than 200 bucks, but like, they're like, I mean, we don't want, we want to be being in zombies. We just totally respectable. Um, but I just remember thinking, man, like I wasn't, you know, I didn't want to do it the other way around. So I ended up selling Ms. Obvious for like 200, 300, 400 bucks a pop to pay for their developer fees, um, at the beginning.

Wow. That's awesome. So, you know, tell us a little bit more about, you know, we know that crypto punks help to launch art blogs. When did art blogs launch and how has it changed over time? You know, looking back at it, you know, from when it first began the F the first version of our blocks in 2018, that first smart contract, I mean, there's, first of all, every art project had its own smart contract, which was a complete cluster in and of itself.

Um, Probably the biggest innovation since then was that we put everything on the same contract. Um, but yeah, it was basically, it was called an art node and an artist would create a generative script that would listen to the most recent block hash of the Ethereum blockchain. And so the generative script would just change every block and there was slightly more complicated ways for people to intervene and inject their own hash into the script and generate a specific output kind of similar to what happens with our box today.

But it was through a very different mechanism where there was a token that stored a hash that you just kind of permanently owned that hash. And you would interact with other projects with that token. It was, it was so many more layers of complication than what we have today. Um, it evolved to what we see now, which launched in November of 2020, just last year, almost a year ago, uh, where the artist.

Deploys, uh, uh, our project on the same contract and the user comes and purchases a minted token, and that minted token, uh, contains a pseudo, random generated, uh, string of characters. And that's what controls the randomness of the token itself. So today when you purchase an AR buck piece, it's being purchased on demand, it didn't exist before you purchased it, which is kind of one of our key things that I think is really kind of special.

You're creating the body of work that the artist intended, but has never seen before at the moment of minting. Uh, and at the end, your takeaway is ERC 7 21 and NFT, uh, that represents that experience of printing. That's awesome fun fact, man. I actually bought a squiggle because it came out on my birthday last year and you know, I saw the date and I was like, oh, you know, I need to have this piece and I've had it ever since.

So I'm excited for that. No, wait a minute. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Um, tell us a little bit more about how you guys transitioned to like a Dutch Dutch auction. Oh man. The emphasis, the infamous attractions. Uh, so th there was a lot of things involved and, uh, you know, I'd like to state that we don't think Dutch auctions are like the solution for everything in the world, but, um, we think we still think they are like the best approach to this.

A couple of things were happening. Number one, we were having, we were having gas wars and we still have gas wars and, uh, gas wars, or, you know, when more people want something, then the amount of there is. And so they paid, uh, increase their place in line to get there faster. And some people were paying more than the price of the art.

In fact, uh, when we kind of like drew the line and said, that's it to gas. Uh, we had a drop or 80% of the money that was sent to the smart contract or 80% of the money that was spent on the drop, went to minors. And 20% of it went to the artists and we felt like that was just kind of egregious and weird.

And like, it just wasn't very art forward, which is kind of our intent. Um, now with Dutch auctions, you still have gas wars, but those gas wars usually end up at a higher price point to where yes, a significant amount of money is going to the miner, but never more than half. And in fact, most of the time, like significantly less than half of the drop list of minors.

And so it just feels less kind of anti artists and like more artists forward. The other thing was that we weren't having any price discovery at all. And so, you know, we were kind of controlling artists to keep their prices between point, well, we never really set a low price. I always had the lowest price at 0.035 E for a squiggle.

I mean, when schools came out, they were 40 bucks. Um, but you know, we kind of, we kind of had this like 0.2, five, eight. You know, and that was kind of her curate. We reserve that even more for curated. I mean, if an artist and the fact that you want it to drop at 0.25, they could. But you know, it was very hard to justify a 0.2, five eats like as a selling price at, or in the early days of our blocks.

And sometimes those projects wouldn't really sell too quickly, which again, we don't mind because we liked the art to kind of sit there on a platform for a little bit, but there was no price discovery. So part of this gas war was that people knew that the moment that a drop happened, if the price was low enough, artificially set to 0.1 Eve and the least expensive price in the curated section on open seat was one eith that there was an instant kind of arbitrage opportunity there.

Like it, this is completely separate for any subjective appreciation of art. It was this completely financial instrument of something generically designated as art box curated is for sale an open seat for one week. And that's the cheapest, that's the floor and something. Arbitrarily designated as art books, it is about to sell for 0.1, Ethan.

So even if I add point for Ethan gas, it's still 0.5 each and there's that margin to be made on the secondary market. So to us, that means that there was no price discovery. We were essentially creating a, a, um, environment for wholesalers to come in and buy the product from us and then resell it on the secondary market for what kind of would eventually become the going rate after the drop for that piece.

Of course, what happens a day, five days and five weeks after that is actually more in line with price discovery in terms of people's appreciation of the art. Um, and we have kind of grown to let that market handle itself, but yeah, the Dutch auction was just there to help with gas wars, but also to like divert more funds to the artist.

Um, and so that art box wasn't artificially setting prices for something on the market. Perfect. So, you know, we have art blocks, uh, factory curated and playground. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the differences in these different art blacks and how artists are selected for curated? Yeah. So, you know, in the end, the factory is this beautiful place for people to just kind of drop awesome generative art and something that I think is really important to note that's changed with our box is that originally our box was meant to be this place for anybody that can write an algorithm.

Like if you were going to create a script that drew a circle on the screen, we were going to let you, because I was just so excited and geeking out about the potential for this type of work to exist. Also, I had spent so many years at this 0.2 and a half years. Basically kind of like begging artists to participate in was not very successful, partly because it was a pretty complicated process to participate early on.

Um, that I was like, okay, crazy. Like, like let's just create somewhere where anybody that knows how to write an algorithm can deploy an art piece on bucks. Well, that's changed now. Uh, we have, we always seem to have like hundreds of people in the application queue and, um, we now have such brilliant works of art on the platform that we think that allowing low, like something that it's not even that it has to be low effort, but something that might be deemed low effort or something that's already appeared on, uh, on the platform like three or four times as a kind of like a trope, no matter how good it might be or how like generic, it might be.

Uh, we feel like eventually it becomes a little bit of a disservice to like the truly exceptionally brilliant projects that have come up in the platform. And those projects exist in the factory, in the playground. And then curated the difference is that a project that ends up getting selected for curated, which admittedly.

The bar has been raised over the course of the platform for curated as well, um, is a project that demonstrates something new or fresh, or like an incredible technical proficiency. It can be really, really simple, but if it's really, really simple, it has to be perfectly executed and defined it. Can't already exist on our blocks.

Curated, no matter how well it's executed, we don't want to projects that are using the same exact kind of algorithm or technology or not even the same exact, but something that could be confused between the two. Um, and there's also like a little element there of projects that have that come from people that have participated in the generative art world for a long time.

So, uh, what we have in the curated section or originally was projects where we were a little bit more protective of price. We were a little bit more, uh, you know, we would tell an artist, Hey, And this was well above what the factory was commanding, but we would say, Hey, okay, like you can set your price and iterations to whatever you want, but we want the max that this project would draw from it, from the ecosystem to be like a hundred thousand dollars or $200,000, which is significantly more than the artist might've ever made before using generative algorithms.

Not always but often. Um, and, uh, so we were controlling on price. We were controlling on, um, features and we were just a little bit more strict. Um, and so what that leads to is the third category, which is the playground, which is more of a badge than anything. And what that is, is a designation. Artist has previously participated as a curated artist on their own.

So, you know, we have a couple outliers, for example, if somebody was doing a collaboration in the playground and they presented as a single, a solo artist and curated, then that still has to go to the factory. Like, but you know, if you have two artists that have previously been curated and they want to collaborate on the playground, we would allow them to collaborate playground.

It's just a badge that says, Hey, like this artist really stepped it up and pushed really, really hard, uh, to present something to a board of 25, uh, relatively neutral curators. And I say relatively, because some of them are very passionate about generative art and like advancing the medium forward. Uh, and those curators decided, Hey, like this meets the expectation and the criteria for something that we would want to set aside as like a flagship project for our.

Awesome. I want to talk about Cromey squiggles. Um, you know, so that is the, you know, one of the most well-known art Black's projects, right? Uh, you know, when people talk about art, blacks, you know, a lot are familiar with that. We also see, you know, these huge sales for them. So can you just talk to us, you know, about, you know, Cromey squiggles, uh, how this came to be and why you think there's so much interest in, uh, this art Black's project.

Okay. So the squiggle was originally a proof of concept. It was never meant to be an art project. It was meant to prove how much variation you could get from the hash string with stored in a token. And to do that, I said, okay, well, let's find point data, because if you can have seemingly unlimited number of points along an access axis, and then, you know, Another limited unlimited.

There's actually more of a controlled range on the y-axis on the x-axis like the number of points on the x-axis. And then I can come up with like trillions of possible combinations of crummy, squiggles, and yeah, some of them might start to look very similar to each other. When you get into the billions and trillions, they would start like you would have that same squiggle, but like the green point in the middle might go down two notches, but everything else might be very similar, but in an edition of 10,000, it's actually.

Kind of uncanny how differentiated they look, if you don't know the collection well, and you just look at a squiggle, they all kind of look like squiggles, but when you start to explore them, you realize that they're all very different from each other. Um, that proof of concept was in 2018. In fact, my brother, so I originally wrote the chromic school in three JS.

My brother helped me convert the squiggle to processing, uh, dot, JS, uh, not just processing, um, because of a project where I, uh, gave a 2000 interior designers and architects in Houston, the opportunity to claim a chromium, Google of which 14 claimed them, uh, and were awarded with a real Promius squiggle in November of last year.

Um, and that was kind of version two of our blocks where, uh, it used the processing language, uh, on a local computer and just stored the hash of that script as proof of this. Um, the two years after that, I found myself kind of like. I don't know when you're a generative artist, you just like to tinker and iterate.

And I found myself kind of shaping the squiggle and tweaking it and modifying it. And also noticing that it kind of stood out from a lot of the things, not just in the NFP space, but just in the traditional world. Like I never, in two years ran across something and thought, man, that looks like a crummy squiggle.

In fact, I started doing Google image, image searches of squiggles, and didn't really find much that felt like it represented a crummy squiggle. So then I found this beauty in like the, the discernible nature of the squiggle and how it actually can represent something that people can relate to. And then in the end, I started adding all the extra features like the, like the pipe in the rib, and those didn't happen until right before, um, our box launched.

But that was kind of where I got excited and really inspired about the fact that our box was actually going to happen and decided to implement some extra little. Awesome. And then, you know, the other, uh, big art blacks, not that they're not all big, but the one that, you know, people talk about a lot. Cause again, the big sales is cadenzas.

Uh, so give us a little bit of the background and you know, the artists behind Fidessa is, and you know what, maybe draws people to this art box project. Well, and this one here isn't Meridian, but similar in level of beauty. So the Bonanza project by Tyler Hobbs is pretty special to me just cause Tyler is someone that I've been following for a long time.

So like there's a very clear distinction, um, of artists that I've been following and inspired by over the course of the last, let's say 10 years of being kind of in the space of creative coding. Um, and he's one of them. And so it's, it was really special to see. To have him agree to put something on the platform.

Uh, he's in Austin. And, uh, I've actually seen his physical murals before, because I live in Houston, so I'm down the street. And so I always kind of felt that it was even more special because he was in Texas. Um, and just his style is so special. He did something with Fidessa that demonstrated the depth of what can happen in the generation of a, a body of work using an algorithm where the artist gives up curation, sets the rules to where they're satisfied with anything that's going to come out of that mentor.

And, uh, just sets it free to the world and lets the world kind of tinker with it. Uh, he, he amongst like, just like any other architects, artists, they, they take these huge risks, like in the generative space prior to our blocks, you, you had the script living on your computer and you, you could generate thousands of outputs and then pick the one that you wanted to supply.

So the gallery, or if you were just going to post it on Instagram, whatever it might be, you, you had this. Built in curation. And I think what makes our books special is that that curation is out the window. That curation has to be done all on the front end. And the artist has to really tweak and massage their piece to where their, their algorithm to where every single piece that comes out of the Minter Minter represents them as an artist and that they're digitally signing something before they've even seen what comes out and, um, our blocks.

Um, uh, Tyler has really, I think, demonstrated that, uh, like as a, as a top project on our blocks. Perfect. Yeah. Love that. So to people that may not be familiar with generative art that are listening, um, can you tell us a little bit more of how the art is actually minted on our blocks when people meant it?

Yeah. So, um, generative art is a form of algorithmic art algorithm. The garden basically means that it instructions. Are given to a computer and the computer spits out an output, uh, algorithmic art might be that you were never intending to have more than one output, right? So you just write code and it produces something different than using a brush, even brush on like a tablet.

So generative artists, where you take that code that produces that thing and you assign a bunch of variables. So the background color, instead of just being blue is actually set to a variable so that every time that you generate a new one, it could be a blue or red or green or whatever. And when you assign various variables to an algorithmic work to where every time that it generates it sort of at random generate something fresh and different, that's where it crosses the line.

At least in my opinion of what would be considered a degenerative project. And I think something really beautiful to look at is that a generative project in my mind doesn't have to be algorithmic. Uh, one of my favorite pieces of art of all time is a piece in Marfa, Texas, by Donald Jonah, it's called a hundred boxes, a hundred untitled boxes and milled aluminum.

And it's. You know, Donald Judd, drew architectural drawings for a hundred sculptures and they were created, but there was rules. They all have the same length within height, and then he just modified the internals of them. So when you walk around them, you see these blocks, they're all the same size. And like the site modifications to me, that's a generative project, but made by hand and then generative art on our blocks is a generative project that's generated by code generated.

Algorithmically. The end results are very similar. So, you know, the, whereas a generative project, like the a hundred, uh, on a named boxes, uh, in milled aluminum, if you just have one piece, it looks really cool. It's like a beautiful sculpture. Um, but without exploring the entire collection of a hundred, it actually just doesn't feel the same.

Like you need to see all of the other iterations to really appreciate that one that you're standing right in front of. Otherwise, it just looks like a metal box. And I think a lot of that kind of happens on our blocks where, you know, Can you can become attached and really fall in love with a specific output or iteration, but then when you see the entire, um, uh, output, when you see the entire body of work, that's when it really sinks in.

The time and effort that the artists went into into creating this like beautiful piece. Uh, so what happens is the algorithmic artist, the artists creates an algorithm that algorithm is, is stored on the blockchain immutably. So like on the Ethereum blockchain, and that algorithm is missing the variability component.

So like, when I talk about the background being red or blue or green, the algorithm is waiting for you to tell it whether it's going to be a blue background or a red background by providing it inputs that are stored on the token itself. So the NFT, the non-refundable Dugan, all it stores is a bunch of strings of characters.

The algorithm that's stored in the blockchain without the information stored on the token is useless. And the information stored on the token without the information stored on the blockchain is also useless. It's those two things combined that create a visual output. So when a user. So the project, all they have to look at besides maybe some tweets from some artists that they might've kind of teased their work.

All they have to look at is all of the previously generated additions of that artwork. And that is the information that they have to decide whether they like those outputs and then want to mint another one. So when you go and you look at the beginning of a project and all you see is met number zero, you actually have very limited information.

To me, it's usually enough information to know whether I like this artist's style in case I wasn't familiar with them before. Uh, but then after that, you know, after 50 of them are minted, now you have this body of work and you can start to see the nuances between the different pieces. And that slowly builds until the edition sells out at whatever the cap that the artists set for the, for the artwork is.

And once that edition sells out, no more iterations can be purchased. And that's when you get the final body of work, the entirety of the, uh, Love that. And like how you mentioned earlier, right? So the artist doesn't know what the final body work's gonna look like until it's minted, which makes it pretty quick.

Correct. And one of, well, I'll just kinda touch on this here too. Cause I mean, we, we get really excited about we get, we get really nerdy about the blockchain component, right? So generative artists, like I mentioned, could have pressed the space bar before our bucks existed and generated unlimited number of iterations for a generative piece.

And so what the blockchain does is it kind of creates a finite amount of iterations to something that has historically been unlimited. Uh, and that's kind of something that couldn't happen without the blockchain. I mean, yeah. You could trust an artist to generate a hundred outputs generatively and then drag the algorithm to the recycle bin on their computer.

But for some reason that feels really weird, like to destroy code like that, like, you know, artists also iterate on the code and they kind of build on it, but it's not that different than like a screen printer taking and saying, this is in addition to 10. And then destroying the screens after 10 and kind of proving that no more are going to be created unless you go back and recreate the screens.

Got it. Uh, where do you see generative art going from here? Well, we're enjoying generative art, um, as kind of generative art fans here. And I think we're introducing a lot of people to not just generative art, but art in general. We're really enjoying the fact that people, you know, in our, in our discord, we have this need and that's, I came for the flip state for the art.

And I think that, I mean, people laugh about that, but I really think that genuinely has happened if that has happened with a hundred people in the last 11 months, I consider that like a major victory, right? Like what else in this world is so, uh, intentionally introducing people to art, um, then, then that kind of experience.

So, uh, I think that art in the generative world will kind of get, you know, it's been around since the sixties. Uh, but might get a new level of recognition, not just because of our box, but because of other generative art projects, uh, on, uh, um, in the space. In fact, I always like to joke that like I've been watching people buy generative NFTs on super rare known origin for years, but the word generative wasn't part of the equation.

Cause it just wasn't part of the equation. The artists was creating it, algorithmically, minting it and putting it on the platform. Um, and it's really nice to now see the word generative is part of the equation to the degree, maybe overdone in a couple cases, but that's okay. Like that's an, that's an indication that people are kind of drawn to that beyond generative art.

I think there's a lot of opportunities for generative. So a lot of the time that I spent ideated art blocks was not just for art. Although art has always kind of been our forward and our first kind of step, but also for the concept of generative design and generative content. In fact, you know, um, early versions of our website said, you know, generative content, regenerative design hosted immediately on the Ethereum, blockchain.

The idea here, being that just like, so art is the easiest implementation of generative, uh, content, uh, because it's, it's digital, it's flat. It's, uh, it's a file. Start on a computer or an algorithm stored on a computer. I think there's opportunities similar to the a hundred, uh, untitled boxes of in milled aluminum, where like you might have a really talented, uh, furniture designer, uh, industrial designer that creates an algorithm that creates a coffee table.

And, you know, you're going to be happy with anything that that algorithm produces because you've seen this designers work and you will go and you'll spend 2000. On a coffee table, which is actually a lot of money for a copy stable, but somehow not a lot of money in the NFT space. So I think we're eventually going to reach this kind of homeostasis, where we realized that, you know, you could spend half an Eve and actually maybe have somebody manufacturer a coffee table and have it delivered to your door that uses CNCS to follow some features that an algorithm dictated that was created by, by an industrial designer or a graphic designer.

So I think we're going to see generative applications in industry, uh, furniture, manufacturing, and then also gaming. I think that, you know, if, if every time I went and bought my, my sword on Zelda, if it was just a slightly different pixel configuration, I think that would be pretty cool. Uh, but then on top of that, if I could level up that sword and then it's available and open sea and, you know, it's unique from the start, but then on top of that, it can be built on, um, and you know, you can sell it and then go mint another sword.

Uh, I think there's a really beautiful opportunity for video game companies to have. The entire catalog of objects in a game existing on a single smart contract, kind of like the Bible of that project. So like, you know, every sort, every suit, every character exists as a generatively created piece. And no matter what happens to that game, that that catalog exists immutably because of the way our box works.

We store the scripts on chain. It has more longevity than your traditional NFT or the traditional video game that was hosted in 1995 on a server that no longer exists. There's that immutability that I could go back to in 20 years and be like, oh man, I remember when I got that character and know, play that game, and it's not dependent on the success of that video game, even though I might've dedicated 40 or 50 hours of my life to that video game.

And now that video game doesn't exist anymore, or that company went out of business. I can still go have the memory of that experience and maybe even own those pieces. So I think there's opportunities in the video game space as well. And we will definitely want to explore those with our blocks. Once we kind of get our inner stuff together and get to explore outside of.

That's awesome. So are you teasing out of art blocks, video games coming soon? Um, you know, we have one developer already Hindu, uh, dropped a piece on our box that, uh, is a game. It's a little game of pong and it's super, super sweet. It's like super smooth, clean 3d. Um, and you know, when, when he created that, I kind of hinted at him creating our blocks arcade and kind of creating like a standardized output for these games where another website could actually listen to outputs from the algorithm that would post scores and kind of create a home for people to like, kind of all play the games together, these like blockchain mini games.

Uh, we are absolutely going to focus on art for the foreseeable future. There's there's, you know, there's so much bandwidth that can be dedicated just to improving the art part of the platform. And that is our roots and that's where we started. And it's so easy to get excited about all these other opportunities and we'll we'll approach them, but.

For now you're going to have to live with like, you know, a couple, a couple of games hosted in the outbox factory. And, you know, I'd love to see like a putt putt golf thing, or like a generates a golf course, like a tiny little golf course with a hole in a random location and rocks and random locations.

And maybe you can't even beat that because the algorithm created an impossible level. I think there's a lot of fun to be had there. Uh, we're just, uh, we, we really are just wanting to take a step back with the exploration and focus strongly on just making sure that our product is as user-friendly and, um, buildable as possible.

Love that. So we've seen those become a hot topic in the NFT world lately. Uh, what are your thoughts on Dow's? Um, I hated the idea of Dow's, uh, early on. Uh, in fact it took two very smart humans reaching out to me and, uh, Proving that, that there was humanity in the concept of a Dow. So I, you know, I I've always been so grossed out by like the incredibly speculative nature of everything in the crypto space.

I shouldn't say grossed out, but that's not the right word. I just, uh, I really discouraged, I guess, by just how everything has to be associated with the valuation. Um, there's a market. I mean, there's market cap on squiggles, right? Like it's a work of art, but like they're, you know, schools are referred to as having a market cabin.

I'm not offended by that. I just, you know, like everything has that like dollar value associated with it. And to me, um, in my early days of crypto, which is 2017 and participating in new coins and startups and, uh, master nodes and, you know, trusting other people to dedicate time to a project. And people really like, I just, I think enough times I would be participating in some kind of like all coin project and the value would spike and like half the team would go away because it would just sell their shit.

They made it, like they made a bunch of money and I, and I felt like Dow's were just going to be an automatic perpetuation of that. Uh, and then I met the beautiful people of the Flamingo Dow and, um, I just remember, uh, pre reached out early because she's like, Hey, I just wanna let you know, we're the ones who've been getting all these squiggles.

Cause there was somebody that was just minting them up to squiggles. There was a few different people that were minting squiggles. And I was like, man, I hope these people, uh, realize like there's no guaranteed value of these things. Like this is just like, you know, um, my little art project, but she reached out and she was like, Hey, I just wanna let you know, we're really excited about our blocks and we really love your squiggles.

And I was very cordial and I was very excited. And then, and this is before I knew she was even part of a doubt. And I, I specifically remember she was like, have you ever heard of Flamingo Dow? And my response was like, oh, I'm not into douse. And we kept talking and. I mean, I love my fellow degenerates in the space.

I've spent four years, like on discord and the crypto punch discord, literally like meeting everybody as they stumbled into crypto because, or in the NFTs. Cause that was kind of like the, the home, uh, you know, the birthplace of all the projects. And I just, you know, I love all my degenerates, but I definitely felt alongside them, like very degenerate in the empty space.

And so little by little talking to Priyanka, I just kind of started feeling like I was talking to a human, like someone from the outside world, uh, someone that understands law and uh, just not just normal procedures. And so I. Decided to kind of consider working with Flamingo Dao. And I did, and I joined and I just remember joining and being like, this is, this is like pure magic.

Like there's dozens of people inside the Flamingo Dow talking about all the projects that are coming out, giving opinions, voting, thumbs up, thumbs down. And there's 50 something members and maybe only 13 active members. And like, I was maybe more than 13, but you know, I was originally an active member and I felt like I was contributing now.

I feel like a just useless number just because of the box has completely taken over my life. But, you know, I have this dream that I would one day get to a point where I can wake up in the morning, uh, open up like the philosophical newspaper, which is like the Flamingo discord with a cup of coffee. And just look at all the comments from the day before and participate in all of these things.

The exploratory, uh, nature of Dallas, I think is an incredible by having that many people from that many different backgrounds, all contributing to a project. I think that there's just like just, I, I just think it's a beautiful thing and I don't think. Our operate the same way. And I don't think all Dallas will be successful longterm, but I, my, I definitely did 180 degree pivot when I met Flamingo and realized that there actually was a humanity behind these dials and like their way of collecting art.

I mean, yeah, I think there is a financial long-term horizon, just like there is with just about anybody in this space, but they seem to respect the NFTs and the value and the artists, um, a lot more than others. And so I have like, there's a special place in my heart for, for Flamingo down, love that honesty I on Dows and also, you know, admitting to the 180 there.

So, uh, uh, thanks for that, Eric. Uh, you know, I know you mentioned, uh, you know, the market cap of art blocks. We talk about floor price on the show and, you know, putting the, the east value aside, how do you measure, you know, the success of art blocks? What makes it a successful project in your eyes? And that you're most proud of.

Uh, after w w what I consider a successful art work is when you drop the word crypto, and when you drop the word generative and you just call it art. And, um, you know, w if you go back to like Tyler House for Danza, all of those pieces, they look really great in the body of work, but they actually look pretty awesome independently too.

Like, even if it was just a, one-on-one like, that's a really delicate, beautiful piece. And so the success of it, of an artwork for me is a, like my interest in mentoring, a bunch of them, which obviously, since our box has gone through like a growth mode that has significantly reduced, like I mentioned, seven mentored in purchased $1,700 bucks pieces between November and may, and then subsequently minted in purchase, maybe like 50 from, uh, June or July to today.

So obviously, like my fund has dropped significantly on that and in the process, but. To me, the sign of success is like how degenerative early. I decided that I wanted to mint that piece. Like whether I wanted one or 10 or 20 or in some cases like, like poor, uh, Alexis, Andre, uh, he dropped it. He did a piece called messengers and I, I mean, I went deep.

I think I bought 40 of them. Cause I wonder one of every color that to me is like success. Uh, in terms of like an art piece, but that's just me as like a curator of my art collection. Um, the other sign of success is like really watching people from the outside world coming in and purchasing. These are box pieces.

Some of them have very significant valuations and people that have zero short-term horizon, like, you know, that the person that's buying these pieces of this price point is not expecting to turn around and sell it for like 10 X next week. Like at those prices, there is a fundamental ceiling. Like we talked about floors all the time, but there must also be a ceiling.

Right. And so whether that fundamental ceiling is the total sum of all of the dollars in the world, or whether it's some other factor of, you know, um, you know, wealth, uh, we, I do think that as you, as you sell pieces for higher, you're getting closer to that fundamental ceiling. And so watching people buy pieces at that kind of fundamental, I mean, that's not the ceiling, but as close to the ceiling, as we've seen, uh, that has zero intention of moving those pieces for the next few years.

Uh, I think is really a pretty solid sign of success as well, because that long-term, these are being recognized as like isolated individual, um, successful works of just generative and not just crypto, but just art. They stand on their own. And the, like the goose ringer is a really good example of that.

Like, it became a very well-known piece, uh, within our box, you know, um, you know, Dimitri showed a lot of favor to it, but then it also kind of looked like a goose and like people recognize it. And, you know, the owner of it was just so proud of that piece and it became world famous, I guess, maybe just in the NFT space, but it's a pretty big space these days.

And then watching the. Expand to end up in a collection of someone else collecting just like the finest pieces of not just our plots, but like all, uh, appease, uh, really I think solidified the, the long-term, uh, success of, of our box. Perfect. So one of our favorite things to ask on the show, um, you know, when we have the creators of projects on is to talk about their favorite traits, right?

So art blocks obviously has so many different projects. So I know you probably can't pick, you know, your favorite ones, but maybe give us some favorite traits for Cromey squiggles or some of the other big names. What do you think, uh, what are some of your favorite traits out there? It's easy with the squiggles.

Um, I really liked the closed terminal ribbed, um, as the community has so nicely dubbed it. I just love the words that the community can use to describe these pieces. And so like, ultimately. They've, uh, they've named it and it's just the rib squiggle, um, that doesn't have an open end on the end that you don't see color on the end.

You just see like the same color of the squiggle, uh, that I, there was a time where any of them that were for sale under five, under 0.5 each on open. See, I was snagging them and I built up a little extra padding on the, on those. I love those pieces a lot, uh, outside of the squiggle, I think I remember, um, you know, early on in our blocks traits were important, but they weren't like this intensity like they are now.

And I remember, uh, the archetype drop shuttle created this trait called the cube and the corner. And then, you know, like the rest of them were just the archetypes and there was something to me that just felt really special about like zooming out. Otherwise flat field and seeing the corner and that special, and then having the whole Cuban, making that extra special, uh, that really stood out to me as a really special trait.

And when I say that it's like, I ended up chasing those traits and then spending more money on that than I've ever spent on anything else in my life. And to date the most expensive things I've ever purchased in my life other than a house is an archetype cube. Uh, and, um, two sub scape star falls. So the Starfall was another trait that just, it just struck me and yellow and black and my favorite colors.

Uh, and so there was just something, when I first saw it, I didn't even know, you know, that was when our box was starting to kind of move faster and I stopped getting to literally nerd out and dive into every single Testnet. I mean, there was a time when our bus was getting started. I knew every single test in that piece from every drop, Dimitri mentioned a thousand tests that visas, I probably explored like 300 or 400 of them.

And then I got consumed by our box and I didn't really get to appreciate. Fun stuff that was happening. And I just remember seeing the Starfall piece, uh, from subscribes, from that Deloitte piece and after the mint and being like, I have to have that. And so I went in and I bought one and then I bought a second one.

And, um, just, you know, those two really stood out to me as like, like more in a sentimental way than just like, oh, these are rare. Like they touch the cord and I really, I really appreciate them. And there's many, many more, but those in particular, like stand up. That's awesome. I mean, I know it's hard to pick on some of these, uh, so, you know, I hate to ask that question, but we always like to try to get it out there.

So, um, Eric talking, uh, you know, broadly about the NFT market, right? You mentioned, uh, uh, I think rebel earlier, you mentioned open sea. We obviously have this, this overhanging elephant in the room of Coinbase getting into an NFT marketplace. Um, you know, what are you thoughts on, you know, a big crypto name, like.

Getting into NFTs and, you know, well, art blocks have a place in that. I say, bring it on. I mean, their, their user base is significantly bigger than the existing NFT space. Um, you know, and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm having some early conversations with them and like just learning about their integrations and kind of how they're going to, uh, deploy their project and like their MVP.

And I really think that they have an approach that's, that's different than your standard kind of NMT marketplace. And I think that it'll find a lot of love and a lot of success. Uh, I think if they act as a, as a ex like introduction to NFTs to 1% of their many, many millions of user bases user base, uh, I think we will all enjoy, um, uh, just a new generation of people entering the space.

And I think that's, that's pretty cool. Um, Marketplaces are hard. They're very hard, you know, and, and, and as, as, as I spoke to, for example, uh, Coinbase the other day, and I was like, look guys, like a lot of people, like to kind of shit on open seat, but like, can you imagine being in the position that open C was in like in August where not only do you have like a massive amount of sales and a massive amount of activity, but then you also have a new influx of people trying to deploy projects.

And everybody has their own little special case and their own little customer service requests. And yeah, you can try to grow your company, but like I experienced the same thing in our books. No matter how fast you try to grow, like you can't just pick people off the street and stick it behind a computer and started coding.

And so I think that there's just so much there that, uh, it's so easy, I think, uh, for the general public and that might've been me before I started our box, right. Like kind of come complaining and like, you know, yelling about the inefficiencies of, of, of open sea. But, you know, I remember open sea at NYC in 2019, you know, with a very humble table and, you know, three, four dudes that literally just were huge NFT nerds and that conviction that they had that early on, uh, I think, you know, they, they get all of the love and the market share that they deserve.

And I think it's going to be up to everybody else to either develop a better product or a different direction, um, a different environment, a different experience altogether for NFTs in order to kind of capture some of that market. But I do caution people. Like when you, you know, it's like, I feel like projects could come out, um, to compete with our box right now.

It'd be like, well, you know, we're not going to tell you how many additions do you have to do? Like they can, they can basically like pick all the things that our blogs is, has struggling with and say, we're going to create this new marketplace. That's going to fix all that. But like that basically is saying that, you know, our blocks is just naive and or dense and not understanding those conditions and just plowing through things.

When in reality, there's a very specific reason why the things that are deficient on our pots are actually deficient on our parts and they have to do with scaling and they have to do with like, Supply and demand. And, um, I think what I, what I appreciate about Coinbase is that they're not coming out and saying, okay, like we're going to do everything.

You know, we're going to pick all the things that open C's doing and do them a completely different way. They're just going to do their own thing. And I think that's how healthy competition happens in the crypto space. It's just do your thing, bring to the table, bring to market, whatever you are passionate about, whatever you feel strongly about.

And if it fits people will come to you. And if it doesn't then, um, you know, that that's part of like startups and entrepreneurship love that. Eric, one of my favorite things that come out of NFTs are the communities. Uh, you know, how do you communicate with, uh, our blocks community, you know, right now is that their discord Twitter.

And if so, are you active on a daily basis in those communities? Our discord community? I think if it hasn't hit 40,000, cause there's is about two, which is just like bonkers. It was a thousand during the archetype drop. In fact, we kind of. W when we were first panicking about oversubscribed drops, we did like a white list and the, our bucks discord, just like we did a user, why not a white list, but like a user list of all the users.

So that in case we needed to implement a white list, we had a way of doing it. That couldn't necessarily be cheated too easily. And then we did that a few weeks later and it was 4,000 I can remember was after some other drop. And then we eventually just gave up like there's 40,000 people that have joined.

Um, I. I spent a little bit less time in the discord than I used to because now there's, uh, 14, 15 of us at our box. And, uh, I spend a significant amount of time on like one-on-ones with the team to make sure that, you know, we can kind of keep her stuff together and continue building and growing the platform.

But, um, as a result of growing the team, cause you know, I got to a point where, I mean, I, I was on the, I was on the verge of breaking myself. I mean, you know, I was easily 80, 90, maybe sometimes more hours a week, you know, I'd wake up, I'd spend the entire time on our blocks and I'd put my kids to sleep and then I'd stay up until three on our blocks.

And it got to this point where it was just like so overwhelming and excessive. And a lot of that time was, you know, uh, you know, one-on-ones with people in the discord, like trying to defend what we're doing and, you know, standing up for what our blocks believed in and not trying to like get swept into like this whole crypto speculative madness and, um, the, the cool thing about growing the team, uh, where right now, I spent a lot of time with the team is that I'm hoping that by growing the team and being able to kind of offload a lot of the responsibilities that I had on a day-to-day basis, I can go back into the discord and fight it out with people again.

And I love fighting it out with people, as long as they're respectful. I don't like talking to people that are accusing us of being money grabby. And like, no, that's just not a fun conversation. Like, I don't think we've indicated in anything but Goodwill for the community. Like we really want the community to thrive and we want the artists to thrive and we want the platform to thrive.

So it sticks around how many platforms existed in 2008 at the peak of like the crypto cycle. And then that's when they were thriving and it, you know, everything fell apart and they went with it, you know, so it's good to be thriving in good times and also be very conservative so that we can vent exist during the slow times.

And that's when we can build. And right now things are cooling off a little bit. And so it's giving me some time to get back into the discord and have some nice little bouts with people which I can kind of miss. I mean, I don't, I don't miss the one. We were having an August, uh, but I missed the ones that we're having today.

Um, and, and it's going to give us time to take a step back and build and, and, and, and literally just continue trying to build like the best NLP platform that can exist, like the most crypto native piece. So, um, you know, that's, that's kinda where we're at, but I love my community. Uh, we're very lucky that I could not be more grateful for the team on our blocks.

They are the community, they all came. And majority of the art blogs team came from the community, which is just completely mind blowing as well. Um, and, and together, you know, uh, I think, I think we, I think we're going to do some fun stuff, love that. And you actually talked about, you know, how Adam teas can be mentally straining, which they can absolutely be that, you know, how do you balance your work and personal life?

You know, now. Th there there's a, there's a story I'll tell you. So we, we actually engaged with a mental health expert, um, because we started feeling like the quality, the mental health quality, and our discord was actually starting to be strained. Like people were saying things that just made us nervous.

I could just, you know, it just felt weird. Like there was the emotions that were, there were being really worn, um, in public and, and more importantly, the way the public was reacting to them maybe felt immature and felt troubling to us. And so we started working with this mental health expert, um, who we started explaining this is discord, and this is the madness that we shared discord.

And it was like, these are the examples of the things that make us really nervous. Um, and during that conversation, he's like, Hey, can, can we just step back a little bit and talk about your team? And like, I remember specifically hearing that and like, just like I was in complete shock because he was like, you're worried about like the mental health of your community.

But like, how has your team's mental health, like you guys are on here 24 7, duking it out with people and worrying about the artists. Cause I mean, you, you have, I mean the amount of time that goes into deploying projects now artists are becoming veterans because they've already deployed before. So it's a little smoother, but there's so much time that goes, especially early on into auditing scripts and vetting the artists and like just the entire process.

Everything was 24, 7 hands-on. Um, and it hit me pretty hard to be questioned about my mental health when we were there to like find out and help the mental health of our community and people were questioning our mental health and we took a step back and I'm like, yeah, this is, this is actually a problem.

And we are all suffering from this, not just the community, there's an addiction. Mentality like in discord and if Ts there's this speculative nature, there's the instant customer service on demand, or I'm going to tweet about how your platform is terrible thing, you know, which I mean, we definitely do not appreciate when people threaten us like that.

Like, I think it's completely unreasonable considering how transparent we are and how public we are about our mistakes and our issues. Like it's just completely unreasonable. Um, so yeah, so mental health is so it's so important in this space and everybody should take a step back every now and then. Um, and you know, we've, we've implemented no drops on the weekends.

Uh, that's been, that's probably been like the number one, like biggest mental health, uh, positive for me, uh, because I can actually kind of, I mean, I'll still LORIC I always learn like you can't not work in this course, but like, I'll take a step back and. And, uh, and not feel like I have to participate every single day of the week.

And so my, my kids are experiencing more of me, which, you know, there was a time there where like, I just really wasn't, it wasn't there. It wasn't very present as a dad. So things have come a long way. I'm hoping that things, uh, continue to get better. Uh, for the team. My target would be 60 hours a week. Like I'm not even looking for 40.

I would just be perfectly happy with 60. Uh, and you know, w we have a lot of team members that have joined, uh, one of them in particular, Jake Rockland is our CTO that came in and was like, okay, no more drops on weekends. Like we, you know, you, you need to set a good example. Like how many days off have you taken Eric?

Because if you're, if you're trying to set an example, You know, mental health, like if you don't do it, then no one else is going to do it too. Or they might take that as like the lead. And I was like, well, I haven't taken any days off. I literally haven't been off discord and 270 days. So, you know, um, we, we, I, like I said, our team is just really special and, um, everybody's looking out for everybody and, uh, we're, we're just really lucky.

And, um, if, if, if in the next five years, our blocks can get to a point where it can even be considered for like the top 100 companies to work for in the United States. Like that would be my next goal, um, because if we can have like the best artists and the best artworks and the best team, and on top of that, be recognized for like having internal, like positive company culture, um, and, uh, and just like a wonderful place to work.

Like there's really nothing else that I'm looking for in life at this point, uh, in terms of, uh, like business or entrepreneurial achievement, like I, I, at that point will have reached, reached my goals and, um, and, uh, I can't wait for that. That's awesome. Erica, thank you so much for your honesty. Right? We talk about these NFTs all the time.

And so many times we probably forget that there is real people, right? Real people behind these projects that have, have real lives. Um, so, uh, I love your honesty. W we kept you along. Uh, this was a great interview, a long one. So Eric, uh, that's going to do it for questions. We appreciate you, you know, joining us on the roadmap.

We look forward to talking to you soon and hearing more about, you know, art blacks in the future. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you to everybody out there, listening our community or our team and our artists. Like, you know, couldn't be here without y'all and thanks for taking the time to chat. I think.

Awesome. Well guys, another great interview here on the roadmap. I mean, mass a huge week, right? We had G funk from pixel and now Eric, from art blocks, two of the biggest projects out there and, you know, mass, I gotta repeat it. Right. I love the honesty from Eric, you know, whether it was the conversation about Dows and, you know, having the 180 there to the mental health aspects, right.

That was something G funk touched on on Tuesday, right. Was the mental health aspect and the needing to take breaks. And I just love the honesty there. Uh, you know, behind this project. Yeah. You know, in two things that I've noticed from the last two episodes that we've done is you can see the passion in the way these guys talk about their projects, you know, and they see it more than just, you know, just a cash grab or just, you know, putting a price on it, which I love, you know, seeing that aspect of NFTs because we get lost in the floor prices and, you know, and you know, is it gonna pump?

Is it not? Why is it dumping? You know, why is there no new news? So I love seeing these two projects that have been around for awhile, you know, provide that insight that we often forget in this fast moving environment. And then if two world perfect, well mass, uh, before we head out today, what do you think if we get to some headlines and talk about some of the big stories out there, let's break it down now, let's go.

What do we have? All right. So last, this actually happened last week, but we haven't had a chance to digest this news yet. So mass, there was a crypto punk record purchase that was turned down. So a $9.49 million bid, um, turned down by punk owner at Richard, R I C H E R D on Twitter, before the bid, he had said that his punk was not for sale.

Don't care, what anyone offers me. And then it was almost like someone out there taunted him. Right. And they put this bid out there. There was also some rumors that maybe, you know, this was a PR move. The big thing here is that this was a punk. That's not even one of the most rare, right. It has the 3d glasses, um, which is a decent trait.

You can see it there on the screen, the cigarette. Um, but the big key here for Richard was he said that over the past six months, I have used 6 0, 4, 6 as my identity, and have built up a significant brand around. To me, my brand identity and what I'm building in the NFT space will be way more valuable in the long run.

And this would have broke the record by a lot, right? The top sales 7.5 8000007.5 7000005.45 million. So I made a significant bump up from the record and I mean, mass, what do you think of this? And how important is it? If an anonymous person out there, you know, makes their PFP and NFT and builds a community, are they ever going to be able to see.

Well, you know, that's a great point, but a lot of these guys they've had their punks, you know, through the cycles where they've 10 X, 500 X, a thousand X, and they've held for this long, which tells us, you know, they identify with it in more of a, you know, like you said, brand instead of just a monetary thing.

So it's curious to see that, um, build around it as opposed to selling it for profit. Right? So this guy can build his brand and, you know, monetize it without having to sell his punk, which I think is cool. But having that offer, I mean, that's tempting, man. I don't know how, you know, that's a big offer. So yeah, I mean, we say diamond hands and, you know, NFTs and stacks all the time, but I'm a big fan of taking some profits too.

And I mean, you talk about a profit that's, that's a big one. Uh, you know, that's, that's, that's a big one to pass up behind, but, uh, again, more power to Richard out there for, for holding onto that. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, as I was, that was huge. Um, let's see, in other news though, we have Mecca verse, right? So Mecca verse has taken a slight dip in value over the last week.

Uh, we've seen some controversy here, Chris. We've seen people talk about, you know, You know, they don't look, they don't, you can't tell them apart or, you know, the profile pictures, you know, don't look as good from a aesthetic level. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, that one I'm screen here. I still love the Lego ones.

Right. But that one before it, the silver one, if you look at some of the, the difference between, you know, a silver, you know, uh, the different. It's hard to tell on some of them, right. It's like slight tweaks of color. Um, so, you know, they've been kind of accused of, you know, not really having differentiating factors.

There was also some accusations of insider trading before the reveal, which we never liked to see in the NFT space, but I mean, mass, these were selling for five to 10 east pre reveal, and then they dipped. Right. And we have a floor, I think right now of 1.83, that silver one that was on screen, um, I think was a 60 eith purchase.

The Lego style one, there was a 50th purchase. So I mean still some big purchases, but this, this project for being as big of an event as it was, you know, 200,000, the disk or 200,000 on Twitter, the hype has completely just died out. I haven't really seen anyone make a Mecca there. PFP. What about you, man? I have not.

And that just comes down to the question. You know, my self included, all I knew about Mecca was that it was very hyped and that you can sell it for a profit. Right. I didn't, I don't know much about what they're doing. You know, I, I feel like that message got lost with all this hype, you know, the community aspect, what their goals are, what the roadmap looks like.

I feel like that got lost and pushed in the backend, which doesn't mean they can't make a comeback and turn it around and, you know, focus on that now. Um, but you know what? Those hype drops, we tend to just be, you know, more concerned about the price. And once the price drops, we tend to look at it as a, you know, I wouldn't say this is a failed project, but definitely it's lost a lot of its hype and community behind it.

Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I think the important thing here still is that anyone that won the lottery, right. And you were able to mint these, your costs was still 0.2 plus gas, and there wasn't a huge gas war. Cause you had six hours. So 0.2 and you essentially could have sold it pre reveal for five to 10 east, or if you hold it, you could probably sell it for two or 1.8 floor now throughout the last couple of weeks.

So you still could have made a huge profit, the people that, you know, probably aren't too happy about the project hype dying down is anyone who bought after the lottery, right. That was buying, you know, for five east pre reveal. Um, but yeah, I mean this project, I, I wish it the best. Maybe it'll come back to life, but, uh, for now I just think the cycle is kind of over there.

Uh, mass, we, I talked for a minute about crypto dad, right? We had crypto dads on the street. So one of the big events is finally happening, right? If you own a crypto dab, you can mint a crypto mom for free plus gas, one mom per wallet. So there is mom acts right to a little take on space X. Um, w we have some other moms they've, they've released some sneak peaks.

Uh, we've got some rainbow lips there, the, the flower hat. Um, and then I think that that is the OJI, their maths. They're calling that the mom, oh, gee, that one right there. I think that's going to be the big one, right? So they will be revealing starting tonight at 7:00 PM. So this happened last night. You have a week to mint if you own a crypto dad.

Um, so I have not mentored my moms yet cause I keep waiting for, for gas to die down, but I kind of want to mint before the reveal tonight. Um, but I'll be following these at a 7:00 PM Eastern time when these start to show up and we'll see, uh, what I get out of this, uh, Love that, you know, we love the dads, such a great community.

Uh, you know, seeing them come out with the moms so quick because their project is only a couple of weeks old. So seeing them launch so quick is great to see. Um, so let's move on here. We have some big board ape yacht club sales. So Matt , who was the DraftKings co-founder he sold the board ape for 696.969 E.

You know, I love the numbers there, uh, which is a third, highest Eve amount ever paid for board apes. So that's huge. We've seen two top sales where it's 7 69, 8, 7 48. And then this one is a third one here. So this ape has a trippy for which I believe only points 77%. I have it, which is 77 apes and then has a King's crown as well, only 77 apes have it.

And the floor right now is 29 E uh, what do we think about this, Chris? Yeah, I mean, I love the sale price, right. Again, I mean, it's hard to pass up on these big numbers. So, um, I didn't look at when those other top two sales happen, but based on a theory I'm rising. I mean, this might actually be the top eight sale in, you know, USD, right.

Um, cause that's one of the things with these sales is it's based in ease, but if a theory was 3000 versus 4,000 today, same with the floor price, right? The floor pack price on apes is 29 eighth right now, which is actually mostly. Then, you know, a floor price of say 33 34, a couple of weeks ago. Um, but I like this, the draft Kings co-founder Matt Kelly.

She's been, he's been pretty vocal and bullish on a board apes. Uh, he still has some, in fact, I think his profile picture on Twitter is, is a board ape still, um, draft Kings has also gotten into board apes, right. They bought one to give away for a contest. So, I mean, I, I like the sale here. I love that trippy for too, uh, you know, as one of the traits.

So there's only 77 out there and actually the top sale ever in EAs, right there was also, I believe a trippy first. So that, that, that trade is definitely one to keep on watch with two of the top three sales of all time and, and, and mass speaking of board apes. Right? So, as I said, you know, we w we saw, um, you know, DraftKings do a, uh, not a giveaway, but you could enter a daily fantasy contest.

And the winner got a board ape, right? Huge value. If you were. We are now seeing that Coinbase is giving away a board ape yacht club NFT right there on screen. That is number 4,609. This is if you download the Coinbase wallet app, you import or set up a new wallet, and then you tweet your Twitter username and the hashtag Coinbase wallet sweepstakes you have until October 26th.

And you also have to follow Coinbase on Twitter through November 15th. This isn't a rare age by any means. Um, the, the key trait here, uh, is that service close, right? The, the shirt and the hat. So that is a 1% trait. So it's a decent one. The floor for a service ape right now is 33 east, which has more than $135,000 mass.

I think this just adds to the Coinbase field, right? They've already had over 2 million people sign up for their NFT. Wait. They already have an app to trade a crypto. Now they have a separate wallet app. I mean, I think Coinbase, they're just going all in on NFTs here. What do you think? Absolutely like snow for a set earlier.

Bring it on. So I can't wait to see that. Um, you know, with that though, if they're in price has been soaring, man, it's hit over 4,100, you know, in the last couple hours. Um, and it's affecting that FTE market. It seems like people are taking profits. It seems like people are not buying as much. You know, we've started to see a trend where, you know, when Eve rises, we do see NFTs kinda drop in floor price or stay stagnant for a bit.

Um, so what are your thoughts on this? As far as the NFT market? I mean, I own some Ethereum, so I'm always happy to see a theory, some go up, but on the flip side, as you said, when a theory goes. A lot of times we see NFT floor prices fall. Right. We see people want to sell their NFTs to take a profit or because they'd rather hold the theory.

I'm right. I mean, it's hard not to own a theory. I'm right now when it's ripping and when people are thinking, you know, that it's going to go higher by the end of the year and next year. Um, so this is just a continued cycle, right? We talked about this on the show before. It's one of those things where again, if you're in NFTs, you gotta be patient.

Um, you gotta know your plan, right? You gotta know your, your risk reward, similar to stocks, right. Um, if you get into a project and the floor drops or it drops, you got to know, Hey, am I going to cut my losses and get out? Or am I going to hold because the value could go back up. Um, you know, I, I just think, you know, it's one of those things, again, Ethereum 4,100 and NFT floor prices.

No, just falling, uh, as a, as a pair trade there. So, uh, uh, another hot topic though, mass, uh, team that we had on the show a couple of times now, uh, the dose. So they have delivered, right? I mean, this is a project where they started, the, the floor price has gone up. They built a good community. They launched puppies, right?

So everyone who had a doge pound guy, puppy, they have a Halloween drop coming up. If you own a dose, oh gee. And a puppy, they have an app they've. Uh, launched early access to some other projects. They have a new roadmap coming out at 7:00 PM Eastern time tonight. Um, so they tweeted that. So again, seven o'clock tonight.

I don't have any early details. Um, the one thing I, I think is part of that, uh, we've seen some athletes get into NFTs and doge pound has kind of been teasing over the last couple of weeks, um, that they have signed some NBA players up for a new NFTE series. So I think maybe that'll tie in maybe dosha pound owners will get early access to that.

Um, but maybe we're getting some new dogs or some new puppies or something down the road again. I mean, I just feel like this team has well exceeded expectations and I'm excited to see what this new roadmap has. Same. Yeah. You know, the doge pound team. They're one of the few teams that I see that are constantly well aware of the markets and are providing utility and value for current holders and marketing themselves to bring on new holders by, you know, all these things that they're doing.

So we'll find out and we'll report in our next episode, what this is here, but so today, this morning, Chris, I don't know if you saw Reese Witherspoon. She changed her Twitter profile pig. Uh, it was a world of woman picks. So that's her new profile picture. Yeah. So we see this here. Um, you know, this is big cause we saw her come on a couple of weeks ago on Twitter and ask about, you know, NFTs and Eve and she wanted to get involved in it.

So seeing her change, her profile picture, we've seen Shaq, you know, and her and a couple of other celebs do this. Uh, you know, do we see this move forward with others? I think definitely the, the thing I liked about, you know, Reese Witherspoon was she, she definitely said from the start, she wanted to know more about women led NFT projects, right.

And again, that's no slight of hand or, you know, offense to the, the male projects out there, but there's been kind of a drive, you know, especially with some of these celebrities and finding the, the female, that projects. I still, I love world of women. Mazza, it's one of those ones where I kicked myself about right.

We've talked about this before I posted about it at 0.06 east in a discord, we watched it go up to three. I think it's above two east today for the floor. I mean, Gary, V's in it, uh, art chicks in it, uh, Logan Paul's in it. Um, now Reese Witherspoon, you got some big names in there and I just, I liked the artwork.

I like their community. And again, a woman led project and mass to your point, you know, celebrities, athletes, they're, they're changing their profile pictures. Right? That can really, you know, build a project up. Right. And it, and it can do more, it can build the floor price, but also if the athlete or the, the celebrity engages in the discord, you know, interacts with the community.

I mean, it really shows that some of these communities have, you know, staying power, um, you know, going forward. Absolutely. And first of all, every time that I look at the world of women, a floor price, Chris, I think of you, man. So for better or worse, I mean, I'm glad that you say that, but yeah. I mean, I had a hard time looking at it today.

As soon as I saw a recent post, I was like, no, oh man. I was like, of course she picked that one. I am curious if we get the backstory or if we hear from Reese, right. There was actually a post about that today. You know, we'll Reese, do you know at Twitter spaces, will she do an interview? Will she start talking about, you know, NFTs?

And I'm curious to hear if she says, you know, why world. You know, was that people posting that on her Twitter, did the team reach out to her? Did she find it herself? Right? How did this come to be? Because mass, I don't know if you remember that, but when she posted that tweet and it was like, what NFT should I look at?

I mean, might as well not post that. Right? Cause she got thousands of responses. She got shilled. She had people not even talking about NFTs. I mean, posting ridiculous things like that. That's what happens. Right. When you're a celebrity, you're always going to get a ton of responses, but I'm curious, you know, so Reese, if you happen to be watching, I mean, we'd love to have you on and hear about world of women.

Cause I want to know, you know, why this project and how did you find it? Um, and again, we could talk more about celebrities with their PFPs let's tag her on Twitter. We'll break this, cook down, posted on Twitter and tag her. So hopefully she. Yeah. And, you know, mass, I didn't happen to look, uh, at her wallet.

I guess that would be the other thing is now that you see the world of women a picture there, you could probably find it right on open, see, based on the traits. And you could probably find the wallet. And I'm curious if anyone has done that yet. And maybe we see, is this the first one, did, how long has she owned this for?

Um, you know, and is there going to be more purchases down the road? Uh, you know, part of that conversation with, uh, with snow fro, right? It was talking about the big investors, but we've also seen, you know, some celebrities buying up art blocks, right. Buying up crypto punks, um, uh, again, and is it a store of value?

Is it, you know, a flax? Is it for the PFP? I think it's a combination, right? Of all those. Absolutely. You know, and I've seen some feedback about celebs joining, you know, I've seen criticism where, you know, we've have seen celebs join, you know, they buy, you know, a hyped project, you know, they, they, they come into that empty space and then a couple of weeks later they launched their own project and just kind of cash grab it and then they just leave.

Right. So we've seen that a couple of times. Uh, it's gonna be interesting to see if that continues to happen or if we see people that actually love the space, for example, Steph Curry joined the board apes, you know, he put it in his bio he's part of the community he's in the discourse sometimes. Um, so I'm curious to see, you know, which directions certain celebs take, you know, with their platform because they have an influence.

So we'll see where that goes as well. So yeah. Um, recess, she put out a tweet, right? It was GM friends and tagged world of women. You saw Barry V retweet it, uh, saying, well, and then Reese retweeted, Gary V's tweet. Um, but to your point about the bio, it looks like Reese Witherspoon does not have a Twitter by.

Um, so we'll see if maybe she, she adds something there, but, uh, I think, you know, this is definitely along that that big conversation we can have on every show matters, right? Celebrities, athletes getting into NFTs. I still think, you know, we're early, we are going to make it because the fact that these people want in, um, and are just now getting in.

I mean, when some of us were in this for months or years, I think shows, you know, the life cycle continuing for NFTs mass. I think that was all our headlines. Is there anything else out there, any, uh, you know, upcoming projects, we haven't talked really about any upcoming mint, um, or new projects. Uh, what do you think anything catch your eye on.

You know, that's funny that you mentioned that because there it's been slow, you know, I probably haven't mentioned projects in awhile that I've, unless there's stealth drops. So what I've realized is the best thing to do now with the downtrending market is to join these. Discords try to get on these white lists and do your research on these projects before you just, you know, mindlessly throw, if that, uh, um, I think it, we can change that and, you know, start doing more of this.

We may see less, you know, just junk coming out and more, you know, uh, projects that are actually focused on the community and the arts. So that's kind of where I'm headed towards in my direction, instead of just trying to mint projects in the last couple of weeks or so. Yeah. I mean, I feel like for a while we were seeing, you know, maybe three or four minutes a day and then it got up, uh, 15, 16, 20 minutes a day, right.

Maybe if we can see the trends continue down. They can be more focused, right. And then, you know, we'll see more people meant them when you're having 20 minutes a day and people are keeping their ease cause they don't want to lose it right now with the bull market. You're not selling out these projects and you're just not getting the interest.

And those projects are losing momentum real fast. So I'm with UMass, haven't done much minting, um, but have done some discord, joining some white lists, uh, searches, some contests, some scavenger hunts, right. Whatever I can do to, to get on these white lists. And again, I mean, look for those discords, um, find those communities where you think this project is, you know, going to last, I mean, I'll even use the example with.

Snow fro, right? He said the art blacks discord was only a thousand when they dropped one of their most successful projects. There's over 40,000 now. And then on the flip side you saw, you know, makeovers had over 200,000, but I haven't looked lately, but I'm guessing there's a lot less than 200,000 in there now.

Um, so that's the other thing is maybe find some of these NFTs that have already mentored, um, that may still have the strong communities and that staying power going forward. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, guys, that's going to do it for us. Another exciting episode of the roadmap. I mean, man, we had a killer week right today.

G funk from pixel vault. We got to talk about punks comic Mehta hero. Um, we got to talk, you know, about that, that talent deal. Maybe we get some movies, some TV in the future. We had a snow fro from art blacks on today. We also got through all those exciting headlines, uh, you know, mass, it's hard to pick, you know, a favorite moment or a, a big event from this week.

Uh, it was just so full of them. Yeah. You know, these are two episodes that I personally will go back and just listen to them and watch them over again, just as there's so much alpha and info from these two guys that are killing it in space. And I see them having long-term value in that empty world. So, yeah, great week for us and great week for people watching and the guests.

Okay, great. Definitely will. We will be back next Tuesday, 2:00 PM. Eastern time. Um, I know we've still got more guests on the docket for October and November. I don't know who off the top of my head, so it's going to be a surprise for everyone out there, including myself, uh, and for mass and less of, he knows off the top of his head, but mass, we will be back on Tuesday.

So thanks for everyone who tuned in or is watching this. We do have all our episodes available as podcast as well, but if you are watching on YouTube, make sure you like this video and you subscribe to Benzingers YouTube channel, uh, and let Benzinga know. Hey, I want more episodes of the roadmap. I want more NFT content so we can keep pushing forward with our show.

Absolutely. See you guys on Tuesday.

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