The WLD Show

Will Robinson runs the Alliance web3 accelerator program and is the founder of dfda0, one of the top gaming guilds playing the Web3 game, Dark Forest. Prior to this, Will was a Forensic Crypto Auditor and obtained a PHD in Game Studies and Game Design.

In this episode, we discuss the Dark Forest game, dark forest DAO, web3 games, incentives, the Alliance incubator program and what it offers, and the future of web3.

Will Robinson, dfda0, Alliance links:

• Will Robinson’s Twitter: @DangerWillRobin
• Will's writing on Web3 games: https://mirror.xyz/wbarobinson.eth
• Alliance’s DAO’s twitter: @AllianceDAO
• Alliance DAO’s accelerator: https://alliance.xyz
• Defi Alliance jobs: https://jobs.lever.co/defialliance
• dfda0’s Twitter: @d_fdao
• dfda0’s Medium: https://medium.com/dfdao
• dfda0’s Github: http://github.com/dfdao
• dfda0’s Discord: http://discord.gg/aaHada53mQ

Episode notes and links:

• How Will ended up getting a PhD in game studies
• How will decided to parlay where he spent the most time into a job
• How games are different from cinema
• Playbour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playbour
• How Will found a job at Catallaxy: https://catallaxy.rcgt.com/
• One of Will’s favorite games: The Passage by Jason Rora - https://passage.en.softonic.com/mac
• bitcoin.com
• The difference between Guilds that Shill vs. Guilds that Show vs. Guilds that Ship
  • Guilds that Shill: Create value via a large community
  • Guilds that Show: Creating a spectacle on top of a game. For example YouTube personalities and pros create value when they play games.
    • Miko Matsumura - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikomatsumura
    • Dota 2 - https://www.dota2.com/home
  • Guilds that ship: Guilds which add to game shelf life by contributing code and new worlds. Ex. People creating new worlds with the WarCraft III editor: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/warcraft3/23395649/revisiting-the-warcraft-iii-editor
• How tokenized games can re-distribute value to players when they build.
• How Will found the Dark Forest game
  • Dark Forest game: https://zkga.me
  • Dark Forest twitter: https://twitter.com/darkforest_eth
  • An intro to how to play Dark Forest: https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-play-dark-forest-the-zksnark-powered-mmo-game-part-1-7222e2c3ab4
• How Will recruited an entire guild, dfda0, to compete at it.
  • Omar Bohsali - @omarish
  • Manan19 - @manan19
  • Zha Yitong - @zhayitong
  • Tony - @cha0sg0d_
  • Lindsay - @llpresswell
• How the Dark Forest game works - https://zkga.me/
• Spoiler Alert: The story behind The Dark Forest which is book 2 of The Three-Body Problem trilogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)
• Dan Robinson (Head of research at Paradigm)
  • Twitter: @danrobinson
  • Paradigm investment firm: https://www.paradigm.xyz
  • Ethereum is a Dark Forest - https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest
• Gaming trends that Will is seeing: “Web3 are not going to be not like normal games and likely much worse.”
• The one real utility with blockchain is censorship resistance
  • Makes perfect sense for finance
  • Putting games on chain, doesn’t always benefit from this utility
• Web3’s value to games
  • Makes it provably fair that you can only be rewarded by playing and winning the game.
  • Composability and open standards (assuming builders are on the same protocol and utilizing the same engines).
• Key(s) to interoperability: aligned incentives
• How the 800 person dfda0 organizes itself
• What the Alliance accelerator is
  • Premise: Bring in lecturers from the DAO and support the top founders. When founder succeed, they come back and teach, to create a virtuous cycle.
  • Purpose: DAO of builder illuminati
  • Everyone is holding each other’s bags and incentivized to build up the DAO
  • Most common investment type(s):
    • Capital investment representing for 1% of the company’s current valuation
• Alliance incubator’s schedule:
  • First 7 weeks:
    • Lecture every day
    • Thursday meeting with other founders
    • Always able to schedule an unlimited amount of time with the Alliance mentors and founders
  • Last weeks:
    • Multiple reps to come away with strong product demos
• The differences Will sees between web3 and web2
  • Tokens
  • Token incentives
  • Secrets are gone, it’s about relationships, brand, being first, and getting enough liquidity to be sticky
  • Must raise large rounds to hire web3 engineers
  • Must be comfortable with regulatory uncertainty
• Do’s and Dont’s when applying and participating in the Alliance incubator
  • Apply to Alliance.xyz first - do a great job on the founder’s section - “Good vibes”
  • Come with a referral please
  • Note: “You can’t pivot who you are, you can pivot what you do.”
• What companies are the future of web3?
  • In the beginning, most projects were low level protocol and primitives. Today, companies are much fluffier: DAO’s, games, much more common retail purposes, much higher founder quality
• Why Will see with Web3: Scalability
• Future problems Will is hoping founders will focus on solving:
  • Entertaining “objects” into new industries
  • Defi protocols
  • DAO’s and DAO tooling on the legal side
    • Building a token warrant (standardizing deals in Silicon valley
  • DAOs - Decentralized alignment and incentives

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Melissa Zhang is the co-founder of Bonfire. Bonfire is a platform that aims to unlock the power of ownership for online communities.

Many are observing a shift from a world where creators monetize individually from their fans, to one where they build wealth with their communities.

Bonfire is building infrastructure to enable creators to take advantage of this shift.  Its tools enable creators to host their communities on their own branded platforms, powered by their web3 assets.

Learn more about Bonfire and Melissa:

• Melissa’s twitter: @MelissaZhang13
• Bonfire’s twitter: @bonfire_tweets
• Bonfire’s website: trybonfire.xyz
• What Bonfire is focused on

In this episode we discuss:

• What is Bonfire?
• Create more sustainable communities for creators
• What inspired Melissa to build Bonfire
• Changing creators from labor into capital
• What Melissa is most excited about
• What broken incentives is Bonfire working to fix?
• How Bonfire’s tools helps creators build a community
• Which creators Bonfire is most focused on.

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Teddy Zee is the cofounder of MintNFT. MintNFT is the first NFT collaboration platform that empowers and protects brands, artists and communities. MintNFT recently launched the Balmain x Barbie high fashion NFT auction.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, Teddy built a storied career as one of the first Asian American executives in Hollywood. Teddy was the Executive Vice President of Production at Columbia Pictures. As well as the Executive Producer for films such as The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch, and Saving Face.

Learn more about Teddy Zee and MintNFT

• Teddy Zee on Twitter: @TEDDYZEE
• MintNFT Website: https://mintnft.com
• MintNFT’s Twitter: @mintNFTofficial

In this episode we discuss:

• What inspired Teddy to go into Hollywood
• Teddy’s experience as an Asian American in Hollywood
• What Teddy saw in Web3 that made him excited to jump into the space
• How Teddy onboards brands to Web3.
• Why brands are adopting NFTs
• What is MintNFT?
• How do brands build credibility in entering the Web3 space
• What makes a good target brand partner for NFTs
• Why a personal foundation is so important to Teddy
• David Chang and Teddy Zee podcast

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Sean Reed is a former professional poker player who got into Bitcoin and crypto in 2011, after online poker was banned in the U.S. He helped start OpenNode, a Bitcoin Payment Processor that allows companies like Shopify, Substack, and McDonalds accept Bitcoin payments. We talk about the different waves crypto has experienced and why he’s such a big fan of transparency, autonomy, and Bitcoin.

In this episode we discuss

• How Sean became a poker player
• Sample size and result required to give Sean confidence that he could quit the prescribed path for poker
• How poker brought Sean freedom
• April 15th, 2011: Black Friday which shut down all online poker in the US
• How Sean searched for a location and method to maintain his livelihood
• Bitcoin poker games
• Why Sean turned to Bitcoin
• Moving to Costa Rica
• How Sean tracked his poker games
• “EV” - Expected Value: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-expected-value-in-poker#how-to-use-expected-value-in-poker
• Bitcoin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
• The bad and the good Sean saw on Silk Road
• How buying, selling, and competition changes when a transparent market is created
• How Sean chose his next job after poker
• Why Sean believes in Bitcoin so much
• Opennode: https://www.opennode.com
• Who Michael Saylor is and his Bitcoin beliefs: https://www.michael.com

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

In this episode we bring back friends of the podcast, Howie Zhang and David Duong, to discuss Web3 gaming. Howie Zhang is a former quant and game economy designer for Immutable X’s Guild of Guardians. David Duong runs monetization for Apex Legends and has generated the game $1.6B by selling digital goods.

Guild of Guardians, a free-to-play mobile RPG, is one of the most highly anticipated Web3 games in the space. Apex Legends, a free-to-play battle royale-hero shooter, is one of the hottest AAA games in the industry. Howie and David bring their experience and perspectives to discuss the challenges and opportunities Web3 gaming faces.

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Chloe Park is a Web3 Designer at Coinbase and VectorDAO. While exploring starting a podcast for VectorDAO, Chloe ran into a few challenges. So she reached out to us to learn more about starting one.  We decided to bring her on the podcast as the host. And have her interview Will, Lee, and Andrew about the journey and thought process behind building the podcast.

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Music NFTs are the next frontier of Web3.

A 19 year-old just created Art Blocks for musicians:

Benny Conn is the founder of Beat Foundry. Beat Foundry is a generative music NFT that actually sounds good. All song data is forever stored on-chain in MIDI format so anyone can freely interpret and remix it in their own way. We discuss Benny’s story and how Beat Foundry works.

Learn more about Benny and Beat Foundry:

• Beat Foundry Website: beatfoundry.xyz
• Ocarina NFTs on OpenSea
• Beat Foundry’s FAQ
• Beat Foundry’s Twitter: @BeatFoundryNFTs
• Benny’s Twitter: @bennyconnn

In this episode we discuss:

• Benny’s origin story and pivoting into software engineering
• Other music NFT projects like Arpeggie, Sound, and Catalog.
• Discovering MIDI - a format for communicating music to a computer.
• What Beat Foundry actually does.
• How Beat Foundry is able to store music on-chain. What does it mean and how does it work?
• How Benny’s background in Jazz helps him think about putting music together that sounds good.
• New possibilities of Beat Foundry’s NFTs. Creating a new type of composer.

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

We bring a friend of the podcast, Steve Wu, on to talk about his new Web3 Journey. Steve is a product manager at Gusto, a payroll and HR software. He previously was a product manager at Scopely, a mobile gaming company, and an investment banker. We talk about the intersection of Web3 (DAOs, Gaming, DeFi) and how it relates to his career.

Moxie Marlinspike (Signal Founder) - My first impressions of web3

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Emerson Hsieh is the co-creator of CritterzNFT. CritterzNFT is the first fully on-chain NFT to enable play-to-earn on Minecraft. In this episode, we cover how CritterzNFT enables play-to-earn gaming and Emerson’s inspiration for starting the project.

Learn more about Emerson and CritterzNFT

• Emerson’s Twitter: @intemerson
• Emerson’s Website: https://www.emersonhsieh.com
• CritterzNFT Website: www.critterz.xyz
• CritterzNFT Whitepaper: https://www.critterz.xyz/whitepaper

In this episode we discuss:

• What is CritterzNFT?
• What is MineCraft and how do people play?
• What does fully on-chain mean for CritterzNFT?
• Who Emerson was inspired by
  • Anonymice NFT Staking
  • Ether orcs
• How Critterz staking works
• Earning $Blocks and buying plots of land
• What does renting Critterz mean?
• Emerson’s path to entrepreneurship and building
• What Emerson’s most excited about
• An example of a Minecraft build on the CritterzNFT server: The Dragon

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

Peter Yang is founder of OdysseyDAO. A learning DAO for creating high-quality, 100% free Web3 education. They are a 4,000 member community of product managers, designers, engineers, and other builders passionate about Web3. Creating quality "explain like I'm five" Web3 learning material. Peter is also the author of the best-selling book, Principles of Product Management. And runs a newsletter, Creator Economy, where 10,000+ subscribers receive essays that Peter writes about building products in the creator economy. We discuss how Peter built the OdysseyDAO community, how the OdysseyDAO is run, and his vision for OdysseyDAO.

Learn more about Peter and OdysseyDAO:

• Peter’s twitter: @petergyang
• Peter’s book: Principles of Product Management
• OdesseyDAO
  • OdysseyDAO Website - https://www.odysseydao.com
  • OdysseyDAO’s Twitter - @odyssey_dao
  • OdysseyDAO Discord
  • OdysseyDAO - Season 1 Plan

In this episode we discuss:

• What is a OdysseyDAO and what it provides: Quality, concise guides for learning Web3 together.
• OdysseyDAO’s mission: Onboard 1 million people to web3
• What got Peter started with OdysseyDAO.
• How Peter went from having a popular newsletter to launching a community
• How Peter realized that it’s not the number of members in the community, but the key is the number of core contributors
• How it all started with a tweet.
  • Signals
    • Learning DAO to explain to people how to onboard to web3
    • Curious beginner post took off
  • Accelerate writing out all the content
• How Peter decided on what work to delegate:
  • Rule of 3: No more than 3 priorities
    • Content
    • Design the website
    • Growing the community
• What it’s like to run a remote company with a part time work force
• What tools are safe in DAO.
  • A communication platform: Discord
  • Shared treasury - Crypto wallet that multiple people have access to: Gnosis safe
  • Crowdfunding: Mirror has no code tools to set up the crowd fund, sell NFTs, and sell governance token
  • Voting proposals using governance token: Snapshot
• The main point of the DAO is to give core contributors upside and ownership
• How OdysseyDAO has guided learning onramps.
• How do you build an audience on Twitter?
• What Peter would have done differently building out the DAO
• What the future of OdysseyDAO looks like

If you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!