You're playing this game with a self-knowledge, and you're doing it in a way that should it all go to 0. You can a look in your personal finances and feel like, okay, you know what, I enjoyed it. I treated this like a hobby or some form of entertainment. But also, you know, you look at your collection and say, I'm really happy with what I'm holding and I'll wait it out, you know, these things work in cycles and right, you know what we've seen in terms of the fundamental.
The entire space. It's not going anywhere. It's just a matter of what will happen with this first, huge wave of wealth generation. How sustainable will that be? And what is act? Two, three, four look like
that was Chris. I don't want to disclose his last name, was to keep that private, but he's open member with me, over at Flamingo, Dow and at Flamingo. We do these weekly Zoom calls. We're just gonna
You know, all the latest and greatest in Ft. Projects and Chris is that person on the call that I feel is just so good at identifying, the next big thing. We've all have that friend. They find the band before it becomes massive. He's that for an FTS. So you're going to hear about some of the Wilder and a few projects in this episode like this new trend of combining in FTS to make new and unique and ft's by burning certain entities, which is crazy as well.
Then of teas that are at the intersection of fashion and identity and we do some rapid fire questions. That cover this favorite art blocks projects, favorite virtual land, and some up-and-coming artists. I think you're gonna like this one. Let's chat with Chris. So Chris, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thanks
for joining me.
Thanks, Kevin. It's an honor to be on the show.
You know, one of the things up to give folks a little bit of a background here. We are on the flamingo. Dow together. You are on a handful of really well-known and respected Dows, like the Lao and Neptune. Dow one of the things that we do every week on Flamingo do as we do these weekly calls and you know, it's kind of updates industry Trends talking about purchases that we want to make. And one of the things that quickly stood out to me in
Of the Newbie to the group joining. Just a few months ago was how insightful and deep you are in the NFC space. And I think that's one of the things that makes Flamingo. So unique is we have a great kind of Bottoms Up economy of folks that are are able to bring up any topic and suggest new and interesting projects and I really enjoy your insights. And so I wanted to have you on the show so that we could just take some of that secret sauce behind the scenes that you do on the flamingo side and just expose folks to your thinking around.
And all things in Ft.
Cool. And yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. The flamingo crowd is awesome and the weekly calls or just, you know, such a wealth of knowledge and people to talk to and for opinions in the space. I mean, there are just so many good people on those calls and it's something I really look forward
to participating. It.
Yeah, you and me both. It's like when I get on those calls, I'm, there's always like a project or two. I've never heard of and so just because we can't cover everything like no, individual can cover everything that's going on in this space. And so I'm always learning something new and that's it's a lot of fun for me. But first, I guess a great place to start with just to be how you got into this crazy world. What is your, what's your background?
Yeah, great question. How did I get in this crazy world? So I've been doing, you know, consumer Tech most of my working life. I went to school for marine biology, which is a, you know, a great place to learn about technology that it's some financial services, but then, you know, it was like 1999 and the internet was born and it was something I hopped into, you know, live through the whole.com crash worked in the space out in La, you know, until about 2006.
At that point time. I moved to New York and my stock options came in and I was able to afford an apartment and he Parks
the oh, that's a tough thing to do, man. I've been
there. Yeah, it was a big moment. And you know what? My wife is. One of those people just loves New York and I always wanted to be there so, you know, that's where we went. And I was actually like moments away from taking a gig at city and and building out their web Analytics.
You and I kind of, you know, it was something it was an interesting opportunity but wasn't something I really wanted to be doing and I got a call out of the blue from a friend of a friend who had, you know, a Telco thing going that was blowing up and needed help. And so, I said, hey, you know, I'll jump in and help you out and, you know, be cool thing to do for six months. You know, that that partnership is still ongoing to this day and, you know, me and a group of people built several companies together in the mobile space.
And you know that that was something I really enjoyed, you know, startup scaling the the whole nine yards, but it eventually, you know, it did take a toll and I needed to step away and I wanted to find something. Do you know I really am just you know, when you work in certain industries, you're Reinventing, you know the most trap over and over again, and I just wanted to find something that was that.
Greenfield, and it took some time, you know, but it's the area was something I've been following, you know, since 2016. But it had been Primitives for so long and I really do worry, as you know, stuff on the on the consumer end and you know, finally like I think I was looking at it, you know, fall 2019 and it's like hell, you know, this is getting to that point and I really, you know, started digging in, you know, that in 2020 early 2020. And you know, I was just looking for
The right opportunity, the right entry point. And and that's when the loud came along and I was I was like, wow, this looks great. It's really a way to know people in the space building that work. But also be able to explore a lot of these projects and I had no idea, you know, really what I was in store for or what the law would go on to be and and you know, form out of it. I mean, you know people who don't know Flamingo, Dow was fun out of the loud and and so
Yeah, I mean, the journey into n of T land was really done collectively. Within the law is we looked at, you know, early projects that we were going to support things like super rare, Ava gochi, you know, and as we continue to explore the world, we realize, you know, we needed to have a vehicle that instead of, you know, investing in Project could acquire assets. And and so, you know, that's how flamingos came about and really
Getting in you know as forming Flamingo and just exploring the space together is was my exposure to it.
That's awesome. So you were in Flamingo from from day one. Did everyone from the Lao move over to Flamingo or was it kind of one of those things where you because your mandate at the Lao was crypto projects, right? Like defy, like things that are kind of not in ftes, and I'm assuming at some point in a few started popping up on your radar. And you said, hey, let's let's create this other side.
Thing. How many folks jumped over?
So the law itself has a stake in Flamingo, right? So, you know, we allocated funds to form it. And so, you know, the entire loud or collectively members Flamingo, but then I'd say about half of membership, it jumped over, you know, it to Flamingo. And so that, you know, when we launched, we might have been 30 30 ish people that, you know, who were keeping flamingos
off.
Gotcha. Awesome. Do you remember what the first Flamingo purchase was by chance? I've just had a curiosity because it's such a legendary down. Now,
I do, I actually made the first and second Flamingo, purchases on behalf of the Dow. And so the first one is somnium space, we are. But yeah, we were really geeking out on. I mean, the first time we talked to Arthur and the somnium team hosts the mind-blower, you know, like he
Is on a zoom called with us in somnium space and it was a sense of nested realities. You know, that you're on your laptop on zoom and he's on Zoom but he's in the better verse on Zoom with you. So, you know that that was our first first buy button Excel plot and a really nice location that you know, we're building out right now and then the second one was very fitting as well because you know, we're massive generative art nerds. And so
So it was neat. Alex's squiggly, WTF project.
Can you explain what the squid? Because so many people think squiggly and they think, you know, crummy squiggles from our blocks. What was the squiggly WTF?
Yea, so quickly. Dirty f. It to generative art project where all the output is SVG. And so, you know, the whole project is stored on chain, and then the output is rendered, you know, SVG files in your browser and it's a little bit abstract. It's
A lot of like, shape driven.
Chapter of an art that looks really cool. Yeah, I'm not doing it justice, but it was something where you know, we never seen anything like that before, you know, we're I think we're still learning, you know, the history of generative art and auto glyphs and squiggly had the Good Fortune of being a project. You know, Jen art project that was live at the time that we were just getting going. And you know in my mind it has this really important place in the history because that
Think it, you know, I view it as the bridge between Cliffs and our blocks and I think a lot of people who are coming into the space in the fall of last year. You know, that was the project that, you know, introduce
them.
Yeah, that's awesome. So what are the things that when you look at? I mean, so much has happened. I feel like in Ft time if crypto time is like this, compressed like just rapidly evolving. I feel like things are happening even faster on the nft front. At least. That's the way it seems in my head. What's your current kind of State of the Union? Thoughts on the overarching and ft space? It just seems, you know, tooling is getting easier. So there's more artists coming on to the scene is there's just more and more projects.
Are we obviously were in a crazy bull cycle right now? You would you agree with
that? Yes, for
sure. I'm worried and I will say, I'm worried not in the Blue Chip stuff that is, you know, meaningful. And you we could Define what that means to be a blue-chip, kind of nft and have something that was a first, but I'm more worried about this. So many people these days, aping into, you know, the next, well, eight projects, or whatever it may be with with.
Insert glasses insert hat, you know, like there seems to be a lot of copycats out there with just love your take on, on all that. And what are the most interesting pieces of the entire in Ft ecosystem, that you're excited about, and which ones you're worried about as well.
Yeah. Wow, I mean, there's so many directions we can go with that. I guess I'd start by saying, you know, and if keys to me are about participation and there are, you know, they're they're
And the way they took off, I believe they were. It was a result of a lot of people who wanted to take part in a theory. Mm. But you know, they they weren't quants. It weren't coders and defy isn't something that comes naturally to a ton of people. And so, you know, in a lot of ways to me and I've teased are about, you know, unlocking, this desire to participate in this community. You know, that being said, yeah, it's run away so fast and blowing up so big.
Big. I do have my concerns, you know, I'm broadly bearish on P FPS a profile pictures, you know Avatar projects. I think that's the place that you know is really kind of ripe for a crash and a lot of that is, you know, because it's so much of it is derivative or its low effort and it's really, you know, does have this this Gold Rush mentality to it. And so,
I do view that as an area of concern, you know, obviously they're super strong projects coming out of it. And you know, you look at things like board Apes. I mean punks obviously, you know, but even some of the newer projects, you know, they will last no will have legs but doesn't you know, for everyone there would be dozens that won't make it and so, you know, that's one. I think you really ought to tread carefully on our blocks, is our blocks is mind-boggling. If God is such a good project, you know.
No froze. Such a great guy. There's so much talent coming out of there. But at the same time, the hyper capitalization, you know, of of our blocks and of teasing general, you know, it does set itself up, you know, for fall. I mean, you know, we've all we've been through these Cycles, you know, early internet ico's, housing crisis. You name it, you know, the history does kind of show that these things have to crust and then crash at some point, but, you know, hopefully we won't
See too big of a pullback, you know, just because of the number of people who continue to come into the space and the way I view it is if you're playing in the nft world, it's really important that you're comfortable with who you are. What you have available to you. And just in terms of your financial wherewithal, and that you're, you're playing this game with a self-knowledge and you're doing it in a way that should it all.
Go to 0. You can a look at your personal finances and feel like, okay, you know what? I enjoyed it. I treated this like a hobby or some form of entertainment. But also you look at your collection and say I'm really happy with them what I'm holding and I'll wait it out and comes back rate and you know these things work in cycles and right. Yeah, I mean, you know what we've seen I think from in terms of the fundamentals of the entire space, it's not going anywhere. It's just
Matter of what will happen with this first? Huge wave of wealth generation. How sustainable will that be? And what is act? Two, three, four look like right.
And you were even seeing even little micro Corrections within communities. Remember when me bits launched, everything was selling the floor for a new meant was around two-and-a-half eith. A lot of people got free me bits because they had a crypto Punk and they could meant 141 and get a free one there. So we saw the floor fall out and
And get down to sub1 eith and then things bounce back and it's now back up again. So we're seeing there's a lot of that a little fluctuations that happen and they can be meaningful at times and then some of the more credible projects will bounce back. I'm curious with me bits and with apes and some of the others. What are the attributes that you see? That will one?
Grab your attention in terms of there being enough of the community and enough of interest to where you're like, okay, this is something. I should. Seriously pay attention to because I'll give you an example for me. I missed four tapes all together. Like I saw that I saw it come out and I was like, you know that design-wise that's not my style seems like a knockoff of crypto punks and but I wasn't paying attention to the community side, which is a huge piece of this and then also I think on
Top of that. You have to layer on what are the Ambitions of the developers behind it? Is it a one-and-done? Is it a constant iteration and and progression of the project over time? Like, how do you view all of
that?
Yeah, great question. I would kind of look at it through a lens of three or four criteria. I think one is just the initial visceral response. You have to a project. Does this look good? Does it resonate with me? Is this something that I can feel a connection to? I mean, I think the eye test is this just the right out of the gate, how you should be looking at it. But then after that, but you do get into this realm.
Of what is the the community response to it? And what is, where is the market on it? And those two things are often very intertwined. Something can run away very quickly and you can go. All right. Well, you know what I missed it, but there's so many other things out there and you know, like board Apes II didn't participate in that one either. And I think it's an amazing project. It's going to be super strong Community. I happen to be really long on me bits at the time and not not super liquidy.
Would I did have an eye on an ape that I liked. It was?
Annoys for Roman toga, and any and sunglasses. And it was one has like, hey, you know what, that, that's something like it appeals to me. I can see myself being represented in it. And yeah, I was waiting for the price to come back, but come down and it just never did and you can't you can't participate in everything. But there's there's that Community marketing component and finally, it's the creators. And how do they carry your project? It's easy to launch. It's hard to say.
Stain, it's difficult to Execute order to continue to show Focus, or to handle the, the communications, and the expectations, and a good way. I mean, it's an entire, you know, skill set Beyond creation. And so, when you look at these projects, you kind of want them to have that, that total package of personal appeal, strong Community, but then operating team, you know, who shows that they're going to go somewhere, right?
Yeah, I
Integrate more. That's, that's a big piece of it out. I'm curious. How do you do your kind of due diligence on that aspect of it? Like, for me, I pop into the discords. I remember when I was early in the Apes. I went into a clubhouse at they were having and it wasn't about one of the, the big red flags for me, is people talking about home. Let's get these up to this price, and I'm going to sell or whatever, maybe like the pump and dump stuff you want to, obviously just completely avoid. But for them, for many of them in, at least, in the
Cuz I was in and it was a few hundred people. They were talking about how they had missed out on crypto punks and this was their version of that. This was their way to participate and, and they had that was exciting for them on the, on the developer front. It's impossible, especially with some of these people being so, Anonymous to know, kind of what their grand plans are. Sometimes they laid out in the website and who knows if they'll actually hit, you know, the Milestones that they set forth, but do you do you go and have one-on-one conversations with these folks or
Is it something where you're just kind of doing what I'm doing? Where you're poking around and discords?
Yeah, I do a lot of poking. I do Discord and and Twitter or relay my big Avenues of communication unfortunate that to be in Flamingo. We collectively share a hive mind and there are plenty of people within Flamingo or far more social and outgoing and talk to these projects and you can get that information back. The thing like I particularly
Hone in on is how a project communicates during adversity, you know, are they out in front? Are they forward in their comms, you know, if they're doing a drop and they didn't realize that they were competing, window is another project and gas spikes and they went, you know, the play that contract and they didn't understand how venomous Gas Works and
You know, you've got 10,000 people in a Discord, just popping off. What the heck is going on. Why haven't you dropped and you're not forthright about that? And you hide behind it? That that to me is something that that speaks, you know volumes about? Is this a project I want to be in or not. And you know, that was a specific example of reference saying it's not always that dramatic. There are more subtle ways. Are they able to pulse the community? Are they able to keep following through in a roadmap? I mean, there's a lot of ways.
In which communication will guide my decisions. And to me that's something, you know, in my past life. I had to do a lot of Channel Communications. I had a lot of people who are down line and bend that when my service is went down. I was affecting their business and so it sort of Mike Scioscia the the angel manager was always super hard on this captures because he was a catcher. Like to me it's one of those. I was an operator. I've been out there and that's the thing I kind of
Personally, look in on but there's a lot of other ways you do it? Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's definitely something that I try to do as well. I think great examples of that board Apes. Obviously the punks Comics one was one that kind of caught me by surprise. I thought it was initially kind of just like a one and done and then the roadmap and things that they've decided to add on top of that. It's interesting, that there seems to be this trend where you own our Genesis piece, whatever it may be. And then as we do more future drops of other related work,
You kind of have access to those as the owner of the first, you know, piece in our collection. We saw that with board games with the Kennel Club punks is done. That is, well. If you burn a punk comic, you see that as being a trend that will continue.
I hope so and because it's, it's a really strong signal and it's a really good way to do it. If you view your project from a lens of Storytelling and development.
Aunt of your own little world and you're able to do it in a clear manner in a consistent Manner and you deliver it it's above and beyond the exponential expectation. And so there's a moment of Joy when you discover. Oh, I'm getting air. Drop something and there's a dopamine hit but it's also it does speak about the people behind the project. And so, you know, I hope more people continue to view their initial drop. Not as an endpoint, but as
The start of a journey and those projects that they will do. Well long term. Yeah,
what are your thoughts on the slightly more geeky emergence of these new entities that you kind of burn or you combine in ft's to create new works frame? Urgence comes to mind. There's a few others that are that have launched recently. Is this too geeky? Like I sometimes when I look at these projects and it's like, okay, take two of ours.
Combine them and it'll output this new thing. And I wonder two decades from now. If people are looking back, will they see it as Innovative or just confusing?
Well, hey, you're now, like, in my wheelhouse, if it's too geeky. I'm to Kiki fists. I love this stuff. This is something that again, it's about participation and it's about being able to get in there and continue with an NF T. And so it's not going to be for everyone.
And for sure, which, what do you love? Which one do you love most about these new examples like is for emergency? Yeah, you're really in 2003.
Merge Is My Jam? Okay.
Tell me. Tell me, I don't get it so called love that, Reddit expensive me like I'm five. Can you tell me what frame urgence is? I'm sure a lot of people listening have no idea what that is,
either. Sure. So for emergent is a project from an Anon artist Creator name degrees and it released in
March, it was a freedom and project in late March. I remember it, you know, because I was with my family, it was spring break, and we were away, and it was something I just randomly meant to. So I don't Twitter and it was these little black and white things that basically it was generative art that followed a set of rules around Primitives and output patterns and it was designed to follow emerging properties in in nature such as fractals. And there's this, these black and white.
And so you meant to them, and he looked at them and I believe they're 984 them and the majority of them don't resemble anything. But some of them do take on shapes. There's a bunch that look like ferns or trees or waves or a snowstorm. Do you can see where the developer, you know, was able to capture sort of like, Nature's ability to create ordered patterns.
With complexity through this very simple design rules and when those shown through your like, oh, wow, that's really great. Now the Twist and and what really set this project apart was it had a burn to Mint mechanic built into it where you can basically take the pieces. You have that you don't like and you can destroy them, you can burn them and they'll be replaced with new ones, but you'll lose.
So for instance, if you had nine, you could burn, you can burn all night and you'll get eight back. If you had to, you could burn to and you get one back. And so there's this aspect of deflation Airy curation
where it's like, I'm kind of confused here. So if you have nine and you burn all them you get how many
back you'll get it back. So the formula is n,
minus 1 M minus 1. Okay. Gotcha.
And so, it's a, you take a you're basically saying, okay. This one doesn't look like a tree. This one doesn't look like a fern. It's not something that I'm visually into because these are generative, right? So you get the output, you never really knew what you're going to get. And you're like, okay, I'll roll the dice. I'll kill off a couple of these and get one back and hopefully it's better. That's the thinking.
Yeah, that's it right there. Go ahead.
It's Ian. So you're reducing Supply. So you had 984. So out of the 94 that were
Mented. Do we know what the current Supply is?
We do someone set up doing analytics on it. And last I look there's about 550 500 that been burnt or remaining it. Let's just say plus or minus 10% half of them are gone.
And they didn't always find new ones.
And so that's the only thing you could do with frame. Mergence is just two for one. You hopefully you like and other attributes that are defined in the blockchain that are rare meeting with there. Be a tree attribute. Is that are that's actually in the contract or is this something where it's just all about subjective visual taste,
its elements of both. There is a rarity scheme within the project and
So what you're looking for are single primitive frames, which is basically, you only have one output pattern be a stars or lines or bubbles or circles. So you're you're looking for a piece that really only has one of those elements on it versus for because you tend to get really nice clean ones and then even within those single output patterns, there's a rarity scheme within them. So for instance, I happen to have one of two Grail.
Emergences, which is a single Prim, continuous triangle, which if you look at it, it's basically just a triangle being drawn and drawn and drawn on itself in like kind of layers of depth and and that's the rarest of the bunch, but
crazy. So, wow. This is kind of fun. It will, I mean, there's a little hit the little hit of gambling here too, right? Oh, yeah. Well, that's okay. Don't go pick up a bunch of floors because I got imagine that that Trend continues. Triangle is what several orders of magnitude higher than a floor.
Yeah, well, it's interesting because no one's ever listed or sold one. So the ultimate value of that it is unknown, but the market mechanics, behind the project are also really interesting because the the the project was getting discovered. And so the floor kept running up at the same time that of these Primitives we're on market. And so the floor quickly run up to the value of the print distinct of the Primitive, the single prims and so you could never get a great fixed.
Are you but there's also that gambling mechanic but you mentioned as well in there. And so we're now just kind of hitting the point where the floor is maybe three, throw it down it varies, but it's kind of gotten away from the individual to go out there and just you know, buy a bunch of furniture bunch and look for something and I. So now a lot of it being done within the community, there's an emergence. Now that's formed where like 84 convergences were donated into the Dow and we're
I'm going to collectively choose, which ones to burn, which ones keep. And so, to be able to continue in that curation mechanic as a group because the market price, I mean, when I was doing this on my own it was like a hundred bucks or something. Yeah. The by frame to burn it, and right? And now
it's if I can't burn something about 9 or 10 K, fourth of. Yeah. Yeah. It really would be double that. Rex. You have to well, you're getting Yaks. Oh, yeah.
But yeah, and so that's a great project. Yeah, that has. That's cool. So that that was the first,
right? Like I don't think I've ever heard that that particular mechanic done prior to this. Is that
right as far as I know. I mean, it's impossible to ascertain. What was the definitive first of anything, but it was definitely in my mind where it first caught on and the first built a community of Pyro's who all wanted to.
Play the game but be kind of collectively turned an initial output into something. That was smaller. But also
better-looking, man. This would be a killer killer extension for our blocks. Wouldn't it? Imagine if every our blogs project had this mechanic?
Yeah, that could be, that could be epic. It's totally would be I imagine. I mean took the Chrome scribbles, but you had. Yeah, started with 10,000 skwiggs and
Fast forward five decades and we live in a world where there's only 50 Hyper's left and the last you know, to burn a regular squiggle would be billions of dollars there, you know, something absolutely ridiculous. But, I mean, those sort of games could be played. And I mean, just in the, our clocks economy, which, you know, itself is, is just blown up so big. It would certainly happen on a much more consequential scale. And a lot of eyes of young.
Yeah. After frame emergence. They released a
Project.
Correct. Yes, which was Paul squares and that project was claimable for frame holders and a reason he started teasing it out on Twitter and I saw him just like oh my God, this looks so good because Paul squares it in color. It's animated. It goes through basically how you can take sequences of squares and through kind of driving mathematical.
Formulas underneath the pattern, you can create highlighted scopic effect. You can create all sorts of different patterns through rotating them, through making them. Big making them small, putting different color palettes on it, and I was just like, I can't wait for this. And when a drop is coming, you got to ask yourself. Am I going to live my life or am I going to be held hostage to a drop and type? I feel like this dropped in May, when I was just tune it up, my golf game, and I had a weekly, a weekly game.
Go and you know, I was like Murphy's Law. I'm going to be oh cough, and and this thing is going to drop and it totally did and it looked great. It was fantastic. And so I missed it and I had to get back in through secondary.
So, what's the mechanic behind this one?
Yeah. So in this one, the mechanic there is that you can create a constellation that orbits the border of your pulse squares of whole squares. Are they sit in a rectangular frame and they're either Square?
These are diamonds the actual art and side. And so what you could do is you could burn either another pulse swear or affirm emergence into your piece and it would live on as a little constellation that orbits around the Border
crazy. So you could take one of your continuous triangles and drop it around the outside of a pool Square.
Yes, and nothing
would want to do that. But who knows what that does to the value? Has anyone? What's happening there on the value side?
Yeah, so there are some impulse queries with with a serious song store of value within them. I believe one's called Chad or Alpha Chad that you know, there's a door 20 whole squares burned inside of it.
And wow, so you could do unlimited pull Square Burns weight. You can do unlimited Pulsar Burns for as a frame of a pole Square.
So you can basically you can burn you can put any pulse square into another one and then it literally it just looks like a little dog.
. That starts orbiting around. You can also put it in frame in that. Yeah.
Well, so put them on the inside as well or no. Did I get that wrong?
No. No, they just, they're just represented as little dots that orbit around the frame, but then you can click down into the contract and you can view all the old pieces that have been subsumed into this into this. So you can see what's been yeah, placed inside and no longer exist on its own.
When you do that those placements on inside.
Now, they're rotating around. The outside, are those cumulative? Or they just replaced by the most recent one that you burned into it. Meaning. Are you seeing more complex frame, as you add and burn, more pull squares to into the frame.
You're just seeing more and more of them. So, if you burn one layer, okay, yeah, you get one that orbits. If you burn to, you have to and so you can tell, you know, how much values been, you know, art has been sunk into the piece, but the number of these
Little circles that orbit around the
frame. Is there a maximum number that you can burned into the frame?
No, you could just, you could keep
going. Wow, so that's, that's very difficult to figure out how you value. Something like that.
Yeah, it is. And I don't think we've actually seen the full value appreciation on those. I've believed the most expensive whole square is sold for about 25 feet that has others others buried inside of it, but
You
know, I I think people are always looking back is history, develops and revaluing things. And so one day, someone may value. One of these pulse squares, not only on the merits of primary one, but all of the other ones that have been sunk into it
and so I see what you're into. You. Love you. Love this. Weird kind of mathy, crazy contract stuff. Is it, would you say that's kind of, like your favorite type of like, crypto art.
I like aren't. And I can have an ongoing involvement.
Element with, you know, some for participation and so yeah that that mechanic where if a piece asked me to interact with it or the pieces available for future collaboration and that's really interesting to me. It kind of keeps that relationship going and what's this
new one that is just now come out with these squares and people are trying to kind of arrange them.
Yeah, that's the one that we're geeking out about in Flamingo. Ubi promoter brought that one in yesterday and so with this
On. And I think this is a trend that is going to grow. I think we want to be able to interact with art and share our. And so with this one, as it moves from wallet to wallet a pixel within within the square. I want to say it's a 16 1. 2 3, 4 is a 4x4 grid. I'm not quite sure what the dimensions are. It's other four by four or eight by eight. Looks like it's four by four. So you get 16, you know, pixels to
Fill in the square. And as it moves from contract to contract, the art, reach the wallet address, and determines what color pixel a creepy. And so by selectively transferring, that piece of art through your friends or through a dhow, you're basically deciding how that one's going to get filled in and you're generating the peace through your coordinated acts.
So, are you generating just one pixel or do as you transfer do more pixels?
Urge on on that nft or how does that
work? Yeah. So picture. It's a, it's a blank, white rectangle. And first time you put it in, I think the top left fills in, with one color. Hmm, and then depending who you send it to are, just going to kind of run clock left to right, top to bottom, and fill its way in. So if you want to plot that out and do a little research, but you can ultimately make a design out of that by who you send it to.
So, how do you lock it in, though? When you say make a design, if I'm just transferring it to someone else and then the color changes. Wouldn't that mess up my design?
No, you're adding a second block. Yeah, so picture to the white grid, white 4x4. Grid right. When you're when you sent, when you interact with the first time, it feels a color in when you send it to someone, the upper left, is yellow. Okay, and
then I send it to you. The second block over is red. There's no way to change that red because the next person is going to be the
Third block over
right? Yeah, what you can do. However is you can kind of check ahead of time. What color it's going to be. You can submit a wallet address and go
crazy. So you have to find a wall to dress this compatible with that color.
Yeah, and
so in some sense you'd have to generate a bunch of water dresses. Let's say you're trying to draw something and you're like, okay. I need a purple like I'm going to have to go and generate wallet addresses, until I find one that's compatible with.
The purple before I send it to that address.
Yeah, or you gotta have a group of trusted friends or be in an organization where you can all say. Hey, I checked my wallet. It's going to be this color years can be that color. How do we want to pass it
around? Wow, and then once you get to the very end, it's done. It's
locked. Yes. Far as I know that that's it. But, you know like these things come at you so fast. I literally one of the people are from mango popped it up yesterday, and I know
I don't know anything beyond
what I just told you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is why it's so hard for me to keep track of all the chaos. There's just it seems to be that there's a new crazy geeky and this is kind of like I'm just trying to figure out which of these has it to your point about the community and like long-term like because the one thing that's that's if you're an artist, it's very subjective, but it's something that you can look at it.
But if you're a coder, you can geek out and go and create all kinds of wild things in different interactions. So it's not like you're just working with brushes and a pallet here. There's, it's just, you're limited to the math that you're writing or there could be so many different ways to slice and dice. This, it's going to be hard. At least it is for me to figure out long-term. What's going to be considered important versus. Just a fun game. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does. And I mean that,
Part of the adventure and part of the fund. I think there's a certain class of work that you can kind of objectively. Say, right now. This has staying power and this is kind of an elite output from an emerging category of art. I think we could say that about what Dimitri's done with ringers, you know, Tyler with the dens def beef. I think there's certain ones of these that you know, but everything else. Yeah. We're just going to have to wait and see.
Yeah, that's a good point. It's also that that's part of the reason why I'm excited to do more podcasts because it allows me to have these conversations with these artists and kind of like just kind of suss out what their motivations are. What drives them. What's what's versus is it? Is it just someone that just doing it for? I don't know what the wrong motivations would be. But I hope I can get a little bit more depth there when I do these interviews, so it's going to be going to be fun to do any other things in this General genre that you would like to call out or
I do want to ask you some questions about your favorite art blocks projects. And then also, we got to cover. I'd love to cover. I know you're into many verses. Well, what would you like to take it?
Yeah, I mean, our blocks is great. I'm super excited to talk about that. I do want to talk about scarcity in abundance for a second. If yeah, let's do that. Because that's a hobby, horse of mine. You know what? We talked earlier about.
Is this bull market going to end? How is it going to end? And I always look at it in terms of scarcity where a lot of these projects are deriving value through creating top-down scarcity, right there saying there's 10 to I'm going to make a set of 10,000 of these 10010 are going to be the most rare 25-year to be a level above that and then everything else might just be whatever. And we see so many of these projects doing that and
It's everything is scarce than nothing
is going to be scarce in certain
point in time the the trick or the fomo or that line to win the lottery. You're just going to be you say to yourself. Well, there's another one coming down the road. And so that's something that like and that's why I don't play super deep in the the pfp space winning winning. A lottery is great. But I'd rather, you know, play in projects where you may have an abundant set of resources and
Collective coordinated work. You, everyone can come together and create something that scarce. I don't participate in axi, but I look a taxi as an embodiment of that in that anyone can play act. See the entry point into ax, the is very low. It's very simple, at the end of the day though. There's only one active, only one project has reached that level of volume and affected and changed. So many lives through the pde model. And that's the result.
Of this collected coordinated work, but not not. Anyone can can just not any project to make an acci, it took that entire ecosystem and all those players coming together to build something special. And so that's something I really get excited about is and if the space is going to keep growing and you're not going to burn people out. That's a model. I want to. I'd like to see more and more projects which to where anyone can get in. It's been if you missed it, if you weren't away.
At the moment of that drop, you still get in. But then you can through work through participation through a good Community vibe that you build up something. That's special that everyone shares in. Yeah.
Is there anything else like that on your
radar? Now? I think we will see that in meta verses and in gaming. If you look at it, if voxels the voxels, the place where there are vibrant neighborhoods, there are big events or the kid community and box
Souls doesn't have a hard cap on the amount of space like they will keep making more land and obviously the older neighborhoods and the more happening neighborhoods more expensive to buy at this point in time, but no one's ever shot out from voxels and if you can't afford land, but you can still drop in and your avatar, you can still attend all those events. And so that's an example. I mean apes. They're doing pets. Let's see how they continue to kind of create these yield bearing at if keys.
Other people could get down the line but that model is still emerging. I think it's if they a long time till week 2, we get to that point of composability where composing things you can freely or cheaply pick them up, but only through time and work. Can you transform
right? Yeah. That is that is a very cool. I love. I don't know what that is, but you have just enabled a new line of thinking that I'm going to brainstorm around because I completely
If I get that gut feeling, when you're talking about this, like something big is going to be built there. Right? And I actually, I think it could be outside of gaming, like someone will do that on the art side, where it's going to require work, and you can't enter later in the game and there is something to be built there. Do you get that same kind of gut feeling you must right?
Yeah. I know. It's we're so early in the space and we're still working through patterns and Primitives that. I mean, I'm waiting I expect in the next six to 12 months.
Projects have, come on market and it's just going to change everyone's perception of what it's possible. Like, I think it's imminent, but we're not quite there yet. But once people see it, it will open a whole set of doors. Yeah, I
agree. Very cool. So we I don't want to take up too much of your time. I know you're busy guy. I would love to talk a little bit about your favorite metaverse. I want to go a little deeper there. Crypto voxels for me is a head-scratcher because outside of a
Vance, when I go into the world and I just fly around, or walk around or whatever. There's not a whole lot going on. What's going to be the Tipping Point for for meta versus to really take off? Because I think like VR in some sense. It all sounds good on paper, but it's, I've yet to see. I mean, in some sense, we have had been of versus take out there. Just not really matter versus their games, right? That that are met over, so you could probably say Minecraft was kind of the first one like that. What's going to make?
This really go from tens of thousands of users to Millions. I agree with
you about these metaverse experiences right now. So you can you drop in and a lesson events happening. Maybe you don't see anyone or maybe it's just some randoms run right by you. And that's actually what I like about it. I'm probably really in the minority, but I love like when I'm walking around in a dust really area in a city if I'm in.
Long Island City and Maspeth on the Sunday morning and no one's around or like Greenpoint and, you know, in Brooklyn, like I'm really into being in these huge spaces and deserted times. And so for me right now, like, that's a Vibe. I love like, I'm a huge somnium space fan, but that's sort of my metaverse, a choice. And it's for me like what they're trying to achieve through using virtual reality through kind of, really always
Pushing the limits of Graphics like they're, they're creating an aesthetic that that I really enjoy and I feel comfortable in. But then I also love the fact that I'm strolling through all these houses are walk into people's neighborhoods and it's empty and it's not for everyone, and that's my own weird little thing. But, you know, that's, that's kind of why I like one day. I'll look back and go. I remember I could stroll around there and not bump into a single person, perhaps, but that's not for everyone. I
I think. But from that, a versus you going to need an entire Tire tool kit to come together, right? Like we're seeing the actual building out of the the virtual space right now, but then you need your audience to be able to come in and fill these spaces and they need to be able to do it in a little more frictionless and matter than right now. Like I drop into DCL and my laptop can't handle it. I did buy a separate gaming.
See, just so I can spend time in the meadow verse. You voxels is maybe the friendliest of them but they still it still has a load on it and I haven't quite gotten comfortable in VR yet either. So that part's going to take time. It's going to take awhile for for us to see users to really get fluid coming in and out of this and frictionless way, but then you're going to need to be able to bring events and artists and musicians, are this cultural aspect.
Looked into it as well and they're going to need like social token tooling. They're going to need artist management. They're going to need Builders. So that if I'm a band and I want to put on a show and I want to do it in one of these spaces, like they don't have that whole package, yet. There's yeah outfits like nft 42, Jimmy's crew or the people who do the wot meet up and box those who are capable of this. But you know, that that hasn't been like that that cookbook in and sort of recipe hasn't been templatized and pass.
Value. And so yeah, we're going to need a lot of different things. This is going to be a kind of a slow onboarding as fast as it's happening. Right now. We may not see a Tipping Point till 2025 or who knows?
Yeah, that's it might take as well. It is is that there needs to be a lot more tooling and and just like less awkwardness around some of the character interactions. And then also, I think a big driver for this is going to be the fun around customizable avatars. Like when I can bring
NG in my me bits and I can bring in my, you know, whatever, maybe apes or when have those as part of my identity that's going to be, that's going to be pretty huge Avatar is or super interesting to me because they're this intersection of fashion
and identity, which are both huge categories, separate on their own. But they really merge at the point of an avatar and we were in a really primitive state with, with avatars right now. There are things
You try on other toys you play with and their clunky. We're going to get to a point. Where as they come, you know, more fluid and have more utility. They're going to start taking it on more and more of this digital identity job. That no one in crypto is solved yet either. And so look for those, I think to really come on a lot stronger than they are today. We're just seeing, you know, kind of a ground ground-floor entry into that world.
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a series
Before we wrap and we'll definitely have to do a second podcast at some point, because I have a lot more questions. We could go deeper and go on forever. But to wrap things up. I do have a series of kind of what I hope to be rapid fire questions for you and we can always skip any if you don't if you don't like them are you game to do a couple quick quick questions?
Yeah,
cool. All right, so you can only buy one our blocks project. Which one
and do I own?
Our blocks yet, or I'm kind of
like blocks yet. This is your first one and you want to take into consideration. Let's just say, obviously, because we mentioned this at the beginning, the most important thing especially in Bear markets is that you actually aesthetically appreciate it. Right? But also, you're also thinking with an eye towards appreciation of it going up over time. So given that balance. What do you
thinking? It's ringers, then that's a no-brainer
ringers. Interesting, interesting. I that's a tough one.
One woman said, it's
not the one I love in my heart, a heart. But if we're kind of balancing all these things out, arrears is the Sure Shot.
That's awesome. What's your heart of hearts? Just out of curiosity that you love?
It's Singularity.
Singularity. Very cool. Okay, so big name artists, you have you have a big budget? You can go out there. You can buy an x copy you could buy whatever you want. What do you go after?
I'm drawing a blank
right now.
Do you have any that you love? I mean are you a fan of POC or it or backer and xcopy or
yeah, I love all their works. And I mean that's the nice thing about the space is like I love who OSHA sand. I have some additions from them. I love POC and unfortunately through Flamingo. We have exposure to pop people, great artist cracks me up. I mean, you know, he's got that that's social commentary layers. So I've gotten edition of each of those and but those aren't true, you know, they're not one of them.
Once or not things I directly owned and so it's a tricky one in that, in that respect because I don't have a single kind of like digital Artisan in the crypto space that I long for. It's more like, I like to have exposure to a lot of them. But, you know, it's like Jen Arts. A little more. My jam.
Yeah, makes sense. Okay, how about land? You have to. You have to buy a parcel of land. You think it's going to be the next metaverse?
You got sand boxes out there. You got the all the ones you mentioned today. Like where do you buy and take up land?
I take somebody in space because it's from me. Personally, it's where I feel
most comfortable, up-and-coming artists any that you like that are out there or I can even be on the the generative side as well.
I'm a huge fan of cloud pixel who is a pixel artists based over in Saudi Arabia, and he's someone
His work just reminds me of my time when I lived in Southern California. It's amazing to see someone who works in pixel art, and I can look at one of the pieces and go. Oh, that reminds me of when I visited my uncles and Hermosa Beach. Like, yes, takes me straight to a time and a place. Yes, Miss
Tilly.
There's some great pixel artists out there man. That's a whole nother genre. I think that's being defined in a very cool way. It's it. I love that. I'm curious. Last question, platform this platform matter to you. So you think of the super-rich do you think super rare is kind of the upper echelon. And then, do you, do you consider that to be a factor when purchasing an NF T? Is it add some credibility to the actual purchase?
Yes, and I am.
I'm on Chain Gang. And so for me, if the art is on chain that, that is my first criteria and that may be why as it relates to digital art. I don't have someone, I'd love to love to have, but, you know, if it's a glyph it's a squiggly if it's an art block. If it's pulse where, you know, anything that's generated on chain. For instance, xcopy you mentioned at xcopy earlier. I recently acquired, and you did to actually pixel chain piece or
Next copy. Yes, and that was something that I really wanted because it was a very important artist, you know, someone really in the States, but doing it, you know, it's not his most dynamic work by any means, but he's doing it in the most crypto native formats. And so, that's for me. I was just like, yeah, that's the X coffee for me.
Yeah. I mean, he's think you're confined to what, like a 16 by 16 pixel Grid or something like that. Like, there's not that much.
Ace. Yeah, I It's A Primitive pattern but it looks cool and it's on chain. So, you know for me on chain is one of them during the platform's, it depends and some of that has to do with the by side and whether it's IP or whether you know, it's in market for me. I'm not a whale. I don't spend huge amounts of money. So certain platforms. I just know, like I'm not going to aren't perfect for me and then but, you know, like super rare is great like I, you know, I like to buy on super rare from time.
I'm to time. I don't do foundation for instance at one where I think a lot of the net artists and certain things on there. Just don't quite line up to my style. But then, you know, auction this can run away and I don't compete in that world. I do own a few Nifty gateways, but I really don't enjoy that platform. It's not using the best practices in the space. But you know, I'll do people on there. I'll do it like a Johnson and was a coup series. If there's a
Project on there. I will. I will, I will buy over there. Yeah,
that makes sense. Speaking of on chain. Do you ever consider any other chains? I know obviously tasos is making a push in that direction with the hen platform. Salon has recently had a pretty big drop that sold out instantly and had something like 40,000 people that were interested in it. Do you are you like a theory until you die or are there other? Obviously a ton of weird stuff on wax? Yeah.
Yeah, what do you think about these other
chains? All right. So I'm a Have Gun Will Travel guy. I think it's part of the adventure to go out. And to try new chains. There has to be a reason for me though. But, I mean, I got NF T. Za next alley. I was a virgin to immutable last week in the middle of the night when the, the Gilded Guardians Market. But dropped on immutable and I mean, there's, there's something kind of exciting about being like, Oh, I'm going to send five eith over immutable, and I don't know.
On the couple hundred people have used this bridge yet. But also I want my serious stuff, living a layer 1 E. I mean II bridged, my Damien, Hirst pieces, the currency drop that was on Palm. I brought them over to main net because I say, I want them housed in my collection, but be, it's just like certain. Yeah, certain things, you know, like, I think important pieces of art that don't have a functional purpose, you know, operating on a chain, like, you know, Polly
Egon Matic or immutable or X Dy, you know, I do want them home on layer 1
Heath. Yeah. Are you one of these students? A crazy people? It's probably smart people that go in and pinned their own ipfs to make sure that their their artwork will always be hosted. Even if the the actual, you know, Main in exchange or Marketplace goes down. And do you want things on our we've as well? Do you think about you? Take that into consideration?
And no, I'm not there yet.
And maybe if I had some, something may have some of my high-value pieces, were, you know, kind of in that state. I want to take those actions, but, you know, I'm not like I said, not super deep into a lot of the digital art where you are relying on Json file that points to a hosting somewhere else. I mean, that's, you know, thankfully like my big pieces are, like, lifts and there are blocks and so, right? That, that problem kind of has already been solved for me.
Yeah, it's crazy. I know.
Some collectors that will go in. They read this more contracts and look at the Json file. They say, where is this pointing, if it's pointing to something centralized? Because someone's domain there, like, and don't want to collect it. If it's pointing to ipfs. They go in and they could do this thing called pinning, where you pay to, actually ensure the backup storage of it at that node were to go down some of them want our, we've because it provides long-term multi Hundred Year storage. It's just it's like anything. It's another rabbit hole, right? It's gay.
Funny how geeky people get about this stuff.
Yeah, I mean but you know, it shows if serious and that they want to have that lasting relationship. So it is Extreme Behavior may be or is it just knowing that a piece is in a good
hands? Yeah. Awesome. Well Chris, this has been, this has been great. It's cool to see that you kick out on a lot of this stuff. As I do, was love to have you back any time to go deeper? Because I'm sure we could on a whole slew of different projects.
Where can people find you? You know, I know that you live a somewhat kind of private presence. We're not going to use your last name and this interview, but do you tweet a lot? I mean, I follow your Twitter accounts like I'm guessing that's the case.
Yeah. So I mean, Twitter is, you know, the best place to find me. I am on crypto Twitter, just like everyone else on the planet. So if you want to find me on Twitter, I'm at Chris F underscore 0 x. Number 0 letter X, that'd be me.
Awesome. I will send people.
All that way. Thank you so much for being on the
show. Thanks Kevin. This is a blast and a great time.
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