Speaker A: All right, hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a very special interview episode. We're joined today again by Jamie from Verse. He's back for round 2. Trinity is here as well. Jamie, how's it going? We're happy to have you back.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. It's going well, thanks. Excited to be here.

Speaker A: We're excited too. You know, we love these follow-up interviews because we don't have to spend the first 10 minutes getting your background, so we can go right into the first batch of questions and topics. Let's just start with like the last year. Inverse, and what do you think you've learned as a platform across 2023? Because you guys have done a lot, you've shipped a lot of new features, but I think philosophically a lot has changed that we've intuited from watching the way the platform has moved. So can you kind of walk us through some of the big lessons and takeaways of 2023? And Trinity, go ahead.

Speaker C: Frame of reference for both Jamie, who may have forgotten everything that's happened in the last year because it's been such a whirlwind. And also for listeners, the last time we interviewed Jamie, it was right after Cosmic Rays came out. So the first big collector-curated, one of the first drops that really put Verse on the map in like that particular way where we had like that viral moment of everybody sharing everything all the time. Collector curating really just being such an innovative spot in the space, and you've done a lot more since then. So, I think that wasn't the first big innovation. All right. Rest of 2023, moving into this year, go.

Speaker B: What we've learned, I truly don't know where to start. Could speak for hours, if not days on that. Any particular area to start with? I feel like there are so many different kind of parts of the space, the business, everything.

Speaker A: I mean, maybe the most obvious one, a very market-oriented one, would just be philosophy around releases. It was halfway through the year, I think, that we started seeing the solos coming out and some of the change in cadence and locking in more on these kind of refunding auctions. Like, I guess directionally, as the market went down, or I guess stayed down, because I think when we last spoke, it was just the very beginning of the bear market truly. How did that kind of inform, like, how did you pivot? Like, what was it like internally? And then what's your outlook, I guess, like? on that, like one of those lessons learned and how they're going to carry forward.

Speaker B: So yeah, you mentioned Cosmic Rays, Trinity. Cosmic Rays was part of a group exhibition that we did around a year ago, and I think one of the biggest takeaways from, quote unquote, the bear was really a kind of realization that collectors want to gravitate to a smaller number of seemingly safer things, which makes a ton of sense for a load of reasons. It's been a kind of tricky one because on the one hand, it doesn't feel great focusing on, let's be honest, a really, really small number of artists. But I think it's also just reality that there aren't many artists who are going to feel relevant and part of the conversation for a very long time. And I think we just kind of accepted and started to lean into the fact that if we're going to be able to offer collectors something that's not incredibly risky and scary to put your money into, we need to be focusing on a small number of artists and really doing all we can to kind of work with these artists to ensure that they can make a splash and hopefully be around for a long time after the release that we do with them. So we've started working much more closely with artists than we were maybe A year ago. So yeah, I think a bit of a shift in the thinking there has been one significant one. Yeah, I can't see us doing group shows again in the way we did a year ago. Adam and Tender are doing an ongoing group show at the moment, which I think works because it's done in a very different way. It's one release per week as opposed to one a day, which I almost can't believe that we were doing a year ago.

Speaker A: It feels...

Speaker B: Yeah, can't imagine doing that today. I'm sure other learnings are going to come out across the course of the next hour or so, but I really don't know where to start. I mean, just, I feel like I knew nothing at all about this space then, and I still feel like there's so much to learn. But yeah, we've kind of gone from knowing nothing to knowing a bit in Those different areas.

Speaker C: I think that, you know, the takes that Will and I had on things a year ago, you know, it's a moving target when you're in one type of market versus another. So I don't think that you should be too hard on yourself. Just thinking about some of the other group shows that you did where you were releasing like 12 projects on one day. I think with the architectural show, you know, hugely massive, hugely exciting.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: But also hugely confusing from a collector's point of view.

Speaker B: And probably not in the best interests of the artists, to be totally honest. But yeah, in fact, that's another one. I mean, we learned a ton about how to sell things and sales strategy. There are 50 lessons on what not to do with the Generative Architecture Show, and that's absolutely all on me. But basic things that are incredibly obvious now, like if you're doing a ranked auction, You've got to make sure there are fewer pieces than likely bidders who can bid to a reasonable amount. If there are more artworks than bidders, then it gets to the point where everyone who wants one has one, and then there's just a frantic scramble to pick up bargains, and then the price is pushed up to the point where it's conceivably no longer a total steal, but still cheap. I could speak all day long about mechanics and sales strategy.

Speaker A: One of the things that we really picked up on throughout 2023, which you've already mentioned, was this consolidation towards a smaller and smaller number of artists by platforms and also a consolidation of collectors towards a preference for curated, highly curated, and premium feeling releases like what Verse was doing through Solos, like what Art Blocks was doing through Curated, and Tonic doing through their offerings that came with with prints and things like that. But that was something that we never really predicted, I think, when we were thinking broadly about the space. It became obvious to us once it was happening. So how did that kind of shift your approach to then courting artists, convincing them to come over to you? Has it actually been easier because there's only a few platforms in town that can kind of command that level of premium there? Like, obviously you offer the physical space if the artist wants, you guys are doing prints and stuff. Or has it become more challenging over time because there's a lot of competing interests who want to get William, right?

Speaker B: I do think we were skeptical of the open approach from day one, because if an artist has a choice between having someone endorse them and shine a really bright light on them and not, I'm guessing most artists would choose the promo and endorsement route. Looking at kind of what was happening in Web3 and NFTs and comparing it to the art world. It was amazing seeing what was happening on FXHash when people were going crazy and it was incredibly exciting and all of this, but it didn't feel like anything had massively changed that would mean that it made more sense for an artist to want to be their own promoter from like old world to new world. There's always been Instagram, it's always been possible for artists to represent themselves and reach an audience, but But it's still always made more sense to work with someone who can endorse you and promote you than otherwise. And I don't see how anything has changed in this new world in that regard. So I think from the beginning we kind of anticipated artists probably wanting to work with people who could promote and endorse them. That said, I think there is a difference in that in NFTs there's this kind of amazing phenomenon whereby collectors will kind of rally around artists and do a lot of the kind of gallery's work themselves, which is pretty cool, but really, really hard for an artist to kind of make that happen of their own accord. And so yeah, I definitely see a role for promoters and galleries, and I think it's been interesting seeing how Artists have— I mean, I've spoken with quite a few who basically say, look, the promotional side of things is really painful, really exhausting. It's not the part that I enjoy, and I'm really happy to outsource that. I mean, of course, there are some artists who are brilliant at it, but that's also the case in the old world. I mean, Hirst is a marketing genius. That's kind of his shtick. And it's certainly the case that there are great artists who are also great promoters. in Web3. I mean, I'd love to get your guys' thoughts. Like, has anything massively changed? How do you feel about kind of the open versus closed thing a year ago versus now?

Speaker C: I think that one of the things that has been a big theme is how this kind of shifts based off of the market that you're in. When you're an expanding market, like we were throughout 2021 and part of 2022, you know, you're getting that influx of collectors, you're getting that influx of new artists who need proving grounds. You know, I think that a lot of the people that we've seen have big success on Verse also, you know, they came from the open platform world for the most part. I think that that continued success of the open platforms is really contingent upon there being more collectors in the community. Uh, in an interview that we just had with Erik Calderon from Art Blocks, you know, it's the artists outnumber the collectors at this point. I don't know if that's something that you perceive or that you sense within the people who are collecting on Verse. Obviously, artists are also collectors, but there needs to be a wider differential between the creators versus others. Does that resonate?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. One thing I've been so relieved to see is that there is a real art market here. I feel like in the early days, it really wasn't obviously the case at all that people would actually want to collect digital artworks and NFTs. And I think it's so cool how, like, in the absence of any hype and any assurance that anything might go up even a tiny bit, people are still collecting. One pretty cool, interesting learning for sure.

Speaker A: We can go in a couple directions here. I mean, we could talk about growth and bringing people back, whether or not you think people will come back. And also thinking back to, like, our original interview, I mean, one of the things that we talked to you about as part of that initial idea behind Verse was being a conduit between traditional artwork world artists and collectors, onboarding them to Web3 and growing the space that way. So it's not just these crypto-native degens, of which there's a very, very small subset who have authentically grown to get interested in collecting art. Let's go there first. Like, it's been a year. First of all, has your doctor friend collected any more NFTs on Verse? And if not, why? Yes.

Speaker B: Okay, great. Every day he is sending me Barbarians. So It's definitely still going, which is—

Speaker A: So we got one, but yeah, what's it been like? I mean, because I think from our side there's been a few names that we don't know, but I don't know if it's because they were like AI people or, or what. So if there were like big names from the traditional art world that have come over, it really didn't hit our radar. So can you kind of speak to that like year of trying to build and onboard from both sides, collector and artist?

Speaker B: I do think I've changed my thinking here a little bit. I think I might have mentioned how great it could be if someone like David Hockney would do a release with Gagosian. If we were to see a Hockney, a release of the newest Hockney iPad paintings as NFTs, I mean, that would be epic. They would go totally nuts. Every art world collector in the world would be in for one. And I do feel it's very possible that something like that could very, very quickly legitimize digital art NFTs in the in the eyes of the wider world, I mean, that would without doubt make it to every art publication and probably beyond. I think I'm now kind of less convinced than I was a year ago that that would actually be really helpful for us. I'm sure it would help, but maybe not as much as I thought it would. And that's mainly just because of kind of realizing how important community is and how the art world community is a thing in the way it is here as well. It makes sense for if a well-known artist in this space is doing a release, everyone gets excited. It is exciting. It's very easy to part with money, buy an artist who you really rate and respect and who you know your friends do too. And similarly in the art world, I mean, people just don't spend 5, 6, 7 figures on works by artists who they've never heard of. It just does not happen because, you know, you're a collector walking through Frieze, all your friends know Richard Prince, you know the dealer, you know the auction market, it feels safe, you know the comparables, you've seen pieces from the same or similar series sell for certain amounts. Like, there's so much context in the way there isn't in the NFT space that, A, makes it easy to collect works by artists who you know, but also makes it fun to own those works. I mean, I've bought a lot of Erik Swahn works, for instance, and I know lots of other Erik Swahn collectors, and it really does make it more fun. And yeah, the context of everything that happens around the artist, around an artist, is really important. And I find it hard to see how without being part of this community there's going to be all that much crossover between this world and the people in it and that Outworld. With that said though, we're giving it a go still. We've been working for since we got started pretty much to do a release by an art world artist. We've done a few small things here and there, but in the next couple of weeks, in fact next week, we have our first kind of really big release by an art world artist, and that's that's works by Tabor Robak. Tabor is he's in the Met, he's in the MoMA, he's in the Serpentine, Whitney. You name it. Really, really well known, really brilliant artist. He's actually done a release on Art Blocks. He did a 2021 release and it's fantastic. So he's kind of like receptive to what's happening here, but certainly kind of more native to that world than this. I'm really, really excited to see what happens. So essentially the piece is called Broken Printer. Tabor, he works in a print shop aged 13. He loves these kind of like The way that printers broke and things came out raw and you can get like— it was very often kind of misaligned. He was also kind of really into clipart at the time. He was playing around with early Photoshop and this whole series is kind of like harps back to that nostalgia he had at that kind of age. And you generate the works and it feels— I mean, I'm mid-30s, like it takes me back to being 8, 9, 10 years old just playing around with my family's computer. And trying to print things out. Series of 4,000. He wants each piece to feel kind of slightly disposable, keeping in mind his works usually sell for a very significant amount of money to very wealthy people. These are going to be kind of very affordable. Series of 4,000 on Solana, very much kind of playing to this kind of new world. And he's very much kind of embracing the NFT community And really, really excited to be working with an artist who is kind of happy to kind of take a bit of a risk, take a leap. We were kind of saying the other day that the antithesis to the Met is probably Solana, and Tabor's doing it. So we're definitely going to get some art world people across. Hopefully they will kind of see how fun it is, maybe give it another go. Maybe we're going to get some of Tabor's artist friends having a look as well.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And yeah, hopefully if it goes well, then we might get an article here or there in the art press and it could do us some favors. So yeah, we'll see. Certainly really excited for it, but still very much remains to be seen how the art world and the NFT space kind of work together, I think.

Speaker A: What's been the breakthrough with artists then? I mean, other than time and giving them time to come up with something authentic, Has the successful value proposition been for someone who's like potentially going to now be selling this NFT that perhaps none of their traditional collectors will collect because they just don't really care about crypto or they don't want to go through the steps to collect it, even though it's not that hard? Because as we've seen in the market, right, like prices on the primary have just continued to come down and down and down.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: So is this really just an exposure play? Like, is that where you're finding success? Like, hey, yeah, you're gonna sell this for less than you normally would, but you might get 100 new collectors and some of those folks are rich and they're gonna come maybe want to get a piece from a gallery from you someday? Like, what's been the unlock?

Speaker B: Actually, like, a bad market's really, really helped because the issue before was stigma. And it was like, you know, I don't want to be seen as a cash grabber. It's not worth me damaging my reputation I've worked so hard to build up to just go and do an NFT and make a load of money. Like, it's just, just not worth it.

Speaker C: The irony. Oh my God.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm gonna be less successful.

Speaker B: But yeah, releasing Releasing when everyone knows that NFTs aren't that cool is kind of cooler. So yeah, we've been finding it way easier to have conversations. People are way more open-minded today than they were a year ago. And Layla honestly has just been going around having convo after convo, and there are some really cool lines in the fire. There might be something else up on our site at the moment. Petra Courtwright, I think, is there.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's kind of teeing up a hopeful project to follow it. Yeah, so Bad Market has been great. Expecting a lot more of those kinds of artists to start exploring it. But at the same time, the reality is most of the artists who are kind of native to the space, feels like a lot of the artists here are just stronger.

Speaker C: Maybe, I don't want to put words into your mouth, the artist community here is much more tied into the overall community through such digital channels as Twitter, and discord and being very real with themselves. Roxanne is always in the fx hash Discord just talking shit and making bad jokes. It's a much more real experience. So maybe there's a sense of familiarity and comfort that the traditional art world encourages more separation.

Speaker B: It's also just the nature of these artists' work. I mean, it's not like Andreas, Kim, Lenny were kind of thinking before NFTs came around, they were just doing that. That's just what they're doing. to their work. They haven't had to change anything. They've just kept producing as they always have done. Whereas there are a lot of art world artists who we've spoken to who are trying to create something for this. And you can tell. It's not like we're chasing the art world for the sake of it. As I say, I don't think they're necessarily stronger artists or anything like that. But I do suspect that us getting a stamp of approval from that world will help on quite a few levels.

Speaker C: Just thinking about that transition between art and traditional, one of the things that really stood out from an events perspective this year was when you went to Art Basel Miami and were basically rubbing shoulders with people in the traditional art world in the same space, sporting like really great work by the likes of Zach Lieberman. What was that experience like and how did the work that was being presented there and also in collaboration with Tender, how did it really kind of stand up to the people you were exhibiting next to? And what sorts of conversations were you having?

Speaker B: That actually was completely Tender. That really wasn't our doing at all. Like, all credit to Adam and Tender for that.

Speaker A: But you sold it.

Speaker B: We were incredibly honored to be able to host it. Thank you, Adam. But yeah, Adam was the one having the conversations. I mean, I know he sold a lot of works to kind of quote unquote trad Buyers. But yeah, they're not part of the Discord. They're not part of the conversation. It's, um, not completely sure, but I doubt many of them have kind of like have become NFT collectors because of that.

Speaker C: They create a Verse account, presumably, how they can continue to collect within that Verse account, even if they're not taking advantage of the Web3 component.

Speaker B: You know, I think that's one of the statistics that you can track is over time, what percentage of people are connecting wallets just for staying entirely Over the past few weeks, I've been kind of starting to feel more and more that it's not a problem if we don't onboard people outside of crypto for a while, because the people here are going to collect so much more, and they get it, and they're part of the community without us having to kind of beg them to become a part of the community. And it's only going to grow, and every wave more people are going to come in. It's going to be normalized over time. And eventually people will realize this is kind of cool. This is art collecting. They'll tell their friends. Yeah, starting to feel that we don't need to worry so much about kind of onboarding people from outside the space.

Speaker C: And that seems something that's been signified in the announcement that you put out yesterday, where you're kind of being more open about your Web3 status just through the inclusion of a connect wallet button, which to this point has only really existed once you've created that account. Is this like a philosophy shift that you think you're committing to for the future?

Speaker B: It was actually there before, but it was behind a login button. And I don't know why that was. We, for quite a while, have been planning on kind of making it a bit more obvious. But it turns out a lot of people missed the fact that you had to click login in order to then connect. But I think the answer is yes. I mean, the reality is like there is a admittedly small but healthy enough market of buyers here. And yeah, it just feels like no matter how much we do to try to kind of onboard non-crypto people, it's gonna pale in significance versus a bull run. I mean, like, um, if we, we might be able to help like 0.1%, but a big boom, lots of press, there's going to be another Beeple. It might not be Beeple, it'll be someone else, obviously. But at some point there's going to be another headline and people are going to start looking at what's happening with digital art again. And hopefully this time around we're going to be able to present ourselves as a space in a more serious, credible way, and it's not going to feel so Bored Ape-y. I kind of feel like it's okay to serve the people who are already here, and maybe it's not such a bad strategy to Let the market and the excitement that is hopefully gonna come at some point just do its own thing. That's not to say we're not also trying to figure out how to get new people in, and we've discussed kind of gift vouchers. I would love to be able to just kind of give my friends something for birthdays, Christmas, that they can then go and spend in an easy way without having to set up a wallet, etc. So yeah, we're definitely kind of going to continue to try new things. But definitely stressing a bit less hard about finding non-crypto people in order to make it through for now.

Speaker A: Well, you've got basically every other platform out there trying to figure out how to bring the next million people in. So I guess you can kind of just hope that one of them hits and scratches the lottery ticket. I mean, that's a big theme that you'll hear. You haven't heard it yet, but that you'll hear in the Snowfro interview is like that pivot that they're making with Sansa, which surprisingly, it's like very Opposing to what you're saying, like they are trying to create a new open platform at a time where you're kind of like, we were skeptical of open platforms and now we're even more skeptical of them. There's a very interesting kind of like move by them, by fx hash, by platforms like Highlight too, that are just trying to like get tools out there to as many people as possible, cheap, cheap, cheap using L2s. So to form that into a question, maybe you can expand on your skepticism of open platforms because like obviously they've had their utility. A lot of that utility has redounded to Verse because it created that first cohort of artists that had the price points and had the community awarded hype to justify doing things like Verse solos, right? Or do something like an Art Blocks curated. So, but those platforms are really fallow now. And as far as we can tell, there has not been like that new crop of artists, at least in generative art. Maybe they're in AI right now.

Speaker B: Hmm.

Speaker A: And I know you guys have dabbled in that a bit too, but like if those platforms just kind of cease, what would the process be like for someone who's new to come to Verse and be like, yeah, trust me, like you can sell this for $1,500 or something, you know, like where will Verse get that confidence to give someone a Solos if we don't have a thriving open marketplace and platforms for them to actually like demonstrate that they can achieve that?

Speaker B: Yeah, just to go to the first thing you mentioned, which I think related to kind of onboarding new people, I kind of feel like the market is going to do the work for us. I don't just mean like the market going up. I mean like every time it goes up and down and up and down, it's news and more people come in. And we only need a few people who start off trading meme coins and then trading something else and then trading something else and eventually kind of finding art. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's probably sustainable. To the open platforms, I mean, it's usually reasonably obvious from Twitter what has a chance of doing well. I don't think it's necessarily the case that an artist has to start selling somewhere before they have a chance of doing well. If they're really good and they have Twitter and their work is picked up on by anyone, then hopefully at some point We do keep a very close eye on what's happening on fx hash and all the open platforms. And I mean, obviously to an extent we need to make decisions on what we think might have a chance of selling well, but we're trying to, as much as we possibly can, work with artists who we think are just really, really great. Ivan, I think Lonliboy has done an awesome job of just working with artists who he just really, really rates. And yeah, financially, kind of Ivan running that program of his may not make too much sense, but I think it's really important in terms of just us putting really strong works out there. It's definitely tricky in that we're a really small team and we can only do so much ourselves, but that's kind of why we're moving more towards this model of trying to support and kind of co-promote releases with galleries and curators. We're not really trying to be a gallery ourselves, per se. And I mean, our plan for the year ahead is much more to try to identify really great curators who have knowledge, experience in areas that we don't, because there are a lot of the same names who kind of everyone hears the whole time bouncing around the space. But digital art's a pretty, pretty broad thing, and there's a lot happening outside the space. So we're hoping that by working with more curators who really know what they're talking about, we're hoping to be able to identify really good things a bit more easily. But in terms of what artists should do, I mean, fx hash does work, doesn't it? Great artists can release on fx hash and do well.

Speaker A: And it worked during the bull. I mean, I think you could do some napkin math and figure out probably what they're making in fees a month and come to your own conclusions about the sustainability of that, along with others that have tried on ETH that have opened and closed or opened and moved slowly. I mean, even on L2s like Prohibition, I mean, If you look at that, like, it's the one project that Erik did there is like 95% of all the volume they've ever done on that platform. So 2023, with a few exceptions of some nice projects on fxhash, someone selling out a project for 15 tez is like big news. And then that means they probably made like $100 or $200 off that project. So I don't know how the numbers add up unless the market comes back in a big way.

Speaker C: There's just also not enough scale. You don't have enough of those. You get those once or twice a month. Maybe. And we talk about the space quite a bit.

Speaker A: And you don't get the people who got started there coming back because it just feels too dead. And so like William hasn't come back, you know, Roxanne hasn't come back. So many of the artists who got their start there—

Speaker C: Jeres hasn't come back.

Speaker A: A lot of people have been gone for like a year plus, even though they have their like genesis projects and built off the community there. So I mean, that's a whole other problem. that I don't think either of us can speak on, which is like, what could fxhash do to bring those people back? But, uh, the other half of it is that there's just not new people.

Speaker B: Yeah, but you said what's the process for someone new, for a new artist? But if you're an emerging artist and you've never released work before, the fact that you can't do a release and make $40 grand doesn't strike me as like a massive, massive problem. I mean, I think it's okay to kind of start with a small release that maybe won't get picked up upon by too many people. And, you know, if it's good, people talk about it, and eventually they ask, you know, that artist starts to get a bit more recognized. But I don't know, like, is, is it definitely a problem, the, the fact that it's hard for artists to become an overnight success and make millions with them?

Speaker A: I don't think it's necessarily a problem. I'm, I'm just more speaking to, like, what happens for a curated platform if there's no next batch of artists? Like, are you just gonna keep selling Mapan's like, what if he has another kid and quits art? You know, like, like you said, it's such a small number of artists that are viable right now that if like half of them left and became trad art world artists only, you need people coming up. You need people to have these places. Like, I guess what would happen in the real world, there'd be like these small— I don't, I don't know.

Speaker C: How many new artists do you need to get to in a year?

Speaker B: I mean, those artists around us are artists and they share their work and They've got side jobs, and that's cool. And the curator platforms keep a close eye on social media and do find them. Whether they're kind of minting and selling on open platforms maybe doesn't even necessarily matter.

Speaker C: If—

Speaker B: I mean, sure, that's a shame that they might miss out on some sales, but I don't think it means that they don't have a chance. And we're certainly not just kind of like exclusively looking to artists who have already been successful. I mean, we're scouring the internet long and hard to try to identify artists who might be the next William A. Fan. And I know that lots of other curators who we're talking to and working with are doing similar. So yeah, not totally sure that that's a massive problem. Yeah, interesting move from Art Blocks. I'm really looking forward to hearing your interview with Eric. I was like absolutely hooked on fxhash a year ago. Would definitely love to see the energy come back. Hopefully a new market kind of brings it back. What are your guys' thoughts on it?

Speaker A: I think candidly, like, they need to figure out a way to give artists that started there a reason to come back. I don't know what that is. I don't know if that's like money, like literally like, here's 10 grand plus you get to do your drop. Or if it's just that they need to wait till the end of 2024, let all this meme coin stuff shift and hope that everything rotates back into art, which would help all the platforms, not just fxhash. It would help Verse and help Art Blocks.

Speaker C: I think the other thing that would help FX hash though is you know so much of the FX hash community is also centered around the Tezos community. I saw a tweet a couple of days ago that Tezos is in risk of falling outside of the top 100 coins by market cap. So I just wonder how tightly tied the two of them are together. You know obviously Verse is protected not just from Tezos but kind of from the whole chain conversation just by virtue of. obfuscating chain to a really great extent, which I think is really smart, at least in the current market. I don't know. I think they're working to pivot fx hash, you know, with the integration of Ethereum, the integration of Base, both super smart, especially with Base being so hugely picked up on Farcaster and integrated there. But I agree with you, Will, that getting that next influx of collectors and also artists who are looking to get in on that is going to be big.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: fxhash got started because of the strong artist community that was also very prevalent in Tezos. And I feel like the Tezos art community, they've been successful and they're going to Ethereum.

Speaker A: There's so many confounding factors to it too. Like, I think a lot of people who were not having a lot of success in fxhash during the heyday, because there were just so many other artists who were getting attention, like back when we were getting like Zancan stuff frequently, and there was always the rumor that William was going to make another drop and stuff. Maybe they would sell out at like 10 tez, but they never broke through and sold out the 100 or 200 or had any of their projects really appreciate. A lot of those just scattered and they went to, you know, there was for a brief moment an open platform on Polygon back at like the end of 2022, the beginning of 2023. They were putting projects there, burning projects in fxhash that didn't mint and putting them on Polygon. Then that platform closed and they were trying things on Solana and now they're trying things on Bitcoin. And I don't know, I feel like they've maybe made the mistake of leaving a community that could have eventually supported them or was actually authentically interested in art. in pursuit of liquidity and conflating the idea of like sales for validation. Obviously some people need the money, so like you can't really argue if you need the money to pay for your life. But yeah, it's not really a way to build a collector base, at least in my opinion. Like it just doesn't look good to someone like me just to see you like moving around and not sticking somewhere. It was funny because one of the things, and Trinity, you already said it, like Eric said, we have too many artists. Like there's more artists than collectors, but at the same time, I feel like the entire problem the space faces is a Supply-side problem in that there's only so many artists that people really want to collect. And so we could easily add 10,000 more artists because maybe only 100 of them will be, you know, quote unquote safe enough to collect. Like we kind of need more artists so that they can go to places like FXHash and Art Blocks and Verse, and that optionality will actually matter. Right now there's like just enough of them to bounce between the curated sites that they don't need to go to the open platforms. Anymore. So that to me is really the big problem. And we've seen maybe a handful of new artists, handful that I can think of, that are like actually trying. And then a lot of low effort stuff on fxhash and other open platforms. So I don't, I don't know how you magic up 10,000 new artists though. Like maybe that will come with the bull run too, because people will want to look into creative coding again and try their luck at making tokens.

Speaker B: I've definitely spoken with at least a couple of collectors who have said there have been 3 things that I've wanted to mint in the past 4 months, which is kind of strange, which maybe leads to exactly that. I do feel a lot of artists are kind of sitting it out to an extent at the moment and waiting to see what happens market-wise before releasing work. So I don't know, maybe there are more artists out there who have things in store but haven't wanted to deploy yet.

Speaker C: You know, I see a lot of things that are posted on fxhash that in a prior market that you know, fxhash was founded in, would've been hugely flipped, quintupled in price, had a huge like hype cycle, but we're seeing them not mint out now. And so I, I think that it is really around having a large enough group of collectors who are willing to collect and drive that market activity, 'cause that kind of fuels conversation. It fuels ardor. It fuels people wanting to talk more and collect more and pay more attention. You know, I noticed in the announcement that Verse put out yesterday, putting the activity feed on the website, putting in like trending art on the website to make it a little bit more market-focused. And I wonder, is that partially to try to capture additional interest beyond the people who are sitting in your Discord all day?

Speaker B: Looking at what Fellowship and NiceAntes have done is just so incredible. It's on everyone's lips. It's not going anywhere. It's now really famous. It feels like a pretty safe thing to own. You see a load of influencers on Twitter saying, you know, this is one of my top X works for the next cycle, etc., etc., etc. And getting series seen in that kind of light, I think, is our job because for the artist it helps put them on the map. For collectors, it helps them feel that they have something that isn't going anywhere, that is a safe hold, that they're still going to be proud of in X years' time because it's still going to be relevant. And so the more measures we can take to increase our chances of that happening with releases on Verse, the better. So that trending page is kind of looking to that and trying to do something about it. There are so many kind of interesting things in that. I mean, the whole series size thing is such a hard one to get your head around. It's something that we've really been struggling with, with Art World artists, as I kind of mentioned, because we've all seen the kind of you know for the next cycle I want to be holding ringers, anti cyclone, etc., etc., etc. And everything is kind of well networked to you know for one of a better term. So far at least, everything that seems to have that kind of longevity or potential longevity is from a pretty big series size. I can't really think of anything under 500 that has done what A Life in West America or Anti Cyclone or Chromie Squiggles, etc., have done. Garden Monoliths is maybe like the best example of something under 500, but even that doesn't have anywhere near the liquidity and therefore conversation and therefore relevance that something like an Anticyclone does. So all of that to say, yes, the trending and activity page is really us trying to kind of do all we can to kind of help our releases stay on people's lips. And that's part of a strategy that includes working with artists to consider series size and a load of other things that might also help their chances. Really hard one with art world artists because most want to release 3 unique pieces, and it's pretty hard to, you know, pretty hard as a collector to justify getting involved with something that's probably going to be forgotten pretty soon.

Speaker A: Yeah, you have to truly enjoy it as a collector if you're going to collect a 1-of-1 from a collection of 3 1-of-1s. Like, That's that very classic example of like, it goes into a family's house and it doesn't come on to auction for 30, 40, 50 years, right? And like, no one sees it, that you kind of hear from the traditional art world when it's news that a piece has come up for auction because it hasn't been available since the '70s to buy. But we don't have a timeline long enough in NFTs to really even imagine that being a viable thing, right?

Speaker B: I think it's even harder than that though. I mean, the art world collector who buy something for their wall for 20 years, more often than not, their friends and family and people they know will know what it is. They'll have people around the house. Like, it'll still kind of benefit from those kind of network effects that an Anticyclone does in a different way. But buying something from an art world artist who may not release again, like, people may never ever see this in your wallet. It's like, it's a tough one.

Speaker A: I think this is kind of still on theme, but shifting a little bit. There was a tweet thread that you put out under your account, not under the Verse account, that was kind of about Verse's function, even though you said that Verse is not a gallery, but kind of like Verse doing some gallery-like things. And one of those being buying art on the secondary. I think that kind of plays into this, right? Like trying to keep floors up, trying to keep pieces top of mind. Like if Verse buys one, it's going to go into that sales feed now. And there'll also be narrative around it. But can you kind of talk a little bit about that decision philosophically? I think it feels very foreign to us in the NFT side, but maybe not so strange from the traditional art world side. And also like of all the collections up there, like how are you picking, how should we interpret this? Like when Verse is buying from just one set of artists, are you kind of signaling to us that these are artists that are like, we should expect to see a lot more from them on Verse in the future? Because there's too much for you to go and sweep every single collection, right?

Speaker B: So you mentioned we're not a gallery, I mentioned we're not a gallery, but we created the kind of Solos arm. Yeah, I suppose we kind of run Solos as a gallery. The issue is we don't really have the bandwidth to really, really do it properly and really run it as a gallery would normally run. But the gallery model by and large is work with a really small number of artists, support them on an ongoing basis. And the fact that you do that means that it makes sense for you to take a pretty healthy chunk on primary. So if you are a gallery who works with 6 artists, you might take their work to a fair, sell a few pieces. A couple of years later, one comes up on the secondary market. You don't really want it hanging around. It's not great for the artist market. So you might buy it, take it off the secondary market, and then at a later date, perhaps show it at another fair. Which is great marketing for the artist. Taking that kind of model is something that we really don't want to properly commit to because we currently just simply don't have the bandwidth, but we would definitely like to be working closely with artists doing that kind of thing. And I think that if we were able to kind of work with a very small number of artists and buy things off secondary and then go to a fair and sell a few of them and find some new collectors and get some great photographs and expose their work to many thousands of new people. I think that could be in everyone's best interests, including the interests of the collectors who we are selling to, because as I say, the more relevant something is and can continue to be, the better for everyone. We don't have any kind of firm plans with any of the works that we have been collecting so far. I hope that One day we might have a bit more bandwidth, as when and if we find ourselves in a kind of stronger position financially. Yeah, we've got quite a few fields and funktors. Hopefully one day we might be able to do a fair somewhere and show thousands of people Eric's work. But yeah, no plans yet. The general thinking is we see it as really important work doing what we can to ensure that things stay and feel Speaking of staying relevant, obviously you wanna stay solvent as a company.

Speaker C: You wanna continue to be producing and showcasing great work for years, decades, centuries, millennia. Part of that has been making big business changes, and I think the biggest one that really happened recently was shifting to Solana. You said that there were, I forget how many wallets or how many new people connected for that release.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Do you still feel good about integrating Solana? Is it something that you see as a continued step forward for Verse or other chains too? I'm just going to open up the other chain conversation.

Speaker B: I don't personally see the Solana thing as a big shift in strategy, really. It was a—

Speaker C: You're hedging.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, Solana is up massively. There's a load of energy in the Solana ecosystem. I think most collectors in the space are here through having been involved with some kind of fun, exciting boom times. And a lot of the people who kind of start off as traders end up as collectors. And if there's a ton of activity on one chain, our thinking was, well, we could do with some more revenue, and maybe we can find some new collectors there. Yeah, we don't have Base, so Solana might be our Best bet there. I wouldn't say it's like a big part of our strategy or anything like that. It was an exploration and an experiment to see if we could get some new collectors. We had 109 new collectors buy Jeres's work, which I think was a— I thought was a good result until Highlight mentioned 40,000 wallets on Zancan.

Speaker C: You can't compete with free.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard to compete with free.

Speaker B: Well, free is a good strategy. That's been eye-opening. It was really interesting seeing some of the kind of feedback, pushback, criticism following Solana. Amazing how political blockchains can be.

Speaker C: Well, do you see any L2s in your future? Just thinking about Base, you know, 40,000 new people are using Base for the first time. It's low cost. It's well integrated. Is that something that you're open to after potentially traumatic experiences with Solana?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we've got Base top of our Monday morning product meeting next week. So we're definitely speaking about this kind of thing. If something can kind of help us out and low gas is certainly helpful and can also bring new people, then that sounds like a good thing. Really, really keen to keep our product as simple and easy as possible. So we're really trying not to compromise that, but I don't think new chains is going to really hurt that too much. And also the benefits of being able to speak to other collectors, I think is probably worth it.

Speaker A: I kind of feel like the way to prove the strategy would be to test the collector base and consistently show them good art and dare them to show up. And then if they don't, after like a certain number of times, just be like, all right, well, you guys said you wanted it. We're giving you like a really nice curated art experience. I get that the liquidity is there, but it doesn't seem actually that interested in collecting like Art. They seem more interested in collecting things that they can commoditize and flip and do that type of stuff with.

Speaker B: We don't want to kind of shout, you know, like, we've got a new Solana release coming out. That kind of feels like it misses the point and is maybe not that cool on the artist. With Jeres's release, we mentioned it was on Solana, but we tried not to like really hype it as a Solana release. But I feel you kind of have to if you really want to get the Solana crowd excited. I feel like it should be a good art release, not a Solana release.

Speaker C: Did you get any pushback from people being like, I don't want to collect this because it's on Solana and Ethereum is my blockchain of choice?

Speaker B: Yeah, from a couple of people. Yeah, mainly because of how the Solana Foundation operates. Yeah, it's very centralized.

Speaker A: It's very— there's a lot of Web3 purists who are not gonna— not a lot, I should say. There's a vocal set of Web3 purists who will say things like, I'll never collect on Solana because it's centralized and blah, blah, blah, right? So the trade-off there is like, okay, there's going to be a couple people who won't collect it, but the whole point of the move is to tap into that potential users there who, for whatever reason, they haven't made the jump over. I mean, to me, that was always the most confounding part of the argument, which is that if they want art, then they can come over. Why do you have to go to them? That's the thing I never understood about the narrative from the end of last year of the Solana folks saying like, you should keep an open mind.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: should all come over here and look at Solana, but all the art's been on ETH and Tez for the most part. So my takeaway is like, either keep pushing or don't, because if it's just like drip and drab, you're never gonna see if there really is like a breakthrough moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Bitcoin's obviously a totally different kettle of fish.

Speaker C: A very expensive and lucrative kettle of fish.

Speaker B: Yeah, we've been trying to kind of figure out the extent to which we should just aim to offer artists tools that they can use? I mean, if an artist comes to us and says, I want to release on Bitcoin, should we say no? Or should we just offer them as best tools as we possibly can to let them do what they want to?

Speaker A: I guess it depends on the cost of getting it set up. It seems very complicated. Not that I know too much about it, but it doesn't actually seem trivial to run a Bitcoin minting platform because there's no smart contracts. There's a lot of— sketchy is not the right word, but just things that I don't understand. And so it seems like it's not as simple as it— as probably the Solana thing was, because Solana is like EVM compatible, right? So you were probably able to take a lot of your existing contracts and make them work.

Speaker B: I'm assured by Agoston Nagy, our CTO, that it wouldn't be too difficult to get up and running on Bitcoin, but still work, obviously.

Speaker A: Where should we go from here, Trinity? We have to wrap it soon because my kid's going to come bursting through the door.

Speaker C: I think that we've done a lot of work talking about A bunch of things, including open platforms versus closed platforms, different chains and cryptocurrencies. I don't know if this is like the best place to end it, but I did have a quick question. What is your take on the recent Art Blocks announcement? I think that Art Blocks is one of your 2 core competitors, at least when it comes to the closed platform space that's releasing great stuff. What was the team's take or what was your take?

Speaker B: The tricky thing about the curated way of doing things is that, I mean, it's pretty hard for a gallery to ever become a kind of venture-scale business. I mean, we've taken VC funding. I'm pretty sure they have as well. You know, by banking on Verse solos, maybe curated, I mean, sure, you can have a good business from doing that, but probably not on a kind of venture scale. So we don't really have a choice but to try to figure out something more scalable. In addition to our gallery model, I'm presuming they're seeing things in a similar way. We've given a load of thought as to whether we should be kind of semi-open, as I think that they're going to be doing as well. We decided not to because we thought that an open platform wouldn't be able to compete with a more curated platform for the best releases. Because if you're an artist and you can go to a semi-open platform or a platform that's gonna really do everything they possibly can to shine a bright light on what you're doing, I struggle to see why that artist would go to the semi-open platform. So yeah, we didn't go down that route for that reason. I can't say I completely understand the difference between Presents and their new model. I think that this is only going to be open and available to artists who have released on Art Blocks before. So I'm looking forward to seeing the extent to which this is— yeah, like, how is this different from Presents, because Presents releases work in a kind of reasonably structured way once every certain number of days. Is this going to be kind of Presents but free-for-all? I doubt it, but if it is, then is that an improvement? I don't know.

Speaker A: Well, you'll have to listen to the interview. The one thing that we didn't get into, which I regret, but we only had so much time, was I was really curious to understand how the business model might change because I could see being really influenced by what platforms like Highlight do, where it's just like a fee per mint type of thing. The artists get to keep everything. You scale with edition size. So if artists want to do something like a big blowout, like Zancan, Highlight printed like over $100,000.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: On that, that an artist gave away for free. Like fxhash would make no money on that drop if Zancan had done it there. So I think that model is weird as it might've sounded initially, at least to me. I think it's showing That at least in this market right now, it's potentially powerful. I guess the most optimistic way to think about it is like, if you anticipate the market coming back in the next year, then you want to have something semi-open so that way you can capitalize on, you know, your more curated set of artists having a place to release and then like owning that. But that could only be another 6, like a 6-month heyday period before it all disappears. Right. So I think it has to be more, it has to be part of a bigger future plan than just catching the next wave. Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. I'm really excited to see where Aave and Enjin go. I'd be interested to get your guys' kind of take on it, but it feels like a lot of platforms are kind of trying to kind of figure out how best to work together and how this jigsaw fits together in a way that does fit together as opposed to kind of overlapping in any way. We've worked with Aave and Enjin in the past. My understanding is that the Sansar team are going to be part of kind of building out a marketplace for everything that Aave and Enjin partners releases. And that sounds awesome. I mean, like, they've got amazing collectors. We would love to do more Enjin releases if we can, if it's gonna enable releases that we kind of work with to show up on that marketplace. That sounds awesome. Ditto Highlight, to be honest. I mean, it sounds like they're building a kind of similar thing. It feels like there's going to be a lot more collaboration going forwards. We've spoken with the AB Enjin team, spoken with Foundation, spoken with Highlight, Yeah, it's pretty clear that the more eyes on a release, the better. So if we can be working with AB Engine, releasing something on Verse that also features on Foundation, I feel like that's just a win for everyone, especially the artist. I really hope in a year's time, it doesn't feel like we're competing for releases or anything like that. Hopefully in a year's time, we're just seen as like, we take a fee for shining an extra light on that release. And if the gallery who we're working, partnering with feels that we add value in doing that, then great, that's a win for everyone and we're not kind of taking anyone's lunch at all. I actually heard you, Trinity, I think it was your last episode before Christmas, you said something along the lines of like, it's really frustrating having to keep up with Discord and Twitter to get a sense of what's going on. The pain's real. So we're hoping that we can kind of just be an aggregator for interesting projects and we're not going to be charging crazy, crazy fees, but hopefully we'll be able to—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: partner with Expanded Arts who are powered by Highlight, also showing up on Foundation, and then we're charging a little bit just for the feature. That's kind of how I see things moving forward.

Speaker C: I think that the way that the Verse releases have been handled, that's one of the things that's the benefit of these, like the closed platforms that are supporting each drop versus an open platform, is that there have been enough people shouting about Barbarians on Twitter That like, if you've logged into Twitter at any point in the last 3 to 4 weeks, you probably have heard or know about Barbarians and you've probably seen a couple of things and you know where it is and you know what it looks like and you know where you can get it. Like the value proposition of being consolidated truly is there. You get a lot more hype, not hype isn't necessarily the right word. You get it. You get a lot more network effect than if you're just one artist trying to promote your one drop on one platform. Because obviously the fxhash team can't do that level of promotion for every single thing that gets released there. So that's just kind of one benefit that, you know, you really have.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was really interesting seeing the Bright Moments Artist Residence program, which shows up on Foundation powered by Highlight. And I think there was another partner there as well. But yeah, it definitely feels like the more collaborators on something, kind of the better for everyone. Which feels really, really strange, but maybe that's the new world that we're living in.

Speaker A: Maybe as a last question to wrap it up here, what can you tell us about this idea you've been floating of a Verse community token?

Speaker B: I mean, it kind of stemmed from the fact that Sketchbook A was so fun. It was so fun. Our Discord was just really buzzy and really cool to see people kind of come together around this work. And it's happening with Barbarians now, and my colleague George mentioned earlier today that he spoke with a collector who, from what I understand, is a kind of crypto-y kind of person. I don't think he'd collected before he saw Barbarians, jumped in, and now he's kind of every day refreshing his 20 seeds. But yeah, those projects don't come around too often, and I feel we need some community glue. And looking at what RGB and Squiggles have done for FXHash and Art Blocks, That's definitely, definitely glue. Haven't really done much work on this other than putting a couple of tweets out and having a couple of conversations with some interesting artists. But yeah, if we can find an interesting piece that can have the feel of an RGB or a squiggle, I think that'd be pretty awesome. It might be a JPEG, it might be a conceptual piece, I have really no idea, but I think there could be benefit for us and for the artist and for collectors in having something like that. I mean, we— for Shettle's release a few weeks ago, we did an allowlist, which I think collectors on the list really, really appreciated. I think it was great for Shettle to be able to say thank you to people who supported him. Those collectors felt good seeing what happened with the auction. Say if we had a community token that meant that, you know, the top 50 holders could be eligible for allowlists or something like that, I feel that would be good for a few parties and also create a kind of spirit that doesn't currently really exist in our Discord. I don't feel we've really got a community. Sometimes it kind of feels like we do, but certainly we don't in the way AB and FX# do. And yeah, I don't think it's coincidence that they both have these kind of now iconic kind of emblems that are these kind of pictures representing who they are. Really just an idea. Not sure if anything's going to happen.

Speaker A: I think the obvious play here is you get Zancan to make something and then you make it like a burn 5 carbon captures to redeem type of mechanism. This could be the thing that finally all the carbon captures have a reason to use in a way.

Speaker C: They're not that many carbon captures, you know, like not when we're looking at the Highlight drop. Yeah. We thought carbon captures was big, but like, it's just minuscule.

Speaker A: I was surprised there was no Carbon Capture 1-year anniversary thing. I thought you guys might make some announcement around that drop.

Speaker B: We spoke with Michael about doing something, and for whatever reason, that didn't pan out.

Speaker C: It's very busy.

Speaker B: It's really— it's so tricky talking about anything Zancan because any— anything you say, people latch onto and either buy or sell or anything. But I agree, that would be That could be awesome. Have you ever spoken with him about anything like that? Anything Carbon Quacks related?

Speaker A: When we had dinner with him about a year and a half ago, I think we floated the idea of burning it or making some project that would burn. But yeah, now this is going to sound like we have alpha for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely have no alpha whatsoever. That to say, I mean, we don't— yeah, nothing's even close to solid on that front.

Speaker A: Fair enough. Trinity, anything from, from you to close it out here?

Speaker C: One rapid-fire question. If you had to pick any NFT project that has happened in this latest cycle, not the cycle before with— can't talk about Squiggles, can't talk about Fidenzas, can't talk about Punks, or maybe even Apes. In our next bull run, which NFT will be worth millions of dollars that we should all go get right now? I'm on my get-rich-quick scheme.

Speaker B: I have no idea. Everyone's talking about A Line Draw and Nice Aunties. Fellowship are killing it. Those seem to be the ones on everyone's lips. I suspect it will be from a big, a big series. In fact, I saw someone predicting Life in West America is going to be massive. Rupee is brilliant, so maybe that's not a bad shout.

Speaker A: All AI projects.

Speaker C: Yeah, we didn't even talk about that, how Verse has really moved away from generative code, a big move towards AI.

Speaker B: No, I don't think we've moved away. I mean, yeah, Yazid's a generative artist.

Speaker C: You're shifting towards, you're opening the aperture as to what you want to include.

Speaker B: Yeah. We've kind of come out from the outset, I think, saying we're a platform for digital art as opposed to specifically generative. But yeah, that is certainly lots of AI happening.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker A: Well, we'll see you in a year, a year or two.

Speaker B: Yeah. Looking forward to it. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah, right on. Thank you, Jamie. It was great to have you back on. Very excited to just chop it up about the market, about Verse, everything you all are doing. We look forward to whatever this community token might be if it happens, not that there's any guarantee or alpha for people to be thinking about. Looking forward to seeing more solos and everything else that you guys bring this year. So keep it up.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: All right, everyone. Well, that was Jamie, round 2 with Verse. I hope you all enjoyed. We'll be back again soon with another episode. Thanks to Jamie. Thanks to Trinity. All right, bye-bye.

Speaker B: We're waiting, always. We're waiting to be signed.