If you’ve been plugging into the world of DAOs lately, you’ve certainly heard of FWB (Friends with Benefits DAO). In many ways, FWB is the cool kid on the block, the connector that taps into all the right scenes. It’s brought creatives, artists, technologists, builders, and anyone who’s in the intersection of culture and web3 together. What differentiates FWB from any other social clubs or scenes, is that like any other DAO, its members have a shared bank account, powered by the blockchain....

The number of successful consumer applications in the web 3 space is still few and far between. Against all odds, Audius, an open source and decentralized music discovery and community platform was somehow able to strike a chord and gain mainstream adoption.  They have racked up 7M monthly listeners and 50,000 artists, including heavy hitters like deadmau5, Nas, Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki and many more. So what exactly is Audius and how were they able to gain so much traction?  Initially, it...

In the last year, play-to-earn (P2E) games have become a promising new frontier for both blockchain enthusiasts who are seeking a deeper purpose in what NFTs and digital ownership can enable, and game developers who are intrigued by this new model of publishing games where it can bypass the walled gardens of the mobile app stores.  However, given the nascency of this industry, there’s still a ton of skepticism. Common criticisms include P2E games being “not fun to play”, not actually helping...

While architects have had so much influence on how our cities, buildings and social spaces are constructed, their influence has not quite reached the virtual world. This is perhaps why we haven’t seen examples in the Metaverse of landmarks, versatile multi purpose spaces, or places that have outlived the specific game, use case or event that it was created for.  Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular are pioneers within the architectural field, having developed curiosity for what...

The term ‘web 3’ has become more and more solidified in the last couple of months, being broadly an umbrella term for the development of all blockchain based technologies. But how does everyone and their moms actively participate in web 3 is a whole other question, and an important one as web 3 needs to gain mainstream adoption to continue to be relevant.  Peter Yang is working on tackling this problem through an education DAO called Odyssey. Through his journey of writing web 3...

People often conflate the idea of the Metaverse with VR experiences, and while VR can be one medium in which people experience the Metaverse, it is merely a subset. The work that Phillip Wang and team is doing on their virtual social platform called Gather helps demyth this common misunderstanding.  For Phillip, the CEO and Co-Founder of Gather, the Metaverse is about creating a strong sense of connection, presence, and place no matter where you are. The vision then, is for the Metaverse is...

There is a tendency to think of technology as engineering and data-driven, but the art of storytelling and the power of intuition cannot be overlooked as central to building great products. Where engineering brings a product to life, storytelling envisions how the user will experience that product. And where data allows us to make decisions based on what we know, intuition allows us to predict outcomes based on what we sense given the patterns we observe.  Especially when it comes to making...

As of late, other than the (unfortunate) plummeting prices of cryptocurrencies, OpenSea has been perhaps the biggest news story in blockchain tech. The world’s largest NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace has just raised a new series C venture funding round, valuing it at $13.3B dollars. If you’re skeptical about its new colossal valuation, here’s a stat for you: the platform experienced $14B in trading volume in 2021, which is more than a 40,000% increase from a trading volume of $33M just a...

Remember Kim Kardashian’s notorious Kimoji system, where you could access hundreds of Kim themed emojis and gifs? The modern iteration of that is what the startup Genies is offering to thousands of celebrities, and ultimately to you as well. Genies is currently working with A-list celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Migos, Cardi B, etc. to help them create dynamic and photorealistic avatars that they can share on platforms like TikTok and Instagram as a way to engage their fans,...

Web 3 has become the canonical term to describe new internet products that are decentralized, user owned, and orchestrated with tokens. It is compared to web 1 where the internet was user owned, but highly technical and not user-friendly and web 2 which formed centralized, and eventually extractive platforms that offered consumer friendly experiences and enabled billions of people to access the internet.  DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) have become the primary social organizing...

NFT games is the new topic that’s been gaining major momentum in the metaverse/web 3 conversation. The fundamentals of NFT games is that the ownership model of game assets are user owned and transactions are encoded on the blockchain. This creates a utility value for NFTs where it can actually live in an environment where it brings tangible value to people, rather than just being say a jpeg piece of digital art that’s hard to show off.  The magic of NFT games shows through the economic...

Jacob Navok is the co-founder and CEO of Genvid, which is the leader in interactive streaming technology. They are working on one of the most interesting problems in the pursuit of the metaverse vision which is, how do you get millions of people to concurrently be participating and interacting in one live experience with no latency (delay or lag)? This is as opposed to what’s happening right now with server sizes of around 50 people in say Fortnite concerts.  Jacob was the co-author of the...

The creator economy, crypto, and the metaverse have been probably the buzziest concepts of this year (or in tech at least), and Kyla Scanlon straddles all three of these worlds on a visceral level. She is a content creator who focuses on financial education, which entails explaining to people hard to grasp concepts like crypto and other vehicles for decentralization. And by being a creator, she naturally occupies a majority of her life in the online world, aka, the Metaverse. As a GenZ (or as...

The best games are often built by those who have developed a mastery over human psychology and motivation and Kenshi Arasaki one of them. He is the creator of multiple hugely popular mobile, free-to-play games, and he shares his principles and insights on what makes games enticing to players and sustains traction.  We deep dive on why a master of psychology and human incentives is the recipe for creating good games. We’ll cover how to create an environment for interesting emergent social...

Games are now becoming the most popular place for kids and young adults to hang out today. This phenomenon became very evident during this pandemic, where time spent on popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Animal Crossing and Roblox exceeded that of other popular apps like Youtube and Instagram. Moreover, gaming platforms like Twitch and Discord have begun to replace traditional social or communication platforms as the primary way in which people socialize.  What’s more astounding...

While most of us are active participants of social networks where we share ample detail about our personal lives, much fewer of us lead active lives in persistent virtual worlds where that life is completely deviated from the one in the real world.  Second Life, created by Philip Rosedale, was an online virtual world platform that took the world by storm in the 2000s. Astoundingly enough, the platform still maintains about one million regular users who, for a lack of a better way to put it,...

Digital identities have far evolved beyond a simple username and emoticon or a profile photo and personal page. It’s become a way that people can express themselves in a wide spectrum of ways and find meaning in new online communities.  In this episode, we explore how Gen Z has different trends in how they display their identities online compared to Millennials. Whereas Millennials approached online identity in a more curated and performative manner, Gen Z shows a strong desire for...

Our lives are becoming more and more digitally native. As we have fewer physical barriers to socialize, work, learn, entertain, express ourselves and create, growing aspects of our lives will become untethered from the physical world.  This reality might excite you or it may induce fear and anxiety. Either way, I believe we shouldn’t just wait and watch for this mysterious future to unfold. Rather, we should seek to explore how to positively define and shape the future we want to create on...