HODL Podcast Episode 8 was originally published on May 12, 2023.
Join Drew, Skyler, and Joel with special guest Tara Fung as they talk about Co:Create, SXSW recap, LinksDAO buying a golf course, Doodles an NFT project or not, and the upcoming Amazon NFT Marketplace. Tara Fung is the Co-Founder and CEO of Co:Create. She previously served as chief revenue officer of Alto, a cryptoIRA and digital asset IRA custodian, and chief commercial officer of CommonBond. She graduated from Harvard Business School and the University of South Carolina.Co:Create enables innovative brands to build gamified, self-owned reward experiences that supercharge their community — fueled by Co:Create's flexible, API-first community activation platform.
Episode Rundown:
- Tara shares her SXSW and NFT Paris recap and trends in the web3 industry.
- LinksDAO has officially bought a 100-year-old golf course.
- Doodle's Founder in hot water — are they an NFT project?
- Amazon is launching an NFT marketplace, but the details remain mysterious.
About Holder
Holder is a CRM and marketing automation platform for web3 brands and creators. They help businesses engage and communicate with their customers on the blockchain. With Holder, companies can manage customer data, track user engagement and automate marketing processes. For more information visit our website.
Podcast Transcript
Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below:
Welcome back everybody to the latest episode of our Hold on for Dear Life podcast hosted by the team here at Holder. If you're not familiar with Holder, we are a web3 marketing automation platform, and today is a very special episode where we have a guest, Terra Feng joining us for the podcast.
Tara is somebody I've gotten to know over the last handful of months in the space, and I'm just a fan of hers and her company co-create, and so I'm super excited to have her joining us. I think, you know, your perspective, Tara, on, uh, things happening in web three is always, incredibly insightful. And so I'm super excited to kind of have you share, in the podcast, with us today and join us just for, for those that are listening, if you're unfamiliar with Tara, I'll kind of just share a little bit more about her, but she, in her day job today is the co-founder and CEO of Co-create, previously served as the Chief Revenue Officer at Alto, a crypto I RRA and Digital Asset IRA.
IRA custodian, chief CU commercial officer of CommonBond, uh, is also an alumni of the Harvard Business School and University of South Carolina, and is based in Nashville. So it's very similar, very close to us here in Indianapolis. At least a semi Midwesterner. I don't know, Nashville's not really Midwest, but I know it's still weird.
I've never lived this far inland. It feels quite odd to be closer to lakes than ocean .
It is, it is true. And then, and then maybe just also kind of hit on really quickly, so, so co-create. You know, and this is kind of directly from, from your, from your all's kind of language, but co-create enabling innovative brands to unlock the power of their community, fueled by gamified self-owned rewards, and, just kind of very, very simple community activation tools.
And, It's just kind of an incredible platform and working with some of the, the leading brands today that are launching Web three initiatives around how do they rethink, you know, what is loyalty and how do I engage with the customer leveraging kind of web three assets. And so, an incredible partner and friend of ours at Holder.
And so, super excited to have you, Tara, joining us on the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me, drew. I'm so excited to be here. You have been such, an advocate and also someone who's like introduced me to really interesting communities like Jump Sky Club, so it is a pleasure to be here with you today.
In one of our first topics, Tara, you've been, at a number of kind of the industry conferences over the last couple of weeks and, just recently got back from South by and I thought kind of maybe it'd be fun to just kick things off with, kind of an south by NFT Paris. Kind of recap from, from you just around kind.
What are some of the things that you've been at some of these conferences the last couple of months that have just been, you know, really insightful or interesting or that kind of have maybe re-energized you around, web3 and kind of the space that we're playing in. Would, would just kind of love to get some your, your kind of recap and thoughts, kind of from being there, boots on the ground over the last couple of.
Yeah, it is definitely conference circuit season. There's been FD Paris Eve, Denver, south by Southwest, NFT LA, which is called something else now. And then comes like there's just a ton, um, I'll say South by Southwest, which is the one I was at most recently. What was really interesting for me to see is, well, once the hangover effect of SVB kind of went away, which definitely put a damper on it at the start when there was so much unknown of do any of these tech companies still have money?
It's a question, but once that was clarified, it really got to be about, okay. I heard three trends that came up consistently. The first was around customer and community experience, where we as an industry, web3 native, we need to make these experiences just as good, if not better, than Web2 experience and there's this, you know, golden honey pot at the end of the rainbow when you get into web3 and when you get on the other side, but it's still really hard to get there. And all of the experiences are still very friction filled, tied oftentimes to walling. And so we heard a lot about customer experience and that in order to cross the chasm to mass adoption, we've gotta just make this more enjoyable for everyone and less risky and less friction.
The two other trends that I really heard was around business value as well was the second one. You know, we are in a tough economic environment. Every business is tightening their purse strings, and if you are wanting to do something new and innovative, you need to be able to make the argument for why that should be prioritized.
And so you've got to say what the business value is of this and be and have metrics that are tied to that. So it's kind of like tied this to KPIs or it's gonna kind of die on the vine. Then the last one that I heard a lot was, I'll call it URL to IRL. Where we need to take these digital experiences and we need to be able to bridge them into the real world and make it so that there isn't this, like again, it goes a lot back to customer experience and community experience where not this difficult thing to take something that's digital or that you got digitally and then use it in the real world, or to have real world experiences that are then represented digitally and you get credit for digitally.
Like this just needs to be seamless because this is all. Following the individual wherever they go and allowing them to get benefits and engagement, um, across all of their life touchpoints. And so I think that bridge, IRL to URL and vice versa is another big one.
Oh, yeah. I, completely agree on, on that.
I think we, we've talked about that for, for quite some time. Even that, a lot of these experiences that we're seeing in web3. Their fullest extent of how, yeah, of how you experience it kind of is through an IRL kind of component. And it is incredibly difficult to kind of make that connection.
And I think kind of, that's a lot of where some of where we started even with like the business around like kind of the value prop is like if you are trying to make. I r l, you know, kind of connection. It's incredibly difficult because you're talking about, you know, bits and anonymous, you know, wallets and things like that, and how can you translate that easily to kind of IRL.
But I think that, you know, even into community building and things like that, like, and kind of we're just getting back to like, there's so much. There's just so much value when you can meet people in person and connect with people in, in person too, and kind of like, or hold something kind of physical.
And I think that we will continue to see more and more of that be an importance around the value you can provide. And kind of how do you connect all of these kind of physical to digital.
Yeah, exactly. And I feel like another way to say this is as an individual, how do these new technologies integrate and enhance my life? And my life isn't just online and it's not just in person, it's both. And so I want this to feel seamless across both of those things.
That's definitely something that we're seeing play out in discussions that we're seeing play out in product. I know Token Proof has a new product as I understand it, that allows you to validate ownership without having to connect your wallet to other accounts.
We're seeing this play out so that you can go to an event in real life and say like, Hey, I can get in because I have this thing, if that's the gating mechanism. And I'm excited to see it be developed further cuz I still think there's a lot of work to be done. Yeah, and I love, we talked to a couple brands too.
They're doing a lot of, and, and you see, you know, artifact and Zuki and some others too, but like the, the fidgital stuff of like, even like specifically an apparel, you know what How do I connect like a physical apparel item to you know, like the physical back token stuff or, you know, IYK has, has their kind of, technology too, but those are also very, very interesting to me.
I believe it was punk 6529. Who in a podcast or something had mentioned this, that, you know, when you when you think about, even in our physical world, like most assets are actually non-fungible assets in kind of of our physical world.
And when you think about kind of the true full, realization of NFTs and non-fungible assets and moving no- fungible assets onto a blockchain, that is like one of the largest industries in the world. And you think about it just, you know, non-fungible physical goods of like, people care, you know, I don't care this cup of coffee versus like another, but like, there's lots and lots of things where it cannot be kind of replaced by another good.
And, and so I think fashion and retail and especially in the luxury side of things, we're seeing a lot of movement there, which has kind of been really, really interesting.
I really like this URL to IRL comparison. I thought that was an interesting thing. I hadn't heard that before. That's pretty cool.
I stole it from someone I don't know who to give credit to, but I definitely didn't come up with it myself.
Yeah, I like it a lot. And wanna pull on the thread there a little bit not to make one more important than the other, the digital versus the physical experience, but like, which one is the one that's needing more work right now?
Because you know, I feel like I see myself, I see a lot of influencers, especially trying to push brands towards this digital experience. Hey, you need to be building out your experiences in the digital world. But to hear it said as URL to IRL, it's like, well, how are we tying back? All of the digital experiences that we have today are the digital tokens that exist today.
And tying those back to the physical ones. And I really like how you're talking. How do we bring those into equilibrium and make them something that is a seamless experience from physical to digital. But I'm almost curious if anyone has an opinion on like what one right now needs more work. Do we think it's the digital side?
Do we think it's the physical side? Because I feel like I could name a couple of things on the physical side that. Are available today that have been widely adopted, like NFT NYC, all the experiences people are gonna go through there. Like the events, us. An example, we're gonna be holding a happy hour for everyone in the Holder ecosystem, but some might be renting out a club as an example and giving out merch.
And that's their kind of, “Hey, you're a part of our digital community”. This is what you're getting for being part of our digital community. So just curious if anyone has any opinions on, you know, which one is the one that needs more work right now to kind bring us to. Valhalla of equilibrium.
Yeah, the way that I've thought about it is that we will have experiences, in the real world IRL, that we wanna have accounted for digitally.
And so if we want to have this digital identification, this digital account system, we wanna be able to say, I got went to that event and maybe because I went to that event, I was able to earn points that are reflected in my brand account or I played this, this augmented reality game like Pokemon Go.
What if whenever you found the random thing. I don't play Pokemon Go. My husband is into Pokemon and so I know like things like Charar, but that is about it. , but like they're playing. Augmented reality game and you're going and you're finding these things. If what if when you that happens that could be represented digitally, it probably already is, but it could be re-represented digitally on a blockchain so that it's not captive to a specific ecosystem, but you can take it with you wherever you go.
Like some of the very tangible examples here is, you know, we innovative brands create these web3, loyalty and reward programs where they can create some concept of points, some concept of status, or some concept of collectibles using different primitives ERRC 20 SE, RRC 1155s, ERC 721s, and I would love to be able to get points.
For doing things in the real world that the brand wants to incentivize and then be able to use those points either within the brand's ecosystem in real life or digitally or with other brand partners that are part of an interoperable loyalty and rewards program. And so like that's kind of what I see.
So I'm thinking more of how can we account for things that happen. Physically and digitally. But I think to what you're also saying is how can we take the things that we've done and have a mass digitally, and get certain goods and benefits in the real world, like whether that's access to events, whether that's point of sale discounts, whether that's access to exclusive products, or being able to cut the line at Supreme when they do another drop, right? Like no one wants to stand in that line forever. So those are some, I, I think it's a really good question of which way is harder accounting for things digitally that are happening in the real world or getting your digital, benefits accounted for physically.
Both of them need to be worked on. I think, I don't know that one's further along than the.
Yeah, that's probably a good thing then that there's,
You know, neither one is outweighing the other one right now. By the way, I am totally stealing that cuz I feel like I've got a bunch of use cases in my back pocket of digital tokens.
But I am taking the Supreme Cut in line one. That one is amazing and hits home for me. Like I'm not, oh my gosh, right, the buyer Supreme. But I could think like five different instances in my life where if I just owned a digital token, I'm at the front of the line at Disney. Oh my. I would totally buy into that.
So that's an awesome one. I like it. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think too, it's maybe not one or the other, but it's like the bridge between the two that you know, needs to be kind of where we focus. Um, and I would also just second that I love the URL to IRL a lot more than fid, which is like the other, like physical, digital, a hundred percent term.
It just feels less icky, but the word just needs to die.
Yeah. One is not a word. The other is a nice acronym. Concisely explains what it's trying to get across.
Exactly.
Anyway, so technically neither of them are words. One's an acronym and one's a made up word.
Yes, exactly. Which is very true. I will say the, he three items that you kind of outlined from, that you've really got from these conferences almost all tie together and feed off of each other in kind of interesting ways.
It just seems like all of the, like, do we do digital, do we do physical? All of that is really coming down to, how are we providing better value? And then, how do we track that? And all that is why are we providing better value? Because we wanna improve the consumer experience, all of these are just directly tied together and completely correlate with. Just how do, how should businesses function? Which I think is something that is happening more and more with NFT and web3 projects is they're trying to, they're, a lot of them are starting to realize, oh hey. Yeah, so this whole business thing, yeah, we gotta do that too. We can't just launch a one-off NFT project and be like, yeah, we made it.
It doesn't work that way. Works for a month.
So yeah. Love hearing that that is con, that that trend is continuing.
I completely agree, and I think that's what got. Me at least personally, so interested in, in this space and kind of, you know, dedicating this, this next chapter in my career, particular web3, is that I see the opportunity specifically around how do you drive business value and how do you drive more meaningful customer experiences and consumer experiences, you know, leveraging blockchain technology just to be dramatically different and like completely flipped on its head than what we've seen over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years in, in kind of the internet and software.
And so it's just, I think, just incredibly innovative and cool things that people are doing this space and we still have a far way to come and to, to go. But, uh, I think there's also just so many kind of really bright kind of lights that we've seen and in kind of just even over the last 18 to kind of 24 months, we're kind of this space has really exploded.
Semi-related to this, but kind of two, a couple of really big updates around the longstanding NFT projects and, and DAOs that have been kind of in the space for quite some time that are just kind of worth talking about. One. Is that Links, Dow, has now won their bid to buy its first golf course.
And so this was a handful of days ago. This was on March 16th. We're recording this podcast today on Wednesday, March 22nd. And as of the 16th links, DAO was officially buying their golf course, which was their original dream and goal when they launched the NFT project and raised the money into the DAO.
And I think, just overall, I was super excited to see this. I think it's a huge win for dowels, a huge win for web3. We, we've talked with the links out team kind of quite a bit over, over the months and kind of year that we've been working on Holder too and gotten some really good kind of customer feedback from them on kinda the product that we've built, but like just large, kind of, it's an incredible win, I think for the community and for the ecosystem.
And so I think the question I would kind of propose to all of you is just what, what do we kind of think this means for, for web3 or kind of what were any of your. Thoughts or feelings as you saw this news over the last week or so?
Yeah, I love this example because there have been a lot of DAO that have set out to do specific things, and most of them are still in the trying to do that specific thing, they're still trying to get to the first milestone, and this is huge.
They bought hundred year old golf course in the UK. It's amazing. I also think that the hardest part is still ahead of them. And so that's where this, the rubber starts to meet the road. It's really exciting to get, you know, hundreds or thousands of people on board to do a dream. . And then when that dream starts to become reality, it's like, okay, well who gets access to the golf course?
And is that, do they automatically get access for free because they were a part of the DAO or is there a membership fee? How is that membership fee different than any memberships that we sell? How is maintenance covered? Like who are we, is this, I imagine these fees are going to flow in through the DAO, is there's some be benefit back to the original holders.
For having been part of it? Or is it just a cool factor and a membership pass? Like all of these decisions, and they may have planned this out entirely. I'm not in the weeds on links down in particular or this purchas and what they've already announced and shared. But I think the gen general thing that I would highlight is when something goes from a goal to an actual action.
Then it becomes really hard because people can no longer have different things in their head and think that they're on the same page and aligned. It's like, oh no, this is what we're doing. Oh, that's different than I thought. I, I had different expectations and I think we've seen across a lot of, web3 communities.
<AFFIRMATIVE> and NFT projects that a community's expectations were not always aligned, and that among the community there were people that had different thoughts of how this should go or what should be done or the benefit back to them, and that's caused a lot of churn and a lot of frustration all around.
And so I'm super excited for links out. I'm wishing them all the best. I'm gonna be staying posted to see how it goes from here. And I wish them really, really well as they embark on what is probably the harder part of the journey.
Yeah.
The interesting thing I think for them that is, that makes it kind of almost like that next step harder, is the fact that it is a DAO not just a NFT community.
There's like another level of, I feel as a community member, as a, you know, links status token holder. I feel like I have even more say, because this is a DAO, this is intended to be like, everyone comes together and votes on this, and now my ne my desires are not necessarily being met. And so that they're almost like a ne a whole step above in difficulty compared to just a regular NFT project that had that, it was like, you know, missing the expectations of their holders.
So I, I think that that is, that is, another aspect that plays into it. But overall, for web3 in general and just the kind of the realization of building a business, I, you know, I, I hope that this goes really well. I hope this doesn't just like completely tank, but I think it's a good thing. But if it completely tanks, then that starts to be.
People start to go ‘see, this isn't gonna work’. We told you, you know, as they're always gonna do .
Oh yeah. I think Just two other, or one other quick data point too. It is interesting, 88.6% of the links style holders voted in favor of putting in the offer too. So even just like, it's been interesting kind of the like that's incredible.
Super majority, you know what I mean? Yeah. That's huge. And, and so I think that that's kind of really, really telling and interesting.
How many eople voted?
So is it that 80, 80 something percent voted affirmatively or 80 something percent of the entire holder base? Like, I'd I'd be curious cuz that's one of the things that often comes up, which granted this is actually a really big deal.
Mm-hmm. For a Dao, it's not like a random decision. It's a very big decision. So I'd imagine that engagement rate on this boat in particular was very high, but I'd be curious, was it like 30% that voted?
Yeah, it's a great question. It was. 4,100 votes. It looks like I'm, I'm looking at the snapshot, 4,100 votes, and I think there are, there's like 9,000 membership tokens, at least.
The original NFTs, yeah. 9,000 tokens, 5,300 owners. I don't know how, if it was like per token, but Yeah, it looks, yeah, it looks like 4,100 tokens at least voted. Okay, so almost 50%, which is a lot. 50%. Yeah. Within DAO land, their quorum is 500 votes. And so, you know, they smash that almost 10 x to the quorum, which like, I mean, it's hard to just hit like a 500 quorum at most.
DAOs is probably pretty hard to hit. But no, I completely agree. And this is, I think an important thing. The other, the other kind of point to thing to note, and I think also kind of leads us into the next topic quite a bit, but is this is also. The like ideal course that they originally even like, sold the community that they wanted to buy even too.
Like, I think they wanted a location that was in the US and like, you know, and kind of, it just happened to be like, “Hey, this is the, the deal that they got too”. But I think kind of of plays into this in web3, so much of what you're doing is building in public in like, like very, very, very public.
You know, you have to like set your vision and make it extremely public on like day zero. And if there's any kind of missteps, that's very easily for kind of the community to kind of see that wherein normal startup land even you can have missteps and like the outside world has no idea, you know how close you came to death or whatever.
And in like web3, it's like all public and everyone knows exactly kind how the business is doing in, in many ways. And so, another kind of very large project where we've seen this play out. Is with Doodles recently and kind of the Doodles founder coming out and saying kind of quote the line that was kind of quoted and, and got kind of the community or certain very vocal members of the community.
I think a little upset was saying, we are no longer an NFT project. And really, you know, I applaud this and I think is really, I kind of agree with their strategy and think it's really unique, but like they're trying to kind of position themselves as larger than an NFT project and more as kind of this media empire, this studio.
And there's a lot of backlash, you know, around this. And a lot of the community were kind of, upset that, they were, you know, not living up to kind of what they said they were gonna do. But I think a lot of this just goes back to like in the NFT and web3 space, so much of what you're building is just very, very public.
And it's incredibly difficult, I think, to build a hyperscale successful business, completely public and transparent. I think this is just an example of kind of that, and I think the link style is also very, Similar example and it went, the other direction in terms of the community so far having kind of very great support for that purchase.
But I think just kind of what opened the question more around just this idea around kind of a, what do you all think about some of the positioning kind of move from Doodles and kind of the drama we've seen over the last week or two, but also like this idea of kind of building in, in public and kind of how to these businesses kind of as we are evolving in this space, kind of in, we've seen this with others too, like how do they evolve beyond kind of just an NFT project and how do you kind of message that almost to kind of customers and things, but it's just in a very important kind of couple of weeks that we've seen over, over the, this kind of community really.
Yeah. I think this is a point where maybe our viewpoints are a little bit. I think with calling out specifically that they are not an NFT project anymore and saying that as a founder, I mean if you look at their open seat page, it is actually still there today. Just checked. It says this is a community driven collectibles project.
So I feel like to come out as a founder and I don't, I don't think he's like forgetting his roots at all, but to say that we're no longer an NFT project, I think there's probably other ways you can say what you're trying to say as a founder, to your point, like we're trying to be this bigger media empire in this studio, and it's really not just about the collectibles project anymore.
I mean, Doodles was never. A governance kind of protocol or, or token in the first flick, like links DAO was, it was really more of just like, oh, these are, you know, cute little doodles. The art was done by Burnt Toast Yo NFT project, and it became a really uber popular project. Probably because of the art, probably because of the community.
There's a lot of great things that they've done, so I think maybe. The story here is the messaging could have been done a little bit better to not, you know, make the people that have been a part of your community, especially the ones that have been there since day one, feel like, well, wait a minute, you know, I always thought that this was community driven and now you're telling me we're not this anymore.
That can kind of shock somebody's world, I feel like, and and I think that's probably where a lot of the outrage can come in to play here. One thing I will say though, and I think you make a good point on how do, you know, build in public. I think there's benefits to it. I'll just share what I see as the upside of building in public, and I actually am gonna steal this from someone that I.
Read about is it puts you in a position to be luckier than most, where by putting out what you're gonna be building as a community, you're getting feedback from the community and opening yourself up to opportunities that you might not have been able to by building everything in a world garden and then Wald garden, excuse me, and then releasing it.
So by showing every step of the way, like kinda how link style. I think for the most part, with their snapshots, they're giving the community an opportunity to voice their opinion and see, okay, this is not the way to go. We're gonna go a different direction, and we know to be successful in a business, you need a little bit of luck.
I don't think anybody has ever said that's not the case. So I think there's an argument to be made for building in public that you are a little bit luckier because you have more eyes, you have more people involved in the project, but then how do you scale something like that to the links down? I think to your point, Tara, that's where things get really, really hard.
Yeah, no, those are all great points. Cuz building in public brings a lot of new challenges, but also new opportunities to more quickly validate and vet if what you're doing, it has resonance and traction. I think that, in the instance of Doodles, there's an aspect of building in public and there's an aspect of, ‘Hey, this is a web3 native project’. This is a web3 native organization, and what that means is that people feel like owners because they are, in some regards, they have bought something that is theirs that gives them certain rights. And so it's not only that they feel like owners, they're also tying their identity to it because ownership is an incredibly powerful concept.
Being a user of something and being an owner of something entirely different. And so what the this brings about is if you feel like you're an owner of something, and then decisions are made and you weren't informed. It's like, wait, wait, hell, who's ma? Who's making these decisions for me? I'm part of this, right?
It's like whenever you're at a company or you have a job and someone makes a decision and tells you about it and it directly impacts you, and you're like, why was I not consulted? I feel like that's what we're seeing across a lot of these Web3 native groups. Is this pushback among their community of why was I not in consulted?
Why was I not informed? I disagree with the direction and this is partly mine, and so my voice matters. That's like the feeling and the emotion that's coming through, and web3 community management for that reason is a lot harder, but it's also, it can be incredibly powerful. Like if we look at these web3 native projects, what they've done incredibly well is they have like definitely hit above their weight class.
in terms of getting expansion of their IP, of their brand, because everyone feels like an owner and they tie their identity to it. You see their p PFPs everywhere because someone's like, this represents me too. And so it's, it's a blessing. It's a curse. It just highlights that community management within web3 is a beast in and of itself.
And it's not just Doodles that has had, you know, run-ins with this. We saw this with Moon Birds as there's been a lot of instances recently with changes in direction or changes in IP rights where people didn't feel consulted and they didn't feel like they were part of the journey. And I think that team is doing is working really hard to, to make sure that the community feels part of the journey and to.
Clear direction, but it highlights that it is hard. You know, Luke and Nets of Pub Pudgy Penguins has also spoken about how there's this tension of what he thinks he needs to do to run a business, and the information that he's able to share to run a business that will drive value to holders, but at the same time what the holders want him to do today.
So this isn't going away. It's not just Doodles. I think it is embedded within what it means to be a web3 native organization as a whole. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's hard work.
I think the only thing I would add is that there's one word missing from that, from the quote that would've kind of like stopped all of the problems, and it's the word just.
I was gonna say only, I was like, I know where you're going with this. I agree.
Yeah.
Like we are not only, we are not, yeah, yeah. Just Or only, yeah, just only whatever. Uhhuh. , yeah.
Qualifier. Totally. Yep. Exactly.
We are not, we are no longer just an NFT project or only an NFT project. It's. More than that.
So it's everything we already are and more so then everyone I love that just feels like they're more a part, they're a part of the bigger things still. Not like we're, you know, foregoing what we, everything we've done in the past and forgetting about it, we're going forward. You know, and there's something to be said for, you know, keeping your eyes ahead instead of always looking in the past.
But, you know, this is, it's very different from to all of your points, Tara, about, ownership. So, yeah, I think honestly just saying just, or only in.
Wanna save them so much. Headaches, PR and coms. It's so important. Yep.
He needs media training. , . There's a lot in web three that need media training.
Probably it's so true because in their vision is so, Captivating, you know what I mean? Like it is like a massive vision and like when you think about it, if you are a holder and like if that vision becomes a reality, like it is incredibly beneficial for you. But I think it's just in like how that was communicated and how you, I mean, it's just kind of goes more back to like how like, you know, running a company in general and like a team and leadership of like, just how you kind of bring your team along with that vision and kind get them bought in and say, you know, this is, this is where we're going and.
It is not the same, you know, as like leading a team, leading a community, to your point, Tara. And so like, it's just there is that like there's that extra barrier that you have to to kind of overcome to bring the entire community along with you. And Yes, you know, they are co-owners with you and not just customers.
And so, you know, they are more bought in, but they're not your team either. You know what I mean? And so it is like there's this other level of like, they're somewhere kind of in between of like, how do you bring. The owners along with you into that vision. It's, I think we're gonna see lots more of missteps cuz all of this is new and everyone is kind of doing this for the first time in many ways.
But I think, I applaud their vision for sure. And, you know, to have a million holder collection plus, you know what I mean? And to kind of build a, a media empire. You know, on the backs of kind of web3 technology, I think is, is is admirable. At least, at least to me.
I do wonder if that's what he meant though, with the qualifier and everything.
I feel like everyone in this room though has, like, from our end, and I don't know if you. Doodles, Tara, I don't think any of us do, but I feel like we're able to cut through and kind of at least potentially see what he was trying to communicate, which is we are not just an NFT brand anymore.
And I think there's a little bit of responsibility to be had from the community itself. I mean, we talk all the time as a community that we're gonna be the ones that shepherd. You know, big brands of brands that haven't made the jump or the leap into web2, into web3 because we've created this ethos.
Well, I think there's then gonna be that responsibility on your side too, as the consumer and as a project holder to then say, and be able to look deeply and say, okay, you probably didn't mean it that way. They, you know, this is a good thing for us to acquire a gigantic, I think, gigantic, animation studio, Golden Wolf.
They're pretty well known, I believe so. To be able to see through that. I. I'll give him a little bit credit and say, maybe the community could have done a little bit better here and just ask better questions after the fact, and then giving him the opportunity to kind of rephrase things. I don't know if he has, I haven't really followed it since, but, that's probably how I would've approached it personally.
Yeah, I, and, and I don't know him well, but I've had the chance to meet Jordan or Poopy, and what I think came across so much when I met him was he is, he's the real deal. Like he's in this because he is trying to build something different. And they are the ones who set up the Doodle bank at the start, where half of their royalties were going into a community-owned treasury.
That is not a joke, that's not like lip service. I love the point you're drawing, which is that there should be some expectation on the community back of assume the lead communities you're in, you know, cuz if you're in there and you're in there because you believe in it, and so there should be doing the best with all of this.
It's really hard to do that though. People feel like they are their expectations and when they're in the hole on what they bought in at and the value of those NFTs. Now, so I understand why it's hard on both sides. I understand also why, how it's exhausting. as a founder and a leader to try to be doing your best and to be doing all this hard work and feel like it's not being seen.
Like I get the emotional, and it's also really hard to always be on. If you have a discord, you're never, and your community's in it, you're never off. Right? So we can have all of the media training we want, but when it's midnight on a Tuesday and you're getting yelled at by 2% of the holders, it's like, yeah, you might snap back.
It's very human, very natural. And then that gets spread everywhere. So I don't know the details of this situation in particular, but I think the point is well made that there are responsibilities on both sides. There's responsibilities community, and there's responsibilities of its leaders. And that in this case, it sounds like both kind of fell down a little.
On our next topic here, we've seen a number of headlines, actually, many of them just very kind of speculative around an upcoming Amazon NFT marketplace with plans to launch in April. A lot of these based on some, some some leaks of kind of internal news and things like that. So there's not really a ton that kind of we know other than Amazon is working on an NFT marketplace and one, I would just say, you know, Amazon, one of the largest businesses in the world, one of the early web2 pioneers, web1, almost pioneers really in kind of the e-commerce space. Moving into NFTs, it does seem like I've, the one thing I have kind of read is that they may not actually kind of be using.
Blockchain technology kind of in a native way or kind of like, they may not actually be kind of NFTs on the marketplace, but kind of more just digital asset marketplace that they're launching, but wanted to kind of just open this up. I think that's a major, you know, potential opportunity for the ecosystem in the space, but also I think still a lot of question marks, but maybe where, where do all, do you maybe hope that this will take, or kind of the, what, what are some of the, the positive signs and kind of things you're looking forward to with an announcement like, I mean, I'll just say what I personally hope comes from this is mass adoption at scale, which is NFTs that have some level of interoperability.
That are being able to, you know, sold on this marketplace that Amazon is gonna bring customers that they have now built for the past 20 years into this technology that we haven't been able to capture with existing tooling and existing marketplaces. What I fear is a Coinbase v2, and I'm not familiar enough with, you know, all of the specific reasons as to why the Coinbase marketplace didn't go over particularly well.
But I do remember when Coinbase marketplace was rumored that there was a lot of the same speculation that I'm giving. Right now on this podcast, which is like, oh my God, Coinbase is gonna be bringing in all the people who have ever bought crypto, which is a pretty big number. I don't have the percentage in front of me, but I think it's, it's more than you'd think.
And they're all gonna be onboarded through this NFT marketplace and it's gonna be the best thing ever. And then, you know, if you look at a Dune dashboard for some of the marketplace volume, they did right before they wound down. I think it was like $4,000 was one of the week that they did, and it was just absolutely terrible.
I don't want to be, you know, like doom and gloom here and say that's going to be the same thing to happen to Amazon. If it's a cash grab, it probably will be. I think the community and the people who are already in this space will see right through that. And the people who don't like Web3 in the first place will not be bought in if their hearts and minds are not in the right place with this.
So, I really wish them the best as they launched this, but I think it's gonna take a lot of work to be a successful marketplace. And I hope when they come out with this that it is going to be very seamless from a consumer perspective. Like my Amazon login is everything that I need to interact with web3 and I can start collecting these digital tokens and collectibles. Kind of similar to the Starbucks experience with their New Odyssey web3 loyalty program where I can log in with my Starbucks account. And yes, it's different than the existing loyalty program on my phone, but I can log in on their website and I can see all my stamps, I can interact with all my web3 stuff there, but I would really never know that it's web3.
And I think that's probably the approach they're gonna take. And if they do, I think it'll probably do. Yeah, I think it's a lot of speculation, not a lot of details, so it's hard to make a prediction one way or another. I think what will be key is their approach. You know, are they just trying to build a bigger walled garden because Amazon's huge, and so if they have their own walled garden, it'll just be bigger than everyone else's.
Are they actually trying to do something that's ownership centric and that plays on the interoperability and composability of block? I don't know, but I'm curious to see how it goes. Amazon has always taken a customer first approach, right? And so that's encouraging. But I've heard rumors that this might be on their own blockchain and it.
Not be EDM compatible. And now with what you're saying, if it's actually not a tokenized asset, but it's just like a digital representation, then the whole like right click save argument comes up, you know, so, I am holding, I'm waiting with baited breath. To see what happens. But I'm hopeful that it'll move the space forward and it'll create more awareness and understanding.
I just hope it doesn't create more fud of people thinking they're experiencing what web3 is, and it's not, it's a cash grab, like limited solution with just web3, fairy dust sprinkled on top, and then they come away with a bad taste in their mouth. I think that would be the worst case outcome.
I'm hopeful that, you know, Amazon's a smart company. They've got great technologists, they have great leaders, they have a really strong customer orientation. Maybe they surprise, surprise all of us in the. Yeah,
I definitely agree with you on the bad taste in someone's mouth. That is probably my biggest concern is that they're gonna taint everyone's opinion that, which may already not be good.
Anyway, just confirming more, suspicions. But, I also think and this is what I was also gonna say, is like the technology. Innovation that Amazon has built over decades at this point is, has always been up there. So it was, it does not, it would not surprise me either way if they made their own blockchain and even made it interoperable and even like just, and more and more and more because they could, and they have the, they have the team, they have the innovation, they have the intelligence.
I mean, they have all of that. And you know, they could run all of the which, you know, from a decentralized standpoint, they could run everything and they could run it all across the world, . They could stand up an entire thing and have it completely decentralized from a world standpoint, but it would be completely centralized on Amazon servers.
So that, that, that's a whole different can of worms. But, I think from a technology perspective, I am really intrigued what they're gonna. They're also known for, you know, placing lots of many bets too, and kind of in, in new areas and, and spinning them down if they don't work and things like that.
But I'm hopefully optimistic for sure around this. And I think that, just the mass, just like the sheer amount of consumers, you know, that use Amazon on a daily basis, I think is, is wild. And even if it is just around. You know, digital assets and if it's on their own kind of, you know, permission blockchain or a non interoperable blockchain or anything too, like the, how they bring ownership of digital assets and kind of, or like the, the a the value of a digital asset and kind of to a consumer I think can also be valuable of just more and more consumers understanding that like, oh yeah, digital.
Do have value, you know, and I think kind of then it brings to the question of like, well, if they do have value, then you should own the keys to that and it should be kind of interoperable and kind of brings up, I think more of the kind of argument for interoperability in a trustless system and things like that.
With the last couple minutes here, maybe we'll make these quick questions. A couple of just like, you know, you, even outside of the, the crypto and web3 space, many people have seen this, but, Ji Uher Vasan, who was formerly a CTOO at Coinbase, he was an Andreessen partner for, a number of years as well, but kind of is now just a very.
Famous, Twitter personality and thought leader, and runs, as an author and, and runs a very, successful kind of blog and podcast too that you recently started. But anyway, he's made this very public, bet that Bitcoin hits a million dollars within the next 90 days due to us kind of hyperinflation.
And, I think a little bit of this is just, we're all talking about it. The internet is all talking about it, and it's interesting. But I'm just curious, maybe the quick question we won't kind of get into much, but like, which, which side of this bet maybe would you all be taking? I think my answer is, I do not think it will hit $1 million.
And more so of like, if it does, you know, as a US citizen, I, uh, would not like to see, you know, the world in a, in a place of a super hyperinflation where it causes the press of Bitcoin to be $1 million. But I understand all of his underlying logic, and it's more around kind of the, the thought process there.
Yeah. Yeah. I think he's, oh, go ahead.
No, you, you're good. Um, I'll just say, I think I would take the, uh, whichever side is not on Bitcoin going to a million US dollars. I just think if, if we ever get to that point, then we're in some pretty bad economic despair. But I've not read through kind of all of what he said.
Maybe there is some like sound logic here that I'm not understanding. I don't know if in the next 90 days, one Bitcoin is a million dollars. I think we have bigger problems than that.
Yeah, I don't think he believes it. I don't think anyone does. I think he's making a huge statement that's gotten him a lot of attention that could potentially impact the price enough that based on his holdings, it makes him more than the Yvette that he's put up.
Right. On trend, is there a lot of uncertainty and is this an inflationary environment? A hundred percent. And so if he's able to incrementally move the market, This is worth way more than a million bucks to him, given his likely Bitcoin holding.
Yeah, I think someone I, I read, if he had a thousand Bitcoin, all he would need is the price of Bitcoin to go up about 4% and that covers this bet. So, for that to happen in considering the amount of media attention that this has got. Plus it's very timely. It's a great point, Tara. With inflation and rising interest rates right now, I mean this is like the time for Bitcoin, if any, to go up and prove that it's a hedged against inflation.
So it's incredible typing. If it is timing, excuse me. If it is just a marketing ploy, you know, whatever. I wish it wasn't because I don't think it's particularly good for the ecosystem, but it is what it is. Yeah, and he has kind of shared more too that like, hey, this is always intended to be, you know, Simon Ed on kind of hyper Bitcoin ization and, and that he is bowing to never share, sell any of his, Bitcoin unless the US dollar is no longer the, the global reserve currency.
But, would agree. Again, this just in terms. We were all talking about it and it did get kind of a lot of attention. And if anything, it has put a lot of attention back on, on Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem, as well. And at a time where I thought, you know with, with SVV and everything that, you would see a lot of attention around it.
So, And with that, we are going to sign off here maybe, Tara, really quickly, is there anything that we can help promote or where can people kind of go to learn more about you or connect with you or co-create?
Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me. Feel free to follow me on Twitter. My last name, my first name is Tara.And so I am non fungible Tara. Um, or you can go check us out, um, on our website, use co-create dot io.Yeah, and stay tuned. Got some fun stuff coming up in the next week or two with Boys Club and Atari, so be on the lookout for that. Awesome.
That is incredible. All right, take care Tara. Thanks so much for joining us and with that, we are signing off.
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