Web3, NFTs and all that: With Ekalavya

I, V, M. So simplified is a show as some of you know, where four of us try to deconstruct the world around us in a language that anyone can understand so that we may all seem smarter to the world and who would want that. I'm Chuck. I'm three K.

I'm the real and I'm to a synchronization is why the four of us will never be able to form a rocket. Usually what we do on the show is we think of a topic that catches her fancy and we read three articles from wired and the VQP page and then we contributed to the lot of that jokes and if all else goes wrong. All of us have this right button over here, which the listeners can see, which says nothing emergency when he press that notification in this house and he automatically comes up with an anecdote or a P G would also go and that is how the show has gone on for 240 episodes. But once in a while, we decided to get on.

Just, just, just, I see what you did there. I see what you did there. I told you that we should generally do one of us. Meanwhile, sometimes we get on people who are much smarter than us or we find a topic that is just too much of an apple for us to chew.

And sometimes both of these tend to happen together. And this the first episode of 2022 is actually going to be that so she kept and I have been wanting to do an episode on VEP3 for a while. Actually, we've been wanting to do stuff around VEP3 for a long time. We actually did a very rudimentary episode on NFTs of fair while back at a point of time and it would very easily say that even among the top 1% of people who understood what NFTs actually were there, the denominator has increased greatly in that time.

So we actually have somebody who understands all this with us on the show. When I say all this, I mean VEP3 blockchain NFTs cryptocurrency. I'm assuming names stocks as well somewhere in there, how Elon must things everything. The next two of us is just going to be a monologue.

My good friend, somebody who I wanted to get on to simplified for a long time and him saying that he was getting into something involved with NFTs coincided very nicely, which we get wanting to do an episode or two on this. So it is my absolute honor to actually it is one of my oldest friends, Akalavya on the show. Akal, hi. Welcome to High Unified.

Thank you guys. Thank you. It's an honor to be here after being a listener. You are generally more inclusive.

I think it's a plan for listeners and not viewers that Akal is the oldest friend in terms of number of years of friendship, not age. That goes to my reign. In fact, only younger. Yeah, I think I know Tony and Akal for approximately the same time.

I think so. Did you guys also meet Akalavya? No, we have a part of the last time. So early awkward days, yes.

Early awkward days, yeah, absolutely. I think late awkward days. But before we get into what you are doing right now and we jump into everything, like VEP3, why is it's going to change everything? This whole bubble around it, if it's right now, and the promise that it holds, why some people try to buy a constitution with something called a DAO and all that.

Tell us a little bit about what you've done. You've got a pretty interesting career even before you decided to get into this whole space. If I start, your editor will just take the entire thing and chop it off. But I'll tell you, I was a web 1.0 consumer.

We might just start by the way. Yeah, we might just be defined. So when I was in school, guys, when I was in school, I was in college. I was a web 1.0 guy.

Why? Because my dad was in the security of the computer center in Pune. Easy access to internet. Did he have to put your shoes outside the computer center?

Yes. I think I was the only one. I think the whole computer center was 60 rooms with just one room with three computers. Early days, right?

So the army was setting up. At that time, I was like, oh my god, what is this? So, web 1.0 was all about the read aspect of the internet. So, and I was, again, one sided games, et cetera.

And then what happened is web 2.0 started. By the time web 2.0 started, probably at the platform where Chuck and I met, which was a forum, which was a basic PHP, BB forum. And the early forms of web 2.0 was coming in by people who were probably bored of just reading. Say it said that we need to write to, right?

So, that's what the whole term of user generated content came in. And honestly, I graduated in bio technology. Apart from viral marketing, I don't think so. I can use bio technology to explain what I'll do.

Means means. So, basically, I was an active user at Paddle Guy. And that's what I met Chuck. And I made my first website in 1994, even front page came out.

So, I used Microsoft Word. Because, again, probably because of access, easy access because of dad. But I didn't like that. At that time, if you wanted to do something in Internet, it was engineering.

And engineering was an NTC computer science. It would primarily be hardware, right? So, no one even knew the web as it was. And I remember writing software code on paper.

An example, I remember a small, like, hello world, where you are like, what are you talking about? But I was always enthusiastic about the prospects of Internet. I used to do different world conversation about, you know, I used to crack Yahoo IDs. And I'll tell you why I'm bringing this up and the aspect of NFTs and belonging and vanity, right?

So, I'll connect the whole page for you. But in around 2000, I was actually clearly into the, you know, used to brute force and we used to infor, crack, IDs on Yahoo. And what are these IDs, right? So, between 96 to 98, so imagine a platform says you can only mint NFTs for two years.

So, for two years, Yahoo allowed you to make crazy kind of IDs, right? Multiple underscore symbols, dollar sign, et cetera, even capital letters, right? And these IDs were made. And when you went to, and Yahoo was the Internet back then, okay?

So, we're just going to chat rooms, just the free Google Google just being a cinja. If you went to chat rooms, Yahoo chat was the biggest. If Yahoo messes in there, everyone used to use. And game rooms like chess, checkers, et cetera.

So, these IDs really stood out, right? And that's when, you know, the vanity aspect of the Internet, early Internet, I realized that vanity's going to play a huge role somewhere down the line, all over the Internet. That's fascinating. I'm bringing this guy from just email IDs and stuff.

That's fascinating. At the end of the day, if you look at NFTs, right, and we come to the conversation, it is about currently currently it's for ownership. It's higher, right? Like people, and it's deep down, see not philosophical, but deep down, it's a human trade, right?

Humans want to own something, right? You mean, an Indian, especially, like Indians, with a culture, you have a culture, you have a culture, you have a culture, you have a culture, you have a culture, right? And just to add to that, I mean, it's not the ownership aspect is important, but it's also that the car exclusive, it's exclusive. It's something I have that someone else does, which they internet, which went 2.2, the technology will do, and the people will get that, you know, because they will call me that.

I tell you why you call yourself Chuck also, right? Because Deepak and Gmail.com, you would not get, right? Fair enough. Because, like you say, Deepak and the line, in any room, right, I'm sure they'll be Deepak Rahul's et cetera, right?

So, fair point, my vote ID was for a while Chuck at WhML purely because it was another guy who was a guy who was a guy. Some other people, at the fair point. So, vanity and your name, et cetera, right? From early times of the internet came early on, right?

It comes on Twitter also, apart from verify that you have your own name as a like, and that's a very cool thing. I have that on Instagram, right? It's a lot of irrespective of, so it's there. So, even if you're not, even if you don't want to price it, et cetera, it gives you some sense of feeling that like what you rightly said, right?

Like I'm unique, I'm different. So, this was an aspect of the internet. I liked because I used to crack ID, sell ID, early pay values are also primarily for getting the data. So, what was your squatter?

I mean, what was I doing right now? I had some really beautiful domain names, including the domain name. Right now, I tried to buy off the podcast. I started in 2009 called Let's Crack.com.

I tried to- So, very casually, I like how we said start up August and 2000. Yeah. So, but I'm just sending you some context with us. You realize, so when you went to forums, right?

And other guys are forums, again, in forums when people are talking, for those of you who understand the NBA job and right, like the people who had Blackie, right? The top six I am calls, right? They would put that below the username and handle. Yeah.

And that was another acronym called I like me, which was fantastic. Or they were run out of the bill, so they were like, he's- Or the non-finance guys, actually. Don't rationalize. Yeah, let's get back to you.

So, I actually moved to work to contest to win. And why contest to win? At that time, if contesting's always been there on the internet, right? And again, you realize why I'm now saying it?

Because a lot of people feel that all these contesting websites and giveaways are fake. Most of the people, if someone says, you want a chance to win this, that, in fact, scams aside, right? But most of the people feel that these lucky draws, etc. are fake, right?

Why is this not legitimate? See, there's no transparency. Sometimes actually the contest creator is giving to his friends, etc. That happens, right?

Maybe because there's actually no good contestant or maybe because you like your friend, right? Do you want to impress your friend? So why am I bringing this up? Because that's one of the use cases of the blockchain which we come to, right?

Like how you can decentralize platform can actually power contesting, right? And I'm not just saying regular contesting. There are some governments which are planning state-run lotteries based on blockchain technology, so there's complete transparency. So I was at this contesting website.

It was great, right? It was Web 2.0. Why? Because we, at that time, Web 2.0 read and write, right?

So apart from just contests, what we started doing at that time was consumers, users could create contests. Now what do I mean by that, right? Like you can create a really nice quiz. Like 50 things you didn't know about Dream Theater, right?

And like I'm sure like Chuck would create a beautiful quiz over there. And we as platformer or brands could recognize that this is a really good quiz. And brands could associate a prize to Deepak's Chuck's quiz, right? So and that's the kind of platform which we tried and we did fairly well.

But yeah, of course it was not too viral, right? Yeah, very, very before this time. Yeah, it was pretty evolved, right? And at the same time, contesting was also launched, games to win.

And games to win started going viral mainly because of Oftwort and Facebook. Oftwort launched its OpenSight social platform, Facebook launched its F8 platform, which basically that's when FarmVille came in. Yeah. So a lot of you guys like you guys look like the H profile who would know what FarmVille is, right?

Something like you talk about. Like some of our listeners must be like, what the hell is FarmVille, right? Now why I'm saying FarmVille is because I'm telling you how I evolved into gaming. I evolved into gaming because the world was evolving into gaming, right?

This is pre-iPhone. Okay. Everything is going to get destroyed suddenly when sudden spikes and evolution happens, right? When the iPhone came, the basic format of the consumption changed with smartphones, right?

So just before that, like around 200 million, I think Facebook had 80% of its users at that and who are playing mafia wars and FarmVille. And while early investors of Zendre and Facebook were pretty much the same guys, same Russian investment firm, and people thought that social gaming is going to erupt, right? Now why was social gaming working so much? Again, the basic format of having a unique farm, right?

Having people coming to your farm, designing and people would be addicted, right? There would be hacks written on how to optimize your office time to get great harvests, right? Like I still remember as a viral post, which keeps coming once in your Facebook memories, right? And every year we are like, we should get another year away.

But this is what was happening around 15, 16 years back, right? Then what happened, right? Like as just as people were getting used to this format of consumption and innovation probably, smartphones happened, right? As smartphones happened, gaming was one of the first things which really took off, right?

Because before that, yeah, it's still texting. People would take the effort, like the most consumer content on the internet has always been born, right? But gaming became a serious contender to be a noble second just after the smartphone's game. And this is actually logic, right?

Like otherwise, 70% of the internet, unfortunately, will always be some form of pornography, right? And all pop up ads, etc. Everything has come from there, right? The skip button on ads actually came from a porn website because if you paid membership, so as internet was evolving, sorry for going a little digressing.

That's really good. This is just fascinating. So, no, you realize, right? Like through your text ads, early form of text ads, first game, within porn, then move to gaming.

Video ads, first in porn, then move to, you know, rappers online. You know, even watch your credit card, actually came for that, right? Because they wanted anonymity. They wanted anonymity.

So, it's easy to find people Wikipedia. It's basically doing an episode on social. So, that's one poverty has one poverty. So, who can forget the Silicon Valley scene?

Oh, for sure. So, after two and a half years in contest, you know, the back happened for me. The back was part of the Realign Entertainment Group and it was really big in gaming. They were spending a lot of money and I actually set up the Social Gaming Division over there, which was again rooted in the car.

Because every time I beat your high score, a message would go that I beat Chuck's high score and all my friends and tough friends would be able to see it. And, you know, what I wouldn't say I had introduced, but we had this cool concept of a trophy cabinet, right? So, and we saw, like, why the back games are Facebook became really popular, because if you beat your friends or if you beat your city score, you would get these unique trophies, right? Or the best score of a day, etc.

And they had no cash value to it. But being the highest score on a particular day on a cricket game, which is a random game, which you just had to keep hitting. Like one of those really addictive games, which you wouldn't play, but then you realize a lot of people just for, instead of you doing, right, like playing such games. The closest I got into any of this is that when we had our first computer and I had an elder brother, it was pretty good at minesweeper, I didn't know how to submit the mines.

But I figured out that on the system, they actually just saved the high scores on a not notepad file. They basically changed the time of my name and he was really, really pissed. I feel like we have a connection here. That won't happen on the blockchain, right?

Because the high scores will not be fungible. So blockchain was invented to protect minesweeper scores. It's a little deeper to what Tony actually said, you know, blockchain was invented because of the basic stuff of someone who got his score changed, because of what he did. It's don't trust anyone, right?

So if you actually look at why blockchain, why cryptocurrency, why NFTs, it primarily exists because people, again, a deep human emotion of the fear which is generated on, right? Someone will backstab me. The government will collapse. My currency will get devalued, right?

Demonetization might happen again. All these are fictional things, of course, which are knowing the realm of possibilities. So it's not saying, right? Like if you look at it at the end of the day, right from what I told you about contesting, why I gave the formula, why I gave the formula, the formula is not there today.

Okay. So all the amount of money which people have spent on getting their farms, et cetera, don't exist. Why? Because it was Web 2.0 because the platform was owned by a company.

Okay. Now your second life also existed. I'm not sure how many of you were on second life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it became a hype, you know, it was great for PR for some brands. So I knew it because of advertising at that time where some brands had set up like an advertising holding on second life. And second life was actually, and that's what's happening now, right? Second life is very futuristic.

It was for people who probably have no lives, right? Or maybe people who don't like going out who don't like other people, right? I think COVID has made all of us like that. So which is why now is the best time.

Right? So it was this like imagine sitting at home all day. A lot of people would not relate, right? Like at that time, 2006 people would say, pre-2006, eight, one second life came out.

People would say, this is for a time when people would just sit in the confines of their house. Okay. Probably with VR devices and live and talk to people online. And we would be saying, what are you talking about?

That's never gonna happen. And probably that wouldn't have happened even two years back. But now when you look at what's happened, suddenly with the solution with COVID happening, with all these lockdown, people have at least opened up with the fact that yes, I can be confined into my house and be staring at a screen all day. No, I think it just to add to that, I think there's one thing that I think the entire revolution has been accelerated by the pandemic because what the pandemic has taught us is a whole bunch of stuff that people absolutely took for granted has completely been destabilized.

And what that has kind of pushed, I mean, the technology was getting in place already. But what has gotten catalyzed is some ways that this lack of certainty of anything has caused people to truly question and understand that what's going to happen to any of the future is uncertain. But what we need to do is build a platform that's able to support this uncertain future with some semblance of rules that we can follow and some kind. No, you don't have to trust a third party.

That's the biggest fear. The third party might dissolve. The banks might disappear and governments say you'll still get some money. What about my whole money?

How can a bank disappear? You will still get some money going. No, but at least earlier banks wouldn't have to give you anything. Now you'll get some, I mean, that's fear.

What are you talking about? It's extremely post-capitalist in some way. I mean, the fundamentals of the capitalist society are pretty untressworthy. So it's almost like jumping before your push to kind of scenario.

So just to sort of put this in simplified terms as the first one, no sleep on the topic, essentially web one was just static content and people consumed whatever was put on. Web two meant that I could create content, but on a platform owned by someone probably sitting in Silicon Valley and I was at their mercy as to whatever I did. Or Bangalore? Yeah.

Hyderabad, which was fair enough, one of those cities. But basically I had no control over it even though I put a lot of work and I was at their mercy. Now web three is essentially in some sense is saying no one particular person holds the power, but everyone owns it. And there is also a transparency with blockchain and et cetera to say, you know, and a clear record to say who owns what and how this thing does.

So I just add to that web one point O was read, web two point O was read and write, web three point O is read, write and own. So again, it looks like a brilliant place for us to take a break. Catch a breath and come back with more fascinating stuff about web three. We'll be here for a while.

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Hello and welcome back. Just a board of only, Ekalabia has just poured himself a lot of coffee that I've seen anyone put at 6.15. And he's already chucked bit by the way, so strap in focus is going to be fun. Ekal, you before the break, we took a little early 2000s, Nastar, talking about a whole bunch of our own favorites.

You were talking about your career, your girlfriend drawing Paris with the history of the internet and studying daily and getting along with it. You were at Zappa where we left off, where do things go from there and where are you right now? So again, when I was at Zappa, gaming seemed to be the next big thing. Apple launched the iPhone and basically Google launched the Nexus one.

I was one of the first guys to get the Nexus one. I had to be geeky and vanity to show people that one really cares. But what happened with the mobile phone was again, back to what I said, suddenly the mobile phone became a boot device for content, which again, which we've established was pornography. But as people realized that, wow, now, porn can be carried in your hand.

People realize that pornography was videos, right? Where one point was probably just photographs, right? Because internet speeds were less. But then suddenly gaming was suddenly in transition, right?

Because gaming on desktops had started becoming big and the smartphone launched on the smartphone. Of course, apps, apps, apps, all came in later. Initially, it was video, right? Like people were like, wow, now we can do video.

So between all that, we were working on a campaign for a brand, right? And as part of, I used to do a little bit of social media marketing. So we suggested that we create these profiles for people on Facebook and then probably they can interact with users, which now seems like a basic idea. But back in 2009, you know, Unilever, I don't know if you can name brands.

Unilever's this brand was like, wow, this is really cool. And so we did that. And suddenly one night, Facebook made a launch that we have launched fan pages. Now you think, every brand also wanted its decava, right?

These are my fans. These are the numbers. I love using this word decava. It just connects so much of anything.

Because at the end of the day, it is vanity. It is showable. And right now it is hype. It's just a decava measuring contest, right?

And by the way, before we get serious again, the underrated comment, which you didn't give Marina Chance to make a joke on, was pornography carried in your hands. So you said that it would be scary. But also just related note on the decava of my brands. I still remember not naming any brands.

One of my clients was at that time, they were so obsessed with the number of fans that they had. That there was one particular thing that the guys like, my annual EGA was coming up and we are currently 10,000 fans shot of 100,000. So let's just spend that extra money by those fans. So I can put that as a header in my this thing.

And that time, I initially I was like taken aback, but I was like marvelling at what a brilliant product this man has created. That in this world, there are actual corporates who are willing to spend this money expense. For just status. On a vanity metric that everyone's body too.

This was before facing the negative. No, but that force? It was this was advertising revenue. But what happened is this was what led to again the evolution.

Because the fans then came fake fans, right? Like the same thing with Instagram, right? Because you can't milk something forever because the people were realized. We had brands back in 2009, 10 saying that we want to work with you guys.

So suddenly the back also became a social media agency. And at that time, there were five brands above one million fans on the scene and I think we managed three of them. And I actually ended up joining the company which was number one back then in India. And that's the next story about video evolution.

But it was obsessing. But people were like, and again, think about it. Because it's a number. Because people feel that if I, you know, like we'll just jump a little bit of another whole board AIP clubs.

Most of the time when people say anything about NFTs, board AIP clubs comes in. And if most of the NBA players, some of the NBA players bought into those NFTs, changed it into their profile pictures. And some of them was really cool, right? Like if a big cool people are doing it, then everyone wants to do it.

So if a big brand has a fan page, then everyone wanted a fan page, right? Because your end consumers used to think, okay, if a brand has so many fans, that means so many people actually like it. And early days, right? This is before, this is before 2-way communication.

This is before CSR. This is before CRM was used before. This is still when digital was a function of marketing. And we didn't see digital businesses.

And the system of the console, the system of the console was still working in Amazon. It's still not the brothers, but the ones in the bunsoles. Flipkart was still around the corner, right? So to give you an idea, this is still at that time of the internet.

But still people realized that on the internet, that same philosophy of Kiska Bala, right? Like, yeah, we were in the mix of something. I don't know, fashion tech company actually. We have a brand which sells only black.

Apart from that, that's just the front of B2B marketing. Otherwise we are B2B2C, SaaS plus company, which works on computer vision, which is helping in automating sizes, figuring out body ships, etc. So that's something in the computer vision, AI space, which I really wanted to do. During that, a lot of aspects of AI and VR in fashion, and again, vanity, etc.

And I was an early crypto investor and big FOMO of exiting too early was out of this space primarily because, you know, I still don't even have currency aspect of, you know, like someone asked me the basic difference between say Bitcoin and Ethereum, right? Like Bitcoin is like, and many people must have heard this. It's also a meme, which I don't know. Bitcoin is like an exchange rate, and Ethereum and blockchains like Ethereum and Solana.

They are like an exchange rate with macros, right? So the way is initially the whole currency aspect, a lot of high people hoping utility, etc. And then you're not just, you're not talking to smart people who are like yourselves, just talking to smart people, googling like Nauties, you don't even need to talk, right? You can just ask Google and just figuring out forums, etc.

Like, I personally started realizing that one was there at the Web 2.0 curve. And this Web 3.0 is pretty much happening right now, which is what I started off at the start, right? By seeing a lot of people are enthusiastic like to hear and watch. And I was like, since it is read, write and own, right?

Like the read, write, the Web 2.0 phase for the early guys, right? Like you guys who created podcast, everyone could create a podcast, right? But like the enthusiasm level has to go a little forward where you are like, okay, let's actually do something in the space where the threshold frequency has to be crossed the same way the early people, the early bloggers, right? The early user-generated contentators, the early video podcasters, they were the earlier ones on that whole journey, right?

So the Web 3.0 journey has started a while back. It's going to take time because again, this you won't, like right now, in the last one, we realized so much the internet has evolved, right? So when you are at it, you won't see daily evolution, but now we are at a pace where it's almost like a monthly evolution, right? Because if you're not in the scene, six months down, there's a new currency, there is a new DAO, there is a new blockchain, and you're like, oh my God, what's happening?

There's so much happening. So no one's an expert. At the start said, like I'm an expert, I'm not an expert. But I think in this space, you have to be an enthusiast, right?

Like you have to want to know more, you want to like use your imagination and like be open to the aspects of how it can actually help you and society in general. Rather than just memorizing definitions of blockchain, ledger, etc. I'm sure there will be courses and certifications where that's required. But you're listening to the wrong part, just if you want that.

You definitely are. Long part is for many things. So for many data, that's the complete evolution of yours itself is kind of fascinating. But to me, the part that actually stuck out the most was which I had connected to NFT, so you were squatting on email IDs and all that.

The whole tie back into vanity is something. So let's use that as a segue to get into Vectory. There are lots of things to... Bro, I sold my first NFT if you can ask it now.

It was Anjali at Yahoo.com for 15,000 rupees when I was in 11th standard, right? At 11th standard, 15,000 rupees, I was like the king man. So we came back to the end. And you know what?

And you know what? 15,000 rupees is a lot of money in there. So, I was in one, sorry, in 2001. No, no, no.

Yeah, who was the thing that didn't say? So one thing that you did not mention was the thing that was what you're doing in this space right now. What could you like? Just tell us like what are basics of this whole thing called Vectory.

A veteran is like, is this like, is this just Vectory on steroids? Is it just not? The thing between Web 3.0 is like one should not... Now before that, just tell us what you're doing in this space.

Okay, so I also run a media company called Fusebalt, primarily content strategy analytics. It helps me pay the bills and honestly that's why I'm doing it. It helps me pay the rent, pay the bills and pay the other employees of the other company. Somehow we do that.

So, and it's something which I'm good at, right? Like, so obviously, can't be completely away from it because if I ever want to go back into content, that's important. But apart from content, again, you have to see the content has evolved, right? So when I say content has evolved, the most consumed content right now has like 9 is to 16 ratios.

We never heard of it. If someone told you 20 years back that everyone's going to be watching 9 is to 16 format content and that's going to be the most watched content on the internet in every country. You would be like, what are you talking about? No, I'm not sure it's normally 9 is to 16.

People would have just said you missed 16 by 9 days. Exactly, right? So content is evolving, right? And the way people are consuming content is evolving.

This whole wave of creators came in, right? And honestly, like Chuck, I've never been a fan of influencer marketing. Why? Because I believe we had the only influencers.

And probably I had seen that it's not going to give you a, again, it's more association, right? Like earlier, I was like, why I used to be very dismissive of influencer marketing because I was used to be like, it's just a screenshot on a marketing PPT, right? Like at the end of a campaign, you send a screenshot saying that we got a shout out from someone. And honestly, it is.

So if there's any marketing manager who's listening to this, they relate better, right? Because at the end of the day, a lot of influencer marketing is down to no one cares what the influencer is generally influencing. Is he or she talking about that brand in their social scenarios? Is actually committed to the brand?

Will she actually buy the brand? That's all genuine influencer marketing, right? Not many people care about it, right? Like people who run their own brands do, eventually you'll realize in this whole marketing thing, you're not here to change the world, right?

Most people are just doing their jobs, right? And that's when you have to realize that most people for them, it's just a job, like it is a marketing screenshot. So yeah, we're telling them that that's not the way we should be looked at. It's not going to change their world, right?

Not everyone wants to change. They're happy with doing their own thing. And then they'll say that it is for each. It is for the screenshot.

So to reduce the price of it is just for the screenshot. So that's one reality of influencer marketing, but it can also do a lot. But when I'm talking about influencer marketing, it's evolving now, right? So what I was saying is slowly, you know, the smarter people are moving to the brand site, they are realizing that it has to mean a little more than a screenshot, right?

And influencers and creators are themselves realizing that it's not just randomly about how many views your reel's got, how many likes you got, right? Because eventually you've got to realize that people are not going to keep coming back just for branded communication, right? You're not going to be able to foster this community of your followers just so that you can keep milking brands. Because even brands will realize it's the same thing just to short.

So then what more, right? So this is when I was thinking like how can we mix this whole, now everyone's a great everyone who's doing anything on video and video is a creator, right? This creator ecosystem can actually make a lot of sense when it comes to content somehow via on Web 3.0. So that was the idea, right?

Like, can we do something around that? Can we mix this content, create our ecosystem? Then you realize, right, a lot of that is happening with the deals with what NBA has, what Grammy has, you know, where people started experimenting with audio visual and arch content, right? So the idea was you can create some bit of content and you can add a utility value to it.

So initially in Web 3.0, in the hype phase, right? Like what where probably we still are, right? We're probably just getting off the hype phase is digital art. Okay, so digital art became the easiest form of an NFT because honestly, NFT is just an address on the blockchain.

Right? So that's what you're going to do. You're going to launch to one back over there. Let's start with some basic.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. So just to understand what an NFT is, right?

Before all this surrounding yan, right? So you have a blockchain, right? And you remember the Farm Bill example which I gave you earlier? Right?

Where is my farm now? Right? Because Farm Bill is shut, right? Now imagine Farm Bill in today's world.

Okay? Farm Bill in today's world on a decentralized platform, second life in today's world on a decentralized platform that it's not owned by just one company. Okay. Any piece of hardware or computer running that program, running that node ensures that today's sound will be alive.

What do I mean by that? Any currency? Right? Let's take an upcoming currency which a lot of people are talking about in India.

If you look at currency like Solana, okay, not many people know about it. It's in the top five currency. I don't have any holdings. So this is not promoting Solana.

Just to use it as an example, this form of this blockchain will not disappear overnight. Unless everyone using it stops using it, right? All it needs is a little bit of energy and a little bit of hardware, 10 ticket actions. This is what the blockchain is.

So if you want to understand it, it's just a network of hardware where a node can be played of a particular program which is linked to a particular chain, right? So Ethereum chain either being the currency aspect of it. So Bitcoin is primarily ledger. So let's keep Bitcoin aside.

There are people are primarily looking at it as currency. Now if you look at something as Ethereum as Solana, when you're talking about the blockchain, now people are realizing that, wow, we can do so much more on it. It's not just currency, right? So that people realize that what is the simplest format to do?

Okay, I'll just tell you what, like, so ERC 7 to 1 is something which you guys should all Google anyway. What is ERC 7 to 1, right? It sounds like a wicked motif. So this is the basics of all NFTs on the chain.

So what is this? There are two, right? There is one which is about creating NFTs and it's about bundling NFTs. So basically what is an NFT, right?

At the end of that, or what is anything on the blockchain? But people say multiple things like smart contract, this, that, etc. Let's keep all these jobs on the side, right? Like, this is basically a program, right?

If you and me have a deal and we don't trust each other, okay, and we don't even trust the third party, right? Because the third party might take our money and disappear, right? So if we don't trust each other or it's not about trust, right? Like if it's an action, which there's some to and fro, you create a contract, right?

Like, I just want that as a program. I think the best analogy that floats around is the vending machine one, right? Where you take the vending machine, the simplest analogy is of a vending machine. So a vending machine works very simply, it's an automated currency.

Like it's the most trustable V-Shop people you can have. You hand over cash and it is programmed to hand over money back to you. So it's the- Unless it stops working. Unless it stops working.

I mean, it's also something we can talk about from our blockchain. Which is why I said, right? But the simplest old school analogy for this smart contract is a vending machine. So this ERC721, so what is it?

So basically to now imagine many people, okay, NFTs aren't, right? Or whatever. And if they can be anything. But NFT as a token, what does it mean?

Non-fungible token, right? What is fungible? Fungible means something which you can replace, right? But I don't know if you can replace you guys, right?

Me, me. Simplify. Gas can be replaced, right? So basically, so crypto currency, right?

One Bitcoin can be broken into N number of 0 0 0 0, right? So 0 0 0 1, 0 0 0 1, you can keep dividing it into it. But NFT cannot be- Just give a little more on that. One more aspect of it is a fungible item is 10 to B node.

You can take two different N2B nodes, and they are absolutely indistinguishable. and they are absolutely indistinguishable. Even if they are eight or eight people, they get from a different big dollar, that stuff. So those are fungible.

Whereas if you take your dog, for example, even if the two dogs are the same breed of the same color, two dogs are non-fungible. Where one guy cannot say, I have a black Labrador, you have a black Lager doll, let's just take it back. That's why I got to genetics and all right? Yeah, so the other is different.

Yeah, so that the whole point is they are non-fungible. So the whole idea of this particular thing is one ether, which is one etherium coin or one whatever is fungible. It can be one ether is exactly completely identical to another ether. But an NFT is non-fungible.

So you can only own one of those on the item. I just like to sit back because I just got it. Unless a collection has non-unique you can slide in the series. But yeah, let's not complicate.

So how many of you come back to the whole NFT? So right now what we see is the tip of the iceberg. What is the easiest way where I can get vanity? Easiest way.

That's a beautiful way of understanding what it is. That is the fundamental. So again, you can see the iceberg cut off. So the same thing, what I've been telling you from the time you were talking about 1997, 1999, right?

Easiest way is the Aftar, right? Like Parthal, I have forums, people putting their display pictures below that. Like that's the Aftar. Most of the forums would have an Aftar, right?

So again, it's your display picture. It's your image. Like we are used like right now WhatsApp, like WhatsApp Twitter. Most people identify with that photograph which we have, right?

So the easiest way was, wow, can we have these Aftars, right? A lot of people who are exposed to gaming Aftars, where do you see great artwork, again, music, movies, et cetera? So suddenly people said yes. Very easy way without having to code too much.

Every time you have to mint an NFT, which apart from the metadata, okay? So there's an NFT, what you are putting up on your ass, the display picture, right? Clicking and saving, et cetera, whatever. The metadata is stored, right?

So which probably shows that what the NFT is, but the utility of the NFT gets built on, right? So that's where, if you own an NFT right now, like artwork, right? It's all, why I'm telling you now, what comes to artwork, right? So artists have dropped probably 50 NFTs, okay?

There's no use of this, no, there is no utility to it apart from showing off, right? So if it's your favorite artist, you have got an NFT because in your social circles and your WhatsApp group in your Friday night, Saturday night, Brids and the fix. Yeah, it's a point of flex. It's like a car, it's like a Tesla, right?

No, just to ask the question here, so as an artist, how do I create an NFT? Yeah, so I'm coming to that, right? So now first, for an artist, the easiest way to create an NFT is to mail me, right? Or, obviously, right?

Because it's like, and that's a five minute explanation, we keep it simple, but let's come to YNFT, right? Why do you want to mint an NFT? Why should the artist want to mint an NFT? So an artist mints an NFT, doesn't create an FFT, that's a technical term?

For it to be recognized and have its unique address on the blockchain. Oh, we got it. So the same way finds an NFT, et cetera, so you mint an NFT on the blockchain, right? For that, again, like this NRC 2021, I told you about, it's a standard, right?

So it's a standard used right now on OpenSea, which is one of the biggest product marketplaces. Apart from marketplaces, it's also a place where you can mint an NFT, but it's a rapper. So they help you do it, right? They help you do it, which is why you have almost 100 to 300 dollars just to mint an NFT right now, if you're doing it on the ether chain, if you don't have a blockchain programmer, right?

Or if you are very much associated only with doing it on the Ethereum chain. And I'll tell you a little more, right? Like how, like, it depends on the utility aspect of it or just the art aspect. No, no, let's continue by the art aspect of it, right?

So some artist drops around 50 of his illustrations and people buy it, right? Now you've got to realize that when you're buying something over here, right? You're buying for arbitrage, right? You're buying to sell, okay?

You can buy to keep, okay? But when you're buying to keep, you have to create hype, right? Even to sell, you have to create hype, right? So the darker side of the darker side of the NFT art part art side is a lot of artists create and they themselves bid within each other, right?

So it's all part of their pool. And you create enough hype, you get enough celebrities, you use your friends, use your social contacts, so you go closer to during COVID, tell them to buy, tell them to do some hype. And that's all right, like basically you're painting, you own a painting, if you can convince enough people around the world that it costs more, that's what you paid for it, right? That's it, that's all you have to create, right?

So the art aspect, that was the only art aspect of it, right? Like, and a lot of people made millions over there, right? Because you're buying something for cheap, you're waiting for the hype to grow, and then you're selling it, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not really got some utility till, till then, till some creators realized, okay, bye, this is not gonna last till we add some utility.

So then some artists said, if you own this token, you get access to my Discord server for like, if you buy this, you can collaborate with an album, and they can take it as the album art. Like one of the things of Leon examples, is the biggest one, yeah. Those four tokens we ever had, in that one to five years, in that one to five years, anytime you can, and you know, building on this, when you ask me what am I doing, right? I didn't wanna tell you because at that time, it might be too complex, no, it's easier to explain, right?

So, Kings of Leon example, a lot of you, you just have to Google Kings of Leon NFT, okay? And you'll realize what they did, right? But now, let's use the Kings of Leon example, right? Imagine it's a band, okay, it's a young band, okay?

The band launches their NFTs, which is basically, imagine, it can be any piece of artwork or an audio track, not give it right to the song, but just an outro in pro some riff. I'll take that over, yeah. Whatever, and they put it up, okay, now because probably Chuck really loves this band, because it's probably like Dream Theater. He's like, this is a good band, I like the music, right?

So even though this NFT is overpriced, I think I will pay $1000 equivalent for the lifetime backstage pass, okay? So, Chuck buys it, okay? And he displays it, everyone says, give it a go, I can go right click and save the JPEG, what is it, what is it? And Chuck says, bro, it's my favorite band, and I'm allowed unlimited backstage access.

People say, okay fine. Now, Chuck's an early spotter of music, right? Now, this band grows, okay, goes viral, has a hit, it's viral on TikTok, viral on Instagram, and it's suddenly this band is now everyone's talking about it, and it's been two years, Chuck's been has that NFT, right? Now, the NFT which we bought at that time, okay?

Suddenly we'll have a lot more tickers, right? Because that band, so Chuck invested in the band, right? So, are you seeing the possibility of what one can do like talent in this space, right? Where, you know, a smart contract basically has been created when Chuck bought the NFT, right?

And he's acting upon it and selling it later because there might be hype, or the band's actually done well, right? So, that's something which I was really excited about, and honestly, I have a Facebook post in 2012, where I actually put this out, and there was no platform where you can do it, right? Like if I wanted to, like Chuck, you would remember this, in 2009, I had put up, there was this big bet, remember? Virat Kohli was the under 19 captain, and I had put out tissue paper saying that if Virat Kohli does not become the captain of the interview team, I'll chop my balls off, and my flatmate at that time had written the reverse, right?

Because, and he said, like, we were having some chicken, he's like, this fork has more talent than Virat Kohli. Because Virat Kohli was this brash abusive young kid, right? And, but yeah, like, I knew that this guy is going to be great, and if there was, like, the same thing with Nadal, I would say, right? Like, I remember, like, I told my dad this, like, we were seeing Rafael Nadal winning his first role, and I told that, if Nadal was a stock, I would invest in him right now, right?

And I was a big one-thalo spherofan back then, he'd won one-one, and then like, Carlos, my, like, I don't know if you guys like French, or Czechs, or Czechs, like that. I'm not going to go to a hardcore round, Nadal, and like, yeah, right? But, I want to skip to this example, because it's a fascinating one. So, I want to piece a few questions on this, and I think a lot of the questions that I have will get answered on this.

So, the example that you use, right? Finding this young band, doing this one, getting a fascinating example. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's a fascinating example. So, what stops this from happening in a world without NFTs?

What is stopping me from, what is stopping the band from releasing a lifetime pass, me buying it in Indian Rupees, and having this benefit? Sure. And later, I can maybe even sell the rights to that pass or something to say, who's willing to pay a lot more for this. I understand that all this can happen on the blockchain, where he's going to be a siteless of a use case, but what's stopping this from happening in Indian Rupees right now?

See, nothing is stopping, right? But again, it's the don't trust anybody attitude, right? So, there is going to be a platform, there is going to be a platform which can connect brands, and say we can sell it, right? Then you have to trust that platform.

What are the bands that are selling? What are the bands that are selling? Yeah, bands should, right? See, this is what's happening.

You're decentralizing everything right now, right? So, at the end of the day, your fans can actually own you. You know, like, again, football example, in Germany, if you look at it, buying you and it's owned by its fans, right? Rather than just having multiple people who are buying it.

So, this is what I'll talk about. Just to add one more point to that, and on this point, and let's take a real world example. Like the one you just said of, if the band is issuing these passes, what stops them from that? The point is, at the end of the day, the database of these passes that have been issued, exists with the band.

Now, that database can be hacked, that database can get erased, that database can be stored in the future. Like, now they have secure, yeah, think of it on levels of a pass that Metallica issued right at the beginning of when they started out, and from those systems that were in place back then, and if someone tried to redeem that pass right now, I'm pretty sure all those systems were defunct at this point. What is this particular system is that not only does Metallica have a record that you have that NFT, but everyone else has that. It's not your name, but that ticket.

Yes, that ticket can be validated by anyone else on that same blockchain. Now, the beauty what you said, right? Like what you said right now is the beautiful beauty, which I'll tell you now what the future is, right? Bro, now imagine this, so you bought that Metallica token, right, back in 85.

Okay, now a new band comes, the same band which you have bought the NFT to do. They put a new utility. Okay, they put a new utility. Saying anyone who owns the Metallica token also gets backstage passes to our concert, right?

That is the platform, that is the secondary phase, where suddenly you can start programming utility to NFTs as a secondary objective now, right? So again, you don't even have to be connected to the NFTs. You as an individual company is now saying, okay, if you have that NFT, you get a 10% off on Starbucks, right? So, Starbucks doesn't even have to give you the NFT, right?

So, the platform, so the amount of things which are going to be created, where like basic example, right now, you will most people say you right click safety image, and you can put it as your own display image, but Twitter is already working on it, right? So, eventually in the future, you will not be able to. So, right now, like the avatars which you have, the NFT avatars which you have right now, might anyone might be using it. But when this meta works, if it happens, whenever it happens, right?

When copyright becomes reality, when copyright becomes, and this is the computer vision, copywriting, right? And we've seen this in audio, in audio fingerprinting on YouTube, on reals, etcetera, right? The recognition is happening. So, computer vision AI, that's why I told you the overlapping with the other work which I've been doing, right?

So, computer vision AI is eventually going to take you to the fact that NFT, the visual aspect of the NFT is going to be easily validated that it is the original NFT, and yet another duplicate pass with someone has made, right? And their lives are not a lot of use cases, right? In identification, in user IDs, etcetera. So, that's a huge...

No, that's fascinating. Verification aspect, you know, this, I mean, every criticism against NFTs, etcetera, right now, can be traced back to something else, like in the real world, like people pay a lot of money for art, which also doesn't have utility. For example, people can write technology like that has already been worked and look at the number of covers of a song or even illegal, like all these other being taken down automatically. So, all this technology is kind of being worked on already.

It's just a matter of explaining, I think, what the problem is? On a decentralized platform, sorry, on a decentralized platform. Right now, the audio fingerprinting is happening and YouTube is still making money. Yeah, that was one heck of a conversation and we are still going to continue.

There was just so many things for us to not be able to back into just one episode, so we decided to split up across two. So, part two of this conversation with Akalabia will be hit your feeds next week. So, we will see you then. Then, stay safe, stay.

No, we'll do that. It's the outro of the next episode. See you then.